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      Jim Post, Known for a Memorably ‘Groovy’ Hit Song, Dies at 82

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      He and his wife, Cathy Conn, had a Top 10 single with “Reach Out of the Darkness” as Friend & Lover in 1968. It’s still played today, but it was their only hit.Jim Post, best known as half of the duo Friend & Lover, whose only hit was a memorable one — “Reach Out of the Darkness,” which proclaimed with flower-power earnestness, “I think it’s so groovy now that people are finally gettin’ together” — died on Sept. 14 in Dubuque, Iowa. He was 82.His former wife Janet Smith Post, with whom he wrote two children’s books, said his death, in hospice care, was caused by congestive heart failure.“Reach Out of the Darkness,” which rose to No. 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 in June 1968, featured Mr. Post and his wife at the time, Cathy Conn, singing lyrics that say, in part:Don’t be afraid of loveDon’t be afraid, don’t be afraidDon’t be afraid to loveListen to meEverybody needs a little love.Although the lyrics say “Reach out in the darkness,” an executive of Verve Forecast Records, the label that released the record, gave it the title “Reach Out of the Darkness.” That title suggested something different to Mr. Post, who wrote the song.“Reach out in the places where you’re not enlightened,” he explained to The South Bend Tribune in 2009. He then recited the chorus: “Reach out in the darkness, reach out in the darkness, reach out in the darkness and you may find a friend.”The song fared better than the duo’s album of the same name, and after a few more singles that were not successful, Friend & Lover disbanded and Mr. Post and Ms. Conn divorced. Ms. Conn died in 2018.Mr. Post injected extra elements into “Reach Out” for a 2009 recording, giving it a radically new arrangement and merging it with “Get Together,” the late-1960s Youngbloods hit that urged listeners, “Everybody get together / Try to love one another right now.” He called the medley “Reach Out Together.” He said at the time that “Reach Out,” mashed up with a song from the same era with a similar sensibility, was as relevant as it had been in 1968.“What is the theme of our country now?” he asked. He answered his own question: “Coming together.”“Reach Out of the Darkness” received new life in 2013 when it was heard over the closing credits of a sixth-season episode of “Mad Men” while Senator Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination was being reported on television. Writing on the arts and culture website Across the Margin, L.P. Hanners said that the upbeat 45-year-old song “was perfectly paired with the duality featured in the final scene of ‘Man With a Plan.’”The song was also heard on the soundtrack of the 2015-16 TV series “Aquarius,” which starred David Duchovny as a homicide detective on the trail of Charles Manson in Los Angeles in the late 1960s.Jimmie David Post was born on Oct. 28, 1939, in Houston and grew up on a farm about 20 miles outside the city. His father was a longshoreman, his mother a homemaker.A singer from an early age, Jim won a school talent contest in first grade, which led to a performance on a local radio show. Later, he told The Chicago Sun-Times in 1972, he was a “successful evangelistic singer” who had performed in more than 500 churches around the United States by the time he was 22.In the early 1960s, Mr. Post became part of a three-man folk group, the Rum Runners, which in 1963 released a version of the traditional song “You Gotta Quit Kickin’ My Dog Around” as a single on Mercury Records. When they played at a club in Kansas City, Mo., a year later, Dick Brown of The Kansas City Star wrote, “To a major extent, the vocals depend on the remarkable tenor voice of Jim Post.”While on tour in Canada with the Rum Runners, Mr. Post met Ms. Conn, a dancer, and left the group to be with her. They soon began performing as Friend & Lover and made their name at the Earl of Old Town, a folk club in Chicago where singers like Steve Goodman and John Prine also performed.Although Friend & Lover was a folk act, their records used studio musicians and achieved more of a pop sound — and, at least at first, pop success.After the breakup of both Friend & Lover and his marriage to Ms. Conn, Mr. Post became a solo act and returned to folk music.“Jim was a wonderful character with a wide vocal range,” the folk singer Bonnie Koloc, who watched Mr. Post perform both with Ms. Conn and alone at the Earl of Old Town, said in an interview. “He was such an enthusiastic performer. We all loved him.”Mr. Post, who was married and divorced five times, is survived by a daughter and a grandson.He later changed directions, conceiving and touring with one-man musical shows. The first, in 1986, was “Galena Rose: How Whiskey Won the West,” about a 19th-century lead-mining rush in Galena, Ill., where he lived for many years.Then, in the mid-1990s, when he began to look like Mark Twain, Mr. Post created “Mark Twain and the Laughing River,” a show that married his songs to Twain’s words. The CD of the show earned him an American Library Association award for notable recordings.He followed that about a decade later with “Mark Twain’s Adventures Out West.”“Reach Out of the Darkness” remained a notable part of Mr. Post’s life 54 years after its release, through continued airplay and the royalties he received.“Two months ago, he got a check for $6,000,” his friend Bob Postel said in an interview.He added: “He was always proud that he wrote it and it surprised the hell out of him that it was a hit. That song paid for a lot of gas.” More

