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

"A Room of Our Own": really uninspired song. the chorus barely sounds like one, and even the solo is weak

"Surprises": reminds me a lot of mid-period Split Enz, when their writing was still a little meandering and weird, but moving towards conventional. That's not a bad thing though, it's a decent song. Though I doubt Billy was inspired by Split Enz. Probably both artists are drawing from the same older sources

"Scandinavian Skies": I was about halfway through when I was thinking "the only thing missing is Mellotron". And of course he uses it near the end. This is true pastiche, but it's not bad. The strings do a lot of heavy lifting in this song - they are most of what I like about it

With one song left, gotta say, this album is pretty bad. One of the worst overall

<SPOILER> but we're going to get another reprise!</SPOILER>

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SX3nFG6Js-Y

Where's the Orchestra? closes The Nylon Curtain. It might also be called "where's the band," as the regulars don't appear here - just Billy, some chamber musicians, and saxophone work by Eddie Daniels, a jazz vet who'd appeared on some previous Ramone records and will also be heard on the next few Billy albums.

A nice little finish, and again, very Nilsson-esque to my ears.

i've always understood the nylon curtain to be billy's attempt to (re)assert himself as a serious artiste after waking up one morning and realizing he was a pop star. circa 1982, channeling psychedelia-era beatles would have been one obvious way to do that, even without the john lennon news cycle the world had just lived through. i hear "surprises," "scandinavian skies," "laura" and probably "goodnight saigon" as the heart of the album he was trying to make, whereas the hits constituted the somewhat different album he'd be remembered for making, which as a (more or less) singles artist (and pop star) is kind of hard to avoid.

(and thanks, vampire!)

― fact checking cuz, Tuesday, October 17, 2017 10:30 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is totally OTM. I think I love this album more because than in spite of the fact that its Billy making his Serious Album Artist Album, and while I think it ultimately "fails" in that ambition, I think it does it in very interesting ways. Also this cassette was permanently in the family car, and my dad would put Goodnight Saigon on the mix tapes we'd take on holiday, so I was brainwashed with this album at a very early age and it probably skewed my critical parameters somewhat. But I do love that self-conscious "albumness", and when, as an 8-year-old, I realised it ended with the elegiac retread of the Allentown melody, it blew my mind.

Weird song. The lyric is awkward, like he's making it up as he goes along. The closing "Allentown" reprise is lovely.

I'd say it's his Serious Dad Album

As this thread progresses, I'm looking forward to a transition from mostly-childhood reminiscences to more adolescent and young-adult reminiscences.

My parents were too old and snobbish for these records, so I don't have the memories others do of parents having these records. They reached me anyway. But it's interesting how many comments have been about our childhood impressions, childhood misunderstandings of the lyrics, etc. What will happen when we get to the 90s, when we heard new Joel stuff as more fully formed people?

Oh we'll be shameless.

Disappointing Prince Vaults Found To Contain 37,000 Hours Of Billy Joel Covers https://t.co/xagWWhSywH pic.twitter.com/FFvjwBAewx

— The Onion (@TheOnion) October 18, 2017

Laugh all you want, but just imagine what he could've done with "Laura".

30-minute Stilletto funk workout

"You don't have to watch Dynasty, I love you just the way you are..."

OMG I AM GOING TO WORK ON THAT MASHUP RIGHT FUCKING NOW

In the interview Joel, who performs monthly shows at Madison Square Garden in New York City, also spoke about his dislike of President Donald Trump.

He said he often drives past his New York home while riding his motorbike, and pulls the fingers.

"I do that all the time," he says. "It is probably on film somewhere. I'm sure they've got cameras all over the place. I'm not a fan. I think he's got a pretty thin skin. I don't think he is very happy in the job. I don't know what he's doing there. And neither does he."

given their tendency for beatle worship and including utter bullshit on their albums i wonder if oasis didn’t model their career after billy joel

where's the orchestra - in which he closes his brief psychedelic rock phase with an attempt to write one for the american songbook, like mccartney waltzing into the studio with some orchestral charts to put an end to a lennon album side. but mccartney has been snacking on some of lennon's leftover lsd, which is why he appears to be having some kind of mild acid trip while sitting in the balcony trying to watch a broadway show in which there are chairs for a pit orchestra but nobody in them, and in which the movie-star lead is saying lines that don't make any sense. or maybe he just walked into a pinter play by mistake. i kinda like this one, which is definitely a bit nilsson-esque as doctor c says. billy likes it too. he used it as his final encore for years (so long "souvenir") and still plays it frequently.

