Shouldn’t we be first of our kind instead of an imitation?

A Different View with Dave O’Connell

here was a story recently about the remaining members of the Eagles suing the owner of a small hotel in Mexico for copyright – because it was called Hotel California.

Indeed it was called Hotel California long before the band had their eponymous hit – the song is 41 years old and the hotel is 67 – but that didn’t represent much of an argument to the notoriously litigious band.

Their legal team accused the owners of the eleven-room establishment in the seaside town of Todos Santos of ‘actively encouraging consumers to believe that the hotel….is associated with the Eagles.’

Presumably that doesn’t stretch as far as a warning at the reception area that you can check out any time you like but you can never leave.

In any event, all of that will resolve itself in a court of law on one side or other of Donald Trump’s infamous wall if he can convince the Mexicans to build it – just after he convinces turkeys to embrace the spirit of Christmas.

But buried deep in the story was the killer line – a reference point that the writer considered essential, to put the Eagles into context for a generation that might not have heard of them.

So the band was thus labelled ‘the Coldplay of its day’ – which is all rather like explaining the Beatles as the One Direction of their era.

For sure music fans today might find the laid-back West Coast style of Henley, Frey and the gang all a little tame compared to the repetitive drone of Drake or Dr Dre.

But ne might equally argue that, if something needs to be explained through a more up-to-date reference or analogy, then it or they weren’t actually that famous in the first place.

Could you see, Elvis, for example, having to be explained as the Justin Bieber or Harry Styles of his day? Would Adele be referenced a white Aretha Franklin? Is Ed Sheeran a modern day Bob Dylan?

It happens in sport as well – anyone and everyone who scores three goals for the Argentinian U12 team is the new Messi, or if they’re starring for the Brazilian kids, they’re the next Neymar.

Who is the new Mick O’Connell or Sean Purcell or Christy Ring? Or have we now reached the stage that we have to explain that Ring was the original Henry Sheflin?

Equally in ordinary life, would you have to tell your kids that a typewriter was a computer without electricity or the internet?

Is an open fire best explained as an open-front radiator you refuel with turf?

Is a sink a washing machine where you have to use your hands?

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.