Right around 1990, it seemed like every band in Manchester, England got to make a record. It was like they were going door-to-door and offering recording contracts. “Thank you for buying the Encyclopedia Britannica, here’s your studio time.” There were no complaint about this from college radio. The airwaves that beamed out to the left side of radio dials were filled with trippy, loping pop gems. For a time, it almost seemed that no other style could penetrate, at least until Nirvana and Pearl Jam ushered in the grunge era and we really discovered how monotonous and homogeneous “alternative” could … Continue reading One for Friday: The Mock Turtles, “And Then She Smiles”

While I try to not to be stuck in the past about such things, I’m always pleased to rediscover one of the songs or artists that was a major part of my youthful college radio days. It’s especially nice if the process is triggered in a unique way. Not just stumbling on a forgotten disc while scanning they collection or hearing the song on the radio (although with most of the music that has slipped to the back of my memory, hearing it on a radio station these days would beyond unexpected to staggering), but instead a route that never … Continue reading One for Friday: Lloyd Cole, “She’s a Girl and I’m a Man”

I greatly appreciate the way that this series of tubes that we call the Internet has completely changed our access to art, especially music. There was a time when getting exposed to something new often meant plowing through the architecture dances of music reviews in various publications and trying to imagine what the album sounded like from the collection of sonic descriptors. Unless the material was embraced by radio or got exposure on some television showcase, the only way to actually hear it involved plunking down hard-earned dollars, something that was in short supply in my youth. Now, even those … Continue reading One for Friday: Debbie Harry and Kermit the Frog, “The Rainbow Connection”

One of the little intellectual games that naturally came up around the college radio station involved speculating about other eras of music and what it would’ve been like to be taking our turn on the left end of the dial in those times. What must it have been like to be there in the late seventies, for example, when the burst of punk and new wave brought amazing albums from the likes of the Ramones, Blondie, and Elvis Costello into the rotation on a regular basis? Or to be Music Director when the package from I.R.S. Records arrived with Murmur, … Continue reading One for Friday: XTC, “My Bird Performs”

Including my years as an undergraduate student, I’ve moved to the rhythms of a traditional academic year most of my adult life. This means I get to recapture a little of that childhood feeling about summer, that it’s a break, or at least a change. Often my summers were actually busier when I was in school at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. It was a much smaller group of students who stuck around in the summer months, dedicated to keeping the college radio station going. During some stretches, it wasn’t uncommon for me to be on the air every day, … Continue reading One for Friday: The Trilobites, “I Can’t Wait For Summer to End”

When I started this weekly feature, I decided I was going to only post songs that were entirely out of print. Eventually Tim Quirk of Too Much Joy convinced me that music’s digital availability didn’t mean a thing when it came to artist compensation, so I shift a bit to focus on songs that were physically out of print. I’ve stumbled on that front a few times, largely because my hunting to determine availability is admittedly flawed, but that’s the guiding principle. Given that, I tend to default to music that was released some twenty years ago, when I was … Continue reading One for Friday: Sidewinders, “Witchdoctor”

Whenever I look back to the music exposure I had during my high school years, I’m generally dispensing laments about the inferior quality of the radio stations that could be pulled in by my humble antenna. I stand by those complaints–I think of of this time as the beginning of the end for strong, distinct, localized radio–but I should allow that there was an exception. WMAD broadcast at 92.1 on the FM dial. Their tower stood in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, and the wattage was low enough that they barely covered the greater Madison area. It usually took some maneuvering, but … Continue reading One for Friday: Treat Her Right, “I Think She Likes Me”

There’s currently no shortage of ways to find out about new music, but it was a very different situation when I was a student programmer at the college radio station in the early nineties. We had ready access to most new music at the station (and least most new music that was likely to suit our collective taste), but the sheer quantity of it made it easy to miss good new stuff. So sometimes a little outside reading was beneficial. Much as I’ve decried Rolling Stone in various electronic spaces over the years, the deeper you dug into their reviews … Continue reading One for Friday: Apollo Smile, “Dune Buggy”

I never heard of the band Swamp Thing before I went to college. On the surface of it, this isn’t remarkable. There are dozens of bands and performers that I can say the same thing about, and probably every person who spend part of their student years huddled in some cramped college radio studio can make similar claims. The difference, and the disappointment it holds, is that the band was from my hometown of Madison, and they were in full swing during my high school years when I was fully invested in learning about new music. Despite the fact that … Continue reading One for Friday: Swamp Thing, “Island Song”