Continuing to draw inspiration from the recently posted autumn of 1989 90FM album chart, we turn to a band that was one my favorite discoveries upon landing at the college radio station. Close Lobsters hailed from Scotland and played a brand of punchy pop laced with tender paisley twinkling and brutal cynicism in roughly equal doses. In my late teens, nothing could have pleased me more. Headache Rhetoric, the band’s sophomore LP and final full-length release until a reunion some two decades later, landed in rotation during my first summer as a student broadcaster, and I gave it loving attention (though … Continue reading One for Friday: Close Lobsters, “My Days Are Numbered”

Though it clearly charted at my college radio station, I have no clear recollection of playing any music from Michael Penn’s debut LP, March, when it was in the new music rotation. I probably did, but it didn’t stick with me, even once its lead single, “No Myth,” started edging its way up the charts (eventually becoming Penn’s sole Top 40 hit). Very much in the know-it-all phase of my late adolescence, I was probably given to a needlessly reactionary indifference to Penn’s music, so certain that he had a record deal only because his brother was a movie star, … Continue reading One for Friday: Michael Penn, “No Myth (Acoustic)”

Well, this was bound to happen. After having cause and capability to revisit a college radio chart from 1989 that I helped craft (it was probably from somewhere around my one-year anniversary at the station), my mind’s been awhirl with thoughts of all the more obscure records on it. There were plenty of albums included there that have received at least periodic revisits from me over the years, but I’m currently more intrigued by those that were used to fill the airwaves during that particular week only to see them later fade almost entirely from my attention. Casting back to … Continue reading One for Friday: Timbuk 3, “National Holiday”

By the time the late nineteen-eighties had rolled around, college radio largely had its own identity, one that almost entirely eschewed artists that got ample attention from stations in the commercial portions of the dial. That was a significant shift from a decade earlier, when an album by the Who, arguably at the peak of their broader popularity, could top the college charts, albeit charts that in their earliest stages. While some stations still afford these legacy artists at least a modicum of respect around 1989, the general rule was to strongly favor the acts that were starting to be … Continue reading One for Friday: Jackson Browne, “Chasing You Into the Light”

When the annual Academy Awards ceremony is finally upon us, the tendency toward retrospective really kicks in. Sure, it’s about thinking back across the prior year in film, but these awards are so storied, so heavy with the weight of history, that thinking back on past winners and past shows comes automatically. No one gives a damn what happened at the Golden Globes twenty years ago, but Vanity Fair will happily devote a lot of digital ink to the Oscarcast of the same year. Reading through that essay of wistful snark brought a lot to mind, including the that way … Continue reading One for Friday: Paul Westerberg and Joan Jett, “Let’s Do It, Let’s Fall in Love”

With limited radio options and meager fiscal resources to boldly build my own collection when I was in high school, I relied on music writing to build my comprehension of the vast expanse of tuneful wonderment that existed outside of the Top 40. As a result, I was often more fascinated by lyrics, which could be excitedly quoted in reviews, than the actually combinations of instruments cranking out the rhythm and melody. My attention was also disproportionately captured by any song that had an elaborate title. Often unable to experience the tracks properly, I got a little charge from feeling … Continue reading One for Friday: Johnny Boy, “You Are the Generation That Bought More Shoes and You Get What You Deserve”

I’ve featured the music of Jon Astley in this weekly space once before, quite some time ago. Interestingly enough, the cited impetus for that post was a song that wasn’t featured in it, presumably because I was convinced of its availability at the time. Or maybe I thought I’d get around to it a little later. If it was the second option, then a little later has finally arrived. Astley was a longtime record producer who took a crack at releasing his own albums, beginning with impishly titled 1987 LP Everyone Loves the Pilot (Except the Crew). In some ways, his … Continue reading One for Friday: Jon Astley, “Jane’s Getting Serious”

I’ve previously acknowledged my fascination for what I consider the secret history of rock ‘n’ roll. When I deploy that term I’m usually thinking of the multitude of bands that created music just as interesting and engaging as the stuff that wound up in the canon of classic rock, but were somehow left behind. There are other facets to that crazy diamond. For example, there are those bands that are the true one-hit wonders, registering a single song deeply into the public consciousness without some much as a glimmer of follow-up success. “Pop Musik,” officially the second single from the … Continue reading One for Friday: M, “That’s the Way the Money Goes”

“This City in Darkness” is one of those tracks in my digital collection that is so obscure I’m not even certain how I found my way to it. To the best of my knowledge, I never played anything from the band Sport of Kings during my radio days, although I suppose it is possible. It seems the band hailed from Chicago, and the entirety of their output was issues only a handful of years before I arrived at my happy bunker with a fully working transmitter. Perhaps I did slip one of their records out of the C Stacks some late … Continue reading One for Friday: Sport of Kings, “This City in Darkness”