Resistance is futile, so here's a recap of Roger's Year in Music 2018.

This year I'm keeping it simple, with a Top Ten list of favorite albums (2018 releases only), an assortment of ephemera, and the year's complete accounting of album acquisitions.

In calculating the Top Ten list of music playing in my head, I ask myself several questions.

• Which albums did I hear most often? 
• Did they have multiple, memorable songs, as opposed to one or two? 
• Did they play a part as soundtracks helping to define my year? 
• Will I be likely to return to them regularly in the future?

In fact, almost all the albums I acquired in 2018 had a memorable song, and sometimes two. However, they're albums, and I categorize them according to the whole of the experience. If this sounds like doomed defiance in the face of a playlist world, then that's exactly the case.

10 The Vaccines … Combat Sports
9 The Coral … Move Through the Dawn
8 Gaz Coombes … World’s Strongest Man
7 The Struts … Young & Dangerous
6 Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever … Hope Downs
5 Shame … Songs of Praise
4 Suede … The Blue Hour
3 Parquet Courts … Wide Awake
2 Johnny Marr … Call the Comet
1 Manic Street Preachers … Resistance is Futile

If truth be told, these additional two albums belong in the "top" list with an asterisk -- because they weren't released in 2018. But I enjoyed them very much, and they'll always remind me of 2018.

The Charlatans … Different Days (2017)
The Courteeners … Mapping the Rendezvous (2016)

As a side note: Noel Gallagher's Who Built the Moon from 2017 has remained front and center of my album listening throughout the year 2018. Longevity like this is rare in my world of tunes; when the calendar page turns, I generally move forward. Who Built the Moon wasn't my pick for top album in 2017, at least at the time when the 2017 list was selected.

Now? Maybe it would be another story.

Another side note: I've richly enjoyed Kamasi Washington's Heaven and Earth, and treat it separately because I listen to jazz differently than rock and pop. The same goes for classical music, and Last Leaf by the Danish String Quartet.

In reverse chronological order, here are all the NA Confidential posts from 2018 with the label Roger's Year in Music 2018.

And, to conclude, the albums I acquired last year. It has been a recurring theme in recent years; the rock and rock-influenced pop music I prefer is diminishing. An early scan of the projected 2019 release schedule reveals three, maybe four albums of interest to me. There will be others, but the point is clear.

In 2019, maybe it's time to turn back to opera. 

---

Album releases 2018, November and December
The Struts … Young & Dangerous
The 1975 … A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships
Muse … Simulation Theory
Parcels … Parcels

Album releases 2018, September and October
Sleaford Mods EP
Paul McCartney … Egypt Station
Suede … The Blue Hour
Paul Weller … True Meanings
Blossoms … Cool Like You
Bill Champlin & WunderGround … Bleeding Secrets
The Coral … Move Through the Dawn
Neil and Liam Finn … Lightsleeper
Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever … Hope Downs
The Courteeners … Mapping the Rendezvous (2016)
Ray Davies … Our Country: Americana Act II

Album releases 2018, July and August
James … Living in Extraordinary Times
Houndmouth … Golden Age
Florence and the Machine … High as Hope
Gaz Coombes … World’s Strongest Man
Peace … Kindness Is the New Rock and Roll

Album releases 2018, May and June
Kamasi Washington … Heaven and Earth
Matthew Sweet … Tomorrow’s Daughter
Manic Street Preachers … Resistance is Futile
Johnny Marr … Call the Comet
Parquet Courts … Wide Awake
Arctic Monkeys … Tranquility Base Hotel + Casino
Snow Patrol … Wildness
Chvrches … Love Is Dead

Album releases 2018, March and April
The Vaccines … Combat Sports
The Decemberists … I’ll Be Your Girl
The Len Price 3 … Nobody Knows (2015)
Neon Waltz … Strange Hymns
Gumba Fire: Bubblegum Soul & Synth-Boogie in 1980s South Africa
The Charlatans …Tellin’ Stories (1997)
The Charlatans … Modern Nature (2015)
Travis … Where You Stand (2013)

Album releases 2018, January and February
The Charlatans … Different Days (2017)
Insecure Men … Insecure Men
Wild Beasts … Last Night All My Dreams Came True
The Len Price 3 … Kentish Longtails (2017)
Travis … Everything at Once (2016)
Simple Minds … Walk Between Worlds
Franz Ferdinand … Always Ascending
Danish String Quartet … Last Leaf
Django Django … Marble Skies
Shame … Songs of Praise
Django Django … Born Under Saturn (2015)

The story of Cross Section's 1979 Quadrophenia soundtrack cover of "Hi Heel Sneakers" by Tommy Tucker.

All the way back in 1979 I bought the double LP of the soundtrack to the Quadrophenia movie.

It repeats much of the Who's album of the same name, plus a generous share of re-recordings, which may be subtly different (there are an abundance of grace notes on "I'm One," for instance), but different, more produced all the same. Even better, they're all pretty good, and help give this a different -- yet, again, subtly different -- feel than the album that's welcome.

Then there's the last side of the record, containing a bunch of mod anthems -- which means there's a bunch of early-'60s soul, plus a couple of girl group numbers and "Louie Louie," all of which are familiar, yet still offer a good portrait of what mods actually listened to. Along the way, a song by the High Numbers -- the early incarnation of the Who -- is thrown in for good measure, along with the Cross Section's take on "Hi Heel Sneakers," plus three new songs, all added to assist the film narrative, all enjoyable but only "Four Faces" really standing out (and it sounds more Who by Numbers than Quadrophenia, anyway).

Those three new Who songs were the rationale for my purchase; one of them including drumming by my teen idol Keith Moon (the Loon), who'd died the previous year, but in the final analysis the song that stuck with me all these years, regularly recurring, was Cross Section's cover of "Hi Heel Sneakers," a 1963 blues song by Tommy Tucker.

Here's the point: I've never had the slightest idea who or what Cross Section was, assuming it was a one-hit-wonder garage band from the early 1960s as preferred by Mods. I also was entire ignorant of the source recording.

It has taken me only 40 years to bother finding the answer.

Cross Section, The Band from Quadrophenia, by Simon Wells (Zani)

When 5 teenagers in 1978 saw an advert in the NME that read “Do you want Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll?” you can imagine what they said! The advert was referring to the movie Quadrophenia, based on The Who’s 1973 studio album of the same name.

The movie was now being made, a young band was required to portray a band mid 1960’s playing in a club in London, this was to be a scene in the movie. A demo was sent as an answer to the advert plus a publicity shot. The band sat back and got on with their lives, namely school and playing in local clubs and pubs in Kent and South East England.

To their amazement, in the summer, the band auditioned along with many other hopeful groups that had been chosen out of hundreds of applicants. The list was narrowed down to 70 or so bands.

After playing live in front of a couple of members of The Who at the Electric Ballroom, Cross Section got to be the band of their choice. Roger Daltrey approached them after the audition in Camden High Street and, much to their disbelief, told them he liked what he heard, and popped the question -‘Would you cut your hair?” “Yeah I’d dye it green” said the drummer - naturally!

Tucker's original version is pretty good, too.

Welcome to an abbreviated November/December edition of tunes, or the music playing in my head.

This album recap is abbreviated because there weren't many new releases of interest to me during the year's final two months. However, the second full-length album by The Struts was highly anticipated on my side of the musical street, and it has not disappointed.

