Sometimes–often, actually–I miss radio. I don’t solely mean working in radio, though that’s true, too. Twenty-five years ago as I type this, I was in my first year of college, meaning I was in my first year at the college radio station. Around this point in the year, I’d just been elected to serve in my first position on the executive staff, a vital part of my higher ed journey that itself would represent four-and-a-half years of diverse, exhausting, challenging, exciting, gratifying work. From there I went to commercial radio for a time, learning just enough to realize it was … Continue reading One for Friday: Steve Carlisle, “WKRP in Cincinnati”

I didn’t know of the Outlets back in my college radio days, but I should have. I’m not saying I should have known them because the Boston band was one of those that evaded my attention despite the prominence of their music elsewhere, but because I’m sure I would have absolutely loved them. On their debut album, Whole New World, the Outlets played exactly the sort of rough-hewn, punk-pummeled rock ‘n’ roll that I found irresistible at the time. Had the record landed in the station Heavy Rotation during my tenure, I would have never stopped playing it. I’m not … Continue reading One for Friday: The Outlets, “A Valentine Song”

Today, as must happen from time to time, this space is turned over to a song–and, by extension, the primary knowledge I have of said song and the artist attached to it–that I originally discovered of the first true treasure trove of hidden musical wonders that I found out there among the twists of the information superhighway. I spent weeks tracking through the entirety of the now-defunct Little Hits blog, stocking my iTunes with the catchy, joyous, punky and perfect obscurities that were shared there. It was like discovering a funhouse mirror version of my beloved 90FM C Stacks (the … Continue reading One for Friday: The Atlantics, “When You’re Young”

First impressions can be a strange thing, especially when personal first impressions are out of whack with actual chronology. Those with a deeper musical knowledge than I generally greeted the 1988 appearance of the Wire album A Bell is a Cup…Until It is Struck and its immediate predecessor, 1987’s The Ideal Copy, with a mixture of surprise and confusion, perhaps joined with the adhesive of derision. For them, the reunion of this founding father band of the post-punk movement sounded so far removed from beloved early works like Pink Flag and Chairs Missing–all rawness and jagged sonic challenges–that the newer … Continue reading One for Friday: Wire, “Come Back in Two Halves”