Over the next couple of weeks, Backbeat will feature some Top Ten lists from around the Village Voice Media chain. Click here for previous year-in-review coverage from Backbeat and VVM.
It's time to rank the best of what went around and came around again.
BILLY JOEL
The Stranger
(Columbia/Legacy)
As punk and disco exploded, the Piano Man's deeply unhip 1978 breakthrough proved that top-shelf Broadway/Brill Building songwriting could still sell - and, occasionally, rock. "Scenes From an Itali
Billy Joe Armstrong engages the crowd (Aaron Thackeray)​Green Day, Franz Ferdinand
Pepsi Center
Saturday, August 15, 2009Better than: Hanging out with eleven-year-olds at an indoor recreation center.
The members of Green Day and their crew tried with all their might to
summon the spirit of an old school punk show in the vast spaces of the
Pepsi Center on Saturday night.
From the first chords of the opening tune, "Songs of the Century/21st
Century Breakdown," frontman Billy Joe exhorted the cr
