Tag: music

Discussion: What’re You Listening To?

by KevinLeave a Comment on Discussion: What’re You Listening To?

A few thoughts on Airports, Dolly Parton, and pivoting away from a popular platform. Also: a buncha new tracks.

As some of you know, in addition to this here newsletter, I also edit an online music publication. We have a few rules around what is kosher to publish and what’s a no-go.

One of our informal rules is that we’ll turn back an otherwise fine piece if it’s the one too manyieth1 in a row on any given artist/topic. Think of it like the stock market’s circuit breaker mechanism. We like giving the people what they want, but there’s a limit. In five-ish years, I’ve only had to invoke this rule twice: once for Taylor Swift and once for Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter.

In theory, I could’ve—or should’ve—invoked it a 3rd time for Dolly Parton, but, well, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Sure, there were some submissions that were all too easy to decline—if you’re gonna write about an icon, maybe don’t have a machine do it for you?—but most showed a person who managed to touch a lot of people in a lot of different ways.

In our case, these indexed toward her records rather than things like Dollywood (and the second-order economic effects of an amusement park), but I’m still struck—as I assume many of you were—by how universal the sentiment seems. It’d be easy to just chalk it up to being hungry for something positive, but, well, you gotta earn it, and in this case, the hagiographies’ll write themselves.

There’s even a movement afoot to change the name of Nashville’s airport to honor her. Seems like a no-brainer, and the only argument one might make is that technically Knoxville’s airport is much closer to her hometown, and even that’s really just grist for the pedantry mill or avgeeks like me.

At any rate, I hope it goes through. It’d be a nice antidote to what recently happened to West Palm Beach’s airport.

On to the music…

This week, what’s old is new again with a fresh track from Dinosaur Jr. Our pal Brian K. Pagels (aka Brian K. & the Parkway) has a new one out (spoiler: It’s fantastic). We’ve also got a few old standbys that sound as good as ever from James and Peter Murphy. Speaking of Nashville, there’s a double dose of Total Wife. Parquet Courts came up in a discussion on songs about NYC, and, well, they’ve been in heavy rotation here ever since.

Closer to home, Madison continues to punch above its weight with killer sounds from both Mossmen and Get Well Now. From north of the border, there’s a little bit of Royal Ottawa. They’re on Wallytbm’s The Beautiful Music label, and you can check out the presser here to learn more about ‘em- really, though, just make some time to spin the EP. From across the pond, there’s a new one each from groove merchants Getdown Services and Cosey Mueller—not the first or last time we’ll see either of them.

One quick note before you press play: You may have noticed there’s no Spotify link this week. That’s intentional. I’ve been yapping about supporting artists for a while, and it felt like the right time to finally (!) put my money where my mouth is. Nowhere’s perfect, but small steps matter. It’s also worth noting that the platform with the lowest-quality sound and worst pay for artists is also the most expensive. I first rolled this out with the playlists that go out to paid community supporters, and now I’m rolling it out fully.

Maybe you still really like Spotify or find value in it. That’s ok, too. No judgment here! Promise. Either way, if you have strong thoughts on the matter, I’d like to hear ’em! Please weigh in below.

KA—

The Playlists: | Apple | Qobuz | YouTube Music | Tidal (NEW) |

Now it’s your turn.

What’s been exciting you lately? Any releases or shows you’re looking forward to? Whatcha got? Share your thoughts in the comments!

Remembering Steely Dan’s Walter Becker

by KevinLeave a Comment on Remembering Steely Dan’s Walter Becker

Photo: Variety.com

Perfection and precision can be funny things — especially in music, where all you really need are “three chords and the truth.”

Rarer still is the group that turns that alchemy into sounds with a unique (that is to say, hard to categorize) but universal appeal.

Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, aka Steely Dan did just that. Obsessive musicians on a perpetual quest to hit just the right mix of notes, they would’ve been at home in a lab. And in many ways, the studio was their lab. Edison had Menlo Park. Becker and Fagen The Village Recorder.

To operate smoothly, a machine needs every part to work well and work together. Becker and Fagen did this by swapping musicians in and out of songs. On the Aja album, there were 6 different lineups for 7 tracks. Recognizing that Chuck Rainey could play the parts better, Becker even took himself out of the lineup for “Black Cow,” “Aja,” and “Peg.” The end result of this endless iterating? Timeless music. Music that is (strangely) at home on the AM dial, at your local college radio station, and in the grocery store. You can still hear songs like Hey Nineteen and Peg fairly often.

As Becker himself noted:

“We have been fortunate enough to do something that has always been out of the mainstream and yet have an audience for what we do.“

We lost Becker on this day in 2017, but his legacy lives on the sounds of Steely Dan. On our radios, in our earbuds, and overhead in the aisles at Safeway.

Have a favorite track by Steely Dan or Becker himself? Let me know in the comments!

Discussion: What’re You Listening To?

by KevinLeave a Comment on Discussion: What’re You Listening To?

A few thoughts on living with abandon, old cars, and a buncha new tracks.

I was supposed to be at the Milwaukee Mile this weekend, but well, there was rain in the forecast, and well, I’m at the point in life where such things are now a dealbreaker. Instead, we wound up at a car show about a half hour west of here. It was at a church, and whatever you’re picturing in your mind right now is correct. Small white building straight out of central casting… on relatively high ground overlooking an impossibly green valley broken only by the occasional farm field… wind turbines running across a distant ridge. Real “amber waves of grain” stuff.

At any rate, I’m also at the age where I’m just old enough to share some small talk with the people showing these cars. I generally have zero idea what I’m talking about, but it’s amazing what doors having gray hair and wearing cargo shorts will open for you.

One of the cars was a ’73 Malibu, and in this case I did sort of know what I was talking about. I mentioned to the owner that my first car was a ’74 Malibu, and that’s the sort of opening gambit that buys you 3–4 mins of chit chat. My car had just enough horsepower to be dangerous in my hands, and I still remember just enough about it to get in trouble. I can tell you about the engine (V8, 350, 4-barrel carb, etc.), and that it had a landau roof, because of course it did. We went a little ways into the weeds, but the short version is that this car was immaculate. Doubly so for being 53 and maybe triply so for spending its life in a place not afraid to use salt half the year.

I was curious about how it stayed that way; had it just been garaged most of the last half century? Was this the result of an extensive rebuild? Something different? Turns out it was a bit of both. You can do a lot to keep a car from rusting or parts wearing out, but time is undefeated. So where was he sourcing these parts, I asked? He rattled off a bunch of different places, “but really,” he said, “once you start looking, you start seein’ ’em everywhere.”

That’s the second time I’ve heard something similar in recent weeks, the first being while chatting with an artist for an upcoming article. Both are right, of course, and it’s also correct that the playlists below this text block are the result of mining all kinds of different sources; friends, articles, radio stations, the records in my living room, etc. In other words, actively looking and active listening. And if you’re here, the smart money says this is how you find stuff, too. No set-it-and-forget-it for this crowd.

I also (somehow) made it to a show Friday night, and got the chance to see John McCutcheon play. Other than a couple of kids in the crowd wrecking the curve, I’d say the median age was, well, older. It was also fantastic. The kid ripping that Malibu around Washington County wouldn’t have been here to save his life, let alone say something like “It sounded beautiful in the hall we were in (another thing meticulously renovated),” but here we are.

I’ll leave it with this: while he played, McCutcheon would share stories and riff on whatever, and something he said really struck me: he was talking about the current state of play in 2026, and rattled off the same list most of us know by heart, but his point was that now more than ever, it’s crucial to live not with control but with abandon; love with abandon, share with abandon, speak and listen with abandon. Maybe go all in on something you’re really into like rebuilding a muscle car.

Teenaged me would’ve recognized the hammer dulcimer on his right only as something gathering dust in the high school band room, but 110% would’ve understood his message.

On to the music:

This list kicks off with one from the Strokes, but really I want to talk about Comedown Machine’s cover art. It’s impossibly retro and looks like something that would’ve been right at home in either Malibu on the way back from the record store. There’s also some tracks from the Posies, the Amps, and the Judybats, who to this day are still the most polite people I’ve ever seen on stage (not derogatory). Snapping back to today, there’s a brand-new one from Thao and Neko Case, Immersion (new record later this week!), and one from Swervedriver whose latest track sounds just as white-hot as “Rave Down” did all those years ago. It’s best played loudly, with abandon.

KA—

P.S. O.R.R. fave Hazel English also dropped a new EP late last week!

The Playlist:

Other sources: | Apple | Qobuz | YouTube Music| Tidal (NEW) |

Want a little more Dolly Parton? Of course you do, and our friends at Qobuz have just what you’re looking for.

I’m trying Tidal out after getting a couple of requests for it. We’ll see how it goes! Mostly, I’d like to slowly move away from Spotify and make sure we’ve got as many bases covered as possible.

Now it’s your turn.

What’s been exciting you lately? Any releases or shows you’re looking forward to? Whatcha got? Share your thoughts in the comments!

What’re You Listening To?

by KevinLeave a Comment on What’re You Listening To?

A few thoughts on friction and a buncha fresh tracks.

I am finally getting around to going through a box of 45s my mom gave me. Ostensibly, this was “payment” for helping her downsize her house a few years ago. Really, I think it was just a face-saving exercise for her.

Wherever you fall on the friction spectrum, 45s sit at the far end.

Friction and intentionality are all the rage these days—I’m as guilty of yapping about this as anyone. I’m also a fan of it. I spend my entire workweek splitting my attention and keeping multiple plates in the air. Sitting down to do nothing but listen to a record is a great way to recover. There are, of course, all the other sensory experiences that come along with it: the smell of the vinyl…reading the liner notes…appreciating the art—all the tactile things.

Still, 45s feel like a bridge too far. I like friction, but not this much. My turntable is on one side of the room. Playing 45s means no couch; it means sitting right in front of the sound machine. That’s partly why it’s taken me so long to get around to this. Real life gets in the way, of course, but it also takes some work to get through a box of these things.

The upside is that going through a small collection like this lets my mind wander a bit. Everyone’s collection says a bit about who they are, and in my case, I’ve known this person my entire life—but I know very little about the almost one-third of her life before I showed up. These little slabs of wax help fill in the blanks a bit, but they raise almost as many questions as they answer.

I know the story behind my own 45s. Each of them tells its own little story, a plotline I can recite: where I was in life when I picked them up—literally—what buses I took to get there, and so on.

Did my mom find these on her own, or did someone else tell her she “had to hear this”? If she found them herself, the likely source would have been the radio. What station was she listening to? I know the house she lived in, but I also know it wasn’t close to any stores. Did she ride the bus to get these? I can pick up the story, but only from the midway point.

The station I remember playing constantly in the house has since become a talk-radio station. That’s a rant for another day.

Also, while I know why everyone put address labels on their records, it still strikes me as strange. Today, we live in a world where everything is collectible, and Lord help you if there’s a 1 mm crease on a corner. They were betting the other way. Records weren’t meant to be preserved; they were meant to be played, even if that meant someone changing things up every two or three minutes.

Maybe that’s the best takeaway here: treating records—or any physical media, really—purely as an investment vehicle is a weird choice. Of course, you should take care of them. Putting them in sleeves and storing them in the right place is the way to go. But ultimately, their place is on the turntable, spinning around and delivering sound.

On to the music…

This week, we’ve got killer tracks from all corners of the music universe. There’s a ripper from Wristwatch, one of my favorite Madison bands—it’s a long list—and one from Maritime, one of my favorites from just down the road in Milwaukee. Our pal Jodaki also sent us one he thought I might like. He was right.

There’s some Lungfish, because of course there is. Indy-based indie darlings Wishy keep their streak of great singles going, and the latest from Afghan Whigs is finally out. It’s been a long time coming, but it was worth the wait.

Catacroma from Riviera Gaz also dropped, and if you like the sort of stuff Winged Wheel—or Lungfish, for that matter—puts out, this is for you. This is also a Steve Shelley side project; he’s having quite the year.

Last but not least, there’s a track each from ORR favorites Wussy and The Paranoid Style. Lisa Walker and Elizabeth Nelson are pairing up for a series of upcoming house shows, and, well, if your favorite baseball team is in the NL Central, gas up the car and make a plan to get out and see them. There are a couple of East Coast dates, too.

KA—

The Playlist:

Other sources: | Apple | Qobuz | YouTube Music| Tidal (NEW) |

I’m trying Tidal out after getting a couple of requests for it. We’ll see how it goes! Mostly, I’d like to slowly move away from Spotify and make sure we’ve got as many bases covered as possible.

Now it’s your turn.

What’s been exciting you lately? Any releases or shows you’re looking forward to? Whatcha got? Share your thoughts in the comments!

Discussion: What’re You Listening To?

by KevinLeave a Comment on Discussion: What’re You Listening To?

Good morning!

Hello from Lake Michigan.

