Billy Joel
2006-02-27
8th Night
Madison Square Garden
New York, NY
Excellent Audience Recording
128 kbps
Artwork Included
01. Introduction
02. Prelude/Angry Young Man
03. My Life
04. New York, New York (tease)
05. The Entertainer
06. The Ballad of Billy The Kid
07. New York State of Mind
08. Vienna
09. Stiletto
10. Zanzibar
11. Allentown
12. Sometimes A Fantasy
13. All For Leyna
14. Captain Jack
15. Movin' Out (Anthony's Song)
16. She's Always A Woman
17. Keeping The Faith
18. Lullabye (Goodnight My Angel)
19. The River of Dreams
20. A Matter of Trust
21. Highway To Hell
22. We Didn't Start The Fire
23. Big Shot
24. It's Still Rock and Roll To Me
25. You May Be Right
26. Only The Good Die Young
27. Scenes From An Italian Restaurant
28. Piano Man
2000s - #6: On January 7, 2006, Billy Joel launched his first solo tour in 7 years. Despite not having written any new material in 13 years, Joel began to sell out arenas across the country. In New York, he announced 2 shows at Madison Square Garden for January, then added 6 shows in February due to unprecedented ticket demand. Eventually, he added 2 more in March and another 2 in April, bring his total run to an even dozen, a record for the World’s Greatest Arena (Bruce Springsteen held the previous record of 10 shows, and the Grateful Dead had two separate 9 show runs, in 1988 and 1991). I was driving in my car when I heard the radio announcement about tickets going on sale immediately for the 6 February shows. Now Billy Joel is my lovely bride’s favorite musician, so I quickly dialed Ticket Master on my cell phone. By some miracle, I got through, and was able to purchase 2 seats for the February 11 show, the perfect Valentine’s Day gift. Of course, when the date rolled around, Old Man Winter decided not to be very cooperative. The forecast for that night was 12 inches of snow, with the blizzard expected to start around 10 pm. We decided to chance it and drove into NY for the show, parking just a block from MSG. Billy must also have been listening to the weather that night, as he ditched the usual opening number, Angry Young Man, and replaced it with Stormfront! Ironically, Stormfront also opened the show at Yankee Stadium back in June 1990 when my bride and I saw Billy for the first time (we were just dating then!). Billy also threw in an unexpected version of Captain Jack, and was so astonished by the crowd’s positive reaction (he called us all crazy), that it became a regular part of the set list for all future shows on the tour. Unfortunately, we had to run before the encore, and just managed to make it home before the worst of the snow hit, though it did take a 1/2 hour to make the last 10 minutes of the drive! In any event, while I never have been able to find a copy of that night’s show, I go have this excellent audience recording of the February 27 performance at Madison Square Garden, 17 years ago today, with the same set list, except for the opening tune. Download this one and hope it doesn’t snow while you’re listening!
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