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      Red Hot Chili Peppers Honor Eddie Van Halen, and 10 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Margo Price, Jamie xx, the Comet Is Coming and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.Red Hot Chili Peppers, ‘Eddie’Red Hot Chili Peppers memorialize Eddie Van Halen and 1980s Los Angeles with what sounds like an old-fashioned, real-time studio jam in “Eddie.” Anthony Kiedis sings biographical snippets — “My brother’s a keeper/I married a TV wife” — while Flea’s bass and John Frusciante’s guitar chase each other all the way through the song, in an ever-changing counterpoint of hopping bass lines and teasing, wailing, shredding, overdriven guitar — the sound of a band in a room, still pushing one another. PARELESKelsea Ballerini, ‘Muscle Memory’In “Muscle Memory,” Kelsea Ballerini orchestrates an instinctive reunion with an old flame — “my body won’t forget our history” — with classic tools: two chords, a backbeat, a lead guitar with wordless caresses. “How long will you be back in town?” she asks, concealing her eagerness. PARELESMargo Price, ‘Change of Heart’Margo Price reaches toward the 1960s and the confrontational side of psychedelia with “Change of Heart.” A wiry blues guitar riff and jabs of organ hint at the Doors as Price delivers a breaking-away song that toys with paradoxes: “You run from danger/straight into trouble,” she sings, adding, “Way down deep you’re as shallow as me.” Just to keep things off- balance, every now and then the band adds an extra beat, while a long, gradual fade-out suggests she’s still a little reluctant to move on. PARELESJamie xx, ‘Kill Dem’It’s now been seven long years since the D.J., producer, and longtime xx member Jamie xx released his beloved solo album “In Colour,” but this year he’s put out two rousing new singles: first the ecstatic “Let’s Do It Again” and now the elastic “Kill Dem.” Built around a sample of the dancehall great Cutty Ranks’ “Limb by Limb,” Jamie minces his source material into barely discernible syllables and launches it into hyperspace, leaving its component parts to ping off one another with a bouncy, exuberant energy. ZOLADZThe Comet Is Coming, ‘Pyramids’The British jazz saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings, who lived in Barbados from ages 6 to 16, is at the core of multiple groups with different lineups. In the Comet Is Coming, he works with the synthesizer player Dan Leavers, or Danalogue, and the drummer Maxwell Hallett, a.k.a. Betamax, in a zone where electronic dance music and jazz collide. “Pyramids” is from the trio’s new album, “Hyper-Dimensional Expansion Beam”; the title of this track might allude to “Pyramid Song” by Radiohead, which shares some of the same ascending yet foreboding chords. Danalogue uses 1980s synthesizers for plump bass tones and upward swoops; Betamax mixes drums and drum machines, constantly accenting different offbeats. And with his meaty tone on tenor saxophone, Hutchings plays a jumpy, dissonant line that’s equally mocking and party-hearty, a bent Carnival shout. PARELESWitch, ‘Waile’In the 1970s, the Zambian rock band Witch — an acronym for We Intend to Cause Havoc — fused garage-rock, psychedelia and funk with African rhythms, spurring a movement called Zamrock. The wider world discovered them with the release of a 2011 collection, and surviving members of the band — the singer Emmanuel (Jagari) Chanda and the keyboardist Patrick Mwondela — returned to the studio in 2021 backed by international musicians, including the Dutch neo-psychedelic songwriter Jacco Gardner. “Waile,” written in 1978 but not previously recorded, addresses “sorrow and suffering” and the separation of a family. It moves through a percolating xylophone-and-guitar riff, blasts of fuzztone, some brisk African funk and, midway through, a slower lament carried by women’s voices before the beat picks up again and hard-nosed guitar riffs push ahead — undaunted. PARELESFlo, ‘Not My Job’On “Not My Job,” the British girl group Flo update the glittering sound of Y2K pop-R&B with a little modern-day therapy-speak: “It’s not my job to make you feel comfortable,” the trio asserts on the chorus. “If you ain’t being vulnerable, that says it all.” The blingy sheen, skittering beat and synthesized strings all conjure an aesthetic you may have not even realized you were nostalgic for — it’s giving “Case of the X”; it’s giving “The Writing’s on the Wall” — albeit enlivened with a fresh, contemporary twist. ZOLADZLil Nas X, ‘Star Walkin’If Lil Nas X continues to play jester, expertly, on social media — this week, he posted impishly hilarious videos of himself sending pizzas to protesters outside of one of his concerts, and of his newly