Third time's the charm, and Billy Joel, Elton John don't disappoint
No one likes to pay a whole lot of money for concert tickets – especially in a bad economy (you knew it was coming), and especially because the people to whom we’re paying all this money are far richer than any of us will ever be.
And when we pay a lot for concert tickets – and two headliners on one tour cancel the same date twice – we have a reason to be impatient, at the very least.
But if you looked at the crowd at the Times Union Center on Thursday night, you wouldn’t have been able to tell that the packed house – and what looked very much like a sold-out crowd – was disappointed not just once, but twice, by the two rock gods on stage.
They sure didn’t disappoint this time. On top of the absolute treat of being able to hear Sir Elton John and Billy Joel sing together, the audience got to hear the very best of the best of their fantastic catalogs, each spanning 30 years.
I would start at the very beginning (a very good place to start), but I can’t give you a play-by-play. I had a true Albany experience – it took me over a half hour to find a place to park because I didn’t want to pay $20 to do so, which meant that I missed the first two or three songs, then pissed off the professional journalists who were being paid to review the show by scooching down the row to my seat, interrupting what were undoubtedly several very serious note-taking processes. (Props to my homeboy from the Gazette who whipped out his Macbook and had his review nearly finished by the time Candy and Ronnie saw ‘Bennie and the Jets.’ We bloggers cower at deadlines.)
Sir Elton went on first for about an hour, followed by Joel, before they ended the show together. (I came in just as the beginning of the show where they played together, was ending. Of course.)
During each of their sets, both John and Joel apologized for the postponements and thanked the audience for coming. John joked, “I was 51 when this gig was booked.”
John played hits like ‘Levon’ (it sounded gorgeous), ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,’ ‘Daniel’ and ‘I’m Still Standing.’
At the beginning of the second solo set, Joel asked that a spotlight be shined on his banner that hangs in the TU Center, boasting his all-time highest box office sales.
“Did His Majesty see that?” he asked. “That’s pianist envy.”
That was just the beginning of his antics.
Read the rest of newsroom staffer Casey McNulty's blog entry on the Face2Face concert here.
