Eagles- Hell Freezes Over

When this album came out, it seemed like everyone I knew owned it. At the time I was a speech and debate champ who spent most of his weekends with kids from other schools in the area doing nerdy things in between rounds of competitive oration. One of the non-nerdy things we did was rock out to whatever CD's we happened to bring. Hell Freezes Over was always in the mix.

I can't say for sure whether or not this was one of the top selling albums of 1994 for two reasons 1) A lot of the kids I hung out with were from Winslow (the place where Glenn Frey stood on a corner. That corner is now part of a park which houses a statue which may or may not be Glenn Frey. Did I mention that there's not a lot going on in Winslow?) and Winslow still takes The Eagles very seriously. Perhaps more so than any other town in America. 2) I'm too lazy to look up the actual figures for sales of this album. Frankly, it doesn't matter to me what this album did nationally because it was very important to those of us who competed in speech and debate in that part of the state.

Hell Freezes Over doesn't really bring much in the way of new Eagles material. There are a few new tracks crowded in at the top of the album, and they are more or less good. Then the album turns to live material. All of the live tracks are easily recognizable Eagles hits. The live stuff is pretty good, but there's really only one reason to own this album. One song on this album got played way more than any other, and don't let the fact that there were kids from Winslow involved sway you into thinking I'm talking about "Take it Easy." The real reason anyone ever bought this album was because of the live acoustic version of "Hotel California." 

For some reason the acoustic version had the right groove that made all the girls whirl around like gypsies and all the guys bob their heads as they watched the girls whirl. We once had a speech meet in Bullhead City, an unsightly trailer park just across the border from Laughlin, Nevada. The town was a dustbowl bereft of anything interesting, but the school cafeteria had a jukebox and "Hotel California" from Hell Freezes Over was one of the tracks on the box. We must have pumped a baker's dozen of quarters into that machine and hit "Hotel California" every time. We never got tired of it. It was our jam.

Although as a discerning appreciator of musics I can't give Hell Freezes Over the highest marks available, I will give it more than it deserves. It's really a sort of cobbled-together album that was probably hastily prepared to support an Eagles reunion. Be that as it may, it will always be connected to a special time in my life. I'll never be king of the nerds again like I was in high school, but this album always brings back memories of the time when I was.