minted wax figure FaceTiming his confused friends — his new single “Star Walkin’” suggests that he is still interested in using his music as an outlet for feelings that complicate that persona, like anxiety, light melancholy and self-doubt. “They said I wouldn’t make it out alive,” he sings defiantly on this gleaming, synth-driven track, which serves as the theme song for this year’s League of Legends World Championship. The one-off certainly doesn’t rank among his most memorable singles, but it’s further proof that he’s figured out a reliable sonic formula to turn personal apprehension into steely braggadocio; by the end of the song, he asks, “Why worship legends when you know that you can join them?” ZOLADZEmiliana Torrini & the Colorist Orchestra, ‘Right Here’Emiliana Torrini attests to the reassurance of a lasting relationship in “Right Here”: “Here’s to all the roads that we’ve been down,” she sings with a smile. “I’m right here by your side.” She’s backed by the Colorist Orchestra, a happily quirky Belgian chamber-pop ensemble that mixes standard instruments with homemade ones — including, for this song, the sound of stone scraping stone. Torrini and the Colorist Orchestra rearranged some of her older songs on an album they shared in 2018, while “Right Here” previews an LP of new collaborations due early next year. There’s pointillistic syncopation from marimba, glockenspiel and pizzicato strings, with a backdrop of sustained chords: the ticktock of everyday minutiae held together by the promise of constancy. PARELESShannen Moser, ‘Oh My God’Shannen Moser recreates a community sing and a hometown band concert in “Oh My God,” from an album arriving next week. In “The Sun Still Seems to Move,” Moser offers theological and existential musings — “I know that life’s not one linear seamless destination” — over fingerpicking and woodwinds, muscles and hands and breath. The music is thoughtful but determinedly physical. PARELESAnna B Savage, ‘The Ghost’The London-based artist Anna B Savage’s devastating new single, “The Ghost,” derives its power from a gradual accumulation of small, intimate details. “We used to notice the same things: His toenails, that little bug,” she sings to an old flame in a trembling low register. “But that changed, you couldn’t see the grave we dug.” Long after the breakup, though, the memory of her ex still lingers. “Stop haunting me, please,” she begs on the chorus, as the austere, piano-driven arrangement suddenly fills up with an eerie atmosphere. It sounds like an exorcism — or at least a yearning, last-ditch attempt at one, in desperate hope that it works. ZOLADZ More

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      Popcast Live! The New Faces of 2022

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherFor the first live taping of Popcast, held at Gertie in Brooklyn, members of The New York Times pop music team explored the ways music is evolving today by highlighting some of this year’s breakout stars. The conversation touched on the British rapper Central Cee, the Bronx drill rapper Ice Spice, the country-folk singer Zach Bryan, the alt-rock revivalist Blondshell, the haunted pop crooner Ethel Cain and more.The conversation included debate about what makes for innovation in the crowded and confusing pop music marketplace in 2022, and an audience Q. and A. session touching on Taylor Swift, the persistence of physical media and much more.Guests:Joe Coscarelli, The New York Times’s pop music reporterCaryn Ganz, The New York Times’s pop music editorConnect 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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      How a Sooty Old Piano Helped Beth Orton Reach a New Creative Peak

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      With a vintage upright and painstakingly assembled songs, the English folk-pop-electronic songwriter’s eighth studio album, “Weather Alive,” is her best.Maybe the soot helped.The English songwriter Beth Orton wasn’t sure she even wanted to make another album when she started to write the songs for “Weather Alive”: her eighth studio album, her first since 2016, and by far her best. It’s an album that sums up and transcends all the crosscurrents of Orton’s decidedly unorthodox artistic path.“It’s been so many phases and changes, and trying to find my place within my own music, within my own voice and in my own sound,” she said in a video interview. “Who am I in what I do?”On her recordings, Orton, 51, is pensive and measured. In conversation, she is nearly the opposite: voluble and forthcoming, with her thoughts tumbling out.Orton’s main instrument is the guitar; she’s a skillful, sophisticated fingerpicker. But soon after she moved to her current house in London with her husband, the musician Sam Amidon, she happened upon a used-piano dealer at Camden Market. She was so taken with the haunted sound of an old upright that she bought it for 300 pounds, about $350. The lines she found herself playing on that piano — brief, circular, quietly tolling — led her to build songs around them.