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Honoring the Legacy of REO Speedwagon

I suppose I should have known the saga of REO Speedwagon couldn't end with a whimper. Before I get into the latest developments, here's a brief review of what's happened so far: In September 2024 came the announcement that the band was effectively breaking up at the end of the year. Apparently, frontman Kevin Cronin ruled that bassist Bruce Hall was no longer fit to continue touring following back surgery in summer 2024. Hall felt otherwise. Here we learned that REO had essentially become a three-way partnership between Cronin, Hall, and Doughty (who retired from touring in January 2023) following the departure of original members Alan Gratzer and Gary Richrath in 1988. Doughty sided with Hall, so Cronin was outvoted 2-1. No Bruce Hall, no REO Speedwagon. In December 2024 Cronin revealed he would continue performing REO Speedwagon songs with the two musicians who replaced Doughty and Hall, as well as Brian Hitt and Dave Amato (who replaced Gratzer and Richrath), with the on...
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Billy Joel: Cold Spring Harbor (1971)

We started at the end, and now we finish at the beginning.  Billy Joel's first solo album has a reputation as a sort of curiousity in his catalog. For one, it was quite hard to find for a long while, as it was initually released on a small label called Family Productions and was very spottily distributed. Another bit of intrigue was that the album was initially mastered at the wrong speed, with the main effect being Billy's vocals - which were already much higher-pitched than what we'd become used to - being pitched up to near Alvin and the Chipmunks levels. In 1983, with Billy at the height of his commerical success, the album was remixed, and given some overdubs and edits. That stands today as the "offical" version, though neither the fans nor Billy himself are happy with it. So I suppose a caveat to this entire review is that Cold Spring Harbor is not the album it was intended to be. That said, I'm going to attempt to take it at face value, using the widel...
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Billy Joel: Piano Man (1973)

For the longest time, I mistook  Piano Man as being Billy Joel's third album instead of his second. When compared with Streetlife Serenade , it just seems so much more realized and complete. Each song lived-in and thought-through. While not a perfect album, it seems like a logical lead-in to his run of classic records that started with Turnstiles . I don't know if my confusion speaks more to the unevenness of Streetlife Serenade or to the quality of Piano Man , but for the purposes of this review, let's say it's the latter. As a whole, Piano Man feels like a collection of lost songs from Broadway productions. I say "productions" plural becasue this is not a concept album. The songs are all over the place thematically and musically, but what they share in common is a theatricality of presentation and a focus on storytelling. To my mind the album is anchored by three epics that come at the beginning, middle, and end. First is the semiautobigraphical "Piano...
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Billy Joel: Streetlife Seranade (1974)

Billy Joel's third album was created in a rush after the success of Piano Man , and it shows. Not that it's a bad album, it just suffers in comparison to its predecessor and its immediate successors. Two of its ten songs are instrumentals. A few of them feel, well, not so much half-baked as undercooked. And it's weird becuase Billy had three songs he'd already been playing live - "Rosalinda," "Long Long Time," and "Josephine" - that didn't make the album (you can listen to live versions on the Piano Man  Deluxe Edition). Anyway, let's look at what is there. One of the reasons Streetlife Serenade underwhelms is the dearth of hits, which is just not something you expect from Billy Joel. The album only had one single, "The Entertainer," which peaked at a respectable #34. It appears on most of his hits packages (though it wasn't on the vinyl version of Greatest Hits Vol I & II ). A lack of hits isn't a problem i...
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Billy Joel: Turnstiles (1976)

Turnstiles is, along with An Innocent Man and The Stranger , in my top three Billy Joel albums. It has pretty much everything you might want from the Piano Man. It has two beloved classics: "Say Goodbye to Hollywood" and "New York State of Mind." And while I like that they respectively open and close side one, I think these two are the key moments to the album's story, and thus wish they'd been sequenced a bit differently (more on that in a bit). It has virtuosity. The opening to "Angry Young Man," called "Prelude," with its lightning fast hammered piano, is the most obvious display of Billy's growing talents. But it wasn't just him. Turnstiles is the first recorded appearance of the Billy Joel band - Richie Cannata, Liberty DeVitto, Russell Javors, Howie Emerson, and Doug Stegmeyer - and their performances show they were able to handle pretty much anything with aplomb. It has introspection and wisdom. Billy was only 27 years old ...
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2024

Here's the tracklist and cover for my annual compilation. I certainly didn't anticipate a year-end mix that had Tears For Fears, Crowded House, Billy Joel, Pet Shop Boys, and the Cure on it, but that's part of the fun of being a music aficionado.  If you have Amazon Music Unlimited, you can listen here  (though I did have to subsitute "Landlocked" for "Emily Said," becuase the former is a Target-only bonus track). 1… Billy Joel... Turn the Lights Back On  2… Crowded House… Teenage Summer 3… Green Day… Suzie Chapstick 4… ISLA… Photograph 5… Taylor Swift… I Look in People’s Windows 6… Tears For Fears… Landlocked 7… The Lemon Twigs… A Dream Is All We Know 8… Old 97s… By the End of the Night 9… Nada Surf… The One You Want 10… Pet Shop Boys… Feel 11… Snow Patrol… All 12… Collective Soul… Words Away 13… Motion City Soundtrack… Stop Talking 14… Max Weinman… In Our Silence 15… Tophouse… I Don’t Wanna Move On 16… The Cure… A Fragile Thing
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Billy Joel: 1980 - 1977

When I decided to write about every single Billy Joel studio album I knew had a bit of a leg up in that I'd written reviews of a handful of his records already. What I didn't realize until just now was that those reviews were of albums that had been released consecutively between 1977 and 1980. As I reread those reviews - the most recent of which is 14 years old! - I found that I still stand by them. My writing style has mellowed a bit, and I no longer give grades to albums, but otherwise my opinions then are my opinions now. So here you go... Billy Joel: Glass Houses (1980) Billy Joel: 52nd Street (1978) Billy Joel: The Stranger   (1977)
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