Root beer rag time (SLYT)

September 13, 2013 12:26 PM

New Orleans Jazz Fest 2013 - Just a short Billy Joel and friends jam
posted by panaceanot (6 comments total)

Man, I love me some Billy Joel.

And that song.
posted by grubi at 3:20 PM on September 13, 2013 [2 favorites]

Has a piano player ever looked less like a piano player? Those sausage hands!
posted by Cosine at 3:37 PM on September 13, 2013 [1 favorite]

Man's a short, pudgy fella in his 60s... give him a break!


signed, Mr Pudgy Hands
posted by grubi at 5:22 PM on September 13, 2013

From the same show, Scenes From an Italian Restaurant with a very special New Orleans cameo.
posted by maxim0512 at 6:28 PM on September 13, 2013

I'm a Billy Joel fan, and I really like Root Beer Rag (and Mexican Connection, as long as we're talking about his instrumental compositions). This is... rough. He's clearly not lying when he says that he hasn't tried this in a while. Joel usually spends most of his performance time looking at the audience (or the prompter) because he's played most of his songs too many times. In this piece, though, he's staring at the keys and his fingers the whole time, like a nervous kid at a recital. It's actually a bit cute. The improvisations are creative and fun, lending some color to a fairly structured tune. I'd love to see what he could do with it after playing it in concert for six months, just to get the feel of it back.
posted by aureliobuendia at 5:33 AM on September 14, 2013

Dude murdered that thing. Not bad for an old guy.
posted by SPUTNIK at 9:18 AM on September 15, 2013