ELTONED

This weekend was the long-anticipated Billy Joel and Elton John concert. It was SO good. If you have tickets to see this show at an upcoming date (cough my sister cough) you are in for a real treat. About an hour before the show, I realized that C was more excited about seeing Billy and I was more excited about seeing Elton. Whomever you are there to see, you won't be disappointed.

Some classical music was played as an introduction, and at the crescendo, the two grand pianos pianos rose up from the stage. Then "Yankee Doodle" came on and out came Billy. He waved and smiled for a while, and then a jaunty English sounding tune came on and Sir Elton made his grand entrance. More waves and smiles and maybe even a thumbs up or two.

I don't want to give all the surprises away so I won't post a set list, but it looks like they are doing the same thing at each performance, if not very similar. Basically it goes like this: Hit. Hit. Hit. Hit. Hit. Hit. And so on and so forth, with only one or two "album cuts" (Billy's term for non hits), but of course they were great too.

After four songs together -- which honestly would have been concert enough; they were that great -- Billy peaced out, leaving us with just Sir Elton. Wow. He was not incredibly talkative in between songs, but introduced the songs with album info, dedications, etc. It was so cool hearing him sing these iconic songs, written years before I was even born, that I know by heart. They call that timeless.

After about an hour, he left and it was Billy's turn. I was pleasantly surprised with how much I enjoyed his set. I like Billy Joel, I was just so excited to see Elton that I a) didn't have any expectations for Billy Joel and b) forgot how many of his songs I knew. As in, I had no idea he sang "We Didn't Start the Fire." Oops. Thought it was Bruce Springsteen, all this time. He also surprised me with some impressive mic stand twirling. He looked like he'd spent some time on the flag corps.

So he performed for about an hour and then of course the two came back out to end the night. This time, rather than taking turns singing verses, they did more harmonizing as well as a cover or two before ending the night with - you guessed it! - "Piano Man." As soon as Billy took that harmonica piece out, the crowd went nuts.

I was so sad when they went off stage. I didn't want it to end! In light of that, I took some videos that, including the pictures I took earlier that day at a birthday party, took up all the memory on my card so I didn't get a single video of Billy Joel singing. But Elton fans will enjoy these: