It’s now been over three-and-a-half years of quite regular weekly posting since I launched this particular Friday feature, a span that has, by my rough tally, led to just over 180 songs being shared in this space thus far (including the week that I proudly ceded to others). It would seem, given that number and my propensity for featuring tracks from my first year of college, that I would have exhausted every out of print college radio hit bearing a copyright date of 1988 or 1989. Indeed, there are times when a song shuffles up on my trusty iPod and … Continue reading One for Friday: Easterhouse, “Come Out Fighting”

Back when I started this weekly music-sharing endeavor, my friend Lauren, blessed with youth and beauty, commented, “I’m intrigued to find out what type of thing you listened to in college.” She correctly ascertained, perhaps before I did, that the songs posted here would come disproportionately from the thick sliver of years that I spent as a wee, impressionable undergraduate at the student-run radio station at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point (go Pointers!). While the bulk of the offerings that can be carbon-dated to the years between 1988 and 1993 offer a fair snapshot of who I was, I’d argue … Continue reading One for Friday: Field Trip, “Run”

Growing up is dumb. Okay, okay, so it has its rewards too: wisdom, accumulating authority, stabilizing emotions and all that junk. Whether that’s due compensation for the virtually inevitable dissipation of passion and energy is a matter of debate. Perhaps nothing crystallizes the supremacy of youth quite like the realm ruled in benevolent partnership by rock ‘n’ roll and pop music. I don’t know that I’ve ever heard a great song about yard upkeep or renegotiating mortgages rates, but first kisses and tragic, heated love affairs certainly fit snugly into a three-and-a-half-minute single. That’s one of the reason that teenage … Continue reading One for Friday: Noise Addict, “Boyfriendship”

We probably thought Edie Brickell was going to be one of those artists who’d be around, creating music that was simultaneously breezy and vital for a long, long time. The debut album with backing band New Bohemians (no “the,” please) arrived in August of 1988, weeks before I landed at the college radio station, and the single “What I Am” got ample airplay throughout the fall on its way to becoming an unlikely Top 10 hit on the Billboard charts. For most, that track represents the entirety of the essential Brickell collection. At our station, however, it was actually the … Continue reading One for Friday: Edie Brickell & New Bohemians, “Carmelito”