At Drowned in Sound, reviewer Andy McDonald gets straight to the point.

The general consensus between film reviewers is that recent Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody fails to capture the essence of the seminal British pomp-rockers. Fortunately, in the same week came Young & Dangerous from The Struts, which goes some way to doing just that. As their stylistic forefathers’ legacy is committed to film, the Derby lads continue to write the early chapters of their story with this second full-length release.

There’s no real mystique as to what The Struts are doing - unashamedly paying homage to Britain’s genre-defining prestige through a resuscitation of glam rock, their sound bursting with cocksure Stones grooves, Queen’s theatrical panache and T. Rex’s irreverent-but-ensnaring lyrical riddles. They’ve even previously invoked the subversive spirit of the Sex Pistols by recording a video on a Thames boat for hit ‘Could Have Been Me’ from their debut Everybody Wants.

It is likely there cannot possibly be a greater contrast than that to be found between The Struts and The 1975, with the latter's new album A Brief Inquiry into Online Relationships tagged as “the millennial answer to OK Computer” by one reviewer.

Spin's Ian Cohen offers online-relationships-review/">this take.

 ... The 1975 are just a lot. They make overwhelming albums about being emotionally and technologically overwhelmed. More than anything they’ve released to date, A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships is prone to maniacal ambition as well as crippling self-doubt and anxiety, obsessed with the granular details of social media etiquette while contemplating the benefits of going off the grid for a while, if not forever. This is a brief inquiry—58 minutes is not a lot to ask when you consider the scope of it all—but “I don’t know” serves as a mission statement rather than a copout to analytic paralysis. Healy probes everything about making music and consuming music in 2018 without resorting to cynicism or nihilism.

As a wheezing geezer, I concede to having had too little time the past month to properly digest the album, which means the arbitrary constraints of chronological reference may fail me in this instance and there may be more to say.

But verily this track is masterful, an absolutely gorgeous commentary on suicide -- if there can be such a thing.

NME reviews the eponymous debut of The Parcels, "a Berlin-based band from Byron Bay, Australia who write songs with slick grooves inspired by the hi-fi funk of 1970s AM radio."

Remarkably, ‘Parcels’ manages to be an album that transcends elements from across pop history while still sounding remarkably fresh. The shimmering disco tendencies of the ‘70s turn ‘Lightenup’ and ‘IknowhowIfeel’ into dance floor smashes, as influences from ‘80s pop titans like Hall & Oates and The Cars rear their heads on gooey cuts like ‘Withorwithoutyou’ and ‘Yourfault’. Meanwhile, ‘Tape’ sounds like it would sit nicely on The Strokes’ underrated synth-heavy 2011 album ‘Angels’, and ‘Everyroad’ has a chunky bassline wobble in its exuberant final third.

Kindly note that when it comes to synthesized electronic robot music, if I can (a) at least imagine the songs being played live by humans with instruments, and (b) locate a tune or melody capable of being whistled somewhere amid the digital layers, then it's okay by me. The Parcels fit therein.

Speaking of "Something Human," and to conclude this glance at the music playing in my head, Muse has returned to action with Simulation Theory.

Yes, I love the grandiosity, the bombast, and even the pilferage.

 ... “Something Human” requires using Muse and trop house in the same sentence, at least until the acoustic guitars arrive. The song then becomes an uncanny homage to George Michael. The airy backing track of “Get Up and Fight” could pass for Balearic pop or a Sweetener outtake, while those whoa-ohs during state-of-the-art guitarless rocker “Thought Contagion” should be of great interest to both satellite radio providers and Imagine Dragons’ copyright lawyers. Leave it to Muse to discover Fleetwood Mac in 2018 and go straight for Tusk. They get the lesser-known of Los Angeles’ major college marching bands to play on the alternate version of “Pressure”—that it’s a highlight for UCLA says more about their current football team than the song itself.

In other November/December musical news, the following topics engaged my ear -- and the end-of-year favorite album wrap will be published in a few days, or whenever I get around to it.

Flight documentaries: An indispensable documentary about Mick Ronson, the under-appreciated guitarist and arranger for David Bowie.

SHANE'S EXCELLENT NEW WORDS: The Man in Black wasn't chasing rainbows with this classic song.

You know Freddie Mercury and Queen stole the show at Live Aid, but what the hell WAS Live Aid?

1812 Overture and more; Louisville Orchestra at the Ogle on January 19, performing Tchaikovsky.

And Gordon Lightfoot:

PINTS & UNION PORTFOLIO: Edmund Fitzgerald? It's much, much more than a Porter.

PINTS & UNION PORTFOLIO: Edmund Fitzgerald? It's much, much more than a Porter.

In 1976, when I was 16, the Canadian performer Gordon Lightfoot had a hit song called "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald."

Back then, AM was the default in car radios, and older automotive models didn't have FM -- much less eight-track or cassette decks, unless you went to a place like Village HiFi in Clarksville, bought your own, and self-customized.

AM radio played the hits, over and over, permanently embedding pop songs in one's brain that might have been tolerable, perhaps even brilliant, had there been a choice not to hear them several hundred times. Lightfoot's story about a shipwreck was one of them, and despite the repetition, it has stood the test of time quite well.

But it wasn't really about a shipwreck, because even if the huge freighter named Edmund Fitzgerald certifiably was a ship, up on the Great Lakes they tend to refer to ships as boats.

In 2014, when I was 54, we visited Duluth, Minnesota and Superior, Wisconsin, port cities on opposite sides of the St. Louis River, both of them critical segments of the industrial umbilical cord connecting iron ore mines in northern Minnesota to factories in places like Detroit and Cleveland, with cargoes traveling by boat across the Great Lakes, through the locks at Sault Ste. Marie, and eventually to the St. Lawrence Seaway.

In the 1990s, when I'd have been around 35, the gang made several trips to Cleveland for the precise purpose of drinking and dining at Great Lakes Brewing Company, which was founded in 1988. At a time when there were relatively few brewpubs in the Midwest, Great Lakes was a yardstick and a beacon of hope.

Many of us adored Porter, and Great Lakes Edmund Fitzgerald Porter was both heavenly and a rare treat, this being long before we could expect to see any of it in Indiana, where the beery namesake of a long-ago boat wreck might be expected to travel by truck, not water.

It's all history, and the critical words to me are "long-ago," because from the time Lightfoot's hit song lodged in my noggin, I never had a clear idea about exactly how long ago the Edmund Fitzgerald sank during a cataclysmic storm on Lake Superior. From the dirge-like character of the song, I always assumed it was an 1800s-era occurrence.

So it was that earlier in December, at my present advanced age of 58, when we tapped a keg of Great Lakes Edmund Fitzgerald Porter at Pints&union, I found myself flabbergasted to finally grasp that the freighter went down in 1975 -- that Lightfoot's song back in '76 was exceedingly topical, and very accurate lyrically.

At the age of 15, I was a regular reader of newspapers and watcher of television news, and still I can't remember the event itself in November of 1975. It turns out that the first mate's son was friends with the founders of Great Lakes Brewing Company, and years later the beer was brewed from this place of friendship as tribute to the memory of 29 crew members who lost their lives when the Edmund Fitzgerald was lost.