I’m writing this from somewhere called South Beach (no, not that one): a dispatch from nowhere that somehow feels like everything. One of the best things about Portland was its proximity to the coast. In the span of ~75 miles (and 60-ish minutes, if you timed it right and kept a sharp eye out for cops), you could go from strip-mall Babylon to the state line along the shore of the Pacific. You could foolishly attempt that same pace on a run to Mt. Hood, but the police in Sandy are undefeated. We can make the same run to the Midwestern equivalent of a coast run. It’s not the same, but it sure feels like it sometimes.

Looming over this beach is a massive power plant. Its presence surely makes sense, but it honestly reminds me of something out of The Simpsons. Or something you might see if you took the longer route to the coast via Highway 30, where the now-gone Trojan nuclear plant loomed, dominating the skyline and seeming very much both in and out of place.

WTF does any of this have to do with music, you may be asking? My point is that I always find it fascinating how one thing reminds you of another, and how transportive those flashes can be.

An offhand conversation about the band ALL this week led to mentioning a shared love of Big Drill Car, which led to me dusting off CD Type Thing and landing right back in the early ’90s. Which led to some Bettie Serveert and Happy Mondays. A short YouTube documentary on Sugar reminded me of being at Tower to grab one of their midnight releases. And why can I remember exactly what the terrazzo floors looked like but need help remembering what I had for lunch yesterday?

We lost John Douglas of Trashcan Sinatras this week, and it felt mandatory to include a couple of their better-known tracks. I’d also highly encourage new listeners to burrow into their deep cuts. It’s well worth the trip.

And that power plant I’m sitting in the shadow of? Well, it reminds me of Pink Floyd and the picture of Battersea Power Station on Animals. The only things flying between the stacks here are frisbees, but still…

KA—

On to the music:

Besides the tracks noted above, we’ve got some killer sounds from Cola, Bad Bad Hats, and Boscomoestas, Jason Singer (Michigander), The Veldt, and close things out with something from our pal Matty C’s Harborcoat.

Side A is tracks 1-13. Side B is tracks 14-27.

The Playlist:

Other sources: | Apple | Qobuz | YouTube Music| Tidal (NEW) |

Note: Trying Tidal out after getting a couple of requests for it. We’ll see how it goes! Mostly, I’d like to slowly move away from Spotify, and want to make sure we’ve got as many bases covered as possible.

Now it’s your turn.

What’s been exciting you lately? Any shows you’re looking forward to? Maybe one with an early start? Whatcha got? Share your thoughts in the comments!

Discussion: What’re You Listening To?

by KevinLeave a Comment on Discussion: What’re You Listening To?

Good morning!

This week I spent a good deal of time listening to the earlier part of Heart’s catalog. As I noted last week, my better half came home from a garage sale with quite a haul, and, well, those records weren’t going to play themselves, you know? No one needs to know my take on Bebe Le Strange (“Even It Up” is a top-five track from them), Private Audition (you can probably skip this one), or the deep cuts on Dog & Butterfly and Dreamboat Annie. I’ll just say I’m always surprised at how well these hold up. Even the glossy-era stuff has its high marks. I’m never mad about hearing “Never” in the store. I’m slow to praise anything from Seattle, but credit where credit’s due.

At any rate, this week I’ve been feeding my ears with quite a bit of stuff that’s held up. The Veldt are a band I found in high school, and if Instagram is anything to go by, people are still finding them. The kids are alright! We’ve got two of them here. A few years ago, our pal Keith R. Higgons did a great interview with the band’s Daniel Chavis that’s also well worth checking out.

Similarly, Watershed is an Ohio band that had a brief moment in the ’90s, then faded from the spotlight, but, lucky for us, never really stopped making records. Their new one’s on here, and they’re doing a short regional tour. If you’re in the upper Midwest, you’re in luck. Also, shoutout for most of these shows starting early. Related: I’m old. They’re also playing with Madison’s Shazy Hade.

There’s some Yo La Tengo, because of course there is, and a couple from the Stones, Pink Floyd, and Eddie Vedder (see above: never beating the old-guy allegations).

Going the other way, we’ve also got brand-new killer sounds from Joel Cusumano , Philly-based Mesh—who sound old in all the best ways—and Young Friend.

Also a new one from THAO that’ll likely still be stuck in your head midweek (sorry!), a double dose of new music from Outer World, and a banger from Swedish House Mafia ft. Lykke Li.

In other words, something for everyone. This is an all ages show. Get in!

