I had a few unofficial rules when I assembled my shows during my college radio days. One of the oddest was this: when in doubt, look to the H’s. That’s the section of the library that I generally gravitated to when I was momentarily at a loss as to what to play next. This may be in part because my most dependable standby, Robyn Hitchcock, had an impressive bevy of albums there in the music stacks, but there were other performers there, like Husker Du and Hunters and Collectors and the Housemartins, who were equally well-equipped to help turn the … Continue reading One for Friday: Hoodoo Gurus, “Come Anytime”

I don’t really like Christmas music. I did when I was a kid. Like a lot of kids, I suppose, I was always pretty happy when the calendar pages flipped up to the point where it was reasonable to pull the worn copies of Christmas albums out of the stacks and starting giving them regular airplay, usually on the big console stereo of my grandparents, the one that allowed for six or seven big black discs to be stacked up on top of the spindle, waiting for their chance to plummet to the turntable and start spreading cheer. That affection … Continue reading One for Friday: Will & the Bushmen, “Blow Me Up”

Usually this electronic space is devoted to sharing individual songs every Friday (as opposed to the weekly diversion at the site that otherwise mirrors this one). Several months ago, I shared an offering from the band that was one of the signature artists of my college radio station during the years that I was there as a student, a band called Too Much Joy. This past week, the band’s lead singer, Tim Quirk, posted a royalty statement from Warner Brothers that he’d fought long and hard to get. The statement details the amount the band has earned from sales of … Continue reading One for Friday: A Digression

In this weekly space, I write a lot about music I procured fifteen or twenty years ago. Back then I was getting albums on vinyl, on CD, and, if desperate, on cassette. While it was no harder to find the newest U2 or R.E.M. record than it was to find Milli Vanilli or Aerosmith, a significant amount of the music that captured my interest required some hunting to get a copy (or sometimes pleading with whatever small label originally serviced the radio station with a second copy that could be added to a poor radio station staffer’s collection). Often the … Continue reading One for Friday: Ed Haynes, “Splash”

I was the Program Director at WWSP-90FM throughout the 1990-91 academic year, a span I shared a house with five other station “executive staff” members, a house we incongruously dubbed “The Terrordome.” I remember a lot of things about that house–including several messy, messy parties–but one of the clearest memories involves my bedroom being filled with records. At this time, the Program Director also held significant responsibility for the music that went into rotation at the radio station, and we were getting so much material that it was often a practical impossibility to review every new album at the station. … Continue reading One for Friday: The Soup Dragons, “Lovegod”

By the time I reached my second radio home–my stay in commercial radio didn’t count as a home, I was just renting–I felt a little detached from music. I still listened, I still collected, I still tried, but it was incredibly difficult to stay in tune with new material. Like a lot of people, I suspect, I wound up largely sticking with familiar artists from my college days, even when their releases constituted an ongoing audio demonstration of the concept of diminishing returns. Without the constantly updated wall of new that resides someone in every good college radio station’s broadcast … Continue reading One for Friday: Death By Chocolate, “Magpie”

Over the years, I’ve devoted far too much mental energy towards the machinations behind late night television talk shows. I watched with rapt attention when Johnny Carson unexpectedly abdicated his throne, and NBC was left to make a public choice between the mercurial genius who’d spent about a decade patiently auditioning for the job and the devoted company man who’d proven his willingness to subvert whatever edge he had in the name of crafting happily bland entertainment. I raced through Bill Carter’s book on the subject and found myself draw to the skillful HBO movie adaptation whenever I caught it … Continue reading One for Friday: Matthew Sweet, “Do Ya”