Calling all food and drink biz owners and operators inside the beltway: Meeting on Wednesday.

As noted in this space on March 26, 2012 (link below), independent locally-owned businesses have driven New Albany’s recent revitalization ... and the lion's share of the drivers to date are the food and drink businesses that have transformed a moribund Nowhere Land into a place quite distinctive in the entirety of the metro Louisville area.

We're proud of what we've done, and now we'd like to be heard.

There is a developing consensus, and at last it may be the case that local independent small businesses (in general) organize themselves to more effectively find a seat at the various planning tables. Granted, we were not elected, but we have invested, and we continue to invest -- time, money and commitment. Reality needs to being reflecting the skin we've put into this game, don't you think?

I do. As an example, what could be more important to downtown merchants than the future of the street grid during the forthcoming toll implementation era?

And yet at this moment, there is no unified voice from the business community, on this or other issues of importance. There needs to be. I cannot speak for everyone, and so I won't. Rather, the food and drink sector inside the beltway is going to begin getting together to chat about how we might organize and market ourselves. On Wednesday afternoon at 3:00 p.m., a few of us are meeting at JR's Pub on Main Street. At last week's Merchant Mixer, we talked about exploring a subcommittee approach, and organizing Food & Drink, Retail Professional groupings. I like the idea, and I'm making it my mission to get the restaurant, bar, brewery and winery segment together.

Interested? Stop by JR's tomorrow and let's discuss.

No, I will not shut up, but thanks for the hint. Now, for more on the necessity of independent business empowerment.

 ... All one needs to know is that in this community, there is almost no disagreement: Independent locally-owned businesses have driven New Albany’s revitalization, and yet in terms of decision-making, the reins are nowhere close to our hands. Why do we acquiesce in this? Why do we not insist on input commensurate with our achievements?

Johnny Marr.

It seems the phenomenon of conservative politicians painfully unaware of the lyrical content in songs they promote is not reserved to America.

The Smiths and anti-Thatcherism are so closely intertwined that even this Hoosier hick knows about it. On the other hand, I imagine few of today's know-nothing Republicans remember Maggie, anyway. They were too busy drooling over the staged blather of a trained actor, Ronnie Raygun.

By the time of my introduction to the Smiths in 1988 by way of the British periodicals I was abstracting at UNI-Data Courier in Louisville, the band was finished, but the music press wasn't through with them. So it has remained.

As a latecomer, there would be no Smiths live performance for me, although I caught Johnny Marr + the Healers at a WFPK indie radio showcase at Headliners circa 2003, and Morrissey a couple years after that at the Palace. As the interview makes clear, don't look for a reunion any time soon; just invest in "The Smiths Complete" for hours of rewarding listening.

Johnny Marr on the Smiths, Morrissey and putting politics back in pop, By Dave Simpson (The Guardian)

... "We invented indie as we still know it," says Marr, the debt ceremoniously acknowledged in the 90s when Oasis's Noel Gallagher played Marr's guitar.

But the guitarist was equally taken aback by the reach of the Smiths' non-musical impact: the amount of people that turned vegetarian because of Meat is Murder, or became politically motivated through Margaret on the Guillotine. "We were of that generation that came after punk and post-punk," he explains. "We're grateful for the revolution, but there was a bit of homophobia there, and sexism. There wasn't in indie. People don't talk about it now, but it was non-macho. If you were an alternative musician, you were political, because of the times [Thatcherism and the Falklands war]. It was taken for granted that the bands you shared a stage with had the same politics. I'm not sure you could say that now."