This Week's Shows (1/25 - 1/31)

There's good music coming soon - really, there is - but it ain't here yet and this week, frankly and at the risk of offending some of the bands listed below, is more just about keeping the stages warm until the good music finally arrives.  It's not all bad, and there are a few stand-out sets here and there, but we otherwise just have more of the same garage/punk bands at the usual venues, a Top 40 pop singer, another Bowie tribute, two nights of a jam band, a whole lot of country-tinged singer/songwriters, and of course, EDM and hip hop.  If you play your cards right, you can also hear cover bands of both Fleetwood Mac, The Doors, Tom Petty, Van Morrison, The Rolling Stones, and Chuck Berry, and even get three nights of a Led Zeppelin tribute.  The best show of the week isn't until the very end - Sunday's Bully show at The Drunken Unicorn (thank dog for the Unicorn), and Thursday's Julien Baker show at Aisle 5 should be great, but until then, it may be a good week to finally go see the new Star Wars movie if you haven't done so yet.

MONDAY, JANUARY 25 

★Dot.s,  100 Watt Horse, Moses Nesh, Liminal Space (529)

Okay, this one should be good - Atlanta's Dot.s started as Ryan James' solo project and has since grown to a five-piece group combining acoustics, electronics and layered vocal harmonies, and their album Jellyfiss alternates complex rock songs with comedy sketches.  Athen's 100 Watt Horse is a folk-rock project, and Moses Nesh calls himself a "bluesman from the future."

Cross Me, Eternal Sleep, Malicious Wounding, Mental State, Conduit (Purgatory at Masquerade)

Hardcore from Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, and parts unknown. 

TUESDAY, JANUARY 26 

Jerome Newton & The Band Who Fell To Earth (529)

Another Bowie tribute ala the Bowie In Sweats show at The Earl a couple weeks ago. The setlist for this show will focus on Bowie’s work from 1969-1974, and includes not only well known material such as Space Oddity, Changes, and selections from the Ziggy album, but also deeper tracks such as Sweet Thing and Cracked Actor.

Marrow, Sima Cunningham, Misery Loves Chachi (The Earl)

Marrow, not to be confused with The Marrows, who played 529 last week, is a new band featuring former Kids These Days members Macie Stewart (keys/guitar/vocals), Liam Cunningham (guitar/vocals) and Lane Beckstrom (bass/vocals), along with drummer Matt Carroll.  Chicago's Sima Cunningham her been called “an incredibly powerful and self-assured performer, with a smoky, sexy voice.”  In 2014, Cunningham debuted her new experimental rock duo, Homme, with Marrow's Macie Stewart.  Openers Misery Loves Chachi is an indie, dream-pop band from Atlanta, combining chill-wave, Motown and African rhythms with post-modern chord changes and jazz harmonies.

Adelitas Way, Failure Anthem, Through Fire, Eye On Attraction, Thoughts Are Nuclear (Purgatory at Masquerade)
Adelitas Way, a rock band out of Las Vegas, will headline a show on the Purgatory stage at the godforsaken Masquerade. Failure Anthem is a five-man "active rock" band out of Greensboro, North Carolina, while Through Fire are from Omaha.  Eye on Attraction are a progressive/alternative rock band out of Scranton, Pennsylvania fronted by the vocals of Amber Sauls.  Openers Thoughts Are Nuclear is from LaGrange, Georgia.

Jess Glynne, Conrad Sewell (Terminal West)

Jess Glynne's I Cry When I Laugh North American Tour comes to Atlanta, where it sold out Terminal West and here's the thing - I had no idea who Jess Glynne even was until I saw her on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah last Tuesday night. So now I at least know that she's an English singer and songwriter in the tradition of Any Winehouse and Adele, and Wikipedia tells me that she rose to prominence as a featured artist on Clean Bandit's (who?) single Rather Be and Route 94's (again, who?) My Love, both of which I'm told reached number one on the UK Singles Chart in 2014. Her debut solo single, Right Here, reached the Top 10 that year, and if you're a fan, I hope you've already got a ticket because it's sold out.