Edmund Fitzgerald Porter, black as a dark night, has chocolate and coffee notes with a hint of hops on the finish. The smooth year-round beer for Great Lakes Brewing Co. has garnered more than 15 awards and has been cited in numerous beers-not-to-be-missed books. It is a moderate 5.8 percent in alcohol and has 37 International Bitterness Units.

One needs a pint at times like this, because to be obsessive about history is to understand there'll be occasions when you're gobsmacked, and simply can't account for a depth of feeling about an occurrence having nothing to do with your own life apart from delicious liquid poured into a a glass.

I'll be buying a second keg of Edmund Fitzgerald to take us through until the expected arrival of Fuller's London Porter in January. What I'd ask of Pints&union customers is when you drink a pint of Edmund Fitzgerald, kindly spare a few seconds to reflect on the tragedy of these 29 men who died not so much because they were heroes pursuing some lofty, noble cause, but simply while doing their everyday jobs.

For those wanting to learn more, these two documentaries are of help. The first includes re-enactment scenes, which aren't my preference in such films, but they're relatively brief. The second film is shorter and more recent. Taken together, the two videos provide a solid overview.

A variety of factors probably contributed to the Edmund Fitzgerald's demise, and they are summarized here.

What sank the Edmund Fitzgerald? 6 theories on what caused the shipwreck, by Garret Ellison (MLive)

Nobody really knows what caused the Edmond Fitzgerald to sink, but that sure hasn't stopped people from trying to solve the mystery.

Turning back to Gordon Lightfoot's song ...

In late November of 1975, Lightfoot read a Newsweek magazine article about the loss of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald, which sank on November 10, 1975, on Lake Superior during a severe storm with the loss of all 29 crew members. The lyrics in his song, "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald", released the following year, were substantially based on facts in the article. It reached number two on the United States Billboard chart and was a number one hit in Canada. Lightfoot appeared at several 25th anniversary memorial services of the sinking, and continues personal contact with the family members of the men who perished in the Edmund Fitzgerald.

 ... and finally, this.

Gordon Lightfoot explains why he wrote 'The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald', by Jeffrey Kaczmarczyk (MLive)

 ... "I went and bought all of the old newspapers, got everything in chronological order, and went ahead and did it because I already had a melody in my mind, and it was from an old Irish dirge that I heard when I was about three and a half years old. I think it was one of the first pieces of music that registered to me as being a piece of music. That's where the melody comes from, from an old Irish folk song."

An article in Newsweek magazine two weeks after the disaster was the biggest inspiration for Lightfoot to complete the lyrics to go with the melody, which morphed into the greatest "story song" of his career -- a song he considers one of his more significant contributions to music.

1812 Overture and more; Louisville Orchestra at the Ogle on January 19, performing Tchaikovsky.

Trust me on this one. Even if you're not an aficionado of the "classical" repertoire, the LO's all-Tchaikovsky program for the Music Without Borders Series, with Teddy Abrams conducting, is a no-brainer.

You'll recognize all three selections, including the boisterous 1812 Overture, and for those of us living in Indiana, there's the added bonus of the easy, painless proximity of the Ogle Center on the campus of IU Southeast as hometown venue.

The Confidentials have season tix for the LO at Ogle, so we'll be there.

---

The Louisville Orchestra presents: 1812 OVERTURE

Louisville, KY (12.4.2018)… The second set of Music Without Borders concerts will feature three pieces by Russian composer, Pyotr Tchaikovsky including one of his most well-known works, the 1812 Overture. Teddy Abrams leads the Louisville Orchestra in performances in three locations: Adath Jeshurun in the Highlands on Thursday, January 17 at 7:30PM; St. Francis in the Fields Episcopal Church at Harrods Creek on Friday, January 18 at 7:30PM; and across the bridge at the Paul W. Ogle Cultural and Community Center at IUS on Saturday, January 19 at 7:30PM.

The two other works on this program are inspired by William Shakespeare plays, Romeo and Juliet Fantasy-Overture and The Tempest, Op. 18.

Tickets are $25* in advance or $30 at the door. Advanced tickets for the concerts at Adath Jeshurun and St. Francis in the Fields are available by calling 502.584.7777 or online at LouisvilleOrchestra.org. Tickets to the performance at the Ogle Center are available by calling 812.941.2525 or online at LouisvilleOrchestra.org.

1812 Overture |Teddy Abrams, Conductor

THUR 1.17. 2019 | 7:30PM | Adath Jeshurun | 2401 Woodbourne Ave.

FRI 1.18.2019 | 7:30PM | St. Francis in the Fields | 6710 Wolf Pen Branch Rd, Harrods Creek

SAT 1.19.2019 | 7:30PM | Ogle Center at IUS | 4201 Grant Line Rd., New Albany, IN

Composed in just one week, the premiere of the 1812 Overture, Op. 49 was held in 1882 at the dedication of the Cathedral of Christ the Redeemer in Moscow. Even though it was (and continues to be) a crowd favorite, Tchaikovsky hated it. Writing to a patron, he said he wrote the overture “with no warm feeling of love, and so it will have no artistic merits at all.”

Despite this, 1812 has become an Independence Day concert staple, thanks largely to a spectacular performance by the Boston Pops in 1974 that included full cannons, church bells, and fireworks; yet it has nothing to do with American independence or the Fourth of July. Although America was at war with Great Britan in 1812, Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture is actually about Napoleonic Wars and the French army’s retreat from Moscow.

Upcoming at the LO

Slatkin Conducts Elgar | 1.12.2019 | 8PM | Leonard Slatkin, conductor | The Kentucky Center

1812 Overture | 1.17. 2019 | 7:30PM | Teddy Abrams, conductor | Adath Jeshurun

1812 Overture |1.18.2019 | 7:30PM | Teddy Abrams, conductor | St. Francis in the Fields

1812 Overture | 1.19.2019 | 7:30PM | Teddy Abrams, conductor | Ogle Center at IUS

Art + Music | 1.25+26.2019 | 11AM + 8PM | Teddy Abrams, conductor | Artists from KyCAD | The Kentucky Center

Star Wars: A New Hope ™ in Concert | 2.2+3.2019 | Keitaro Harada, conductor | The Kentucky Center

The mission of the Louisville Orchestra is to change lives throughout our entire community as only the Louisville Orchestra can – by promoting a culture of music through outstanding performances + education. Our sponsors believe in this mission: The Louisville Orchestra receives funding from the Fund for the Arts, The Kentucky Arts Council, and the Association of the Louisville Orchestra.

Republic Bank is the sponsor for the Music Without Borders Series.
Support for these concerts are provided by Adolf and Sara van der Walde and Israel Rosenbloum Fund, and Elite Homes

To learn more about becoming a donor, contact Edward Schadt at 502.585.9413.

*6% sales tax will be added to each ticket purchase.

Louisville Orchestra 620 W. Main, Suite 600 Louisville, KY 40202 (502) 587.8681

You know Freddie Mercury and Queen stole the show at Live Aid, but what the hell WAS Live Aid?

I spent three hours last night contemplating lost youth, so allow me to explain.

On the one hand, I'm no fan of biopics, and I probably won't watch Bohemian Rhapsody.

Bohemian Rhapsody is a 2018 biographical film about the British rock band Queen. It follows singer Freddie Mercury's life, leading to Queen's Live Aid performance at Wembley Stadium in 1985.

