I’ve tapped out plenty of words about the glory of having ready access to an array of new music in my college radio days, an advantage of the gig that has been somewhat blunted by the clicking immediacy of the internet that has emerged in the years since. But the wild west of the worldwide web lacks the intensely personal recommendations that I found in those poster-adorned hallways of my past. The algorithms will keep improving, but I doubt they’ll ever truly catch up to a pal with different music tastes who alights on just the right track to share … Continue reading One for Friday: Mose Allison, “What’s Your Movie”

Remember when the Chicago Cubs won the World Series? That was pretty good, right? Other than that, 2016 continues to be quite the prolonged kick in the teeth. I didn’t know Leonard Cohen’s work when I was first falling into my music obsessions. But I did know of him. Cohen was this almost mystical figure of cool on the fringes of pop culture, not boxed out of the center but choosing not to stroll over to it because it just wasn’t worth his time. Better to lean against a wall and nurse a cigarette. Let others deal with all that … Continue reading One for Friday: Leonard Cohen, “Democracy”

When I reviewed De La Soul’s gratifyingly strong new album, and the Anonymous Nobody, I wrote about my own journey with the group, from initial hesitance to cheerful embrace, a trajectory that spanned from their debut to their sophomore effort. As I noted, 3 Feet High and Rising was one of those records that completely flummoxed me during my college radio years. It got rave reviews and was clearly sparking with creativity, but it also provoked heightened ambivalence in me when I tried to figure out how it might fit onto our station’s airwaves, especially since the playlists were typically … Continue reading One for Friday: De La Soul, “A Roller Skating Jam Named ‘Saturdays’”

I adore those rare instance when a music discovery hits with an immediacy and clarity of a ringside bell. To my mind, there’s nothing more magical than when such a revelation happens in the midst of a crowd, basking in live music delivered by a skilled performer. The first of many times that I saw Billy Bragg live, he was touring to support his 1991 album, Don’t Try This at Home. This excursion to stand before the Bard of Barking was of major importance to me. Workers Playtime was one of the albums I clung to like a religious artifact … Continue reading One for Friday: Billy Bragg, “Sulk”

I like music. And I like a lot of different bands and performers. It’s a breadth that I’ve tried to cultivate every since I first started buying records with focus and dedication over thirty years ago. When others prodded me with questions about favorites — bands, styles, songs, albums — it’s usually resulted in me stammering out some noncommittal response, not because I’m lacking in opinions (as this digital outpost presumably makes clear), but because those sorts of singular declarations felt so limiting. I always wanted more. I’m a broadcaster by inclination. Narrowcasting holds little interest for me, even when … Continue reading One for Friday: Bettie Serveert, “The Pharmacy”

Sometimes I wish I’d kept absolutely everything from my college radio days. My time as a student broadcaster predated the point when hefty archives could be handily condensed down to a dinky drive the size of exhausted cigar stub, so any exhaustive collection would have been a bulging box of papers and audio tape. No matter the pack rat tendencies that lurk inside me, dragging my history from home to home (and eventually state to state) simply wasn’t feasible. I know that. Still, I’d love to load up different slices of bygone broadcast days. I’m often surprised at just which … Continue reading One for Friday: Daisy Chainsaw, “Love Your Money”

By the time I reached my second college radio station, a splendid subterranean outpost where I served as the advisor, I was luckily primed to accept the songwriting talents of precocious teens named Ben. That preparedness prevented me from being needlessly dismissive of a favorite singer-songwriter with key student staff members. This might seem a small accomplishment — and, truly, it probably was — but, let’s face it, I needed all the cool kid points I could accumulate. Where I warmed to Australian Ben Lee several years earlier, it was Texan Ben Kweller who had an honored place in the … Continue reading One for Friday: Ben Kweller, “Commerce, TX”

I remember a spring afternoon in 1997. I was standing in Strictly Discs, as fine of a record store as can be found in Madison, Wisconsin, as a learned music fan was browsing the new releases and chatting with the guy behind the counter, as learned music fans are wont to do. And the shopper’s stack grew larger, he was talking about the upcoming releases that he’d already had a chance to somehow hear, declaring that Something to Remember Me By, the sophomore full-length from Ben Lee was a masterpiece. I was filled with envy. I’d happened upon Lee while … Continue reading One for Friday: Ben Lee, “End of the World”

Ben Folds unwittingly threw me a lifeline at precisely the moment I most deeply lamented what was happening in music. Ben Folds Five, the debut album from the trio that bore his name, arrived in the summer of 1995, just as “alternative rock” was peaking as a commercial radio format and simultaneously destroying itself with a thuddingly monotonous approach to playlists. As I listened from a bunker of a radio study, drowning in dispiriting, lifeless grunge knockoffs, I longed for something that just sounded different. One of the things I most valued about college radio was the sense that it … Continue reading One for Friday: Ben Folds, “Landed (alternate mix)”

It only made sense. A trio of Bens — with the last names of Folds, Kweller, and Lee — emerged on the alternative music scene at about the same time, in the mid-nineteen-nineties. (It’s not quite accurate to term them peers since two of the three were literally kids and the third could accurate reference multiple ex-wives in his lyrics.) Besides a forename, all three songwriters had a propensity for clever, genially comic lyrics. Around ten years later, the music business landscape around them had changed dramatically: album sales started their precipitous plummet, the once hot alternative radio format was … Continue reading One for Friday: The Bens, “The Emperor’s New Clothes”