IT'S BETTER THAN DRINKIN' ALONE: The Official ILM Track-by-Track BILLY JOEL Listening Thread

Yeah, "ponderous" maybe sums this one up for me. I like each of the pieces and it's very prettily-recorded, but basically we've got five verses, each kicking off with one of two starting lines, alternating with big instrumental sections. Very much a curtain-raiser but it'd still be good to have more of a song there, and the attempts to pile on oomph make it kind of wearying. For the first time I'm a bit reminded of Ben Folds in 'concept' mode, though I don't think he'd ever give guitar solos the spotlight the way Joel does here. The McCartney comparison is interesting - Paul doesn't tend to try to make Statements as much, but certainly they're both drawn to the use of medleys of somewhat disconnected pieces.

The lyric is an interesting start... seems like he's continuing from "Piano Man" with the interest in musical performers and what they offer the society around them. Maybe he was trying to be more subtle and less literal in sketching this out, but for me it just ends up vague, what with there being no narrative and no specific characters. Some lines feel like red herrings - "Child of Eisenhower" in particular suggests we're getting a Portrait of a Generation (see Hall & Oates's War Babies, released eight days after this album), but that doesn't really go anywhere.

That second promo shot is just a little too close to McCartney for comfort:

http://www.feelnumb.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/paul_mccartney_let_it_be_album_cover_the_beatles_microphone.jpg

https://cdn.smehost.net/billyjoelcom-uslegacyprod/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/140509_birthday_ad.jpg

I really can't forgive titling a song Los Angelence

quality manspreading back cover photo tho

"I still am into doowop. When I can find it. I was amazed, we were in a restaurant the other day and they were playing this Billy Joel thing, where he does all the voices as acapella doowop, it was really good, I wish he’d do a lot more like that."

from: http://sylviesimmons.com/lou-reed/

I really can't forgive titling a song Los Angelence

ha. it's "los angelenos." and i can guarantee you that whatever he might have done with "los angelence," it would have been a much better song than "los angelenos."

lou reed otm

BILLY: Here's one of my new ones, Lou. It goes a little something like "UH-ONE, UH-TWO, UH-ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR!"

LOU: Yeah, you should really give that doowop sound another try.

Puffin thinking the same thing I was thinking with the beard pic. Funny thing is, it sounds like he's trying to channel Lennon on this one.

On the Al Stewart thread, we were talking about how he kinda has a Lennon thing going, and believe me, I'm not trying to say this one sounds like Al Stewart.

Something about those nasal, drawn-out Eeee-lussss-oooonnnnnnnnnn, ~oonnnnnn~oo-ONNNNsss!

waaaay too long, and, yeah, it reminds me of mediocre Elton John, the first song on a concept album

I am not aware of Billy ever trying to emulate George Harrison.

I have seen him do Ringo Starr, but outside of music.

"streetlife serenader" sounds like 5 minutes of writer's block.

recorded in this case at the St. Paul Civic Center, 7/20/1980

First concert I ever went to was Billy Joel, and I'm pretty sure it was this one!

I'm really glad Billy goes on to do some great songs because many of the early ones are a slog. Big step backwards here compared to Captain Jack.

The way he holds notes on this song ("serenaderrrrrrrrr") gets old real fast. That's the kind of thing you should do once or twice in a song not at the end of every line. this song goes nowhere

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qa9dYAIwj_s

Los Angelenos is another non-narrative sketch, focusing on a different set of local characters. It, too, stayed in the setlist and got the Songs in the Attic treatment, with a version recorded at Toad's Place in New Haven, 7/10/1980. (The video, like others from SitA, uses footage shot separately at another location.) It's not a wildly different arrangement, though it maybe rocks slightly harder. I assume this is one included less because Joel was disappointed in the original recording, and more because he liked the song and wanted to introduce it to his larger fanbase... though this crowd seems hyped for it already anyway! This version also got a single release in Japan in 1981:

https://img.discogs.com/qcHNTlhyDZnU8EfyLgrSoz2rjog=/fit-in/600x605/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-8361464-1460119609-9140.jpeg.jpg

Sucker for that main riff during the riffs. It sounds familiar, probably because it's one of those chord progressions found in 1000 other songs. Works well here.

Billy's NY/LA thing is one of my favorite aspects of his catalog. Saying goodbye to Hollywood while New York City burns to the ground. Steely Dan also with their love/hate/hate relationship between home and away, but Billy takes the supposed rivalry to extremes pretty good as well.

And he should whip out the Attila organ on every song, even The Longest Time.

Whatever that accent he's doing here is, he needs to stop it.

los ANNNNHHNNHJUHLEENOHHS

It, too, stayed in the setlist and got the Songs in the Attic treatment

did it stay in the setlist or was that just a momentary revival for that brief SITA tour?

