New Albany is a state of mind … but whose? Since 2004, we’ve been observing the contemporary scene in this slowly awakening old river town. If it’s true that a pre-digital stopped clock is right twice a day, when will New Albany learn to tell time?
Before running down the album list for 2019, kindly allow a bit of belated housekeeping.
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November & December Discs
There were only two purchases. As noted previously, and speaking as a stubborn refusenik when it comes to playlists and non-album-oriented modernity, a great change in my listening procedures occurred during 2018-2019. I've acquiesced to streaming, most often experienced via a nice pair of noise-blocking headphones. What I like, I buy.
The Who … WHO
Coldplay … Everyday Life
First, Coldplay. At this point musical polarization is highly likely; you enjoy the band, or not. Having conceded this, the new album is fun if not entirely free of pretentiousness.
As for WHO by The Who, it's true: I'm biased, having been a partisan for 45 years. It's far better than I imagined.
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Here's the TOP 10.
I've made comments about some of these at the time of release, but the list is enough for now. Click here and you'll find all the posts in 2019 with the label "Roger's Year in Music 2019."
10. Sleaford Mods … Eton Alive 9. Liam Gallagher … Why Me? Why Not. 8. Bastille ... Doom Days 7. Yak … Pursuit of Momentary Happiness 6. Sammy Hagar & the Circle … Space Between 5. The Who … WHO 4. The Hold Steady … Thrashing Thru the Passion 3. Bob Mould … Sunshine Rock 2. Foals … Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost (Part 2)
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HONORABLE MENTION
These two albums were great favorites of mine in 2019. They weren't released in 2019, so down go the asterisks. Sunflower Bean … Twentytwo in Blue (2018) Royal Headache … High (2015)
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NUMBER ONE Fastball … The Help Machine
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During December I listened at length to these two 2019 releases.
Titus Andronicus ... An Obelisk White Reaper ... You Deserve Love
I'll be buying them soon, and they can be added to the comprehensive purchase list that starts ... now.
Album releases 2019, November and December
The Who … WHO
Coldplay … Everyday Life
Album releases 2019, September and October
Foals … Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost (Part 2)
Temples … Hot Motion
Down N Outz … This Is How We Roll
The New Pornographers … In the Morse Code of Brake Lights
Fastball … The Help Machine
Elbow … Giants of All Sizes
Keane … Cause and Effect
The Hold Steady … Thrashing Thru the Passion
Ride … This Is Not A Safe Place
Fontaines DC … Dogrel
Liam Gallagher … Why Me? Why Not.
Album releases 2019, July and August
(no albums purchased)
Album releases 2019, May and June
The Amazons … Future Dust
Bruce Springsteen … Western Stars
Sammy Hagar & the Circle … Space Between
Bastille … Doom Days
Album releases 2019, March and April
Foals … Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost (Part 1)
Royal Headache … High (2015)
Catfish and the Bottlemen … The Balance
Album releases 2019, January and February
Sunflower Bean … Twentytwo in Blue (2018)
Bob Mould … Sunshine Rock
Yak … Pursuit of Momentary Happiness
Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats … Wasteland (2018)
Sleaford Mods … Eton Alive
Twilight Sad … It Won’t Be Like This All the Time
2019 was a fine year in music for Roger as it pertains to the sort of music Roger likes. And that's as complicated as it needs to get.
This clever video was released five days ago. Very effective, and of course her album this year is quite good. I wish the best in musical futures both to Katie Toupin and Houndmouth. We need more good music, not less.
Katie Toupin is ending the year with a breakup, which she caught on video.
After spending much of 2019 immersed in her solo debut, Magnetic Moves, Toupin is ready to start 2020 without the tagline that seemed to always accompany her over the preceding months: “formerly of Houndmouth.” In the video, which she posted this week, a piece of poster board that reads “Katie Toupin (formerly of Houndmouth)” goes with her everywhere—the grocery store, the tub, while doing kettlebell swings at the gym—as her song “Someone to You” plays. Finally, Toupin has had enough, and she rids herself of the unwanted appellation. By the end of the clip, the singer is beaming while she uses paint and glitter to decorate a much smaller sign that reads, simply, “Katie Toupin.”
“I don’t need that tagline anymore. At this point, it doesn’t have any value,” says Toupin, who left Houndmouth in 2016. “It’s not going to move any more tickets. The fans that wanted to stay with me are already with me. It’s time to move on and just be the person that I am.”
Toupin’s video is a fitting capper to a year when plenty of artists sought to take more active control over how they are viewed by audiences, critics and whoever else comes across them. Sometimes, like Toupin, musicians shaped their public identities in creative ways that entertained—or helped create—fans. Others lashed out on social media when they weren’t perceived as they wanted to be. Either way, pop musicians vocally defining how they want to interact with the world is a fairly new development, and one that runs contrary to the way things have worked in the past. It used to be that musicians made records, went on tour and did press to promote the record or tour. Though some of them had specific images—or reputations, in some cases—to maintain, they rarely engaged directly in a back-and-forth with their audience, or with critics. That sort of thing fell to publicists and managers until the rise of social media. When the president of the United States fulminates on Twitter all day, why shouldn’t musicians talk about what’s important to them?
“We get to have a voice that isn’t filtered, if we decide to,” says Toupin, who teased her video in advance as a “major announcement.”
