J Mascis' Mega-Jam With Canadian Indie-Rock Elite

In the spirit of today's celebration of guitar gods and the people who love them, here's a clip of six-string wonder J Mascis -- who has already proven his skills at Guitar Hero -- joining up with a dozen-plus excited Canadian indie rockers for a joyous impromptu post-show jam session in Toronto. It's a "sixty-two beers" fueled rendition of "Backed Out On The ...," a track from Broken Social Scene co-founder Kevin Drew's upcoming Spirit If album.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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