I find it interesting and instructive that since the movie was released, there has been so much discussion about Queen's performance at Live Aid, but unless you're over forty years of age, it may not be clear to you what Live Aid even was.

The videos pasted here are two parts of a single three-hour BBC documentary, an hour and a half each, and the whole Live Aid story is recapped. It's solid and filled with information in spite of the many too-cute visual flourishes.

Verily, July 13, 1985 was a bizarre cultural landmark. Flawed, but indisputable. It's unclear if the millions raised that day accomplished very much in terms of famine relief for Ethiopia, and yet if you were a music fan at the time, Live Aid cannot be forgotten -- whether you loved it or hated it.

The following was pulled from my 1985 European travelogue and lightly edited for context. One thing that rings true about the documentary are those memories of walking the streets of London and hearing the concert from every window. I was in Ireland at the time, and the interest level was comparable. It was an amazing thing, indeed.

If nothing else, Live Aid will be remembered as a pioneering use of satellite transmission technology. As many as two million people around the globe tuned in, and while we're now connected in far more sophisticated and immediate ways, it's difficult imagining state-of-the-art technology bringing people together in quite the same fashion.

Because: we don't desire being brought together, do we?

---

At one of the pubs in Sligo, I’d overheard a conversation about a big concert on Saturday, July 13. At first I thought they meant a show in Sligo itself, but then it became clear it was to be televised from Wembley Stadium in London – and finally I made the connection with the magazine I'd previously spotted at the hostel in Paris.

It was Live Aid, Bob Geldof’s epochal day-long, worldwide gig to raise funds for Ethiopian famine relief. I was about to learn the importance of being Irish; Geldof was born and raised near Dublin, and as the guiding force behind the punk-era Boomtown Rats, he doubled as curmudgeonly social critic.

It was a quality Irish conservatives found disconcerting – until the hometown boy made good on a larger stage.

So, never discount the power of national pride. Live Aid was the project of an Irishman, and Ireland was preparing to be quite enamored of this fact, whether or not any of them liked the Boomtown Rats.

On Saturday morning I asked Gerry, who with his wife Mary was my host at their informal bed and breakfast, to direct me to the bus headed for Strandhill. It was a settlement by the ocean at the foot of Knocknarea (nock-na-ray), a 1,000-foot tall limestone hill overlooking the Bay of Sligo. My plan was a morning hike to the top, where a Neolithic burial cairn is located, and then a return to Sligo to watch Live Aid.

As it turned out, Gerry was preparing to drive to the golf course, and so he deposited me at the trail head near Strandhill. It was hazy, muggy and fly-infested, and the path well-traveled. The view from Knocknarea was worth the effort, with majestic vistas of green fields, rocky hedgerows, shimmering sea and the ever-present Benbulbin.

I caught a bus back to Sligo after lunch, showered, and found a seat at a nearby pub. Live Aid was showing on a projection TV. The Irish national television channel had preempted all other programming, and between acts, there were cuts from the live feed to the studio, where an older presenter and Phil Lynott, Thin Lizzy’s singer and bassist, provided what amounted to color commentary.

It struck me that whenever a set ended, and the two television commentators began talking, voices in the pub would be lowered, and the drinkers would pause to listen. This was interesting, though it still was relatively early in the day.

Live Aid was the most ambitious international satellite television production of its time, and Geldof’s creation was subject to rightful criticism: Wasn’t it the very same group of pious pop stars, pumping up their own album sales by means of a charitable “cover,” with little of the money raised ever actually making it to the intended beneficiaries in Ethiopia?

More pointedly for Live Aid’s connection with Africa, why were the acts almost entirely white? Stevie Wonder is said to have refused a slot at the American venue because he had no intention of being the token black.

Ironically, Lynott was a black Irishman, born in London, and he was in the television studio precisely because his band hadn’t been invited to play. How could Bob do that to Phil? They were mates. Still, as Live Aid unfolded, my fellow pub goers were united in praise for the idea – after all, it was Geldof, an Irishman, who’d organized it.

Unfortunately, illness and heroin addiction killed Lynott barely six months later. Did he and Sir Bob ever make up?

At some point later in the afternoon, I walked back to my room to get more money from the secret cash stash. I heard familiar sounds coming from the kitchen, where Mary sat watching U2 begin its star-making Live Aid set.

“It’s U2,” I said. “I love this band. Are you a U2 fan, too?”

“I’ve no idea,” she replied. “But they’re our lads, aren’t they?” We watched together

Just as I re-entered the pub, Queen started playing. Like much of the rest of the planet, I was spellbound as Freddie Mercury worked the crowd of 75,000. I’d been only a casual follower of the group, and had not witnessed it on stage.

Queen’s 20-minute set at Live Aid is routinely rated among the most memorable live performances in rock history, and while it may have not been the music I came to Ireland to hear, it’s a personal memory I’ll always cherish.

It gets hazy after that. Back in my room, I listened to the some of the Philadelphia portion of Live Aid on a small radio I’d brought along. I fell asleep, and it would be many years, well into the Internet era, before I ever saw video of what I'd missed.

SHANE'S EXCELLENT NEW WORDS: The Man in Black wasn't chasing rainbows with this classic song.

This week's inquiry is a tad convoluted, and it begins with the Johnny Cash song, from the 1971 album of the same name: Man in Black.

As I observed recently on Facebook, I had this album in the year of its release, at the tender age of 11. In trying to recall how and why, I concluded it must have been a gift from my father, with the lyrical content of the song serving to explain why he was a Johnny Cash fan in spite of listening to little in the way of "country" music.

Looking back to where the nation stood in 1971, and considering the typical context of country music at the time, Cash's protest song stuns. It cannot be pegged right or left, and stands as a statement of independent (and individual) conscience. I liked the song then, and still do.

My friend Allan commented.

Wondering about his lyrics about wearing the “rainbow”. When did the recent meaning appear?

Ah, I'd love to wear a rainbow every day,
And tell the world that everything's OK,
But I'll try to carry off a little darkness on my back,
'Till things are brighter, I'm the Man In Black

This fascinating blog post at Oxford Dictionaries dissects the word "rainbow."

 ... The word rainbow has long been used as a modifier to signify a wide range of related and typically colourful things, and as human civilization has progressed, the rainbow has come to be associated with a similar theme: that of diversity, inclusion, and acceptance. In fact, the most common collocates of rainbow in the Oxford English Corpus (leaving animal names such as trout, runner, and lorikeet aside) are flag, coalition, and nation. The rainbow flag has a long history of being used by many ethnic groups, political parties, and religious movements over the centuries, but since the late 1970s has been most often associated with the LGBT movement, where it stands for diversity and gay pride. A rainbow coalition can refer to either the established American movement for social change, or any political alliance of several different groups, while rainbow nation is a term attributed to Archbishop Desmond Tutu to describe South Africa’s racial and ethnic diversity.

"Rainbow Coalition" was a term used by Chicago Black Panther Fred Hampton in 1968, and subsequently borrowed by Jesse Jackson around 1971, when Cash's song was written and recorded. The Rainbow flag as symbol of the LGBT movement debuted in 1978.

I don't have a clear conclusion as to Cash's use of the term in this song, which protests inequality and supports diversity and inclusion. Occam's Razor suggests that the simplest answer is best: He'll continue to wear black as opposed to bright rainbow-colored clothing precisely as a form of protest against injustice.

