Noted Without Comment...

...except to say a) that it's one of the funniest things I've ever seen in my life and b) how the hell didn't I get the memo on it previously? 😎

La Fin de La Semaine Essay Question: Special "My Extremely Old Back Pages" Edition

And speaking, as we weren't, of Billy Joel the other day, from the December 1982 issue of the Magazine Formerly Known as Stereo Review, here's my of review Joel's then new The Nylon Curtain. Funny thing is, it's a lot less negative -- both about the album itself and its auteur in general -- than I had remembered from before I stumbled on it in the archives recently.

BILLY JOEL'S late-Seventies records have revealed a songwriter with a fair amount of wit, a tough, unsetimental view of generational and class concerns, a real gift for the melodic hook, and a not-inconsiderable skill as a bandleader. If he sold records in slightly smaller quantities, I have no doubt the critics would have made him a cult figure on the order of, say, Warren Zevon. The unforgivelable sin of his vsat popularity notwithstanding, it should be obvious that, compared with his commercial competition -- the Styxs, REO Speedwagons, and Journeys that glut our airwaves and pretty much define mainstream above-ground rock -- he comes off as a genius. Or at least an honest respectable craftsman.

That said, Joel's new Columbia album The Nylon Curtain feels like something of a throwback to his earlier, dismissable work. (The songs that made his initial reputation -- "Piano Man" and the like -- seem overheated and faintly embarrassing now.) The admirable Long Island bar-band rocker who had emerged in his recent work is strangely muted here, as is the social diarist, and in their place at times seems to be just aother cabaret artist. The songs, when they're not weighted down with shameless and inexplicable musical references to Sgt. Pepper, are vague and far too personal. Theyre not annoyingly confessional in the usual manner of the nakedly emotional singer/songwriter; they're simply cryptic. Instead of sketching specific incidents and letting them stand as metaphors for experiences we've all had, they pile on so many specific, unconnected details that they become unintentionally surreal. "Scandinavian Skies," for eample, is basically just another band-on-the-road song, but Joel has tricked it up to the point where I defy anybody who wasn't along for the ride to know what the hell he's talking about.

Other songs that might have worked are scuttled by their length. "Laura," a potentially interesting portrait of a desperately unhappy girl of a type we have probably all known, goes on longer than War and Peace (well, perhaps it just seems to). And some are simply overambitious. "Goodnight Saigon," for example, tries for a large-scale statement about the horror of the Vietnam War but collapses in a confused welter of irony and second-hand period scene-setting that sugggests its author OD'd on home viewings of Apocaypse Now.

There are two marvelous exceptions, however. "Pressure" is a satisfyingly spiteful put-down song in the great tradition (an upwardly mobile "Like a Rolling Stone," perhaps) in which the singer sneers at a young woman whose world view seems limited to college psychology courses and Time magazine, Musically, it's a neatly executed mix of New Wave electronics and a kind of of demented nineteenth-century classicism, and it makes a splendid single. Even better is "Allentown." Over a great, chugging instrumental track (comeplete with some discreet factory sound effects) Joel recounts a story as contemporary as the morning paper, a story of broken promises and fading dreams in America's industrial heartland. It rings utterly true, evoking a genuine mood of contemporary despair without once lapsing into mawkishness or cheapjack cynicism. It's a grand song -- and the most overtly rock-and-roll cut on the record, which may not be coincidental.

While The Nylon Curtain isn't a great album, or even a topflight Billy Joel album, it has to be accounted a partial success for these two songs. Their presence is all the more laudable in an era when the musical mainstream is deliberately bland and the "avant-garde" is recylcing devices from fifty-year-old Dada manifestos. -- Steve Simels

BILLY JOEL: The Nylon Curtain.
COLUMBIA TCT 38200.

I should add that the above ran in the same issue as my thoughts on Bruce Springsteen's also then-new Nebraska, an album that I was, to my surprise, far less taken with than the Joel effort. In any event, I bring the whole subject up because I really kinda disliked Joel for the longest time (heh heh) until well into this century, when I saw one of his now legendary shows at Madison Square Garden and became a forever devotee.

Which leads us, inexorably and inevitably, to the subject of the business at hand. To wit:

...and the post-Elvis pop/rock/folk/soul solo artist or band you were largely meh about when they were at their commercial and cultural peak of popularity but have since turned into a rabid fan is...?

Discuss.

No arbirtrary rules of any kind, but I will add that if you want to flip this -- give an example of a band or group that you loved, nay lurved back in the day, but now you go "what was I thinking?" when you consider them today -- I wouldn't object.

And in case you are wondering -- and I suspect long-time readers will have guessed this -- my nominee in the original category is Queen. Who I really disliked when they were big, but since seeing the bio-pic I now worship the ground they walked on.

Alrighty then -- what would YOUR choices be?

And have a great weekend, everybody!!!!

One More Sharp-Dressed Man in Heaven

Sad news -- Frank Beard, aka the drummer guy in ZZ Top who didn't have an actual beard, has passed at the age of 76. The world is a significantly duller place in his absence.

And now a true story, which I am sharing to make all you kids jealous at just how fabulous it was to be involved, however periphally, in the music biz back in the day.

