Remember that part in The Wrestler when Randy the Ram is discussing music and concludes that the “nineties sucked” because that Cobain kid had to come and ruin it all? He kind of had a point. Unlike the titular grappler, I wasn’t pining for lost hair metal anthems. Instead, I was disheartened with the way Nirvana’s astounding success suddenly, briefly turned “alternative rock” into a widespread radio format. The artists that made college radio so exciting through the eighties and into the early nineties were either in decline or had checked out altogether, making it all the easier from commercial … Continue reading One for Friday: Ed’s Redeeming Qualities, “I Will Wait”

Throwing yourself into college radio and the music that has its most welcoming home on the left end of the dial can make you feel as if you’re in an alternative musical universe. It’s not just that you wind up listening to completely different stuff that many of your contemporaries, often baffled over their inability to understand that listening to, to use an example from my era, a hearing a new Husker Du record is a far superior experience compared to listening to the same Led Zeppelin album side played for the thousandth time. It’s that the music you love … Continue reading One for Friday: Guadalcanal Diary, “Always Saturday”