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

does he have a black eye on that one cover?

"the entertainer" is one of my least favorite billy joel fan favorites. it's a cute idea, and the "3:05" line always made me smile, but it wears thin kinda fast. the melody isn't strong enough to sustain the verse-verse-verse-verse-verse structure, and though he's trying his hardest to make it more interesting with all the arrangement cutesiness, it just sounds like cutesiness. and yuck that drum roll after "laid all kinds of girls." my favorite part of the song is the instrumental coda, mostly because i've been waiting three-plus minutes for something different to happen. also, this sounds even more like a harry chapin song than the last one that i said sounded like a harry chapin song.

lol many of these comments. The moog was reminding me of ELP "lucky man." Much more awful than I remembered. Anyway, The Entertainer is jaunty and jaded. Heard it many times before but once was enough for right now.

Just catching up with the last four or five: damn, lot of Moog on this album, even a little on "Root Beer Rag". I always thought "The Entertainer" was a one-off. I think the songs so far maybe stand out a little more than on Piano Man, but not much more

"The Entertainer" has always been a favorite Joel track of mine. Cynicism suits him, and paired with that cheesy Moog melody and banjo picking makes for a strange but memorable song. Even the usual clunker lines in the song make me laugh rather than cringe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VhcQiqwTp4

Last of the Big Time Spenders is the first in another block of generally overlooked Side Two numbers, yanking us away from Moogs and banjos for another piano-and-pedal-steel ballad. The title always makes me think I'm going to get a cover of Norman Greenbaum's Good Lookin' Woman but alas, Billy didn't go in for covers for a long, long time.

Not a huge fan of "The Entertainer" either. Maybe it was during my time at the classic rock station where I just got real sick of all the boo-hoo, we're big time stars but how we gotta pay the manager now? Don't call me, I'll call you.

And I love me some Billy Joel. Love me some cynicism. Even love me some moog. But "The Entertainer" just goes more than all-in on all three.

LotBTS nice step back. Nothing much more to say about it. Still trying to figure out what WMJ's "true" voice is. I think it's somewhere between "Piano Man" and "Pressure". While this song is fine, that voice isn't heard here. Instead, it's that a-woo-woo voice, the one that starts trying to teeter toward another Sweet Baby Ray imitation.

A pleasant number, with conventional chord developments and a strong Elton vibe (the lyrics are too straightforward for Bernie Taupin though).

Trying to picture Billy covering "Don't Call Us, We'll Call You" and it just won't stick for some reason, which is odd cause yeah the lyrical theme seems right up his alley. Something about the riff or the rhythm.

Both got real touchtone phone numbers prominently heard (as I mention it for the 106th time.)

another kinda unmemorable song on this album, like the song title though

^^ Yeah, def. Wish I still had a fantasy football team.

I really like this one - the Elton-y piano works for me, and his singing is nice. idk, i think it has a languid charm about it that I enjoy.

also absence of insane Moog might be swaying me more than usual lol

I like it when it's playing but can't really remember it when it's over. Should give it some more spins I guess. Reminds me a little of some slightly more focused later tracks, like "Vienna" (which I also have never really fallen in love with).

sounds like an unfinished study for an elton album track. the pedal steel break is a little wtf.

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

Weekend Song: Billy as a hard workin' 9-to-5er, money in his pocket and ready for some fun times with his baby. Hey - it ain't no crime.

ain't no crime for sure, but he ain't no bob seger or bruce springsteen. or ray charles, whose voice he's sort of channeling here.

the "back-breakin', bone-shakin', belly-achin', hard-workin'" part is good practice for songs to come about not starting fires, though.

Totally gonna blast this from the CRV's speakers Friday afternoons in the parking lot before heading over to Chili's.

Billy's good with these Side 2 blue-collar interludes - "Half a Mile Away" or "Christie Lee" - that usually let off a little steam before heading toward the poignant parting finale.

You know, as late as 1980, American workers were apparently still working this mythical 9 to 5 schedule. It's 8:33 CDT here, just wondering what happened.

... on the way to that PLACE

http://www.gallup.com/poll/175286/hour-workweek-actually-longer-seven-hours.aspx

"hour workweek" sounds more my speed tbqh

Not much to say about the last two. "The Last of the Big Time Spenders" is kind of a dull piano-led piece, while "Weekend Song" is kind of a dull rocker.

On another listen, "Last of the Big Time Spenders" has a little more to it than I thought, but not as much as it needs. Probably also suffering from sequencing - it has enough buildup and affect of reflectiveness to make for a closing track, but as album filler it just feels like texture.

"Weekend Song" obviously could only be album filler... as with some other songs like this, I believe Billy had fun playing it, but his bellowing efforts at soul have always felt forced to me. He's on record as saying he was going for Leon Russell with this, and unfortunately Leon's evident comfort in this kind of material just highlights the strain for BJ. This kind of thing also gives the lie to the idea of this as a "concept album" - unless every song is going to be from a different character's POV or something, presenting both the Entertainer and the Back-Breaker Bone-Shaker in the first person just reminds you of the singer's distance from the actual lived experience of the latter. Better to stay in his observational zone and try to sketch out the lives of those who can't drive with a broken back, from the entertainer's third-person vantage point.

this album...is not very good

and listen, I'm a Timberwolves fan, I have a huge urge to pull for a mix of ill-fitting parts, untapped potential that somehow dangle the promise of being great but comes crashing down to Earth in a big heap

Both really bad at signing contracts.

hahaha

this album...is not very good

harsh truth

hrm seems Flagging ate a post but agreed that this album is underwhelming, gibing with Billy's own statements that it was rushed and underwritten. Roberta is the closest thing to a "discovery" since I already knew I liked The Entertainer and Root Beer Rag.

