In this space, I tend to venerate the music spun with vigor on college radio during my first year as a member of the brethren of left of the dial broadcasters. I think that’s fairly understandable. Most music fans cling … Continue reading One for Friday: The Triffids, “Holy Water”
Some songs that arrived at my college radio station had a remarkable number of attributes, all converging to make it nearly irresistible to the eager young music fans that took turns on the airwaves. “Religion Ruined My Life,” from the … Continue reading One for Friday — Brian Ritchie, “Religion Ruined My Life”
One of the gifts of discovering a deep and abiding love of music right around the time a necessary transition to adulthood looms is the sudden access to a dazzling universe of sonic art that can provide a vocabulary of … Continue reading One for Friday: The Weakerthans, “Tournament of Hearts”
When I was first committing myself to the happy tasks of music fandom in my teen-aged years, I never quite understood why there wasn’t more excitement over local and area bands. This was well before the internet put practically every … Continue reading One for Friday: E-I-E-I-O, “Hey Cecelie”
In this weekly feature, I invoke my days at college radio station quite a bit, especially those from my first year as an undergraduate. I mean it with utter sincerity and not an ounce of hyperbole when I celebrate everything … Continue reading One for Friday: Big Audio Dynamite, “Just Play Music!”
I mean it with complete sincerity and accompanying appreciation when I insist that the Rainmakers were the perfect band for the student-run radio station where I spent my collegiate years. While I and my cohorts were committed to the rebellion … Continue reading One for Friday: The Rainmakers, “Spend It on Love”
So, in my digital collection, I have a couple versions of Christina Aguilera’s “Genie in a Bottle.” Sort of, anyway. I’m not sure if mash-up artists have an abiding weakness for the first chart-topper from the young woman who would … Continue reading One for Friday: Freelance Hellraiser, “A Stroke of Genius”
Crossing over from my relatively sheltered experience with music into the vast open tundra of college radio was joyful and astonishing. It was freeing, intimidating, exhausting, and enlivening all at the same time. When I complain about the difficulty I … Continue reading One for Friday: Mental As Anything, “Thinking Out Loud”
I turn now, as I do on occasion, to the stockpile of songs I once gratefully downloaded from a blog called Little Hits. The page is long-gone, lost to the misty whims of digital media. But at the time I … Continue reading One for Friday: The Scruffs, “She Say Yea”
The Screaming Blue Messiahs were a blast. More specifically, just about any track from either of their first two full-lengths — both of which sat snugly in the music stacks when I arrived at my college radio station in the late-nineteen-eighties — was a blast of bristling rock ‘n’ roll energy in the midst of a playlist. I don’t think anyone at our station would have held up the band as some pinnacle artist, transforming the landscape of college rock music nor issuing records that we knew — just knew — would be enduring classics. They weren’t R.E.M. or the … Continue reading One for Friday: The Screaming Blue Messiahs, “I Can Speak American”
Coffee for Two 