Do you know the song "Bitter Creek", off "Desperado"?<\/p>\n
"Desperado" was a failure upon release.\u00c2\u00a0 The album didn’t break the Top Forty, and neither did the single, any of them.\u00c2\u00a0 Those standards, "Tequila Sunrise" and the title track, they had no impact, the record was a stiff.<\/p>\n
Not that the label and the band didn’t give it a good shot.\u00c2\u00a0 There was a run-up of hype in "Rolling Stone", all about the outlaw theme and the cover photo, with Jackson and J.D.\u00c2\u00a0 But only fans cared.\u00c2\u00a0 And how many fans were there?\u00c2\u00a0 Of a band with a lightweight hit single?<\/p>\n
Yes, they were named the Eagles, about as generic as "America", and they didn’t start with FM airplay and grow, they began on Top Forty.\u00c2\u00a0 Hipsters passed right by the debut album.<\/p>\n
But what an album it was.<\/p>\n
"Take It Easy" is a deserved classic.\u00c2\u00a0 But the trio that enraptured me was "Witchy Woman", "Earlybird" and "Tryin’".<\/p>\n
"Witchy Woman" was our introduction to the brooding Don Henley.\u00c2\u00a0 It had the darkness of the sixties, but with a seventies sensibility.\u00c2\u00a0 It was slick where the dopesters of the sixties were rough.\u00c2\u00a0 It brought you right into the desert.<\/p>\n
"Earlybird" might not have had the character of Poco’s debut, but it had even more appeal.\u00c2\u00a0 The picking and a grinnin’ lassoed the listener, and the harmonies were like Crosby, Stills & Nash on steroids.\u00c2\u00a0 They were sweet, but with balls.<\/p>\n
Yet my favorite is the album closer, "Tryin’".<\/p>\n
Randy Meisner has been exiled from the Eagles, his tracks don’t even grace the compilations.\u00c2\u00a0 He was in the band through "Hotel California", but it’s like he doesn’t exist.\u00c2\u00a0 But he was an integral part of the act.\u00c2\u00a0 The intensity of his vocals resonated with the desires of the aging baby boomers, entering their twenties, wanting to achieve their goals.\u00c2\u00a0 Glenn was the emcee of good times, Henley was the brooding genius, Randy was us.\u00c2\u00a0 Alternately frustrated and excited.<\/p>\n
Records have moments that put them over the top, that make them transcend their trappings, that make them personal favorites.\u00c2\u00a0 When "Tryin’" breaks down a little over two minutes in, and Randy sings of keepin’ on tryin’, you’re energized.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m still tryin’, are you?<\/p>\n
And then the song is over, in a flash, they never return to the verse.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s a guitar solo, and then the album ends.<\/p>\n
It was these album tracks that got me to buy "Desperado".\u00c2\u00a0 I liked "Doolin’ Dalton", the set-up for the theme.\u00c2\u00a0 David Blue’s "Outlaw Man" was the most obvious track.\u00c2\u00a0 But the songs I loved, when I purchased the album back in ’73, long before it was a classic, were Randy Meisner’s "Certain Kind Of Fool" and Bernie Leadon’s "Bitter Creek".<\/p>\n
He was a poor boy, raised in a small family Christopher Moltisanti didn’t fall into the Mafia, he wanted IN!\u00c2\u00a0 The life looks so glamorous to one without options.\u00c2\u00a0 The money, the broads, the action.\u00c2\u00a0 But they come at a price.\u00c2\u00a0 Christopher paid with his life.<\/p>\n Maybe Christopher’s is a rock and roll story.\u00c2\u00a0 A rocket to the top, a brief reign laden with drugs and alcohol, and then a quick crash, a slide into oblivion.<\/p>\n They say that he was crazy You need a good woman at home, to keep you together.\u00c2\u00a0 No one makes it without a babe, to listen to their stories, to soothe them, to bandage their wounds and send them back into battle.\u00c2\u00a0 Christopher had Adriana.\u00c2\u00a0 An Italian dream.\u00c2\u00a0 But she got caught in a bind, and played with the Feds, she had to disappear.\u00c2\u00a0 Intellectually, Christopher knew it was the right thing to do, but emotionally…he could never get over it.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, he suppressed his emotions for a while, but then, her absence, it gnawed at him.\u00c2\u00a0 And her replacement, Kelly, was just not enough, beautiful and devoted, but not dangerous.<\/p>\n He wants to dance, oh yeah Adrianna ran shotgun.\u00c2\u00a0 She was just as wild as Christopher.\u00c2\u00a0 They were F. Scott and Zelda without the education, without the intellectual curiosity.\u00c2\u00a0 They were a certain kind of fool, who always gets caught in his own game.<\/p>\n Christopher couldn’t survive. His demons were eating him up.\u00c2\u00a0 Rage catches up with you.<\/p>\n But we thought Paulie would pull the trigger.\u00c2\u00a0 Or Tony would approve a hit.\u00c2\u00a0 We didn’t imagine that infused with coke Christopher would flip the Escalade while listening to Roger Waters’ lame remake of "Comfortably Numb" from the "Departed" soundtrack and end up so weak, blood flowing from his orifices, that Tony could suffocate him with one hand.<\/p>\n Tony Soprano is no fool.