(2023) Billy Joel - Live at The Great American Music Hall, 1975    


Review:
Recorded June 1975 in San Francisco, Billy Joel Live at The Great American Music Hall 1975, is coming to record stores for Record Store Day 2023 on double opaque gray vinyl. This album, taken from a stop on the Streetlife Serenade tour,introduces the earliest available recordings of future Turnstiles classics “James” and “New York State Of Mind”, and includes examples of Billy’s loving imitations of Joe Cocker, Elton John and Leon Russell – a staple of his early concerts. Consider that a month later after Billy’s performance, no less than The Grateful Dead would play their only show that year, a radio broadcast — which eventually was released as One From The Vault and highly regarded as one of their best ever performances.  I guess my underlying point here is that there is something magical about this venue. I can attest to it having seen many of my favorite artists perform there including Robert Fripp, Jeff Buckley, Betty LaVette, David Crosby, Dungen and more. And every one of these shows has been tremendous. Old, woody and intimate, The Great American Music Hall holds less than 500 people and is just one of those special live music spaces they just don’t make any more. You can read more about it on the Wiki if  you are interested (click here). That said, Billy sounds very comfortable on this stage, the last night of a four show run. His band is well oiled and having fun.  He previews two songs that would later appear on his first masterpiece, Turnstiles album (released the following Spring). Thus we get to experience early versions of “James” and “New York State Of Mind.”  The latter is especially tasty with a sweet sax solo at the end by Johnny Almond  (yes, of Mark-Almond fame). The band brings to life songs from Billy’s then current second album Streetlife Serenade including “The Mexican Connection” as well as “Roberta,” “Weekend Song” and “The Entertainer.” He also rocks “Everybody Loves You Now” from Cold Spring Harbor. It is neat hearing tunes from Piano Man live which didn’t really get performed as much later in his career once the big mega hits started happening.  So look forward to hearing sweet renditions of  “Travelin’ Prayer, “You’re My Home,” “Ain’t No Crime” and of course “The Ballad Of Billy The Kid.”  Billy’s comfort with the audience and stage humor is evident as he banters with the crowd. And as he sometimes would do live, he pepper’s the show with comic covers. This round he pulls off a particularly great spoof of Joe Cocker’s take on “You Are So Beautiful” which was topping the charts around that time. Beyond the performance, what gets me is the quality of this recording.  Billy Joel Live At The Great American Music Hall 1975 sounds terrific!  The vinyl pressing is excellent and very quiet which is so important in this show which has many hushed points including bits of near silence between Billy’s stage banter.  “The Entertainer” is particularly great as the acoustic guitar sounds like it was mic’d from the front of the instrument (ie. just a bit below the sound hole), which is how they used to record them back in the day — nowadays, so many acoustic guitars are recorded in-line via built-in pick-ups on the guitars which (especially early on) could result in a kind of sterile tone. Here you can almost feel the wood of the instrument. Even though this West Coast version of Billy’s band doesn’t have quite the same power of his later group which first came together on Turnstiles  - bassist Doug Stegmeyer is the only one in this group who was in the later incarnation - they are certainly a tight ensemble. — audiophilereview


   


Track List:
01. Opening
02. Somewhere Along the Line
03. Roberta
04. The Mexican Connection
05. Root Beer Rag
06. James
07. Intro of Band Members
08. You're My Home
09. Cocker Imitation / You Are So Beautiful (VampFragment)
10. Everybody Loves You Now
11. New York State of Mind
12. Benny & The Jets (VampFragment)
13. Travelin' Prayer
14. Delta Lady (VampFragment)
15. The Entertainer
16. The Ballad of Billy the Kid
17. Ain't No Crime
18. Weekend Song


Media Report:
Genre: soft rock, pop rock
Country: New York, New York, USA
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits
Compression mode: Lossless
Writing library: libFLAC 1.2.1 (UTC 2007-09-17)


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