Michael Franti Does Politics, Impressions at Rothbury

Throughout his late-afternoon Rothbury set with Spearhead, Michael Franti displayed a knack for impressions that would put Dave Coulier to shame. During an amped-up cover of Sublime's "What I Got," the singer dropped a few bars of "The Rainbow Connection" in his best Kermit the Frog voice and briefly channeled Cookie Monster as he chanted "C is for cookie." It wasn't all fun and games, though. A pair of politically charged songs from his forthcoming record (All Rebel Rockers, out on Anti- this September) — the hard-hitting reggae riddims of "Remote Control" and the comparatively peaceful "Hey World" — found the singer laying out his views for a New World Order.

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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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