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

general groove/piano riff also really really remind me of Steely Dan's "Time Out of Mind"

For some reason, I've always imagined that the rival in "My Rival" was Billy Joel.

― nitro-burning funny car (Moodles), Friday, 4 April 2014 13:41 (three years ago) Permalink

this is amazing

― some dude, Friday, 4 April 2014 13:47 (three years ago) Permalink

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f5/Thestranger1977.jpg

"I was the whining stranger"

― some dude, Friday, 4 April 2014 13:48 (three years ago) Permalink

for some reason the production on 52nd Street is starting to feel "80s" to me where everything previous feels v "70s" but couldn't really point to what's changed.

folks! just dropping in with a question… haven't been listening along and for that matter have no viciously strong views pro or con…

why is Springsteen so universally beloved in white people NJ (like maybe Ira Kaplan, Glenn Danzig and their respective constituents do not care for him, but I'm not aware one way of the other) but white people LI has shit tons of people who can't stand him? why does he not represent the hopes and dreams of working class LI? does he not rock enuff or something?

but white people LI has shit tons of people who can't stand JOEL

I have no idea but would hazard that Springsteen's rep is that he treats people well/pays back into the community/etc. and Joel seems like a garden variety self-absorbed drunken asshole...?

for someone who's been as iconic and super famous for as long as he has, there's remarkably little dirt on or bad blood w/ Springsteen

Some great anecdotes in that MIX article:

Ramone wrote in his book, Making Records: The Scenes Behind the Music, “To help Billy find the right voice when he was recording, I made him a control box with Echoplexes, MXR phasers and flangers. We labeled the buttons ‘Elvis,’ ‘Doo-wop,’ ‘R&B,’ etc. and put it right on the piano so he could switch the effects around until he hit one he liked.”

In Ramone’s book, he quotes this anecdote about “My Life” from Liberty DeVitto: “[Phil] wanted me to play a very straight beat, and I bucked him. ‘I ain’t playing that disco bullshit,’ I said. Phil got up, slammed something on the console and scolded me like he was my father. ‘You’ve been in this business for what—12 minutes? And you’re gonna tell me what you’re gonna play? Just get the hell in there and play the way I told you to play.’ I grumbled about it then, but every time I see the Gold record I received for ‘My Life’ on the wall, I mutter, ‘F—in’ guy was right!’”

lmao

truly, who could have guessed in 1978 that disco beats sold records

I *GUESS* the hi-hat pattern is discoish (open every other beat) but I don't think of this as a disco number.

I have known so many drummers who are like "I won't play a [insert random genre] beat" it is the weirdest thing. (and different from not being *able* to)

like there is an unspoken Drummer Code and if they play the wrong kind of beat they will be thrown out of the Drummer's Guild and barred from Rocking in Public.

Οὖτις, sometimes it is both won't and can't.

Back to "My Life," I suppose one could cite the octave bass line, but the guitar is nondisco; so are the halftime bits.

yeah i have never thought of "my life" as disco

"it is the weirdest thing." I don't think its weird at all, but it is becoming less common. up until 20 years ago, I encountered the "I won't do this because it sucks and is not real music" attitude all the damn time.

lets be real, drummers are weird

haven't been following this thread too closely, but I see someone stumbled on my comment about "My Rival". I can confirm that I was specifically thinking of The Stranger, because of both the "whining stranger" line, and also the reference to "Anthony's Bar & Grill", which I thought was maybe a joke on the Anthony of "Movin' Out".

"sure, he's a Jolly Roger": Captain Jack

..."until he answers for his [ain't no] crime"

Something about "My Life" is more 70s/80s/timeless lounge than "Piano Man" itself. The piano sounds almost like a fake synth piano, the whole thing is made for a one-man piano busker. Not so much disco as easy-listening cha-cha-cha samba, kind of self-aware easy listening à la Rupert Holmes and "Margaritaville."

agree! that opening riff and into the flourish is total piano lounge in my mind

like it's the musical version of the when harry mey sally "white man's overbite" & the men are wearing leather sportcoats & the women all smoke dunhills

https://media.tenor.com/images/5ca3980117f310c62f933d891b31232f/tenor.gif

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yget4xVAulE

Zanzibar, my favorite album track when I first got into this record, closes out side one. It began life as a hazy idea to do some kind of exoticist sketch of faraway lands, etc. Maybe Billy'd been listening to Dylan's "Mozambique." Thankfully, Phil Ramone, on hearing the title, proclaimed that it sounded like the name of a "jazzy sports bar," and Joel wisely reverted to his write-what-you-know approach.

The trumpet solos, as mentioned above, are courtesy Freddie Hubbard, who probably needs no introduction with the jazzbos in the room; in addition to an extensive discography as bandleader, he'd recorded with John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Art Blakey, Herbie Hancock, and the list goes on. The 5:13 album version fades out on the second solo, but the full 6:46 take can be heard on the "My Lives" box set. Wiki: Joel also recalled that after playing with Hubbard on the song, drummer Liberty DeVitto claimed that "Now I feel like a grown up."[4]

Re Devito and "My Life" -- boy, did these guys hate disco.

i absolutely adore this song. mostly for the sublime chorus, but also: the swagger of the verse melody, which sounds like it's dancing along with ali and running the bases with pete rose. the gorgeous breakdown and build back up into a completely different song (and completely different band) in the bridge/solo section with the freddie hubbard payoff. the sound of the piano (is that all electric, or is there both electric and acoustic piano going on here?). the details behind the piano, especially the vibes. i even like the lyric even though i'm not sure it works. is this a high-school kid out for a night in his old man's car, trying to get to second base with a waitress? or an older dude who's a regular with a tab at the bar? do older dudes/regulars have dreams of getting to second base? do younger dudes run tabs? and where exactly is this bar that has muhammad ali on the tv (which would've been a pricey pay-per-view event) and a shantytown nearby? what country are we in? or what's going on here? but i really don't care. he gets to the "i've got the old man's car/i've got a jazz guitar" part and i am melting, and if leon spinks is somewhere in this here bar, he can knock me out with one punch and i won't even feel it.