KA—

Side A is tracks 1-13. Side B is tracks 14-27.

The Playlist:

Discussion: What’re You Listening To?

by KevinLeave a Comment on Discussion: What’re You Listening To?

Good morning!

This past Friday I went to a political rally lightly disguised as a stop on a book tour. It was a Q&A with Ben Wikler and Pete Buttigieg, and a couple of other local/state politicians and activists. I was really there to see “Mayor Pete” (I’m an unrepentant infrastructure geek), but if I’m honest, it was far more engaging and entertaining than I thought it might’ve been.

I’m terminally online and far too plugged into the WI political landscape for my own good. It’s easy to get jaded and check out, but this was a great antidote; a bulwark against the tsunami of political ads that are about to swamp every channel.

One of the points made was a quote: Hope is not the cause of action. Hope is the consequence of action.

I admit it’s a touch pithy—something very much at home on a Successories poster—but I also couldn’t help but frame it in terms of records, writing, and any creative pursuit. People take their time, treasure, and talent and put something out in the world. They hope people like it, of course, but that’s an aftereffect.

The TL;DR of the evening was that success comes when we (collectively) decide to tear down existing models and speak truth to power. Those walls come down slowly at first and then all at once. It starts with a conversation, or making a single phone call. Or making a small ask of someone (in my organizing days we would call these pressure tests, and the equivalent might be asking them to sign an A-card). You do this over and over—you put in these reps—and eventually something new and better emerges.

On the way there, we drove by what was once Smart Studios, and as each person spoke, I couldn’t help but map their points to the past and current music landscape.

Writing about the building a few years ago, I noted:

Today, Smart Studios stands stoically on the corner as the world rushes by. Boarded up and on the market, it stands sentinel over an era long past, but whose legacy lives on.

In the ’90s, people took existing models and bent them to their will…or they just tore them down altogether and built something novel.

And we did it together. People collaborated long before your Instagram timeline was polluted with spammy “DM to collab” comments from bots. It felt like everyone was in a band. And if you weren’t playing, you were writing. And if you were writing or making a ’zine, you were doing art for record covers or T-shirts.

When people took to the streets in PDX, it wasn’t performative or for the ’gram. The crowds built a person at a time. One person asking another to join them. And another. And then another.

It was a fantastic time. And it was the result of small steps adding up to something much larger.

No wonder it gave us so many good sounds.

On to the music…

This week, I’ve been listening to a ton of The Church. Ditto R.E.M. and Yo La Tengo (some of you may have seen that those are the two frontrunners for which discography Sam Colt and I work through next- stay tuned for the results!). There’s also some INXS and Shonen Knife, the latter of whom used to soundtrack a lot of my drives into the city for shows, We also lost L7 bassist Jennifer Finch late Saturday. L7 of course recorded at Smart Studios. Fuck cancer.

I promise this isn’t a nostalgia account; I might be an 80s/90s kid, but the music of 23026 gives me just as much hope as those records did back in the day. This week we’ve got some killer new sounds from Sweeping promises, Ceylon Sailor, Inland Years, and many more.

Side A is tracks 1-14. Side B is tracks 15-27.

The Playlist:

Other sources: | Apple | Qobuz | YouTube Music |

Now it’s your turn.

What’s been in heavy rotation in your world? Any new releases or shows you’re looking forward to? Whatcha got? Share your thoughts in the comments!

Some Thoughts on Dave Kendall and the Magic of MTV’s 120 Minutes

by KevinLeave a Comment on Some Thoughts on Dave Kendall and the Magic of MTV’s 120 Minutes

I miss my 120 Minutes CDs.

Like many people, I was lured in by the iPod. I could have all of my music on a little machine? I wouldn’t need to store anything? Sign me up! In the early 00s, I was already sick of moving boxes around. I did brisk business offloading them-interestingly, a lot went to APO boxes-and I never really looked back. The future was bright, and it belonged to these cool new devices being sold to us by impossibly cool ads.

We didn’t think much about the second-order effects of offshoring all these things. Or how putting “earbuds” and later AirPods in would seal us off from other music fans, both literally and figuratively. This shift wouldn’t be the death knell for IRL music discovery, but it certainly put it in the ICU. Being able to access music online, on our own terms, also meant the end of relevance for shows like MTV’s 120 Minutes. None of that will be news, of course.

The big news this week is that former 120 Minutes host Dave Kendall has passed away.

