Archive for March, 2006
A Review: Billy Joel – My Lives, Disc 3
Monday, March 6th, 2006This is the third in my series of reviews of the “My Lives” Box Set from Billy Joel. Scroll to the bottom of this post for links to reviews of the other discs.
Disc 3 of the series basically showcases Billy Joel as a kick-ass cover band and movie soundtrack contributor. As a cover artist, Joel offers up the Isley Brothers’ Shout (recorded live at Yankee Stadium), two Elvis Presley tracks from the Honeymoon in Vegas soundtrack (All Shook Up and Heartbreak Hotel), Duke Ellington’s In a Sentimental Mood from the soundtrack of A League of Their Own, the Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night (a staple of his Face-to-Face setlist with Elton John), Leonard Cohen’s Light As A Breeze, the Disney classic When You Wish Upon a Star, and two Bob Dylan tunes: To Make You Feel My Love and Highway 61 Revisited. It’s been said many times that Joel is quite an impressionist, and putting all of these covers on the same disc highlights that fact. He not only does a pretty good job imitating the voices (especially Presley and Dylan), but also has an uncanny ability to capture the style of the original tune while still providing his own take on the material.
As a soundtrack contributor, there are the songs mentioned above, but also a couple of originals: Why Should I Worry from Disney’s Oliver & Co. and Where Were You (On Our Wedding Day) from Runaway Bride, both of which, in my humble opinion, are good enough to have made it on their own as singles if they weren’t already part of a movie soundtrack.
The real gems on this disc, though, are the live (Yankee Stadium) version of I Go to Extremes and the alternate version of River of Dreams. In the former, Joel’s piano playing exceeds even his own high standards, particularly on the improvisational riffs near the end (over the years, these settled into a scripted few, including the one where he bounces down the keyboard on his backside), and some clever variations in the lyrics (“Darling I don’t know why I go for ice cream…”). The latter has a lot more featured piano than the released track, including a swing-style version of the Goodnight, My Angel theme right in the middle of the piece. In retrospect, they probably cut it down for timing so they could release it as a single, but this version is much, much more entertaining.
Motorcycle Song, a demo that eventually became All About Soul, and the unreleased You Picked a Real Bad Time are the only “rabid fans only” tracks on this disc. I liked Motorcycle Song because the lyrics are such obvious placeholders (they describe Joel riding his motorcycle around various Long Island highways), in much the same way that Allentown was originally written as Levittown (“Well we’re living here in Levittown; The grass is green the dirt is brown…”). You Picked a Real Bad Time is roadhouse blues in the spirit of Big Man on Mulberry Street, and while I like it a lot, it’s not as good as the released material.
The only original album cut on the disc is The Downeaster “Alexa”, the first track on the disc, which I’m sure is there because it has some sentimentality to Joel (“Alexa” is his boat, which he named after his daughter), but given the rest of the material, I think it sticks out like a sore thumb.
All in all, this was my favorite disc so far. The first two discs show Billy Joel, rock & roll hopeful from Levittown, hungry for success and working hard to prove himself to everyone. This disc shows BILLY JOEL – SUPERSTAR, spending some of his hard-earned capital to branch out in different directions, lend his name to smaller projects, and have some fun with the music, rather than trying to create the next classic rock song every time out.
I look forward to Disc 4…
My other reviews:
Disc 1
Disc 2
Disc 3
Disc 4
Categories: ISBS Reviews, Words about Music | Comments Off on A Review: Billy Joel – My Lives, Disc 3
A Review: Billy Joel – My Lives, Disc 2
Thursday, March 2nd, 2006This is the second in my series of reviews of the “My Lives” Box Set from Billy Joel. Scroll to the bottom of this post for links to reviews of the other discs.
For the rabid Billy Joel fan, Disc 2 will not be as exciting as Disc 1, primarily because it contains more album cuts that the rabid fan already has in his/her collection. The casual fan will be happier with it, though, since the album cuts are generally not obscurities, but songs that were released as singles and received some decent radio air play. Examples include An Innocent Man, Easy Money (which was the title song for a 1983 movie of the same name, starring Rodney Dangerfield and Joe Pesci), Modern Woman (which was on the Ruthless People soundtrack in 1986), and Baby Grand (the duet with Ray Charles).
Like Disc 1, this collection also includes some live performances, although Captain Jack sounds basically like the album version, and The Times They Are A Changin’ was already released on the Russian album. The golden nugget of the live tunes on this disc is I’ll Cry Instead, a Beatles cover that Joel did with Elton John at one of their Face-to-Face concerts. I always enjoy hearing Joel cover the Beatles – his attention to detail and his ability to do various musical styles (increasingly rare in today’s artists) make these versions good imitations of the original, but still come across sounding fresh and energetic.
The demo tracks on this disc are also interesting to the rabid fan. The End of the World eventually became Elvis Presley Blvd., which was released as the B-side to Allentown, back when records had B-sides. Elvis Presley Blvd. is also included, so you can hear how the lyrics went from intricate and cheesy to clever and catchy.
The Prime of Your Life eventually became For The Longest Time. This track is most interesting for the music, since he had very few words written when it was recorded (most of the track has him simply humming along). The music, though, is a very dense piano arrangement, and sounds very much like classical music. It’s funny to listen to the classical piano and hear the doo-wop in your head that it eventually morphed into.
