Plop down $150 for a ticket to Good Sports 5th Annual Legends of the Ball, a five-hour event at the Roxy Monday June 9, starting at 6:30 p.m. What do you get? Well, the appropriately bombastic, triumphant Ultrasonic Rock Orchestra as your band. As your winning Good Sports of the year: The Red Sox Kevin Youkilis (in the sports division) and Myron Stovell (community division) and the National Recreation Foundation (philanthropy division). Basically, it's a party with a good cause and like those sorts of things at JSInk. And now, just in case you're wondering about the URO, here's what we wrote previewing their run on theatre row - just about across the street from the Roxy - last year.

Rock opera: Guilty pleasure or just pleasure? Doesn't really matter, does it. Boston Rock Opera kicked up the once-scorned genre when alt-rock was raging strong and no one wanted to hear multi-part story songs about fantasy worlds. Of course, that's not all rock opera was about. The Who's "Quadrophenia" is one the best albums period; The Kinks two "Preservation" records are right up there, too. BRO disbanded, but a different troupe, the Ultrasonic Rock Orchestra, has formed under the direction of Sal Clemente and Alan Ware. They've assembled scads of singers and musicians and they recorded an elaborate, contemporized version of "Jesus Christ Superstar." This pissed Andrew Lloyd Webber off as you might expect. Then, Clemente and Ware wrote a mini-opera, "Will We Rock You?," about that gnarly experience. They also staged several non-thematic live shows where they simply attempted to put together the best rock opera-ish songs they could: from the Beatles, Bowie, Who, Queen and others. The music has its share of bombast and can be cited for being over-the-top, but it can also be emotionally trenchant and memory jolting. You might also think: Hmmm, They don't write 'em like that anymore. The URO brings make a more ambitious heyday, that its worst was pretentious and its best thought-provoking. And does "Bohemian Rhapsody" ever get tired? (Well, did during "Wayne's World," but it's come back.) We still marvel over Freddie Mercury's journey through life ("I'm just a poor boy/Nobody loves me"), his cocksure defiance, his brush with the devil and his denoumenet - "Nothing really matters, to me." A soft sung ending to a line about a life lived passionately and for keeps. Magic then; magic now and these guys do it justice.

279 Tremont St., 617-282-6125    www.goodsports.org