Though I like to think my musical tastes have diversified somewhat in recent years, two decades ago there was no surer pathway into my preferences than big, proud electric guitars. The Chicago band Urge Overkill was already on my radar for that very reason by the time they released their major label debut, Saturation, in 1993. Their prior effort, The Supersonic Storybook on Touch and Go, was championed by CMJ, the college radio trade publication, and I returned to it fairly regularly across my last few semesters as a student at the station. But Saturation, officially released just a couple … Continue reading One for Friday: Urge Overkill, “Sister Havana”

I’m going to break one of my chief rules for One for Friday today, so let’s start with a modified version of the regular disclaimer. The track I post today seems to be available for purchase as a physical item, although its unlikely to be stocked as a matter of course in your favorite local, independently-owned record store. Instead, I humbly suggest that you consider contacting the proprietor of said store and asking if Home by Hothouse Flowers can be ordered. Perhaps you’ll be able to pick it up two weeks from tomorrow when there will be a lot of … Continue reading One for Friday: Hothouse Flowers, “Movies”

Not to upset any lingering, devoted fan base the band might have, but I feel obligated to admit that the main reason I have affection for the band the Buck Pets is that I once knew a lovely young woman who appropriated their band name so she would have something to call me. She just liked the way it sounded, I think. When she was on the air, she’d play a song from the album and backsell it by sharing, “That one goes out to my little Buck Pet.” We never figured out what “Buck Pet” really meant, what the … Continue reading One for Friday: Buck Pets, “A Little Murder”

Back at the college radio station, I was always appreciative when I found out the official derivation of a band’s name. This was in part because it was handy information to have when introducing or backselling a band’s songs on the air, providing something interesting to help fill up the time. It was also fairly difficult background to come by for a lot of the artists we played. Even at that late date, there was no shortage of articles tracing how the Rolling Stones selected their moniker, but it was a lot harder to find out where the hell the … Continue reading One for Friday: The Woodentops, “They Can Say What They Want”

Inadvertently, this is the second time in the last three weeks that I’m featuring a band that Atlantic Records simply didn’t know how to handle. Map of the World was a band from Ann Arbor, Michigan, signed by the major label in the late nineteen-eighties, a time when A&R men roamed college towns with fevered urgency, so sure that the next R.E.M. was lurking out there somewhere. The group–headed up by the sibling team of Khalid and Sophia Hanifim–had exactly one release for the label, a 1989 EP entitled An Inch Equals a Thousand Miles. When it wasn’t embraced automatically … Continue reading One for Friday: Map of the World, “I Fight for My Life”

For brief stretch of time, my adult beverage of choice was a velvet crush. I didn’t pick up on this from friends or family or even some intrepid bartender who could somehow spot that I’d be a sucker for the combination of sugary, “fruit”-flavored water and hard liquor, but because Soul Coughing sang about it in a song. The opening lyrics to the song “Mr. Bitterness” place the setting as a bar called The Bitter Seed and describes a woman who we will come to know as alluring and aloof. She drinks a velvet crush. Lead singer M. Doughty helpfully … Continue reading One for Friday: Soul Coughing, “Mr. Bitterness”

Eleventh Dream Day is the band that taught me about the fiscal realities of being a top college radio act. The Chicago group had a surprise hit on the CMJ charts with their second full-length and major label debut, Beet, in 1989. As it recall, it came out of nowhere, and wound up making it all the way to #2 on the CMJ album charts. To us, it seemed like a big deal. This was obviously a huge new band, rubbing shoulders with the iconic likes of the Cure, the B-52’s and Public Image Ltd. Surely they were now huge, … Continue reading One for Friday: Eleventh Dream Day, “Makin’ Like a Rug”

I hope I’m wrong and anxiously await the opportunity to be proved so, but I think we’re heading towards a dreadful Academy Awards ceremony this Sunday. I’ve adamantly disliked the selection of Seth Macfarlane as this year’s host for a variety of reasons (not just because I don’t find him or his creations funny in the slightest, but also because he’s by far the least prominent celebrity to host the program in my memory, diminishing the prestige of the whole endeavor), but it goes beyond that. Nearly every special segment of the show that’s been teased by the producers sounds … Continue reading One for Friday: The Billy Nayer Show, “Hey Boy”

As I’ve recounted, there were many discoveries I made after I arrived at the campus radio in the late-eighties. Among them were a series of records with a distinctive cover design, just the name of an artist atop a big black box with a dizzying array of other bands and performers listed within it. In small print at the very top of the jacket sat three simple words: “The Peel Sessions.” To the best of my knowledge, I hadn’t heard of John Peel, the British radio personality and indefatigable music fan who was the namesake for the records. We didn’t … Continue reading One for Friday: Billy Bragg, “Valentine’s Day Is Over” (Peel Session)

As is often the case when Friday comes around this space, it’s time for another tale of the 90FM “C Stacks.” When I arrived at the University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point, the greater music library was divided into three sections, the bands placed in them sorted roughly by notoriety: the A,B and C Stacks. Obviously the C Stacks was where the most obscure music went to live out its days at the radio station, until some college kid a generation later pulled it out, muttered, “What the hell is this?” and relegated it to the deep storage in the … Continue reading One for Friday: Cruel Story of Youth, “You’re What You Want to Be”