The hype machine for music was very different in the late eighties when I was at the college radio station. (And The Hype Machine was nonexistent.) New releases from artists we considered significant could actually sneak right up on us, unheralded by the major music magazines and produced without any mention whatsoever from the glossy drones on MTV. The album would just arrive in the mail, or occasionally show up alluringly on the CMJ upcoming releases list that periodically provided a month’s advance forecast on the back page. Even then, it was only the name of the artist with some … Continue reading One for Friday: Syd Straw, “Think Too Hard”

I’m a bad sleeper. I’ve been a bad sleeper for years. That’s actually an official diagnosis. Back in the mid-nineties, my problems were so pronounced that I sought out a sleep disorder specialist, went to several appointments with her, wore a bizarre contraption on my noggin one night so she could get data on what my sleep patterns were like. In the end, she said there was nothing wrong with me that was nameable or treatable. She shrugged her shoulders and said, “Some people are just bad sleepers.” At the time, I was compounding my difficulties by working fifty to … Continue reading One for Friday: Bic Runga, “Get Some Sleep”

Paul Kelly was one of those artists that I arrived at the college radio station determined to find. He had received laudatory reviews in Rolling Stone, one of the few sources for music information that I had in the mid-to-late eighties. Despite the Australian troubadour’s relative obscurity on these shores, the publication reviewed his records, approvingly quoting the lyrics and generally describing his songwriting capabilities with the same sort of unabashed enthusiasm they usually reserved for more sainted figures like Neil Young. His music clearly wasn’t going to get played on the commercial radio stations I could access during my … Continue reading One for Friday: Paul Kelly & the Messengers, “Under the Sun”

As the sort of cop-out posts from the past couple of days clearly indicate, this is as extremely busy week for me, making the process of putting word together pretty and cogently to be hard. With that in mind, I’m going to defer to someone else’s older post for today’s musical selection. Luckily, while researching my post at the other site, I stumbled upon a song I’ve been wanting to hear for a long, long time. Enjoy. Continue reading One for Friday: Cheating Off of Someone Else’s Paper

There was a lot that I didn’t know about music when I arrived at my college radio station. Without knowing that a microphone with a broadcast capabilities was my destination, I’d spend the prior year or two cramming. I subscribed to Rolling Stone (in part, because Paul Schaffer told me to), I listened to the one local radio station that treated the release of a new R.E.M. record as an event, I stayed up late on Sunday nights to watch MTV’s 120 Minutes. Without really knowing it, I was researching, trying to understand the secret life of music that scooted … Continue reading One for Friday: Scruffy the Cat, “My Baby She’s Alright”

Tonight at 6:00 p.m., the college radio station that I write about often in this space will commence the 41st staging of their annual trivia contest, a Mardi Gras of minutiae that has grown so monumental that it lays claim to being the “World’s Largest.” As cameras have capture, I’m a participant in this contest, playing on a team of some notoriety, a team that, unbelievably, has been playing in this contest for over twenty years. For me, as it is with many of the 11,000 or so who will come to Stevens Point to hang on every word uttered … Continue reading One for Friday: “Come On Eileen”

One of the trickier aspects of being a music fan is when the music you love gets appropriated by pieces of the pop culture that you, well, don’t have such strong positive feelings towards, let’s say. I remember being shocked and appalled when I first heard Material Issue’s “Everything” butchered by some nasty, yearning band called Stereo Fuse. And while I’ve long since given up on righteous indignation as a response to a band selling off their songs for use in slick commercials, there’s still a part of me that instinctively winces when a song I really admire is paired … Continue reading One for Friday: Dream Warriors, “My Definition of a Boombastic Jazz Style”

I was in Memphis when Alex Chilton died. Most of what I knew of Alex Chilton started with Paul Westerberg and the Replacements. Before Westerberg was called upon to eulogize Chilton, he testified about him in song, supposing interstellar lineage as the proper explanation for his unique brand of coolness. This song arrived one album after an ill-fated attempt to have Chilton produce the Replacements’ major label debut, giving Westerberg the opportunity–and, in the opinion of the music journalists who were paying attention to this underappreciated corner of the sonic landscape, the obligation–to speak at length about the thwarted opportunity … Continue reading One for Friday: Paul Westerberg, “Trumpet Clip”