Larry Campbell, Teresa Williams (Eddie's Attic)

Larry Campbell is a multi-instrumentalist who moves freely between rock, blues, country, folk and Celtic, playing guitar, fiddle, mandolin, pedal steel, cittern, dobro and banjo. Campbell's wife, Teresa Williams, will play the opening set. Both Campbell and Williams were members of the Levon Helm Band, and Teresa has toured as a member of Phil Lesh & Friends, and has been featured with Further and Bob Weir's post-Grateful Dead projects.

Cedar Hill (Steve's Live Music)
Cedar Hill is a bluegrass group from Atlanta with a high energy show that features variety, comedy and entertainment, tight harmony, unique vocal arrangements, and masterful picking on the 5-­string banjo, mandolin, acoustic guitar and electric bass.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 27 

Robert Earl Keen, The Roosevelts (Variety Playhouse)

Texas troubadour Robert Earl King will headline this show, with mandolin-based country rockers The Roosevelts opening.  Why are all troubadours from Texas?

Uniform, GHB, Enoch Ramone & The Ebola Boys, COPS, Death Stuff (The Earl)

A night of raw, unadorned punk.  Atlanta's Uniform consists of two-thirds of Wymyn’s Prysyn (vocalist and guitarist Josh Feigert and drummer Bobby Michaud), as well as bassist Matt Gibson Hatcher (Cheap Art, Slugga), and Bobby’s brother, guitarist David Michaud (Dasher, Stepdad SS). GHB, who just played The Earl last Wednesday with Wymyn's Prysyn, will bring their bratty punk attitude back to the club. Enoch Ramone's album, ER​+​EB Jr​.​Esq​.​III, consists of six under-two-minute punk songs; on their Bandcamp page, their tags include comedy, puke rock, and punk rock. Atlanta's COPs features Jesse Smith of Gentleman Jesse in a more ferocious, contemptuous setting. Death Stuff are a punk band from Bloomington, Indiana.  Bring ear plugs and be ready to mosh.

Uniform opening for Parquet Courts at The Earl, January 2015 

Wake, Grammar Tree, Chew, Okinawa88 (529)

Wake is an experimental non-profit hip-hop collective out of Atlanta.   All of Wake's work is planned to be released for free. "The collective feels art is not something to be owned. The creative process is to be shared and used for growth and education, not profit."  Openers Okinawa88 are an Atlanta hip hop/digi-funk duo, and it's probably a safe bet to assume the bands in between will be of similar style.

City Mouse, Frankie Boots, The Darnell Boys (Eddie's Attic)

City Mouse is Atlanta-based songwriters Brian Revels and Michael Hudgins, backed by Jenna Mobley on bass.  Frankie Boots leads a folk rock/Americana band out of San Francisco. Athens' The Darnell Boys were raised on country and blues, including the Allman Brothers Band and Hank Williams Sr.

Ania La Candela, Jerry Fields (Steve's Live Music)
Dancer Ania La Candela and percussionist Jerry Fields provide a night of flamenco dance and music, joined by Doble T on guitar and singer Kevin Wilson.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 28

★Julien Baker, Old Sea Brigade (Aisle 5)

Memphis' Julien Baker is a young singer/songwriter whom I just discovered - in fact, I only learned about her just now, while researching This Weeks Shows. However, the New York Times' Jon Caramanica included her album Sprained Ankle in his Top 10 for 2015, stating "In a superb year for women in indie rock, Ms. Baker’s voice stood out for its frailty and its determination. These songs limn a woman in decay, dying but alert enough to catalog every last indignity."  NPR's Ann Powers said "The raw nerves feeding this twenty-year-old's confessional songwriting can be overwhelming, but there's also much consideration and grace in her voice as she takes on loneliness, self-loathing, skin hunger and her insistent God's grace."  Baker has been included in the line-up for this year's Shaky Knees Festival, but this set at Aisle 5 may provide a more suitably intimate setting to hear her songs.

G-Eazy, A$AP Ferg, Marc E. Bassy, Nef The Pharaoh (The Tabernacle)

Rapper G-Eazy's When It's Dark Out tour, which sold out three nights at New York's Terminal 5 earlier this year, comes through Atlanta for a show at The Tab.

