If the tag tally on my dashboard is correct, this is the 201st edition of One for Friday. I was properly trained by my time as a fervent comic book collector to find great significance in recurring publications hitting the big round numbers, but last week’s 200th go-round with the feature is less momentous than this week’s comparatively clumsy number. The reason is simple: with this point, One for Friday officially outlives the weekly Friday distraction it originally spun off from. Back when all my digital words were dispensed exclusively via a different platform, I spent the end of every … Continue reading One for Friday: The Weeds, “Better Now”

The first time I knowingly heard of Chekhov’s gun, it was in a song. The monumentally important Russian playwright used the gun as a mean to articulate the importance of efficiency in dramatic storytelling, writing, “One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it.” The way Peter Case put it in his 1989 song “Put Down the Gun” was as follows: “I don’t want to swear it/ But it’s something that I’ve heard/ A gun in the first act/ Always goes off in the third.” So I came to my knowledge … Continue reading One for Friday: Peter Case, “Put Down the Gun”

This week, I wrote a review of the new album by Yo La Tengo, which naturally got me thinking about my long history with the band. I’m honestly not sure if my college radio station had either of the Hoboken group’s first two albums, but I actually remember putting their 1989 effort, President Yo La Tengo, into rotation. I can’t claim we were some brilliantly forward-thinking predictors of future greatness, embracing the record wholeheartedly. In fact, as I recall, it barely got played at all. For whatever reason (because it’s good, I’d like to think), I did return to it … Continue reading One for Friday: Yo La Tengo and Daniel Johnston, “Speeding Motorcycle”

Randy Newman is one of my favorite songwriters, which is a phrase that, to paraphrase Jack Donaghy, anyone with two ears and brain should be able to say. Though I revel in the reservoirs of dark cynicism that bubble up into his most famous songs (the bleakly brilliant slavery sales pitch “Sail Away;” the satiric “Political Science” that remains shockingly relevant forty years after he first recorded it; even the widely misunderstood mockery of prejudice in “Short People”), I have to admit to having a particular soft spot for, well, Newman’s underappreciated soft spot. When Newman started penning songs for … Continue reading One for Friday: Randy Newman, “Something Special”

For a few years, I always knew where I’d be at midnight on New Year’s Eve. Back in 1989, my first full calendar year at college radio station WWSP-90FM, I had a nutty idea. Well, it was an idea that was fairly commonplace in music broadcasting, but it was nutty for us. I’d take the weekly charts we compiled (for the purposes of reporting to CMJ, the trade publication of college radio, which in turn kept the record labels servicing the station with new releases) and use them to determine the station’s Top 90 albums of the year. Then we’d … Continue reading One for Friday: Bodeans, “Brand New”

I have no idea if I ever played Yo at the college radio station. Their album Once in a Blue Room was released in 1986, a couple years before I made it to our perch at the left end of the dial. The “Y” section of the station’s C-stacks, home of the more obscure material, were tricky to get to, basically requiring a junior contortion act from the DJ to fit into the roughly foot-wide space between the record shelves and the concrete bunker that the turntables sat upon. The problem was even more dramatic with the “M” section a … Continue reading One for Friday: Yo, “I Meant to Tell You”

Syd Straw was an artist I first found in college, taking special solace in her solo debut, Surprise. She wasn’t incredibly prolific, which seemed somehow apt. There was something about Surprise that made it seem like a rapid-fire follow-up simply wouldn’t be appropriate, as if it would lack respect for the specialness of what had been accomplished. Besides, there was a purely selfish benefit to Straw taking about seven years to get around to releasing her sophomore effort, 1996’s War and Peace. By the time it arrived, I was deep into my tenure in commercial radio, growing ever more enchanted … Continue reading One for Friday: Syd Straw, “CBGB’s”

I’m currently reeling from illness, which makes me tempted to call in sick on writing this post. But there are some obligations that need to be followed through on. For example, I have a ticket for a concert tonight, an investment I don’t take lately. Even if I felt I could eat the twenty bucks for the privilege of burrowing deeper under the covers of my inviting bed, I don’t want to miss this. Not that it’s some once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. In fact, this will be third time in as many years that I’ve hauled my weary old bones over to … Continue reading One for Friday: The Mountain Goats, “You Were Cool”