Madonna sidestepped any filters in June when she objected to a lengthy profile of her in the New York Times Magazine that she felt focused on the wrong things, including her age. She wrote on Instagram that she felt “raped” by the result. And Lana Del Rey didn’t stifle herself in August when she clapped back on Twitter to a largely positive NPR review of her new album Norman Fucking Rockwell!. Writer Ann Powers made reference to “Del Rey’s persona as a bad girl to whom bad things are done,” and at one point called her lyrics “uncooked” when compared with Joni Mitchell’s. Neither observation conformed to the way Del Rey wants to be seen (or, maybe, sees herself), which she made clear in a response: “There’s nothing uncooked about me,” she wrote in part. “To write about me is nothing like it is to be with me. Never had a persona. Never needed one. Never will.”
That’s a bold claim, considering Del Rey made it under the cover of a stage name (she was still going by her given name, Lizzy Grant, on her first album in 2010). In a way, though, it’s all a persona. In a probing 2018 interview with Esquire, Bruce Springsteen talked about how depression can sometimes make him lose track of his sense of identity. From a fan’s perspective, the interviewer replied, “You’re Bruce fucking Springsteen! How do you not know who you are?” Springsteen laughed, and revealed a secret most entertainers don’t talk about: “Bruce fucking Springsteen is a creation” ...
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 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.
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.
... 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.
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.
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.
There have been 12,787 posts since October, 2004, and while I try to write about topics with some measure of resonance apart from the prerequisites of my own inner world, the blog still functions as a diary at least part of the time. Writing about music probably isn't why you check in, and that's fine. It's something I do for me.
That said, I'm almost a month late in fulfilling my self-directed mandate to regularly summarize the music I've been enjoying, preferably at two-month intervals.
Following is a video sampler of the CDs purchased in March and April. They appear in no particular order, because I'm not organized enough to manage things like chronology.
The Vaccines … Combat Sports
The Decemberists … I’ll Be Your Girl
The Len Price 3 … Nobody Knows
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)
Of these, Combat Sports is my favorite, with the three-year-old Modern Nature finishing second. Both proved to be ear worms, and Combat Sports probably will place highly in the year's end Top-Something list. The songs are short, snappy and melodic, with traces of the Kaiser Chiefs.
One of my goals for the year in music, 2018, is to relax and allow myself to follow the passing butterfly. New releases were of spotty interest for me in March and April, so I did something I rarely do and indulged in a few "classic rock" tangents and digressions.
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The 20th anniversary of Bring It On, the first album released by the British band Gomez, came on April 13. I celebrated by listening to all of Gomez' albums. After an extended seven-year hiatus, it seems the group might be going back into the studios. This makes me happy.
Another anniversary (the 40th) of Van Halen's debut album in 1978 had me thinking, and it appears my position has evolved. I wasn't a fan of the band's David Lee Roth era, which ended in 1985. However, I liked Van Hagar. Now, with greater distance, I can see how groundbreaking and revolutionary the early material really was; not just Eddie's guitar, but the sound and attitude, too.
To be sure, Sammy Hagar -- he's 70 years old now -- remains a rock and roll everyman, and an enduring performer to be appreciated. As for Van Halen's mercifully brief third aggregation, my annual listen to the horrid Van Halen III has confirmed that after 20 years, it hasn't gotten any better.
In early April, I accompanied my wife to her appointment for dental work, taking along a book and enjoying a couple of hours of reading.
Unfortunately, the Sirius channel of choice in the waiting room was devoted entirely to Top 40 hit songs of the 1970s, like "Afternoon Delight" and "The Night Chicago Died." Several Bee Gees songs also were aired; at the dentist, as during high school, this band was inescapable. I subsequently retreated to YouTube to give a few Bee Gees hits a second listen.
It's hard to do, but if you can ignore the clothes and wash the palate clean of pop culture at the time and focus on the music, it's far better than I ever thought. The singing, songwriting and production are stellar. Pop music after the Beatles seldom witnessed such an epic, unholy roll as the Bee Gees enjoyed at the band's peak. Here's my favorite song, which was released in 1975 just before the tsunami. You never heard the lovely bridge on the radio; it got chopped.
"Play some Skynyrd," crooned John Eddie back in '03, and of course he was referring to "Free Bird" and "Sweet Home Alabama," among other memorable songs from Lynyrd Skynyrd's heyday in the 70s. Everyone knows about the plane crash in 1977, which put a premature end to the juggernaut, killing singer and principal songwriter Ronnie Van Zant.
Lynyrd Skynyrd later reformed, and has been on the road as a working band for decades, stocked by an ever shrinking number of plane crash survivors until now only guitarist Gary Rossington remains. Nothing against the reconstituted Skynyrd, which in its second life became something the same and yet far different, because it's hard to imagine Ronnie Van Zant devolving into parody, like Charlie Daniels.
This prompts a question: exactly what is Lynyrd Skynyrd, and at what point does it cease being so? The farewell tour is underway, and along with the many other summer touring announcements coming in March and April, another rabbit hole opens.
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Lindsey Buckingham's departure from Fleetwood Mac may or may not be noticed by a majority of the ticket-buying fillers of arena seats, but for the pundit class, it ignited all sorts of commentary along the lines of when, if at all, an aging band's replacement parts render it no longer original enough to pass muster.
The discussion is interesting, and ultimately ridiculous. Obsessive true believers like me always have been outnumbered 10-1 or greater by casual thrill-seekers, and so it will remain forever more. In music, you're whatever you say you are, until people stop paying you. Then it changes.
The received wisdom is that older rock and pop artists still possessing the clout and back catalog to fill venues are referred to as "legacy" or "heritage" acts; few fans attend their shows for the purpose of hearing what they've recorded lately, but expect to hear the hits. Because the business model has been flipped, and performance is the money-maker, the hits are what these audiences are sure to hear.
