Streetlife Serenade by Billy Joel (CD, 1974)

CBS Records

4571191057242

10050170574

Billy Joel

CD

1974

Streetlife Serenade

Rock

Also available with PIANO MAN on one cassette. The remastered edition of STREETLIFE SERENADE is an Enhanced CD containing both a full audio program as well as a video clip for the song "Souvenir." Personnel: Billy Joel (vocals, keyboards, Moog synthessizer); Gary Dalton, Richard Bennett, Mike Deasy, Roj Rathor, Al Hetzberg, Don Evans, Art Munson, Michael Stewart (guitar); Tom Whitehorse (pedal steel guitar, banjo); William Smith (organ); Emory Gordy, Larry Knetchel, Wilton Felder (bass); Ron Tutt (drums); Joe Clayton (congas). Recorded at Devonshire Sound, North Hollywood, California. Digitally remastered using 24-bit technology by Ted Jensen (Sterling Sound, New York, New York). STREETLIFE SERENADE may have been a disappointment to Joel's record company, featuring but one single, "The Entertainer," that barely scraped the Top 40, but it's loaded with songs that came to be signature pieces for the piano man. For years, Joel began his concerts with a piped-in version of the instrumental "The Mexican Connection" and closed them by playing the bittersweet ballad "Souvenir." Another instrumental, the fast and infectious "Root Beer Rag," served as a favorite piano showcase throughout Joel's career, while the snide and clever "The Entertainer" began a career-long obsession with the evils of the pop industry. Most of the album is about suburbia and its malcontents. While Englishman Elton John, to whom Joel was already being compared, devoted his second major-label album to a concept album about the mythological American West, Joel devoted his to the very real American frontier of strip malls and backyard barbecues in which he grew up. No romanticizing was intended. In case Joel's growing cynicism wasn't already evident, the album's one love song, "Roberta," is written to a hooker.

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USA