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| Photo provided by William Lindsey Cochran |
By ERIC SCHELKOPF
Billy Joel's album "The Stranger" was the album that turned Joel into a household name.
The band Great Moments in Vinyl will perform the album "The Stranger" when it takes the stage at 8 p.m. Jan. 20 at The Venue, 21 S. Aurora Ave. in downtown Aurora.
Tickets range from $15-$20, available at The Venue's website, themusicvenue.org. Along with playing the album, Great Moments in Vinyl will share insights about Joel and his music.
I had the chance to talk to Great Moments in Vinyl founder William Lindsey Cochran, who plays bass in the band, about the upcoming show. Cochran has had a lengthy career in Chicago radio, including being part of WXRT and WNUA. He currently works for MeTV-FM.
Q – Great to talk to you. I understanding that Great Moments in Vinyl will not only be performing the album "The Stranger" at The Venue, you also will be telling stories about Joel and his music. What do you hope for people to get from hearing those stories?
I use the stories to do a couple of things, including to fill the time between songs. I try to keep people's attention and to keep the focus on us by telling stories.
And it also brings people into the music. You pay more attention to the music and the song itself rather than thinking, "Do we sound like the album?"
I talk between each song for about 45 to 50 seconds and either I'm setting up the next song or giving some sort of backstory about the preceding song or just talking in general about the artist.
We try to bring out the live passion for the music.
Q – Great Moments in Vinyl has been performing since 2013. What was your idea in forming the band?
I knew I wanted to do a tribute band and I enrolled in a Bruce Springsteen class at the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago and a Van Morrison class. The instructors were really good and had this stuff down.
One of the instructors put together a Bruce Springsteen show and asked me to play bass. And I had so much fun, I thought of putting together my own band.
I did two Bruce Springsteen shows and two David Bowie shows using these Old Town School of Folk instructors. And then I had another group of guys I was hanging out with that wanted to do prog rock, so we did two Pink Floyd albums. I brought in some ringers to make that work.
And it just kind of took off from there. I think this will be our 100th show when we play The Venue.
It's been great. It's really just me finding the musicians that want to do a certain show.
Q – How do you pick which artists and albums to pay tribute to?
There's a lot of things that go into that process. And some of it is just, what do we feel like playing.
We do get requests from fans. Some people want to hear Bob Seger, so we're going to do that at the Joliet Area Historical Museum sometime in the spring.
I'm willing to tackle anything. We've done ABBA. How many bands that do Led Zeppelin are also going to give you ABBA?
Q – You've had a long career in radio. What have you tried to do on the radio?
When you think about it, you have thousands of listeners, but it's really a one-on-one medium.
When you're on the radio and you're live or when I'm doing a promo, it's like I think I'm talking to that one person.
Yes, thousands of people are listening, but you're not talking to thousands of people. You're talking to one person.
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