Thirty years ago, in the spring of 1988, Soul Asylum released the album Hang Time. In the Minneapolis regional of the nineteen-eighties tourney for the hearts and minds of college radio kids, Soul Asylum was doomed to never finish better than … Continue reading One for Friday — Soul Asylum, “Sometime to Return”

Thirty years ago, in the summer of 1988, Let’s Active released the album Every Dog Has His Day. It was the third full-length from the band, following a debut EP. Every one of those releases was a major hit on … Continue reading One for Friday — Let’s Active, “Every Dog Has His Day”

In my first year at the college radio station, practically everything felt like a discovery. It was as if I had been plopped down inside a magical mine of modern music and anywhere I swung my pickaxe was likely to … Continue reading One for Friday — The Wonder Stuff, “Give, Give, Give Me More, More, More”

There was a time when one of my household charges was to collect covers. As chores go, it’s not bad. With a clear imperative to seek out novel versions of familiar songs, I scoured the internet in the hopes of … Continue reading One for Friday — Last Town Chorus, “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me”

I wrote about Frightened Rabbit only once. When I was regularly churning out copy for Spectrum Culture, I put in to detail the ingenuity of a track from the band’s sterling 2013 album, Pedestrian Verse, as a contribution to the … Continue reading One for Friday — Frightened Rabbit, “Oil Slick”

Since I invoked Lyle Lovett in yesterday’s album review, it seems an appropriate time to return to him in this weekly act of music-sharing. Lovett first entered into my little cohort of favored artists with the release of his second … Continue reading One for Friday — Lyle Lovett, “L.A. County”

In my music collection, I have many versions of “A New England.” I think it’s a natural, perhaps inevitable result of being a Billy Bragg fan in good standing. The song he wrote when he was twenty-one years old — … Continue reading One for Friday — Kate Nash and Billy Bragg, “Foundations/A New England”

In the late nineteen-sixties, New Zealand club owner Ken Cooper wanted a house band. The patrons shuffling in and out of The Plaice were fans of psychedelic music, so that’s the sound Cooper sought, assembling a handful of local musicians … Continue reading One for Friday — The Avengers, “Everyone’s Gonna Wonder”

By 1997, I was desperate to hear music that didn’t sound like Pearl Jam. I admittedly tend to overstate the enveloping nature of the grunge movement on nineteen-nineties rock scene, but it was exhausting to endure the onslaught of bands … Continue reading One for Friday — 5 Chinese Brothers, Three Cool Guys”

I’ve spent this week spilling out personal lore associated with the annual staging of The World’s Largest Trivia contest by my student broadcasting alma mater. Until I revive the tradition next year, I have one more. Years ago, to fill … Continue reading One for Friday — The Kings, “Anti-Hero Man”