The subtleties quickly become immersed in contradiction. To even casual fan, Buckingham and Stevie Nicks might seem integral to Fleetwood Mac, and yet the band began as a hardcore blues outfit featuring guitarist Peter Green, and it has taken a variety of shapes with various musicians before (and since) Buckingham and Nick first joined.
And, Buckingham left once before.
There are no original members in the band Blood, Sweat & Tears, currently touring with American Idol contestant Bo Bice as vocalist in the job made famous by David Clayton-Thomas. However, Clayton-Thomas wasn't the band's original singer; he came aboard after the group's debut release.
Former singer Clayton-Thomas is 76 years of age and Bice is 43, and therein lies an important lesson, because it comes down to money, as in any business, and if many musical aggregations can plausibly say it's all about the style of music paying customers want, and the songs they want to hear, then it's of less importance who performs it.
Granted, there are on-off talents that cannot be replaced, like Jimi Hendrix, but at the same time, if people will turn out to hear passable renditions, then capitalism will provide them.
Accordingly, tribute bands have changed the world. Journey famously plucked singer Arnel Pineda from the Philippines via the internet. Current Chicago tenor Neil Donnell, the guy singing Peter Cetera's and Jason Scheff's songs, was a member of a Chicago tribute band in Canada.
KISS speaks of keeping the band alive with no original members at all, and Robert Lamm of Chicago confided similar thoughts to a journalist, and if this makes no sense to you, allow me to observe that in the past few years, I've seen multiple shows by the Glenn Miller Orchestra and the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, neither of which might possibly have "original" members any younger than about 95 years of age.
Miller famously died in WWII, and neither Dorsey brother made it to the 1960s, and yet there's nothing stopping musicians fresh out of college, as well as older players happy to have a regular gig, from performing Swing Era arrangements. The precise experience may not be the same. If you close your eyes, it's also not tremendously different. Symphony orchestras have been doing it since Beethoven was still alive.
As age-depleted rock legacy bands and their tribute bands become one and the same, the chief considerations are legalities: who retains the rights?
Once the lawyers are happy, it's all about selling tickets.
Of course, these lists are contrived click bait, but Mojo does them better than most. The first brief video snippet includes a fleeting glimpse of the Kaiser Chiefs, a band I greatly enjoy. There are so many more: Suede and Waterboys receive honorable mention, and what about Travis and the Charlatans? Simple Minds? I remember reading somewhere that Squeeze wasn't huge in America, either, apart from the hit song "Tempted" and the early 1990s greatest hits CD.
I'm delighted to report that my CD collection includes discs from 7 of the 10 bands mentioned in the Mojo video. The * means I have all the group's albums.
10 Supergrass*
7 Kasabian*
5 Stereophonics
4 Manic Street Preachers*
3 Pulp
2 The Jam (and Paul Weller)
1 Stone Roses
Here's the sequel, with a twist.
Some of these are big favorites, too, with Blur and The xx meriting honorable mention.
9 The 1975
8 Florence + the Machine
6 Muse
4 Oasis
3 Arctic Monkeys
2 Coldplay
1 Radiohead
For me, I've always liked rock and pop music from the UK and Ireland. I've liked it more than American music of the same genres. It's okay if you disagree -- just be musical about it.
Over at Five Thirty Eight on the occasion of the Academy Awards, writer Walt Hickey had not-so-flattering things to say about the "worst best original songs in Oscar history," among which was "On The Atchison Topeka And Santa Fe."
A version is included above for your listening pleasure.
Vocal by The Sentimentalists (later to be known as The Clark Sisters) on Tommy Dorsey's version of the popular Oscar-winning tune from "The Harvey Girls." Four different recordings of the Johnny Mercer-Harry Warren song reached the national top-ten single sales chart: Judy Garland (who sang it in the movie), Dorsey, Bing, and, with the #1 chart-topping version, Mercer himself.
CD audio, originally issued on 78rpm: Victor 20-1682 - On The Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe (Mercer-Warren) by Tommy Dorsey & his Orchestra, vocal by The Sentimentalists, recorded May 26, 1945
I haven't watched an Academy Awards telecast since John Wayne's final appearance in 1979, and in truth, drinking Miller Lite, touring Ken Ham's ark or reading the "Collected Works of Jeff Gahan" (written by Mike Hall) sound like way more fun than sitting through the Oscars.
But I'd like to defend the virtue of "On The Atchison Topeka And Santa Fe," which to my ears is far superior to any acclaimed Disney soundtrack excerpt of the last 30 years. This song is weirdly symbolic to me, even if it was recorded 15 years before I was born.
In short, there is an exuberance to music like this from the period when WWII was drawing to a close. Granted, the end was not yet nigh; Hitler was gone, but the war in the Pacific had yet to conclude. Hiroshima and Nagasaki would not become household names until August.
And yet, at the time, America surely seemed to be atop the heap, although if we go deeper, it can be seen that this dawning age of well-ordered preeminence was remarkably brief, and a mere historical blip. The situation changed, and quickly.
In the mid- to late-1960s, only 20-something years after Dorsey's version of "On The Atchison Topeka And Santa Fe" was recorded, I was listening to it in company with the other songs on my father's LP collections of the Swing Era. We always listened to them on Sunday mornings over a big breakfast. To my dad, this was church.
For better or worse, he was populist to the core and at the time, much troubled by the Vietnam War, hippies and societal dislocation; in truth, the wealthy fat cats weren't giving the little guy a fair shake, but hadn't he served three years in the Marine Corps for just a little bit of fairness?
