That Eagles special was pretty damn good for a bunch of fogies. Don Henley cracks me up. Have you ever seen him play drums? He sits there in flannel, as bad a choice for a drummer to wear as drinking milk is on a hot day, but its OK because he barely moves. What few movements he does make are so stiff its like he's a muppet. Actually, that's insulting. As I recall Animal played mean drum kit. That dude was crazy.
And Glenn Frey was hunched over like he had a bad back. Joe Walsh was talking in tongues. And Timothy B Schmidt, well, I never quite figured out what he does.
Don't get me wrong, they have some good tunes. I like them live much better when they're doing their acoustic sets while they're seated on stools in a row at the front of the stage. They're dominant at that. But their age shows when they try to rock.
Even if you don't like their music, watching Joe Walsh is worth the price of admission. While the rest of the group is meticulous, taking great pains to make sure their songs are seemingly an exact replica of the original studio version, Walsh seems to take great joy in ad-libbing his songs, plugging in new lyrics on the fly just for the hell of it. During his solo song "Life's Been Good To Me", he changed two lines in one verse -- the demon! -- and you should have seen Henley's face. He didn't know what was going on. Hilarious.
But watching Walsh on songs that aren't his is even funnier. He looks alternatively bored, disinterested, and amused, all while continuing to strum away at the guitar and sing half-hearted backing vocals. Its quite a sideshow. I like Joe Walsh, even his stuff with James Gang back in the early 70's. My favorite Eagles song is one of his, and it sadly doesn't appear on either of their greatest hits albums, so not many people know it. Pretty Maids All In A Row. Good stuff.
As I was watching the Eagles, I was flipping to the Twins game during commercials. And I missed a grand slam by my boy Torii Hunter. Dammit anyway.
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