When I got to my college radio station, in the late nineteen-eighties, I was anxious to start discovering artists who were entirely new to me. But I also appreciated the safety of those artists I’d heard repeated on the radio over and over again, even if it was with only one or two songs. Even more than that, I was somewhat proud that college radio could serve as a safe landing space for gifted performers who’d taken a spin with commercial success but were ultimately deemed too iconoclastic to become recurring residents on those parts of the dials. It matched … Continue reading One for Friday: Todd Rundgren, “The Want of a Nail”

A little more than eight years ago, I began working at a unique little college nestled in the Swannanoa Valley in Western North Carolina. Surrounded by mountains, equipped with a full working farm, and populated by students who came to the place knowing full well that their education was going to necessarily include fifteen hours each week devoted to keeping the operations of the college going, in every facet from office work to heavy-duty landscaping to cleaning floors and toilets. I’d come from an institution of higher learning with a fair number of enrollees who were just checking boxes in … Continue reading One for Friday: Dan Rousseau, “Good Morning Swannanoa”

When I was a teenager, just starting to hone my musical taste into something respectable, I wanted to believe in a local music scene. As I read through my biweekly subscription copies of Rolling Stone with the sort of intense scrutiny others save for the Bible, I became enamored with any write-up about a town that was exploding with an influx of great new bands that were garnering national attention. The mixture of civic pride and being ahead of the curve was potently appealing to me for reasons I still can’t quite identify. Of course, I couldn’t truly take advantage … Continue reading One for Friday: Fire Town, “Turn To Me”

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”