When the child bride and I relocated in April 2017 it had taken 12 months of marketing, six months of bridging finance the mafia would have been proud of, countless sleepless nights and almost as many grey hairs before we could move out of our acreage based country house and into our city based townhouse. On Friday this week (it’s now Sunday) my mother put her house on the market and on Saturday (yesterday) received an offer which was bang on the money. I consider this rather unfair. As unfair in fact, as favourite musicians dying while at the height of their powers. Which brings me to last night’s Eagles concert.

It was our sixth – 1976, 1994, 2005, 2009, 2015 and last night, the first since Glen Frey left the building in 2016. Now 2005 was called the Farewell 1 Tour which I guess makes last night’s concert part of the Farewell 4 Tour although they appear to have abandoned that naming protocol like Led Zeppelin stopped numbering their albums after 2,3 and 4.

Things have changed in so many ways, not least the Eagles line-up and their relative popularity. Back in 1976, the CB and I were wandering past the now demolished Festival Hall in Brisbane’s CBD and noticed on the hording above the main entrance that the Eagles would be appearing so we walked in to the box office where there was no queue and bought two tickets on the side, half way up and about 15m back from the stage. For all subsequent concerts getting similar tickets is like winning the lottery and you just about have to anyway to pay for them. So we each sold a kidney (now we’re on dialysis – the other two went for the Rolling Stones tickets a few years ago) and got tickets in a similar location, albeit in a different venue from all those years ago at Festival Hall.

As it happened, the seat location turned out to be rather problematic. I have to admit I’ve been doing it rather tough these past few weeks. Not genuine refugee tough but compared with a month ago, a bit challenging. If you read the few posts prior to this one you’ll see I had dental issues, an infection which turned out to be in my prostate which sent my PSA from a relatively benign 2.1 to something better measured by the Doomsday Clock and more recently a stiff neck which feels like my vertebrae have been fused together. So last night I had to either swivel to the right in my seat or gingerly turn my head to get a good look at what was going on. I had managed to turn it enough to be able to look straight at the stage but now my head is permanently locked at 10 minutes past the hour.

You thought this was going to be a review of the concert didn’t you and up to now the connection between this blog entry and the concert has been somewhat tenuous. But here goes.

The vocals and musicianship were predictably flawless so I’ll leave those aspects alone but there was one exception.

Joe Walsh forgot the first two lines of “Walk Away” and the magnificent screen behind the band had a ten foot high picture of his face on it at the time. They carried on regardless and never missed another beat. Status Quo would have admitted it and pissed themselves laughing about it but we’re dealing with a more serious entity here although everyone had a chance to chat and the mood was pretty relaxed throughout. But Joe is one of my favourite guitar players – the flamboyant artist to Steuart Smith’s technician – so he gets away with it. Add Vince Gill who selfishly combines terrific soaring vocals with stunning guitar chops – why does one person get to quarantine the outstanding talents of two – and you have a guitar line-up second to none in modern music.

A band with three gun guitarists plus two other competent players and a bass player lined up across the stage is my kind of band. Add five different lead vocalists and back-up musos who’ve been with them for decades plus an unrivalled back catalogue and I’ll be lining up for number 7 if the opportunity arises. By adding Vince Gill and especially Glen’s son Deacon Frey to the line-up, the average age of the band has plummeted. It doesn’t make the older guys any younger unfortunately and while 60 may be the new 40 (I’m prepared to stretch this even further) I’m not sure we’ll get to see 7 in Brisbane, if at all.

Of course it wouldn’t be a Brisbane concert (or Sydney, of Melbourne I expect, especially Melbourne) without the obligatory clown yelling “Aussie Aussie Aussie” and expecting the predictable follow-up. It didn’t work the first time and he got howled down the second time so mercifully, there wasn’t a third. I guess this is a reflection of the evolving demographics at Eagles concerts. We took our kids when they were youngsters (Hell Freezes Over in ’94 I think) and there were families there last night doing the same. So it wasn’t quite the Hollies or Status Quo crowd who we are starting to recognize and nod acquaintance to. But no doubt we’ll see elements of them and most of the Eagles crowd at Fleetwood Mac later in the year.

And to the prick who kicked a bottle of water all over my man-bag (phone, wallet, glasses, keys if you must ask), thanks for making it an even more eventful night.

My mother thinks Frank Sinatra was the duck’s nuts. I’m happy to listen to the duelling guitar solo (duet?) at the end of Hotel California on a continuous loop until I disappear into the flames.

