Now that MTV has been around for well over a decade, we have
\nseen many artists who have benefitted from the advent of the music
\nvideo. Some of these artists were deserving of the attention this
\nnew media gave them, where they would otherwise have been
\nignored.<\/p>\n
Other artists should drop to their knees and kiss MTV’s butt for
\ngiving them success they did not deserve – albums which would have
\nbetter been ignored.<\/p>\n
Don Henley, for example, had carved out his place in rock
\nhistory as the drummer and one of the vocalists for the Eagles, one
\nof my favorite bands. While the band took an extended “vacation,”
\nHenley moved on to a dubious solo career. His second album, 1984’s
\nBuilding The Perfect Beast<\/i>, is one depressing effort that
\nrejects all the lessons learned with the Eagles.<\/p>\n
The album became a hit with its first single and video, “The
\nBoys Of Summer.” Despite a robotic drum track, Henley does a fairly
\ndecent job on the remainder of the track, and has held its own well
\nover a decade since its release.<\/p>\n
But the follow-up single, “All She Wants To Do Is Dance,” is a
\ntremendous waste of CD technology. Again, we hear a robotic beat,
\nonly this time the vocal and remainder of the backing track follows
\nexactly the same pattern. Henley must have had one nasty case of
\nwriter’s block when he knocked this one out.<\/p>\n
It only gets worse. “Man With A Mission” is a pale effort at
\nhigh-speed 12-bar blues that is a difficult listen. And, while the
\ntitle suggested a real interesting track, “You’re Not Drinking
\nEnough” is not a well-written or performed track that has none of
\nthe humor I would have expected.<\/p>\n
In fact, most of the songs on
\nBuilding The Perfect Beast<\/i> suffer from exactly the same
\nfate. The title track is a disappointment, as is “Drivin’ With Your
\nEyes Closed,” as is… oh, what’s the use of rattling off almost
\nevery song on this disc?<\/p>\n
The best performance on the album comes on “A Month Of Sundays,”
\na track highlighted by the piano and synthesizer work and Henley’s
\nvocals, which actually sound in place here. The fade-in to “Sunset
\nGrill” almost seems natural, and makes the track better than it
\nsounded on its own on the radio.<\/p>\n
Henley would end up taking a breather from his solo career, and
\nthough he would still hit a few speed bumps along the road, the
\ntime off would do his songwriting quite a bit of good. However,
\nBuilding The Perfect Beast<\/i> is a tremendous waste of
\ntime.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24441,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5759],"rating":[5616],"class_list":["post-35645","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-don-henley","rating-rating-d"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/35645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35645"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/35645\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35645"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=35645"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=35645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}