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 Great gift for Joel Lover1 Jul 24, 2010
Purchased this as a gift for my wife. She loved it! Many rarities, b-sides, and demos for the true Billy Joel fan.
 Disappointing For The Long Time Joel Fan. Jan 31, 2009
As someone who has loved Billy Joel for years and professes to own pretty much all officially released Joel material (and then some), I cannot help but express disappointment of the decidedly poor handling of this boxed set. There is no doubt a lot of great music here, but how much of it do we really not already have?
Of the sixty-something songs, only 23 are previously unreleased, mostly demos or live recordings. While these are definitely treasureable recordings, it leaves the listener with too much of a feeling of wanting more. Sure, most of the previously released stuff is the obscure albums tracks (such as the excellent ballad "Until The Night" from "52nd Street), and the demos (such as the lovely 1983 take of "And So It Goes") give good insight into how some of the greatest recordings in popular music came to be, but when you consider how much of this stuff has already been released (in some cases, several times over), it really makes you wonder how much thought Billy really put into this. Billy, to be fair, has never been one who gives his fans the unheard gems they so crave, as he is very self-critical and figures that if it was shelved, it was for a good reason.
Only on Disc 4, which features a plethora of great live tracks, does the casual fan have reason to celebrate. Two duets with Elton John, a raucous "You May Be Right" and a cover of "Hard Day's Night," are good consolations to the fact that we've never heard an official cd or dvd release from any of the five (soon to be six) Face2Face tours. There's an explosive rendition of "Big Shot" dating to the late 1990s' that ranks among Billy's best performances of this song (one of his weakest musically, though I love it because it's fun). His beautiful cover of "Don't Worry Baby" from the 2000 Brian Wilson tribute is also included, and is one of th best recordings Billy ever did, live or in the studio. Towards the end the cd gets a bit tedious with the classical stuff, but the hidden track, a hilarious interview from 1980 promoting "Glass Houses," makes up for it.
The dvd is admittedly disappointing. Taken from Billy's June 18th, 1994 concert in Germany, the performances themselves are excellent, but the show itself is severely truncated, missing great performances from that night such as deep, introspective rendering of "Honesty" and a soulful "An Innocent Man." (There's an excellent soundboard bootleg of the complete show floating around.)
The booklet is impressive, with a very nice essay, but ultimately provides little. Overall, "My Lives" is a fairly worthy collection, but it's not the definitive collection it could've been.
Real good stuff Nov 13, 2008
For people who are hard core billy joel this will work for you. On the other hand if you are a person that just like to hear his hits then, pick up the billy joel's( The Complete Hits Collection 1973-97). The My lives CD has a lot of songs that i myself never got to hear. Plus comes with a dvd which makes it real nice to see billy doing a live concert. The sound is great,includes rare solo demos, b-sides, soundtrack hits.
Great Quality Feb 13, 2008
Came quickly and package appropriately so CD's were not damaged. Fabulous collection of Billy Joel music. Can't go wrong for the extreme Billy Joel fan!
0 of 7 found the following review helpful:
 Very poor songs - nothing you want to hear Oct 04, 2007
I still love Bill's output from 1971 to 1981, and a few songs after that. But the songs on this compilation are terrible. They should have stayed in the dusty cardboard box at the bottom of the closet. I couldn't even listen to all the discs because they're so poor. After enduring as much pain as I could I realized I wasn't a Billy Joel fan after all. Beware.
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