A belated accounting of my year in music for May and June.

It's the song by the Smiths, as performed by Johnny Marr at Glastonbury. New Albanians know it as Team Gahan's response each time I write about them.

It's axiomatic: The music of my life means much more to me than it does to you, a statement of even greater relevance given that I ceased being an arbiter of musical trends at the dawning of the age of rap and hip hop three decades ago.

However, if you're of like mind I may have been listening to something of interest -- and vice versa.

As noted previously, there has been a great change in procedures during 2019. Finally I've acquiesced to streaming, most often experienced via a nice pair of noise-blocking headphones. My CD purchases are perhaps 25% of what they were before, limited to what I enjoy the most.

Unfortunately I'm as susceptible as ever to forgetfulness, and this is why the following brief rundown of albums and music from May and June is so late. First, snippets from the handful of CDs acquired during these months, followed by links to musical musings.

The Amazons … Future Dust

Bruce Springsteen ... Western Stars

Sammy Hagar & the Circle … Space Between

Bastille … Doom Days

Yeah, well, I liked Van Hagar, and I like Sammy's new album with The Circle. Fight me.

ON THE AVENUES: Let's lift our voices for another verse of "Talking Seventh Inning Blues."

Four decades later, Disco Demolition Night has not aged well.

What Steve Resch has in mind for the Jimmy's Music Center building downtown.

I'd rather read Elton John's autobiography than watch the biopic.

Jazz master Sidney Bechet was born on this day in 1897.

I thought I heard Buddy Bolden say ...

The Boss on Independence Day.

I think it started at dusk on Monday evening when we finally located the New City Brewery in Easthampton, a new-age craft brewing start-up located in a decidedly old-school brick mill building the size of downtown New Albany, with lots more of them located in the immediate vicinity.

Immediately Bruce Springsteen's album The River began playing in my head, and so now it's "Independence Day," July 4.

The subconscious is an amazing tool, indeed.

Springsteen's "Born in the USA": Because words and meanings matter.

It's a reminder worth reissuing periodically, particularly during an election year.

Behind The Song: Bruce Springsteen, “Born In The U.S.A,” by Jim Beviglia (American Songwriter)

... Those who say that Springsteen was trying to be subversive are probably missing the point as well, since he wasn’t trying to sneak these harsh rebukes by; he belts them out as loud as he does the chorus. The song spurns patriotism that is no more than blind loyalty and acceptance of all the government does.

"And I think to myself there is no way to explain in a brief interview the power of the 40-year hurt in shaping American society."

(2 of 4)

Basketball-laden holiday weekends are death for readership, but not only is Bruce Springsteen's album The River timeless;it's also prescient.

US election 2016: The 40-year hurt (BBC Magazine)

The London-based American writer and broadcaster Michael Goldfarb is frequently asked on air why this year's US election has turned out to be so unusual, and whether insurgent Republican candidate Donald Trump can really win. He has to give a short answer. The long answer, he argues here, involves going back 40 years.

Bruce Springsteen is coming to London with the River tour. At £170 for the cheapest pair, I can't afford to see the Boss any more, even if my body could handle standing on Wembley Stadium's pitch for three-and-a-half-hours in an early June drizzle.

It's interesting that Springsteen is re-exploring The River album again. Whenever the anger that simmers in America erupts and reminds the rest of the world that the country is troubled, he seems to be the cultural figure whose work offers an explanation.

Roger's Year in Music 2014, No. 5: High Hopes, by Bruce Springsteen.

Let's get one thing out of the way: I won't try to make a case for High Hopes being in the upper echelon of Bruce Springsteen's canon.

The album is an instance of adaptive reuse in music, as The Boss combines various aggregations of the E Street Band -- including two deceased members -- to refashion various songs from the past decade. A few well-selected covers (including the Suicides, above) season the mix, and the result is perhaps surprisingly effective as a coherent collection of songs, which update Springsteen's sound and remain topical.

Two familiar Springsteen epics, "The Ghost of Tom Joad" and "American Skin (41 Shots)," do far more than provide familiar touchstones; they also deploy E Street fellow traveler guitarist Tom Morello to purely lethal effect, while largely summarizing the year that unfolded following the album's January release: The corrosive effects of income inequality and violence borne of racism.

Significantly for me, High Hopes plays like an album even if it is composed of spare parts. There is pacing, modulation and dramatic flow. The listener is engaged by the artist's songs as positioned together, and if this fatally dates me, I understand and will remain unreconstructed, eschewing "shuffle."

Kitty Empire's review at The Guardian hits the high points of High Hopes.

Last spring, Morello replaced bandana-toting E Street guitarist Steve Van Zandt on the Australian leg of Springsteen's Wrecking Ball world tour. He ended up resetting the co-ordinates on the album of loose ends that Springsteen had been planning. Morello suggested revisiting High Hopes, previously covered by Springsteen. He dug out another tune Springsteen knew by the Saints, an Australian punk band.

