The Long Run is an interesting album in its own right, but a disappointing follow-up to Hotel California. This time the revolving door pushes out Randy Meisner, but Timothy B. Schmit provides a nearly seamless replacement of his bass wizardry and upper-register vocals. (Curiously, Schmit had previously replaced Meisner in Poco.)

The most well-known song from the album is “Heartache Tonight”, which is mostly a return to the form of previous Souther-penned Eagles hits. The clapping effect used in the introduction and verses is cheesy, but the call-and-response of Henley’s bass drum and the three guitarists save these sections. Frey’s singing is soulful, but at this point he is simply not the superior vocalist Henley has become. Given the lyrical content, the celebratory attitude of the music seems out of place.

“The Long Run” is a mid-tempo fusion of rock with rhythm & blues and is generally enjoyable, although the main rhythm guitar riff starts to sound obnoxious after a while. “I Can’t Tell You Why” is similarly a application of rhythm & blues rhythms to the type of rock ballads the band has been writing since “Tequila Sunrise”. Schmit’s impossibly high vocals and the subtle interplay of bass, guitars, and keyboards work quite well and Frey’s extended closing solo is very nice.

The simple chord progression and melody of “In The City” are bland, but the effect of playing the simple riff straight for one iteration and syncopated the next keeps the listener unsettled and Walsh’s slide guitar and the band’s vocal harmonies keep the song interesting. “The Disco Strangler” is a good attempt at hard rock, but it lacks the killer riff that made “Life In The Fast Lane” so enticing.

“King Of Hollywood” is a great example of the band’s ability to make something from nothing. Schmit plays a single note dotted-quarter eighth drone through virtually the entire song, but many bassists would kill for such a consistent, warm tone. The song plods on and on but never seems tired. Rather, it evokes the same kind of hypnotic feeling as “Hotel California” while being much more low-key. A guitar solo each from Frey, Felder, and Walsh and alternating sinister vocals from Frey and Henley keep the song interesting to the end.

The heavy talkbox groove of “Those Shoes” continues in a similar mood but somewhat less effectively. A nearly five-minute song at this tempo requires something to keep the listener interested, and this does not have enough. The next song, “Teenage Jail”, is, if possible, both heavier and slower. By this time, any listener’s appetite for dirges will have been satiated. That is a shame, because the synthesizer and guitar solos in the middle of the song are well-worth listening.

“The Greeks Don’t Want No Freaks” is a startlingly bright rock & roll tune after the last two depressing tracks, but it is only interesting for its rare use of organ in an Eagles arrangement. “The Sad Cafe” is a pleasant closing ballad in the style used to end most Eagles albums.

As a whole, the album is a bitter and depressing glimpse at Los Angeles and the entertainment business from some of its most knowing and cynical residents. In retrospect, the band’s impending dissolution seems obvious. This may be document of a group realizing it is ready to give up the long run, but it makes a powerful musical statement.

It is with good reason that Hotel California is the most well-known albums by the Eagles and one of the most popular in all of rock music. The loss of Bernie Leadon is regrettable, but the addition of Joe Walsh more than makes up for it. While he lacks Leadon’s country sensibility and a classically good voice, his unique singing style and rock chops take the band further down the path they chose when adding Don Felder.

The title track has become synonymous with what is now called “Classic Rock”, and it is indeed a classic example of everything that is good about rock music. Henley’s voice and mysterious lyrics fit the spooky rock riffs perfectly and Walsh and Felder’s extended solos manage to be both exiting and beautiful. A few minutes of that hypnotic repeated bass pattern, reggae upbeats, and repetitious arpeggiated solo leave the listener in a trance, perhaps not unlike visitors to the eponymous hotel.

“Life In The Fast Lane” is the first great hard rock song written by the band, no doubt due to the influence of Walsh. The main verse riff is not much to speak of, but the one used as the intro and under the choruses is remarkable. Still, the song might have been unremarkable if Walsh had not been interjecting tasty guitar licks throughout the tune. Henley’s singing is quite effective again, and it is clear that at this point he is the best lyricist in the group.

The other real gem is the album’s closer, “The Last Resort”. Once again, Henley writes a fantastic set of lyrics and sings them to a delightful melody. The song starts with simple, but effective piano accompaniment, but the rest of the band eventually joins in. Felder’s steel guitar is a distracting throwback to the band’s country roots, but the rest of the arrangement is spot-on. In particular, the key change is very effective.

Most of the other album cuts are quite good as well. “Pretty Maids All In A Row” is a strange combination of balladry and rhythm & blues, but it works. “Victim Of Love” does not quite have the energy or inspiration of “Life In The Fast Lane”, but it still rocks harder than anything the band had written previously. “New Kid In Town”, “Wasted Time”, and “Try And Love Again” are all mediocre at worst, although the synthesized strings can be a bit much at times. The instrumental reprise of “Wasted Time” is the only track that the album would be better without.

