A bottle of white....a bottle of red...

[salin]

Can anyone complete the next line of the lyric?

Billy Joel thread alert!

[BoX o BooX]

1. Perhaps a bottle of rose' instead.

;)

[salin]

3. ... in my italian restaruant

big :thumbsup:

[GOPisEvil]

2. Perhaps a bottle of rose instead.

[salin]

5. can you name the title single from the album?

[GOPisEvil]

7. The Stranger?

:shrug:

[salin]

9. Indeed!

and that was a great song as well...

[GOPisEvil]

12. Very good lyrics!

[salin]

13. hard to find that depth

in many pop lyrics these dayss ...

[GOPisEvil]

16. Mainstream pop, yes!

There's some good indie stuff out there, but you have to hunt.

[salin]

18. Elvis still usually strikes hard

:D

[GOPisEvil]

20. I saw Elvis a couple months back.

Too bad the festival sound sucked. But he was there.

We are talking Costello, right? :D

[salin]

22. saw him at a small outdoor stage in Berkley

and yes, Costello, not the otherworld velveted one...

[GOPisEvil]

24. A friend of mine wrote an article for our weekly paper on literate pop.

It's a good source for good music with intelligent lyrics.

Bands like The Decembrists, etc. I'll have to hunt down that article.

[salin]

26. please pass it on

I would love to read it.

[GOPisEvil]

Lyrics!

Lyrics for: Scenes From An Italian Restaurant

A bottle of white, A bottle of red
Perhaps a bottle of rose instead
We'll get a table near the street
In our old familiar place

You and I - Face to face
A bottle of red, a bottle of white
It all depends upon your appetite
I'll meet you any time you want
In our Italian Restaurant

Things are okay with me these days
Got a good job, got a good office
Got a new wife, got a new life
And the family's fine
We lost touch long ago
You lost weight I did not know
you could ever look so good after so much time
I remember those days hanging out at the village green
Engineer boots, leather jackets and tight blue jeans
Drop a dime in the box play the song about New Orleans
Cold beer, hot lights
My sweet romantic teenage nights

Brenda and Eddie were the popular steadies
And the king and the queen of the prom
Riding around with the car top down and the radio on
Nobody looked any finer
Or was more of a hit at the Parkway Diner
We never knew we could want more than that out of life
Surely Brenda and Eddie would always know how to survive

Brenda and Eddie were still going steady in the summer of '75
When they decided the marriage would be at the end of July
Everyone said they were crazy
"Brenda, you know you're much too lazy
Eddie could never afford to live that kind of life"
But there we were wavin' Brenda and Eddie goodbye

They got an apartment with deep pile carpet
and a couple of paintings from Sears
A big waterbed that they bought with the bread
they had saved for a couple of years
They started to fight when the money got tight
and they just didn't count on the tears

They lived for a while in a very nice style
But it's always the same in the end
They got a divorce as a matter of course
And they parted the closest of friends
Then the king and the queen went back to the green
But they can never go back there again

Brenda and Eddie had had it already by the summer of '75
From the high to the low to the end of the show
for the rest of their lives
They couldn't go back to the greasers
The best they could do was pick up the pieces
We always knew they would both find a way to get by
That's all I heard about Brenda and Eddie
Can't tell you more than I told you already
And here we are wavin' Brenda and Eddie goodbye

A bottle of red, A bottle of white
Whatever kind of mood you're in tonight
I'll meet you anytime you want
In our Italian Restaurant.

[salin]

8. boorah!

The song (but not all the lyrics) have been bumping around in my head tonight. How fun to put the words to it. I can not say how many years it has been since I have actually heard the song - but heard it so much in my youth that the song is clear in my head like I heard it a few days ago...

[AlCzervik]

4. Scenes from an Italian restaurant.

[salin]

6. Brenda and Eddie were just going steady...

[Deja Q]

10. ...some blue food coloring and then off to bed?

:shrug:

[BoX o BooX]

11. He discusses this song in "The Complete Hits Collection."

During his college lecture tour.

It's a bit of an homage to "A Day In The Life," with the song-within-a-song thing. It's a really amusing disc (number 4 of the Collection) to listen to.


edited for punctuation and clarity

[salin]

15. will have to try to find that

bet it would be interesting...

[Slowhand16]

14. Billy Joel is the man...

[salin]

17. Clapton as well

assuming that is the homage to which your nic refers?

[AlCzervik]

19. this is another Joel song i love, especially the castanets.

All the waiters in your grand cafe
Leave their tables when you blink
Every dog must have his everyday
Every drunk must have his drink
Don't wait for answers
Just take your chances
Don't ask me why

All you life you had to stand in line
Still you're standing on your feet
All your choices made you change your mind
Now your calender's complete
Don't wait for answers
Just take your chances
Don't ask me why

You can say the human heart
Is only make-believe
And I am only fighting fire with fire
But you are still a victim
Of the accidents you leave
As sure as I'm a victim of desire

All the servants in your new hotel
Throw their roses at your feet
Fool them all but baby I can tell
You're no stranger to the street
Don't ask for favors
Don't talk to strangers
Don't ask me why

Yesterday you were an only child
Now your ghosts have gone away
You can kill them in the classic style
Now you, parlez vous francais
Don't look for answers
You took your chances
Don't ask me why
Don't ask me why

[salin]

23. don't know why, but the lyrics

take me to Joe Jackson's Big World - another classic collection.

[AlCzervik]

28. My favorite Joe Jackson song is "Is she really going out with him?"

[salin]

29. Mine - the cacaphonous "Jet Set"

obnoxious song -but captures the a certain type of nuveau riche to a tee.

[Winamericaback]

21. Allentown

That is my personal Fav.

Well we're living here in Allentown
And they're closing all the factories down
Out in Bethlehem they're killing time
Filling out forms
Standing in line

Well our fathers fought the Second World War
Spent their weekends on the Jersey Shore
Met our mothers in the USO
Asked them to dance
Danced with them slow
And we're living here in Allentown
But the restlessness was handed down
And it's getting very hard to stay
Well we're waiting here in Allentown
For the Pennsylvania we never found
For the promises our teachers gave
If we worked hard
If we behaved
So the graduations hang on the wall
But they never really helped us at all
No they never taught us what was real
Iron and coke
And chromium steel
And we're waiting here in Allentown
But they've taken all the coal from the ground
And the union people crawled away
Every child has a pretty good shot
To get at least as far as their old man got
But something happened on the way to that place
They threw an American flag in our place
Well I'm living here in Allentown
And it's hard to keep a good man down
But I won't be getting up today
And we're living here in Allentown

[salin]

25. written in the Reagan years -but even MORE true today

than it was then (and it WAS true, then.)

[salin]

27. one of the best songs to conjour up musically the essense

of the lyrics: Pressure

Remember driving in heavy traffic on the John Ryan (Chicago) with the traffic nearly stalled - and the train running on the side of the highway... listening to the music and the song... just ratcheted up the 'pressure' of the moment by 100 percent...