There are some albums that appear to be instant classics as soon as they are released. In 1978 "The Stranger" was everywhere. Living on Long Island in a town very close to Hicksville Billy Joel seemed more like an older brother to all of my friends and family than a rock star. The music of The Stranger was all over the radio, playing inside of every house I visted, including my own, and playing overhead wherever I went.

I have always been amazed at the fact that every song on this album is a classic song. Listening to the re mastered version you will quickly hear how poor the orignal CD release of The Stranger was treated.

The best part of this package is the Live CD of the Carnegie Hall concert. It is simply the best live recording of Billy Joel that i have ever heard and no fan of Billy Joel should be without it. In fact, for the Billy Joel doubters out there, i suggest listening to this Carnegie Hall concert and questioning your doubting selves about how special his talents truly are.

Any show taken from The Old Grey Whistle Test is bound to be special and the DVD, while short, is a nice look back at Billy and the band when they had full heads of hair and lots of rock and roll charisma. All in all a nice package in which i can say for once, i do not feel like a ripped off consumer.

I bought this last night and I am very disappointed with the sound.

I am not a snob. I am just reporting what I heard after playing this new "Stranger" CD set. My volume level is closed to zero or minimum and the sound that I am hearing is already loud. The midrange and upper midrange are shrill and very fatiguing too.

ps.
Keep your remastered Billy Joel CD's.

This is very bad news for people who love good sound.
If we continue to patronize this 'loud and modern' remastering and then the recording company achieved the sales that they have targeted, there is a great possibility that they will give the same (bad) remastering treatment to any future re-issues.
Expect to hear more releases like this in the future.

There's no mention of the remastering engineer in the Deluxe re-issue liner notes.
It just says "the original album was mastered by Ted Jensen."
To me that information is useless.
The buyers are more interested to know who did the remastering for the re-issue and not the mastering credit for the original album.
Those are two different things.
Maybe it was remastered by a new college graduate son of a Sony record executive and that explain why the sound is so loud and annoying and there's no remastering credit.

Nowadays, you cannot return an open CD anymore. The only way to dispose it is to re-sell it to music stores that do buy-and-sell for $5 cash or store credit. Now I will be losing at least $25.
My theory is that Sony has intentionally made it sound loud and shrill to attract a much bigger portion of the population. I am referring to those people who don't have stereo system in their homes and to those who only listen to music through their boomy car stereo.
Of course, profit is more important to them than satisfying the ears of the small audiophile niche.

Thank goodness that we still have the remastered CD's and vinyl records.

I haven't heard the SACD yet but I hope that it's not another example of 'modern' remastering.