“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”

Some Fridays I offer up elaborate personal history to accompany whatever song has been selected for the kindergarten-approved act of sharing, or I’ll at least delve into some aspect of the artist’s career that I admire. And then there are the instances when a song merely hit my ear just the right way during the week, somehow asserting itself as the right little gem to join the couple hundred other tracks that have been scattered digitally throughout the years. Franz Nicolay’s “This Is Not a Pipe” shuffled up this week, and it set me gently aswirl. To the degree that … Continue reading One for Friday: Franz Nicolay, “This Is Not a Pipe”

I doubt there’s anyone who considers Tin Machine to be first tier David Bowie. That includes myself. Even still, I hold a great deal of affection for the digression into clattering rock that Bowie made in the late nineteen-eighties. If Bowie dominated the seventies, the eighties proved to be a touch more complicated. For one thing, his remarkably prolific creativity ebbed somewhat. Bowie issued eleven solo studio albums during the seventies, and only four during the eighties. While he still had hits — he never had as strong of a showing with a trio of consecutive tracks on the U.K. charts … Continue reading One for Friday: Tin Machine, “Baby Can Dance”

I recently noticed that Little Hits is gone. As anyone who’s been scoring along at home might know, Little Hits was a music blog that went a long way towards inspiring this weekly feature. Updated regularly, the blog shared MP3s and reminiscences about the songs and bands they contained. My affection didn’t simply stem from the fact that I enjoyed the music shared there, nor was it the genial, knowledgable essays that earned my devotion. I did like the songs and the writing, but it was the actual nature of the selections that thrilled me, specifically the way in which the name … Continue reading One for Friday: Smart Remarks, “Mary’s Got Her Eye On Me Tonight”

Well, there’s no real reason to start the new year with something chipper and upbeat, is there? The Builders and the Butchers are a beautifully artful and occasionally morose folk-rock band out of Portland, Oregon. Led by singer-guitarist-songwriter Ryan Sollee, the band deliver music that is at once strangely timeless and sharply current. At first listen, it can seem like they’re engaged largely in a act of preservation, but there are layers that which make it clear that they are simultaneously committed to moving forward, exploring the dark corners of songs in a protracted attempt to make their music singe with the … Continue reading One for Friday: The Builders and the Butchers, “No Roses”

There are cynics, there are skeptics There are legions of dispassionate dyspeptics Who regard this time of year as a maudlin insincere Cheesy crass commercial travesty of all that we hold dear When they think that Well, I can hear it But I pity them their lack of Christmas spirit For in a world like ours, take it from Stephen There are much worse things to believe in. Merry Christmas, all. Listen or download –> Stephen Colbert and Elvis Costello, “There Are Much Worse Things to Believe In” (Disclaimer: To the best of my knowledge, this song has been released … Continue reading One for Friday: Stephen Colbert and Elvis Costello, “There Are Much Worse Things to Believe In”

If it weren’t for social media, I’m not sure I would have ever learned of the death of Mick Lynch, the lead singer of the band Stump. A friend of mine, who himself spent time in a band that was fairly attention-getting, posted about it yesterday morning, sharing videos and and an acknowledgment of artistic influence. Stump was fairly obscure, so there was no trending Twitter hashtag nor any obituary offered prominently by any major music news source (Pitchfork, however, did find digital space to write up the admittedly satisfying arrest of a rich pharmaceutical scumbag on the tenuous connection that his … Continue reading One for Friday: Stump, “Living It Down”

Back when I had some control over the music that was played at my college radio station, this was about the point that I’d finally relent and drag the meager collection of Christmas music out of deep storage. Yes, plenty of our on-air personnel were likely irritated that I waited so long (even back then, timeline creep with Christmas revelry was happening), but as someone who was generally listening to the station all day long, I could only take so much holiday cheer. While it certainly didn’t help that there was a relative dearth of seasonally appropriate college rock back … Continue reading One for Friday: Wire Train, “Skills of Summer”

(Disclaimer: Dogs Die in Hot Cars is a terrible, terrible name for a band, and sharing this song is by no means an endorsement for the group’s supposed cleverness in selecting that moniker. Usually it’s fairly easy to avoid holding a suspect band name against a batch of musicians, especially since so many over the years have acknowledged the difficulty of coming up with a smart, original, pithy was to be billed on posters. And the number of band names that actually sound fairly ridiculous but become plain and comfortable over the years is legion. I mean, the Beatles is a … Continue reading One for Friday: Dogs Die in Hot Cars, “Paul Newman’s Eyes”

I am still adjusting in my return to my native state of Wisconsin. Certainly spending a day indulging in gluttony while the wind blew briskly outside was a helpful reminder of the cultural terrain of the dairyland to which I’ve boomeranged, especially since we managed to place ourselves within a restaurant that is most accurately reviewed with the phrase “Lots of meat!” There were plenty of things giving me that seems-like-old-times feeling yesterday, from a glass of beer at The Great Dane to Brett Favre in Lambeau Field. And then there’s the blaze orange I’ve seen out an about the past … Continue reading One for Friday: Venison, “Forward”