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captainsblogSomewhere in North Jersey, Thursday night.
This is not when, or how, we expected to be leaving New York. More about that, eventually. But this post will recap the previous night of amazement as Emily and I joined Billy Joel and close to 20,000 of his friends for close to three hours of virtuosity.
We both got up ass-early yesterday morning and were at Amtrak 30 minutes early for a train that was almost half an hour later than that. No biggie: we'd built almost four hours of cushion into the journey, and had plenty of time to check in, eat and get to our seats....
Which were, simply, amazing:
That was center stage from our viewpoint, closer and clearer in sight line than many on the floor.
Right at 8, an opener named Gavin Degraw took the stage and the piano. Em knew his stuff and the audience received his short set with warmth. Then Billy, who Emily swears she saw on the lobby during our patdown, hit the opening notes of Miami 2017, and it was ON.
He was in a good mood and on fine voice. Most of the songs were Glass Houses or earlier; many were from Turnstiles, The Stranger and 52nd Street, his Holy Trinity of canon. Set list, near complete, follows (I'll cut it for space and spoilers once I get back to a real computer):
Miami 2017
Pressure
SayGoodbye to Hollywood
The Stranger
Vienna
Summer Highland Falls
Entertainer
Downeaster Alexa
Zanzibar
Movin Out
NYS of Mind (with a Newsday namecheck:)
Alllentown
My Life (after a false start and a Workin on the Railroad piano riff)
Sometimes a Fantasy
Always a Woman
Don't ask me Why
River of Dreams (with an added bridge of ZZTop's Tush)
Scenes from an Italian Restaurant
Piano Man.
He changed the last-verse lyric to "It's a pretty good crowd for a Wednesday," and when he added the next line about the manager giving him a smile, I added, "and about 8 million bucks!" That's not fair, or true, it turns out; his take from each of these monthly MSG gigs is only 1 mill. Still, that's a lot of rock and roll to him.
Yes, that was one of his four encores, preceded by Uptown Girl and followed by You May Be Right and, finally, Only The Good Die Young. By the end, the band was joining on the balloon tosses and flirting with the fan girls in the front row. We got our more than three hours after the lights went out near Broadway. We were replete.
----
Then we did stuff this morning, met up with a great friend for lunch, and then entered the seventh circle of intercity transit hell/ where it's cold, not hot. But that's tomorrow's post from one of the two of us:
This is not when, or how, we expected to be leaving New York. More about that, eventually. But this post will recap the previous night of amazement as Emily and I joined Billy Joel and close to 20,000 of his friends for close to three hours of virtuosity.
We both got up ass-early yesterday morning and were at Amtrak 30 minutes early for a train that was almost half an hour later than that. No biggie: we'd built almost four hours of cushion into the journey, and had plenty of time to check in, eat and get to our seats....
Which were, simply, amazing:
That was center stage from our viewpoint, closer and clearer in sight line than many on the floor.
Right at 8, an opener named Gavin Degraw took the stage and the piano. Em knew his stuff and the audience received his short set with warmth. Then Billy, who Emily swears she saw on the lobby during our patdown, hit the opening notes of Miami 2017, and it was ON.
He was in a good mood and on fine voice. Most of the songs were Glass Houses or earlier; many were from Turnstiles, The Stranger and 52nd Street, his Holy Trinity of canon. Set list, near complete, follows (I'll cut it for space and spoilers once I get back to a real computer):
Miami 2017
Pressure
SayGoodbye to Hollywood
The Stranger
Vienna
Summer Highland Falls
Entertainer
Downeaster Alexa
Zanzibar
Movin Out
NYS of Mind (with a Newsday namecheck:)
Alllentown
My Life (after a false start and a Workin on the Railroad piano riff)
Sometimes a Fantasy
Always a Woman
Don't ask me Why
River of Dreams (with an added bridge of ZZTop's Tush)
Scenes from an Italian Restaurant
Piano Man.
He changed the last-verse lyric to "It's a pretty good crowd for a Wednesday," and when he added the next line about the manager giving him a smile, I added, "and about 8 million bucks!" That's not fair, or true, it turns out; his take from each of these monthly MSG gigs is only 1 mill. Still, that's a lot of rock and roll to him.
Yes, that was one of his four encores, preceded by Uptown Girl and followed by You May Be Right and, finally, Only The Good Die Young. By the end, the band was joining on the balloon tosses and flirting with the fan girls in the front row. We got our more than three hours after the lights went out near Broadway. We were replete.
----
Then we did stuff this morning, met up with a great friend for lunch, and then entered the seventh circle of intercity transit hell/ where it's cold, not hot. But that's tomorrow's post from one of the two of us:
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Date: 2015-02-20 04:40 am (UTC)no subject
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