Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged in New York was released on CD after Kurt Cobain’s death. I remember someone writing at the time that after the unexpected shotgun blast proved the extent of Cobain’s depression, every song now sounded like a suicide note. Around two years after Cobain ended it all, another musician from my college radio days killed himself. He was far less prominent–no cottage industry of mournful t-shirts sprung up around his loss–but to me he was even more important. Jim Ellison was the lead singer and chief songwriter for the band Material Issue. Their albums were like gifts from … Continue reading One For Friday: Material Issue, “Don’t You Think I Know”

Since I’ve committed to only posting out-of-print music for this humble weekly feature, there’s a very good chance that I’ll be continually hearkening back to my college radio days. I find it less likely that this will become an exercise in CMJ nostalgia, but that seems a surprisingly fertile area for me this week. The weekly trade journal used to be the sole source for reading about the music that was likely to cross our desks and turntables (and eventually CD players) at the radio station. There was no Pitchfork, there was no collection of ultra-hip blogs. All we had … Continue reading One for Friday: Harm Farm, “Daisy, I…”

This little corner of the Interweb was framed-up and drywalled in large part because the place where I have been posting for the past several years seems to have picked up an infestation of fiduciary termites. So the time to branch out to wondrous new URLs is now. For the time being, everything that’s posted here will also be posted there. Except on Fridays. For over three years, Fridays have been devoted to a feature I shamelessly stole from Tom Spurgeon’s “The Comics Reporter” site. I list five songs (or albums or something music-related) on a given topic and ask … Continue reading One for Friday: The Weeds, “Nancy Sinatra”