Sing us a song, you're the piano man

Priscilla and I headed down to the Honda Center in Anaheim Saturday for the Billy Joel concert. I reviewed the show for the paper (this is a condensed, edited version of my original review and I'm happy to send the full-length one to anyone who's interested) and we ended up sitting in some choice seats, given to us by the promoter. With no traffic there or back, it was a fun night out indeed.

Billy Joel was a huge star while I was growing up on Long Island. Teens on the Island just loved him for his music and because he was from Hicksville, a town on the Island. It was a case of local boy making good.

And for reasons that still befuddle me, other musical groups that were also popular when I was in junior high and high school included a swath of Southern rockers, including Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Marshall Tucker Band, the Outlaws and, of course, Bay Area legends the Grateful Dead.

Joel played most of his hits to a sold-out crowd of fortysomethings looking to recapture their youth via his music. From his days in the early 1970s, Joel was a hit machine with one No. 1 single after another. He stopped writing pop music a couple of decades ago but remains a huge concert draw, witness his 12 shows a few years back at Madison Square Garden, which is, coincidentally, the first place I saw him in 1980 on the "Glass Houses" tour.

Anyway, here's the set list from Saturday night:

Angry Young Man

California Here I Come

My Life

Everybody Loves You Now
The Entertainer

The Ballad of Billy the Kid

Allentown

New York State of Mind

Zanzibar
Root Beer Rag

Movin' Out

Don't Ask Me Why

Captain Jack

Always a Woman to Me

Keeping the Faith

River of Dreams

Highway to Hell (sung by a roadie, Joel on guitar)

We Didn't Start the Fire

Still Rock 'n' Roll to Me

You May Be Right

Scenes From an Italian Restaurant
Only the Good Die Young

Piano Man