From there, it was a natural rollick to a local studio to record those, plus the rebooted, electrified Ghost of Tom Joad with all 18 members of the 2013 touring E Street Band, plus Morello, in full effect. All in all, Morello plays some role on eight of the 12 High Hopes cuts, which span covers, re-recordings, vault numbers and previously unheard tracks. That's Morello, making "squeep" noises on the title track, previously an EP obscurity, now a major soul-rock workout about hope in hard times.

The keynote address here is clearly Tom Joad, no longer a ghost of a song, but a fully fleshed beast on which Springsteen and Morello swap both guitar parts and sung verses ...

Bruce Springsteen's "American Skin (41 Shots)."

Musically, the year 2014 has started slowly. It isn't unusual.

Historically, in January there is a tendency for me to delve into classical and jazz, and so it has been again this year; high points to date include a Louisville Orchestra performance (and a forthcoming Kentucky Center Chamber Players gig at U of L on Super Bowl Sunday) as well as a happenstance reconsideration of trumpeter Sonny Berman. The pop/rock realm usually waits until February, and may have something to do with my need to be charged properly for Gravity Head's onslaught.

Bruce Springsteen's new album, High Hopes, is a hodge-podge collection of newly recorded covers, unreleased material and older songs freshly re-imagined. What makes it most interesting is the presence of guitarist Tom Morello, formerly of Rage Against the Machine. A generation removed from the Boss, Morello also inhabits political terrain to the left of his elder. The result isn't Jay-Z, but then again, this is my blog, and I wouldn't know a Jay-Z song if I tripped over it on the street.

The Springsteen-Morello partnership works quite well on an electrified "The Ghost of Tom Joad" (originally recorded acoustically in 1995), and the venerable "American Skin (41 Shots)." The latter originally was penned by Springsteen to address the shooting death of Amadou Diallo by New York City police in 1999. Several versions were released, and then it returned to the stage set following the killing of Trayvon Martin.

It's far too early to tell whether High Hopes will rank among my most-listened-to releases of 2014. Still, there is something undeniably comforting to me about Bruce Springsteen's unflagging work ethic. In a nation filled with angry white guys, it's actually possible to be angry for the "left" reason.

The Boss's ode to Mitch Daniels upon his impending departure.

This is what will be: The Boss, live in Cologne.

As many of you know, our longtime friend Kim Andersen – a Danish national and proud citizen of the universe who currently is a resident of Koln (Cologne), arguably Germany’s premier party town – surprised us with tickets to see Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band last Thursday evening at the Koln Arena.

It was my first time ever at a Springsteen show, and having been breathlessly told by fans for many years how inspired the Boss’s concerts usually are, I can now nod sagely and echo the immortal words of the late Madeline Kahn in “Blazing Saddles” and say: Ohh! It's twoo! IT'S TWOO …

Springsteen’s new album "Magic" was well represented during the show, and the fact that the songs therein contain more than a few barbs in the general direction of the miserably failed Bush regime was raw meat for the locals in attendance. Note that the Hoosier author agrees with the Europeans and our own native of New Jersey when these lyrics are sung:

The earth it gave away
The sea rose towards the sun
I opened up my heart to you
It got all damaged and undone
My ship Liberty sailed away
On a bloody red horizon
The groundskeeper opened the gates
And let the wild dogs run

Here’s a review of the two and a half hour concert and the set list.

December 13 / Cologne, GER / Koln Arena

A smoking show, both literally and figuratively -- the Koln Arena must be one of the last such venues where lighting up is still permitted, and when the lights came up they revealed quite a cloud overhead. A surprisingly simlar set to the previous night, considering it's just a couple hours' drive. But the enthusiastic Cologne crowd, on their feet all night, set this one apart -- and who can complain about "Because the Night" two nights in a row? "The Promised Land" had that newly added "People Get Ready" gospel coda again, too. "Kitty's Back" was absolutely smoking, particularly Roy's solo -- a killer, jazzy improvisation, which Bruce echoed as he followed it with an extended solo of his own.

The end of "American Land" brought a patented James Brown routine, as Bruce fell over backward, "exhausted," still on the floor as the band went into a bonus "Santa Claus is Comin' to Town." Nils and Steven helped him up to sing, and a special guest joined in, too. "Wolfgang, do you believe in Santa Claus?" Bruce cried to Wolfgang Niedecken -- like Joe Grushecky in Pittsburgh, you can pretty much bank on Niedecken joining in when Bruce comes to Deutschland. The German rocker didn't really seem to know the song, rarely stepping to the mic, but all eyes were on Bruce anyway, especially once he put that Santa hat on. How does he manage to make that thing look good? Tilting it at a rakish angle, twirling the pom-pom around like a helicopter... no one wears a Santa hat like Bruce. Hey, the guy's a professional.

Setlist:
Radio Nowhere
The Ties That Bind
Lonesome Day
Gypsy Biker
Magic
Reason to Believe
Because the Night
She's the One
Livin' in the Future
The Promised Land
Waitin' on a Sunny Day
The River
I'll Work for Your Love
Devil's Arcade
The Rising
Last to Die
Long Walk Home
Badlands

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Girls in Their Summer Clothes
Kitty's Back
Born to Run
Dancing in the Dark
American Land
Santa Claus is Comin' to Town