Classic Billy Joel album and a stunning 1972 live concert
Billy Joel had a long career in music before his first commercial break with this 1973 album and its title hit single. He’d played piano as a studio sideman and recorded with several rock groups, including the Hassles and Attila, before settling into the singer-songwriter style that began with 1971’s Cold Spring Harbor. With his solo debut having stiffed commercially, and label problems keeping him from recording a follow-up, he relocated to Los Angeles where he spent six months playing as a lounge pianist, writing new material a eventually returning to touring. Signing with Columbia, he released this sophomore album in November and cracked the Top 40 by the following Spring – more than five months after the records were released. The single rose to #25, but it would be three more years until Joel achieved massive acclaim with 1977’s The Stranger.
The introspection of Cold Spring Harbor was mostly replaced on his second album with lightly- and wholly-fictional character sketches. The album’s love song, “You’re My Home†(written as a Valentine’s Day gift for Joel’s first wife) is also its most personal, though the title song is clearly drawn from Joel’s tenure as a lounge singer. Narratives of travel and distance, as well as the line “too many people got a hold of me†(from “Worse Comes to Worstâ€), speak to the touring and travail of his early solo years. The album’s sound was heavily influenced by California’s early-70s canyon-country scene, mixing West Coast twang with Joel’s East Coast bravura. The epic “Captain Jack†turned out to be the cure for that early turmoil, as a live recording from a 1972 radio broadcast became the turntable hit that sparked Columbia Records’ interest.
The Legacy edition of Piano Man augments a remastered edition of the original album on disc one with a newly commissioned mix (from the 16-track master) of the 1972 radio concert that yielded the pivotal live recording. Recorded live in April, 1972 at Sigma Sound Studios, the concert was broadcast on Philadelphia’s WMMR-FM. The audience was made up primarily of contest winners and the set list included six songs from Cold Spring Harbor, three that would be recorded later in the year for Piano Man, and three rarities from Joel’s early songwriting catalog (“Long, Long Time,†“Josephine†and “Rosalindaâ€). Joel is commanding at both his piano and microphone throughout the show, and his road band is soulful and razor sharp; together they deliver performances with more musical life than the studio versions of Joel’s first two albums.
‘70s rocker delivers a nostalgic musical autobiography
If you lost track of Dwight Twilley over the years since his mid-70s breakthroughs, Sincerely and Twilley Don’t Mind, you’re in luck, as his latest album is as richly enveloping and fully satisfying as you remember from thirty-five years ago. Those who kept up with the Oklahoman have been treated to new albums, live recordings and multiple volumes of unreleased material, but the pop mainstream long ago moved on from the magic he created with drummer/vocalist Phil Seymour and guitarist Bill Pitcock IV. With Seymour having passed away in 1993, and Pitcock having passed just as this new collection was being completed, this is likely to be the last album that retains the full measure of Twilley’s ‘70s nostalgia.
And nostalgic this album is. Not only does much of it sound as if it were produced alongside Twilley’s earlier classics, but as the soundtrack to a documentary on Twilley’s life, the songs are purposely autobiographical. Twilley sounds great, with the Buddy Holly hiccup still in his voice, the atmosphere of Sun’s slapback echo surrounding him in a luscious bank of rhythm guitar, bass, drums, and keyboards, and Pitcock’s 6-string adding searing leads. He writes of his immortal days as a Tulsa teenager, his early dreams of rock ‘n’ roll, and the musical education he received from Sun’s Ray Harris in Tupelo; and it’s all wrapped in Twilley’s signature melding of Merseybeat and Memphis.
Twilley’s remained enthusiastic, even as music business machinations – he and Tom Petty each suffered at Shelter Records – sidetracked his career at the very points it was set to explode. He’s scrupulously maintained his artistic integrity – never pandering or chasing trends in search of a contract – and built an artistically consistent, if not always consistently distributed, back catalog. His musical autobiography retains the youthful spark of his earlier work, but layered with the craft and perspective of thirty-five years in the business. He lauds the value of hard-won accomplishments in the lushly acoustic “Good Things Come Hard,†reaching back for images of his early partnership with Phil Seymour.
