Nashville singer-songwriter, rocker and scene-builder Nordista Freeze loves to get onstage and explore the huge variety of music that’s been “pop” at different times. The organizer of the annual Space Prom is exceptionally busy year-round, with recent exploits including a marathon of 50 concerts in all 50 U.S. states in 30 days, plus supporting Bloc Party at the Ryman and Of Montreal at The Mil (all as he makes a bid to compete on Survivor). Somehow he also found time to organize The Cool Off, a show that’s meant to evoke a formal school dance (“dress nice and be ready to dance,” he says on Instagram) that celebrates the blend of rock and soul that characterized American pop in 1962. You could say this time was right as the ’60s were becoming culturally and politically distinct, with landmarks in the civil rights movement and the U.S. space program as well as the Cuban Missile Crisis. (Still yet to come: the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and the Kennedys, the escalation of the Vietnam War, Beatlemania, psychedelia and much more.) Freeze isn’t strictly limiting the show to songs released in 1962, which leaves him and his cohorts a broader canvas to paint a picture of the culture that gave us indelible music that year, from Ray Charles’ “I Can’t Stop Loving You” and Sam Cooke’s “Bring It on Home to Me” to Roy Orbison’s “Crying,” Booker T. & the M.G.’s “Green Onions,” Little Eva’s “The Locomotion” (fun fact: written by Carole King and Gerry Goffin) and beyond.
8 p.m. at The Blue Room at Third Man Records
623 Seventh Ave. S.
