Back when I had some control over the music that was played at my college radio station, this was about the point that I’d finally relent and drag the meager collection of Christmas music out of deep storage. Yes, plenty of our on-air personnel were likely irritated that I waited so long (even back then, timeline creep with Christmas revelry was happening), but as someone who was generally listening to the station all day long, I could only take so much holiday cheer. While it certainly didn’t help that there was a relative dearth of seasonally appropriate college rock back … Continue reading One for Friday: Wire Train, “Skills of Summer”

(Disclaimer: Dogs Die in Hot Cars is a terrible, terrible name for a band, and sharing this song is by no means an endorsement for the group’s supposed cleverness in selecting that moniker. Usually it’s fairly easy to avoid holding a suspect band name against a batch of musicians, especially since so many over the years have acknowledged the difficulty of coming up with a smart, original, pithy was to be billed on posters. And the number of band names that actually sound fairly ridiculous but become plain and comfortable over the years is legion. I mean, the Beatles is a … Continue reading One for Friday: Dogs Die in Hot Cars, “Paul Newman’s Eyes”

I am still adjusting in my return to my native state of Wisconsin. Certainly spending a day indulging in gluttony while the wind blew briskly outside was a helpful reminder of the cultural terrain of the dairyland to which I’ve boomeranged, especially since we managed to place ourselves within a restaurant that is most accurately reviewed with the phrase “Lots of meat!” There were plenty of things giving me that seems-like-old-times feeling yesterday, from a glass of beer at The Great Dane to Brett Favre in Lambeau Field. And then there’s the blaze orange I’ve seen out an about the past … Continue reading One for Friday: Venison, “Forward”

At around the time the calendar odometer took its might spin from 1999 to 2000, I was extremely anxious about all the music I was missing. I’d graduated some seven years earlier, meaning I’d left the constantly rushing stream of college radio behind (I stuck around the station for another year-and-a-half as a community volunteer deejay, but the immersive quality of being a leader there meant exposure to new music didn’t feel quite the same). I deluded myself into thinking that working at a “new rock alternative” commercial station kept me connected, but I now realize the ratio of truly exceptional … Continue reading One for Friday: Shelby Lynne, “Your Lies”