I’ve featured Billy Joel’s ‘Piano Man’ on the blog before, in its studio version, but I wanted to tell a little story about it so I dug up this nice 1975 live version on YouTube.
‘Piano Man’ has the honor of being the song I most misunderstood as a kid.
The year was somewhere between 1981-1986, making me somewhere between 9 and 14. I hope I was closer to 9.
I’m not sure how much I can really say about a two and a half minute instrumental track from an album of Belle and Sebastian b-sides.
This song has that familiar surf rock sound, which I like. It conjures up a modern western vibe, memorably tapped into by Quentin Tarantino in Pulp Fiction.
The nicest thing about Random Weekends is that they often reveal hidden gems within my music collection — songs I didn’t even know I had.
Take today’s SOTD, a deep cut on Ben Folds’ Best Imitation of Myself retrospective collection — which makes it a deep cut on an album of deep cuts.
Last week I featured Elvis Costello’s ‘20% Amnesia‘ during a theme on bad songs by great songwriters.
Frequent commenter Dana correctly pointed out that it was a weak song on an otherwise excellent album. So I figured I’d give that album, Brutal Youth, a shout-out today.
Brutal Youth is one of the highlights of the back half of Costello’s career. He released it in 1994, 17 years after his debut, and it’s insane to think that it’s been almost 20 years since it came out.
When driving I often listen to complete albums, but since I switched from a CD player to a USB drive I’m just as likely to let it play songs in random order. It’s a nice way to hear a broader selection of my music collection, songs I might not reach for otherwise.
It’s also good for blog fodder. The Wallflowers’ ‘One Headlight’ popped up the other day and inspired Monday’s SOTD post. And this morning I was treated to today’s Shakira track.
