I never got all that hung up on record labels during my college radio days. That may have been in part because our station was just small enough that some of the humbler labels–of the sort more likely to inspire enduring affection–chose to keep us off their servicing list, not having the financial wherewithal to cover everyone. It may have simply been because my tastes at the time still had enough mainstream swirled into them, lessening how often I dug deep into the sort of incredibly obscure stuff that might stir my interest in a band’s labelmates in the hope … Continue reading One for Friday: Lush, “Take”

When We Were Kings, Leon Gast’s definitive documentary on the fabled “Rumble in the Jungle” fight between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman, started life as a concert film. As part of the associated festivities in Zaire, several funk and soul artists were there to stage a live show, which undoubtedly seemed like perfect fodder for a hit movie release back when Michael Wadleigh’s film of the Woodstock Music & Art Fair was still making the rounds to young, adoring and probably pretty stoned audiences. While there, Gast quickly figured out that the real story was happening over in the training … Continue reading One for Friday: James Brown, “Gonna Have a Funky Good Time”

When I showed up at the college radio station in that fateful fall of 1988, I had a little catalog in my head of songs that I needed to find. I have been combing Rolling Stone for a couple years by then, fascinated by all these elusive artists that popped up in the review section or other humble corner of the publication. There was no way one of my local radio stations was going to play a performer like Shona Laing or a song like “(Glad I’m) Not a Kennedy,” but that didn’t stop it for lodging in my brain … Continue reading One for Friday: Shona Laing, “(Glad I’m) Not a Kennedy”