For the record, here’s the set list. There were three encores and to all of those people who left after the first and second encores, hahahahahahahahahaha.

1. Seven Bridges Road (all)
2. Take it Easy (Deacon Frey)
3. One of These Nights (Don Henley)
4. Take it to the Limit (Vince Gill)
5. Tequila Sunrise (Vince Gill)
6. Witchy Woman (Don Henley)
7. In the City (Joe Walsh)
8. I Can’t Tell You Why (Timothy Schmidt)
9. New Kid in Town (Vince Gill)
10. Peaceful Easy Feeling (Deacon Fry)
11. Love Will Keep Us Alive (Timothy Schmidt)
12. Lyin’ Eyes (Vince Gill)
13. Don’t Let Our Love Start Slippin’ Away (Vince Gill)
14. Those Shoes (Don Henley)
15. Already Gone (Deacon Frey)
16. Walk Away (Joe Walsh)
17. Life’s Been Good (Joe Walsh)
18. The Boys of Summer (Don Henley)
19. Heartache Tonight (Vince Gill)
20. Funk #49 (Joe Walsh)
21. Life in the Fast Lane (Don Henley)

Encore 1

22. Hotel California (Don Henley)

Encore 2

23. Rocky Mountain Way (Joe Walsh)
24. Desperado (Don Henley)

Encore 3

25. Best of My Love (Don Henley)

 

We’ve all started new positions during our working life. Admittedly some people do it only once and these are generally public servants or Japanese although the job-for-life the previous generation of Japanese workers expected is not quite as ubiquitous these days.

Before you start a new position you generally have to negotiate your way through an application to get an interview, then fill in some questionnaires to make sure you’re not a psychopath or a sociopath. And here’s the rub.

Did you ever wonder, once you’ve got to know your workmates, how some of them jumped those hurdles. Some of them wouldn’t be able to jump rope if it was lying limp on the ground. How did these thoroughly unlikeable individuals slip through the fuck-wit filter? Were they interviewed by like minded people? Are they put there as a management challenge for everyone else? Do they know someone or have photos. Or are they simply the beneficiaries of the only job generating programme left-leaning governments throughout the world know – employing more and more bureaucrats. Because let’s face it, many of these people work in government. One of the few privileges private enterprise enjoys compared with government is the ability to fire someone. That person has to have committed an atrocity three times or three different atrocities before human resources will stop wringing their hands and gnashing their teeth long enough to risk a trip to the unfair dismissal tribunal. But such are the “rights” of employees over management these days.

Back to our work-place wankers. You know the type. They work to rule absolutely when it advantages them. Breaks are taken at exactly the time they are meant to be taken. This doesn’t necessarily mean one returns to work at the allotted time. One has to finish one’s cigarette, doesn’t one. They are the ones who loudly assert their rights at work. If there’s a union presence they will utilise it as often as my mother calls her local member of parliament. They will leave their workplace exactly at knock-off time even if it means leaving a nail half banged into a piece of wood. And they will gossip, maliciously.

There is an Australian Football club that famously implemented a “no-dickheads” rule which is a bit like the fuck-wit filter mentioned above. This meant that if you were up yourself to the extent that you disrupted the team’s cohesion, it didn’t matter how good you were, you weren’t welcome and you weren’t selected. And it worked because the club enjoyed considerable success.

This doesn’t necessarily mean it will work everywhere. Imagine applying it to an NBA franchise. Overnight you’d be down to about three players. And NFL teams would lose whole defensive lines – you know the ones who carry on like they’ve cured cancer after making one tackle. Unfortunately when you see an eight year old soccer player put on a Hugh Jackman routine when they score a goal, to the raucous cheers of Mum and Dad, you know the future supply of dickheads is secure.

When the no-dickheads rule is rolled out to all work places in the country we will have platoons of embittered ex-administration officers roaming central business districts all over the country, stopping outside their previous places of work, sucking on fags and abusing passers-by. In the US they will occasionally (rarely thankfully) return to their old workplaces with guns. Stringent application of the no-dickheads rule at the appropriate time could have nipped a tragedy in the bud. Or more likely simply shifted it to another location.

Unfortunately it seems we are stuck with these people and now that political correctness has sunk it’s cold dead claws into every facet of life, especially the fun bits, they can claim victim hood status as well. Best to just ignore them.