Small sip of alcohol to Brits / SUN 9-17-23 / Features of airports in Nevada / Common city street hangouts / Vegetable that looks like a portmanteau of two other vegetables (but isn't!) / Neither lose nor win in betting lingo

Constructor: Jill Rafaloff and Michelle Sontarp

Relative difficulty: Very easy

THEME: "Classical Music" — famous pop songs are clued as if they related to classical mythology (the musical artist is included in parentheses at the end of the clue):

Theme answers:

• "GIVE PEACE A CHANCE" (24A: Supplication to Ares (Plastic Ono Band))
• "HERE COMES THE SUN" (34A: Warning to Icarus (The Beatles))
• "LIGHT MY FIRE" (52A: Request to Prometheus (The Doors))
• "OH, PRETTY WOMAN" (66A: Comment to Aphrodite (Roy Orbison))
• "YOU'RE SO VAIN" (84A: Criticism of Narcissus (Carly Simon))
• "DON'T BRING ME DOWN" (95A: Entreaty to Hades (Electric Light Orchestra))
• "MORNING HAS BROKEN" (114A: Congratulations to Eos (Cat Stevens))

Word of the Day: Plastic Ono Band (24A) —

The Plastic Ono Band was a rock band formed by John Lennon and Yoko Ono in 1969 for their collaborative and solo projects based on their 1968 Fluxus conceptual art project of the same name.

Lennon and Ono began a personal and artistic relationship in 1968, collaborating on several experimental releases. After their marriage in 1969, they decided their future endeavours would be credited to the Plastic Ono Band. The band featured a rotating line-up of musicians including Eric Clapton, Klaus Voormann, Alan White, Billy Preston, Jim Keltner, Keith Moon, Delaney & Bonnie and Friends, and Lennon's former Beatles bandmates George Harrison and Ringo Starr. After Lennon and Ono moved to New York in 1971, they collaborated with Elephant's Memory under the name "Plastic Ono Elephant's Memory Band". Lennon's collaborations continued under similar names until 1974.

From 2009 to 2015 (29 years after Lennon was murdered), Ono and her son Sean Lennon led a new incarnation of the group, the Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band. [...] 

During the couple's second bed-in, held in Montreal in late May and early June 1969, Lennon, Ono and their guests recorded the Lennon-penned song "Give Peace a Chance" and Ono's "Remember Love". These were released on 4 July as a single credited to the Plastic Ono Band. It was the first single released by Lennon outside of the Beatles, with whom he was still active. Although an independent composition and release by Lennon, his Beatles writing partner Paul McCartney was still credited, as both a contractual and personal agreement of sharing credit. (wikipedia)

• • •

All these songs are old and (therefore?) in my wheelhouse. The modern song here—the only one that belongs to my own radio-listening experiences and not my parents'—is "DON'T BRING ME DOWN" which came out in 1979. So we've got seven songs, the most recent of which is 44 years old. These are all famous songs, for sure, but nothing since 1979? That's not exactly inviting to the youngsters—by which I mean, people under 40. Even though all these songs are superfamiliar to me (I know them all, note for note), the narrowness of cultural reference feels like a bit of a weakness. Everything came out between '64 and '79. I'm trying to imagine what older solvers would do with a puzzle that had this same theme, but where all the songs came out between '05 and '20. The howling! But a preponderance of solvers will know these songs as old friends, and will probably be delighted, as the theme is cute and the difficulty level is very, very low. I love these songs (well, most of them), and I love classical mythology, so my feelings about this one naturally skew toward the positive. Some of the cluing could've been more dynamic, or funny. Didn't really get why Eos was being "congratulated" for morning's having broken, and while Aphrodite is undoubtedly pretty, Helen seems like the one with the iconic good looks (the face that launched a thousand ships and all that). But I did think a couple of these were right on the money—funny in unexpected ways. See especially "HERE COMES THE SUN" (hilarious when imagined as a warning shout), and "DON'T BRING ME DOWN"—though technically everyone went "down" back then (Aeneas visits his father in Elysium, for instance, which is in the Underworld), and Hades didn't really "bring" you, your shade just sort of ... ended up there. So, essentially, this clue is conflating Christian ideas of the afterlife with classical ones ... but I still think it's funny. Narcissus is a bit on the nose, but on the nose is better than off the nose. In short, the theme was pleasant and light-hearted and entertaining. Assuming you know something about pop music 1964-79. And something about classical mythology, of course.

["Bruce?!"]

The fill is solid throughout—no cringing, and not even much sideeye that I can remember. Of course I was going so fast that I didn't really have time to think much about the fill, but I usually remember wincing and sideeye, even at high speeds. This one started out with an obvious 1-Across: Need for double Dutch (ROPE), and once I got going I never slowed down. Well, not never. I spun my wheels a little bit at ODER (!?) / FEUD. My German is bad to nonexistent, so no hope on ODER (which I know only as a river), and FEUD ... that must've had a vague or otherwise tough clue. Yep: 45A: Beef, maybe. I fell for the meat meaning, I think. The one proper noun that might've proved tricky for some today is YVONNE De Carlo—another pop cultural bone thrown to the oldsters (55D: De Carlo who played Lily Munster). That one's running through J'ADORE, another proper noun that might elude a few solvers (64A: Dior fragrance). You've also got the (classical!) MIDAS in there, but clued as an auto parts store—that adds yet another potentially unfamiliar proper noun to the mix. And that whole section crosses two themers. For me, the names were all ultimately familiar, but if you struggled a bit there, that seems understandable. 

My only real screw-up came at 106A: Camp production, maybe (B-MOVIE). I had the "-MO-" and very confidently and very proudly wrote in S'MORES. S'MORES are more a "camp production" than B-MOVIEs are. Most B-MOVIEs are nowhere near camp(y). They were simply the lower-budget, typically lower running-time movies on a double bill. Camp schmamp. I mean, anything cheap and badly acted might be camp, I guess, but most B-MOVIEs simply would not qualify. In short, S'MORES was the correct answer, and I am lodging an official protest with the Crossword Gods to have B-MOVIE overturned. I'll let you know how that goes. 

Last thing: if you are a Central New Yorker (as so many of the best people are), you should know that the Finger Lakes Crossword Competition is taking place *this* Saturday, Sep. 23, in Ithaca, NY. It's a benefit for Tompkins Learning Partners, an adult literacy organization in the Finger Lakes area. I'll be there giving a little preliminary talk on ... I don't know, something. If you live anywhere in the area, come solve a puzzle and say hi. It's not a big time commitment. More of a mini-tournament, where you can solve alone or in teams, and you can choose one of three difficulty levels. For more information, see the tournament's website. 

That's all, see you tomorrow.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld 

P.S. I think the vegetables in the imagined portmanteau of PARSNIP are parsley (?) and turnip (80A: Vegetable that looks like a portmanteau of two other vegetables (but isn't!)). Would never have thought of parsley as a "vegetable," but hey, it's green, it's leafy, whatever.

P.P.S. 16D: A, as in ancient history? is ANNO because the “A” here is the “A” in “A.D.”—ANNO Domini. Slightly weird clue, in that most time that might be marked “A.D.” is not, in fact, ancient, but maybe the clue is suggesting that the term itself is old, replaced in many quarters by “C.E.”—Common Era. 

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