There was a time when there seemed to be no more enticing goal than to work eternally in college radio. Just continuing on in broadcasting had its appeal too, although it was hardly a field known for its stability and … Continue reading College Countdown: KROQ-FM’s Top 40 Songs of 1987, An Introduction
2. Weezer, Weezer Unlikely as it may have seemed that a band that had only released their debut album seven years earlier was in dire need of a comeback, that was exactly the situation Weezer was in when they released their third album in late spring of 2001. Following a surprising smash with the oddball pop of their self-titled debut in 1994, Weezer’s sophomore effort, 1996’s Pinkerton was widely seen as a failure, although admiration for the record has swelled in the years since. Rivers Cuomo, the main creative force behind the band, put Weezer on hiatus while he toyed … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 50 Albums of 2001, 2 and 1
4. Stephen Malkmus, Stephen Malkmus As has already been made clear, no doubt, in these past couple of weeks, the upper reaches of the 2001 CMJ album chart invites a fair amount of compare and contrast between my graduation from … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 50 Albums of 2001, 4 and 3
6. Stereolab, Sound-Dust Stereolab was just starting to rattle college radio’s proverbial cage at about the time I secured my undergraduate degree, a task undertook in concerted foot-dragging fashion, I assure you. The album Mars Audiac Quintet was released about a year after I graduated, its lead single, “Ping Pong,” nicely mapping out the new path noncommercial radio stations might take now that their profit-driven counterparts further up the dial had fully and completely appropriated grunge rock. The music was poppy and light but also archly different, introducing oddity through the casualness of its mildly disenchanted deconstruction of traditional songcraft. … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 50 Albums of 2001, 6 and 5
8. Jimmy Eat World, Bleed American There is probably no album that better measures the distance between the college radio station I left in 1993 (or 1994, depending on how you look at it) and the one I joined in … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 50 Albums of 2001, 8 and 7
10. Death Cab For Cutie, The Photo Album As anyone who’s spent quality time with my Friday posts is probably well aware, I have extremely strong associations between the college radio station and certain songs and albums from the era … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 50 Albums of 2001, 10 and 9
12. Low, Things We Lost in the Fire The first time I realized I may be falling out of step with the prevailing taste of college radio kids came fairly early in my post-collegiate years, when a breathless rave in the pages of CMJ New Music Monthly inspired me to go out and purchase The Biz, the third album by the Chicago band the Sea and the Cake. The jazz-inflected collection of languidly thoughtful songs was deemed smart, intricate and artistically challenging. It found it incredibly boring, maybe because I had inclinations towards neither bongs nor headphones. So it was … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 50 Albums of 2001, 12 and 11
14. The Beta Band, Hot Shots II Like a lot of people, I suppose, my first exposure to the Beta Band came in the single finest moment of the decent but disappointing 2000 film adaptation of Nick Horby’s novel High … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 50 Albums of 2001, 14 and 13
16. Rainer Maria, A Better Version of Me Occasionally, my re-acquaintance with college radio in 2001 involved something approaching cruelty in the reminders I was given as to how detached I’d become from the music scene. As a College DJ … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 50 Albums of 2001, 16 and 15
18. Travis, The Invisible Band I didn’t have a working familiarity with a lot of the artists on this list when 2001 began, even those that could reasonably claim to already be well-established in the realm of college. I certainly knew Travis, though, largely because I had completely bought into their brand of lush, emotive pop at the time. It was an understandable (and, I’d hazard, commonplace) position to hold at the time, collecting music crafted in the rhythmic aftershocks of The Verve’s Urban Hymns, the 1997 album that housed perhaps the most rapturously wonderful single of the decade. The … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 50 Albums of 2001, 18 and 17
Coffee for Two 