The Daily Procrastinator

On Thursday, March 19, I crossed two more names off my “Musicians To See Before I Die” list. Elton John and Billy Joel performed together at the Toyota Center in Houston as part of their Face To Face Tour. My ol’ buddy FlashCap accompanied me on this excursion into musical awesomeness.

When we arrived at Toyota Center and found our way to our seats, we realized that these seats were GREAT! We were seated at floor level, no more than fifty or sixty yards from the stage. We could see the performers clearly, and we also had a front-and-center view of the huge display screens over the stage. These screens were of a sort I’d never seen before. They were made up of hundreds of strings of vertical lights suspended from the ceiling, and the lights changed colors and configurations to display images from the stage. It was pretty impressive.

Behold the amazing light/screen thing! Aren't cellphone pictures great?

As soon as the lights went down, both Elton John and Billy Joel took the stage, and they played four songs as duets, alternating between each artist’s hits. Interestingly, they also alternated singing verses within each song and sometimes harmonized during the choruses. After the initial series of duets, Elton John played a solo set of over an hour. Thereafter, Billy Joel played a set of similar length. To wrap it all up, they returned to duet mode and performed several of their most legendary songs to end the evening. As a highlight to the fantastic piano playing and singing of the two stars, I must say that the rest of the band was fantastic. I was particularly impressed by the percussionist and trumpeter during Billy Joel’s set and the bassist during Elton John’s. Check out the setlist:

Duets
Your Song
Just The Way You Are
Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me
My Life
Elton
Funeral For A Friend/Love Lies Bleeding
Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting
Burn Down The Mission
Madman Across The Water
Tiny Dancer
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
Daniel
Rocket Man
Levon
Still Standing
Crocodile Rock
Billy
Angry Young Man
Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song)
Allentown
Zanzibar
Don’t Ask Me Why
Always A Woman
Scenes From An Italian Restaurant
River Of Dreams/Deep In The Heart Of Texas
We Didn’t Start The Fire
It’s Still Rock And Roll To Me
Only The Good Die Young
More Duets
I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues
Uptown Girl
The Bitch Is Back
You May Be Right
Benny And The Jets
You Say It’s Your Birthday
Back in the USSR
Candle In The Wind
Piano Man

Honestly, I’m more of an Elton fan than a Billy fan, but FlashCap favors Billy. We had all the bases covered. At least one of us sang along to nearly every song, with the exceptions of the relatively obscure “Burn Down the Mission” and “Zanzibar.” At many points during the show, tens of thousands of voices were all singing in unison. I love those kinds of moments. I’ve experienced this “mass singing” at concerts ranging from Jimmy Page & Robert Plant to Black Sabbath and from Lamb of God to Paula Cole. More than any other event in my life, singing along to the same song as a stadium full of people reveals to me the Brotherhood of Man. When the entire crowd inside Toyota Center–black, white, hispanic, asian, straight, gay, male, female, conservative, liberal, wealthy, poor–ALL belt out “Sing us a song, You’re the piano man,” all is right in my world.

The first time Elton John and Billy Joel toured together, I skipped the show because I thought the tickets were too expensive. If they ever tour together again, I am going to attend a show. You should, too. We can harmonize.

So a bedeviled Angus Young is shoveling coal into the furnace of a jet black train speeding out of control while two scantily-dressed women stroke and lick his steadily-stiffening pointed tail (wink-wink, nudge-nudge), culminating in his throwing the wenches off the train so he can ram it through the end-of-the-line barricade in a huge explosion of lights and sound.

Subtle, these guys ain’t.

But that’s the exact point of an AC/DC show. While Angus, Brian Johnson and the crew are pushing 60, they know what the crowd wants to see and gives it to them. You want blood? You got it. And by blood I mean the hits (although the absence of “Money Talks” and “Who Made Who” was kind of glaring). Loud and with an energy that most bands half their age just don’t have the interest in putting into their shows. This was greatly appreciated by the sold-out crowd which seemed largely made up of parents bringing their 12- to 16-year-old children to experience what a “real” rock band is all about.

Unfortunately, I’ve heard rumors that this may be AC/DC’s farewell tour (and judging by the price I paid for my ticket they’ll be going out in style). Disregarding the notorious lack of reliability these sorts of rumors have (see The Rolling Stones, Ozzy Osbourne), it was good to see AC/DC is still at the top of their game.

I paid how much for this ticket?