I don't think my father ever put all these pieces together. He had strong feelings about injustice, but lacked a consistent framework to express them. It doesn't really matter. The point I'm trying to make is that only two decades after the war, songs like "On The Atchison Topeka And Santa Fe" already had become mile markers for him. When he heard them, all those great things once again were possible.
Circa 1987, Gore Vidal spoke briefly and eloquently about the reality of the period.
The last best hope of earth, two trillion dollars in debt, is spinning out of control, and all we can do is stare at a flickering cathode-ray tube as Ollie “answers” questions on TV while the press, resolutely irrelevant as ever, asks politicians if they have committed adultery. From V-J Day 1945 to this has been, my fellow countrymen, a perfect nightmare.
It's 2018, and Dorsey's recording of "On The Atchison Topeka And Santa Fe" will be 73 in May. The problem isn't so much that "they don't make 'em like this any more," although this is certifiably true.
To me, the real problem is the likelihood of someone reading about the song, and being unable to imagine what a passenger train is, having never experienced one. No wonder we've gone to hell in a hand basket.
Previously I threw my hands into the air, made a belated list of favorites, and called it good for 2017. The long awaited and much belated account of Roger's Year in Music, 2017. In 2018, the revised plan calls for a musical recap every two months. Will I stick to the regimen? Beats me, but it's worth a try.
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I cannot fathom how I've managed to miss The Charlatans -- not just the band's most recent album from 2017, but its entire career since the early 1990s.
From the offset, 'Different Days' is an album drenched in colour. Opener 'Hey Sunshine' bursts with lavish kaleidoscopic synths, whilst The War On Drugs-esque follow up 'Solutions' drives with zealous passion. Elsewhere on the LP, 'Let's Go Together' and 'Not Forgotten' are the record's most anthemic moments and see The Charlatans rising in a concoction of electric organs and Madchester swagger.
Music like this is my sweet spot, so it's time to catch up.
Conversely, I'm fully aware of Travis, which was the opening act for Oasis the first time I saw the Brothers Gallaghers at the then-Murat in Indianapolis. Like The Charlatans, Travis came on the scene around 1990.
I completely missed Everything at Once, the 2016 release.
In a packed-to-the-rafters north London venue, Travis are launching their (latest) comeback in an ultra-Travis manner: playing two sold-out shows in one evening in a pub. No stunt-casting venue-hire or fan-teasing viral gimmickry required.
Thanks for the tip, Joe. It's a stellar collection of songs.
Another missing link in recent years is the Len Price 3 (a tip of the hat to Shea). Last year's album was Kentish Longtails, and at Louder Than War, Ged Babey hones in.
There seem to be a lot of targets the band unleash their vitriol on in their songs; Trendy Camden bands, social climbers and flash bastards, bullshitters, liars, female airheads with debatable morals, ‘screen zombies’, vacuous Pop-puppets. Eight songs out of fourteen are venomous attacks on the people they ‘hate’. The word ‘morons’ appears in two songs. This almost puts me off the band a bit – but then, most of the targets deserve the abuse they get.
The beautiful thing about the Len Price 3 is that one needs only hear the opening chords of a song to know what lies ahead, so brief samples suffice. The band has been compared to early-days-old-school Kinks and The Who, and it's easy to see why.
The catchiest song of the year to my quivering ears comes from Django Django:
In the ear worm rankings, Django Django is followed closely by this anthem of disaffection from South London's post-punk group Shame.
They’re as ferocious as their acknowledged inspirations the Fall; even when the guitars aren’t turned up to a jet roar, Steen’s furious sneer gives them urgency (“My voice ain’t the best you’ve heard / And you can choose to hate my words / But do I give a fuck?” he asks on One Rizla). Best of all, though, they have huge, anthemic tunes to go with the anger.
I rediscovered the joys of both Franz Ferdinand and Sparks when the two bands produced the FFS collaboration in 2015:
This is not a meeting of equals, and it doesn't have to be. It's a marquee-name band throwing their weight behind a cult act that clearly inspired them—and the cult act showing who's really in charge.
FFS had the salutary effect of causing me to positively reassess both bands; I could hear echoes of Alex Kapranos in last year's Hippopotamus by Sparks, and now I think of the Mael brothers while listening to Franz Ferdinand. It's not a bad thing at all.
When Manic Street Preachers were promoting Futurology in 2014, James Dean Bradfield and Nicky Wire were unstinting in their praise for the Scottish band Simple Minds as a major formative influence.
The shadow of Simple Minds’ early work shrouds the record, ‘Dreaming A City’ is a bona fide steal of ‘Theme for Great Cities’ and lead single, ‘Walk Me To The Bridge’, openly acknowledges singer/guitarist James Dean Bradfield thoughts, “Simple Minds were crystalline gods to me.” Yet, the Manics have not created a clumsy homage to those electronic art-rock records: the sound is genuine, and these pieces are emblematic of the whole record.
Americans tend to think of Simple Minds as a one hit wonder courtesy of "Don’t You (Forget About Me)" in 1985, but the truth is considerably more extensive. As more than one reviewer notices, Simple Minds has been far more successful at preserving its classic sound amid changing times, while still adapting and reinventing around the edges, than a band like U2.
The latter might choose at some point to select a single producer and make an actual rock record, but I'm finished holding my breath. Meanwhile, Simple Minds is sounding great.
The strange, accomplished and hypnotic sound of Wild Beasts has intrigued me since Two Dancers, released on my birthday in 2009. I don't listen often, but certain occasions beg for it.