Also of note is Christie Lee, his most explicit ode to Christie Brinkley (now referred to as “Ex #2”). The unreleased version is a swing number, but eventually became straight rock & roll when it appeared on the Innocent Man album.
There are other unreleased songs, including a version of Getting Closer with Steve Winwood (although Winwood never sings a note, so you wouldn’t know he was there unless you read the liner notes), and And So It Goes, which also sounds very much like the released version.
Then there’s the Roadhouse Blues number, House of Blue Light and the Beatles-esque Money or Love, both of which have nostalgic value to the rabid fan, but probably wouldn’t be appreciated by too many others.
All in all, I enjoyed Disc 2, but with a few exceptions, much prefer Disc 1. Stay tuned for more on Discs 3 and 4.
My other reviews:
Disc 1
Disc 2
Disc 3
Disc 4
Categories: ISBS Reviews, Words about Music | 2 Comments »
A Review: Billy Joel – My Lives, Disc 1
Wednesday, March 1st, 2006My posts about Billy Joel have been getting hundreds of hits (helped along, I’m sure, by Google and the fact that he’s touring), but people are clicking through, so who am I to not respond with more content?
First of all, a backhanded compliment to buy.com. I ordered My Lives on Saturday night, and chose Budget Shipping (5-7 days), which is free, as opposed to Standard Shipping (3-5 days), which would have cost me a few bucks. The discs arrived at my door Monday afternoon. So, first, wow – that’s incredibly fast service, especially given there was a weekend involved. But then, hey – good thing I didn’t pay money to have it delivered faster, since I got it within one day anyway.
That aside, on to the music (I’ve only listened to Disc 1 so far (1960’s – 1980), so I’ll post more as I go). Bottom line: this material is for the real Billy Joel fan. The ones who know all the songs, not just Greatest Hits 1 through 3. As one of those fans, I thoroughly enjoyed it. If I weren’t one of those fans, though, I think I would have hated it. Passionately.
The first two tracks are from The Lost Souls, Joel’s first band. I’ve heard him say on his college lecture tours that My Journey’s End was the first song he ever wrote, so here’s your chance to hear studio version of the first ever Billy Joel song. That said, the recording quality is awful (so much so, that I originally thought something was wrong with the CD). The quality improves as we move toward the 1970s, with a couple of tracks from The Hassles and one from Attila (a Jazz Ensemble and Heavy Metal band that Joel experimented with before going solo). The insert warns that the Attila tune, Amplifier Fire is loud enough to be scary, but I didn’t mind it in the least. There’s even a rather clever mixing technique in the middle, where the keyboard is vamping in the left channel and the drums are in the right, and then they gradually switch, then switch back, then switch again, etc. At the time, that was probably high technology. Today it’s so easy to do that folks don’t bother doing it, making it unique once again.
After that, we get back to what we all know as Billy Joel music. Piano-centric, melodically interesting tunes ranging from ballads to full-blown rock & roll. Basically, the songs can be broken down into three groups: album versions of lesser known songs, unreleased studio and/or live versions of popular songs, and unreleased demos.
For the rabid fan, the album versions are nice, but nothing new. For the more casual fan, I think they’d probably highlight why these songs were never hits (with the possible exception of She’s Got a Way, which is a gorgeous ballad no matter how you slice it).
The unreleased versions of popular songs will probably sound exactly the same to the casual fan, but to the rabid fan, they’re fantastic bits of musical trivia. The highlight for me was the unfaded version of Zanzibar, where you get to hear a whole lot more of that fantastic trumpet solo at the end. The reggae version of Only The Good Die Young is fun as well, although I’ve heard it before elsewhere.
The rest of the tracks (seven in all) are demos. These were never released and, in many cases, not even finished (he hums his way through verses he hasn’t written yet.) The best of these tracks are songs that were eventually released under different titles or with different lyrics. For example, Piano Man is there with an extended harmonica part, an extremely annoying echo effect on Joel’s voice, slightly different lyrics, and a different melody for the bridge (the “La Da Dah” part). There’s also These Rhinestone Days, which became I’ve Loved These Days, New Mexico, which became Worse Comes to Worst, and a version of Miami 2017 that remains a ballad all the way through. I thoroughly enjoyed these tracks for two reasons: first, the sparse arrangements show off Joel’s piano playing more than the final cuts, and second, because they give a fantastic insight into his writing process – how the music gets set first, and the words come gradually, often getting rejected and rewritten (sometimes scrapped entirely, sometimes tweaked only slightly). The other demos on the disc are songs that were never released under any title, including Only a Man, Oyster Bay and Cross To Bear. The rabid fan would be interested in these because they are, to most people, new Billy Joel songs, which is something we haven’t been treated to in a very, very long time. The casual fan will likely think of them as bad Billy Joel songs, lending no weight to the fact that the artist went on to do much more interesting things.
So, overall, I’m very pleased with Disc 1. Your mileage, as they say, may vary.
My other reviews:
Disc 1
Disc 2
Disc 3
Disc 4
Categories: ISBS Reviews, Words about Music | 1 Comment »