(V. evocative but I must quibble: I doubt McCartney was any more capable of producing "orchestral charts" than Lennon was - or for that matter Ringo. For a chart to exist, didn't he have to hum the bits to George Martin or whoever, who turned that humming into notation? Your larger point stands, of course.)

ha, true, i do believe george martin would have to had to produce those charts. and hire the players.

Even Joel (to swerve back on topic), who studied piano in his youth, says he can't even sight-read anymore; to do his late-career classical dabblings he needed a collaborator. As did McCartney and Costello for their late-career classical dabblings.

I'm not a huge Lennon stan but had he lived, you can be damn sure he wouldn't be writing a fucking string quartet called "The Walrus Variations" or whatever.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5bH-qg7QFY

Elvis Presley Blvd. is the first of a couple of obscurities that - at the risk of overtaxing everyone's patience - I'm throwing in before the next album. The aforementioned b-side to "Allentown," it is not to be confused with the Rick Ross and Project Pat song of the same name. By my count, it's one of only three non-album B-sides we'll encounter; it wasn't anthologized until the 2005 My Lives set, which also includes a totally different arrangement and lyric dubbed The End of the World. I have to say I prefer that one, which may please fans of the McCartney-oriented Billy.

Doc, your thoroughness is a monument. I had never heard this song (though I guess I was vaguely aware that it existed). I can see why it's obscure. Sonically quite good - the guitar tone and vocal treatment especially. But pretty much hookless and instantly forgettable.

revisiting nylon curtain as a whole album today and man "pressure" is just the best song

i'll tell you what it is.... BESTSONG!!!!!

hmm came out looking a bit young-money-ish. a style billy has not attempted to the best of my knowledge

I was so psyched to hear for the first time today a Billy Joel song from the Ramone era I hadn't heard before!

It deserves to be a B-side, but it's an excellent - if I may - bridge between Nylon Curtain and An Innocent Man.

You know me, I get a little wary when people start singing about Memphis and Elvis. But ending it with a car crash instead of becoming a Christian tonight, I'll accept it.

Also, leave it to Billy to write a song about Elvis, but have it sound like the title track to Sgt. Pepper.

You think he ever listened to that record the summer after he turned 18 and sang BILLLLLL LLLYYYYYYYY JOELLLLLL! as they went into With a Little Help from My Friends?

No wonder he envied Joe Cocker.

lol thank you for that indelible image of young starstruck Billy

hah, pplains, that is great.

Is he singing into a hairbrush in front of his bedroom mirror in this vision, or does he have a cheap Radio Shack condenser mic by that point (plugged into the aux input of a dual-cassette boom box)?

he had already been in his first band for a couple years, and joined the Hassles that year, so it seems reasonable he might have had acess to some mic or another

access

the verses of "elvis presley blvd" sound like they belong on streetlife serenade. the chorus, if that's what the "step on these shoes" part is, could have been the 8th or 9th single from an innocent man. guitar riff sounds like a late-period beatles leftover. nothing sounds, feels or even remotely suggests elvis.

I'm guessing this was a Glass Houses leftover shelved because the main riff sounded too much like The Stranger, and the better, mellower demo version sounded too much like "Don't Ask Me Why" and they wanted to make sure the balance of the album stayed on the rock side of things. Also that just puts it closer to Presley's death, though obviously rockers were far from done with contemplating Graceland and the Ghost of Elvis.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oX8xwDsWGHI

Nobody Knows But Me, our other little palate-cleanser, hails from the second of the Children's Television Workshop's two-volume In Harmony series, which featured popular musicians doing kid-friendly tunes. Many of the artists went with existing kid's ditties, and Springsteen's "Santa Claus is Coming To Town," taken from a 1975 concert recording, has enjoyed some airplay. James Taylor even got away with recycling an old album track. But Billy, perhaps unable to find anything really kid-oriented in his catalogue, pushed through his writer's block to come up with a (minor) original work, riffing on the idea of imaginary friendship.

Like its predecessor, the album won the Grammy for Best Album for Children. While it should be allowed that this is not usually a wildly competitive category, the winners are generally quite respectable entries in the genre. Sadly, the album was a commercial step down from its #156 predecessor, failing to chart. However, Billy may have taken some solace in being able to, for once, see his name on a record without Artie Ripp's Family she-wolf logo. A promo single, maybe only issued in Europe, puts Billy and The Boss back to back.

https://img.discogs.com/zrym8uWBYsim_pNAq5sqtKXOmFM=/fit-in/600x588/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-1540758-1367364607-7189.jpeg.jpg https://img.discogs.com/Ny4Pvszg4LTLI_hfZl2DDl0DZ5A=/fit-in/600x587/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-1540758-1367364613-2683.jpeg.jpg

OK someone explain that tuxedo cat

nobody knows

shaved garfield

Catchy, in that way that I think would get annoying if I heard it a few more times. He goes a bit crazy near the end, doesn't he

Creepy song that I bet kids loved.

