![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Dec. 4th, 2009
Take it easy, my foot
Dec. 4th, 2009 06:50 amIt never fails to strike me. Every time I hear a live performance from The Eagles - and mind you, I love much of their music - every single note is there in place exactly as it is in the albums. I do not, of course, expect the kind of danger one finds in Bob Dylan live performances, where some songs seem from time to time to be set to altogether different tunes. But one goes to live performances for the improvisation, the extension, the serendipity, the things that do not happen in the albums - even the mistakes. I have never known any such thing to happen with The Eagles; their songs are as fixed as classical scores.
Now, the reason I say this is that this is the group that composed Take it Easy, indeed that did as much as anyone to encourage the whole world to think of America's west coast as a place of mellow, semi-stoned, hippy relaxedness. But when you look at their actual artistry, they are as mellow and relaxed as a Prussian platoon, or at least as the Berlin Philharmonic. Every effect, every harmony, is worked out in advance, carefully scored and learned, and conveyed with professional precision. They move to a perfectly worked out and carefully rehearsed plan. Mellow and relaxed, my foot.
Now, the reason I say this is that this is the group that composed Take it Easy, indeed that did as much as anyone to encourage the whole world to think of America's west coast as a place of mellow, semi-stoned, hippy relaxedness. But when you look at their actual artistry, they are as mellow and relaxed as a Prussian platoon, or at least as the Berlin Philharmonic. Every effect, every harmony, is worked out in advance, carefully scored and learned, and conveyed with professional precision. They move to a perfectly worked out and carefully rehearsed plan. Mellow and relaxed, my foot.