The group's new (and last) album following the announcement in late 2017 that it would be disbanding is called Last Night All My Dreams Came True. It's a "live in the studio" collection of reworked previous songs, and to be honest, I've have preferred a benedictory offering of new material.
By means of introduction to Insecure Men, this excerpt from the review by Alexis Petridis of The Guardian.
It’s seldom that anything involving Fat White Family comes with a heartwarming story attached. They are, after all, a band who describe themselves as “an invitation, sent by misery, to dance to the beat of human hatred”, whose artistic obsession with the ugliness of life is apparently reflected behind the scenes. Their music springs from a grimy personal world of penury, mental torment and hard drug use: “heartwarming” isn’t really on the agenda.
And yet, there is something at least vaguely cheering about the story behind the eponymous album by Insecure Men, a project that really came to life when the band’s chief songwriter, Saul Adamczewski, was asked to leave temporarily after – and this is a very Fat White Family kind of story – refusing to vacate the Paris venue the band were playing on the night of the Bataclan attack because he’d arranged to meet a heroin dealer there later on.
After a fairly harrowing spell in rehab, Adamczewski emerged not only clean, but eager to make music more tuneful and less unsavoury than the oeuvre of Fat White Family, in the company of his schoolfriend Ben Romans-Hopcraft.
Adamczewski has this to say about Sean Lennon, who produced the record.
We’re really close friends and I love working with him, and I’d rather work with him than anyone else, he’s my favourite person to work with. He hasn’t got much of an ego. He’s just happy to nurture people’s ideas – even if they’re crap – all the way to the end until they realise they’re crap.
That's beautiful.
Finally, we heard the Danish String Quartet on NPR last fall, and apparently so did everyone else, because it took three months to get Last Leaf on back order.
Classical and folk music continue to intermingle in fascinating ways. The intersections stretch back far beyond Bach, who cleverly slipped a German folk song into his Goldberg Variations. Later, composers like Ralph Vaughan Williams and Béla Bartók combed the countryside, collecting tunes from villagers. And a recent piece, Steel Hammer, by Pulitzer-winner Julia Wolfe, draws inspiration from the folk ballad "John Henry."
The members of the Danish String Quartet also have affection for folk. They are plenty happy playing Haydn and Brahms, but their new album, Last Leaf, is entirely devoted to old Nordic folk melodies and dances, which they've arranged for string quartet. The oldest date to around 1300, but there are newer ones, and even a couple faux-folk tunes composed by the group's cellist Fredrik Schøyen Sjölin.
Very compelling, this mixture.
Now, a selection of video documentaries, interviews and concerts. First, Propagandhi, a veteran Canadian band occupying the intersection of the musical and the political.
On the flight back from Porto, I watched The Rolling Stones performing Sticky Fingers Live at the Fonda Theatre 2015.
Rolling Stones fans who snagged one of the precious few tickets to catch the legendary British rockers performing a secret show on May 20, 2015, in Los Angeles at the historic Fonda Theatre were given a truly rare treat. The Stones performed their classic 1971 studio album Sticky Fingers for the first time ever in its entirety and those who missed out can finally get their first view of the show when “Sticky Fingers Live At The Fonda Theatre 2015” drops on Sept. 29 via Eagle Rock.
The video contains band member interviews and background, helping to explain why the set list is re-arranged from the original running order on the 1971 album -- and failing to solve the question of exactly whose zipper was featured on the LP's cover. To put it simply, the performance reveals a band of old-timers still capable of surprises in an intimate setting, if not in the stadiums. Specifically, Stones fans will enjoy guitarist Ron Wood's channeling of material that featured Mick Taylor, a very different lead player.
Having announced a seemingly endless final tour prior to retirement, my attention was drawn to a 2010 BBC documentary about Reg Dwight's climb to the top.
Documentary exploring Elton John's childhood, apprenticeship in the British music business, sudden stardom in the US at the dawn of the 70s and his musical heyday. Plus the backstory to the album reuniting him with Leon Russell, his American mentor. Features extensive exclusive interviews with Elton, plus colleagues and collaborators including Bernie Taupin, Leon Russell and others.
Finally, as referred to previously, two hours of a dinosaur band playing a set list composed of songs I've heard hundreds of times, performed by a couple of guys in their early 70s.
At one point, Townshend held up his signature Stratocaster in the soupy fog and in a nod to Woody Guthrie said, “This red guitar kills fascists!”
Pete Townshend has told numerous interviewers that somewhere in the middle of The Who's 50th anniversary concert tour, he began feeling renewed seeing large numbers of young people in the crowd. Seems the pedant in one of rock's finest songwriters again felt the need to begin dispensing education along with the music.
Swap power chords for beer, and I can relate to this sentiment. Here are a few other posts about music that appeared in January and February, 2018.
Particularly in the early days after the East Bloc imploded, visiting westerners would scratch their heads at any local mention of Dean Reed, the American pop star. In turn, East Germans, Czechs and Russians would express befuddlement.
How could Americans not know about Dean Reed?
Three days ago, I found myself unable to remember the name of "that American singer in East Germany back then." Google promptly schooled me, and then YouTube sweetened the offer.
I hadn't planned on spending several hours watching videos and reading remembrances of a fellow whose unlikely (red) star already was fading prior to his untimely death 31 years ago, but as regular readers of NA Confidential know, the history of late-period communism has an enduring grip on me, primarily because I had the good fortune to see a wee bit of it first-hand just before the end.
The boy can't help it. Yes, Roger's on a Commie Jag again.
