BILLY JOEL: STREETLIFE SERENADE (1974)
1) Streetlife Serenader; 2)
Los Angelinos; 3) The Great Suburban Showdown; 4) Root Beer Rag; 5) Roberta; 6)
The Entertainer; 7) Last Of The Big Time Spenders; 8) Weekend Song; 9)
Souvenir; 10) The Mexican Connection.
Brace yourself for a serious statement — this
is not just a «piano pop» album, but a sprawling panorama of California circa
1974. A couple of instrumental tunes and a couple of universally suitable
ballads can be still tied in with the general concept, which revolves around
the perceptive and insightful singer-songwriter sick and tired of the gay,
nonchalant, sunny lifestyle on the West Coast that yields only superficial
comfort and prevents the artist from aspiring to higher goals, because how can
you ever aspire to higher goals with mountains of coke and hordes of
bikini-clad beauties blocking the sun from you? "Such hot sweet
schoolgirls, so educated", "going into garages for exotic
massages" and all that. Tough, ungrateful life without any redeeming
qualities whatsoever. Damn all that hot sun and light sea breeze.
The music honestly reflects the darker, sterner
processes in Billy's mind — it is now less oriented at a «rootsy» sound and
seems more influenced by the progressive movement, as the man procures himself
some trendy synthesizers (most prominently heard on ʽThe Entertainerʼ), rolls
out some dark piano colors, strengthened by hard rock guitars (most prominently
heard on ʽLos Angelenosʼ), and does everything in his power to come up with an
album that would be traditionally «accessible», yet not too overtly
«commercial» — the only single was ʽThe Entertainerʼ, a song that actually bashes the ideology of entertainment and
the structure of the charts so explicitly that even the public seems to have
gotten it: few people bought the single, even fewer people bought the album,
and in the end, Streetlife Serenade
cost him some public support without compensating for any extra critical
favor.
The basic problem remains the same as before:
the ambitions of the artist are by no means matched by artistic genius. ʽThe
Entertainerʼ raves and rants about the cruel industry ("It was a beautiful
song / But it ran too long / You're gonna have a hit / You gotta make it fit /
So they cut it down to 3:05"), but if the lyrics do indeed refer directly
to Billy's struggle with the record industry people over the length of ʽPiano
Manʼ — well, Billy, not everybody in
the world agrees that ʽPiano Manʼ actually deserves a six-minute running time;
it's just a generic waltz, for Christ's sake, not a Beethoven's 9th or even a
ʽHey Judeʼ, for that matter. How about some modesty here? For that matter,
without all the righteous anger ʽThe Entertainerʼ could have been a nifty
little pop teaser, vocally catchy and with fun use of the synthesizer, but
using that sort of melody for a Big Cultural Statement is off-putting.
If you «mentally delete» most of the lyrics and
some of the heroic posturing, Streetlife
Serenade isn't too bad, though, and should probably rank up there with
«second-tier» Elton John albums (although, of all the songs, only ʽLast Of The
Big Time Spendersʼ sounds directly like one of those semi-inspired Elton
ballads). ʽStreetlife Serenaderʼ has an inoffensive, nicely flowing piano
melody whose lack of dynamic flow is somewhat compensated by nuanced little
flourishes that show Billy's romantic classical piano influences without
compromising good taste. ʽThe Great Suburban Showdownʼ skilfully combines pedal
steel with synthesizers and ends up sounding like a Bee Gees song circa Life In A Tin Can — yet another record
with a brotherly spirit about how boring life can be in L.A., but ʽShowdownʼ
would have probably been a highlight on it. ʽWeekend Songʼ is a good one to
enjoy on a lonesome evening when you'd like to get drunk and go on the town but
lack the money, the spirit, and the real
will to do so.
And then there are the instrumentals. ʽRoot
Beer Ragʼ sounds pretty much the exact way as the title would suggest — with a
few whiny whees from synthesizers that creep up behind your back every now and
then, but mostly just relying on the good old honky tonk and Scott Joplin for
inspiration. ʽThe Mexican Connectionʼ begins like an incidental piece of
elevator muzak, cuddled around a pretty, but repetitive pop riff, but then does break into a Mexican part, also
justifying the title. In the end, both provide some harmless fun.
What totally kills off Streetlife Serenade, though, and opens up all sorts of
possibilities for getting seriously irritated, is its — and Billy's in general
— total lack of any sense of humor.
So ʽRoot Beer Ragʼ is «funny», because, you know, it's ragtime played light and
fast, that's always funny by definition, but we are not talking about that: we
are talking about how deadpan serious this whole thing plays out, even if the
man simply cannot handle «serious» on the same level with the truly «serious»
performers. Even the irony is delivered with a vengeful attitude, but even when
Billy Joel was playing Attila the Hun, he could never begin to hope to scare
the shit out of you — much less now, when he is playing lyrical pianos and
futuristic synthesizers.
The whole thing is about as huge a Social Artistic
Statement as you'd expect from the average Miss North Carolina, memorizing
answers to generic questions on family values and world peace from cue cards.
And I sure wish I could forget about it and just enjoy the tunes, but the awful
thing is, the tunes just aren't that
great — decent, not great — to win over you on their own. They are served to
you on the same platter with personality, and you can't really separate one
from the other. The only reason I can sit through an album like this without
cringing is that I honestly like Billy's voice and phrasing — even when he is
splurging out banalities, he sounds more like a genuine human being than, say,
Tom Jones or David Coverdale, and for that alone, Streetlife Serenade should be redeemed from the numerous
accusations by professional «Joel haters» who could spend their time more
wisely hating somebody else. Leo Sayer, for example. Why don't we all go hate
Leo Sayer? He sold a lot of records, too.
Check "Streetlife Serenade" (CD) on Amazon
Check "Streetlife Serenade" (MP3) on Amazon
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