“I was like, ‘OK, I don’t know how to play this instrument, but wow, it just sounds so beautiful,’” Orton said. “So I started on the piano, just writing simple songs, not worrying about being good at what I do.”Speaking from her home studio in London, a converted garden shed, she turned to that instrument to play a few plangent clusters of notes. “No matter where you touch it, it just has these resonances,” she said. “Little ghosts of other chords just keep ringing out and you’re like, ‘Oh, that speaks of another melody, and that speaks of another feeling.’”“Johnny Marr,” she added, referring to the Smiths guitarist, “said that each instrument has its many songs, and it’s true — they all seem to hold their secrets.”About halfway through recording the album, Orton decided to have the piano restored. “It was a terrible idea,” she said, laughing. “They opened it up, it took a while to settle, and they just found it was full of soot.”For Orton, even that was evocative. “It was like old, old fire.”“Weather Alive” is an album of meditative grace and constant questioning, of elaborate constructions and startling intimacy. In a way, it’s a British, more pensive analogue to Taylor Swift’s albums “Folklore” and “Evermore,” which also rely on brief piano lines. On Orton’s album, acoustic instruments hover in electronic spaces; mantra-like piano motifs promise stability. Yet Orton’s voice fearlessly tests itself. She’s never afraid to sound broken. Her voice trembles and catches, scrapes and cracks, smears some words and obsessively repeats others as she conjures elusive but intense emotions.“I was like, ‘OK, I don’t know how to play this instrument, but wow, it just sounds so beautiful,’” Orton said of her piano.Rosie Marks for The New York Times“This is someone who is very deeply mining their inner self, without a great deal of a filter or artifice or a desire to be manicured in some way, to hide oneself from the world,” said Shahzad Ismaily, who played guitar and keyboards on the album. “She was having none of that.”Orton said she thinks she’s become less afraid. “This is how I sing. This is my voice now,” she said. “This is who I am and this is what life has made of me. And it may be something else next week, or next month, or next year.”In the album’s eight leisurely songs, Orton sings about longings, memories, nature, attachments and separations, about overwhelming sensations and uncertain prospects. She’s equally prepared for bliss or disillusionment. In “Lonely,” she reflects that “Lonely loves my company,” and wonders, “Will you be the ash of a well-tended fire/Will you be the ambush of my desire?”Orton’s first recordings — with the producer William Orbit and with the Chemical Brothers — floated her vocals amid electronic loops. But Orton was never a dance-pop top-liner. Her smoky, plaintive voice, her intricate guitar picking and her modal melodies harked back to British folk roots, while her lyrics grappled with tangled, unresolved relationships.Orton studied and performed with two of her avowed influences — the guitarist Bert Jansch, a founder of the jazzy folk group Pentangle, and the folk-soul songwriter Terry Callier — and she made albums that continually rebalanced elements of folk, jazz, soul, trip-hop and electronics. Her 1999 album, “Central Reservation,” won her a Brit Award as best British female solo artist.But Orton struggled with the demands of performing and touring. In her early years on the road, she said, “I would go out and, like, roll with it, or get drunk enough, or just get stoned enough, or get revved up enough to get up there and do what I do on pure nerves. I think people loved it. But it was hard to live with.”That excess couldn’t last. Orton soldiered through medical problems until 2006, when she had her first child, Nancy; her second, Arthur, was born in 2011. Raising small children kept her largely at home, where she expanded her abilities in electronics and production; her 2016 album, “Kidsticks,” was built on computerized elements that she could record in the moments between caring for her children. For “Weather Alive,” she had more free time since both children were old enough to go to school.She still wasn’t sure she wanted to be a touring singer-songwriter anymore. In London, she participated in a National Theater workshop on writing musicals, with mentors including Stephen Sondheim. But the old upright piano brought her back to the craft of songwriting.“With my kids at school I was able to go deep again,” she said. “What I couldn’t do when the kids were little was really dig into the internal workings, like I like to. So I was left again with this sort of meditative quality, or maybe for the first time seeing my own thought patterns. Because I was writing for no one.”The album often sounds as if all the musicians are quietly huddled together, listening intently to one another, whispering ideas. But that’s an illusion that Orton created as producer and engineer. Like many pandemic-era albums, much of “Weather Alive” was recorded at widely separated times and places.In the album’s eight leisurely songs, Orton sings about longings, memories, nature, attachments and separations, about overwhelming sensations and uncertain prospects. Rosie Marks for The New York TimesOrton tried, at first, to record the songs entirely on her own. “I had many