I’ve touched on this before, noting:

It’s always a tell when someone makes a snide remark about remembering when MTV actually played videos. The channel answered the siren song of more eyeballs and pivoted away from music to other content, resulting in more people associating the channel with reality TV, outnumbering those who knew it for music videos. This is why Gen Xers regard MTV as a vehicle for music discovery, and Millennials regard it as where they discovered Snooki.

MTV had shows back then, of course. Yo! MTV Raps introduced a whole generation to the world of hip hop. 120 Minutes did the same for alternative/indie music, and this was when the term alternative still meant, well, alternative. NBC might’ve coined the term Must See TV, but for someone like my fellow travelers and me, this was the show to watch, even if it was on impossibly late. Sometimes that meant taping it and watching the next day after school (no internet = no spoilers). I got rid of those tapes, too. They’d be fun to watch, though.

They often let musicians from your fave bands host, and things would often get… interesting…I mean, does anyone else remember when Greg Dulli and Donald Logue hosted 120 Minutes?

For that matter, does anyone remember when MTV would just give 2 hours of airtime to people who’d do things like reenact scenes from The Godfather before teasing upcoming videos from “The Radiohead & The Pavement?”

Those were fun, of course, but the regular hosts were what made it great. Kevin Seal was as irreverent as anyone. Matt Pinfield’s encyclopedic knowledge was his superpower, and to be fair, one he only ever used for good. That would’ve made lesser men interminable.

But in between them was Dave Kendall. An affable guy with cool hair and a cool accent, both of which lent him more credibility than any other VJ, though I imagine metal heads felt the same way about Headbangers Ball hosts Adam Curry and Riki Rachtman.

Week in, week out, he would introduce legions of indie/alternative/goth kids to their new favorite bands. Alternatively, his would often be the only chance their fave current-band videos would ever see the light of day airtime.

In 2026, YouTube exists. In 1992, this was it.

“Dave was one of the true believers. Long before alternative music found its way into the mainstream, he was there every week on 120 Minutes, introducing people to bands that would go on to define an era. He didn’t just host a show. He gave a home to music that deserved to be heard. He loved the music, respected the artists, and connected with fans in a way that always felt authentic. “That’s a rare gift.”

~Matt Pinfield

It’s possible that Kendall was just reading cue cards or parroting what an A&R exec had handed him to read, but I doubt it, and if that’s the case, don’t tell me. He was a TV host, sure, but this was also a show whose idea he pitched and sold to the network. More than that, he was the man introducing us to a world of new bands and sounds. For those of us not yet in college, he was the substitute for the cool kid down the hall with the crate full of cool shit.

Today, you might get lucky and have the algorithm serve you up that sort of thing, but I doubt it. You can, of course, get anything you want anytime online- including links to every 120 Minutes episode and a list of hosts. This morning, I listened to a playlist I made via Qobuz. You can usually find “The Pavement” on there. You won’t find “The Radiohead.” It’s wild what you can build with 1’s and 0’s. That’s today’s version of the mixtape, but a lot of the tracks on there are bands introduced to me via 120 Minutes that later spent a lot of time on Maxell cassettes in my car. I watched the show and picked up copies (and later, picked up a pen). Others watched and picked up guitars. Those descendants often make these playlists, too.

It all makes for an incredible time to be alive, but there’s an electricity missing there. If you’re intentionally looking something up, it’s not the same lottery. Ultimately, that’s something people like me attributed to Kendall, and where much of that affinity lies. That his stint on the show neatly coincided with my peak music-discovery years doesn’t hurt. I hammered out a proverbial shitty first draft on Wednesday morning shortly after seeing news of his passing online. It would’ve been better to hear it via MTV News, but that too exists only as a memory now. I guess it’s cool that he outlived the network?

CDs are making a bit of a revival, so there’s that. Kendall would probably dig it. I’m taking some liberties here, but I like to think he was a CD guy, outside of DJ’ing, of course. Looking at the Nevermind the Mainstream comps now (online obvs.), the track lists for Volumes 1 & 2 read like who’s who of my favorite bands. To say that’s down to the influence of 120 Minutes and Kendall is not assumptive. I’m also confident there are a lot of people out there who would say the same.

If there’s any justice in the world, by now you’ll have seen many well-written obituaries, fueled by memories of people like me who used to stay up late just to see what Kendall would gift us next.

Thanks, Dave, and rest easy.