Interestingly, Cash later had an album by the name of Rainbow (1985), and a song on it called "Here Comes That Rainbow Again." Watch the video of Cash on David Letterman's show singing his new single, and wait for a surprise at the end.

The 50th anniversary of the "White Album," or where the Beatles meet Gravity's Rainbow.

Hands down my favorite Beatles album, even though I didn't come to it until a few years later, when I was a junior in high school.

I haven't smoked pot for more than twenty years; alcohol does me just fine, thank you; however, if I ever go back for another bowl, let's hope the trip includes this album. It took a couple of Beefeater and tonics to take the edge off tonight's listening, conducted straight through with only a brief pause in the middle for the necessary refill.

Things like this make me emotional. As the author observes, 1967 may have been the Summer of Love, but 1968 was a year for the barricades.

The Accidental Perfection of the Beatles’ White Album, by Jordan Orlando (The New Yorker)

... The Beatles’ naïve and aggressively experimental musicianship propelled their most fractured and divisive project into a kind of accidental perfection. Fifty years later, the record is still good, still indelible, still as clean and pure as its sleeve, requiring no explanation or description beyond the band’s name. As the first century of electricity and world war recedes—the century of radio and movies and television and jazz, the final unconnected century, when teen-agers around the world flooded the seaport docks as new vinyl arrived—these ninety-four minutes endure, preserving the instant that rock joined the pantheon of the highest arts.

It's the September/October edition of tunes, or the bimonthly roundup of the music playing in my head.

Welcome to the music playing inside my head. It won't necessarily play to everyone's taste, and that's as it should be. It's my damned blog, and I'll do with it as I please.

In 2018, I've resolved to offer a musical recap every two months. For those just tuning in, note that I no longer can carry a tune across the street without breaking both legs, but music's still playing in my head every waking moment.

I'm completely convinced that when the music stops playing, death will be near.

In addition, I'm the quintessential old fogey's stogie when it comes to music; no iTunes or playlists for me. Perversely, no vinyl, either; my albums are stacked over at the Public House, and I don't own a turntable.

As with books, each year I research and buy those CDs that seem best suited to my tastes. They're usually augmented with impulse buys and random excursions, and of course I listen to snippets of radio, YouTube and the like.

Before proceeding, here is another vicious and deadly accurate assessment of my deteriorating condition. Still talkin' 'bout my generation? That's nice, but my generation is utterly irrelevant insofar as its album-oriented preferences are concerned.

The Album Is in Deep Trouble – and the Music Business Probably Can’t Save it, by Tim Ingham (Rolling Stone)

Sales are plummeting, and the music industry is returning to the era of track-led consumption. Is the LP doomed?

Make no mistake, the album is fighting for its life.

Sales of music’s most beloved format are in free fall in the United States this year. According to figures published by the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), the value of total stateside album sales in the first half of 2018 (across download, CD and vinyl) plummeted by 25.8 percent when compared with the first half of 2017.

If that percentage decline holds for the full year, and there’s every indication it will, annual U.S. album sales in 2018 will end up at half the size of what they were as recently as 2015. To put it more plainly, U.S. consumers will spend around half a billion dollars less on albums this year than they did in 2017.

The CD album is, predictably, bearing the brunt of this damage. After a comfortable 6.5 percent drop in sales in 2017, in the first half of 2018, revenues generated by the CD album in the USA were slashed nearly in half – down 41.5 percent, to $246 million ...

Broadly speaking, these selections are listed in order of impact, but there are bits of value in them all. Links are to reviews with which I agree, except for Bill Champlin's album; it seems to have been reviewed nowhere.

Suede … The Blue Hour

Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever … Hope Downs

Sleaford Mods (EP)

The Coral … Move Through the Dawn

Paul Weller … True Meanings

Paul McCartney … Egypt Station

Blossoms … Cool Like You

Bill Champlin & WunderGround … Bleeding Secrets

Neil and Liam Finn … Lightsleeper

Ray Davies … Our Country: Americana Act II

Finally, a belated catch from 2016, which would be near the top if this list were not intended to reflect new releases.

The Courteeners … Mapping the Rendezvous (2016)

Flight documentaries: An indispensable documentary about Mick Ronson, the under-appreciated guitarist and arranger for David Bowie.

Flight documentaries happen when we're flying home after a European sojourn. Eastbound flights are for sleeping, westbound for reading, writing and watching.

Movies? Not for me, although it's usually a good opportunity to explore new music via audio selections.

I readily concede to being only a lukewarm aficionado of David Bowie, but an addiction to music magazines during the early 1970s has assured my lasting familiarity (and belated listening) with Bowie, Mick Ronson, the Spiders from Mars, Mott the Hoople, T. Rex, and the other "glam" period British acts that so influenced personal fave, Def Leppard.

Hence, the vital importance of this snippet from the Freddie Mercury tribute concert in 1992: Bowie, Ronson, Ian Hunter, the surviving members of Queen with Joe Elliot and Phil Collen on backing vocals on "All the Young Dudes."

Ronson was terminally ill and died not too long after his appearance. If you're a fan of music of the period, this documentary is a must-watch.

"Beside Bowie-The Mick Ronson Story" Is a Flawed But Essential Documentary For Every Bowie and Mick Ronson Fan, by Michael Fremer (Analog Planet)

... After kicking around London for a few years and making little headway and less money, (Ronson) returned to Hull and became a municipal groundskeeper. One of his band mates in a group called The Rats returned to Hull to try to convince the contented gardener to travel back to London to become a member of David Bowie's backup band. Though hesitant after his previous experiences, Ronson made the trip and the rest, as they say, is a history in desperate need of telling, which this film manages pretty well so I'm not going to further synopsize it.

It's clear that Ronson was a masterful guitarist with a unique sound that's in part created by a partly open "Wah Wah" pedal that he matter of factly demonstrates on camera and that by the time Bowie's semi-breakthrough album Hunky Dory was recorded, he'd learned from Visconti the art of arranging and had become a brilliant one.

Rick Wakeman, who plays piano on that Ken Scott-David Bowie produced classic, says in his on-screen interview that Ronson, not Bowie, was the real co-producer and that his string arrangements on tracks like "Life on Mars" were, as all listeners know, nothing short of brilliant. While "Michael Ronson" receives arranging credit, it's kind of buried ...

Turns out I'm not the only person favoring flight documentaries.

Speaking of airplanes, I watched this on the flight back from Amsterdam so I can't get into the technical aspects of the film or the sound, though I did listen on my Jerry Harvey Layla in-ear phones, which are amazing. My conclusion is that while this is a somewhat flawed presentation, it's one every Mick Ronson fan should see as should every Bowie fan. In fact, it's indispensable. When it was over, having "met" onscreen, Ronson's wife and family I was left beyond sad by how this super-talented man, who was never a money-grubber, left this planet too young, under-appreciated and with little money to leave his family.

Real-life Freddie Mercury: "The Queen frontman was debauched, outrageous – and proud. We celebrate a rock legend in tight shorts, leather and leotards."

I watch very few movies of any sort, and I'm not a fan of the genre known as biopics. They can be good, but my preference is a serious documentary filmed by a serious documentary film maker, or better yet, a serious book written by a serious author.

Yes, this may sound dry and -- dare I say it -- even pedantic. But for me, it's entertaining to learn. Knowledge is good. I like to know things.

