A vacation is hard work. No matter how enjoyable my ventures into the greater world may be, they are rarely relaxing, even when pure relaxation is the goal. And when the destination doesn’t involves time in a hammock rocking in synch with cool oceanic breezes, but is instead dominated by energetically traversing an urban landscape for miles of foot travel, well, it can leave even the heartiest souls a little ragged. And I am hardly the heartiest soul. So as I return to the personal digital screens for the first time in many days (the items that took up successive … Continue reading One for Friday: The Textones, “Vacation”

When I embarked on my second journey through the magical land of student-run radio, as the supervising adult instead of one of the rabble-rousing kids, I was all too aware that I had a lot of catching up to do. Despite my desire to stay current on music, to avoid being the guy who was calling up the college radio station requesting the songs and artists I’d been listening to for twenty-five years or more when the deejay really wanted to play that brand new thing on the shelf, I had done poorly. This was in part attributable to putting … Continue reading One for Friday: Ryan Adams, “Come Pick Me Up”

It always seemed that Marshall Crenshaw was genetically engineered to be a cult hero. Even though his very first single, the utterly wonderful “Someday, Someway,” made it into the Billboard Top 40, it was hardly a thunderous success, peaking at #36. That seems simultaneously appropriate and a little tragic. Crenshaw created songs that were made for the radio, albeit maybe a different era than the one he was in. This was the early nineteen-eighties, when new wave was ascendent, punk was morphing from broad-ranging alternative to almost myopic jackhammer anger, and electronic was still trying to find its footing in … Continue reading One for Friday: Marshall Crenshaw, “You’re My Favorite Waste of Time”

When I was a college radio kid, heading off to New York City for the annual CMJ Music Marathon was a pure pipe dream. We simply didn’t have the sort of money for that sort of thing, and our different advisors and on-campus advocates decided, probably accurately, that it was a bit of a boondoggle, not worth fighting for. When dryer, more professionally respectable student-oriented broadcasting conferences cropped up more regionally conducive locations, they made university funding available to us. Again, they were probably correct to do so. Considering the sort of shenanigans we got up to in our posh … Continue reading One for Friday: Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, “Where Have All the Rude Boys Gone?”