Billy Joel at the Palace Theatre — October 15, 1976

On October 15, 1976, Billy Joel played the Palace Theatre in Albany, five months after the release of Turnstiles, an album that had stalled at No. 122 on the Billboard 200. Routed between a night at Buffalo’s New Century Theatre and a Massey Hall date in Toronto, the show opened with the instrumental “The Mexican Connection” and leaned hard on the new record — “Summer, Highland Falls,” “James,” “Prelude/Angry Young Man,” “I’ve Loved These Days” and “New York State of Mind” — with Paul Simon’s “Still Crazy After All These Years” tucked in mid-set and “Miami 2017 (Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway)” closing the main set before encores led by “Captain Jack.” The Deadly Nightshade, the trio of Helen Hooke, Anne Bowen and Pamela Robin Brandt and one of the nation’s first all-female bands, opened the evening. Fifty years later, it stands as a snapshot of Joel on the theater circuit in the months before The Stranger made him a household name.