Were I to write about any other topic today, it would seem strange. Even so, I don’t feel I have anything true and proper and unique to contribute to the conversation. So I’ll defer to Prince himself, who got the sentiment correct, right down to the month. Continue reading Prince Rogers Nelson, 1958 – 2016
211. The Boomtown Rats, “I Don’t Like Mondays” I suspect every last one of my college radio cohorts back in the day knew the backstory of the most notable single the Boomtown Rats ever released. At the very least, they had the basics. The band’s lead singer and chief songwriter, Bob Geldof, composed it after encountering a news story about Brenda Spencer, a sixteen-year-old in San Diego who opened fire on a neighboring schoolyard from a window in her family home. When a reporter got her on the telephone, she explained her motivation by blandly noting, “I don’t like Mondays.” (Spencer later … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 211 – 209
It is now a longstanding tradition that the Friday that ushers in the annual staging of the World’s Largest Trivia Contest by my broadcasting alma mater, WWSP-FM, is a day on which I post a version of “Come On Eileen.” As everyone knows, it is the official theme song of the Trivia team I play on. Really, everyone knows it, even Wikipedia: But the thought of hunting down a new take of this familiar song seems pointless to me when I already have a favorite cover version. This is my friend Mollie: She’s fantastic in countless ways. I could provide specifics, but I’m … Continue reading One for Friday Encore: Mollie Donihe, “Come on Eileen (Cover)”
214. Modern English, “I Melt with You” After the Snow, the second album from Modern English, represented a very deliberate stab at creating big pop hits. The band’s debut full-length, Mesh & Lace, released one year earlier, was very much in the gloomy, agitated post-punk mode perfected by Joy Division. When it came time to follow it up, they wanted to do something markedly different. At the time, lead singer Robbie Grey explained, “We could have easily carried on with the Mesh & Lace formula. We could have played the barren landscape, the heavy drumming, distorted guitars, and wailing vocals game … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 214 – 212
There’s an interesting choice on Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the live album released by the U.K. band the Godfathers, in 1989. To the best of my knowledge, this full-length wasn’t issued for sale in record stores, at least not in the United States. Instead, I believe it was a promo-only release, largely targeted at college radio, Epic Records’ means of keeping the band in the minds and hearts of fickle student programmers, many of them already coming down from the energized highs of the group’s debut release, Birth, School, Work, Death. That album’s title cut served as the perfect angry anthem, after all, for … Continue reading One for Friday: The Godfathers, “Birth, School, Work, Death (Live)”
On Silver Age, Bob Mould reclaimed his history after several years that could reasonably be characterized as messy (which doesn’t mean altogether bad, but his explorations sometimes verged on aimlessness). He followed that with Beauty & Ruin, expanding the scope of his productively nostalgic creativity to deliver music that sounded like every skipped stone ripple of his career gathered together to formulate something just new enough to turn heads anew. Now we come to Patch the Sky, which feels like the end of a trilogy. This time, Mould is settling into a comfortable mode, or as comfortable of a mode as his somewhat … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf: Patch the Sky
217. New Order, “Love Vigilantes” “Love Vigilantes” was widely considered a significant departure for New Order and something of a statement of purpose, or at least against reflexive pigeonholing, when it notably led off the band’s 1985 album, Low-Life. Though there are familiar sonic signatures throughout the track, it is distinctively lean and even a touch twangy. More strikingly, the lyrics actually tell a story, which was rarely the case with the jagged merging of words and music on earlier New Order songs. According to Bernard Sumner, the song’s lineage begins with a U.K. tour undertaken with the Buzzcocks in the … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 217 – 215
Continuing to draw inspiration from the recently posted autumn of 1989 90FM album chart, we turn to a band that was one my favorite discoveries upon landing at the college radio station. Close Lobsters hailed from Scotland and played a brand of punchy pop laced with tender paisley twinkling and brutal cynicism in roughly equal doses. In my late teens, nothing could have pleased me more. Headache Rhetoric, the band’s sophomore LP and final full-length release until a reunion some two decades later, landed in rotation during my first summer as a student broadcaster, and I gave it loving attention (though … Continue reading One for Friday: Close Lobsters, “My Days Are Numbered”
These posts are about the songs that can accurately claim to crossed the key line of chart success, becoming Top 40 hits on Billboard, but just barely. Every song featured in this series peaked at number 40. By my rough, hasty count, the Everly Brothers placed a total of twenty-seven songs into the Billboard Top 40, including three that topped the chart. The siblings were such a constant presence on early rock ‘n’ roll radio that disc jockeys routinely turning singles over, giving the B-sides enough spins to merit respectable chart placement. That was the case with “Love of My Life,” … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “Love of My Life” and “Bowling Green”
220. fIREHOSE, “Brave Captain” “Brave Captain” was the ideal opening salvo from fIREHOSE. Recorded in October, 1986 at Radio Tokyo studios, in Venice, California, Mike Watt and George Hurley put the song to tape less than a year after the tragic death of D. Boon brought an end to their prior band, the Minutemen. Inspired punk rockers still reveling in acclaim showered on the recent double album masterpiece Double Nickels on the Dime (though the now rarely invoked 3-Way Tie for Last was the band’s true final statement) at the time of the van accident that claimed the life of their lead singer, … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 220 – 218
Coffee for Two 