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      Ray Hildebrand, the ‘Paul’ of Hitmakers Paul and Paula, Dies at 82

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      He wrote a romantic song for his friend’s girlfriend, Paula, and recorded it as a duet with Jill Jackson. It became a No. 1 hit.Ray Hildebrand, whose recording with a friend, Jill Jackson, of a love song he wrote in college, “Hey Paula,” became a No. 1 hit in 1963 and brought them instant fame as Paul and Paula, died on Aug. 18 at his home in Overland Park, Kan. He was 82.His son-in-law, Larry Sterling, said the cause was dementia.“Hey Paula” was a sweet, romantic ballad about a couple close to marrying. Mr. Hildebrand had written it at the request of a friend whose girlfriend was named Paula, but the emotion behind it was for Judy Hendricks, a former girlfriend with whom Mr. Hildebrand wanted to reunite.The song is a musical conversation started by Mr. Hildebrand, who sings in, part:Hey, hey, Paula.I want to marry you.Hey, hey, Paula.No one else could ever do.When Ms. Jackson answers, she sings:Hey, Paul.I’ve been waiting for you.Hey, hey, hey Paul.I want to marry you too.The popularity of “Hey Paula” evolved slowly and then exploded. It began as a song that Mr. Hildebrand and Ms. Jackson sang on a 15-minute radio show she had in Brownwood, Texas, where they were both attending Howard Payne College (now University). The show’s disc jockey told them that listeners loved the song, and suggested they record it.At a studio in Fort Worth, they cut a 45-r.p.m. record, and the song, released on the small Le Cam label, became a regional hit. Recognizing the song’s potential, Mercury Records soon bought their contract and the recording and reissued it on its Philips label.“They changed our names,” Mr. Hildebrand told Link, the Howard Payne magazine, in 2012. “We called the song ‘Paul and Paula’ by Jill and Ray, and they called it ‘Hey Paula’ by Paul and Paula, which is better marketing.”Released in late 1962, “Hey Paula” topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the second week of February 1963, displacing “Walk Right In” by the Rooftop Singers. It stayed in the No. 1 spot for three weeks. Paul and Paula’s next single, “Young Lovers,” peaked at No. 6 at the end of that April.They were on tour in England in the spring, when “Hey Paula” rose to No. 8 on the Melody Maker chart and they met the Beatles in a BBC television studio.In June they sang “First Quarrel” on Dick Clark’s “American Bandstand,” and they later joined Mr. Clark’s three-week musical caravan as part of a roster that also included Gene Pitney, Lou Christie, Bob B. Soxx & The Blue Jeans, the Crystals and Ruby and the Romantics.But when the Clark tour reached Cincinnati at the end of July, Mr. Hildebrand realized that he had had enough of the road. At the end of a show, he told Ms. Jackson that he was quitting the tour. He felt he was no longer in control of his life.“So at 5 o’clock in the morning in Cincinnati, I wrote Dick Clark a note and slipped it under his door,” he said at an event held two years ago by the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, a sports ministry, to which he devoted much of his life. “I said, ‘I’m so sorry.’”For the rest of the tour, Mr. Hildebrand said in an interview with the website Classic Bands, Mr. Clark filled in for him on “Hey Paula.”Once he was off the tour, Mr. Hildebrand started dating Miss Hendricks again. They married in early 1964 and stayed together until her death in 1999.Jill Jackson, who is now Jill Landon, said she supported Mr. Hildebrand’s decision to leave the Clark caravan. “It was the right thing for him to do,” she said by phone.She and Mr. Hildebrand released three albums in 1963. They continued to perform together occasionally for a while and, until recently, reunited at oldies shows and other events.Mr. Hildebrand and Ms. Jackson in 1985. Though their days as hitmakers ended in 1963, they continued to reunite for oldies shows and other events. Ron Wolfson/MediaPunch , via AlamyRaymond Glenn Hildebrand was born on Nov. 21, 1940, in Joshua, Texas. His father, Walter, was a school principal; his mother, Alma (Wood) Hildebrand, was a teacher. After attending Navarro Junior College in Corsicana, Texas, he transferred to Howard Payne College on a basketball scholarship.In the summer of 1962, he got a job at the college’s swimming pool and, to save money on housing, lived in the gymnasium. In the quiet of the gym, he started writing songs.He was asked by a teammate to write a song about his girlfriend, Paula. Another teammate listened to an early version of the song, which was told entirely by Paul, and suggested a change.“He said, ‘You ought to let the girl sing back to the guy,’” Mr. Hildebrand recalled in the Link magazine interview. At first, he said, he thought the suggestion was ridiculous, but then he agreed to do it, turning the song into a conversation.After receiving his bachelor’s degree in English in 1964, Mr. Hildebrand started a new career as a contemporary Christian singer and songwriter. He recorded albums under his own name and, starting in the 1980s, with a partner, Paul Land, in an act that mixed music with comedy.From 1967 to 1981, he was program director of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes at the organization’s national office in Kansas City, Mo. It was mostly a musical job, writing songs with pop melodies and performing them at conferences and summer camps for young athletes. He continued to perform at Fellowship events for many years.“He brought a great deal of fun and laughter to the stage,” Wayne Atcheson, a former assistant director of the organization, said in a phone interview. “You never knew what he would say to get a belly laugh.”Mr. Hildebrand was inducted into the Fellowship’s Hall of Champions in 2003.He also worked as a television producer and a real estate appraiser.He is survived by his daughter, Heidi Sterling; his son, Michael; seven grandchildren; four great-grandchildren; and a brother, Steve.Looking back at “Hey Paula” many years later, Mr. Hildebrand said he understood its appeal.“I think one of the things ‘Hey Paula’ had was, it was like a couple dating over the air,” he said in the Classic Bands interview. “They were singing back and forth to each other. You had your Steve and Eydies, but it was not in the teenage pizza-and-peanut-butter songs.”He added: “It was marketable. It was cute.” More

