Allentown - Where's the orchestra ?
Jeffrey Epstein
Another unique thing about Where's the Orchestra...
If you turn your speaker balance left to right and back, you'll
notice that the vocal is 90% on one side and not the other.
Very cool to sing along to :' )
Etienne Morency (e.mo...@videotron.ca) wrote:
: Hi !
: I have bought the album " The Nylon Curtain ". Even tough I
: have ever heard Allentown, this was the first time I heard Where's the
: orchestra. Probably all of you have noticed that the end of Where's
: the orchestra is very similar to Allentown ! ! !
: " I have been a fool for lesser things " B.J.
: Etienne Morency
Mike Boxer
Etienne Morency wrote:
>
> the end of Where's
> the orchestra is very similar to Allentown ! ! !
I think that's the point - it IS Allentown. Something often done in
musical show scores is called a REPRISE, where the original theme is
brought out at the very end for poignancy or finalization of previous
forshadowing. "Where's the Orchestra"'s lyrics (at least on the surface,
perhaps there's a hidden or metaphorical meaning) are all about a guy
who goes to a show thinking it's a musical, but it's actually just a
play, with no orchestra. And so the whole feel of the song is the
quintessential musical's pit orchestra background music, and the reprise
of ALLENTOWN, which can be argued as a central theme of the album, is
thrown in to complete that notion.
Mike
Daniel Bryden
I must say that when I first that bit in 'Where's the Orchestra' I was well
impressed. It is wonderfully simple but brilliant at the same time. What
a guy...
Daniel.
Jake River
I asked Billy to discuss this album at one of his Q&A seminars and this is
what he said about the last song. The last song is a metaphor for life.
We're brought up to believe that everything is going to be happy and
sing-song like a musical, but in reality, life is a tragedy with silence.
Billy said he wrote this album during a dark period of his life. He had had
the motorcycle accident, his marriage to his first wife was falling apart,
and one of his idol's, John Lennon, was murdered, (this is why a bunch of
songs have a Beatle/Lennonesque quality to them -- "Surprises", "Room of Our
Own" etc.) Billy said that the central theme to the entire album is
disillusionment... disillusionment in the economy of "Allentown",
disillusionment with one's family in "Laura", disillusionment with the
country in "Goodnight Saigon" etc., etc. 'till you get to the end of the
album... "Where's The Orchestra", which sums up the mood and themes of the
album with a metaphor for life and a symphonic reiteration of the theme
"Allentown". Billy also said that this was his favorite album that he
composed. -- Jake
Scott Poggensee
Doesn't he do the same thing on the album "The Stranger"?
--
Scott Poggensee
Plano, Texas
sc...@gte.net
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"And so we embrace again behind the dunes. This
beach is so cold on winter afternoons. Ah, but
holding you close is like holding the summer sun.
I'm warm from the memory of days to come."
--William Martin "Billy" Joel
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