For those who are driven into recurring bouts of disappointment and misery because onetime titan of melancholy pop Morrissey now devotes his energy to finding novel ways to demonstrate he’s a wanker, I would like to remind you that Johnny … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Johnny Marr, “Spirit, Power and Soul”
308. Utopia, Adventures in Utopia (1979) Utopia was regarded as the side project Todd Rundgren started to give him and some like-minded cohorts a chance to make highly experimental music, separate from the commercial expectations tied to Rundgren’s solo outings. … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #308 to #306
Even Billy Joel Mocked ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire.’ I Loved It. by Lindsay Zoladz The Number Ones: Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start The Fire” by Tom Breihan This was quite a week for new writing about Billy Joel’s last … Continue reading Outside Reading — Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnnie Ray edition
If the likes of Haim can create elegant throwbacks to nineteen-seventies pop that somehow sound modern and fresh, then surely there’s a vast tract of fertile ground in reviving and reinventing the R&B groove of the same area. That’s what … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Amber Mark, “Foreign Things”
Sometimes comedy illuminates hard truths with a pointed urgency that other means can’t quite achieve. Sometimes comedy is just funny. This series of posts is mostly about the former instances, but the latter is valuable, too. Once again, without emotion…. … Continue reading Laughing Matters — Flight of the Conchords, “Robots”
311. The Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Red Hot Chili Peppers (1984) The Red Hot Chili Peppers had a lucrative record contract in hand. What they were lacking was a full lineup. The group came into being in fairly impromptu … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #311 to #309
As previously shared, I had the pleasure and honor of being on the air at my alma mater college radio station last week. In part because I limited myself to music released between fall 1988 and spring 1993, and in … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Church Girls, “Separated”
Eleven years is a long stretch between solo albums, but sometimes the world conspires to make working alone, more or less, the most prudent course. In the time since the generally well-regarded debut released under her first name, Anika Henderson … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf — Change
These posts celebrate the movie trailers, movie posters, commercials, print ads, and other promotional material that stand as their own works of art. It can’t be overstated how dominant a cultural force MTV was in the nineteen-eighties and into the … Continue reading The Art of the Sell — R. Crumb for MTV
This series of posts covers my long, beloved history interacting with the medium of radio, including the music that flowed through the airwaves. For the ninth straight year, my college radio alma mater threw open its doors and airwaves to … Continue reading Radio Days — 90FM Reunion 9
Coffee for Two 