iterations and inventions of like creating my own drum kits out of cardboard boxes and tambourines, just fooling around and then making loops,” she said. “But I had to put it aside because I knew, at some point, that I was going to make a piano record.”The sound of “Weather Alive” began with in-person London sessions with the jazz-rooted rhythm section of Tom Skinner (Sons of Kemet, the Smile) on drums and Tom Herbert (the Invisible, Polar Bear) on bass. Orton sent songs-in-progress to Ismaily and to the saxophonist Alabaster DePlume, then reworked them around what came back. An idea briefly improvised during an outro could be turned into a loop and reshape an entire song.Ismaily recorded his parts remotely, exchanging hundreds of takes with Orton. “There were a few tracks where I received vocals that were just sounds without the lyrics written yet, so she might just be humming a melody,” he said in a telephone interview. “But even then, you felt pulled into what the world was that you were occupying. She was continuing to discover what the song itself was all the way to the end, which is beautiful.”Orton said the album “just took on its own life and I was the doula. It was on the one hand sculpting and having as much control as it was possible to have, and on the other, let’s just birth this!”It was as if, she added, “the record became its own kind of weather.” More

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      Bad Bunny Leads 2022 Latin Grammy Nominations With 10

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      Rosalía has eight nods, while Jorge Drexler and Christina Aguilera have seven each for the awards, which will be held on Nov. 17 in Las Vegas.Bad Bunny, the chart-topping Puerto Rican star, dominates the nominations for the 23rd annual Latin Grammy Awards, leading stars from across the spectrum of Latin music, like Shakira, Rosalía, Carlos Vives and Jorge Drexler.Bad Bunny, whose “Un Verano Sin Ti” is an international blockbuster — and the biggest LP of the year in the United States — has a total of 10 nods in seven categories, including album of the year, according to an announcement on Tuesday by the Latin Recording Academy, which has been presenting the awards since 2000. The Mexican songwriter and producer Edgar Barrera has nine, and both Rosalía, the genre-blending Spanish performer, and the Puerto Rican singer Rauw Alejandro follow with eight.Artists with seven nominations include Drexler, the doctor-turned-songwriter from Uruguay who first came to international attention in 2004 when he won an Academy Award for a song from the film “The Motorcycle Diaries,” and Christina Aguilera, the American pop diva behind hits like “Genie in a Bottle” and “Beautiful,” who released a Spanish-language album, “Aguilera,” this year.Camilo, a playful Colombian pop singer with a handlebar mustache, whose recent music has been documenting his domestic life, has six nods, as does Carlos Vives, a veteran singer-songwriter from Colombia with 15 Latin Grammys already.This year’s Latin Grammys will honor music released from June 1, 2021, to May 31, 2022. To be considered, songs must be new and contain lyrics in Spanish, Portuguese “or Indigenous dialects of our region, regardless of where such product was recorded or released,” according to a statement from the academy.In addition to album of the year, Bad Bunny — born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio — is nominated in the record of the year category for “Ojitos Lindos,” featuring the Colombian electronic duo Bomba Estéreo. “Un Verano” is also up for urban music album, and Bad Bunny’s other nods reflect his prolific work over the last year, solo and in collaboration.Bad Bunny competes against himself in the urban fusion/performance category (with “Tití Me Preguntó” from “Un Verano,” as well as “Volví,” a track with the New York bachata band Aventura); in reggaeton performance (two non-album tracks, “Lo Siento BB:/” with Tainy and Julieta Venegas, and “Yonaguni”); and in best urban song (“Tití Me Preguntó” and “Lo Siento”). Another non-album track, “De Museo,” is up for rap/hip-hop song.One surprise this year: a shutout for “Encanto,” the animated Disney film that came out in late 2021. Its songs, by Lin-Manuel Miranda, the composer behind “Hamilton,” draw from Latin styles including salsa and Colombian folk music, and tracks like “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” became ubiquitous hits. The soundtrack was eligible for awards, and was submitted for consideration, according to the academy, but it failed to get any nominations.In addition to “Un Verano,” the album of the year field includes “Aguilera”; Rosalía’s “Motomami”; Drexler’s “Tinta y Tiempo”; Bomba Estéreo’s “Deja”; Marc Anthony’s “Pa’lla Voy”; Alejandro Sanz’s “Sanz”; Fonseca’s “Viajante”; Sebastián Yatra’s “Dharma”; and Elsa y Elmar’s “Ya No Somos los Mismos.”Also up for record of the year are “Pa Mis Muchachas” by Aguilera, Becky G and Nicki Nicole, featuring Nathy Peluso; Rosalía’s “La Fama,” featuring the Weeknd; Anitta’s “Envolver”; Camilo’s “Pegao”; “Te Felicito” by Shakira and Alejandro; Pablo Alborán’s “Castillos de Arena”; Karol G’s “Provenza”; “Baloncito Viejo” by Vives and Camilo; Drexler’s “Tocarte,” with C. Tangana; Juan Luis Guerra’s “Vale la Pena”; and the title track of Anthony’s “Pa’lla Voy.”