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”

As I spend my first spring back in my native state of Wisconsin, I am reminded of the unique feelings that well up when it finally seems that winter, that harshest season, is irrevocably over. Those who’ve never endured the weather of the Upper Midwest perhaps don’t understand that snowy assaults can continue happening well past the point that seems at all reasonable, that these blustery heartbreaks might occur after a the false promise of a long stretch of beautiful, warm days. To live here, one acquires a defensive readiness to face down the cold yet one more time, as … Continue reading One for Friday: Great Lakes Myth Society, “Summer Bonfire”

In my earliest couple of years at the college radio station, I mentally differentiated between those artists who completely belonged to us kids — those that I could see as rough contemporaries — and those who were, for lack of a better term, “adults.” This wasn’t always based purely on chronology. The Cure, for example, released their fourth studio album at around the same time Marshall Crenshaw released his first, but it was the Detroit native who I automatically slotted into a sort of college rock elder statesman role. After all, the Cure were still crafting songs that spoke directly … Continue reading One for Friday: Marshall Crenshaw, “Whatever Way the Wind Blows”

Though I grew up when Prince was at the height of his chart-dominating powers, I came to Purple One’s music late. It was my own fault. I listened to that melange of inverted pop, fiery funk, rafter-rattling rock, and provocatively challenging lyrics and I couldn’t find my entryway. I even remember standing in a record store holding vinyl copies of both Sign o’ the Times and Paul Simon’s Hearts and Bones, mulling which one to purchase, only to have a friend essentially tell me I wasn’t ready for Prince’s double album masterwork. He was right. (By now, I own it; … Continue reading One for Friday: Ani Difranco, “When You Were Mine”