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      Rammstein Singer Till Lindemann Is Cleared of Sexual Assault Allegations

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      Berlin’s public prosecutor’s office dropped its investigation, citing a lack of evidence for allegations that Mr. Lindemann had drugged young women in order to have sex with them.Berlin’s public prosecutor’s office on Tuesday said it had dropped its sexual assault investigation into Till Lindemann, the frontman for the rock band Rammstein, citing a lack of evidence.The investigation began in June after several women said that Mr. Lindemann had plied young people with alcohol and drugs before, during and after concerts in order to have sex with them. Lawyers for Mr. Lindemann denied those claims in a statement and threatened legal action against those making the claims and news outlets reporting on them.“I thank all those who have waited impartially for the end of the investigation,” Mr. Lindemann, 60, posted to Instagram on Tuesday.When the German news media reported on the allegations of impropriety against the leader of one of the country’s most successful modern music groups, commercial partners ended their ties with Mr. Lindemann. Universal, which distributes Rammstein’s music, said it would stop any promotional activities. And politicians condemned the described behavior.“We need more awareness about abuse of power and sexualized violence, and not only in the music industry, but in the whole cultural industry,” Claudia Roth, Germany’s culture minister, told Der Spiegel, a newsweekly, adding, “The times of foul machismo combined with abuse of power up to sexualized violence should really and definitely be over.”According to the prosecutor’s office, however, it was impossible to substantiate the reports against Mr. Lindemann because so many accusations were made anonymously. Kaya Loska, a prominent influencer who had described her experience backstage during a concert in 2022, was interviewed by prosecutors. But they said she was of little help because she did not witness any crimes being committed.“It was therefore not possible to sufficiently substantiate any allegations of the crimes, nor was it possible to gain an impression of the credibility of the alleged injured parties and the believability of their statements during questioning,” Sebastian Büchner, who speaks for the public prosecutor’s office, wrote in a statement.Shelby Lynn, a former fan of the band, helped make the allegations public when she posted on social media about her experience at a concert in Vilnius in May, during which she believed she was drugged. Ms. Lynn took her complaint to the Lithuanian police, but they declined to investigate. More

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      Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour Speed Round, Part 1

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicThe first leg of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour has come to a close, with the pop superstar having performed in stadiums across North America for several million people.A few of those people are friends of Popcast. This week and next, we’ll speak with a few of them about their experiences at the show.On this week’s Popcast, conversations about the consonances between the Eras Tour and Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour, the way Swift does (and does not) deploy dance as part of her arsenal and the thrills of seeing Swift perform for the first time.Guests:Wesley Morris, a critic at large for The New York TimesBrian Seibert, who writes about dance for The New York Times and othersYasi Salek, host of the Bandsplain podcastConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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      A Summer of Live Music, From Stadiums to Clubs

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      Hear songs from Beyoncé, Alvvays, Mdou Moctar and more.Beyoncé, a master of ballads and addition.The New York TimesDear listeners,I sincerely hope I am not the first person to break this news to you, but it’s true: Summer is almost over.Let us not mourn what is lost, though. Let us celebrate the summer that was. And what it was, for me at least, was a time to go to a lot of concerts. Most of them outdoors!While the post-lockdown summer concert has made its gradual, necessary return over the past two years, this season it felt back in full bloom. The news was, of course, dominated by a few extremely high-profile ones (Taylor Swift’s cultural juggernaut Eras Tour; Beyoncé’s first solo outing in seven years, the Renaissance World Tour) but there were plenty of simpler (and cheaper) pleasures to be had, too. I caught some incredible free shows over the past few months in New York City parks, from the likes of Mdou Moctar and John Cale. And in a smaller club environment, I was introduced to the up-and-coming singer-songwriter Blondshell.Today’s playlist is a kind of sonic scrapbook of my summer of shows. I’d encourage you to make your own, too; even as this season fades out (sob), it’s a great way to hold onto its most tuneful memories.Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. Alvvays: “Easy on Your Own?”Let’s start with the most recent one: Last Wednesday, I caught an excellent double bill in Prospect Park, as a part of BRIC Arts Media’s annual Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival. The Canadian dream-pop band Alvvays played first; its last album, “Blue Rev,” was one of my favorites of 2022, and I especially love this fuzzed out, gently melancholic second track. (Listen on YouTube)2. Alex G: “Gretel”And here’s the other half of that double bill, the Philadelphia indie musician Alex G, who also released one of my favorite albums of last year, the strange and poignant “God Save the Animals.” Alex’s live shows are always a bit louder and more raucous than his records would lead you to believe; I have actually seen mosh pits break out when he plays this seemingly subdued standout from his great 2019 album, “House of Sugar.” (Listen on YouTube)3. Taylor Swift: “The Archer”I have been known to refer to this one as “The Sagittarius National Anthem.” The more I think about Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour — and there are plenty of opportunities to do so; it’s still all anybody wants to talk about — the more I think my favorite stretch of the concert was the first one, when she finally got to play some songs from her 2019 album “Lover.” Here she is at her most minimalist, and her most antiheroic, as she punctures her own good-girl image on “The Archer”: “I see right through me, I see right through me.” (Listen on YouTube)4. Tanya Tucker: “Delta Dawn”When I traveled to the Gorge in Washington earlier this summer to catch Brandi Carlile’s Echoes Through the Canyon festival — and, you know, a certain very, very special headliner — I was lucky enough to catch an early evening set by the country icon Tanya Tucker. My second favorite part of the show was when she played “Delta Dawn,” which she recorded at age 13, and every single person there sang along at the top of their lungs. My first favorite part was when Tucker uncorked a bottle of her signature tequila and passed it around the front row. (Listen on YouTube)5. Amanda Shires & Bobbie Nelson: “Always on My Mind”The headliners that final night of Echoes Through the Canyon were the Highwomen, a country supergroup that features Carlile, Maren Morris, Natalie Hemby and the fiery fiddle player and singer-songwriter Amanda Shires. Each Highwoman played a solo cover during the set, and Shires wowed me with a poignant rendition of “Always on My Mind,” which she dedicated to Bobbie Nelson. Luckily, you didn’t just have to be there: The studio recording of the song, on which Nelson played piano shortly before she died last year, is gorgeous, and quite close to the version Shires played live. (Listen on YouTube)6. John Cale: “Heartbreak Hotel”Another brilliant show in Prospect Park: Earlier this month, 81-year-old John Cale treated Brooklyn to a spellbinding concert on one of the most temperate evenings of the whole summer. His set pulled from decades of his own material, but one of the most memorable moments was when he played an eerily deconstructed reimagining of “Heartbreak Hotel,” similar to this version that appeared on his 1992 live album “Fragments of a Rainy Season.” (Listen on YouTube)7. Blondshell: “Dangerous”I already knew, from listening to her 2023 self-titled debut as Blondshell, that Sabrina Teitelbaum was a sharp songwriter with a distinct take on the dark side of young adulthood and an easy way with minor-key melodies. What I didn’t realize until I saw her live this summer, though, is that she can really sing. She belted out “Blondshell” highlights like “Salad” and “Sepsis” (two great titles for songs), but the finely calibrated pathos she brought to the haunting “Dangerous” lingered with me long after the show. (Listen on YouTube)8. Mdou Moctar: “Tarhatazed”Mdou Moctar, the Tuareg guitar wizard whose last few albums have gained him much-deserved recognition in the West, leads what I believe to be one of the best rock bands in the world right now. I’ve seen them live a few times, and they’ve never sounded tighter than they did at the free — what a bargain! — show they played in July at Central Park’s SummerStage Festival. The new material was amazing and has me very excited for whatever the group decides to release next, but in the meantime, here’s an epic jam from the band’s 2019 album “Ilana the Creator.” (Listen on YouTube)9. Beyoncé: “1+1”As I pointed out in my review of the North American opening of her dazzling Renaissance World Tour, Beyoncé began a show that honors the vast history of dance music with, unexpectedly, a mini-set of slow, piano-driven torch songs. I confess I was getting a little impatient with the Queen — didn’t we come to dance?! — until she played a transcendent “1+1,” one of her greatest ballads. Then I had no choice but to bow down. (Listen on YouTube)I’ve got a hundred thrown-out speeches I almost said to you,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“A Summer of Live Music” track listTrack 1: Alvvays, “Easy on Your Own?”Track 2: Alex G, “Gretel”Track 3: Taylor Swift, “The Archer”Track 4: Tanya Tucker, “Delta Dawn”Track 5: Amanda Shires & Bobbie Nelson, “Always on My Mind”Track 6: John Cale, “Heartbreak Hotel”Track 7: Blondshell, “Dangerous”Track 8: Mdou Moctar, “Tarhatazed”Track 9: Beyoncé, “1+1”Bonus tracksI purposely left off the summer concerts to which I’d already devoted entire playlists, but in case you missed those, the Cure and the Pretenders were both amazing.Also, my beleaguered New York Mets are still giving me little to cheer about, but I continue to be amused by the special walk-up songs they choose for “Women’s Day” (which was March 8 everywhere else in the world but, for some reason, was Aug. 26 at Citi Field). Each player changed his walk-up song to one by a female artist, and for the second year in a row, Daniel Vogelbach’s pick was the one to beat. This year he chose Vanessa Carlton’s “A Thousand Miles,” and last year, he went with Kelis’s “Milkshake.” Daniel Vogelbach, I salute you. More