Reel Big Fish, The Maxies, Suburban Legends (Heaven at Masquerade)
Reel Big Fish was one of the legions of Southern California ska-punk bands to edge into the mainstream following the mid-’90s success of No Doubt and Sublime. Like most of their peers, the band was distinguished by their hyperkinetic stage shows, juvenile humor, ironic covers of new wave pop songs, and metallic shards of ska. The group cultivated an underground following that broke into the mainstream in the summer of 1997, when their single Sell Out became a modern rock radio and MTV favorite. The members of The Maxies were born in Greenland but have settled into Southern California, and play punk, punk pop, power pop, and garage rock.  So Cal ska rockers Suburban Legends open.

Peach Kings, Deaf Poets, Spines, Twin Criminal (Purgatory at Masquerade)
Downstairs from the Reel Big Fish ska-fest, Peach Kings, the rock noir duo of Paige Wood and Steven Dies, will headline the Purgatory stage.  Peach Kings' sexy and relatable songs are animated with a raw vibe and raucous stage presence often compared to The Kills and The White Stripes.  Deaf Poets are the Miami Beach duo of Sean Wouters and Nicolas Espinosa, whose music has the starkness of garage rock combined with the eagerness of ’80s punk, and some bluesy melancholy mixed in for good measure.  Spines are a post-punk noise rock band from Atlanta.  Twin Criminals opens.

Crystal Bright and the Silver Hands (Steve's Live Music)

Crystal Bright’s songs reflect her background in anthropology and ethnomusicology and her experiences playing and singing  in Mariachi, Chinese, Balinese Gamelan, Ugandan, Samba, and other styles. While singing, she alternates between playing accordion, musical saw, piano, adungu (a Ugandan harp), concertina, and bombo (Argentine drum).

The Welcome Home, Bridges, Son & Thief (Smith's Olde Bar)
Word was that Smith’s Olde Bar, an Atlanta institution since 1993, was going to close, but the club now has a new lease on life with the help of Atlanta real estate developer Hendon Properties. As a result, we can now have Athens Night at Smiths on a Thursday evening.  The Welcome Home is an indie rock band out of Athens, Bridges is a folk-rock band out of Athens, and Son & Thief are another indie rock band out of Athens.  

Dang Dang Dang, Highriders, Scragglers, Ben Trickey (The Earl)

We assume this will be a night of southern rock and alt country.  Dang Dang Dang has been billed as a "powerhouse" featuring "Rick Dang in an exclusive appearance straight from his bar stool in East Atlanta."  Not much else about them is known to us, or about Highriders, other than they've played several times at the Star Community Bar.  The Scragglers are apparently an Atlanta country rock band featuring members of Bigfoot, and opener Ben Trickey "strums and sings about the dark, emotional side of life as an imperfect man."

The Hooten Hallers, Deadly Lo-Fi, Georgia Slim (Star Community Bar)
The Hooten Hallers are a blues, soul, and rock n' roll band from Columbia, Missouri known for their raucous live shows and are heavily influenced by American roots music. Atlanta's Deadly Lo-Fi performs both as a one-man band with Rev. T (Travis) and also as a duo with Mr. Skeleton Man (Seth Moody), when available. Georgia Slim of I Want Whiskey opens.

King Furu, Dream Culture, Wieuca, Fake Flowers (The Mammal Gallery)
Okay, this one's got me: I can't tell if King Furu is the headlining band or the name of the event - you'll have to go to the show to find out for yourself if you're curious.  However, Dream Culture is apparently a psychedelic rock band based out of Athens.  Wiuca call themselves a "post-hippie" band and were described by Athens' Flagpole Magazine as “A fuzz-heavy, slightly countrified version of the sort of wistful slacker-rock pioneered by Pavement and Dinosaur Jr.” Atlanta indie rock trio Fake Flowers plays lush, propulsive pop songs, combining elements of shoegaze, post-punk, surf, and psychedelia. Live art by Mac Stewart doing the show.

Angie Aparo (Eddie's Attic)

Angie Aparo is the father of Anthony Aparo, who played Eddies' last week, and a highly respected and accomplished singer and performer in his own right. Angie has appeared on stage and in recordings with Tim McGraw, Faith Hill, Edwin McCain, Matchbox20, and the Zac Brown Band, but don't hold that against him.

