Oh.
Great. Now G. Nome just ruined one of my favorite songs.
This is the first time I’ve heard anything about this subject but a google search brought up this,
Thanks for giving me a clue Anthracite this quilt thing is pretty much unknown across the pond.
Well, if you pick up the 4 disc Complete Hits Collection, the 4th disc includes commentaries on some of Billy’s songs (unlike some songwriters, he is exceptionally frank in explaining the meaning behind his songs) and on track 11, a girl asks the story behind “Piano Man” and Billy basically explains the whole story (his time in a piano bar waiting out a bad management deal)…basically the bread in the jar is tipping…the other stories are rather interesting as well…give it a listen :).
I worked on three Billy Joel music videos, in the early/mid 1980’s. HUGE thrill, since I’d been a fan since Turnstiles. “Miami 2017” always blew me away, give me chills when I hear it.
He was very kind to me, the lowly production assistant with a bazillion questions. Coolest moment of all three shoots: Backstage at the Capitol Theatre in Passaic ( long gone now, sadly). He’s killing time before we got to him. He wasn’t one to live in his Green Room, he just hung out with the crew while we prepped sometimes. A few of us stood and listened…as…he sang one “Police” song after another. Apparently he loved Sting’s work. Something I’d never thought I would hear- Billy Joel doing Police covers. Second coolest moment: Being 14 miles out from NYC on a garbage scow, for shots on “The Night Is Still Young”, and he hung out with us in the cabin the whole time. He was just recovering from the thumb injury. He bemoaned having to play the opening bars of “Prelude/Angry Young Man” Lots of cool stories, and I got to ask him about opening for “YES” in the salad days of his career. ( I’m an immense “YES” fan). His eyes LIT up- apparently he was/is a fan, too. He got hired to open, and of course hung out and watched their set afterwards. He said it was one of those gigs that made him think he was going to make it one day.
Nice guy. I loaned him my churchkey, and never got it back 
Cartooniverse
Well, I notice that you don’t call yourself bent which you may have done in the sixties when it meant annoyed or deranged. I assume, however, that your hipster fluency allows you to remain as comfortable with that word as it does with the use of the word bread for legal tender. Personally, I would feel stupid (and nervous) if I asked someone to feel some bread (Hippie for “Can I borrow money”) or called that person bent if they seemed unobliging. Other beat and hippie words for money were geech, gold, grease, paper or poke. While language is an organic thing and new words are added to dictionaries every day I don’t believe bread became common usage any more than any of these others. Even if it is more well-known than the others I don’t think it was accepted into the language in the same way that “rip-off” has been for instance.
My remark about the Piano Man lyrics was intended to be a commentary on all this. I was pointing out that because the word bread as it is used in Billy Joel’s song is now an anachronism the line of the song in which it occurs has taken on a possible new meaning for anyone lewd enough to see it. Dig? Now I must split and scene and leave it clean.
Wait - I think it’s “split the scene and leave it clean”. Bummer.
Thanks for sharing those memories. It’s nice to know that he’s a great guy to hang with. I always find him a little difficult to watch but I love his music. When I saw him on the Actor’s Studio (what was he doing on the Actor’s Studio?) - made me love & respect him even more.
I’ve been reading SDMB for months and sort of thought of registering - but you made me do it Cartooniverse.
Hope that’s not too corny but I thought you’d like to know what you’ve inspired.
vincesblond: Welcome to the board!
cartooniverse: Yes, thanks for sharing the memories, it’s good to finally hear about a big-name musician who has time for other people. Knowing that, I’ll enjoy his music even more than before. But what exactly did you lend him? (I always understood the “bread”, but “churchkey?”)
Speaking of which, I still don’t get the whole (willfully incoherent – thanks Alessan, that gave me a chuckle) “quilt” thing, and I probably don’t want to either.
G. Nome, I’m going to try this exactly one more time.
Were you or were you not making a slur about gay people in your comments.
If your answer has more than one word in it, you will be hearing from an Administrator.
I actually know an answer! A ‘churchkey’ is a small metal device needed back in ancient times to take the tops off of beer and pop bottles (glass bottles, that is) before they became almost universally twistoffs. I even knew people that would wear one on a cord around their neck so as to always have it handy. Now everyone knows how old I am. (Sigh)
You betcha he does. Back in 1994, when he was touring with Elton John, I wrote him a letter about a week before the local show, c/o the stadium where he would be playing, simply thanking him for writing “Vienna,” which I consider my personal anthem and which has gotten me through some bad times (no brain tumors or anything, just typical college angst).
About halfway through his set, he told the crowd that he didn’t usually do the next song in concert, but he’d gotten a letter . . . Then he played “my” song live, just for me (but also to the delight of about 50,000 other people :D).
By far the best day of my life, and BJ kicked himself a few miles up my rating scale.
Thanks Satchmo. Funny how never heard that one before. I just call them bottle openers. We use them every day since they still haven’t discovered twistoffs here in Germany yet. I’d never think of wearing one around my neck, though. There are about 30 other ways of opening the things in an “emergency”.
Thank you too Scarlett. That helped me make yet another small step away from being cynical. 
Way to keep your temper, Manhattan- I almost didn’t.
Poor choice of idiom to say the very least.
Believe me, I will be demanding that audience with an administrator if my request for an apology from you is met with a two letter word beginning with “n”.
In what way was I supposed to slur gay people? You have slurred my name in suggesting I could conceive of it. It was me who started a thread on Brian Molko (which nobody was interested in) and Queers vs Christians, for instance. I believe that treating oppressed people as though they were saints in all respects is not an effective way to erradicate their problems. In this way, I suppose, I risk being misconstrued.
You have no right to a user name projecting an image of cultural sophistication and cosmopolitanism. Henceforth I shall know you by the less pretentious Humphrey.
Is anyone else hearing Pink Floyd playing? From Dark Side of the Moon?
G. Nome wrote:
Then Manhattan wrote:
It seems as though everyone is interpreting the “name on a quilt” line as a reference to the AIDS Quilt. If that is so, whatever G. Nome meant in her enigmatic comment, what about Manhattan’s implication that AIDS=gays? The AIDS Quilt is a memorial to AIDS victims of all stripes, not gays exclusively.
That’s certainly true, but G Nome seems, in his/her joke to be making an anal sex joke, and the implication of anal sex-AIDS seems to be an anti-gay slur.
Talk about out of the mouth of babes. Railroadshorty seems to have read very well the full thrust of** G. Nome’s **intent. Since there is no precedent for defining the exact meaning of bread or jar she has allowed the rest of us to define those terms ourselves. I mean, that jar could be a female as well as male rectum, or a vagina as well. I’m afreud that I fell for the stereotype as well.It isn’t easy being perfect.
What kind of sex is more likely to cause transmission of HIV than anal sex? Her joke was a bit crude, but in no way homophobic - if you let people in a bar you play piano at have anal sex with you (which is what that line would mean under G.Nome’s alternative interpretation), there is a chance of getting AIDS.
I think some people here are just way too PC.
Of course G.Nome could have avoided this whole hornet’s nest by simply admitting or denying manny’s accusation.
By choosing not to do either, G’s just acting like a drama queen. PC or no PC we have little tolerance for DQ behavior.