i also adore action bronson's homage:

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

i like this! even more so than Movin Out or Scenes from an Italian Restaurant this one really feels like it's straight out of a broadway show

that repeating fast-paced piano line reminds me of "At The Ballet" from A Chorus Line:
"Daddy always thought that he married beneath him
That's what he said
that's what he said"

Just realized how much the chorus groove of this reminds me of the verse groove from "Movin' Out." That is not a bad thing.

Vintage live version. Very Steely Dan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cN8ngsgZhTg

how many billy songs have woah-oh-oh parts in them? is someone keeping count? the one in "zanzibar" come at a spot where one of those tinkly piano runs would have worked almost as well.

I think I enjoy BJ songs more if I pretend they're being performed by Rowlf the Dog.

but this is front-to-back awful imo. Stiff, rhythmically and melodically forced, z-grade Steely Dan lyrics (now with added shitty sports metaphor!), no hooks, bellowed vocal trying *really* hard to make this work but just ... no.

This song makes me feel bad for Freddie Hubbard.

lol Shakes
reading yr reactions itt is like what I picure would happen if joined a "broccoli of the month" club
<3

yeah yeah
https://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fmedia.giphy.com%2Fmedia%2FdwCDhA5qVhYoU%2Fgiphy.gif&f=1

lol

Dude went full Attilla for a sec in Eazy's clip!

I agree with Shakey on one thing. The late 70s such a halcyon time for overstuffed baseball metaphors.

I love this song. Would even love a mix of just four bars from the verse looped over and over again. Evil jazz guitarists driving down the turnpike, passing under a streetlight on every fourth beat.

Yankees stealing the headlines... Goddamm does this guy enjoy reading a newspaper. That line was a big hit during the Shea Stadium shows though.

More childhood misreadings: it never occurred to me that "Ali" referred to Muhammad Ali but rather to some young guy working his ass off as a dancer at this bar. Makes more sense anyway with people trying to steer him away from going downtown and blowing his night's tips buying people free drinks.

But I do think the song holds together well - narrator is old enough to be at a bar but still kinda faking it, excited to *be* a nobody at a bar, I've even got a *tab*, just like in the movies! It's like a teenage "Deacon Blues" with even more basic and maybe less pathetic aspirations: drink, watch TV, try and pick up a waitress. Oddly, we never even really hear about him *playing* the guitar (unless this is another Piano Man scenario and he's observing this all from the stage, off to the side of Ali's dance routine)... another prop of adult coolness, like Billy's trumpet on the cover, that he's not actually prepared to back up.

I've been to a lot of sports bars. Pretty much none have featured live jazz, and even fewer have had male professional dancers.

Maybe I just don't get out enough. Clearly I don't know as much about bars as BAR PRO BJ. After all, he knows that all the hepcats order Tonic and Gins.

Ali on the stage is a dancer guy
Gives away drinks for free

Afterthought: maybe the old man's car was left to him, or a hand-me-down?

Then he could be simply an introverted adult who lives largely in fantasy (not a teenager who somehow has a bar tab).

maybe he killed an old man (using the sound of the applause for ali's dancing as cover) and took his car

alternately he could be nursing a can of popular diet soda Tab

Part-time driver for a mob capo.

the old man who was making love to his tonic and gin died and left billy his car. unfortunately apart from that things have been going downhill. he lost his piano gig when the manager decided to go with a trumpet-and-live-male-dancing format, and is now just another tab.

billy has traveled into the future and is an introverted kid living in the fantasy world of his laptop in his bedroom. it is 2008 and he has several tabs open on his firefox browser: a used car lot selling an old honda just like his dad has. a guitar shop. and, obviously, a zanzibar tab. but mostly he's watching old sports clips on youtube.

Honesty - Only heard it a few times on the radio - it wasn't on my copy of Greatest Hits I/II. It's a bit too plodding, like everyone has said, but I think the verse chords are subtly interesting. Doesn't quite go where I expect

My Life - Love this song. That piano tinkling is such a nice detail, I stole it for one of my own songs

Zanzibar - The delivery is so intense! It sounds like they recorded the vocal over a different arrangement, then changed the arrangement. The piano is really awkward and the whole thing comes off like "Copacabana". In spite of that, I think the chorus is cool and the instrumental section even better. Weird song though, for him

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmUrJ_el-SM

Stiletto opens side two with another move towards jazzier directions, this time with room for Richie Cannata. An ode to a femme fatale, or perhaps to BDSM practices, its extended instrumental passages retain something of the sweep of "Scenes From An Italian Restaurant," and have been repeatedly sampled. Maybe I'll manage to get my own 2010-era mashup attempt online later today...

(tbh when i first heard this, my reference point was almost certainly this guy)

this is good except for the "Billy Joel sings" parts

Such a leap forward in confidence. It's not a great song but it's a real nice listen.

this is all about billy's left hand, the bass and the finger snaps. and they are fantastic finger snaps. his voice keeps slipping in and out of ray charles mode, which is weird. and i can.not.stand the way he pronounces stil-EHH-TTOHHH with the extra emphasis and extra length on TTOHHH. the band sounds looser than he does.