The 1990s edition of the Mickey Mouse Club was a surprising hotbed of soon-to-be-successful young artists. In addition to better-known alumni Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake and Christina Aguilera, the Club was home to a dozen more actors and singers whose stars may not have risen to international fame, but whose work is worth looking up. Among those making a living with their music is Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter Tony Lucca. No longer the boy singer (that’s him in the middle, next to girlfriend Keri Russell), or the hunky actor of Aaron Spelling’s Malibu Shores, Lucca’s matured into a bearded and bespectacled singer-songwriter with a dozen EPs and albums to his credit.
His first few efforts were self-released and promoted via the Internet, but a couple years after opening for ‘N Sync (home of fellow Mousketeers Justin Timberlake and JC Chasez) in 2001 and 2002, he landed a deal with Lightyear and released the Chasez exec-produced Shotgun. Lucca showed off a deft ear for pop melody and harmony, and though the arrangements and vocal tone occasionally stray toward the middle of the Adult Alternative road, the overall effect was favorably remindful of the early releases of power-popsters like Richard X. Heyman. Lucca’s efforts continued with Rock Ridge on Canyon Songs and Rendezvous with the Angels, and now with this latest all-covers album.
Cover songs are a tricky proposition. If you radically reinvent song, you need to find an interpretation that speaks to listeners in equal measure to the original. If you tread the outlines of the source, you need to do more than spark the listener’s urge to seek out the original artifact. Lucca’s chosen the latter route, threading together interpretations of baby boomer classics that are close enough to be comfortable, but sufficiently personal to rise above karaoke. Better yet, by recording a full album of covers, Lucca tells listeners a bit about himself and the influences that go into his own songs.
The album’s selections are generally well-known and often well-covered by other artists, from the piano-based dirge of Stephen Stills’ “Find the Cost of Freedom†that opens the album through the soulful a cappella reading of Chris Whitley’s “Dirt Floor.†In between Lucca adds just enough originality to Steely Dan’s “Dirty Work,†Tom Petty’s “You Got Lucky†and the Rolling Stones’ “Waiting on a Friend†to freshen them up without taking untoward liberties. It’s a delicate balance – changing the tempos slightly or adding a soulful edge to the vocal – but one for which Lucca has a tremendous feel.
An American songwriting legend revisits her career highlights
It’s been more than a decade since listeners heard new recordings from Jackie DeShannon, and rather than writing new material, she’s chosen to reconsider the classics in her catalog. The good news is that the songs are terrific, DeShannon’s voice has aged well, and she finds compelling, new interpretations for the well-worn chestnuts. The less good news is that a few of the arrangements are undercooked, the tempos start to drag by album’s end, and the mixes don’t always lay the vocals fully into the instrumentation. It’s great to hear DeShannon singing, and to have these songs rethought by their author (alongside the new composition “Will You Stay in My Lifeâ€), but one might wish her co-producer pushed for a greater variety of approaches.
The album’s title track is its best, maturing the adolescent anticipation of DeShannon’s original into mature knowingness. Her earlier notes of youthful anxiety are transformed into hints of surprise as she lingers over the words and realizes the on-going strength of her desire. The stripping of ‘60s filigree from Marianne Faithful and Cher’s versions of “Come and Stay With Me†[12] turns the song from ‘60s pop into something fit for Linda Ronstadt’s early days, and that same Canyon vibe lives on in “Don’t Doubt Yourself Babe.†The latter smooths the Byrds’ jangly folk-rock (and DeShannon’s own folk demo) into engaging adult pop. Among the most startling transformations is DeShannon’s turn of the hyperkinetic “Breakaway†[123] into a definitive and dark ballad, and a bluesy take on “Bad Water†that strips away the Raelettes’ ‘70s-style soul.
Legendary bassist’s post-Stones R&B band
