I like music. And I like a lot of different bands and performers. It’s a breadth that I’ve tried to cultivate every since I first started buying records with focus and dedication over thirty years ago. When others prodded me with questions about favorites — bands, styles, songs, albums — it’s usually resulted in me stammering out some noncommittal response, not because I’m lacking in opinions (as this digital outpost presumably makes clear), but because those sorts of singular declarations felt so limiting. I always wanted more. I’m a broadcaster by inclination. Narrowcasting holds little interest for me, even when it comes to personal taste. Well, especially when it comes to personal taste is more like it.

And yet I’m often reminded of the bands that I never really took the time to dig into. These are performers who I’ve liked, and often liked a great deal, but somehow never made the pivot to adding multiple albums to my collection. For me, the band that’s most emblematic of that settled-in blind spot is Bettie Serveert.

The Dutch band started releasing albums when I was still a goofball kid (or young adult, I suppose) at my beloved Central Wisconsin college radio station. I know I played tracks off of their 1992 debut, Palomine, and I know I liked them. Then, a few years later, I stood in a fleeting music venue in the state capital and watched the group open for Golden Smog, a band I was obligated to see by the terms of my friendship with a gaggle of Uncle Tupelo disciples (Jeff Tweedy was part of Golden Smog, a sort of supergroup of scrubby Midwestern rock sorta-stars). Golden Smog was fun that night, but I found Bettie Serveert to be downright dazzling. Had I dollars to spare, I undoubtedly would have snapped up one of their merch table CDs right then and there. Sadly, disposable income was in short supply those days and nights.

And then, in the lamest of excuses, I just never got around to it. Bettie Serveert didn’t get much radio play, nor were they championed all that forcefully by the music press, at least after the warm reception for that debut. They were easy to forget about, to let slip on the priority list. There was always some new must-buy record that took priority.

Given the untamed frontier of digital media, a few Bettie Serveert tracks have found their way into my iTunes, and they’ll occasionally shuffle up. Every last time, I’m struck anew by how good it sounds. It happened again the other day. There was “The Pharmacy,” a more recent track from the band. And it sounded amazing, just like the sort of song I would grab onto and play to near-exhaustion across my various on-air shifts.

I wonder when’s the earliest I can get to my favorite local, independently-owned record store.

Listen or download –> Bettie Serveert, “The Pharmacy”

(Disclaimer: Say! Speaking of favorite local, independently-owned record stores! I suspect the album that’s home to this track is indeed still available in a physical form that can be purchased at that beloved shop, and I’m sharing this here to urge you to take the necessary steps to engage in precisely that commerce. Or maybe buy one of the band’s other eight albums. And then a whole bunch of other stuff. The record store can use your support. And mine. That’s my plan. The file is shared here and encouragement to support the band, not replacement for doing so. I believe this to be fair use, but I know the rules. I will gladly and promptly remove it from my little corner of the digital world if asked to do so be any individual or entity with due authority to make such a request.)