So sometime in the early-to-mid-70s, I happened to meet a visiting gal pal of a friend of mine who worked at the William Morris Agency in Manhattan, and became immediately smitten. Said gal pal lived, inconveniently for me, in Houston, so it occured to me there might be a way to shnorr a Texas trip. At which point I called up another gal I know at another big agency (for some reason the vast majority of the agents and publicists I knew back then were women -- I have no idea why), inquired if they had a band playing in the Houston area anytime soon, and was informed that the Top -- who were still more or less a local act, having not yet glommed onto the Sharp Dressed Men shtick they developed to world wide acclaim in the MTV 80s -- had a show coming up in a week or two at some Texas arena, and would I like to go?

I said yes, conned my bosses at Stereo Review into paying for a local hotel, and then hied myself off to the Lone Star State for a weekend of music and partying with the object of my affections. (In case you're wondering, the Top, who I had never previously seen live and wasn't crazy about their albums at the time, struck me as unremarkable, but the young woman who occasioned my Houston sojourn and I had, shall we say, a lotta fun).

The pre-facial hair ZZ Top a year or two before the time I saw them live

BTW -- I said it was a true story. I didn't say it was an interesting one. 😎

They Say Music is a Universal Language...

...but I say you haven't lived until you've heard six fat bald guys doing The Kinks' classic "Dead End Street" in the original Norwegian.

Hey, I didn't say it was good -- just that you haven't lived until you've heard it. 😎

Tuesday's Music-Themed Cartoon Chuckle and Photo-Funnys

Okay, I'm embarrassed about the first one. 😎

Songs That Sound Increasingly Relevant to Me For Obvious Reasons (An Occasional Series)

From 1988, please enjoy wise-ass Texas roots-rockers (heh) The Wild Seeds and their plaintively wistful "I'm Sorry, I Can't Rock You All Night Long."

I actually reviewed the album that's from at The Magazine Formerly Known as Stereo Review when it first came out, and if memory serves I loved it, especially "I'm Sorry." Nevertheless, I seem to have lost my copy, and until I chanced across the above on FB the other day, I had totally forgotten that the song had ever existed, let alone that it was such a pitch-perfect skewering of 80s hair band machismo.

Inspirational verse:

I'm sorry
So sorry
I can't rock you all night long
It's an interesting idea, baby
But it would be wrong

Lord knows, we've all known the feeling as we age, but it's rarely been expressed so eloquently.

La Fin de La Semaine Essay Question: Special "Yes, I Actually Am the Son of a Veterinarian" Edition

Okay kids, as some of you may know, I had a weird freak accident (a fall in my kitchen, no less) two weeks ago, and as a result I've been in excruciating back pain ever since. So today's business is, necessarily, gonna be something essentially tossed off and not up to my usual standard of excellence. (And if truth be told, I've probably done a variant of it sometime in the blog's dim dark past.)

Hey -- how do you say "cut me some slack, Jack!" in Yiddish? 😎

Anyway, by way of introduction, let me note that yesterday marked the 4th anniversary of the arrival of our beloved pussycat Mickey -- a rescue from the Bronx, thus named after Mr. Mantle -- at our digs in Forest Hills.

He's a real sweeteart, and you'll note that he's also polydactyl, i.e. he has six toes on each paw. Pretty cool, no?

In any case, that leads us inevitably and inexorably to the subject at hand. To wit:

...and your favorite (or least favorite) post-Elvis pop/rock/soul/folk record/song referencing animals either in the lyrics, title, or name of the artist/band is????

Discuss.

In case you're wondering, my nominee is this.

The song itself is sort of a guilty pleasure; it's a tad dated, obviously, but I think I just kinda dig the idea that these guys might possibly have named themselves after the hilarious absurdist play by Ionesco.

Alrighty then -- what would YOUR choices be?

And have a great weekend, everybody! And hope that the Heroin Jr. pills my pain specialist just prescribed for me make my weekend a little more bearable than I'm used to of late.

Songs I'd Forgotten Existed, Let Alone Loved (An Occasional Series): Special "Insert QAnon Joke Here" Edition

From 1970 and their sophomore Boppin' the Blues album please enjoy the original five-piece lineup of NRBQ and their hilarious and irresistible "Flat-Foot Flewzy."

As most of you guys know, our good friend Sal Nunziato has been running a "Songs That Totally Rock" sort of contest this week over at his Burning Wood blog and the above song -- which I had not heard or even pondered in five decades -- got nominated. Imagine my pleasured surprise when it turned out to be an absolute unmitigated delight after all these years.

Now excuse me while I go check out both of the Q's first two albums, which I seem to recall as being just chock full of stuff as great as that.

Slacker Wednesday

Okay, a friend posted a version of this on FB yesterday, and I couldn't resist.

RUIN A BAND OR ARTIST'S NAME BY ADDING SOMETHING POLITICAL!!!

Dire Straits of Hormuz

The Andrew Formerly Known as Prince

Snoop DOGE

Adam Antifa

Rage Against the Voting Machine

Cheap Trickle Down

Ginger Baker's Air Force One

Join in, won't you?

Regular actual music posting resumes on the morrow -- Scout's honor!!!

[h/t NYMary]

Tuesday's Music-Themed Cartoon Chuckles and Photo-Shopped-Funny

And yes, I'm aware that the last one, once seen, cannot be unseen. 😎