Sometimes a Fantasy: Billy Joel's forgotten masterpiece

I sometimes forget that back when I was a kid, Billy Joel was my favorite singer. Maybe I repress that memory, but that's another story. 52nd Street and The Stranger were my go-to albums for a quiet night at home, reading in the big green chair. Which is odd, because at the time, Glass Houses was his big album. He'd jut turned the corner from somewhat obscure, kinda respected singer/songwriter/balladeer to badass rock star and whipping boy for Springsteen's fanboys, and let's face it, he probably deserved it.

Because Billy Joel, for all the macho posturing of his megahit phase, was also always a schmuck at heart. Obsessive, depressive, angry, but always too willing to yield to his heart of schmalz. There's a certain machismo that can only be measured by when the guy who wrote "She's always a woman to me" later tries to pass off "You May be Right" or "Only the Good Die Young" as bad-boy rebel anthems. I always felt as though if he ever met up with a genuine tough guy, with a Bruce Springsteen or one of those bastards from a heavy metal band, he'd go down before the second punch.

Which only made his pathos that much more interesting. I'm just gonna say it: Billy Joel was every nerd's go-to macho surrogate. I didn't know this when I was a kid, but I sensed it.

Looking back on his hits now, I think Sometimes a Fantasy might just sum up his whole life. Because, man, this video, I just don't know.

It starts with a phone call, one of those ancient push-button things, and Billy calling some girl. He's in a run-down squatter's place, squirming on a bed, Vacant sign flashing outside his window, all bug-eyed with desperate love. He starts singing into the phone when the woman answers. She's all elegant, dressed in a white gown, striding indignantly about her posh all-white apartment. She clearly hates Joel but for some reason won't hang up. Probably she's got tons of money and can't stand that Billy's a poor artist whose lithium prescription ran out.

Here's Nervous Billy on the phone:

And here's his lady, having none of it:

Nervous Billy doesn't quit, though. She's on the phone, and that means there's hope. Nervous Billy didn't get a zillion platinum albums by hearing no and taking it. No, Nervous Billy, when he's desperate for action, he has a guiding spirit he can consult, a suave bastard who knows how to handle guff. So every once in a while Nervous Billy looks at this other Billy Joel who's apparently in the room with him. This is Cool Billy, with his hair slicked back and a big old sexy... beard? Cool Billy nods and smokes, and encourages Nervous Billy to just keep singing. But things don't go well, until Nervous Billy hands the phone over to Cool Billy. And all he does, see, is hold it up to his ear and raise an eyebrow. 

Thusly:

 And then she's all:

And, oh, yeah....

Suddenly the chick is all hot for Nervous Billy. And even though he's singing the same crap song, now it's all syrup and honey to that uptight rich ice queen. There's some more lyrics about phone sex, and they get all hot, and there's shots of feet clenching and loins quivering in quick cuts, and then a split-screen of them like they're in the same bed... and then it's all over, and the video cuts to a ringing phone that isn't answered at all. Sometimes a Fantasy, it turns out, was only a fantasy.

This is like the ultimate coked-up genius video. If there were MacArthur genius grants for things that seemed cool when you were totally cranked on coke, this video would have earned Joel a zillion bucks. It's also a glimpse into the nervous psyche of Joel himself, a man who despite selling all those albums, despite sold out shows and marrying Christy Brinkley, could never quite see himself as anything but a schlub from Long Island, screaming into a microphone for people who would never appreciate him for himself, but always fell for the suave bastard he wanted them to think he was.

I'm kind of over Billy Joel, and so is he, actually. He stopped writing songs after 1993 and got bored with singing his greatest hits over and over. He lately made a splash with a once-a-month stand at Madison Square gardens, but before that he'd seemingly resigned himself to living kind of a quiet life on Long Island with his fourth wife. But every once in a while, he can still make a splash, like he did in 2012 for the hurricane Sandy relief concert. If you want a better run-down of what he's up to, check out this Grantland piece, or this question and answer thing in the New York Times, which shows that he's settled down a bit, but probably isn't above riding his motorcycle in the rain, if that's what it takes.

You can watch the whole twitchy, wtf-y masterpiece of Sometimes a Fantasy here:

Brass Kings at Grumpy's

This was Saturday; we were walking to Grumpy’s. On 22nd Ave., we saw a woman taking pictures of the switchlights at the train tracks. She saw us a looked a bit flustered, then she said, “That’s a Griswold,” pointing at a switchlight. “And that’s a Raymond. They used to all be Griswolds, back in the thirties, then they started changing them, and you don’t see them much any more. I just had to take a picture.” She was down from Brainerd, partly to look at old railroad equipment, partly to visit some friends. We commiserated about the need to indulge ourselves once in a while, and then pointed out to her the switching yard just down the way. Her husband sat in the car, patient and smiling, then held up his hands in a what-are-you-going-to-do gesture, but he didn’t get out of the car.

So we moved on the Grumpy’s, the tiny bar that packs a music stage, four booths, a patio, a video game console, a wickedly well-stocked jukebox, and full bar into a space not much bigger than a basketball court. They were holding their annual Northeast Minneapolis Folk Festival, so they’d opened up the side gate into a courtyard that runs the length of the building on the north side, where a tent held the musical acts, and the guests stood under low eaves of lilac trees.


Soon enough The Brass Kings had set up under the tent and were ready to play. The Brass Kings, when you hear about them, sound like a novelty act. One guy, Mikkel Beckman, slaps and scratches ringed fingers against a vintage washboard, and another guy, Brad Ptacek, has cobbled together a single-string bass out of a battered galvanized steel washtub, a broomstick, and a length of rope. The only semi-legitimate instrument is an ancient metal guitar in the hands of Steve Kaul, which he'd plugged into a buzzing, dangerous sounding amp. So you sit down and think this is going to be some kind of frazzled old jug-band, dead-enders playing the Old Grey Mare, and then they start jamming. Kaul sets up an arpeggiated blues riff, and Ptacek plugs out the basics of a chord structure – root and fourth and fifth, pulling the rope taught with a hand kept from blistered ruination by a thick leather carpenter’s glove. The washboard is a soothing scrape in the background.

Soon enough Kaul starts singing Muleskinner Blues, about as standard a folk tune as you’ll find. But there’s something intensely different about their sound, and when Kaul stops singing and starts exploring what his resonator is capable of, the music moves from Appalachia to the middle east, a resonating otherworldly sound like a not unlike a sitar. It wouldn’t be far off the mark to say The Brass Kings are a jam band, a spiritual heir to Jerry Garcia, out there exploring the reaches of the sonisphere for rare treasures. Their own MySpace page describes them as “Split Lip Rayfield jamming with Ravi Shenkar.” The oddness goes mostly unnoticed, such is the aura they send over the crowd. When Beckman pulls out an old piece of refrigerator facing for one song, no one even bats an eye. We just sit in the sun and listen and drink, then put down a couple demon dogs, and let the evening flow.

Other bands were less successful. They were mostly kids with downy long beards and new guitars, their shoes barely scuffed. They growled some but were unconvincing in their passion. A guy on a washboard got lost in the six-piece band, reduced to obligatory old-timey ornament. Time would take care of these kids, turn them into artists someday, or not. But it was Saturday night, and we didn't have time to wait.

On the way home we didn’t see the switches or the lady who loves them or even notice that we'd crossed the tracks again; we just walked quietly in the dark night. But the old ways, man, they were all around. The Griswold switches and the found instruments, the washboards and tin-tub basses - they go away, they come back, some of them stay where they are forever, blinking away, resonating into the night.

The Brass Kings at Memory Lanes: