This morning as the wife was busy making breakfast I thought a little musical entertainment should be in order. I rifled through my record collection and came out with this interesting selection by Billy Joel.
Joel’s fourth album, from 1976, runs through different listening aspects for me. We have the very good and peppy in “Say Goodbye To Hollywood“. I love the drum beat in this track, very infectious. We then have the ‘hey-it’s-a-nice-song’ feel of “Summer, Highland Falls“. It is a good track to sit and listen to but I’ll never need to hear it.
Ol’ Billy had a huge miss on the not-so-good of the raggae tinged “All You Wanna Do Is Dance“. There wasn’t much that I enjoyed in this song. It made me think, “All I wanna do is skip to the next track!” Although, the steel drums throughout do make me think of those Girls Gone WIld commercials on late night television.
These are all followed by a masterpiece of AM Gold. “New York State Of Mind” is one of those rare pieces of perfection in music. I have noticed over the years that the huge talent of Billy Joel has had more than his fair share of perfect songs. Anyway, all of these different musical turns all happen before flipping over the vinyl.
Side two is pretty much along the lines of nice tracks to sit and listen to but nothing huge or amazing seems to pop up. All in all, it is a nice record to spin early in the morning when you don’t want to get the blood flowing too quickly.
Here is a video if the amazing track “New York State Of Mind“:
This is a track that does not appear on the record but is one of my favorites from Mr. Joel called “Captain Jack“:
By the way, how awesome that you can hear the hisses and crackles and pops of the vinyl in the video above? Also, hilarious how someone drew Ace Frehley make up on the cover photo.
I love Billy Joel’s music.