And now today, on the first sweltering day of summer in the northern state where I currently reside, my mind casts back to similar seasons past, landing inevitably in 1989. That was my first summer at the college radio station, which felt like the true and proper beginning of my adulthood. The whole school year prior, living in a residence hall and going to classes, was still somehow an extension of what I’d always done, just with an odd sleepover component. But that first summer, I lived in an apartment, figured out my own meals, and balanced the competing schedules of a … Continue reading One for Friday: Hoodoo Gurus, “Where’s That Hit?”

Paul Kelly was a major figure for me during my inaugural year at the college radio station. His was a name I carried in with me, largely because a couple of his albums made unlikely appearances deep in the album review section of Rolling Stone, well past the point most readers had probably determined the artists and titles were getting too obscure to bother with and flipped the magazine closed. (I can’t find digital versions of those reviews, but there’s some circumstantial evidence that the column inches were courtesy of the championing of David Fricke, who still takes every reasonable … Continue reading One for Friday: Paul Kelly and the Messengers, “You Can’t Take It with You”

Like a lot of other DJs at my college radio station, I gravitated to covers. It was commonplace in the nineteen-nineties, which is part of the reason labels we’re always pushing artists to include revamps of familiar songs on their albums. In a crowded marketplace, it was one of the surest ways to grab the fickle attention of student broadcasters. With limited spots on a playlist, anything with a whiff of the familiar held an appealing safety. And yet I didn’t actively chase covers, not until years later. That’s when my splendid partner-in-all-things made it clear that she found covers … Continue reading One For Friday: Kasey Chambers, “Better Be Home Soon”

  At the college radio station, I was always firmly committed to the idea that we were supposed to dig deeper onto albums. Our commercial competitors up the dial were the sad souls that could only be bothered with one or two tracks from most artists, blandly following the directive of label executives who deemed certain songs more likely to burrow their ways into the minds of helpless listeners. Those of us who staffed the student-run outlet were no sycophants. We still believed rock ‘n’ roll was about rebellion and open expression. Personal choice dictated our playlists, not craven market-researched grasping … Continue reading One for Friday: Texas, “I Don’t Want a Lover”