The announcement this week that the few remaining Blockbuster video stores would be closing inspired a lot of surprisingly wistful reminiscences for the chain with the garish blue and yellow color scheme that was once best known (and reviled in all the right corners) for a selective prudishness that deemed Henry & June unacceptable but Playboy exercise videos a-okay. (To be fair, I’m in absolutely no hurry to sit through the former again, so they may have had a point purely on aesthetic merits in my example.) Of course, this didn’t truly reflect a swelling of nostalgia for one particular … Continue reading One for Friday: Darren Hanlon, “Video Store”

We have an uncarved pumpkin on our front porch. Initially, there was a little regret about that in our household. However, a different sentiment quickly overtook it, defined by a simple, direct statement: every day is Halloween. There’s not exactly an abundance of holiday cheer in our residence, most of the special days of the calendar coming and going with, at most, cheerfully unorthodox commemorations. There is one that is held more dear than the others, and that’s Halloween. That reverence for October 31st means I’ve long gone out of my way to make sure I have a small surplus … Continue reading One for Friday: The Postmarks, “Every Day is Halloween”

I first left Florida–meaning left with a car full of belongings and no real expectation of returning–over six years ago. At the time, there was something even more significant than changing the state in the union that I called home: I was fairly certain I was leaving radio behind for good. It had been a major part of my identity since I started college myself, even in the interim years when I couldn’t by any stretched interpretation of the word call myself a broadcaster. And it was was certainly central to a professional reinvention that began in the middle of … Continue reading One for Friday: The Heathens, “Stickin Around”

As I’ve acknowledged previously, I and my college radio brethren shared a certain susceptibility to cover songs. That weakness increased immeasurably when the song getting the cover treatment was something that already fit into our alternative music format, a track we’d played exhaustively in its original derivation. It’s not like the Pixies had trouble getting airplay on their own, but covering a Jesus and Mary Chain song could make even their most skeptical fans in college radio (that would’ve been me) swoon. At my station, it was also sort of a stealth means to get around programming policy designed to … Continue reading One for Friday: The Wonder Stuff, “Closer to Fine”