Robert Baird

What keeps Waterfall, the band’s seventh album and the first in four years, from sinking into a kind of earnest, overly precious, 1970s lite rock muck is that James’s many influences are a mist and not a downpour.

Deep into what Geddy Lee now calls their “kimono period,” the band wrote and recorded, 2112, ("Twenty One Twelve") a record that makes them incredibly pretentious dorks or prog rock gods (in kimonos).

While the mass ogling was in full swing and the sickly sweet aroma of jittery, prepubescent testosterone hung heavy in the classroom, I was equally interested in Miss Wagner’s musical selections.

Vinyl Rage! Prospect Expressway Jammed With Overamped Record Buyers Eager For Adam & The Ants, Gwar and Jethro Tull!!! It’s Record Store Day In Brooklyn!!!

After my Austin sojourn this year, I paid a visit to the more staid and adult universe of the Savannah Music Festival.

He is easily among the most accomplished and influential slide-guitar players ever to put a ring of glass or metal around his finger. In 1977, on the golden record carried by the space probe Voyager, alongside the first movement of Beethoven's Symphony 5 and recordings of "footsteps, heartbeat, and laughter," his greatest song, "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground" went off to represent humanity to the stars.