\u00c2\u00a0 He’s too paranoid to be tripped up.<\/p>\n Then again, we’ve been rooting for him.\u00c2\u00a0 But no longer.\u00c2\u00a0 In the denouement of the series, David Chase is illuminating Tony’s less lovable dimensions.\u00c2\u00a0 He’s got a conscience, but he’s not ruled by it.\u00c2\u00a0 Paulie lamented busting Christopher’s balls, Tony just saw his nephew as an obstacle, that needed to be pushed out of the way.\u00c2\u00a0 And with his work done, Tony went to that high class resort town known as Las Vegas.<\/p>\n Who knows the power of the Mafia in Vegas today.\u00c2\u00a0 They say the town is clean.\u00c2\u00a0 But we don’t believe it is.\u00c2\u00a0 Would the head of a New Jersey family get a private jet, first class treatment?\u00c2\u00a0 I’m thinking no.\u00c2\u00a0 Tony is a gambler, but not a legendary high roller, who is comped on his way to hopefully losing millions.<\/p>\n But it turns out Tony’s not agenda free in LV.\u00c2\u00a0 He needs to pay a call on one of Christopher’s old friends.\u00c2\u00a0 A stripper with class.\u00c2\u00a0 Not one of the Bada Bing regulars with a boob job and tattoos, but a classy girl next door, the woman of vacationers’ dreams.<\/p>\n This girl ends up in bed with Tony.\u00c2\u00a0 She doesn’t even bother to take off her clothes, she just lifts her skirt, like a schoolgirl.\u00c2\u00a0 And after Tony makes a joke about her working to pay her tuition, she starts reminiscing about her old flame.<\/p>\n No man wants to hear about another male as he’s in post-coital repose.\u00c2\u00a0 He feels triumphant, having done his manly duty.\u00c2\u00a0 To be juxtaposed with another is to undercut him.\u00c2\u00a0 And in one false move in the aftermath of sexual intercourse, Tony moves further in on Christopher’s action, he tells this girl he wants to follow in his nephew’s tracks, he wants to partake in peyote.<\/p>\n I like a pretty girl as much as anybody else.\u00c2\u00a0 But you’ve got to be afraid that that’s their chip, that that’s what they’re trading on.\u00c2\u00a0 Christopher’s old girlfriend radiates a certain amount of intelligence, but really all she seems to have is her looks, and her charm.\u00c2\u00a0 People like that are scary.\u00c2\u00a0 People like that take you for a ride.\u00c2\u00a0 This woman took Tony for a ride.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, Tony thought he was in control, but men are beholden to women, no matter how self-impressed they are.<\/p>\n Tony and this girl end up in the desert.\u00c2\u00a0 In Eagles country.\u00c2\u00a0 As the sun sets off in the distance.\u00c2\u00a0 Tony with the witchy woman.<\/p>\n And as I viewed this scene, a song started going through my brain, "Bitter Creek", the second to last song on "Desperado".<\/p>\n Out where the desert meets the sky Oh, peyote<\/em><\/p>\n Bernie Leadon left the Eagles first.\u00c2\u00a0 His contribution to the band has been essentially forgotten.\u00c2\u00a0 But his and Meisner’s compositions added character, back when an album was something you played from start to finish, when seemingly secondary tracks revealed themselves and became your favorites.<\/p>\n My favorite "Sopranos" episode remains the one wherein Tony accompanies Meadow on a college trip to Maine, wherein he strangles an old colleague now in the witness protection program.<\/p>\n My favorite "Sopranos" scene is when Meadow agrees losing her gas credit card is adequate punishment for a serious transgression.<\/p>\n That episode in Maine was haunting, just like that northern state it took place in.\u00c2\u00a0 The family discipline scene had the truth of today’s parenting.<\/p>\n I will remember "The Sopranos", my favorite drama to ever grace the small screen, if not the best.\u00c2\u00a0 But when I walk through life, its scenes will not be replayed in my head.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s music’s role.<\/p>\n We didn’t just listen to those albums, they became part of our lives, they flash through our brains like family members, like old friends.<\/p>\n The protagonist in "Bitter Creek" speaks of one last score, and then no more runnin’.\u00c2\u00a0 I doubt Tony Soprano is going to escape unscathed, if he lives through this season at all.\u00c2\u00a0 "Desperado" might be an artifact from the seventies, but it’s still alive, it resonates.<\/p>\n <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Do you know the song "Bitter Creek", off "Desperado"? "Desperado" was a failure upon release.\u00c2\u00a0 The album didn’t break the Top Forty, and neither did the single, any of them.\u00c2\u00a0 Those standards, "Tequila Sunrise" and the title track, they had no impact, the record was a stiff. 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He kinda had a craving for somethin’ no one else could see<\/em><\/p>\n
The kind that no lady should meet<\/em><\/p>\n
He wants to sing, oh yeah
He wants to see the lights a flashin’ and listen to the thundering<\/em><\/p>\n
Is where I go when I wanna hide<\/em><\/p>\n