Monday, August 14, 2023

California Jam, Ontario Motor Speedway, Ontario, CA, 4-6-1974, Part 3: The Eagles

The third act at the 1974 California Jam was the Eagles. (And yes, I know that, technically, their name is just "Eagles.")

Unfortunately, this is a short set, consisting of just five concise songs. I assumed there was a lot more that didn't get recorded, but I found a setlist that shows they only played one more song as an encore, "Tequila Sunrise." One has to keep in mind that although the Eagles would be massively popular later, they still weren't that big at the time of this concert. In fact, their first huge hit, "The Best of My Love," came out on album one month before this concert. But it wasn't released as a single until late 1974 and wouldn't become a Number One hit until 1975. This concert was key to exposing the band to a larger audience, especially through the TV broadcast.

One interesting thing about the Eagles set is that Jackson Browne performed as a de facto member of the band for the whole set. This is because band member Don Felder had to miss the concert due to the birth of a son around the same time. Browne was already a friend of the band, and co-wrote their hit song "Take It Easy." He alternated between keyboards and guitar, and sang backing vocals.

The sound quality of this set was the roughest of all the music I found from this festival. The bass and drums were way too loud. So I used the audio editing program UVR5 to lower the bass and drums way down in the mix. It sounds a lot better now. However, I think it's likely there was so banter between songs that got edited out of the version I found.

This album is only 18 minutes long, the shortest set by far from this festival. Note that the track numbering continues from the numbering of the previous set, in case you want to put all the tracks in one folder to be heard as one massive listen.

16 James Dean (Eagles)
17 Blackberry Blossom [Instrumental] (Eagles)
18 Midnight Flyer (Eagles)
19 Already Gone (Eagles)
20 Take It Easy (Eagles)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15571497/CalifrniaJmOntrioMtorSpeedwyOntarioCA__4-6-1974_03Egles.zip.html

The cover photo comes from this exact concert. I believe that's Jackson Browne in the blue shirt on the far right of the image.

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