Meat Loaf never made it in L.A.\u00c2\u00a0 Spin "Paradise By The Dashboard Light" and an Angeleno will be flummoxed.\u00c2\u00a0 Who’s Phil Rizzuto?\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, decades later we’ve heard it, but "Bat Out Of Hell" was in no one’s collection, the record got no airplay.\u00c2\u00a0 And Billy Joel got little more.<\/p>\n
Sure, "Piano Man" was a hit.\u00c2\u00a0 And "The Stranger" made headway, but on the left coast Billy Joel was not a superstar.\u00c2\u00a0 Even to this day, he might be able to sell out Yankee Stadium, but in the City of Angels he’s lucky if he can sell out an arena.<\/p>\n
When we get nostalgic for the seventies in LaLa Land, we think about Van Halen, we wax rhapsodic about the new wave club scene.\u00c2\u00a0 The concept of a Billy Joel radio concert on KMET is laughable.\u00c2\u00a0 But surfing the Web over the weekend I found just that, an FM broadcast of a Billy Joel concert at Nassau Coliseum back in 1977.<\/p>\n
Over dinner, I’ll tell you how to find these things.\u00c2\u00a0 Then again, if you don’t already know how, the information will be useless.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ve got to search blogs, download via RapidShare or Megaupload, and then decompress the .rar file with an application you’ve downloaded from the Web.\u00c2\u00a0 In an era where most people who might want to hear this show don’t even know where files download on their computer, this info might as well be etched in hieroglyphics.\u00c2\u00a0 But if you’ve got a bit of savvy, the rewards are endless.<\/p>\n
Not everything’s a hit.\u00c2\u00a0 That Zeppelin show from Long Beach might be straight from the soundboard, but one listen was enough.\u00c2\u00a0 But those Rolling Stones alternative takes were magical.\u00c2\u00a0 And this Billy Joel concert is pristine.<\/p>\n
They’ve even got the soundcheck.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s an aural backstage pass.<\/p>\n
And it takes a couple of numbers to get the sound right.<\/p>\n
But then…<\/p>\n
I thought Billy Joel was a joke until 1981, when he released "Songs In The Attic", a live reworking of his overlooked material from the seventies.\u00c2\u00a0 I mean who wouldn’t hate a guy posing with an instrument he didn’t play on the cover of his album?\u00c2\u00a0 I still don’t love "52nd Street", but "Summer, Highland Falls" brings me right back to my youth, working at a camp in the Catskills.\u00c2\u00a0 And it’s not pure nostalgia, I can’t forget where I am now.<\/p>\n
We are always what our situations hand us<\/span> Ain’t that the truth.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe it’s because I hate the middle of the road.\u00c2\u00a0 But that seems to be the story of my life.\u00c2\u00a0 And I wouldn’t have it any other way.\u00c2\u00a0 If I fall on my face reaching for the stars, it’s a small price to pay for that warm feeling inside when I triumph.<\/p>\n I was high in the mountains, listening to this concert on my iPod, and I could see the history of our business in relief.<\/p>\n Billy Joel could certainly play.\u00c2\u00a0 You could hear all those piano lessons.\u00c2\u00a0 And his voice was still high and clear.\u00c2\u00a0 And the lyrics, Billy was saying something.<\/p>\n Billy didn’t make it the first time out.\u00c2\u00a0 He failed with the Hassles, his deal with Artie Ripp didn’t deliver a hit album.\u00c2\u00a0 He ended up in L.A., playing in a bar.\u00c2\u00a0 And ended up with a song, the aforementioned "Piano Man".\u00c2\u00a0 And trying to follow it up, executing upon the same formula, "The Entertainer" immediately ejected serious listeners from his fan base.\u00c2\u00a0 An artist doesn’t repeat himself, he keeps exploring.<\/p>\n Slow down you crazy child<\/span> Today’s artists are built in a day.\u00c2\u00a0 They buy a Mac, fire up GarageBand and record a track, post it on MySpace, immediately e-mail you an MP3, insist you pay attention.\u00c2\u00a0 Whereas it used to be much harder to make it.\u00c2\u00a0 You had to practice, play endless gigs, fight for a chance to get a deal.\u00c2\u00a0 Where it still might take you multiple albums to break through.<\/p>\n But today it’s as if anybody who buys a ticket can play for the Yankees.\u00c2\u00a0 And you wonder why we’ve stopped watching?<\/p>\n The major labels say they purvey the official merchandise.\u00c2\u00a0 But if they’re not selling kids wet behind the ears, they’re selling safe shit like "The Entertainer".\u00c2\u00a0 And suddenly able to have a voice, outsiders insist you listen to them, now they can broadcast their desire to be famous, even though they should be home practicing.<\/p>\n In other words, Billy Joel is fuckingfantastic.<\/p>\n And that’s a surprise three decades on.\u00c2\u00a0 He was a niche player back then.\u00c2\u00a0 A journeyman.\u00c2\u00a0 And his multiple marriages and car wrecks have made him a modern joke.\u00c2\u00a0 But at least he’s smart enough to stop recording.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, he can still play, but he seems to have run out of things to say.<\/p>\n And he used to have plenty he wanted to tell us.\u00c2\u00a0 Especially when he still hadn’t made it, even after his first hit, when no one seemed to care.<\/p>\n In other words, we’re no longer getting the best and the brightest. They’re going into tech.\u00c2\u00a0 Where you can operate unfettered and make real money.\u00c2\u00a0 Shit, you can’t get rich in music, you can’t get enough people to pay attention.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not efficient.\u00c2\u00a0 And maybe it’s this lack of efficiency, the wasted effort, that will finally deliver music worth hearing in the future.<\/p>\n There are no shortcuts.\u00c2\u00a0 You aren’t born being able to program in C++, nor can a three year old play the piano.\u00c2\u00a0 And those thirteen or fourteen, even seventeen or eighteen, haven’t lived enough to have anything worth listening to.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s the rough edges, the hard life, that makes your stories interesting.\u00c2\u00a0 Billy Joel ran away from his record label and played in a piano bar to survive.\u00c2\u00a0 Today’s kids quit the soccer team and cut a record on their computer and now they’re ready for world domination.\u00c2\u00a0 Huh?<\/p>\n They say that these are not the best of times<\/span> That’s the problem, we baby boomers lived through the sixties and seventies.\u00c2\u00a0 And today’s generation, our brethren purveying pabulum, want us to forget this golden age.\u00c2\u00a0 An alternative take of "Gimmie Shelter" came over my iPod and I got goosebumps.\u00c2\u00a0 I remembered hearing it for the first time in my buddy’s bedroom and being transfixed.\u00c2\u00a0 Hate to tell you, nothing Wilco’s ever done is close.<\/p>\n Get pissed off.\u00c2\u00a0 But as good as Wilco might be, bands of that caliber never made it in years past.\u00c2\u00a0 Wilco was Poco.\u00c2\u00a0 A good band that had fans, but not superstars.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m waiting for superstars to return.<\/p>\n <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Meat Loaf never made it in L.A.\u00c2\u00a0 Spin "Paradise By The Dashboard Light" and an Angeleno will be flummoxed.\u00c2\u00a0 Who’s Phil Rizzuto?\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, decades later we’ve heard it, but "Bat Out Of Hell" was in no one’s collection, the record got no airplay.\u00c2\u00a0 And Billy Joel got little more. 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Either sadness or euphoria<\/span><\/p>\n
You’re so ambitious for a juvenile<\/span><\/p>\n
But they’re the only times I’ve ever known<\/span><\/p>\n