*spoiler alert* it's definitely underwhelming as an album but i'm a big fan of the last two songs on each side. a little resequencing could've helped this one.

yeah i'm not loving this album much. it's better than Cold Spring Harbor, but that's basically damning with faint praise

I actually think I like CSH more, it's obviously way less polished but it has at least two classic BJ songs in "She's Got A Way" and "Everybody Loves You Now." The rest may be a grab-bag but at least they feel like things he was eagerly waiting to record, rather than forcing out because it was time to hit the studio.

you may be right

:D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gizOUq-QDUg

Souvenir, the last non-instrumental track on the record, is also the shortest, at 2:00. As One Final Serenade reports, in his earlier years, Billy often played "Souvenir" at the end of his concerts and on New Year's Eve. Moreover, it was used in a sentimental scene for the final episode of the television series "How I Met Your Mother."

Perhaps reflecting Billy's fondness for the song, its title had a long afterlife. After The Stranger but before Songs in the Attic, Columbia would issue a promo-only disc entitled Souvenir, presumably in the hopes that radio play might help move some of the back catalog:

https://img.discogs.com/SsVY4xQdqWr56n70PNcpRLuoUvg=/fit-in/600x600/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-1819521-1362170366-4428.jpeg.jpg

... and then, in 1990, they used the name again as the title for an awkward but succsesful five-disc Australian box set that jammed together a live show, Greatest Hits I & II, a disc of interviews, and... Storm Front. Even Billy looks outraged at this ripoff:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/e/e1/Billy_Joel_-_Souvenir.jpg/220px-Billy_Joel_-_Souvenir.jpg

"souvenir" closed all, or almost, of his shows for years, until he replaced it with "where's the orchestra." it's gorgeous.

*or almost all*

i bought that souvenir promo disc early in my billy fandom and for a long time it was my favorite billy album. a great four-song live set on one side and five early album tracks on the other.

Really nice song & it was really a smart move to make it so brief esp compared to so many songs on this album that are trying way too hard to not do much

"Spenders" and "Weekend Song"... bleh. Really underwritten - I can understand why BJ doesn't think much of this album. "Souvenir" is nice though, especially the opening/closing piano. Agree that the brevity works for it

Like the brevity and the piano, don't like the way he elongates his vowels ("holidaaaaaay," "mementooooos").

"Souvenir" sounds a little Randy Newmanish to me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-j_7YKS-7I

The Mexican Connection: a closing instrumental, with a last cameo for that jaunty little Moog. Per One Final Serenade, this recording was often played as opening music at BJ concerts. As well, as we've already seen, it was the B-side to "The Entertainer." It's nice, imho.

If I have time today I might give the whole album a listen straight through, since I've been kind of dogging on it despite liking a number of moments and the overall sound of the recording.

i like this feel like i could hear this behind the opening credits of a dudley moore movie

This is fine, but it really doesn't feel like he had a whole lot of material for this album.

Listening the LP straight through, on my good speakers, it's better than it was a song at a time on Spotify and cheap headphones. Not in the sense that it all adds up to some big statement or coherent piece of music, but just that it's nice to spend a sustained listen with the sound/recording, enjoying some details in the production (e.g. the blurts of organ jamming that show up at the ends of the "rockier" songs). It all sounds good and it's well played if uninspired. That 70s production blanket. In this sense, "Mexican Connection" is a great way to end the album, no vocals to distract you from the warmth of those instruments grooving away in the depths of the studio. A couple of bits almost sound like callbacks to other songs (a snatch of Billy the Kid, followed directly by a zippy Moog run out of The Entertainer) - I wonder if Billy was going for a Band on the Run type ending (or I guess something off Broadway?), with little reprises of several songs to make you think that this was all supposed to fit together more than it does.

Not a really awful place for an artist to come back from... but I'll admit I've spent a lot of the last few days looking ahead to the next album.

"the mexican connection," like "root beer rag," makes me ridiculously happy. a little bit elmer bernstein (again), a little bit "guantanamera," a little bit "where's my moog, i haven't used it in several minutes!" it was indeed his entrance music for a good chunk of the '70s into the early '80s (meaning pretty much all those shows opened and closed with streetlife serenade tracks). it would've been good entrance music for this album, too -- a much better track 1 side 1 than the title song imho.

dead last in this ranking of billy's songs by a guy from vulture who clearly hates instrumentals:

http://www.vulture.com/2015/02/complete-works-121-billy-joel-songs-ranked.html

okay that is straight up crazy! it's a pretty solid instrumental, popped into my head when I was falling asleep last night... he has done MUCH worse, even in the tracks we've reviewed so far!

a little bit "guantanamera,"

More "La Bamba" to my ear