In a pinch, just watch the Live Aid video. You can backtrack from there.

Guaranteed to blow your mind: the real Freddie Mercury, by Alexis Petridis (The Guardian)

Unlike the sanitised character in the new film Bohemian Rhapsody, the Queen frontman was debauched, outrageous – and proud. We celebrate a rock legend in tight shorts, leather and leotards

Bohemian Rhapsody is a film that suffered from a difficult gestation. It was announced in 2010 but, in the intervening eight years, everyone from the lead actor to the screenwriter to the director either bailed or was replaced, in some cases several times. Freddie Mercury was first to be played by Sacha Baron Cohen, then Ben Whishaw, although it’s hard to see how either could have done a better job than the actor the role eventually went to, Rami Malek, whose incredible performance is the film’s one unequivocal triumph.

You can see why they pressed on with its making. For one thing, few artists have been so hawkish in posthumously extending their brand as Queen: since Mercury’s death in 1991, there have been jukebox musicals, umpteen archive releases and documentaries, as well as attempts to reboot the band without him. For another, Mercury’s story is clearly one worth telling. If anything, he seems a more remarkable figure in hindsight than at the height of his career.

The child of Parsi parents, who formed his first band at school in Mumbai, Mercury was an Asian frontman at a time when Asian visibility in rock was virtually nil and racism was overt (intriguingly, the guitarist in Mercury’s Bombay school band was Derrick Branche, who went on to appear as Mr Gupta in the famously problematic ITV comedy Mind Your Language). Island Records boasted an Anglo-Indian prog band called Quintessence, but there was certainly no other Asian rock star on Mercury’s scale. He was a gay man who, while never coming out publicly, put his sexuality front and centre in his performances and songwriting, apparently without his audience realising what he was doing.

In his autobiography Head On, Julian Cope recounts the experience of supporting Queen at Milton Keynes Bowl in 1982, as part of the Teardrop Explodes, and being showered with homophobic abuse by their fans. “[They] shouted, ‘Fuck off, you queer!’ at me,” recalled an incredulous Cope. “Wow, they dig Monsieur Freddie and they call me queer. So much for the workings of the average mind.”

Bohemian Rhapsody isn’t bad on the issue of Mercury’s race, a subject usually ignored or dismissed as beside the point in the story of Queen. We see Mercury facing down racist abuse while working as a baggage handler at Heathrow and from an audience member at an early gig. But its depiction of his sexuality is more troubling. It’s a film that seems to view the fact that Mercury was gay as little short of a tragedy. His homosexuality leaves him lonely, unable to share his bandmates’ domestic happiness as they settle down into marriage and parenthood. It drives a musical wedge between the band and their frontman, whose ideas for songs and styles are increasingly founded on his experiences in gay clubs and viewed as antithetical to the spirit of the band.

It also seems to give him a taste for hedonism that makes him unreliable and unprofessional: according to the film, the rest of Queen seem to have spent the late 70s and 80s tutting and rolling their eyes at Mercury’s behaviour before demurely excusing themselves from whatever deranged bacchanal their singer was leading the charge at and going to bed early. Anyone with a passing interest in the band knows this is nonsense. A reporter from the US magazine Circus who attended the legendarily debauched launch party for their 1978 album Jazz noted with surprise: “Brian May seems to be the true organiser of the night’s carnival.” Yet watching the film, you think: “God, imagine being in a band at the height of the most sybaritic decade in rock with this bunch of prigs.”

Classic jazz solos by Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins and Ben Webster at Swing & Beyond.

I've been enjoying the archives at Swing & Beyond.

This blog will showcase the music, history, and images of the swing era (roughly 1935-1950). It will also include material from from years both before and after the swing era, because Swing is a rich musical tradition that endures to this day. Here you will be able to listen to and learn about some of the greatest music in the swing idiom, and in other compatible musical idioms. Your guide will be jazz historian and author MICHAEL P. ZIRPOLO. His commentary will accompany whatever is posted, and it will inform and stimulate discussion. Once the music and Mike’s commentary have been posted, the forum will be opened to your comments, questions, and insights. The objective of this blog is to share the music, history, and images in the swing idiom, and seek a deeper, richer understanding and appreciation of what swing is, and why it is so great.

Zirpolo is a familiar name. He wrote the book on Bunny Berigan -- one of them, at least.

ON THE AVENUES DOUBLEHEADER (2): A book about Bunny Berigan, his life and times.

Following are three of Zirpolo's blog posts at Swing & Beyond, each of them breaking down a particular song featuring legendary tenor saxophone solos.

“Lady, Be Good” (1936) Lester Young and Count Basie

“Body and Soul” (1939) Coleman Hawkins

“Cotton Tail” (1940) Duke Ellington and Ben Webster

Not many rock and pop releases of interest to me have been scheduled for the remainder of 2018. I'll be combing the usual sources of information lest something choice has been missed. Otherwise, the winter months are prime time for jazz and classical music.

BEER WITH A SOCIALIST: The Louisville Orchestra's free pre-season kickoff events include an All In vinyl launch party with beer at Gravely.

Just the other night while reading at home, I masterfully paired Tchaikovsky's 5th Symphony with a St. Bernardus Tripel, pausing from the text every now and then to have a blissful Charles Emerson Winchester conducting moment.

Seeing as there is no conceivable danger of my being considered a role model for our nation's youth, I can confide that even when I was under-aged, classical music has been a frequent accompaniment to the range of better beers passing through my life.

During these times, I've often imagined the classical repertoire in the setting of a tavern or public house, and actually experienced it on those occasions two decades ago when Sid King brought the Butthead Bass Quartet to Rich O's.

Consequently, I'm very excited by the idea of two free LO kickoff events at Gravely Brewing Company.

ALL IN Limited Edition LP Launch Party

Wednesday 19 SEP at 7PM
Gravely Brewing -- 514 Baxter Ave
Free admission

Join Teddy Abrams in a special pre-season kickoff party as Crosley presents a limited edition vinyl LP of the #1 Billboard Classical chart leader ALL IN. Enjoy music by the NuLu String Quartet and comments from Teddy about the LP and upcoming concerts. PLUS be the first to get your LP and to order your custom Louisville Orchestra turntable. A sample will be on display.

And this:

FREE EVENT: UpTempo presents JOHN WILLIAMS TRIVIA NIGHT
Wednesday 12 SEP at 7PM
Gravely Brewing - 514 Baxter Ave

Shifting to the great outdoors, there'll also be a free LO concert with Joseph Mechavich conducting at the Iroquois Amphitheatre on Sunday, September 9 at 7:00 p.m.

More information here

It's the July/August edition of tunes, or the bimonthly roundup of the music playing in my head.

Welcome to the music playing inside my head. It won't necessarily play to everyone's taste, and that's as it should be. It's my damned blog, and I'll do with it as I please.

In 2018, I've resolved to offer a musical recap every two months. For those just tuning in, note that I no longer can carry a tune across the street without breaking both legs, but music's still playing in my head every waking moment.

I'm completely convinced that when the music stops playing, death will be near.

In addition, I'm the old fogey's stogie when it comes to music; no iTunes or playlists for me. Perversely, no vinyl, either; my albums are stacked over at the Public House, and I don't own a turntable.

As with books, each year I research and buy those CDs that seem best suited to my tastes. They're usually augmented with impulse buys and random excursions, and of course I listen to snippets of radio, YouTube and the like.