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      Florence Welch Says She Had Emergency Surgery

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      Florence Welch, the front woman of the band, apologized to fans for canceling her recent shows after undergoing what she said was lifesaving surgery.Florence Welch, the front woman of the English indie rock band Florence + the Machine, announced on Instagram that she had undergone emergency surgery, which is why she had canceled some of her recent shows.“I had to have emergency surgery for reasons I don’t really feel strong enough to go into yet, but it saved my life,” Welch wrote.“I’m so sorry that I had to cancel the last couple of shows,” she added.The singer said she plans to return to the stage for the Meo Kalorama festival in Lisbon, Portugal, where she is slated to perform on Sept. 1, and close out her Dance Fever tour in Malaga, Spain, on Sept. 2.The Dance Fever Tour was initially postponed in November, when an X-ray revealed that she had been dancing on a broken foot, Welch said on Instagram at the time.“It is not in my nature to postpone a show, and certainly not a U.K. tour, but I’m in pain and as dancers know, dancing on an injury is not a good idea,” she wrote in November.In her most recent Instagram post, she assured fans that her feet were fine but said that upon her return to the stage she might not be jumping around as much, adding, “you can do that for me.”“Suffice to say I wish the songs were less accurate in their predictions,” she wrote. “But creativity is a way of coping, mythology is a way of making sense. And the dark fairy tale of Dance Fever, with all its strange prophecies, will provide me with much-needed strength and catharsis right now.”The band is most known for its hit “Dog Days Are Over,” which peaked at 21 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2010, and “Shake it Out,” which peaked at 72 in 2012. More

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      A Strokes Tribute Band Is Part of a Fresh Wave of Latino Fandom

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      The members of the Strokes tribute band Juicebox, like the crowds they draw, are predominantly Latino.On a Friday night, at the center of the Santa Fe Springs Swap Meet, a large stage at this open-air California market stood in front of an expanse of picnic tables and food vendors.The swap meet, at the border of Los Angeles and Orange Counties, usually hosts tribute bands that pay homage to Rock & Roll Hall of Fame-enshrined acts like Metallica or Mexican American icons like Jenni Rivera. But that evening in March, Juicebox, Southern California’s leading Strokes tribute band, had gathered an enthusiastic, multigenerational audience ready to celebrate the group that has come to symbolize stylish downtown New York City rock in the early 2000s. There were leather jackets everywhere.Deep into the show, when the group played “50/50,” a forgotten track from the Strokes’ 2013 full-length “Comedown Machine,” a mosh pit started, earning the crowd a warning from the venue. As Juicebox left the stage after performing 47 singles, album cuts and B-sides over three sets, chants began, calling out for one more: “¡Otra! ¡Otra! ¡Otra!”The members of Juicebox, like the crowds they draw, are predominantly Latino, though the band’s founder and drummer, Jason Wise, is a 38-year-old self-described “Jewish dude” from Queens. He moved to Los Angeles in 2010 and fell in with a group of mostly Latino musicians he met through Craigslist who loved early 2000s rock bands as much as he did. Six years ago, Wise started Juicebox, which now features the lead vocalist Edgar Rene Espino, the guitarists George Campos and Renzon Sanchez and the bassist Tony Perez (who recently took over for John Leal). It usually plays twice a month, booking gigs across Southern California.Wise discovered the Strokes when he was in his midteens and they’ve been his favorite band ever since. “They are a big part of who I am as an individual and to be able to be part of spreading the fandom and the love of the Strokes to other people is something that I’m not tired of doing,” he said. “If I wasn’t in this band, I would go to these shows.”Juicebox, from left: George Campos, John Leal, Edgar Rene Espino, Jason Wise and Renzon Sanchez. Wise started the band six years ago.Saul Barrerala for The New York TimesThe Strokes themselves remain a major act in Latin America, which has a long tradition of supporting rock music. When the band performs “Reptilia” for festival crowds, it’s greeted with stadium-size fútbol chants.It’s not surprising that a place like Los Angeles County — where 49.1 percent of respondents (or more than 4.9 million people) in the 2021 census identified as Hispanic/Latino — is home to a large number of Latino Strokes fans.But Jeanette Diaz, a journalist and publicist from Los Angeles, believes that the pull of the Strokes is especially strong among the first-generation American children of immigrants, who