As I’ve mentioned before, I had two different and separate spins through college radio. When I returned to the left of the dial as an advisor in 2001, I felt like I had to relearn the music all over again. (Though not entirely: the number one album of the year in 2002 was by Sonic Youth.) I didn’t have to know if backwards and forwards; that was the job of the students who were actually programming the station. I did want to have a working knowledge of it. I wanted to know what the station was playing and give good advice about what was and wasn’t relevant. This may have been a daunting task, but it wasn’t an unpleasant one. In the intervening years, I missed knowing about new music and, most crucially, new artists.

I was especially glad to have access to the weekly publication of CMJ once again. I’d read their monthly newsstand spin-off with some devotion for a while, but it really wasn’t the same. There was something about getting the reviews at roughly the same time the CDs were hitting the station and seeing the assessments smartly tilted towards a consideration of what releases would work best on the radio, and watching how the records shifted on the charts, that near real-time view of how programmers nationwide were reacting to it, provided a quick back-up alert to excellent music that might have been initially missed. Naturally, the version of CMJ that I had renewed access to in 2001 had evolved enough that it wasn’t precisely what I wanted it to be–a shortcoming of nostalgic feelings rather than that of the magazine itself–but it was close enough. Part of my work week was spent poring through each new issue.

That’s how I found that album Alive with Pleasure by Dylan Hicks. This was not a release that was likely to stir the interest of most of the DJs at the station (to the degree the vigilantly diverse station had a defining sound at the time, it was a Beachwood Sparks dreamland haze”) so I surely wouldn’t have ever heard a note of it without stumbling upon the description of his “smart wordplay and pop sensibility.” Seeing Paul Westerberg’s name invoked also helped.

Of course, it may have been the song “All the Rock Star Jobs Are Taken” that really locked the album in for me. After years of embracing and loving the youthful rebellion and romanticized misery of my favored rock and pop songs, there was something comforting about discovering a clever, funny track that directly addressed getting older in that scene–albeit as a performer instead of a fan–and perhaps coming to terms with the notion that letting that go was okay. I was back in college radio, but that didn’t mean I needed to be a college kid again.

Dylan Hicks, “All the Rock Star Jobs Are Taken”

(Disclaimer: Alive with Pleasure appears to be out of print, although it is available for digital purchase, which I will maintain is a dodgy prospect for the artist until Tim Quirk tells me otherwise. Regardless, buying it that way provides no compensation to a local, independently-owned, bricks-and-mortar record store, and they deserve as much support from purchases of music as anyone. My brief manifesto shared, I will now humbly note that I’ll gladly remove this music file from this corner of the Interweb should I be contacted by anyone who has the due authority to make such a request.)