This series of posts covers my long, beloved history interacting with the medium of radio, including the music that flowed through the airwaves.

Although I get to be on the radio an awful lot these days thanks to the place where I’m lucky to have a day job, I still have a special affection for those occasions when I return to my alma mater to preside over Then and Now, the show my friend Wayne has been hosting on Sunday nights for a good long time. Last night, I was back in that air chair. I originally had only the vaguest of plans for the program, but a few conversations in the days leading up to the shift convinced me that I needed to do something special.

My partner-in-all-things and I have had cause for reminiscing in recent weeks. Mixed in within our discussions has been fond nostalgia for concerts that we attended together over the years. So, for this Then and Now, I built a playlist almost entirely consisting of artists we saw play live. There were a couple small cheats: We haven’t seen Talking Heads in concert, but we have had incredible experiences watching the first-rate tribute act Houses in Motion, and we know we were in the same Violent Femmes audience a few months before we met. Otherwise, we watched every one of the acts in the playlist while standing side by side.

For posterity’s sake, and my own record-keeping, this is my playlist from Then and Now on June 7, 2026:

Wild Flag, “Romance”
Thao and the Get Down Stay Down, “Meticulous Bird”
Ladytron “He Took Her to a Movie”
Tori Amos, “Cruel”
Jack White, “Weep Themselves to Sleep”
Kacey Musgraves, “High Horse”
Those Darlins, “The Whole Damn Thing”
Cat Power, “Free”
Old 97’s, “Friends Forever”
Hole, “Awful”
Imperial Teen, “Yoo Hoo”
Chvrches “Keep You on My Side”
Cut Copy, “Hearts on Fire”
M.I.A., “Pull Up the People”

Billy Bragg, “Greetings to the New Brunette”
The Mountain Goats, “Cry for Judas”
The Figgs, “Favorite Shirt”
Bob Dylan, “Political World”
Lucinda Williams, “Change the Locks”
Talking Heads, “Houses in Motion”
Laurie Anderson, “From the Air”
St. Vincent “Regret”
Interpol, “Not Even Jail”
White Lies, “Death”
Sinéad O’Connor, “Fire on Babylon”
Shane MacGowan and the Popes, “The Rising of the Moon”
Bruce Springsteen, “Badlands”
Gear Daddies, “Little Red Corvette”
Lloyd Cole, “She’s a Girl and I’m a Man”

Phoebe Bridgers, “Kyoto”
Muna, “Anything But Me”
Kraftwerk, “Trans Europe Express”
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, “Stranger Than Kindness”
The National, “You Had Your Soul with You”
Violent Femmes, “Nightmares”
Ani Difranco, “Superhero”
Robyn Hitchcock, “Alright Yeah”
Savages, “The Answer”
PJ Harvey, “This Is Love”
Yeah Yeah Yeahs, “Pin”
Courtney Barnett, “Nobody Really Cares If You Don’t Go to the Party”
Neko Case, “Last Lion of Albion”
Mitski, “Remember My Name”
Diet Cig, “Thriving”
Sleater-Kinney, “Price Tag”

Previous entries in this series can be found by clicking on the “Radio Days” tag.