Truth be told, it's likely that my very first exposure to Dean Reed came in 1986, courtesy of the infamous segment on 60 Minutes. I finally made it to the GDR three years later, but by then Reed was dead, and I'm fairly certain I didn't know about his passing until my fellow East German student summer workers told me. By this time Guns 'N' Roses was a thing, even in Karl Marx Stadt -- not exactly Reed's bailiwick.
Dean Reed was born in Denver. He went to Hollywood in search of careers singing and acting, and improbably, he found them. Armed with a few minor American hit songs, Reed traveled to South America in the early 1960s and discovered he was an idol on a par with Elvis.
Amid the Cold War dualism of the time, Reed also abruptly became "woke" as a socialist. One thing led to another, and after stints in Argentina, Chile and Italy, he surfaced in East Germany. There he embraced the party line, made his home (a very nice one, too), became a superstar in the Warsaw Pact, and later fell victim to internal cognitive dissonance and external geopolitical shifts.
American Rebel, the older of these two documentaries (1986) doesn't purport to be a critical examination of Reed's various careers on the other side of the wall. However, it's entertaining, and about as much a period piece as can be imagined from a time that still feels all too immediate to me.
We really talked about those things all the time, didn't we? It might as well have been 300 years ago, not 30.
The Red Elvis gets slightly closer to the central questions of Reed's life (and death), as summarized in this passage from a separate essay.
Over time Reed recognized the contradictions between his idealistic world views and the reality of life in East Germany, but he didn’t know what to do about them. As the years passed, he also saw his fame and star power fade. A new generation barely knew who he was. People who knew him well have said he longed to return to the US, but his socialistic, Marxist views and actions would have made it impossible for him to make a living in the land of his birth – especially after his 1986 appearance on 60 Minutes. Only six weeks after that TV interview his body was pulled out of Lake Zeuthen (Zeuthener See) near his home at the southern tip of East Berlin.
There has been much speculation about Dean Reed’s death. Was it a suicide (as most of his East German friends and family think), a strange accident, or was it something more sinister? We may never know, but he was known to be very depressed and suicidal in the weeks before his death. Dean Reed was caught between two worlds, between two countries, in a trap of his own making.
More from a fan site which looks to have been functional since the Internet's dawning: Dean-Reed-Archiv-Berlin.
Liam's first solo album is out now, and Noel's third arrives in a few weeks. Chris Moyles has spoken with the brothers Gallagher (separately, of course), and Oasis fans will appreciate the dual snapshots.
Happily, there is a point of convergence between these famously fractious siblings: all of their kids like their respective fathers' new albums. In short, Oasis is still quite dead -- but Liam's album is surprisingly solid, and I look forward to the arrival of Noel's.
In a recent interview with Mojo magazine, esteemed songwriter and musician Jimmy Webb recalled the way Otis Redding flat stole the show at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967.
Webb explained that Redding had been a professional musician virtually his entire life, whereas so many of the other acts were flower-power dilettantes unfamiliar with stagecraft and the necessary dynamic of performance art.
Otis knew what worked, and he delivered. The others learned, or perished as working musicians.
Edgar Winter, Vincent Furnier (a.k.a. Alice Cooper) and the members of Deep Purple (even current virtuoso guitarist Steve Morse, then all of 13 years old) all were playing and performing in some capacity in 1967.
A half-century later, we had the pleasure of seeing them play at the open air Klipsch Center, formerly Deer Creek, located north of Indianapolis. Rest assured: they have learned.
This reviewer in California might as well have been writing about the show we saw in Indiana on August 30, although Deep Purple omitted "The Surprising" from its Indy set, and played only "Time for Bedlam" from the band's inFinite album, released earlier this year.
Three distinct brands of classic rock were on display Sunday night at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles. American blues rocker Edgar Winter, shock rocker Alice Cooper and British heavy metal pioneers Deep Purple all came to the venue armed with their biggest hits delivered via crowd-pleasing, fast-moving sets.
Deep Purple has been the tour's headliner, in the midst of what the group acknowledges probably is its final jaunt. Three-fifths of Purple's classic lineup (Ian Gillen, Roger Glover and Ian Paice) remains in place, and summer's set list is built to please the legacy/heritage rock crowd, which makes even more sense in a venue where the "craft" beers cost $16.
Instrumentally, Deep Purple retains the swagger necessary to give solid readings to hit songs like "Highway Star" and "Smoke on the Water," even if lead singer Gillen's voice is diminished, and sole founding member Paice's drumming can be a tad sluggish at times.
As a fan of 45 years, I have a minor complaint to register.
The current aggregation of Deep Purple has been together since 2003, producing four excellent albums of original material, the last two of which are simply outstanding.
I'd gladly pay double an already high price to hear this lineup play an entire set derived solely from their time as a unit. Admittedly, I'd be the only person in the Klipsch Center, but it would be a great seat, indeed.
The late Johnny Winter was a renowned, spellbinding blues guitarist. His younger brother Edgar is a dazzling multi-instrumentalist, switching from keyboards to saxophone to drums, and capable of playing jazz, funk, blues and straightforward rock and roll.
Winters' opening set compressed all of these considerable talents into a mere five songs lasting 45 minutes, which isn't enough. The most recent of these songs was released around 1972.
That's the rock/show biz, which brings me to Alice Cooper.
He has (and has not) been doing the same stage show since the first time I saw him in 1976. The guillotines, blow-up dolls, macabre embellishments and shtick is unchanged; significantly, Alice's music always has evolved. He might remain a teenager lyrically, but instrumentally, his cast of younger musicians shred, staying nicely up to date in terms of backing metal.
