I adore those rare instance when a music discovery hits with an immediacy and clarity of a ringside bell. To my mind, there’s nothing more magical than when such a revelation happens in the midst of a crowd, basking in live music delivered by a skilled performer. The first of many times that I saw Billy Bragg live, he was touring to support his 1991 album, Don’t Try This at Home. This excursion to stand before the Bard of Barking was of major importance to me. Workers Playtime was one of the albums I clung to like a religious artifact … Continue reading One for Friday: Billy Bragg, “Sulk”

I like music. And I like a lot of different bands and performers. It’s a breadth that I’ve tried to cultivate every since I first started buying records with focus and dedication over thirty years ago. When others prodded me with questions about favorites — bands, styles, songs, albums — it’s usually resulted in me stammering out some noncommittal response, not because I’m lacking in opinions (as this digital outpost presumably makes clear), but because those sorts of singular declarations felt so limiting. I always wanted more. I’m a broadcaster by inclination. Narrowcasting holds little interest for me, even when … Continue reading One for Friday: Bettie Serveert, “The Pharmacy”

Sometimes I wish I’d kept absolutely everything from my college radio days. My time as a student broadcaster predated the point when hefty archives could be handily condensed down to a dinky drive the size of exhausted cigar stub, so any exhaustive collection would have been a bulging box of papers and audio tape. No matter the pack rat tendencies that lurk inside me, dragging my history from home to home (and eventually state to state) simply wasn’t feasible. I know that. Still, I’d love to load up different slices of bygone broadcast days. I’m often surprised at just which … Continue reading One for Friday: Daisy Chainsaw, “Love Your Money”

By the time I reached my second college radio station, a splendid subterranean outpost where I served as the advisor, I was luckily primed to accept the songwriting talents of precocious teens named Ben. That preparedness prevented me from being needlessly dismissive of a favorite singer-songwriter with key student staff members. This might seem a small accomplishment — and, truly, it probably was — but, let’s face it, I needed all the cool kid points I could accumulate. Where I warmed to Australian Ben Lee several years earlier, it was Texan Ben Kweller who had an honored place in the … Continue reading One for Friday: Ben Kweller, “Commerce, TX”