Dueling hits - Billy Joel 1973 +some | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's note: I have initiated this new segment on BCN, where I determine the Best Music Ever ... and, 'with a little help from my friends'. I do this from my opinion, for what that is worth, where I will measure the best music that I am familiar with.

    I do this for two reasons: 1) I want to expose the best music that I know to the rest of us. 2) Popular Music today may be the very worst it has ever been, and that is saying much, since I lived through Disco.

    For a list of all of the contributions to this series, please click here.

    As previously mentioned, there will be others who share their favorites with our BCN readers, in particular here, Bobby Tony.

    Billy was born in the Bronx, New York City but raised in a area in Long Island called Hicksville. The population density of Hicksville was about twice that of my home city of Atlanta, but it apparently had the same neighborhood cohesion where I grew up. That is about all a small city boy from the south would have in common with Billy.

    Billy was and is a New York kinda of guy, which from my experience puts a hard edge on your persona. If you do not toughen up, they will run roughshod over you. I suspect living in a crowd will harden the edges of anyone's personality. I have no excuse for why I am a a#$hol#.

    He's a bard of everyday suburban dream and disappointment, and his forte is the romantic ballad, epitomized by his signature tune, "Just the Way You Are.""

    But some of his music transcends the geography and the decades.

The piano Man - 1973
   

The longest time -1984 - His tribute to the Do Wop days
   

The grand finally It's still rock and roll to me - 1980
   

    That will wind up my submissions to Dueling Hits. I have obviously left out many of my favorites but the hook it ready to yank me off the stage and I probably have overstayed my welcome anyway. Thanks for the forbearance and tolerating my musical walk down memory lane.

    "We don't sing because we are happy, we are happy because we sing"   Williams James

    Bobby Tony has left the building.-------for now.