Few bands are able to belt out hard rock anthems in one breath and whisper heartfelt ballads the next without sounding silly, and fewer still are able to write such exceptional material as the Eagles do here.

One Of These Nights is the first album on which the band wrote nearly all of their own material, and the quality of the songs does not suffer. The title track is exceptional, adding a strong rhythm & blues influence in the rhythm section to the quasi-hard country-rock of the lead-off track from their previous outing. Meisner’s syncopated bass work through the verses is especially notable, and the first few notes of the guitar solo are among the most exciting Felder or Leadon ever played. The only flaw in “One Of These Nights” is an unflattering use of Meisner’s vocals during the choruses.

“Lyin’ Eyes” is another outstanding track. The song is framed as a ballad, but the drums, bass, and strummed guitar give it an upbeat shuffle feel without actually using swing eighths, and there are plenty of piano and guitar leads arranged around the vocal lines to make it interesting. Henley’s vocal delivery make the listener understand the pain of the dallying wife, the knowing old husband, and the longing boyfriend, and the other members’ subtle “oohs” and “aahs” sweeten the arrangement.

“Take It To The Limit” follows exactly the same formula as “Tequila Sunrise” and “Best Of My Love”, and it continues to be quite effective. “Journey Of The Sorcerer” is uninspiring, considering that the band have played more interesting instrumental parts while functioning primarily as accompaniment for a vocal melody. The rest of the album is mediocre: good enough for release, but not good enough to supplant the growing back catalog of superb songs in their live set.

The addition of guitarist Don Felder game Eagles a new, fuller sound on On The Border, and it is definitely a change for the better. Although this album is at least as musically diverse as those that came before, every song works well. Unfortunately, most of the best material is still written by outsiders.

“Already Gone” puts a harder edge on the country-rock stylings of Eagles’s previous singles, and the band succeeds in adding power without sacrificing the beauty of their earlier work. The closing track, “Best Of My Love”, has all of the same features as “Tequila Sunrise” from the previous album but manages to sound fresh. “On The Border” is the band’s first foray into funk-rock, and is quite promising.

The album also contains two good ballads (“You Never Cry Like A Lover” and “Ol’ 55”), an interesting hard rock boogie (“James Dean”), and a surprisingly enjoyable bluegrass tune (“Midnight Flyer”). Bernie Leadon’s tribute to Gram Parsons, “My Man”, works well also. “Is It True?” would be filler for most bands, but with Frey’s slide guitar and Meisner’s bass playing it becomes more than a generic rocker. The same can be said of “Good Day In Hell”, where Felder’s leads nicely complement Frey’s fuzzy upbeats.

Desperado is a step back from the success of Eagles. There are good songs here, but they are overshadowed by an unfocused mess of other material. The idea of lyrically connecting the songs in a loose concept album about lawlessness in the Old West is generally unsuccessful, but the high points of the album are able to stand by themselves quite well.

This time around the highlights of the album were written by members. “Tequila Sunrise” is a beautiful example of the same type of song as “Take It Easy” and “Peaceful Easy Feeling” slowed down but without losing its rock & roll arrangement. “Desperado” is an unusually sparse arrangement of a very slow ballad, but Frey’s piano playing and Henley’s vocal melody are lilting enough to prevent it from becoming plodding. “Saturday Night” is another effective ballad. “Outlaw Man” is a good rocker made great by Meisner’s driving but melodic bass playing through the second half of the song.

I have a general dislike for country music, and “Twenty-One” is an example of everything I hate about it. “Out Of Control” is harder and faster than anything on Eagles, but it does not seem to be a style that suits the band’s strengths as much as “Chug All Night” from the previous album. “Certain Kind Of Fool” is a good hard-edged song in the country-rock style of the band’s best work, but Meisner’s vocals sound unpleasantly strained. “Bitter Creek” is enjoyable, but the vocal version of “Doolin-Dalton” is unremarkable and the instrumental version of it is awful.

The debut album by Eagles, while surpassed by their excellent later work, is a quality country-rock statement, as well as an indicator of the musical diversity they would later espouse. The best tracks here are the mid-tempo folk-country-rock songs, “Take It Easy” and “Peaceful Easy Feeling”. The hard rock teasers “Chug All Night” and “Tryin’” and ballads “Most Of Us Are Sad” and “Take The Devil” are also good tracks, though “Train Leaves Here This Morning” and “Earlybird” are a bit too countrified for my tastes. “Witchy Woman” is an interesting track, but generally overrated.