And I wrote that before he went crazy at the end, what the hell was that?

*Slams down lid on piano* Your move, Lou Rawls!

off-topic but "Jellyman Kelly" is great

While we're clearing out some of the leftovers, dig these Nylon-era Billy in the Suburbs portraits by Deborah Feingold.

https://i.imgur.com/NY0mHqL.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/iJZXQTZ.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/b0oHWOb.jpg

What, you expect him to only occupy one lounge chair?

Clearly you are unaware that he's the pyanno man. AND, unlike you, he knows a woman in New Mexico.

tell her all your crazy dreams!

nobody knows but me - i like all bo diddley beats no matter what. i like little billy channelling his little mccartney. i like the 1-2-1-2-1-2 etc intro. i like him getting silly billy at the end. goofy and fun.

Springsteen's "Santa Claus is Coming To Town," taken from a 1975 concert recording, has enjoyed some airplay.

massive airplay where i come from! a classic rock christmas standard. (but not necessarily from this album. same version was released three years later as the b-side to "my hometown." and if memory serves, at least some radio stations had a copy even before in harmony came out.)

bragging rights: i was at the springsteen show where "santa claus" was recorded. at the c.w. post dome, 1976. my high school graduation was also held at the dome. it collapsed several years later; couldn't handle the snow drifts. there's a whole new auditorium there now called the tilles center.

1975, rather.

the weight of the snow drifts... or of nine tiny reindeer??

https://img.discogs.com/lBPfOqkaoOPbesdXsPV_CvTQ2Ug=/fit-in/600x600/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-822425-1352320536-1582.jpeg.jpg

https://img.discogs.com/UCRkJ9gcQSbO4ze8yXi2rCrKC7k=/fit-in/600x589/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-822425-1441182124-7253.jpeg.jpg

https://img.discogs.com/8O3m-sBHLTGlxISYwkAIMqbd_Is=/fit-in/600x600/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-822425-1324648628.jpeg.jpg

An Innocent Man, Billy Joel's ninth solo album, was recorded in Spring of 1983, probably while "Goodnight Saigon" was still on the charts, and released that August, less than a year after The Nylon Curtain. Most of you are probably familiar with the standard narrative: recovering from a long year of divorce and the grind of recording the weighty Nylon Curtain, a newly single Billy, flush with excitement at dating supermodels Elle Macpherson and future wife Christie Brinkley, drew a connection between his new mood and his teenage years. This led him to the American rock, pop, and soul music of the 50s and 60s, and he threw himself energetically into a string of generally upbeat and optimistic style exercises.

Whatever we may think of all that, the resulting retro-pop was an unlikely smash: six top-forty singles, of which three made the top ten. One topped the US charts and another did the same in the UK, Australia and New Zealand. On the Adult Contemporary charts they were unstoppable: #1, #2, #1, #1, #1, #3. Though the album itself peaked at only #4, it sold steadily, becoming the fourth-biggest seller of 1984 and, according to one list I've found, its 7.9 million sales make it the #32 best-selling album of the 1980s, just above (I swear) New Jersey. At the Grammys, it got an Album of the Year nom, inevitably losing to Thriller; the other noms were Synchronicity, Let's Dance, and the Flashdance soundtrack. "Uptown Girl" was also nominated for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance, along with 1999, "All Night Long," and "Maniac." The victory went to... Thriller.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdGzzfQ52TQ

Easy Money, the album-opener, has never been among my favorite tracks, but it certainly makes a clear announcement that we're going to get something different from The Nylon Curtain. I admit that it may have been ruined for me by this ILX post.

Wikipedia, by the way, spells out which act(s) each track is 'supposed' to be celebrating, but I won't be specifying those since it's more fun to approach them with an open mind, and ILM's collective pop knowledge no doubt exceeds that of the Wiki hivemind.

A cheese ball, one I find inexplicably endearing. I don't know if this was actually featured in/written for the Rodney Dangerfield vehicle that I think came out that same year (and which I haven't seen), but I cannot help but feel that Billy Joel writing a song for a Rodney Dangerfield movie from the 1980s is about as on-brand as you can get.

*BUT one In find...

One *I find...aw, fuck it