Follow the first year of this innovative experiment in the music industry to look at their programs through a variety of viewpoints - from critics, musicians, celebrities and fans. This month, we Newsday TV critic Verne Gay.
I was just another face at Zanzibar - or in the garden, on Friday, along with lots of other Brenda and Eddies, all filled with sadness . . . and euphoria.
Strike “sadness." All euphoria. When Billy Joel announced this "residence” line "as long as the public is concerned" was either modest or a disposable escape hatch: when public bail bonds. But bilge may not be an option - or as the star with dry (Sadness?) Indicated a packed house, was the showbiz for 50 years and may be doing this for another 50.
There is still plenty of love and devotion out there - an amount not quantifiable Friday night, so the only question is how Joel is involved. That seems to be a nonissue too.
With excellent support - the veteran band members Tommy Byrnes on guitar, saxophonist Mark Rivera, Carl Fischer on trumpet, vocalist Crystal Taliefero - is fought out a show high on energy, but also full of riffs, detours and grace notes played as a continuous loop in your head so happy, and for four decades.
There was even a devotional aspect to the show, “Goodnight Saigon " , with members of the Fire Department on stage, singing along with 20,000 other supplicants ( " And everything would fall together ... " )
Or “New York State of Mind," Joel opened with a few bars of “Rhapsody in Blue”.
O “Allentown ": “Met our mothers in the USO ... " The words we are so deeply familiar but Joel still conveyed that painful sense of loss and decay.
He's used this residence dust off some forgotten gems. But apart from a few bars (what sounded like) his orchestral suite, " Elegy: The Great Peconic " played from the speakers when the lights went out, there was a "dark" Joel.
This was a night of all levels, from minor (“Zanzibar”, "Summer, Highland Falls “) to the songs you are probably being covered in that like the newly discovered Earth right now (“Piano Man") planet.
What was left of Joel and fans was discover something new and fresh. That was so, especially with an enthusiastic “The River of Dreams” who was arrested the midpoint of a version of “Night of a hard day.” Another interlude Beatles was "When I'm Sixty -Four”, which Joel (which will turn 65 on May 9), he said he was singing for the last time.
And if you thought that this audience is composed of pre - geriatrics hyper - adrenaline, you may be right (these tickets are expensive).
But you can be wrong, too. Many were in their 20s and 30s, a testament to the fact that the songs and the guy who wrote them are meta- generational. There are millions of hearing "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant” for the first time. This residence is seeking permanent.
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