THE Wait is Over!

Last week Billy Joel cancelled all live performances after being diagnosed with normal pressure hydrocephalus, a condition of the brain which does leave Joel with hopes for a recovery. Though it leaves little hope his fan will see him play live again.

Leaving me among THE lucky ones.

I first heard Billy in September of 1977, forced to listen to his album The Stranger through the wall my bedroom shared with my sister Marci’s room.  The sheetrock offering little protection from the waves of sound and would have offered even less had I found the temerity to ask her to turn it down. 

For months after its release she played the album on repeat, which at the time would have required her to get off the bed and flip the record every 20-minutes or so. Or to shout for me to come flip the record, which like changing the channel was a burden carried by the family’s baby.

Side one of The Stranger wraps with Scenes from an Italian Restaurant. It’s the story of Brenda and Eddie, lovers committed though perhaps not to each other. Joel’s Romeo and Juliet who's love was ephemeral, until their story became eternal. 

Some 50-years later Scenes sets the scene in Nonnas, a new movie on Netflix starring Vince Vaughn.  A nearly true story, Vaughn’s character undertakes a Quixotic quest to open an Italian restaurant New York in the 1970’s, as if Joel had written the movie to go with the song.    

A mashup of Terms of Endearment and Wedding Crashers Nonnas is worth the whiplash between crying and laughing while crying, an affect allowed by dialog noticeably more developed than is typical in a Netflix production.

Nowhere was that more evident than when Vaughn’s co-star Drea de Matteo nails a reference so remote it might only be noticed by a wordsmithing paint geek from New York, who’s also from the 70's.  

Talk about niche. 

Acting as decorator for Vaughn as he constructed his restaurant de Matteo tells him they're going to need to paint to “splash the place up.”

But when telling Vaughn that Matteo never mentions the word paint, instead pointing to the dingy walls and ordering “a little Benjamin Moore,” referring to the paint company which enjoyed a nearly 100% market share at that time in New York.

And whether the mention was purchased as a product placement or was an organic element of the script it was masterfully dropped, even if I was the only one who caught it! Because like the names Xerox and Band-Aid once meant copy machines and adhesive bandages in New York in the 1970's, Benjamin Moore meant paint. 

In that era Sherwin-Williams would have had no stores in New York City and just two in the metro area to cover from Peekskill out to Montauk; a region of more than 10,000,000 resodent, which now contains dozens of Sherwin-Williams locations.

Billy Was Right!

Side two of The Stranger opens with Vienna, which Joel also released on the B-side of his first gold record Just the Way You Are.  The location on the back would have reflected Joel’s belief that Vienna was not a hit in its own right, though time would prove the Piano Man wrong. Because Vienna has gone on to become one of Joel's most enduring hits, one which is still downloaded more than 900,000 times daily on Spotify alone.

Vienna reminds us not to burn the candle from both ends, to enjoy the journey rather than race towards a destination. Advice the rock star never took himself, though his hypocrisy doesn’t diminish the message of that song.

But even when following Joel's (and my mother's) advice eventually you reach your destination, hopefully liberated from the suffering of your journey.  A state Buddhists call nirvana which Joel promises can be found in Vienna, Austria. 

A city which had waited long enough. 

While away I dropped two new podcast episodes with a third episode dropped earlier this week. They’re a tease from a new series I plan to create featuring the voices of our industry and also of this blog. So like those first episodes, we'll be talking about more than just paint.

Which y'all seem to like.

Between the travel and catching up on work I’ve had scant time to keep up with the paint hot stove, tea I know so many of you come here for a cup of. 

But while my outbound efforts have been curtailed I still receive inbound traffic, including one message last week foretelling an announcement from Pittsburgh.

I’m told it was THE topic of conversation around the water cooler in Cranberry last week.

THE tip came from a source who has previously informed my writing here and while unconfirmed, feedback from others convinces me what I was told is likely to be true.  So I’m expecting a significant announcement from Pittsburgh in the coming weeks regarding brands and other assets.

Nothing we didn't already know was coming.