I've long maintained that Alice Cooper is the last vaudevillian standing. Know that I didn't coin the comparison; Groucho did.
"When guys like Groucho Marx would come to the show, he always called me, he says, 'You're the last hope for vaudeville.' And he would bring Jack Benny and George Burns and Mae West. And people like that would come to the show, because it was vaudeville to them. They said, 'Ah, remember 1923? The Great Floyd used to do that! Remember? Of course, he would have doves come out of his sleeves when he —' And this was nothing new to these guys. They would, you know, Groucho would come to the show and he'd see it, and he'd go, 'Ah, rawr rawr rawr.' You know, he'd insult everybody there. 'Excuse me, I got to go insult the maitre d'.' You know, that kind of thing. We were best of friends, Groucho and I were. But they saw it as vaudeville, and actually that's what it is. It's rock 'n' roll vaudeville."
In June we saw U2 at Papa John's Stadium in Louisville. I never thought the time would come for me to say this, and yet here it is: My monstrous outdoor venue concert-going career may be over. Both shows were fun, and I have no regrets ... but those $16 beers.
The video is available at various for-pay portals. It's inexpensive and worth the time. Older readers may recall Harry Nilsson's heyday in the early 1970s. If all this is well before your time, the film may yet have value as documentation of a not-so-quaint era of rock star excess.
In 1968, when asked to name his favorite American rock group, John Lennon replied “Nilsson,” which was of course not a group at all but a Brooklyn-born, Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter named Harry Nilsson.
This is an excellent long read from 2013, although the merit of watching the documentary lies in hearing the songs:
Remembering Harry Nilsson: American Beatle, filthy drunk, and the great lost music genius of the 1970s
... In the years before the Lost Weekend and before Pussy Cats, Nilsson established himself as a kind of pop culture Zelig, a figure who was around greatness or creating it on his own, landing in shocking good fortune only to squander it over and again. His drinking is legendary; he soaked himself with the best of rock’s worst drunks. He also possessed one of the purest voices of his generation, and was often described as the most gifted white male singer of his time. It’s hard to overstate its dramatic, breathtaking quality, and at its best, his songwriting. His is a career that feels both forgotten and deeply embedded in modern pop. He sang standards and rock and jazz and winding conceptual songs and tiny little kids’ tunes and commercial jingles. He wrote, voiced, and spearheaded an animated film starring Dustin Hoffman. He played Dracula in a movie. He soundtracked a sitcom and nearly fought Jackie Gleason in a nightclub. He was “the Beatle across the water.” He tore up London bars with Ringo Starr and Keith Moon. He invented the remix album. He also invented the mash-up.5 He dropped acid with Timothy Leary. He sang of moonbeams and fire and coconuts and puppies. He was a prodigious songwriter whose two biggest hits were covers. He made his father’s abandonment the centerpiece of his songwriting, and yet rarely acknowledged its importance publicly. He performed live in concert in his prime exactly zero times. He lobbied for a songwriter named Randy Newman and is responsible for the career of Three Dog Night. He composed scores for Otto Preminger and Robert Altman. He wrote a musical about the Wright brothers. He had no. 1 albums and pop smashes and disastrous failures. He won Grammys. He was hilarious, and such a sad man. His voice can be heard as Jon Voight gets off that bus in New York City in Midnight Cowboy. He sang “You’re breaking my heart, so fuck you” on the follow-up single to his masterpiece breakthrough. He was married three times and had seven kids. He snorted heroin and hitchhiked across America. He was a renaissance man and a get-along guy. A carouser and a crusader. He failed well and succeeded poorly. He did everything before most, and nothing in moderation. His songwriting career began about 50 years ago. It almost ended 40 years ago. He died nearly 20 years ago. But his songs — and that voice — go on and on and on.
In no particular order. There'll be more, I'm sure.
Honorable mention to songs by White Reaper, Goldfrapp, Kasabian, Phoenix, John Mellencamp, Ride, Cheap Trick and British Sea Power. As 2017 has pertained to the sort of music Roger likes, it's been a better year than expected.
I'm not a Mandy Patinkin fanatic. I own none of his album releases, and haven't ever seen him perform live. He's an actor, too, and I can't recall seeing a movie or television show in which he appeared, though it's never a good idea for me to rule out being too drunk to remember, at least back in both of our salad days.
But I do know that Patinkin singing is like Ted Williams batting. When I'm feeling low, these songs lift me up. He may have equals, but no betters.
"Younger Than Springtime" is from the 1986 "remake of South Pacific), which was universally panned ... except for Patinkin's Lt. Cable.
"Over the Rainbow," from the infamous Letterman episode that Cher missed.
Another Letterman cameo: "Brother, Can you Spare a Dime?"
Arriving in Hungary thirty years ago for a stay that lasted almost the entire month of June, I had many potential activities in mind, but perhaps the last thing I expected to do was attend a big pop/rock show at the soccer stadium (Nepstadion; since demolished) in Budapest.
But that's exactly what happened, and for the whopping sum of $7.25.
For three decades, I've been grateful for the chance to see Genesis perform behind the Iron Curtain (June 18, 1987) and then later during my travels, witness U2 playing on the group's home turf in Cork, Ireland (August 8).
What I didn't know until moments ago is that U2 also played in Budapest while I was traveling in Hungary in 1987, on June 8, while I was reposing in the countryside.
SPOILER: Except it never actually happened.
