When I got started in college radio in the late nineteen-eighties, there was still a lingering myth about broadcasting being a good route to do something truly daring, even subversive. It was, after all, a radio station that had played George Carlin’s routine about the seven words that can’t be said on television, leading to a landmark Supreme Court case that got the great comedian’s brilliant skewed linguistic analysis forever entered into the federal record. And the notion of the darkly philosophizing deejay still cropped up every now and again, as if everyone who got behind the microphone could hold … Continue reading One for Friday: Diesel Park West, “All the Myths on Sunday”

When I was removed from the constant discovery zone of college radio, I often poured through music magazines to find my way to new artists. This meant that, like a sportswriter considering whose name to write on his or her MVP ballot, I was unduly susceptible to a performer with a good story. Jack Logan had a great story. He was a longtime songwriter who came to prominence fairly late in life, after moving to Georgia, where he befriended Peter Buck of R.E.M. While Logan was still making his living as a swimming pool motor technician, he started releasing albums, … Continue reading One for Friday: Jack Logan, “Teach Me the Rules”

Though I like to think my musical tastes have diversified somewhat in recent years, two decades ago there was no surer pathway into my preferences than big, proud electric guitars. The Chicago band Urge Overkill was already on my radar for that very reason by the time they released their major label debut, Saturation, in 1993. Their prior effort, The Supersonic Storybook on Touch and Go, was championed by CMJ, the college radio trade publication, and I returned to it fairly regularly across my last few semesters as a student at the station. But Saturation, officially released just a couple … Continue reading One for Friday: Urge Overkill, “Sister Havana”