My absolute favorite time to be at the college radio station during my undergraduate years was winter break. I liked the isolation that came from being in the station alone, a sensation compounded by the stretch of time when the university was at its most severely underpopulated and the frigid temperatures outside meant that there was even an abatement of general traffic on the road past the windows of the hallway between studios. Although, I must add that there remained a slight problem with the situation until the calendar reached December 26th: I didn’t particularly like Christmas music, but I … Continue reading One for Friday: Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, “Cold White Christmas”

I’ve usually had fairly conventional picks for the best album of the year, to my dismay (I have a niggling desire to be more iconoclastic than I really am). There have been exceptions, though. One of those occurred in 1995, probably because I was enduring the overly conventional to a tedious degree thanks the playlists I was handed at the commercial radio station where I worked. While most of the cool kids’ lists were topped by the likes of Radiohead, the Smashing Pumpkins and Björk, I was ready to tell everyone who’d listen that the actual greatest achievement in recorded … Continue reading One for Friday: Mike Watt, “Heartbeat”

I guess we can’t have nice things. I remember the very moment I found out about Wild Flag. I was in my community’s finest record store, indulging in my usual practice of compulsively checking the Sleater-Kinney section, even though my collection was basically complete (I’m still lacking the self-titled debut in case anyone is looking for a holiday gift-giving idea). As I forlornly muttered about the demise of the band and my own inability to ever see them play live, the gentleman behind the counter gently directed me to a flyer on the front door of the shop. Sure enough, … Continue reading One for Friday: Wild Flag, “See No Evil”