Roger's Year in Music for 2020. Without music in 2020, I'd have gone quite insane.

For one year at least, pending what I decide to do about the future of my self-expression, there'll be relative simplicity in the following listening lists for 2020.

There's also a documentary of note, highly recommended to those of you who were/are INXS fans like me.

 

 Here we go. 

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I LIKED THESE A LOT BUT THEY WEREN’T RELEASED IN 2020

Titus Andronicus … An Obelisk (2019)
White Reaper … You Deserve Love (2019)
Wussy … What Heaven Is Like (2018)
Haim … Days Are Gone (2013)
Eubie Blake … The Eighty-Six Years of Eubie Blake (1969)

LISTENED MUCH TO THESE NEW ALBUMS BUT DID NOT BUY THE DISCS

Idles … Ultra Mono
Kansas … The Absence of Presence
Pearl Jam … Gigaton
Nubya Garcia … Source
Lang Lang … Bach: The Goldberg Variations

25 Sleaford Mods … All That Glue (compilation, not new music, but a constant companion)

24-11 COULD BE IN JUST ABOUT ANY ORDER

24 Blossoms … Foolish Loving Spaces
23 Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever … Sideways to New Italy
22 Grouplove … Healer
21 Strokes … The New Abnormal

20 Sparks … A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip
19 Travis … 10 Songs
18 The Killers … Exploding the Mirage
17 Fontaines DC … A Hero’s Death
16 Ocean Alley … Lonely Diamond

15 Everything Everything … Re-Animator
14 James Dean Bradfield … Even in Exile
13 Spacey Jane … Sunshine
12 Wild Front … The Great Indoors (EP)
11 The Struts … Strange Days

10-6 ARE GREAT ALBUMS BY OLD FARTS

10 Bob Dylan … Rough and Rowdy Ways
9 AC/DC … Power Up
8 Bruce Springsteen … Letter to You
7 Bob Mould … Blue Hearts
6 Deep Purple … Whoosh!

TOP FIVE

5 Doves … The Universal Want
4 Courteeners … More. Again. Forever.
3 Haim … Women in Music Part III
2 Rookie … Rookie
1 The 1975 … Notes on a Conditional Form (as an album, from start to finish uninterrupted. It moves me tremendously in this fashion, less so when biting off smaller bits). 

MUSIC: Ain't Misbehavin': Louis Armstrong at Town Hall, 1947.

Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong's finest and most innovative trumpet playing came during the 1920s, first as a sideman with King Oliver, Fletcher Henderson and Clarence Williams, then fronting his Hot Five and Hot Seven combos. His recordings with these aggregations still are regarded as revolutionary in terms of jazz improvisation.

From the early 1930s until 1947, Armstrong followed the fashion of the age and led a big band, becoming a "pop" star in the modern sense. He was known more as a singer and entertainer, and less as a jazz trendsetter.

In 1947 Armstrong played a concert in New York with a small group of selected musical friends, including trombonist Jack Teagarden, clarinetist Peanuts Hucko and cornetist/trumpeter Bobby Hackett; the latter plays the first solo in the recording here, following Armstrong's vocal, and his phrasing is noticeably modeled on Bix Beiderbecke.

The concert was a smash success; big bands were in the process of dying amid changing postwar times, and so Armstrong wisely formed the All Stars, a band with revolving members, with whom he toured for the remainder of his life. By the time of his death, Armstrong had added fame as a global cultural ambassador to the list of so many achievements.

Subversively, and perhaps presciently, Satchmo also was an unapologetic user of marijuana throughout his adult life.

By the way, I love this version of the Fats Waller classic song.

In 2020, as my sabbatical proceeds, it is my aim to recall cultural landmarks ignored in these forgetful times.