Zoso – The Ultimate Led Zeppelin Tribute (Variety Playhouse)

The first of a three-night stand by this tribute band.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 29

An Evening With Macklemore and Ryan Lewis (The Fox Theater)

You have to admit, as much as you want to dislike the blue-eyed Seattle rapper, you have to admire him for at least speaking out on this issue, especially since it's so incredibly awkward coming from him. On White Privilege II, the white rapper questions both his position within hip-hop and as a white person unsure of his role in the struggle of black people fighting injustice.  It might get preachy at times, but he could have just played it safe, released Thrift Shop II, and gone for the money.

Art Garfunkel In Close-Up (Buckhead Theater)

Folk-rock and harmony legend Art Garfunkel's one man show comes, appropriately, to Buckhead. Reserved-seat tickets for this show start at $60 and range up to a jaw-dropping $125 ($135 day-of-show), so expect an audience of the truly devoted, devoid of the merely curious.  I wonder if there'll be anybody left at Johnny's Hideaway during this set.

Yani Mo, Nino Augustine & the OPE Band, Allen Thomas & The Family Orchestra (Aisle 5)

Yani Mo, "the lioness with nine lives," an Atlanta-based MC, headlines a free hip-hop show at Aisle 5. Originally from Panama, rapper Nino Augustine recently formed the OPE Band in Atlanta.  Allen Thomas opens.

Voodoo Visionary, King Koda, The Night Shift (Smith's Olde Bar)
Atlanta's Voodoo Visionary improvisational dance funk balances deep grooving bass and funky drum beats with keys and guitar to create a sound the group calls "psychofunk." Influenced by a wide array of artists such as Parliament Funkadelic, the Grateful Dead, Talking Heads, and Medeski Martin & Wood, Voodoo Visionary has their own unique sound. King Coda is a four-piece progressive rock band with influences in funk, punk, bluegrass, psychedelic, electronic, jazz, improvisation, and classical music.  Openers The Night Shift feature heavy, dance-type rock riffs.

The Weeks, Chief Scout (The Earl)

A second night of country rock at The Earl, this time featuring The Weeks.  Opener Chief Scout is the pet project of Athens-based songwriter and guitarist Trey Rosenkampff, who has been gathering buzz for his scrappy guitar pyrotechnics and energetic live shows.

The Breaks, Howl The Wolf, Bast, Lost In Chaos (Purgatory at The Masquerade)
The Breaks are an old-school three-piece punk band from Atlanta.  Influences of Atlanta's Howl The Wolf include Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Black Sabbath, Frank Zappa, Nirvana, Soundgarden, Stone Temple Pilots, and Alice in Chains.  Bast are a melodic rock band out of Atlanta.  Lost In Chaos opens.

Russell Moore & IIIrd Tyme Out (Eddie's Attic)

An early bluegrass show at Eddie's.

Sierra Hull (Eddie's Attic)

A later bluegrass show at Eddie's.

Onchi, Ancient Whales (529)

Onchi is a punk rock band from Decatur.  Thunderous power trio Ancient Whales (Asheville) perform melodic garage rock songs.

HeRobust, Mike Floss (Terminal West)

An EDM night.  HeRobust, otherwise known as Hayden Kramer, is an electronic producer from Atlanta.  Mike Floss is a rapper from Nashville who will appear at this May's Shaky Beats EDM festival.

Andrew & the Disapyramids, Night Terrors, Sonic Graffiti (Star Community Bar)
Where the bros are: Andrew & The Disapyramids are an Atlanta covers band that plays 60s beach music, British invasion/mod rocks songs, late-50s sock hop rock, and frat rock.  Raunchy punk band Night Terrors are members of Atlanta's The El Caminos with Tom Jerzawitz on vocals.  Openers Sonic Graffiti play rock, punk, blues, garage, and "soulful voodoo funk."

moe., Dumpstaphunk (The Tabernacle)

The first of a two-night stand by these two jam bands.

Domino - A Van Morrison Experience (Steve's Live Music)
I think the title is pretty much self-explanatory.

Zoso – The Ultimate Led Zeppelin Tribute (Variety Playhouse)

The second of a three-night stand by this tribute band.  

