Billy Joel Enteries
I'm slowly putting more of my book on m y blog. Some of this stuff is over twenty years old but I need to preserve stuff on myt blog since my old website went down. Th ese are original without any editing, which might not win me a Pulitzer, but it is a good way to back up my book while expanding the blog!
March 27, 1997
River of Dreams (B. Joel)
This reminds me of the days at the Woodcliff School, the worst school on earth. My “river” was widest during seventh grade because I was in a class with guys who didn't treat me as an equal. They pretended to walk and talk the way I did and said I was some kind of an experiment that went wrong. Then outside the room there was this one kid who waqs worse than anyone in tha room!! One day we were in the library amd he wrote a note saying “Jay will never have sex”> He knew I liked a gi rl very much and he used my disability to scare her away. One time Andrew told her if she and I were to ever make love, she would get my disability and our kids would be mutants. That was in the past all of us have made our peace. However I still don't think they wil ever realize how much they hurt me. This song reminds me of how getting through middle school was like my “river of dreams”.
December 27, 1998
( I got the Billy Joel Greatest Hits I,II & III for Christmas 1998)
We Didn't Start The Fire (B. Joel)
Joel wrote this to celebrate the history when he was growing up. IO first heard this son in Mr. Bagley's fifth grade class and will never forget it. The timing was awful- because the kids teased me about my music. It wasn't until Igot the tape from the same kid who teased me! OK I read Billy Joel and thought oh yeah another heavy rocker. I was wrong, I actually liked it! About a year later I was at my uncle's house for my cousins' birthday party and another Billy Joel came on that I liked. He showed me the cd case cover and to my amazement, it was yet another Billy Joel album. It\ wasn't until then I made the connection between “We Didn't Start The Fire” and “This Is The Time”
The Entertainer (B. Joel)
Someone was looking down o n me when I heard this song for the first time on the radi. The opening fifteen seconds has to be my favorite part of the entire song; which when Billy plays the Moog Synthesizer. It's just another one of those things that I'm trying to convey through my writing. The words are only one part of a song. Sure the words trigger my own ideas but it's the instruments that give them the boost to be transformed from my head to the keyboard.
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January 20, 1999
She's Always a Woman(B. Joel)
This song is lethal for a guy like me especially when I think about all my little “affairs” (not really) through high school and it just slid into my twenties. The entire theory behind the one dance one song at the dances wasn't my idea, it was Jeff's. I met him when I was a junior and he was a sophomore. He and I talked the entire year about police scanners, the fire department and much to my dismay romance. See everyo-ne knew about my crush on Sydel, I mean I didn't actually keep it a CIA top secret. That night I asked Sydel was hell, My brother Chris and I had a big fight over something stupid. We were in my parents' room and I threw a lamp at him, which landed on the floor and broke. I was so upset I called Sydel and just cried to her saying ho-w I needed to be cheered up. Her charmed cheered me right up and I asked her to the prom, and she said yes. This was the beginning, maybe the middle of April . For week it was the hot item around the Junior Class, JM has a “hot prom date with a beautiful girl and a Senior at that!! The night was perfect, I slow danced like Sinatra and felt like gold, nothing could stop me. It felt good. I wish I could have that feeling forever. The was the end of my Junior year and it wqas a good one
Senior Year number one was even better because O went to a holiday ball, two proms AND down mthe shore with the senior class. I even some how buckled down and made the honor roll all four markings periods! Everything wqas cool, I was socially at my peak physically. Sure I didn't get me diploma but I had another year of this, I think I could hanmdle this! I WAS WRONG! Senior Year number two was the worst of the five years at Pascack Valley High School. Tommy died that past summer and I really couldn't get over it. Then I decided to write a poem which turned out to be jus a horrible idea.
May 9, 2024
Running on Ice (B. Joel)
Baby Grand (B. Joel)
From Billy Joel's Questions & Answers (4th disc in the greatest hits box set)
"I am.. just so we're clear no one's under t he illusion this a is a concert or anything.......Basically it's questions and answers and what I'm trying to do is I'm trrying to get is all this information out about this job i do. Because there is a job aspect to what I do there's a gig, there's career, there's a profession there's a craft to it. There's an art to it There's a science. There's a technology and when I was first starting out I didn't know how to do any of it. I just knew I loved music and I wanted to do something in music And I had to learn by trial and error, making a lot of mistakes and I wished I had the oppritunity to ask somebody who did the job so I could ask them"
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