But Seriously Folks – Joe Walsh

Well here I go again showing my age but here is a seriously, get it,  good album by Joe Walsh best know as one of the Eagles. Walsh himself has had his own successful career despite his fame with the Eagles in bands like the James Gang and of course his own solo career.

Now I came across this album by pure accident. Some of you may remember in the good old days when there was a thing called the record club. The offer seemed too good to be true, five albums really cheap then one a month for 12 months at full price. Since then I have come to believe in the saying that if something to too good to be true then it probably is. The record club deal was effectively too good to be true. So if you didn’t order your next album in time then you got record of the month. You could send record of the month back unopened with your next order for two albums but if you didn’t you were sent the bill. Well, you guessed it, But Seriously Folks, was record of the month. I didn’t send it back and I got the bill. So I opened it and couldn’t stop playing it and like a lot of other albums, I played it so much I had to later purchase it as a CD.

At the time I had a few mates that were right into Joe Walsh. They came to my place for a listen to his latest offering and absolutely hated it. They liked Walsh for his soaring guitar work on songs like Rocky Mountain Way whereas this album was subtle and witty. One of my friends told me that he had “heard” that this album was a contractual obligation and that Walsh simply threw together a group of songs to fulfill his part of the deal. Some parts of the album do reflect this however if you read other reviews of this work  nothing at all is mentioned about the subject.

To me all the tracks are worth a listen and Walsh uses subtlety, humor and wit in songs like Over and Over where he delves into the repetition of some things in life and Second Hand Store where he reflects on things of great personal value that diminish over time.  Tomorrow is a great song, the opening lyrics say it all “Tomorrow making a list of things to do, and when I wake oh ho ho ho, gonna cross all them through”, yeah, my kinda guy.

Released in 1978 and runs for just over 35 minutes. As usual most of the Eagles are backing Walsh on this album.

I thought I’d post two tracks this time. The first it probably the hit from the album Life’s Been Good the full length version. A shorter version was released for radio and if you have heard this song before you probably heard the shortened version.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMRl0198x-0

This next track, well it is actually two tracks that merge together, Inner Tube/Theme from Boat Weirdos is what I have requested to have played at my funeral. This is an instrumental piece and Walsh has captured the ebb and flow of my life here, soft, loud, highs and lows plus excellent instrumentation and a lovely melody. Hope you enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OAKZGwAY9U

PS: Tutu and I still listen to this album today. To us it withstands the test of time.

First published at http://hungsworld.wordpress.com/2014/07/07/album-review-but-seriously-folks-joe-walsh/