SATURDAY, JANUARY 30

Tedo Stone, Oak House, Sydney Eloise & The Palms (The Earl)

Tedo Stone has a new album, Marshes, out featuring his fusion of throwback southern vibes, indie rock hooks and a wall-of-sound resonance.  Athens, Georgia trio Oak House employs "dark tonalities with liberal rhythmic experimentation while featuring driving rock-riffage and pulsing electronic undercurrents." Sydney Eloise & the Palms’ debut Faces is a classic-pop meditation combing ’50s balladry, Phil Spector-style Walls of Sound, ’60s psych pop, ’70s Laurel Canyon country and more. 

The Purkinje Shift, Crown the Cake, Swots (529)
The Purkinje Shift, originally active from 1996-2000, have reformed and promise "a big, mathy party."  Crown The Cake is a rock outfit from Columbia, SC. SWOTS is a five piece rock band from Atlanta.

Sea Ghost, Wray, Sleep Dance (Mammal Gallery)

Sea Ghost Plays "pop jams with guitars."  Birmingham, Alabama's Wray isn’t afraid to revel in repetition, churning seamless grooves firmly in the tradition of NEU!, Faust, or Can.   Sleep Dance, a rock band out of Atlanta, open.

The PsychoDevilles, Crazy Man Crazy and V-8 Death Car (Star Community Bar)
If you didn't get enough rockabilly last week at The Reverend Horton Heat/Unknown Hinson/Nashville Pussy show, or just need a fresh dose for this week, The PsychoDevilles may have just the thing for you. Included on the bill are Crazy Man Crazy from Savannah, and V-8 Death Car from Montgomery, Alabama.

Susi French Connection (Eddie's Attic)

A seven-piece band plays a variety of 70’s music—from classic soul to country to disco—and insists the tables get moved for dancing. We'll see how well that works with Eddie's strict silence policy. Two shows - one at 7:00 pm and one at 9:30.

moe., Dumpstaphunk (The Tabernacle)

The second and final of the two-night stand by these two jam bands.

McLovins, Fox Street, Mister F (Aisle 5)

Another jam-band oriented lineup featuring Connecticut's McLovins, Colorado's Fox Street, and upstate New York's Mister F.  It may be possible to catch some of this set after the moe./Dumpstaphunk set if you hadn't got enough jam in you after a night at The Tabernacle.  Apparently, this is the last night of the McLovins/Mister F tour.

The Stoneberrys (Rolling Stones Tribute Band) (Steve's Live Music)
The only explanation needed here is that the band covers both the Stones AND Chuck Berry.

Rumors: Fleetwood Mac Tribute, The Dirty Doors: Doors Tribute Band, Refugee: Tom Petty Tribute (Smith's Olde Bar)
Bonus points for rich white people - there are $75 VIP tables available for this show.

Zoso – The Ultimate Led Zeppelin Tribute (Variety Playhouse)

The third and last of a three-night stand by this tribute band.

SUNDAY, JANUARY 31

★★Bully, Palehound (Drunken Unicorn)

Probably the best show of the week.  Bully are a melodic, punky, indie-rock band. The New Yorker wrote, "On Trying, the single from this Nashville band's debut album, Feels Like, the lead singer, Alicia Bognanno, recalls River Cuomo's droll lyricism and pulls off a damn good scream, singing about useless college degrees and imminent menstruation with the charisma of a star.  She interned at the Chicago recording studio of the grunge legend Steve Albini, the engineer behind formative early-nineties albums, such as Nirvana's In Utero, and her education in straight-to-tape recording shines through the album's fuzz."  Bully parts ways with their former tourmates, Metz, and for this leg of their tour will be joined by Palehound (Boston's Ellen Kempner), who had been touring with Torres, including one date with Julien Baker opening (see how everything comes together?). 

Naughty By Nature, KeyBoy (Heaven at Masquerade)
Naughty By Nature were discovered by fellow New Jersey native and then-emerging hip-hop artist Queen Latifah, who eventually signed the group to her management company, Flavor Unit, and helped them land a deal with Tommy Boy Records.  The kings of the hip-hop anthem are now on their 25th Anniversary Celebration Tour. Opener Key Vincent McCarthy, better known by his stage name KeyBoy, is an underground hip hop artist and record producer from Hutchinson, Kansas.

