I worked in commercial radio in the mid-nineties. I was employed by a mini-conglomerate in Madison, Wisconsin, so I wound up pitching in at a couple of different stations, but the bulk of my time was spent at a place that, just a couple of years earlier, I would have guessed would be a dream station. It was an alternative rock station, which eventually, tellingly started to tout itself as a “new rock alternative” station. When my cohorts and I were logging endless unpaid hours at the college radio station, commercial alternative stations were like distant beacons in the fog … Continue reading One for Friday: The Vents, “One Way Ticket”

When I started this companion feature to the other music related foolishness I indulge in to help close out the working week, I came up with a couple of guidelines. For one thing, I was only going to post material that was officially out of print, a guideline that’s already expanded to have some wiggle room. The other was that I’d stick exclusively with material that I owned, converting and uploading the audio for the express purpose of using it here. My iTunes library is filled with wonderful obscurities previously uploaded to different pockets on the Web by other souls … Continue reading One for Friday, The Cost of Living, “So Much Better”