“Tocarte,” “Provenza,” “Pa Mis Muchachas” and “Baloncito Viejo” are also up for song of the year, a songwriter’s award. The other nominees in that category include Rosalía’s “Hentai”; “A Veces Bien y a Veces Mal,” as performed by Ricky Martin and Reik; “Agua,” performed by Daddy Yankee, Alejandro and Nile Rodgers; Mon Laferte’s “Algo Es Mejor”; Fonseca’s “Besos en la Frente”; Carla Morrison’s “Encontrarme”; Yatra’s “Tacones Rojos”; and “Índigo,” as performed by Camilo and Evaluna Montaner.The nominees for best new artist are Angela Álvarez, Sofía Campos, Cande y Paulo, Clarissa, Silvana Estrada, Pol Granch, Nabález, Tiare, Vale, Yahritza y Su Esencia and Nicole Zignago.Tainy, who worked on both Rosalía and Bad Bunny’s albums, is competing for producer of the year against Barrera (Camilo, Maluma), Eduardo Cabra (Elsa y Elmar, Mima), Nico Cotton (Conociendo Rusia, Elsa y Elmar) and Julio Reyes Copello (Fonseca, Cami & Art House).The awards are voted on by members of the Latin Recording Academy, which include artists, songwriters, producers and other music creators in all genres. The ceremony will be held on Nov. 17 in Las Vegas.A complete list of nominees in all 53 categories is here. More

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      Robert Fripp Lightens Up

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      No one expected to see the leader of King Crimson dancing in a tutu on YouTube. In a rare interview, the guitarist explains “an entirely different trajectory.”Robert Fripp became a rock star without acting like a showman. As the guitarist and leader of King Crimson — the band he founded in 1969 — Fripp, 76, has written music that’s barbed, visceral, complex and ambitious, seizing the vanguard of progressive rock yet reaching a broad audience.King Crimson’s catalog has found multiple generations of admirers among musicians, including the Rolling Stones, the Clash, the Mars Volta, Black Midi and even Kanye West, who sampled “21st Century Schizoid Man” in the song “Power,” which has been streamed more than 135 million times. (The deal involved is still under litigation.)Fripp’s guitar riffs are saw-toothed and dissonant; his solos lines slice and sear. But onstage, he has always been the picture of an introvert: seated, taciturn, entirely concentrating on his guitar.“Some players can put on a really great show playing guitar. I can’t,” Fripp said in a rare video interview from Long Island, where he was preparing to teach one of his Guitar Craft seminars. His white shirt, vest and tightly knotted tie were a sartorial contrast with his hair: a gray, upright Mohawk. “I have to focus and pay attention very closely. I have no room for jumping around or symbolic gestures. So the excitement isn’t in what the player is doing in terms of his gestures. It’s in terms of the music which is appearing.”But during the pandemic, Fripp has showed a new public face: droll, chatty and unpretentious. He and his manager, David Singleton, are on a speaking tour called “That Awful Man and His Manager,” promising to discuss music and business and to answer fan questions; it comes to City Winery in Manhattan on Friday. (The “awful man” designation teases at Fripp’s many disgruntled former bandmates and business associates.)Spurred by his wife, the pop-rock singer Toyah Willcox, in 2020 Fripp started co-starring in a charmingly homemade weekly series of YouTube videos, “Toyah and Robert’s Sunday Lunch,” that has them attacking pop and rock hits from Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” to Britney Spears’s “Toxic,” often in costumes and makeup. The couple has also danced — both in tutus — to “Swan Lake.”Outside of King Crimson, Fripp has made ambient music using Brian Eno’s “Frippertronics” looping setup; added indelible solos to songs like David Bowie’s “Heroes”; produced albums for Peter Gabriel, the Roches and Daryl Hall; written voluminously in an ongoing online diary; and taught Guitar Craft seminars, where he seeks to instill the same technical and philosophical discipline — an important word for Fripp — that he brings to his own playing.He has repeatedly dissolved and reconfigured King Crimson to his shifting but exacting specifications. “When there is nothing to be done, nothing is done: Crimson disappears,” Fripp has said. “When there is music to be played, Crimson reappears. If all of life were this simple.”A documentary, “In the Court of the Crimson King,” appeared at festivals earlier this year, and Fripp completed a book, “The Guitar Circle,” with the lessons of his Guitar Craft seminars. He is about to release a collection of his long-accruing aphorisms about music, ethics and creativity in three sets of 78 cards each, the same number as a Tarot deck. Leaving no merchandising opportunity unturned, he also offers personalized, handwritten, metal-leafed versions of his aphorisms.A chat with Fripp invariably spirals outward, from the particulars of guitar tunings to what he jovially calls, with an expletive, “cosmic” horse manure. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.What makes a man go on tour with his manager?Probably to present our work to the world in a way that doesn’t quite get across in social media, in the same way that performance, for me, is really the only place where you connect with music. When you meet someone face to face, you can engage. And a key part of the so-called speaking tour is likely to be the Q&A.During the pandemic you became very active on social media. Did YouTube change your life?Yes, very much indeed. The main change in my life, following lockdown, is I got to spend time with my wife for the first time in 34 years of marriage up to that point. And I loved it. I have a wonderful, dear wife, but I kept leaving her. For me, lockdown was an opportunity to address some subjects of interest to me, including catching up on my academic reading in music. But there is my dear wife thinking, “This old character is losing it — I’ve got to get him going.” So then out came the tutu and “Swan Lake,” which was something of a turning point in my life.You’ve been more performative on YouTube than you have been for 40 years in King Crimson.I think that’s probably true.“Some times have been better than the others,” Fripp said, “but riches and popularity have never been on the top of my to-do list.”Timothy O’Connell for The New York TimesIs that going to change you when you go back to performing concerts?I don’t think I can look back. I think the future has now shot off on an entirely different trajectory. A personal interest for me is kicking received opinion. Because if you were only seen in a certain way, there is a richness in life which is somehow closed to you. A question: Have you seen Toyah and Robert live sitting in with the Trevor Horn band at the Cropready festival?Yes, you played Lenny Kravitz and tuned your guitar in the standard tuning, E-A-D-G-B-E, for the first time since 1984. You broke your streak. But most of your lockdown songs were probably written in standard tuning.That’s right. I’m learning to play in E again. And after spending nearly two years working very hard, translating classic rock riffs into a C pentatonic tuning — that’s C-G-D-A-E-G — to actually tune to E is a lot easier, but it’s also a challenge.How did the C tuning start?I was in the Apple Health Spa on Bleecker and Thompson back in September 1983, in the sauna at half past 10 in the morning, almost asleep, and the tuning flew over my head. At the time I couldn’t understand what it was for. I was asked to give a guitar seminar at Claymont Court in December 1994, to raise funds for the running of the estate and the children’s school. There was a click and I realized the tuning was for the guitar class. So at that point, anyone who came into a Guitar Craft seminar was pretty much on the same page. Whether you had experience or not, you have a new tuning. Including me.Which has now led to the book, “The Guitar Circle.”It’s pretty much what, as a young guitarist, I would have liked to have known. The aphorisms are probably the most useful part of the book.What unanswered questions do you still have?I know pretty much all I need to know at this point in my life. But it’s a question of engaging with it. And I hesitate because it’s so easy to get involved in cosmic horse [expletive]. An understanding is what you can take onstage that’s entirely practical.Speaking of the stage, the most recent version of King Crimson turned the typical setup inside out, putting the drums up front and the other musicians in the back. Why did you do that?It’s a very simple story. I think maybe it was July 2013 — Toyah and I were visiting chums in Vauxhall. I was sipping gently on prosecco, and for some reason I asked the question, “If King Crimson were to perform tomorrow night, what would it be?” And then it appeared: three drummers at the front, the conventional front line at the back. It was what we call the point of seeing, and I trust points of seeing in that way. And then I knew what King Crimson would be if it formed.But I wasn’t sure that I wanted to take that up because King Crimson for me is grief. Nothing else in my life can happen when King Crimson is in go mode. It is such a responsibility. The background to King Crimson is in the counterculture. And we probably wouldn’t use the term today, but the aim was to change the world. Can music change the world? Well, back then, all the young players and probably most in the audience would say, “Of course it can.” But moving 53 years later, we’d say, Well, that’s horse [expletive]. But for me it’s not. It’s still an ongoing concern and a responsibility to the originating intention within King Crimson, which is something that is always possible when music is available. That is a continuing theme and a continuing imperative.Isn’t there some pleasure in performing?During the rehearsals, as we were playing the notes, I felt the music move into the notes. There is a quite distinct experience of King Crimson as an individuality in this thing, entirely apart from whoever is playing it, moving into this certain place onstage. And for me, that is validation. But if, for whatever reason, a performance doesn’t meet what is possible, it is an acute suffering for me.People can