I had the good fortune of being transported back to the best part of my teens tonight – the part that included jelly bracelets and Aqua Net and Michael J. Fox and pop music. My sister and I shared a stack of 45s that we’d play on the living room stereo and dance ’til we dropped onto the gold-and-white shag. Our tastes were typical – whatever Rick Dees was playing on the Weekly Top 40 would find its way from the back-of-the-store, second floor record section in Hi Ho Shopping Center to our turntable. Some of my favorites were “Making Love out of Nothing at All,” “Cum on, Feel the Noise” and “I’ll Tumble 4 Ya.”
And the two songs I got to hear at top volume tonight at the Key Arena, sung by those titans of popular music, Billy Joel and Elton John. They did “Uptown Girl” and “I Guess that’s Why they Call it the Blues” as duets, with two pianos as big as my living room.
- The visuals for “Rocket Man” might have been inspired by a 1970s Elton John acid trip.
- Billy Joel twirled the mic stand like a baton during “It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me.”
It rocked.
Pickle Dreams 