The other night I took Jeannie and the girls to see Billy Joel at Madison Square for her birthday. Billy is one of Jeannie’s all-time faves and it was Michelle’s first arena concert, so they were all very excited. Billy’s grown on me over the years too. Last time I saw him was in the 80’s at the height of his pop phase and at the time I thought he was pretty cheesy. He spent a few years not doing much and somehow emerged as one of the all-time greats of rock. Now he\u2019s not exactly touring, but doing one show a month at the Garden, supposedly indefinitely until he stops selling out. I might go back again in the summer.<\/p>\n
He’s never sounded better. Since he’s put on weight his voice has more power and resonance, and a soulfulness it never had before. Billy\u2019s piano playing keeps on improving too. He reminds me of Bud Powell, with hands like bear paws flying around while his fingers hardly seem to move. We had great seats BTW, directly behind the stage looking down at the band. I could see Billy\u2019s hands quite clearly and I can tell you he doesn\u2019t always follow the way the music is in the book!<\/p>\n
Billy has a great band too. He\u2019s got nine players and between then cover all the sounds from all his different styles and really nail the sound of the record. Horns, guitars, synths, drums, percussion, everything. This group has been together a long time and have a really good collective vibe and are really tight.<\/p>\n
Yet at the same time the set was pretty loose. Billy kept on throwing in improvisations, bits of other songs, changing the lyrics to little jokes (\u201cIt\u2019s a pretty good crowd for a snow day\u201d), and extemporaneous raps between songs. He was celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Beatles\u2019 coming to America, and threw in part or most of When I\u2019m Sixty-Four, The Night Before, and A Hard Day\u2019s Night, as well as Let It Snow and Layla as intros\/interludes. At one point he looked at the next song on the set list (I could read it off the teleprompter) and played a different song entirely.<\/p>\n
As far as the actual set goes, Billy played alot of deep tracks mixed in with the big hits, and skipped all of his songs I don\u2019t like. Highlights include Miami 2017, Vienna, Zanzibar, Allentown, Movin\u2019 Out, Captain Jack, New York State of Mind, Always a Woman, River of Dreams, and Scenes From an Italian Restaurant. I checked the set list from his January show and he did about half the same songs and half other stuff. The encores were Big Shot, Still Rock and Roll to Me, You May Be Right, and Only the Good Die Young.<\/p>\n
Great show. Happy birthday honey!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The other night I took Jeannie and the girls to see Billy Joel at Madison Square for her birthday. Billy is one of Jeannie’s all-time faves and it was Michelle’s first arena concert, so they were all very excited. Billy’s grown on me over the years too. Last time I saw him was in the … Continue reading “Still Rock\u2019n\u2019Roll to Me”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2521"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2521\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}