Victoria Canal (Eddie's Attic)

Those wanting to end their weekend on a quieter note than Bully or Naughty By Nature may want to consider Victoria Canal's solo set at Eddie's Canal is an Atlanta-based, 17-year-old singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist known for intimacy and poignancy in her performances, packing intelligent lyrics and a soulful delivery into her powerful message.  This will be an EP release show.

Mouths of Babes (Eddie's Attic)

Second show at Eddie's will feature Ty Greenstein (of Girlyman) and Ingrid Elizabeth (of Coyote Grace) as Mouths of Babes.  Mouths of Babes' sound has elements of blues, folk and soul, and the two songwriters juggle harmonies, guitar, bass, foot percussion, cajon, banjo, harmonica, and ukulele from song to song.

Jamie Laval Show (Steve's Live Music)
Celtic music.

Basketball Jones

Back in '81, at an Atlanta Hawks game versus the Boston Celtics at the old Omni, we got Bob Cousy's autograph.

The Cooz might not have been the greatest basketball player that ever lived, but he was certainly the most innovative.  Red Auerbach is said to have invented the fast-break, but Cousy perfected it and was the first stylistically dazzling player to play it while employing behind-the-back passes, full-court passes, between-the-legs passes, and more.  At the time, he was called "The Houdini of the Hardwood" and he opened the way for flamboyant players after him, including Chamberlain, Kareem, Jordan, and Lebron.  He initiated the artistic self-expression that makes modern basketball so exciting and compelling to watch today.

You really can't overstate the man's contributions to the sport, much less to the Celtics dynasty of the Fifties and Sixties.  He really is a hero to us, not only for his playing but for his public stance against racism.  Raised as a white kid in an ethnically diverse neighborhood, one night in 1950, rather than stay in the team's hotel in Charlotte, he accompanied teammate Chuck Cooper, the first African-American to be drafted in NBA history, on an uncomfortable overnight train ride after Cooper had been denied a room.  He also sympathized with the plight of black Celtics star Bill Russell, a frequent victim of racism. On his retirement from the game in 1963, President John F. Kennedy told him, "The game bears an indelible stamp of your rare skills and competitive daring."

By 1981, we were living in Atlanta and the Cooz was a color commentator for the Celts, despite some sort of speech impediment that made him pronounce his "R"s as "W"s.  This wasn't a problem until the Celtics recruited rebounder Rick Robey, forcing Cousy to have to say, several times each game, "Wick Wobey with the webound!"  The Celtics wound up trading Robey and keeping Cousy in the booth.

Anyhow, after the Atlanta game (Celtics won 98-90), we walked down to the Celtic's bench and saw coach Bill Fitch and the towering Kevin McHale (6' 10") heading toward the locker room.  We couldn't get near them before they disappeared beyond security, but that's when we saw Bob Cousy wrapping up his broadcast on the floor and he graciously gave us his autograph. 

That was 34 years ago today.  I'm happy to be able to report that Cousy's still alive and well and living in Worcester, Massachusetts.

But this is a music blog and not a sports blog, and while I can't find any songs about Bob Cousy in particular, here's Macklemore and Ryan Lewis on basketball in general.

Superb Owl

Pulling for Seattle because, well, because screw Peyton Manning!  I'll take Richard Sherman instead any day!

Shit I Missed

New Year's fireworks at the Space Needle, synchronized to music.  (Belated) Happy New Year, y'all!

My Life As Music, Part I: 1954-1960

In 1954, Dwight D. Eisenhower was President and  the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki a mere nine years earlier were fresher then in American's memories than the events of 9/11 are today.  I was born that year on the exact same day as the late Walter Payton of the Chicago Bears. Four years later, Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth, Chelsea Light Moving) was born on that same day.  But these are mere coincidences and not the point of this post.

In the year 1954, the landmark Brown v. the Board of Education decision overturned the policy of "separate but equal" conditions for different races.  Although the ruling turned out to be extremely difficult to enforce in the Southern United States, the civil rights movement had entered a new phase after Brown. 

