The first Fourth of July that I specifically remember occurred in 1976. I’d recently turned six years old at the time of the actual holiday, but I think what I really remember is all the run-up to it. It was the country’s Bicentennial. Anticipation was high (and significantly drummed up) that this would be the finest Independence Day celebration the nation had ever seen. The word “Bicentennial” was everywhere, particular used to drive commerce with it rendered in red, white and blue on store windows to announce a sale inside, or at least the presence of home pyrotechnical devices that … Continue reading One for Friday: Albert Brooks, “Phone Call to Americans”

I don’t remember how I first discovered Huxton Creepers. I hadn’t heard of the Australian band before reaching the college radio station in the fall of 1988, and, as I recall, they weren’t an especially hyped outfit on the left side of the dial either. Their records came and went without anyone paying them much attention. One of their album covers may have been pinned to the studio wall, which was wallpapered with album flats at that time. Maybe I just found their record because my standing default was to go the H section when I didn’t know what to … Continue reading One for Friday: Huxton Creepers, “Rack My Brains”

I’ve lived in three different U.S. states and I’ve felt attached to each of them in different ways. While I currently call North Carolina home, my first thirty one years on this planet (to they day, in fact) were spent in Wisconsin, and part of the proof that America’s Dairyland still has a unique hold on me is that nothing piques my curiosity about a band like finding out that’s the place they’re from. This is true of current artists, but it’s even more pronounced when it’s a band from the past, a band I feel I should have heard … Continue reading One for Friday: The Baroques, “Musical Tribute to the Oscar Meyer Weiner Wagon”

I don’t know why I love you Your face is a foreign food Sometimes I just lock onto one piece of a song, usually a particularly nice turn of phrase in a set of lyrics, and that stands paramount in my mind as the reason why I like this song. I can get into everything else–the strident quality of the music, the guitar sound that’s both smooth and jagged, even what the song meant to me at the particular time it was released–but I’ll always come back to whatever that little bit that most captures me, most inspires me. When … Continue reading One for Friday: The House of Love, “I Don’t Know Why I Love You”

I remember reading about the Violent Femmes album Why Do Birds Sing? when it was released in 1991. Specifically I remember one of the band members responding to a question about the inclusion of a cover version of the Culture Club hit “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?” on the record. It was conceded that no one in the band had any particular affection for the song, and that it was only included as a stab at getting a little more attention and a little more airplay. They were counting on the combination of familiarity and novelty to pique … Continue reading One for Friday: Afghan Whigs, “Creep”

Once I wrested myself away from the glum world of commercial radio in the late-nineties, I wanted to get back to what I loved about broadcasting in the first place. I wanted to discover new music, I wanted to build diverse playlists, I wanted to talk about artists that were worth talking about. My best bet was to find some sort of return to college radio. The opportunity came at Christmas. As fate would have it, the holidays found me trekking back to the central Wisconsin city where I went to college, and I knew from first-hand experience that there … Continue reading One for Friday: Abra Moore, “Four Leaf Clover”

The hype machine for music was very different in the late eighties when I was at the college radio station. (And The Hype Machine was nonexistent.) New releases from artists we considered significant could actually sneak right up on us, unheralded by the major music magazines and produced without any mention whatsoever from the glossy drones on MTV. The album would just arrive in the mail, or occasionally show up alluringly on the CMJ upcoming releases list that periodically provided a month’s advance forecast on the back page. Even then, it was only the name of the artist with some … Continue reading One for Friday: Syd Straw, “Think Too Hard”

I’m a bad sleeper. I’ve been a bad sleeper for years. That’s actually an official diagnosis. Back in the mid-nineties, my problems were so pronounced that I sought out a sleep disorder specialist, went to several appointments with her, wore a bizarre contraption on my noggin one night so she could get data on what my sleep patterns were like. In the end, she said there was nothing wrong with me that was nameable or treatable. She shrugged her shoulders and said, “Some people are just bad sleepers.” At the time, I was compounding my difficulties by working fifty to … Continue reading One for Friday: Bic Runga, “Get Some Sleep”

Paul Kelly was one of those artists that I arrived at the college radio station determined to find. He had received laudatory reviews in Rolling Stone, one of the few sources for music information that I had in the mid-to-late eighties. Despite the Australian troubadour’s relative obscurity on these shores, the publication reviewed his records, approvingly quoting the lyrics and generally describing his songwriting capabilities with the same sort of unabashed enthusiasm they usually reserved for more sainted figures like Neil Young. His music clearly wasn’t going to get played on the commercial radio stations I could access during my … Continue reading One for Friday: Paul Kelly & the Messengers, “Under the Sun”

As the sort of cop-out posts from the past couple of days clearly indicate, this is as extremely busy week for me, making the process of putting word together pretty and cogently to be hard. With that in mind, I’m going to defer to someone else’s older post for today’s musical selection. Luckily, while researching my post at the other site, I stumbled upon a song I’ve been wanting to hear for a long, long time. Enjoy. Continue reading One for Friday: Cheating Off of Someone Else’s Paper