A few days ago, I had the great pleasure of seeing (for the first time) Billy Joel perfom live. He played at Madison Square Garden in NYC, close to his home town. It was, by far, one of the most amazing musical experiences of my life. He played for about 3 hours, playing most songs I knew (and I’m not even a hardcore fan). His performance was so well refined, so crisp, and so awesome that words can almost not describe it.
He played to a sold-out crowd, and just added a 12th show in NYC at the end of February.
There is one thing that I’d like to mention — this was the first concert I’ve been to in a long time where the crowd was mostly older than myself. At one point during the concert, a younger fan – around my age – stood up and started to grove to the music a little. Shortly after he did that, a woman fan – about 50 years old – asked him to sit down. And he did. I looked at that, as I sort of saw the whole thing happen. I was reading facial expressions; the kid couldn’t believe he was asked to sit down, and the woman looked like she couldn’t believe that he couldn’t believe that he was asked to sit down. None the less, he reluctantly sat down and about 15 minutes later, he stood right the hell up again. That was pretty awesome too. 🙂
Oh, and the audience practically sung “Piano Man” for Billy. That was kinda cool, too.