Sometimes I marvel at all the different ways my college radio station introduced me to new music. There are the obvious ones, of course: combing through the walls of records, chatting with fellow deejays about their more obscure favorites, just plainly listening to station as much as I could. There was another method that I’m confident is fairly prevalent at college radio station to this day. I learned about music from the posters on the wall. Our station was flooded with promotional materials from the various labels and distribution agencies and just about anything that could get tacked up on … Continue reading One for Friday: Ranking Roger, “So Excited”

By the summer of 1998, the song “Torn” was practically unavoidable. I used to join a friend on an annual summertime jaunt intended to hit as many Major League ballparks as we could over a long weekend. While we always made sure the vehicle was stocked with plenty of mix tapes (competitively so), part of the ritual was scanning through local radio, including carefully cataloging which songs we heard the most. On that trip, “Torn” was the clear winner (though, to be fair, we likely zipped right past “The Boy is Mine,” which topped the Billboard charts for essentially the … Continue reading One for Friday: Ednaswap, “Torn”