There’s currently no shortage of ways to find out about new music, but it was a very different situation when I was a student programmer at the college radio station in the early nineties. We had ready access to most new music at the station (and least most new music that was likely to suit our collective taste), but the sheer quantity of it made it easy to miss good new stuff. So sometimes a little outside reading was beneficial. Much as I’ve decried Rolling Stone in various electronic spaces over the years, the deeper you dug into their reviews section the more likely some fine but obscure new band could be discovered. It was even more likely if it was one of the other two music magazines that made the rounds of my friends: Musician and Spin.

Spin in particular seemed to take great pride in being more daring that Rolling Stone, regularly putting the heroes of college radio on the cover and compiling lists of the greatest music of all time that pushed back against the conventional wisdom. This caused me to pay keener attention when the publication engaged in that usual practice of using the close of a calendar year as a excuse for making lists. My recollection is that I was reading just such an issue–the edition that heralded the close of 1991–in the studio while on-air doing shift during the chilly, desolate days of winter break. I came upon a sidebar list, which had a title something like “The Year’s Ten Best Albums That You Haven’t Heard.” One of the albums on that list was the self-titled debut from Apollo Smile, which I knew we had in the station. I went over to the C Stacks, the collection of little-known artists in the station, a grabbed the CD. Just like that, it was added to that afternoon’s playlist.

It was the same sort of immediacy that’s available to skilled navigators of the music blogosphere now, when reading about an intriguing new artist can lead quickly to sampling some of their music. I was always thankful for that aspect of being at the station, a gratitude that was heightened during the one summer I spent away from there during my tenure. There are a lot of things I like about the information and communication bonanza that the Interweb represents, but that access to the wide array of music out there may be the most pronounced. Every time I find some new, thrilling music out there because of all the music fans tying their hearts out, there’s a little bit of me that’s back in that old studio, hearing a great record for the first time.

Apollo Smile, “Dune Buggy”

(Disclaimer: As best as I can tell, Apollo Smile’s album is out of print, although her time spent as “the living anime girl” means there’s a surprising amount of material about her out there in cyberspace. This song is posted with the understanding that it can’t be acquired in a way that provides money to the artist. If anyone with due authority to make such a request asks me to remove it, I will promptly and gladly comply.)