The best material was not written by the band, but their excellent arranging style pervades everything. The rhythm section of Meisner and Henley keep most of the songs firmly rooted in rock & roll, while Leadon’s banjo and guitar leads add a country flavor the Frey’s rhythm guitar, which alternates between folksy strumming and pseudo-hard rock riffs. The contribution of four capable vocalists allow the songs to cover a variety of keys and styles and add rich harmony at just the right spots.

Curse Of The Hidden Mirror is a very similar album to Heaven Forbid. The songs on this album are generally more complex and more polished than those on Heaven Forbid, to their credit, but they lack the energy that had been building for more than a decade before the previous release. That is not to say that Curse Of The Hidden Mirror is not a heavy album or that the band’s heart is not in it. Rather, it is among Blue Oyster Cult’s best work. Heaven Forbid is the better release, but this is a close second.

After 12 years without a real studio album, Blue Oyster Cult released one of their heaviest effects ever in Heaven Forbid. The psychedelica that permeated most of BOC’s work is almost entirely gone and the pop sensibilities the band had been chasing for two decades are refocused, resulting in a lean, mean hard rock disc.

The albums starts with “See You In Black”, a breakneck thrash metal response to critics who might argue that BOC could no longer be relevant in the heavy metal community. The next track is “Harvest Moon”, which is reminiscent of “Astronomy” in its length and complexity. The melody is as catchy as anything the band released, but is accompanied by an uncompromising sea of moderately distorted guitars and a burning double-time solo from Dharma. “Power Underneath Despair”, “Hammer Back”, and “Cold Grey Light Of Dawn” are based on relatively simple muscular riffs, more like “Cities On Flame” than perhaps anything else the band had written between them.

The band takes a step back towards arena rock with “X-Ray Eyes”, but even this song is grounded in heavy rock. “Damaged” uses spasmodic rhythm guitar and organ figures to great effect as it tells the tale of a man who recognizes and enjoys his own insanity. The quirky pop-rock of “Real World” does not quite seem to fit on the album, but Buck’s guitar fills make it worth a listen or two. “Live For Me” features simple held power chords and a choir of “ooohs” but avoids cheesiness by virtue of the band’s heavy attitude and musicianship. “Still Burnin’” is the logical response to “Burnin’ For You” from 15 years previous. Despite another use of choir-esque vocals in the chorus, it is a fittingly powerful almost end of the disc. The last track is a live version of “In Thee” (originally released on 1979’s Mirrors) that serves as a pleasant cool-down from 41 minutes of controlled fury.

Heaven Forbid will be a shock to fans who know Blue Oyster Cult for their arena-rock era of “Don’t Fear The Reaper” and “Burnin’ For You”. Even those who loved the dark, psychedelic boogie of their first few albums may be unpleasantly surprised. For the fan of highly polished, fast hard rock, however, this may be the best album BOC ever recorded.

On the surface, there are quite a few similarities between The Diamond Age and Stephenson’s earlier work Snow Crash. Both are set in a moderately near future and ignore the typical science fiction topic of space travel. Both focus on the societal changes that technology might cause, notably the idea that people will organize themselves into separate but cooperating cultural and ethnic groups with small sovereign enclaves around the world. Both open by describing a character or life situation that will be quickly abandoned as a device for introducing the reader to the peculiarities of his world.

The only difference I noticed early was that the caustic wit with which Snow Crash was written seemed largely gone. Eventually I realized that The Diamond Age has a much looser plot and many more protagonists than its predecessor as well. Like Snow Crash, it ends rather abruptly, leaving quite a few frustratingly loose ends to the reader’s imagination.

Based on these observations, I expected to label The Diamond Age as a spectacular novel, but the lesser of the two. After finishing the section explaining Princess Nell’s journey through the seven lands of King Coyote, I am not so sure. An average reader might find this section boring, but to a computer scientist, they are sheer brilliance. I suspect that this may be how a literary expert feels when finding an allusion in some work to a long-lost poem or myth. If so, it would certainly explain why the literary elite love the works of Joyce and his ilk. Now that I have read about it, I desperately desire to undertake Princess Nell’s virtual adventures myself. In fact, I am shocked that the revealed contents of the Primer have not been adapted into an adventure game.

I am still not sure that I would call The Diamond Age my favorite Stephenson work, but it is a masterpiece nonetheless.

The Revolution By Night is a disappointing successor to Fire Of Unknown Origin. “Shooting Shark” is another in a series of catchy single penned by Buck Dharma, and “Take Me Away” is a hard-hitting lead-off track. The rest of the album, however, is generic arena rock executed well but without any particular merit. The absence of Albert Bouchard for these sessions may be the root of this lackluster performance.