can have complicated feelings about their identities and which culture they belong to. The band “could just do what they wanted to do and it was accepted, and a lot of people try to find that,” Diaz said. “It’s this idea of fitting in on your own terms, which a lot of Latin kids craved, maybe subconsciously.”Some members of Juicebox say they feel a closeness with the Strokes that comes partly from representation. (The drummer Fabrizio Moretti was born in Brazil, and the guitarist Albert Hammond Jr.’s mother is from Argentina.) “I see pictures of Fab and I’m like, I play soccer with that guy, he looks like someone I know,” said Sanchez, the Juicebox guitarist whose own background is half Lebanese and half El Salvadoran. “And a guy like Albert, who has big curly hair, that’s my brother. I can see myself in the Strokes.”Fans at a Juicebox show in late May.Saul Barrerala for The New York TimesThe most obvious antecedent to this fandom is the one for the Smiths, the maudlin but melodious Manchester band that broke up in 1987 but continues to enjoy a passionate following among Mexican Americans today. This relationship has been covered in articles, documentaries and books for over 20 years, and it too has inspired tribute bands, including the long-running Sweet & Tender Hooligans, fronted by Jose Maldonado, who is often called “the Mexican Morrissey.”José G. Anguiano, an associate professor of Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies at California State University, Los Angeles, said he has seen similar phenomena in the region’s goth, metal and rockabilly worlds. “As people have moved away or they’ve aged out of certain subcultures or music scenes, it does seem like in Los Angeles, Latinos have moved in to take the reins,” he said. “What’s really cool is they’re taking the reins, not just in terms of being fans, but also fronting these tribute bands and producing their own music. They’re fully participating in every sense in these subcultures.”In 2022, the rising El Monte, Calif., band the Red Pears covered the Strokes’ “Automatic Stop” for Unquiet Live’s YouTube channel. In the video, their guitarist and vocalist, Henry Vargas, introduced the song as being by “Los Estrokes.” The Red Pears never thought it was strange that they knew so many Latino people who were into the Strokes because they all came to the group through Latino friends. But it was each band member’s individual love of the Strokes that helped bring them together and shape their sound.“In our city there was a lot of punk, ska and metal bands,” Vargas said in an interview. “We were the only ones that were branching out, trying out different stuff.”Before joining Juicebox in 2022, Espino, the band’s lead singer, was in a different Strokes tribute band for six years, but he’s never seen the real deal play live. He said he’s always been a bigger fan of the Arctic Monkeys, whose frontman, Alex Turner, famously started an album with the lyrics, “I just wanted to be one of the Strokes.”“I’m living his life right now,” Espino quipped.Sanchez, 26, is the Juicebox member most interested in re-creation. In a skinny tie or a polo shirt, he plays a white Fender Stratocaster at nearly chest-level, just like Hammond Jr. His mind was blown open by the Strokes when he was 14, after two brothers he used to be in a band with introduced him to the song “The Modern Age.”But an even younger cohort has recently embraced the Strokes through the Rick Rubin-produced album “The New Abnormal,” from 2020, which spawned a TikTok hit in “The Adults Are Talking.”“I didn’t know how they’re doing it, where they sound like they’re not trying, but they’re really trying,” Miguel Ponce, a D.J. and promoter, said of the Strokes.Saul Barrerala for The New York TimesOn a Friday night in late May, a crowd packed Knucklehead, a dive-y bar on an unglamorous block in Hollywood. Juicebox was on the bill alongside an Arctic Monkeys tribute band called Polar Primates for Room on Fire, a club night dedicated to early 2000s indie and alternative music. The Strokes’ time playing tiny New York City venues like the Mercury Lounge looms large in their history, but in reality, it lasted for barely a blip. Juicebox shows like this one let fans who were born too late or on the opposite coast reimagine themselves in that moment.During a phone interview a few days earlier, Room on Fire’s D.J. and promoter, Miguel Ponce, 29, explained that he learned about the Strokes from a friend on his high school baseball team, but it took a little time before he truly got it. “I heard the song ‘Ize of the World’ and I don’t know what it was, but all of a sudden it hit like a spark, dude,” he said. “I didn’t know how they’re doing it, where they sound like they’re not trying, but they’re really trying.”Ponce started Room on Fire in March 2022, but the early installments didn’t draw much of a crowd. After he had Juicebox play for the first time this past January, the party began to take off. “I started seeing the true potential of what I can do,” he said.Before the pandemic, Ponce used to book shows with local acts in Downtown Los Angeles. He already knew how much of an influence the Strokes had. “Most of the indie bands, they would dress like Julian Casablancas,” he said. “There’s no shame in that.” More

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      David LaFlamme, Whose ‘White Bird’ Captured a 1960s Dream, Dies at 82