Before I was born, R&B artists such as Fats Domino and Johnny Otis were creating exciting new music by speeding up the tempos and emphasizing the backbeat, but their music was not allowed to be played on many white-owned radio stations. However, artists and producers quickly recognized the commercial potential of the new music, and white performers were soon appropriating black music, a trend that still continues to this day (e.g., tUnE-yArDs and Macklemore & Ryan Lewis).

Bill Haley & His Comets are generally considered the earliest group of white musicians to bring the new music to the attention of white America.  In addition to the Brown decision, 1954 was also the year that Haley broke free from his former country-and-western style and recorded Chattanooga Choo Choo and Shake, Rattle and Roll, and more importantly, Thirteen Women (And Only One Man in Town), the latter featuring a now-more-famous B-side called (We're Gonna) Rock Around the Clock, widely regarded as the world's first rock 'n' roll recording. Not that there's any agreement on exactly what was the first rock 'n' roll song, nor will there likely ever be, but from late 1954 to late 1956, the first two years of my life, the group had nine singles in the Top 20, an accomplishment generally considered to be the birth of rock 'n' roll.

But the stand-out performer of the 1950s was not Bill Haley, but The King, Elvis Presley.  What people tend to forget, though, is that most of Elvis' early hits were covers of black R&B or blues songs, like That's All Right (a countrified arrangement of a blues number), Baby Let's Play House, Lawdy Miss Clawdy, and most notably Hound Dog, Presley's 1956 hit cover of an earlier (1952) recording by Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton.

Elvis' version now ranks No. 19 on Rolling Stone's list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.  My young parents bought a copy of Hound Dog sometime on the late '50s, and it is the earliest recording that I can recall hearing, even though my parents didn't consider it appropriate entertainment for young children.  They were pleased that whenever the song came on, I would bay like a hound in protest, and to this day  whenever I hear the song, I still hear a howling voice somewhere in the back of my mind.  Nevertheless, I remember hearing my father sing along with the record late at night to my mother's amusement.  Hound Dog clearly excited my parents, but at my young age I didn't recognize the sexual nature of that excitement, although in retrospect I now note that my two sisters weren't conceived until after Hound Dog had been purchased. 

That excitement on the part of young white audiences over African-American music and rhythms inevitably provoked racist reactions in the 1950s, but before we judge that earlier generation too harshly, I saw the same thing happen again in the 1970s with racist and homophobic reactions to the advent of disco, and in the 1990s with racist reactions to the emergence of hip-hop.

Thus was the world into which I was born.  Segregation, a despicable vestige of even more abhorrent slavery, was formally outlawed, and rock 'n' roll, a new form of music created by white musicians appropriating black styles, started becoming popular.  I never lived in a time without rock 'n' roll music, and I never lived in a time of  legal apartheid in America. To put it another way (and I know how this sounds), neither rock 'n' roll nor racial integration in America ever existed without me in the world.

But periods of musical innovation tend not to last very long.  For example, by the time most people heard the psychedelic music that was coming out of Haight-Ashbury in 1967, the Summer of Love had long since been over.  Same with the first punk-rock explosion in New York in the 1970s and the indie-rock renaissance in the late 2000s.  By the time I entered kindergarten in September 1959, Elvis had joined the army and Little Richard had retired from performing to become a preacher.  Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper, and Ritchie Valens all died in a February 1959 plane crash on the infamous "Day The Music Died."  Jerry Lee Lewis became entangled in a scandal surrounding his marriage to his thirteen-year-old cousin, and Chuck Berry had been arrested on allegations concerning a 14-year-old Apache girl.  The Payola scandal implicated major music-industry figures in bribery and corruption charges and gave a sense that rock 'n' roll music was coming to an end.  The charts were soon dominated by syrupy love ballads, usually aimed at teenage girls. 

But all was not without hope.  On January 2, 1960, a charismatic young Senator, John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts, initiated his campaign for President of the United States.  There was an excitement in the early '60s air, a sense of possibility that anything was possible and that the best was yet to come.  There was talk of a "New Camelot," surf music began to emerge from California, and dances crazes like the Twist and the Watusi embodied the excitement everybody was feeling.

With a vigorous young leader like Kennedy as President, we wondered, what could possibly go wrong?