Oct 022012
Please rank the following in the order of most tolerable to least tolerable:
Free free to use any criteria that you like, but make sure that you show your work.
And please don’t just say that you hate them all, because we all do for the most part (except for Jungleland and one other guy, maybe Konajinx?).
No.
Eagles. I can stand a few of their their pre-Hotel California numbers (“Already Gone”, “One of These Nights”)
Billy Joel. Tried to be more than schlock but mostly failed.
Jimmy Buffet. Lawyers w/ blenders. It’s a No.
Beside his big hit I’ve barely ever knowingly heard the music of Jimmy Buffet. I can easily tolerate that level of involvement.
I’ll go with Eagles next because they have a couple of songs I can enjoy, at least parts of songs. They have some other songs I can laugh at, and I bet that if I had the chance to hang with them in their prime I could have had handled getting wasted in their presence without too much trouble.
I actually like a song by Billy Joel and bits and pieces of a few others. I really can’t stand almost everything he’s done. He’s got a catalog of music I wish could be burned and never played again. When my “cultural revolution” gets underway I’ve got troops headed the way of the storage sheds for his master recordings. If I had the chance to hang with him in his prime I suspect I would have disliked him as much as I dislike his music. The one thing that scares me about this notion, however, is finding myself liking him enough on the strength of a solid talk about baseball or the Beatles. Liking baseball and the Beatles can be a burden sometimes.
This is difficult on so many levels. Like Mod, I think I only know 2 or 3 songs by Buffet, as opposed to many by (the) Eagles and Joel. But on the “strength” of those 2 songs and how much I detest everything about the whole Buffet vibe, I am going to place him last. (The) Eagles have one or two songs if, gun to my head, I can accept. “One of These Nights” isn’t that bad, is it? And, God help me, “Peaceful Easy Feeling.” So their next. Billy Joel at his worst is easily as bad as anyone, and he is so often at his worst. But there was a microscopically small time around the very early 80s when he had a few okay songs, I think. So, he takes the crown. I hope you feel good about this cdm, ’cause I think I need to go be sick now.
Come on, surely one of them is more annoying that the others.
The Eagles – I do like a few of their early numbers. Hell, I can even see what people like Hotel California, even though its pretty irritating to me.
Jimmy Buffett – There is probably nothing that I like about Jimmy Buffett. I’m not a party guy, so I probably am more annoyed by Jimmy Buffett fans than the actual guy. Buffett himself is a virtual nonentity to me.
Billy Joel – The only Billy Joel songs I’ve ever liked were the knock-offs of ’60s sounds, Uptown Girl and that other one. When he’s “serious”, for example “Captain Jack” , he’s dreadful. When he’s “rockin”, for example “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me”, he’s dreadful. “Sensitive”, “Just the Way You Are”, dreadful. “Socially Aware”, “We Didn’t Start the Fire”, dreadful. And he never is less than totally annoying and smug while putting out the most execrable crap.
Eagles
Joel
Buffet. (scant knowledge of his songbook, but what he has wrought on our culture is unacceptable)
1. Billy Joel (I am a fan and have seen him many times) I pretty much like most of every era of his career. I like his voice, I like his band. I own all of his music.
2. Jimmy Buffet -his early stuff is quite good the rest reminds me of being on a boat or at least the bar by the boats. Also my dad digs him and my 3 year old son likes “Volcano”
3. Eagles – Not because they are better or worse than Jimmy Buffet, but that I am just tired of hearing any/all of their songs.
From worst to “best”:
3. Buffet. Like others, I don’t know enough songs of his but those I’ve heard I’m sick of and think are stupid. And I don’t like the people who like Buffet.
2. Billy Joel. I like songs off The Stranger and other selected singles.
1. The Eagles. I liked them. I have very fond memories of driving across the desert from Phx to LA and listening to The Eagles Greatest Hits while looking at the desert out a dark window. My favorites of the group based solely on nostalgia.
Another way to put this, if someone gave me free tickets to any of these bands, I would gladly accept The Eagles and would request dinner be thrown in with Billy Joel. Jimmy Buffet would get a withering look and a snort.
I wouldn’t go and see any of these for free.
At least the Eagles were a rock band, kind of. And apparently my brother in law asked me what I thought of the Eagles around 20 years ago and I said they were horrible — I just found out recently that I made him feel bad and I now I feel like a retroactive jackass.
(New thread about the perils of rock snobbishness to relationships?)
Billy Joel next, because although I despise him, I’ll guiltily hum along to the more bubblegum stuff.
Least tolerable is the other guy. Don’t wanna hear him. Don’t wanna hear about him.