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      As a founder of the San Francisco band It’s a Beautiful Day, he was at the center, if not in the forefront, of the Haight-Ashbury acid-rock explosion.David LaFlamme, who infused the psychedelic rock of the 1960s with the plaintive sounds of an electric violin as a founder of It’s a Beautiful Day, the ethereal San Francisco band whose breakout hit, “White Bird,” encapsulated the hippie-era longing for freedom, died on Aug. 6 in Santa Rosa, Calif. He was 82.His daughter Kira LaFlamme said the cause of his death, at a health care facility, was complications of Parkinson’s disease.Mr. LaFlamme had seemed an unlikely fit for the role of flower-power troubadour. He was a classically trained violinist who had performed with the Utah Symphony Orchestra. He was an Army veteran. “When I was a young man, I carried my M-1 very proudly and was ready to do my duty to defend my country,” he said in a 2007 video interview.But the times were the times, and in 1967, the year of the Summer of Love, he and his wife, Linda, a keyboardist, formed It’s a Beautiful Day. The band bubbled up from the acid-rock cauldron of the Haight-Ashbury district, which also produced the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and other groups.The band never found the commercial success of its hallowed San Francisco contemporaries. Its debut album, called simply “It’s a Beautiful Day” and released in 1969, climbed to No. 47 on the Billboard chart. “White Bird,” sung by Mr. LaFlamme and Pattie Santos, did not manage to crack the Hot 100 singles chart, perhaps in part because of its running time: more than six minutes, twice the length of most AM radio hits.Even so, the song became an FM radio staple, and an artifact of its cultural moment.The LaFlammes wrote the song in 1967, when they were living in the attic of a Victorian house during a brief relocation to Seattle. The lyrics took shape on a drizzly winter day as they peered out a window at leaves blowing on the street below.White birdIn a golden cageOn a winter’s dayIn the rain“We were like caged birds in that attic,” Mr. LaFlamme recalled. “We had no money, no transportation, the weather was miserable.”He later said the song, with its references to darkened skies and rage, was about the struggle between freedom and conformity. In an email, Linda LaFlamme said that she considered it a song of hope, and that the only rage they had felt was about the Seattle weather.Still, the song, with its pleading chorus, “White bird must fly, or she will die,” seemed to echo the mounting disillusionment of 1969, as marmalade skies turned into storm clouds with the realities of drug addiction and social turmoil, as epitomized by the bloodshed at the Altamont rock festival that year.“It was a very solemn period of music on that first album,” Mr. LaFlamme said in a 2003 interview published on the music website Exposé.“If I would have kept going that way,” he added, “I would have ended up like Jim Morrison, getting more and more into that personal torture trip.”It’s a Beautiful Day’s debut album, released in 1969, reached No. 47 on the Billboard chart. But the band never found a fraction of the commercial success of some of its fellow San Francisco bands.Columbia recordsDavid Gordon LaFlamme was born on May 4, 1941, in New Britain, Conn., the first of six children of Adelard and Norma (Winther) LaFlamme. He spent his early years in Los Angeles, where his father was a Hollywood stunt double, before settling in Salt Lake City, where his father became a copper miner.David was about 5 when he got his first violin, a hand-me-down from an aunt.“I began fooling around with it on my own and taught myself to play ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,’” he said in a 1998 interview. Formal training followed.After joining the Army — he was stationed at Fort Ord, near Monterey, Calif. — he suffered hearing damage from the firing of deafening ordnance. He ended up in a military hospital in San Francisco, then put down roots in the city after his discharge in 1962.He found lodging in the same house as his future wife, Linda Rudman. “By the second day that I was there, she and I had already written a song together,” he said.In 1967, Mr. LaFlamme formed a band called Electric Chamber Orkustra, also known as the Orkustra, with Bobby Beausoleil, a young musician who played bouzouki and would later be convicted of murder as a follower of Charles Manson. A run with Dan Hicks & His Hot Licks followed before the LaFlammes formed It’s a Beautiful Day.The band got its break in October 1968, when the promoter Bill Graham had it open for Cream in Oakland. It’s a Beautiful Day signed with Columbia Records soon after.The band’s second album, “Marrying Maiden,” rose to No. 28 on the album charts. But by then the LaFlammes had split up and his wife had left the band. (They divorced in 1969.)It’s a Beautiful Day carried on with varying lineups and released three more albums, including “At Carnegie Hall” in 1972, before disbanding a year later.In addition to his daughter Kira, from his first marriage, Mr. LaFlamme is survived by his third wife, Linda (Baker) LaFlamme, whom he married in 1982; his sisters, Gloria LaFlamme, Michelle Haag and Diane Petersen; his brothers, Lon and Dorian; another daughter, Alisha LaFlamme, from his marriage to Sharon Wilson, which ended in divorce in 1973; and six grandchildren.Mr. LaFlamme released several albums over the years, including a solo album in the mid-1970s called “White Bird,” which included a disco-ready version of the original single. It actually outperformed the original, peaking at No. 89 on the Billboard Hot 100.But, he said in 1998, “It was a very difficult period musically, because during that period disco music ruled the earth.”“It was really the day the music died,” he said. More

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      A Crash Course in the Elephant 6 Recording Co.