Yes, Wikipedia lists the U2 Budapest tour date here and here, citing an off-line reference. I can find no other attribution anywhere else on the Internet, and as many refutations as you please, like here. It must have been ghosts. If a Wiki editor is reading, a correction is merited.
At the time, I was flummoxed to learn that Genesis was coming to Budapest.
Even in an era of glasnost and perestroika in the USSR ... even in Communist Hungary, where there was a tad more freedom to maneuver amid the East Bloc's subservience, and the term "Goulash Communism" was used to describe the Janos Kadar doctrine, "If You're Not Against Us, You're For Us" ... even as Magyar reforms permitted small-scale private ownership, which made things slightly more tolerable for social classes that officially didn't exist in Hungary ... the typical Western stadium-sized musical extravaganza was a highly unlikely occurrence, if for no other reason than a completely incompatible cost structure.
In other words, if a ticket to an Invisible Touch tour date cost roughly $25 in Western Europe and the United States, how could Genesis afford to reduce ticket prices to an affordable level in a Communist country given the sheer cost of mounting such a stadium-sized spectacle?
Following is the list of verified "western" shows in Budapest's Nepstadion between its construction in the 1950s and the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
1965 – Louis Armstrong 1986 – Queen 1987 – Genesis 1988 – Human Rights concert: Peter Gabriel, Sting, Bruce Springsteen
Apart from the immortal Satchmo's peak Cold War appearance, which quite possibly was financed by the US State Department, there simply had to have been heavy subsidies to make the later concerts possible.
By extension, since Warsaw Pact currencies were essentially worthless, the subsidies surely would have taken the form of scarce hard currency -- American, British or German, or at least some form of barter. Proximity to Vienna also was a plus, though this wouldn't have mattered in places like Berlin.
That the Hungarian government was willing (and able) to negotiate such quality-of-life expenditures might well be regarded as a precursor of the end times, only two years down the road.
---
In 1987, Genesis was at the pinnacle of its 1980s pop phase, and while the group was almost ludicrously popular, perhaps it could have been "fashionable" only in a locale behind the Iron Curtain. It seems that Hungary was willing, Budapest was able, and Queen had broken the ice the previous year (see postscript below).
Genesis had Invisible Touch atop the charts, and the album was ubiquitous on the radio. It inadvertently became the soundtrack of my extended stay in Hungary. I'd packed a small portable radio and what I hoped were enough AA batteries to get me through the trip, intended for use in the radio and the Pentax flash.
In Sopron and Kőszeg, much of my evening hours were spent listening to a primarily German-language station called Radio Danubius, which I assumed originated in Austria. As it turns out, it was founded in Budapest in 1986.
Perhaps because Genesis was playing Hungary, Hungarian radio was playing Genesis. When I returned home and bought Invisible Touch, just about every song on the cassette (you read that right) was familiar.
On June 17, the day before, I took the subway to Nepstadion with the idea of surveying the landscape. I found dozens of Sealink trailers lined up on both sides of the "service" entrance, probably a hundred workers hard at it, and neither a gate nor security to prevent me from wandering inside the stadium and spending a leisurely hour watching the stage being built.
On the 18th, I met my new American friend Mike and we went to the show. At this late date, a review would be senseless, although it's hard to argue with the brutally frank approach at Allmusic.
At the same time, I was (and remain) an unreconstructed fan of Genesis throughout the band's evolving prog-to-pop career. The "pop era" Genesis took no chances and its stage show was formulaic; consequently, the group was savaged for doing exactly what successful show biz aggregations are supposed to do, which is give the public it's money's worth.
Genesis in Budapest wasn't avant garde. The show eschewed edgy, but the natives seemed to enjoy it, and so did I. Here's the song I'll always associate with June 18, 1987.
Genesis itself has a measure of ambivalence about the song "Abacab," off an earlier album and a staple of its 80s live performances. This version was filmed at Wembley Stadium in London two weeks after the appearance in Budapest.
At concert's end, public transportation had concluded for the day, with the exception of unfathomable night buses. It would be a four-mile walk back to my accommodation on the Buda side of the Danube, and Mike accompanied me part of the way, eventually peeling off toward his digs in Pest.
Everything was closed, and I recall it being bizarrely quiet at the stroke of midnight along a major avenue in a large European capital city. Then I heard a rumbling sound echoing through deserted streets, and stepped behind a statue to take a break and see what was happening.
Promptly a Soviet Red Army motorized column rumbled past. The Cyrillic lettering on the tanks and support vehicles contrasted with Hungarian on the signs all around me. The column was gone fairly quickly, and I've always wondered what it meant, although the most likely answer is it was moving from one base to another through the city during the least busy time of day.
Land of confusion indeed. It's always possible Phil Collins was more prescient than he's been given credit for.
--- Postscript ---
A DVD called “Hungarian Rhapsody: Queen Live in Budapest” was released in 2012. It grandly documents the very epitome of the now-discredited stadium rock genre, rewinding to the groundbreaking 1986 show at Budapest's Nepstadion, when seemingly every movie camera in the entirety of Communist-era Hungary was assembled in one venue to capture the rare spectacle of a Western concert behind the Iron Curtain.
This film is an essential gem, capturing the late, lamented Freddie Mercury and his band mates at their post-Live Aid pinnacle, on what proved to be their final tour. Footage is interspersed of Queen behaving as tourists. For me, it's a time capsule given that my visit to Budapest and the unexpected Genesis concert was only a year later.
As much as seeing Genesis meant to me at the time, after seeing the Queen film these many years later, I’d have chosen Queen because of Freddie Mercury. He was a one-off. Then again, so are we all.
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