Eagles, Joel, Buffet
I’ll never understand how Buffet can be so popular with essentially one song. That cheeseburger thing is not a song, it’s some chords, some mumbling and few big accents, suitable for drunken motorboating where you can only hear a few notes over the crash of the wake anyway. Please DO NOT TRY to make me understand.
I’ll give the Eagles slight credit for allowing Joe Walsh a forum, but I doubt I like more songs of theirs than Joel’s. I believe, that in the hands of a different artist some of his songs could be ok. But I still have to get past the fifty Irish folk singers I heard in the 80s and 90s who had to sing feckin’ Piano Man while playing a guitar.
The general consensus seems to be that Eagles are the least offensive of the three and I have to agree. I like Take it Easy and Tequila Sunrise, and I can tolerate some of the other pre-Hotel California songs as well.
When I wrote the original post, I thought that Billy Joel was a lock for “Most Offensive” but I’ve poked around on the internet and refreshed my memory about some Buffett songs and, while I can’t believe that I’m saying this, Billy Joel is not the most musically offensive of the three, Buffett is. Maybe it’s Buffett’s more easy going manner contrasted with Joel’s Long Island Hard On persona clouded my judgment. But the only Buffett song I can make a case for is Havana Daydreaming. At least Billy Joel has Say Goodbye to Hollywood (which I will be adding to the current Last Man Standing thread shortly), and several others that I could probably deal with if stuck in a car that only had one radio station while on a long trip.
Hey, you should be thanking me, brother. Self awareness is the path to enlightenment.
Buffet has two good songs if you count the Pina Colada song that is actually by somebody else.
They’re still doing it in 2012, mockcarr, to be sure.
?
“That cheeseburger thing is not a song”–true, so true, and well said!
Path to the bathroom is more like it.
!
#&$)%*!
I’ve never knowingly heard a Jimmy Buffett song, but I’m going with the Eagles as well, even though I used to really hate them these days I’ve mellowed and will merely saunter over to the radio to turn it off if one of their songs comes on.
Every time I hear a Billy Joel song (with one exception that I liked before knowing who it was by, but can’t remember what it’s called now) I get a mental picture of him emoting over a grand piano with that either the smug grin or the theatrical grimace that he alternates between and I almost forget that I foreswore violence at the age of ten.
For all I know the Eagles do those expressions as well, but on the clips I’ve seen it’s hard to tell behind the beards.
I found this task to be very painful, so felt the only way for me to determine this would be to remove the act themselves and find a cover version of a song by each of the acts above that I could enjoy!
So here goes in order from most tolerable to least and all three of these I will take over hearing anything by The Eagles, Joel or Buffett
Eagles done by Langley School Music Project
http://youtu.be/G9hf92iOhqk
Buffett as done by Willie Nelson
http://youtu.be/XNc4YFUbZrs
Billy Joel done by Gerry and The Pacemakers
http://youtu.be/XNkBmWlLH_k
I probably like Buffet the most, because he has a sly sense of humor that goes right over the heads of people who think “Margaritaville” is a party anthem.
Middle of the road honors goes to the Eagles: I think “Take It To The Limit” is a fine tune, with a killer hook–but they have too many songs that remind me of how not fun an inflated sense of self-importance can be.
Billy Joel: I despise. “We Didn’t Start the Fire” is the ultimate song for the 1%. Plastic soul man, indeed.
Holy crap, I didn’t know Buffett wrote Railroad Lady. I like that song, or at least Willie’s version of it.
The first track on this link is a song I like by Billy Joel’s first band the Hassles:
http://youtu.be/TOl56ftRzu8
Luckily, I no longer go out to hear that.
I pretty much agreed with your take on this, but I couldn’t leave well enough alone.
I laughed. If he wrote that, he could have descended to a lower circle in hell. And then parrots could have endlessly asked him for crackers that he could no longer supply.
Jimmy Buffett because Come Monday is the cheesy AM goodness I’m usually okay with. And he encourages his wicher shoe wearing fans to be blotto, which is the only way I can take them.
Billy Joel in second because I had friends that liked him when i was a kid. So I can think about high school shenanigans instead of the dumb music.
The Eagles – Pee-Yuke! Don Henley is The Devil.
Did someone call my name?
My list would be exactly as you have it here.
Billy Joel, Eagles, Buffett.
i own zero Buffett. I will never own any Buffett. That guy is terrible. Not the biggest Eagles fan, but I do enjoy “Life in the Fast Lane” and “In the City,” which is two more than any Buffett.
I did indeed. Thanks for weighing in. It’s nice to hear people voting FOR someone instead of against people.
If you’ve never seen this one:
http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/what-i-would-be-thinking-about-if-i-were-billy-joel-driving-toward-a-holiday-party-where-i-knew-there-was-going-to-be-a-piano