Billy Joel, The Piano man Pt.3

Following on from the first two posts of this series, finally the specialty record company Mobile Fidelity re-issued Billy's 1983 album a few weeks ago.

While from the part of view of artistry this fails to keep up with his artistic development such as that on the previous years The Nylon Curtain, what it makes up for is his abilities to bring about a fine pastiche of 50's music for the 80's which hit the nostalgia market head on.

It also helped no end that Billy had embraced the pop video for stations such as Much Music and MTV so those memorable songs from the album such as the singles Uptown Girl, Tell Her About had lodged their way into ones visual recollections of that era. Billys performances on what I can consider to the best songs on the album such as the uptempo Christie Lee, the doowop inspired the Longest Time  and plaintive An Innocent Man are amongst the best he's ever recorded.

This remastered super audio cd that also has a layer that plays in regular players offers much improved transparency over the original and 1998 remastered edition coupled with an amazing rich sound that makes you feel Billy's singing in your room on a good quality stereo.

Strongly recommended for Billy Joel fans.

Don Henley

The Eagles were a band who I followed in the nineteen-seventies until the ugly affairs of the Long Run tour of 1979/80 saw the the band effectively end and with remembers starting or in the case of Joe Walsh resuming solo careers.

In late 1984 Don Henley released Building The Perfect Beast on Geffen records which was the home to The Boys Of Summer, a top 5 hit, Sunset Grill and All She Wants To Do Is Dance.

In 1989, he released the Age Of Innocence album that didn't chart so  well but was acclaimed for tackling more mature themes than many in rock not least the disconnect between the governed and the governors.
Recently I was able to get these, the very best sounding versions of both titles on 24kt gold cd at an affordable price to replace my original cassette copies.