Before proceeding, here is a vicious and deadly accurate assessment of my deteriorating condition. Still talkin' 'bout my generation? That's nice, but my generation is utterly irrelevant.

Bland on Blonde: why the old rock music canon is finished, by Michael Hann (The Guardian)

 ... Music has changed irrevocably. You can see that by looking at festival bills, where hip-hop and R&B artists sit alongside rock bands, the never-the-twain tribal divisions of the past dissolved. You can see it in the fact that online distribution of music has created a generation gap in music again, by creating an audience of teenagers who consume everything online, who listen to music that has bypassed the traditional gatekeepers of press, radio and labels. And you can see it in the fact that music journalists – the people who traditionally define the canon – are no longer overwhelmingly men. That more women and people of colour are now creating the narrative around pop is surely a good thing, even if it sometimes feels uncomfortable for those of us brought up on the certainties of Led Zeppelin and a narrative that begins with Robert Johnson and traces a line through the Beatles and the Smiths.

I suspect we may be at the end of the age of the canon, for now at least.

Nolo contendere. 

Hann's right, and I support his conclusion: "It won’t be a list that reflects my tastes, and I’m fine with that. My canon is dead. Long live the new canon, whatever it might be."

Obviously, I remain a pop-rocker. For me, classical music is WUOL-FM and my CD collection, and the latter suffices for jazz listening and world music (internet radio helps). I've nothing bad to say about hip hop or country; they're just not my taste.

In 2018, live music has been restricted to the Louisville Orchestra at the Ogle Center (see list below). I'd like to be more supportive of local music, and concede that this is the 800-lb chink in my armor. It's a constant struggle, but the fact is that I don't indulge in nightlife any longer, and when dining and drinking out, our preferences run to conversation, which tends to be precluded by loud music. So it goes. It's all about me, and what I like.

Following are CD purchases from July and August, 2018, randomly listed. I've spent my money wisely these past two months.

Houndmouth … Golden Age

Houndmouth's stylistic reboot has been a summer's highlight. There'll be dissenters, but I love the new sound. Our local favorites have spent the past few years re-contextualizing themselves in the aftermath of Katie Toupin's departure; they couldn't have possibly remained the same, and have evolved accordingly by reaching inside. These are my favorite sort of life lessons from music, and let's hope the progression continues.

James … Living in Extraordinary Times

I was barely aware of James' existence prior to the band's 2014 release, La Petite Mort. This is the band's second album since then, and serves as an overt and often angry riposte to Brexit, Trump and the numbing stupidity of our contemporary world. This fact duly noted, it's the music and not the lyrics commanding my attention. Repeated listens are highly rewarding. You'll hear new, good things each time.

Gaz Coombes … World’s Strongest Man

Gareth Michael Coombes was the genius behind Supergrass, for my money the most criminally overlooked of late 90s-era British bands. His newest solo release begins eccentrically with self-directed cynicism and a dramatic falsetto, then gradually yields to a pleasing blend of old traits and new flourishes, as with this song's piano intro. It might be refashioned from "Imagine" by John Lennon, or closer still, The Who's "Gettin' in Tune," and overall, it's very solid pop from a gifted performer.

Florence and the Machine … High as Hope

On her latest, Florence Welch sings autobiographically, and the lyrics appropriately fascinate, alternately visceral and nostalgic. Arrangements are nuanced; the music creeps through more so than bursts out. There have been no ear worms for me, just a greater appreciation for her craft after multiple immersions.

Peace … Kindness Is the New Rock and Roll

It transpired by sheer coincidence that the very period of this album's heaviest rotation in my cranium coincided with Matt Brewer's tragic death.

Overnight, the tone of a largely upbeat, sassy pop-rock album became elegiac. Phenomenons like this probably can't be helped. Your brain experiences a dialectic, as opposing emotions clash -- in this instance, sadness and exhilaration -- and must somehow be resolved.

Listen to this song, and then I'll continue.

For anyone who knew Matt, the ultimate resolution is obvious. Matt's whole life was about kindness and the sheer exhilaration of living, and while his premature departure from this planet is sad and tragic, we're left with a legacy of joy and love.

Simply stated, I'll never be able to listen to this album without thinking about Matt, and so to close this musical rumination, here's a song dedicated both to Matt and his wife Brook.

Following are links to music-related articles from the past two months.

Rhiannon Giddens: "The musician reveals all about her mission to put the black back into bluegrass – and Shakespeare."

New Albany has a Klingon composer.

4 shows for only 65 bucks: The Louisville Orchestra's 2018-2019 Neighborhood Series at the Ogle Center.

Three reminders of rock music's role in defeating the Communist bogey man.

Three reminders of rock music's role in defeating the Communist bogey man.

I intend to watch this soon.

​FREE TO ROCK is a documentary film directed by 4-time Emmy winning filmmaker Jim Brown and narrated by Kiefer Sutherland. Rock & Roll spread like an uncontrollable virus across Eastern Europe despite Communist attempts to outlaw it. Thousands of underground bands and millions of young fans who yearned for Western freedoms and embraced this music as the Sound of Freedom, helped fuel the nonviolent implosion of the Soviet regime. Free to Rock features Presidents, diplomats, spies and rock stars from the West and the Soviet Union who reveal how Rock & Roll music was a contributing factor in ending the Cold War.

I intend to read this soon.

BURNING DOWN THE HAUS: Punk Rock, Revolution, and the Fall of the Berlin Wall, by Tim Mohr (Kirkus)

How a forbidden punk-rock underground fomented rebellion against totalitarian East Germany.

A translator and former Playboy staff editor and club DJ in Berlin, Mohr carefully documents a rousing, little-known Cold War story, showing how alternative culture developed in the Eastern Bloc in a similarly grass-roots fashion as elsewhere but for greater stakes. “The ethos of East Berlin punk,” he writes, “infused the city with a radical egalitarianism and a DIY approach to maintaining independence.” But during the 1980s, homegrown punks were seen as both a nuisance and threat, worthy of repression. Based in part on interviews with survivors, Mohr ably documents how regional small-scale punk scenes grew and connected nonetheless. From the start, he notes, “groups of punks started to attract attention from security forces everywhere they went.” East Germany provides a vivid backdrop to the narrative. Conformity to state-supervised existence was enforced by surveillance and informants, so punks’ embrace of abrasive music and fashion was inherently political ...

And, I haven't forgotten the Plastic People.

How a Revolutionary Czech Rock Band Inspired Vaclav Havel, by James Sullivan (Rolling Stone)

Havel met the Plastic People of the Universe in 1976

It took a Czechoslovakian rock band that worshipped Frank Zappa and the Velvet Underground to make Vaclav Havel realize the true power of rebellion. Havel, the Czech playwright, humanitarian and political revolutionary who died yesterday, put his movement on the line with the manifesto known as Charter 77, which was directly inspired by an underground rock band called the Plastic People of the Universe.

Named after a Zappa song, the Plastic People formed in 1968, shortly after the suppression of the uprising known as the Prague Spring. They played a psychedelic brand of garage rock like their American heroes, including the Velvets, Captain Beefheart and the Fugs, says Paul Wilson, a Canadian who was teaching in Prague at the time. Wilson joined the band in 1970 at the request of their manager, Ivan Jirous, a culture critic who acted as a kind of art director for the group, much as Andy Warhol did for the Velvet Underground ...

