In last week’s One for Friday, I expended quite a few words writing about a friend from my college radio days when I served as an advisor to the students who were running the station. In writing about the way I associate certain songs with certain people, I made an offhand mention of how thoroughly and pervasively that was the case back when I myself was a student, working away at our little broadcast outlet in the heart of central Wisconsin. In the comments, one of my old cohorts challenged me to name some of those songs that were locked in with specific old friends, so it seemed like that might be a good inspiration for this week’s edition (thought it’s not quite the first time I’ve written about the songs that play in lockstep with memories of pals from a couple decades ago). Coincidentally, another friend from those days contacted me separately to reminisce a bit about the music that used to fill our days, so it seemed clear he should be the target.

I was the Station Manager of WWSP-FM for two years and I was lucky enough to work with an exceptional Program Director during the duration of that time. I’ve no doubt that Program Director was the most challenging position at the station, but Bryan did it with thoroughness, persistence and a instinctual gift for fairness as he worked with the staff. Befitting the position, he was also extremely strong on the air, winning the yearly Best DJ award a couple of times during his tenure on the staff. A lot of that came from his insistence on taking the role seriously. He wasn’t just there to play all his favorite songs over and over again; he was supposed to discover great new songs so he could share them with the listeners. He never lost sight of the fact that he was doing a radio show–that he was broadcasting–and he challenged the rest of the on-air staff to take the same approach.

And he also had a hell of a knack for digging deeper into new albums to find the terrific song that no one else at the station was playing yet. A lot of us got hung up on whatever the hit single was, but Bryan always seemed to find the song that the label would eventually figure out was ideal for the second or third single. It might have been the song that grabbed the listener on the first listen, but it was often deeper, smarter, cleverer. If the first single was the one that would inspire us to sing along mindlessly, the songs that Bryan found were often the ones that could inspire those late night listens, the ones where really hearing the song was the goal.

While it’s far truer to say that I associate the entirety of the Too Much Joy oeuvre with Bryan, there is another song that forever belongs to him because he found it first. The Hoodoo Gurus’ 1989 album, Magnum Cum Louder was a sizable hit at the station. So when the follow-up, Kinky, arrived a couple of years later in the spring, the on-air staff was eager to play it. The first single was “Miss Freelove ’69,” a song engineered to grab the attention of hormone-addled college kids who were naturally defenseless before any song riddled with innuendo. I was fairly sick of it as the school year ended and summer was approaching. Remembering how the prior effort was a dominant presence during the summer, I was grousing to Bryan about the new record as a comparative disappointment. Bryan offered a counter-argument: “Naw, dude, you’ve gotta play ‘1000 Miles Away.’ That’s the great song off that album.”

He was right. While “Miss Freelove ’69” transformed from an exuberant party song to a somewhat tiresome novelty after a couple months of regular play, “1000 Miles Away” endured thanks to its homesick sincerity, restrained but charming wordplay and slowly escalating pop epicness. Sure enough, RCA Records wound up releasing it as the second single from the album, although it didn’t gain the sort of traction on the college charts as its predecessors. Even so, I think Bryan was right that it was the best song on the album. He usually was right about those things.

Hoodoo Gurus, “1000 Miles Away”

(Disclaimer: It appears to me that Kinky is out of print, at least in the United States. It might be a different matter in their homeland of Australia. If nothing else, I do think that “1000 Miles Away” may be available on a “best of” compilation that’s available as a pricey import. I thought I saw such a release when researching this a couple days ago, but I can’t seem to find it today. Certainly you can go to your favorite local, independently-owned record store and acquire either Mars Needs Guitars or Blow Your Cool, both of which are highly recommended. Regardless, if someone with due authority to request its removal contacts me with such a request, I’ll gladly and promptly comply.)