Today is apparently College Radio Day. I could write at near-endless length about my time as a student broadcaster and still note properly convey exactly how much I got out of it. I value everything about my collegiate experience, but the college radio station was special, in practically every way. It was a sanctuary, an enlivening mental obstacle course, a place of spiritual renewal. It was a place of constant discovery, for music obviously, but for so many other things, especially the reserves of belief, insight, and capability I had within myself that I’m convinced never would have been tapped … Continue reading One for Friday: The Feelies, “Away”

It sure seems like the most appropriate follow-up to last week’s One for Friday involves a song from Mr. Marti Jones. Most of the Girls Like to Dance But Only Some of the Boys Like To, Don Dixon’s solo debut, was first released in the United States in late 1986, only after it had proven successful as an import in Europe, where it had received distribution the year before. Making the journey seem even more arduous, most of the material on the album was first peddled to labels well before. As Dixon acknowledged at the time, practically every song on … Continue reading One for Friday: Don Dixon, “Girls L.T.D.”

By 1988, Angst was a band with a honorable history. Formed in San Francisco, in 1980, Angst put out multiple albums on seminal punk label SST Records, including a couple that were produced by the label’s co-owner, Joe Carducci, making it reasonable to consider the group one of the signature acts of the pile-driving music house. When I got to my college radio station, I didn’t know any of that. All I knew is there was an album called Cry For Happy in rotation that had a striking drawing of roses on the front cover. I’m pretty sure I even pronounced … Continue reading One for Friday: Angst, “I Could Never Change Your Mind”

Marti Jones was one half of what passed for a power couple in the land of college rock, circa 1988. Jones was part of the band Color Me Gone in the mid-nineteen-eighties. They released a bit of music on A&M Records. It didn’t take, but the label clearly liked Jones, signing her to a solo contract that led to the release of the LP Unsophisticated Time, in 1985. The man behind the boards for that record was Don Dixon, then a hot, up-and-coming producer thanks to his efforts, with Mitch Easter, on the first two R.E.M. albums. He wasn’t making … Continue reading One for Friday: Marti Jones, “You Can’t Take Love for Granted”