I’ve long been under the impression that I’m not supposed to like The Sound of Music, the last album credited to the dB’s during their original run. (Reunions happen.) In the canon of cool, the first dB’s album justly holds an honored place with every subsequent effort a dissipating echo. Certainly declaring allegiance to one of the albums recorded after band co-founder and stellar pop songwriter Chris Stamey is highly suspect. And yet the record that has the strongest nostalgic pull for me is not the masterful Stands for Decibels. It is indeed that final album. It is The Sound … Continue reading One for Friday: The dB’s, “Working for Somebody Else”

It’s now been twenty-five years since my first summer at the college radio station. That whole first year had a major impact on me, but there was something different–something deeply transformational–about the first summer. For one thing, I was now on the people in charge. I’d been on the executive staff the spring before, though in a fairly low-level position. Now I was the Program Director, effectively second-in-command on the staff, carrying responsibilities that encompassed everything that crossed the airwaves. For another thing, we were able to devote ourselves fully and completely to the operations of the radio station, without … Continue reading One for Friday: Concrete Blonde, “Little Conversations”

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”