There’s a clear tendency to retrospectively reduce eras of pop music to singular sounds, despite the fact that such monolithic sonic styles are rarely the case. By now, the nineteen-eighties are largely thought of as a time of synth pop and maybe wailing saxophone solos, as the fallout from the new wave explosion earlier in the decade settled over just about everything. Those who had their radios tuned to the stations staffed by college kids might associated the jangly tones of R.E.M. a little more readily, but when a current band is said to have an “eighties sound,” its almost … Continue reading One for Friday: The Brandos, “Gettysburg”

For several years now, most of my music listening has been shaped by the various shuffle features connected to my digital collection. That particular batch of MP3 files spans far and wide, a result of concerted effort to essentially create the automated radio station of my deepest longings, one that operates with at least some of the limitations of format knocked asunder. At different points, that entailed me securing all sorts of songs that I didn’t necessarily find familiar. I wanted surprise as the playlists unwound. I relied on the robust song-sharing blog community to help me shape my fictional station’s library. There … Continue reading One for Friday: Bob Seger, “Love the One You’re With”

Every once in a while, I feel obligated to tap out a new ode to the “C Stacks,” the part of my college radio station’s music library that inspired the most affection in me. When I arrived at the noncommercial broadcast outlet in the late nineteen-eighties, the main music library was divided into three sections, delineated by the first three letters of the alphabet. The “A Stacks” were home to those artists that we expected everyone knew, like Peter Gabriel and U2. The “B Stacks” were for the bands and performers that college radio kids held up as titans but … Continue reading One for Friday: The Chant, “All Behind Me”

An Emotional Fish formed in Dublin, Ireland. That seems all the justification that’s needed for sharing this song today. For all those who are going to take today’s quasi-holiday as an excuse to abuse their own grey matter, for the love of Daniel-Day Lewis, at least do it with Guinness, won’t you? (I feel a little bad I’m skimping on the words here, so I will note that I’ve previously written about An Emotional Fish in a more expansive manner.) Listen or download –> An Emotional Fish, “Grey Matter” (Disclaimer: I’d like to type that I put in diligent effort … Continue reading One for Friday: An Emotional Fish, “Grey Matter”

Love at first listen is a wondrous thing. I don’t think the Lime Spiders had an album in rotation when I arrived at my college radio station in the fall of 1988. Their sophomore full-length, Volatile, might have been trailing along in the big batch of recent records that weren’t quite given the full-scale push but also hadn’t transitioned to the greater library. Even if that was the case, Volatile wasn’t the album I found. Instead, for some reason, I slipped their debut, The Cave Comes Alive!, out of its place in the music stacks. Released in 1987, the album … Continue reading One for Friday: The Lime Spiders, “My Favourite Room”

There’s a long strange history of actors moonlighting in the music biz, from Robert Mitchum’s bizarre shimmy with calypso music to Ryan Gosling’s membership in the indie goth outfit Dead Man’s Bones. Things got especially weird during the nineteen-eighties, the wildest of musical decades. Only on that cultural roller coaster could Eddie Murphy nearly top the charts and Bruce Willis absolutely redefine the scope of vanity project by roping major stars into a fictional rock god history to accompany a record of appalling R&B covers. And only in the nineteen-eighties could character actor Bill Paxton be one-half of a new … Continue reading One for Friday: Martini Ranch, “World Without Walls”

Michelle Pfeiffer has been nominated for an Academy Award on three occasions, losing to Geena Davis, Jessica Tandy, and Emma Thompson. Best as I can tell, her first experience missing out on an acting award came in late 1982, when her turn as Stephanie Zinone in the misbegotten sequel Grease 2 made her a contender in the category of Best Young Motion Picture Actress at the 4th Youth in Film Awards. The winner was Aileen Quinn in the title role of John Huston’s film version of the musical Annie. (That same year, Nancy McKeon absolutely cleaned up at the Youth … Continue reading One for Friday: Michelle Pfeiffer, “Cool Rider”

As must happen from time to time, I have a “Jane” song to share. To the best of my knowledge, I never played a song by Dolly Mixture during my college radio days, but I wish I would have. Their sound was precisely what I hoped to discover when I dug deeply into the most obscure records in the radio station’s music library, finding those old releases that perhaps hadn’t been touched in years but exhibited a wear-and-tear in the packaging that suggested they were once deeply loved. Had a Dolly Mixture album been in our stacks, how could it … Continue reading One for Friday: Dolly Mixture, “How Come You’re Such a Hit with the Boys, Jane?”

As is probably evident by now, the number of songs from my college radio days that I consider worthy of filing under the category of “favorites” could fill a full programming day. There are those that were clear peaks of beloved bands and there are those that snuck up on me over time, snuggling into my psyche following the discovery and championing of my valued cohorts. Then there are those songs that arrived as fully-formed, undeniable (to me) triumphs. From the moment the needle first hit the vinyl or the laser first struck the disc, the song was clearly, thrillingly … Continue reading One for Friday: All, “She’s My Ex”