As I carry with me my digital musical collection, assembled with tireless dedication, beamed down to a device just about anywhere I am, I don’t really pine for bygone days. Yes, I have a tremendous affection for formats that were once the only conveyance for music, which is why I’m one of those sorry fellows who pays exorbitant prices for new music “on vinyl” (I know this is a fancy, hipster way of saying, “record”). Really, the only part of my music culture that I’m helplessly nostalgic for is the art of making a mixtape. All through the night They … Continue reading One for Friday: Art Brut, “Sounds of Summer”

As was projected in this space, I spent a portion of last weekend on the air at my alma mater, my first spin in the air chair in that particular studio in over fifteen years. It was delirious and delightful, a truly joyful experience that had the intense feel of coming home. With only two hours of airtime available to me, I barely got to dig into the history I carry with me from those days, much less the intervening decades of professional life and music fandom informed by my beloved time as a college radio kid. In particular, by … Continue reading One for Friday: Fetchin Bones, “Stray”

World Party had a Top 40 hit while I was in high school, pushing into the hallowed portion of the U.S. charts with “Ship of Fools,” their first single. Presumably, then, that song and the album it derives from, Private Revolution, represent the high water mark for the band Karl Wallinger started after he walked away from the Waterboys. My memory shapes the history a little differently, though. I remain highly susceptible to mentally enhancing the value of those albums that arrived sometimes during my first couple of years at my college radio station. That’s partially due to nostalgia, but it … Continue reading One for Friday: World Party, “Put the Message in the Box”

There are a bevy of albums from my first semester or so in college radio that I think of as wondrous gifts. Those aren’t necessarily the best albums from that time, the ones that I will quickly hold up as exemplars of the college rock sounds in its waning years, before the tsunami of grunge buffeted it away. Instead, they’re the albums that I hold dear, but I’m not confident I would have found my way to if they hadn’t sat in the new music rotation during those early days when I was eager to learn. I had my preconception … Continue reading One for Friday: Voice of the Beehive, “I Say Nothing”

I’ve recently been taking advantage of the technological marvels afforded to me by the endlessly interconnected digital world to listen to my alma mater college radio station with some regularity. Though I have an obvious bias coloring my perception, I still maintain that this particular oasis on the left end of the dial is programmed better, smarter, and more effectively than just about any other outlet with a transmitter tower at their disposal. While so many other noncommercial stations indulge in extensive block programming, allowing the on air staff to craft playlists that speak exclusively to individual, hyper-focused music preferences, the place … Continue reading One for Friday: Concrete Blonde, “Ghost of a Texas Ladies’ Man”

I’ve got a strange, new concert-going tradition, inadvertent and entirely out of my hands. For the past couple of years, I’ve had multiple instances where I’ve seen shows that fall into the category of long-awaited. In all of those instances, I stood in the crowd with a single song in mind. I wasn’t some agonized hipster, pining for a minor obscurity unlikely to be played. In every instance, it was a single, or at least a track that was pushed as such. In no instance was it some deal-breaking tragedy if it didn’t get played, but I stood ready for it nonetheless. … Continue reading One for Friday: Thao with the Get Down Stay Down, “Bag of Hammers”

It’s been almost exactly a year since my household began the segmented process of returning from a decade and a half living in southern states, resettling in our homeland of Wisconsin. During that span, I think it’s fair to say that each of us has occasionally felt the sensation of a unique culture doing its damnedest to welcome us back. The winter was milder, the beer has gotten better, the city has been alive and accommodating. Maybe best of all, there have been a handful of entirely unexpected musical gifts. When I was at my college radio station, Swamp Thing … Continue reading One for Friday: Swamp Thing, “Learning to Disintegrate”

Because some days you need some New Zealand punk from the late nineteen-eighties. And because I remain committed to paying forward the bevy of obscure wonders I once discovered on the late, lamented blog Little Hits (mourned previously in this space). And because I could scour every song in my digital collection and not find another with a title remotely as apt for this ridiculous day and age. Today, that’s all I’ve got. Today, I’m confident that’s all I need. Listen or download –> The Dead C, “Bad Politics” (Disclaimer: I am under the belief that this track is entirely … Continue reading One for Friday: The Dead C, “Bad Politics”

I feel like I have a pretty strong memory when it comes to the music that landed at my college radio station during my tenure there, especially the first year or two. There have been a few hundred of these “One for Friday” posts by now, for example, and a whole mess of them include songs that were released between 1988 and 1990. Despite my proclivity for reminiscence in this digital space, I don’t live in the past. But I sure do like to listen to music from back then. My self-congratulatory assurance of my own exhaustive expertise on the … Continue reading One for Friday: Flies on Fire, “Baptize Me Over Elvis Presley’s Grave”

Whenever major life changes are upon me, the soundtrack inside my head consistently leads with the same song. The last two lines of the chorus echo: “This is the day your life will surely change/ This is the day when things fall into place.” After fifteen years working in higher education — the experiences of which are peppered throughout the writings in this space, albeit judiciously — I began a brand new chapter on Monday. For now, I’ll leave it at that and make this one of the weeks that I step aside after a minimal number of words and let … Continue reading One for Friday: The The, “This Is the Day”