When I worked commercial radio, toiling at a “new rock alternative” station in the mid-nineteen-nineties, I desperately appreciated those handful of artists that reminded me of my time in the woolier sonic lands of a student-run part of the FM band. I don’t really mean those major college radio bands that had decisively crossed over by that point, like R.E.M. and U2. Nor am I referring to the bevy of grunge rock bands that were the beneficiaries of Nirvana’s success, those groups that largely made college radio a mere pit stop before going on to massive record sales and monstrously … Continue reading One for Friday: Possum Dixon, “Emergency’s About to End”

As must periodically happen, the One for Friday space this week is devoted to carrying the baton forward for the late, beloved (by me, anyway) blog Little Hits. The online space that shared notably obscure songs from a certain era — basically the power pop, post-punk, modern rock tsunami from the late nineteen-seventies to the late nineteen-eighties — was one of my favorite destinations when I first started assembling a pile of music onto a hard drive, building the automated radio station of my most blissful dreams. Besides admiring the taste of the blog’s creator, his selections spoke to a favorite … Continue reading One for Friday: The Dazzlers, “Lovely Crash”

One of the things I miss most about living on the air in college radio is the sense of perpetual discovery. This part of the experience is undoubtedly leavened somewhat by the intense availability of information about bands, music, and albums across the untamed wilds of the internet. Getting background and inside stories is mere keystrokes away at any given time. That’s useful, but it strips away some of the fun, some of the intense, thrilling mystery of it all. There was nothing quite like opening a slew of packages from record labels and promotion agencies to create a big … Continue reading One for Friday: Meow Meow, “All I Ever Got”

  Sometime during my first pass through college radio, the onslaught of tribute albums began. There may have been some genuine affection for certain performers that inspired such efforts or at least colored the performances by the acts recruited to fill out the grooves. The real driving force, though, was the dead certainty that the most direct way to a college deejay’s heart was with one of their ragamuffin rotation staples playing a really familiar song, likely from an artist they secretly loved but has no entry to their ultra-hip airwaves. This how we got, say, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones … Continue reading One for Friday: Neko Case, “Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis”

There are those songs that are immediately rejuvenating. I suspect we all have them, those tracks that are perhaps somewhat designed to have that effect (uplifting lyrics, soaring melodies, music that builds and builds), but, more importantly, hold with them some beneficial added history. They were there at exactly the right time, the message, the sound, and everything hitting in the right way, like tumblers in a lock falling into proper place. Maybe the sweet spot was hit even more cleanly because the accumulated history of prior listens had finally accumulated to the point that the song shifted from casual … Continue reading One for Friday: Guadalcanal Diary, “Litany (Life Goes On)”

  On this day, when crass consumerism reigns supreme, I woke up with a Billy Bragg song galloping through my head. So even as I watched the morning news programs, wherein all the more important, more meaningful, more troubling developments of the day were pushed to deep on the segment list in favor of grotesquely chipper reports on which sales were generating the most aggressive enthusiasm among desperate holidays shoppers, my mental accompaniment involved a distinct Essex accent delivering the battle cry “We’re making the world safe for capitalism!” Bragg was one of the artists I clung to most gratefully … Continue reading One for Friday: Billy Bragg, “The Marching Song of the Covert Battalions”