VMP Magazine

Britpop might be perceived as peaking during the years 1994-1995, but 1997 stands out as particularly auspicious for British bands releasing their legacy-making third albums. (No offense to Blur, who released their masterful and messy self-titled fifth album that same year.) The Verve released the sublime Urban Hymns while Oasis dropped the fun if overblown Be Here Now. But no date stands out like June 16, 1997. On that day, Radiohead released OK Computer into the world, while Spiritualized released Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space. They both sounded like classics upon arrival, and the intervening decades have only borne that sonic truth out, though they took different routes to get there.

In December, 2016, JazzTimes traced the history of protest in jazz. It touched on classics like Louis Armstrong’s “(What Did I Do to Be So) Black and Blue” and Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit” right up to Max Roach’s fiery We Insist! The Freedom Now Suite and Archie Shepp’s Attica Blues. But they left out the first album-length statement of the Civil Rights era, leading longtime subscriber Sonny Rollins to write in and defend his magnificent yet oddly overshadowed 1958 album, Freedom Suite. The editors of JazzTimes weren’t the only ones to mistakenly pass it by.