Sometime during my first pass through college radio, the onslaught of tribute albums began. There may have been some genuine affection for certain performers that inspired such efforts or at least colored the performances by the acts recruited to fill out the grooves. The real driving force, though, was the dead certainty that the most direct way to a college deejay’s heart was with one of their ragamuffin rotation staples playing a really familiar song, likely from an artist they secretly loved but has no entry to their ultra-hip airwaves. This how we got, say, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones … Continue reading One for Friday: Neko Case, “Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis”

There are those songs that are immediately rejuvenating. I suspect we all have them, those tracks that are perhaps somewhat designed to have that effect (uplifting lyrics, soaring melodies, music that builds and builds), but, more importantly, hold with them some beneficial added history. They were there at exactly the right time, the message, the sound, and everything hitting in the right way, like tumblers in a lock falling into proper place. Maybe the sweet spot was hit even more cleanly because the accumulated history of prior listens had finally accumulated to the point that the song shifted from casual … Continue reading One for Friday: Guadalcanal Diary, “Litany (Life Goes On)”

  On this day, when crass consumerism reigns supreme, I woke up with a Billy Bragg song galloping through my head. So even as I watched the morning news programs, wherein all the more important, more meaningful, more troubling developments of the day were pushed to deep on the segment list in favor of grotesquely chipper reports on which sales were generating the most aggressive enthusiasm among desperate holidays shoppers, my mental accompaniment involved a distinct Essex accent delivering the battle cry “We’re making the world safe for capitalism!” Bragg was one of the artists I clung to most gratefully … Continue reading One for Friday: Billy Bragg, “The Marching Song of the Covert Battalions”