Selected Works (2000)


 

Disc One
  1. Take it Easy
  2. Hollywood Waltz
  3. Arleady Gone
  4. Doolin Dalton
  5. Midnight Flyer
  6. Tequilla Sunrise
  7. Witchy Woman
  8. Train Leaves Here This Morning
  9. Outlaw Man
  10.Peaceful Easy Feeling
  11.James Dean
  12.Saturday Night
  13.On the Border
  
Disc Two
  1. Wasted Time (Reprise)
  2. Wasted Time
  3. I Can't Tell You Why
  4. Lyin' Eyes
  5. Pretty Maids All in a Row
  6. Desperado
  7. Try and Love Again
  8. The Best of My Love
  9. New Kid in Town
  10.Love Will Keep Us Alive
  11.The Sad Cafe
  12.Take it to the Limit
  13.After the Thrill is Gone
  
Disc Three
  1. One of These Nights (Intro)
  2. One of These Nights
  3. Disco Strangler
  4. Heartache Tonight
  5. Hotel California
  6. Born to Boogie
  7. In the City
  8. Get Over It
  9. King of Hollywood
  10.Too Many Hands
  11.Life in the Fast Lane
  12.The Long Run
  13.Long Run Leftovers
  14.The Last Resort
  15.Random Victims, Part 3
  
Disc Four
  1. Hotel California
  2. Victim of Love
  3. Peaceful Easy Feeling
  4. Please Come Home for Christmas
  5. Ol' 55
  6. Take it to the Limit
  7. Those Shoes
  8. Funky New Year
  9. Dirty Laundry
  10.Funk 49
  11.All She Wants to do is Dance
  12.Best of My Love

 

After their 1994 reunion, the Eagles kept the touring machine well-oiled and humming, reminding everyone that this was no one-off resurrection. But new recordings? That was another matter. So it was no shock when, close to the 2000 holiday season, the band followed a time-honored tradition of legacy acts and delivered a career-spanning box set.

As far as box sets go, Selected Works fares respectably. Ironically, the Eagles never amassed the sprawling vault of material that some of their peers could boast. Unlike a band like The Police, who managed to assemble their entire recorded oeuvre into a comprehensive anthology, the Eagles had to work with a comparatively lean catalog. This scarcity shaped the set’s contours: it’s less a treasure trove and more a curated “best of, and then some.”

The first three discs are given thematic labels — “The Early Years,” “The Ballads,” and “The Fast Lane” — but the categories quickly blur. Tracks bleed across the boundaries, as if the compilers themselves found the lines arbitrary. Take Desperado, for example: listed among the ballads, yet it’s just as much a formative moment from the band’s fledgling period. These divisions feel more like marketing than meaningful curation.

True unreleased gems are scarce. The lone new song, Born to Boogie, is less a find than a novelty — silly, lightweight, and hardly a highlight. More intriguing are the scattered audio snippets peppered through the set: a radio interview segment with Frey and Henley, featuring Don Felder calling in to play a new, unreleased track over the phone; a montage of unused Long Run outtakes; and an in-studio Hotel California session capturing candid, unguarded banter. These moments offer glimpses behind the curtain, and it’s clear the band wasn’t always aware the mics were live.

The real prize, however, is the fourth disc — a spirited live recording from New Year’s Eve, 1999. This isn’t a repeat of the sterile sound that marred Eagles Live; it’s vibrant, loose, and imbued with genuine energy. It features a strong mix of hits and deeper cuts, although the inclusion of solo material feels less justified. With so much Eagles group material to draw from, these moments often interrupt the flow rather than enrich it.

More curiously, the disc includes holiday tunes like Please Come Home for Christmas and Funky New Year. Both had appeared as singles previously but feel oddly placed here, occupying precious space on the live disc rather than resting in their original studio glory among the earlier discs. A small but telling misstep — one that hints at the compromises often necessary in assembling these sets.

For most fans, the live disc alone justifies the investment. With only six studio albums to choose from, this collection doesn’t quite deliver the full canon, but it covers the essentials with a polished, if occasionally fragmented, narrative arc. It’s a solid retrospective, if not quite the definitive one.


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