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Five bands you would hear in heck
- Thread starter cyclingwriter
- Start date
cyclingwriter
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John said:
I saw them after their hey day (circa 2004). I remember Kinney had a fan blowing in his face all night so his hair could fly back.
I Should Coco
Well-Known Member
Bamadog said:
See, I tried to stick with the rock genre for my five, Bamadog, but agreed that Cher's music is evil incarnate. In fact, that horrid voice on the robot/disco song of hers from the 1990s probably IS Satan!
Oh, and lay off Foreigner, man!!! Besides, Lou Gramm's a Christian rocker now!
The Big Ragu
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Twoback said:
I grew up on Long Island, a town over from where Billy Joel grew up. When you grew up in Nassau County, they issued you mandatory Billy Joel record albums every year or so and it was just part of your upbringing. Then 1982 or 1983 hit and we were staring at high school, and realizing that there were two types of people: 1) those who would never leave, would get married at 18 to their high school girlfriend and never see a world beyond the burgeoning guido and mall culture they were immersed in. 2) The rest of us couldn't wait to get the heck out of there. It was depressing.
And it just became really not cool to like Billy Joel.
Except a lot of people kind of secretly still did, which is why I call him a guilty pleasure. There was an alternative radio station called WLIR at the time that was playing "new music" that wasn't mainstream in most places (I know this, because when I got to college, I was listening to stuff a lot of people thought was weird) and it pretty much ran our lives. It ran the clubs we went to. It dictated how we dressed. So everyone tossed Billy Joel aside and things like Joy Division and Talk Talk and ABC and Joe Jackson and Modern English and the B-52s and early U2 became the things to listen to; then it became things like Echo and the Bunnymen and Depeche Mode and New Order and Morrisey. It was all music like that. It was just the way it was where I came from. Billy Joel became something you rolled your eyes at. My adolescence wasn't us bopping our heads to Uptown Girl. It was plotting our escape from suburban heck while listening to the Smiths.
I know I was a cliche, by the way, and no cooler for being that way. We were actually kind of lame and didn't know it. But that is who we were.
Anyhow, that said. ... a lot of people kind of secretly liked Billy Joel, even if it wasn't cool. It just was HARD to admit that if you heard Honesty come on, you started crooning along like a lovesick douche, or that you knew all the words to Scenes from an Italian Restaurant. Unless you wanted to be a social leper.
There is a large segment of people who are my age who grew up in similar surroundings who still won't admit that they secretly like Billy Joel. Maybe it is a New York thing?
And yeah, at a certain point, when he turned into the pop-top 40 Billy Joel (particularly when I was in college), the stuff is less guilty pleasure stuff than just plain crap. No pleasure at all. Being a good piano player doesn't get him a pass. We Didn't Start the Fire is total crap, for example.
93Devil said:
He did write his share of crap songs.
For that matter, so did McCartney. He gets a pass because there's a dividing line of sorts, and he's always a member of The Beatles.
Well, Joel is always the guy who wrote The Ballad Of Billy The Kid, Captain Jack, Rosalinda's Eyes, Scenes From An Italian Restaurant, etc.
The Big Ragu
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Twoback said:
Indeed, if I ever need someone to write my suicide note for me, Billy Joel will be my first call.
Surprised to see Bob Seger pop up from some. Yeah I know we all got sick of "Like A Rock" but that was from a shirtty album where he also ripped himself off, always a desperation move. Seger made some tremendous albums in the 70s and early 80s. Even his last album, Face The Promise, had some solid stuff, most notably a killer cover of Vince Gill's "Real Mean Bottle" with Kid Rock.
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