THIS is a CLOSE-UP?

Just over four decades ago, on 1 May 1977, Folsom Field in Boulder, CO held over 60,000 most-likely-baked music fans for a concert featuring Country Joe McDonald, John Sebastian, Firefall, Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band, and headlined by Fleetwood Mac. My parents were two of those fans, and my father captured the following pics of the event (along with some periodic commentary from my dad at the time). Country Joe McDonald ("he was extra") John Sebastian ("he sucked") Firefall ("they were very good") Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band (the middle picture features Fleetwood Mac watching from the wings) Fleetwood Mac (the middle picture shows Christine McVie playing wooden chairs) At one point, a hang glider flew over the stadium, eliciting a cheering standing ovation from the crowd. Speaking of the crowd... The center of the second shot features two women with bino...

Aside from cloying humidity and beaded necklaces designed to elicit fleeting nudity from soused dames, southern Louisiana is known for a delightful musical melange of R&B and Creole called zydeco. Largely driven by accordion and guitar, zydeco is custom built for filling the dance floor with ebullient joy, so no matter your age, color, or creed, it's pretty hard to sit still once those propulsive rhythms kick in. So naturally, zydeco connects with people who live for dance music. People like Robert Palmer. "Change His Ways," a tale of the ebb and flow of a love affair, is a musical outlier on Heavy Nova , but it does feature Palmer's trademark vocal harmonies as the foundation to the zydeco flavors, adding layers of sweetener to a song that doesn't need it but benefits from it. And I haven't even mentioned the yodeling yet. Palmer's peripatetic zest for genre-hopping may be off-putting to some, but tracks like "Change His Ways" offer further ...