Nong Khiaw, Laos
When Glenn Frey checked out, on January 18, my Facebook news feed was still full of tributes and encomiums to David Bowie, who had died eight days earlier. Frey got hardly a mention. Bowie’s career was long, varied, and complex in a way that Frey’s was not, and Frey was just one member of a group. Still, it was a notable silence, especially if you happen to be traveling anywhere in the world that isn’t England or America.
Wherever I go in the world, I hear Frey’s music. Specifically, I hear “Hotel California.” I’ve heard it sung with Afro-French accents on the banks of the Seine. The Filipino bar band in Yangon played it. Today a Lao trekking guide was noodling around on his guitar at a local restaurant in Nong Khiaw, and inevitably he wandered into “Hotel California.” You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave “Hotel California” for long.
I know we’re all supposed to hate the Eagles, for countercultural reasons long forgotten and because The Dude hates the Eagles, but admit it: you know the words to “Hotel California,” and chances are you’ve hollered along to it at a karaoke night or when it was played by some cover band somewhere in the world. For better or worse, it’s the song that everyone everywhere knows. You can stab it with your steely knives, but you just can’t kill that beast of a song.