During winter break after my first semester of college I asked the Program Director at the college radio station to tell me his pick for the best album of the year. He paused and thought about it, clearly not as trained as I was (by the nefarious influence of Rolling Stone) to always have a clear, decisive response at the ready whenever the opportunity arose to rank the offerings of pop culture. Eventually he answered “Soul Asylum’s Hang Time.” This caught me by surprise. I’d fiercely studied the handful of “best of” lists that were available during that era–what a … Continue reading One for Friday: Soul Asylum, “Heavy Rotation”

When I made it to the college radio station in the fall of 1988, I was focused on those performers who knew how to make their guitars do wonderfully noisy things. I came late to the stirring population of artists who populated the subgenre of “college rock” after flailing around all over the radio dial during my teenage years. When I arrived, I was especially susceptible to the guiding judgment of my peers, and when the less tolerant denizens of my high school (a phrase you may accurately read as “every other student in my graduating class”) deemed a band … Continue reading One for Friday: Alison Moyet, “And I Know”

Every April, Stevens Point is the location of the World’s Largest Trivia Contest. It originates and emanates from WWSP-90FM, the student-run radio station at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. 90FM is where I went to college. Well, okay, officially I went to college at UW-SP, but no matter how many classes I took or what the diploma says, I majored in college radio. I spent five years helping to run that contest and have been playing in it ever since. The team I’m on was in fact started by radio station alumni and probably about half of the forty people … Continue reading One for Friday: Dexy’s Midnight Runners, “Come On Eileen” (live)