4 shows for only 65 bucks: The Louisville Orchestra's 2018-2019 Neighborhood Series at the Ogle Center.

I've already re-upped our subscription for the forthcoming Louisville Orchestra four-pack at the Paul W. Ogle Center. For music fans, this package is one of the most overlooked entertainment bargains in New Albany, bar none.

For most New Albanians, it's only minutes to campus of Indiana University Southeast on the north side (4201 Grant Line Road), where the parking for these shows is free. The venue is excellent and intimate; your view of the orchestra will be up close and personal.

Here's the schedule, and tickets are available at the LO's web site.

KENTUCKY STRINGS
SAT 13 OCT 2018 | 7:30PM

1812 OVERTURE
SAT 19 JAN 2019 | 7:30PM

AN EVENING IN ITALY
SAT 2 MAR 2019 | 7:30PM

WILLIAM TELL
and OTHER OVERTURES
SUN 14 APR 2019 | 3PM

New Albany has a Klingon composer.

I'm not a science fiction kind of guy, but languages fascinate me even if I've never managed proficiency in any of them apart from English.

Surely somewhere there's an Esperanto beer.

Music’s Final Frontier: Meet New Albany’s Klingon Composer, by Ashlie Stevens (WFPL)

New Albany-based cellist and composer Jon Silpayamanant wrote his first opera several years ago. Like many of the great classics, it’s not sung in English.

But instead of German or Italian, Silpayamanant’s work is written in Klingon.

Yes, Klingon — the bloodthirsty aliens from Star Trek with bumpy foreheads, whose language of the same name is perhaps not the most musical (when asked if he needed to warm up before singing, Silpayamanant laughed and said ‘Oh, that doesn’t matter for Klingon). There are a lot of consonants placed back-to-back, and some guttural sounds.

But Silpayamant is not the first person to find the beauty in an alien language.

There is a whole subset of sci-fi and fantasy fans — and linguists — who are interested in constructed languages; things like Tolkien’s Elvish languages, the dialogue in the Star Wars universe, and of course, Klingon.

And there are societies based around learning these languages.

Last weekend, the Klingon Language Institute held its annual q’uepa — that’s Klingon for ‘big meeting’ — in Indianapolis. Most of the attendees were there to listen and learn about the nuts and bolts of the language, like syntax and proper grammar. It’s a pretty robust language with synonyms, swear words and a full dictionary ...

Rhiannon Giddens: "The musician reveals all about her mission to put the black back into bluegrass – and Shakespeare."

It's completely embarrassing to admit that up until now, I've know nothing about Rhiannon Giddens and her music. At the same time, it's just another crucial reminder that the opportunity to learn is ever-present, even if we abstain from it or miss the chance the first time around.

'White people are so fragile, bless 'em' … meet Rhiannon Giddens, banjo warrior, by Emma John (The Guardian)

She pours fire and fury into powerful songs that target everything from police shootings to slavery. The musician reveals all about her mission to put the black back into bluegrass – and Shakespeare

‘We’re all racist to some degree,” says Rhiannon Giddens. “Just like we’re all privileged to some degree. I have privilege in my system because I’m light-skinned. I hear people say, ‘I didn’t have it easy growing up either.’ But when did it become a competition?”

As someone on a mission to bridge such divides, Giddens thinks about this stuff a lot. The Grammy-winning singer and songwriter was born to a white father and a black mother in Greensboro, North Carolina, in the late 1970s. Her parents married only three years after the landmark Loving v Virginia decision, which reversed the anti-miscegenation laws that had made interracial marriage illegal. Their union was still shocking enough that her father was disinherited.

While much has changed in the 40 years that Giddens has been alive, her latest album, Freedom Highway, is a powerful testament to the inequality and injustice that remain. It opens with At the Purchaser’s Option, a devastating track inspired by an 1830s advert for a female slave whose nine-month-old baby could also be included in the sale. “It was kind of a statement to put that one first,” says Giddens. “If you can get past that, you’ll probably survive the rest ...”

Tunes, or the bimonthly roundup of the music playing in my head, May/June edition.

In 2018, I've resolved to offer a musical recap every two months.

For those just tuning in, I can no longer carry a tune across the street without breaking both legs, but music's playing in my head every waking moment. I'm convinced that when the music stops playing, death will be near.

I'm old school -- no iTunes or playlists for me. Perversely, no vinyl, either; my albums are stacked over at the Public House and I don't own a turntable. As with books, each year I research and buy those CDs that seemed best suited to my tastes. They're usually augmented with impulse buys and random excursions, and of course I listen to snippets of radio, YouTube and the like.

For me, classical music is WUOL-FM and my CD collection, and the latter suffices for jazz listening and world music (internet radio helps). I've nothing bad to say about hip hop or country; they're just not my taste.

In 2018, it's looking as if live music will be restricted to the Louisville Orchestra at the Ogle Center, unless anyone has cheap seats to the Def Leppard/Journey show at Yum next week (hint).

I'd like to be more supportive of local music, and concede that this is the 800-lb chink in my armor. It's a constant struggle, but the fact is that I don't do much in the way of nightlife any longer, and when dining and drinking out, our preferences run to conversation, which is precluded by loud music.

So it goes. It's all about me, and what I like.

Following are CD purchases from May and June, 2018. They're in approximate order of preference, and I can tell you now that Marr and the Manics will be among the year's most listened for me. It cannot always be said with confidence, but verily, I've spent my money wisely these past two months.

---

Johnny Marr … Call the Comet

Manic Street Preachers … Resistance is Futile

Parquet Courts … Wide Awake

Kamasi Washington … Heaven and Earth

Chvrches … Love Is Dead

Matthew Sweet … Tomorrow’s Daughter

Arctic Monkeys … Tranquility Base Hotel + Casino

Snow Patrol … Wildness

---

Reviews have been chosen because they're fair and balanced according to the verdict of my ears. I typically skim reviews before making purchases, then read them voraciously afterward.

Recent archival digressions included the complete CD set of Artie Shaw's Gramercy Five, acquired a few years back and filled with deliciousness, and the 1970s oeuvre of Edgar Winter, both solo and with his band at the time, via a brief free trial with an on-line music provider (I've no physical copies of his output). Winter had a spectacular run from his debut to around 1977, and no more versatile performer could be found during that period.

Through the same medium, I listened to several live performance of The Who from the pre-Tommy period. Glorious days, indeed, and a rare treat for me.

An aside: Usually Glastonbury keeps me abreast of contemporary Brit Rock, though not this summer, as it's a break year. But there's much of the recent Isle of Wight fest to be viewed on YouTube, and my friend Jerry and I continue to split the cost of a yearly subscription of Mojo magazine.

A few headlines from May and June:

Calendar check: New Albany Blues, Brews, & BBQ Festival at Bicentennial Park on Sat., Sept. 29.

The two most recent Manic Street Preachers albums, ending one era and beginning another.

ClassicX Escape radio, with new music from classic rock artists.

SHANE'S EXCELLENT NEW WORDS: Moon's brandy and Lennon's Brandy Alexander, with other less interesting milkshakes and frappes.

Ten days that shook my world -- or, the albums that changed my life when I first heard them.

You keep singing "My Old Kentucky Home." I do not think it means what you think it means.