Discussion: What’re You Listening To?

by KevinLeave a Comment on Discussion: What’re You Listening To?

Good morning!

Saturday, I talked a little bit about two music “hot takes” I have. At the risk of sounding like a broken record (sorrynotsorry), there’s a third: I’m not especially fond of Nirvana’s In Utero.

Writing about the record in 2023, I noted:

Part of that incuriosity was down to my insufferable gatekeeping mindset back then, but the reality was this: I had first heard the songs from Bleach live before I heard them on cassette. I can remember how “Negative Creep” was introduced as something that “would be coming out soon” and how it felt like the best kind of kick to the head. The rest of the record was more of the same.

Nevermind came out not too long after, and, well, we all know what happened next. It was the end of a brand for Mennen and the beginning of an era for “alternative music.” And let me say this: In short order, “alternative” would become a punchline, the music being more mainstream than whatever it was supposed to be a substitute for that would come soon enough. In 1991, Pearl Jam’s Ten and this were a vicious 1-2 combo for a world not quite ready for it, but in hindsight, better for having had them both happen.

There was also a period where I soured on Nevermind, mostly, I think, because it became so inescapable. Time has largely softened that, and while I still (subjectively) think Bleach is the best release of the lot, Nevermind is a very close second — and objectively the top pick. Ask 10 people what their favorite track is, and you’ll likely get 11 answers. If that’s not the hallmark of an excellent record, I don’t know what is. If you have, if you need.

That line’s from my pick, “Breed,” but “Lithium” is usually at the top of the leaderboard too. And I mention all of this because it was released as the album’s third single on this day in 1992.

Tell me, would “Lithium” be your pick? If not, what is?

KA—

On to the music…

Besides Nirvana, we’ve got tracks from Sugar and Fugazi, both of whom were also feeding my ears back then (and anyone within a 5-6 block radius of my car). Also, more Fleetwood Mac, but not from Mirage. We’ve also got killer fresh sounds from Jack White, The Strokes, Brothertiger, feeble little horse, Twin Bloom, and Jodacki. There’s also a new mix from New Order, because of course there is.

Side A is tracks 1-15. Side B is tracks 16-29.

Other sources: Apple | Qobuz | YouTube Music |

Now it’s your turn.

What’s been in heavy rotation in your world? Any new releases or shows you’re looking forward to? Whatcha got? Share your thoughts in the comments!

Discussion: What’re You Listening To?

by KevinLeave a Comment on Discussion: What’re You Listening To?

I hope everyone had a great 4th of July, in whatever form it took. If nothing else, I hope you were somewhere that didn’t feel like the inside of a vast furnace.

I think it’s safe to say that the wave of mid-year reviews has crested. I know some people have a distaste for such things, but I love ‘em. Maybe you do too? Here’s a good one, and a couple of others here, here, and here. Finding new records- or a new spin on one of my own faves- is always a delight, but I think my favorite part is that these lists invariably include the phrase “so far” in the title. Yeah, I know that makes sense, given where we’re only halfway through the year, but it’s also a signal that (maybe) the best is yet to come? That maybe our new AOTY is just around the bend, waiting for us to catch up.

Speaking of lists, through a combo of old age, provenance, and shifting priorities (read: not being able to stay up late, not wanting to drive more than 10 miles in any direction), there are very few bands I want so see play left on my bucket list.

Spoon was one of the few left standing…until this past Friday, when we got to see a stripped-down, mid-day set. It was only Britt and Alex Fischel, but it was fantastic and well worth the drive to Milwaukee. I also got to see Lake Michigan, some ships, and watch Cape Verde almost pull off the upset of the century, so it was just triple 7’s all the way down. We should all be so lucky.

KA—

On to the music…

It’ll be no surprise that this week’s list is extremely Spoon-coded, and a bit longer than usual (see also: 3 hours in the car on Friday). There’s plenty from them, but also new stuff from Kristen Hersh, Mike D, Milwaukee band SPF-150, and more.

Also, a few tracks from Wire’s Colin Newman. Nothing this time from his Immersion project, but they also have a record coming later this year. Having heard a preview, I’m pretty confident it’ll be on more than a few AOTYs come December.

Side A is tracks 1-17. Side B is tracks 18-37.

Other sources: Apple | Qobuz | YouTube Music|

Now it’s your turn.

Any new releases or shows you’re looking forward to? Whatcha got? Share your thoughts in the comments!