Last week, we came to the conclusion of the mightiest College Countdown effort yet, a survey of the Top 250 songs from the first ten years of CMJ, the trade publication that once served student broadcasters — and maybe still … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 40 Cuts, March 16, 1990 — An Introduction
I need to acknowledge the walls of the college station where I made my home from 1988 to 1993 (and beyond, truthfully). Not the college issued white blandness, but the scrappy, unkempt cover-up provided by student programmers over the years. … Continue reading One for Friday — Big Pig, “I Can’t Break Away”
I readily concede that at this melancholy moment there’s a greedy desire to hear echoes of Tom Petty just about everywhere. But, whenever I now cycle back to A Deeper Understanding, the new album from the War on Drugs, I … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf: A Deeper Understanding
1. General Public, “Tenderness” The Beat had just had their biggest hit in the U.K. when the breakup happened. A cover of the pop standard “Can’t Get Used to Losing You,” a song first elevated to hit status by Andy Williams, … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 1
It’s very possible Wildflowers was the last album I purchased while living in my college town. I stuck around for roughly a year and a half following my graduation, working a thankless movie theater management job and soothing my post-collegiate … Continue reading One for Friday: Tom Petty, “Wildflowers”
For me, Tom Petty’s career was a recurring invitation of rediscovery. The Florida native delivered his first album with the Heartbreakers in 1976, which put him right on the cusp of artists who, in my perception, had simply always been … Continue reading Tom Petty, 1950 – 2017
2. R.E.M., “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” At the time R.E.M. released their fifth studio album, Document, in 1987, the little ol’ band from Athens, Georgia was still adamantly against a … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 2
A couple of weeks back, a friend of mine was kind enough to share some airtime with me. After participating in the reunion weekend for my old college radio station two years runnings, I decided I was up for swinging … Continue reading From the Archive — Pleased to Meet Me
This is it, friends. This is exactly what 1980 sounded like. The single “Girls Are Always Right,” from the U.K. new wave band Any Trouble, has some Joe Jackson to it. And Elvis Costello, and Graham Parker, and Marshall Crenshaw. … Continue reading One for Friday — Any Trouble, “Girls Are Always Right”
3. Love and Rockets, “No New Tale to Tell” “This was our ‘getting it together in the countryside’ acoustic album,” David J wrote on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of Earth, Sun, Moon, the 1987 release from Love and … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 3
Coffee for Two 