recognize your guitar tone from a single note. What do you want that tone to be?True. That’s all.The actual sound of the note may change, like if you’re sustaining or whatever. But that’s the criterion. Is this note true? And I remember with King Crimson, I think it was in Preston — it might have been Darby — in the autumn of 1972. And I threw off a lick. And it was awful. It felt like I was lying to my mother. It violated conscience for that one lick. I was lying to music and that was appalling. And it still irks me to this day.What have you learned from all the pop songs you’ve been playing on YouTube? When I heard “Toxic,” that sounded like a Crimson riff.Some of the riffs, I think, “Hmm, maybe we supped at the same table.” I love playing classic rock riffs. They are relatively easy, providing you’re alert when you’re playing them. It was a privilege playing in Crimson, but it was a very specific repertoire. As a guitar player, it’s like the Olympics of guitar, phenomenally difficult lines, and it required two to four hours of practicing a day. Now, King Crimson is not in go mode. I can step back from it to a certain extent and move my attention into learning E tuning.You’re touring with your manager, and you have an aphorisms deck called Finance. How does having to earn a living affect your music?I have no problem singing for my supper. My sense has always been: Present your work to the public. Some people change their work to meet what they believe their public is. Well, that might work for a while, but I have no idea what my public will want, so if I hear something, I follow it. If I see something, I follow it and present it to the public, trusting that there will be a sufficiency in order for a supper to arrive. And historically that’s worked. Some times have been better than the others, but riches and popularity have never been on the top of my to-do list.I’ve learned to trust the music, trust the process. And it’s important that the audience should know they are as important as the musician. If the audience is present and engaged and listening, the relationship is qualitatively different. When that happens, the moment becomes actually real. And there is a profound satisfaction in there. And then you go back, you get on the bus and you drive overnight to the next venue and it all begins again. More

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      Bad Bunny, No. 1 Again, Puts a Spotlight on Inequities in Puerto Rico

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      Days before his latest album notched its 11th week atop the Billboard 200, the pop superstar released a music video paired with a documentary by Bianca Graulau.Another week, another hundred-odd-million streams and yet another No. 1 for Bad Bunny, the Puerto Rican pop superstar whose album “Un Verano Sin Ti” has dominated the upper rungs of the Billboard chart since it came out in May.In its 19th week of release, “Un Verano” notches an 11th time at No. 1, the most at the top since Drake’s “Views” had a 13-week stint in 2016. The runs for both albums are nonconsecutive, but Bad Bunny has the distinction of never dipping below No. 2. (“Views” fell as low as No. 4 during its first 19 weeks out.)In its most recent week, “Un Verano” had the equivalent of 97,000 sales in the United States, including 132 million streams, according to Luminate, the tracking service that powers Billboard’s charts. Since its release, the album has had the equivalent of about 2.4 million sales, and its songs have racked up 3.3 billion streams.The accomplishment comes as Bad Bunny is selling out stadiums across North America — including two nights at Yankee Stadium last month — and has become increasingly outspoken about political and social issues in Puerto Rico. On Friday, he released a 23-minute video, which segues from a music video for his song “El Apagón” to an 18-minute documentary by Bianca Graulau, a journalist, called “Aquí Vive Gente” (“People Live Here”).Her film looks at inequities in Puerto Rican real estate, including the eviction of some low-income residents of San Juan to make way for million-dollar homes that cater to mainland speculators and cryptocurrency traders. “They’re evicting Puerto Ricans to get rich with what’s from here, with what’s native from here,” one woman, who said she was given 30 days to leave her apartment, tells Graulau in the film.Bad Bunny’s video also explores the longstanding problems with Puerto Rico’s power grid, which has struggled to recover after Hurricane Maria in 2017. Outages this year led to protests against Luma Energy, a private company that took it over in 2021. The video arrived as Hurricane Fiona knocked out power across all of Puerto Rico, and led to widespread flooding.Three new albums placed high on this week’s chart. The Canadian rapper Nav opens at No. 2 with “Demons Protected by Angels,” while Ozzy Osbourne, the 73-year-old metal god and onetime reality-TV star, starts at No. 3 with his latest, “Patient Number 9.” The country singer Kane Brown debuts at No. 5 with “Different Man.”Also this week, Morgan Wallen’s “Dangerous: The Double Album” is No. 4, extending its historic chart run with an 87th time in the Top 10. More