Proto-Toto "Hold the Line"
I dig this

this is kinda like a him trying Steely Dan lyrics

this is better than i remembered it. the elec piano and gtr work nicely together. the first real appearance of rawk and roll billy. i'm not sure i've ever tried to connect billy to steely dan, but now that pplains has brought them up, i could imagine the dan having a go at this one.

also: nice rolled r's.

good question fcc - I'm actually not sure! I'm not finding any live versions from the late 70s online which might be a sign that it's a revival...

"shitty Steel Dan song w/singer w v awkward accent" p much sums it up

Weird accent aside, I kinda like this one.

and got the Songs in the Attic treatment, with a version recorded at Toad's Place in New Haven, 7/10/1980.

just listened to the SITA version. faithful but kinda goofy. more-than-kinda goofy if you include billy's and liberty's funny faces. i like the original more.

https://static.giantbomb.com/uploads/original/2/27239/1998565-3ds_sm3dl_1020_38.jpg

open up! open up! it's-a-me...

looool

Street Life Serenader -- this wants to be a great song, it feels like it's knocking at the door. Maybe it's the Elton-ness of it that gives me that impression idk. I love the music and it really wants to take you somewhere but the lyrics are like placeholders and just leave you going huh, that was ok I guess

Los Angelenos. Love this riff, LOVE it. I actually really dig this one, despite the MAJOR accent fail. Yikes. Definite Toto vibes for sure. The percussion gives me a bit of Santana too or something I can't quite place.
Kinda feels like the kinda song that'd be playing in the background during a house party/key party/coke party whatever the fuck 70's suburbanites got up to at their parties back then

kinda kinda kinda ugh i hate myself

whatever the fuck 70's suburbanites got up to at their parties back then

going into garages for exotic massages, if billy is to be trusted on this one

going into garages for exotic massages, if billy is to be trusted on this one

well that's a step up from sitting at home and masturbating, if you ask me.

y not both

ha

http://i.imgur.com/Wawj5V5.gif

bwahaha

pplains - major lol, bravo

hero

omg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qwEtA_yx-g

The Great Suburban Showdown: Billy gets some time on the studio's Moog, and spins out another sketch of a time and place, though this time in the first person and with more of a story (and perhaps a touch more empathy). The setting, though certainly not the treatment, reminds me a bit of Newman's "So Long Dad"...

I like this one. Needs a stronger hook but that intro with the Moog just puts me in a good mood, cemented by the steel guitar. How many songs feature both of those instruments? Very odd hybrid he's going for - wonder if he'd heard Jeff Haskell's Switched On Buck (1971). Anyway, I'd forgotten that his country attempts continued onto this album... a part of his kettle of influences I don't normally think about, or try to listen for in later albums. This song probably needs more of a hook - I kinda don't remember it after it's over - but it's the best listen on this album so far, for me.

i thought "los angelenos" was just kind of ok but it's still stuck in my head a day later

Miss the days of flying commercial, drinking free champagne, and going "oh, shit, should've brought my gun with me."

i like this one!

I think Dr C's right abt needing a stronger hook ... and yeah the gun thing is weird! esp since it seems like his folks are just boring & not really getting up in his business or anything

what is the "showdown" part aside from just saying goodbye?

in general, I'm finding myself wanting to root for this album but not being able to, it's almost like he's playing with the idea of doing some kinda Springsteen more conceptual thing but it's just not his nature and he can't really do the songs for it

whereas on "Captain Jack" he manages to make a good suburban ennui that really sticks to your ribs

I don't know if the Moog is the best instrument for the ends he wants to achieve – and what are those ends anyway?

I feel like he wanted to write a song about being a twentysomething and having this mixed thing about going home and your parents drive you crazy but it's also kind of comforting to be there - hey, lots of people would relate to that - but he pulls back from really developing either theme and it just ends up vague again. Or maybe he started out wanting to write a tough ugly cynical song cause he's such a world-wise rockin' guy but then got partway through and was like "nahhhhh, I mean Dad can be annoying but I like the folks okay and it'll always be home!" Either way it feels a little purposeless. There's something about how this will all continue in heaven (a sort of lame shade of "Daddy Sang Bass") but nothing really *happens*, certainly not a showdown. My workshopping suggestion: add e a bridge that flashes back to earlier times, establishes in a few evocative words what his relationship to this place *used* to be, and then the juxtaposition of that and the rest of it creates some kind of emotional tug.

Honestly, the most interesting angle, and the most Joel-ish, would have been to make an earnest case *for* Long Island suburban life and family - stick it to all those cooler-than-thou Los Angeles snobs with their Pleasant Valley Sundays and Paved Paradises! Give us the flipside of Captain Jack - guy comes back from his strange couple years in LA and is fucking thrilled to see the crabgrass, oh man guys you don't know how crazy everybody is out west. He'd take basically that course on the next album, but adopting NYC rather than your Huntingtons and Cold Spring Harbors.

(versus Captain Jack, whose lead is parading around the old town in affected hipster styles. but maybe that's closer to how Joel really felt about his roots at this point? hence the lunge for NYC cred?)