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      A new documentary explores the lo-fi psychedelic music made by bands including Apples in Stereo, the Olivia Tremor Control and Neutral Milk Hotel.The Apples in Stereo, one of the anchors of the Elephant 6 scene that’s the focus of a new documentary.Tim BarnesDear listeners,Today’s Amplifier is a celebration of the Elephant 6 Recording Co., a humble but hugely influential music scene that grew in the 1990s out of two small Southern cities — Ruston, La. and later Athens, Ga. — and serves as the subject of “The Elephant 6 Recording Co.,” a spirited new documentary directed by C.B. Stockfleth that tells the stories of some of its most enduring bands, like Neutral Milk Hotel, the Apples in Stereo and the Olivia Tremor Control.If none of those names means anything to you, fear not: You’re only 25 minutes and eight songs away from knowing exactly what I’m talking about.The Elephant 6 story begins in Ruston, a sleepy college town where there was little to do but dream, hang out with friends and, when you got bored enough to try to figure out how, make music. One of my favorite things about the film is the way it captures the necessity of creativity and a do-it-yourself ethos in places where there isn’t a lot of pre-existing art or culture. “I feel like kids in places like that tend to get deeper into the things that they love — tend to go further into them, tend to lose themselves more in them because they need to,” Julian Koster of Neutral Milk Hotel says in the doc. “They have to escape into something.”Eventually, those kids cobbled together enough money to buy instruments, microphones and most crucially, four-track tape machines. In the film, Kevin Sweeney of the band the Sunshine Fix gives perhaps the most succinct summary of the Elephant 6 sound that I’ve ever heard: “Those guys were just trying to record ‘Sgt. Pepper’s’ or ‘Pet Sounds’ on their cassette machines,” he says. After some consideration, he adds, in disbelief, “And they did!”A whole group of them relocated from Ruston to Athens, where the independent-minded bands who had come before — like R.E.M. and Pylon — had created an infrastructure where artful music could thrive and find its local audience. “It just seemed like a beacon for weirdos,” says the Elephant 6 musician Heather McIntosh.Sometimes called the Brian Wilson of the scene, Robert Schneider, the helium-voiced lead singer of the Apples and the producer of many of the early Elephant 6 albums, set up his own low-budget recording space that he called Pet Sounds Studios. (Although, as someone points out in the documentary, it acquired the nickname “Pet Smells,” because of all the cats that lived there.)“The Elephant 6 Recording Co.” is a vivid time capsule of musical community before the internet, before tape trading became a thing of the past and before indie rock became such a marketable commodity. Neutral Milk Hotel emerged as the scene’s breakout star when it released the critically adored 1998 album “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea,” but the group’s frontman, Jeff Mangum, fled the public eye and stopped releasing new music. (Still publicity shy, he’s the only major member of the collective who isn’t featured in the film.)Inspired by the movie, today’s playlist is a crash course in the Elephant 6 sound, which would go on to inspire the next generation of indie musicians and beyond. Though many other artists would be associated with the collective in later years, I’ve stuck to four of the original and most recognizable bands from that scene — the Olivia Tremor Control, the Apples in Stereo, Elf Power and Neutral Milk Hotel — selecting an earlier and later song from each.Get ready to lose yourself in a utopia of psychedelic pop-rock, layered and collagelike production, and the intoxicating ambition of a bunch of musicians trying to craft their own “Pet Sounds” with whatever they had on hand. (The film, which premieres this weekend, will be available on video on demand starting Sept. 1.)Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. The Olivia Tremor Control: “Jumping Fences”The Olivia Tremor Control melded psychedelic experimentation and pure pop melody, fronted by longtime friends Will Hart and Bill Doss, who died in 2012. The band’s 1996 debut album, “Music From the Unrealized Film Script: Dusk at Cubist Castle,” is one of the high-water marks of the Elephant 6 scene, and the jangly, tuneful “Jumping Fences” demonstrates why. Like many 19-year-olds who came before me and, hopefully, many who will follow, it blew my mind when I first heard it in college. (Listen on YouTube)2. The Apples in Stereo: “Glowworm”Fronted by Schneider and formed when he was temporarily living in Denver, the Apples in Stereo are the most sugary sweet of the Elephant 6 bands; their infectious tunes recall the sunshine pop of the ’60s coated with layers of tape hiss. After a run of singles and EPs, “Fun Trick Noisemaker,” the Apples’ 1995 debut that features the bouncy fan favorite “Glowworm,” was the first full-length LP to bear the Elephant 6 stamp. (Listen on YouTube)3. Elf Power: “Jane”Though the dream-pop group Elf Power recorded this 1999 song in New York with the accomplished producer Dave Fridmann, its introverted titular character still captures that imaginative, small-town spirit out of which so many Elephant 6 bands sprung: “Jane was the one who would always have her fun when she’s lying on her bed, making visions in her head,” the frontman Andrew Rieger sings. Sounds like Jane’s about to start a band. (Listen on YouTube)4. Neutral Milk Hotel: “Song Against Sex”Neutral Milk Hotel’s first album, “On Avery Island” from 1996, overflows with ideas, lo-fi resourcefulness and ramshackle energy. On its lead track, “Song Against Sex,” Mangum creates one of his soon-to-be-signature surrealist musical frescoes, while regal blasts of horns and crashing percussion give the song an antic maximalism. (Listen on YouTube)5. The Olivia Tremor Control: “A Peculiar Noise Called ‘Train Director’”The Olivia Tremor Control pushed even further into the realm of psychedelia on its great second album, “Black Foliage: Animation Music Volume One,” from 1999. On this track, hooky melodies and moments of pop lucidity suddenly burst forth from textured cacophony. (Listen on YouTube)6. The Apples in Stereo: “Please”Here’s an effervescent fuzz-pop gem from the Apples in Stereo’s 2002 album, “Velocity of Sound.” One of the longest running Elephant 6 bands, the Apples have also had some of the most high-profile cultural crossovers: cameos on “The Powerpuff Girls” and, later, “The Colbert Report.” Just as unexpectedly, Schneider is now a mathematician who teaches at Michigan Technological University — and, to the surprise of his students, moonlights as an influential indie musician. (Listen on YouTube)7. Elf Power: “All the World Is Waiting”Elf Power is perhaps the most prolific of the major Elephant 6 bands; last year, the group put out its 14th album, “Artificial Countrysides.” I love this warped, stomping tune from Elf Power’s 2006 release, “Back to the Web”; its music video, filmed in Athens, captures the communal zaniness of the Elephant 6 scene. (Listen on YouTube)8. Neutral Milk Hotel: “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea”Mangum’s fervently beloved 1998 album brought more attention to the Elephant 6 scene than anything had before — maybe more attention than it could handle. Something changed after “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea,” a visionary, heart-on-its-sleeve album that continues to find new listeners in new generations; this was clear enough when the band finally reunited in 2013 for an extensive world tour. The album’s title track, which on the record features little more than four frantically strummed guitar chords and Mangum’s keening wail, has since become the unofficial anthem of Elephant 6 and all it represented. When “The Elephant 6 Recording Co.” premiered last week in Los Angeles, an accompanying tribute concert ended with a group singalong of this tune. (Listen on YouTube)How strange it is to be anything at all,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“8 Songs That Explain the Elephant 6 Recording Co.” track listTrack 1: The Olivia Tremor Control, “Jumping Fences”Track 2: The Apples in Stereo, “Glowworm”Track 3: Elf Power, “Jane”Track 4: Neutral Milk Hotel, “Song Against Sex”Track 5: The Olivia Tremor Control, “A Peculiar Noise Called ‘Train Director’”Track 6: The Apples in Stereo, “Please”Track 7: Elf Power, “All the World Is Waiting”Track 8: Neutral Milk Hotel, “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea”Bonus tracksWant to feel old? Friday is the 10-year anniversary of Miley Cyrus’s most infamous Video Music Awards performance, which sent waves of moral panic throughout the nation in 2013. Exactly a decade later, she’s released a more wizened and reflective ballad, “Used to Be Young,” which I wrote about in the Playlist. This week’s roundup of new music also features new tracks from L’Rain, Zach Bryan featuring Kacey Musgraves and Al Green’s gorgeous cover of Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day.” More