“Children by the millions sing for Alex Chilton when he comes round
They sing: I’m in love, what’s that song?
I’m in love with that song.”
— Paul Westerberg, 1987
I still remember precisely where I was when I first heard Big Star: the front room of the condo Kirk & I lived at during the exact center of the 1980s. At that point, Big Star was just a rumour, a murmur that had begun to percolate from the burgeoning indie scene. We, of course, were both DJs at CSUF’s radio station, KFSR, and Kirk was also the Music Director.
Being Music Director had a really nice perk: keys to the Music Library in the Speech Arts building. The Music Library held 1000s and 1000s of albums going back decades. A certain portion of those records had been deemed suitable for KFSR by the previous Music Directors, but that left a vast treasure of undiscovered music to dig through. So we did.
Of course, this really was like looking for gold in a silver mine (or trying to drink whiskey from a bottle of wine), and usually led to escapades like the great Heavy Metal Record Toss, which was competition to see who could fling a vinyl record the furthest from the stage of the CSUF Ampitheatre. I think that Tim won that one.
But occasionally, we’d find some amazing stuff for the radio station, and one time, we found Big Star.
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It was a weird decade for the music industry. We watched the major labels implode right before our eyes, all the while protesting the future and trying to criminalize their user base. Would things have been different if the labels had put together a cheap, DRM-free solution in 2000? Maybe, maybe not, but there is no way it could have turned out worse.
It was a weird decade to be a music fan. For my entire life, the album had been the lingua franca of music: songs were the basic unit and singles were cool, but albums were a statement of purpose. But I started out the decade listening to albums from start to finish and ended it fragmenting them into my various mixes.
Now, I have a mix for the house, a mix for work, and a mix for my car: my own personalized “radio stations” that eternally combine older favorites and new songs. As someone who had been making mix tapes for himself since his early 20s, I’d only been waiting for this my entire life. But there was a consequence to the endless resequence: by 2006, most of my favorite albums revealed themselves to be collections of songs that stood out from the others.
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Welcome back my friends, to the blog post series that never ends. Of course, it’s moving more slowly than I’d like, as well. But here we are.
So, really quickly, the ground rules. These aren’t about artists, or albums, or even songs, but rather, moments: that piece of a song that draws you into it; that piece of a song that you wait to happen again; that piece of a song that is running in your head when you can’t sleep; that piece of a song that you find yourself humming at inopportune times.
That piece of a song that you can’t live without.
This is the tenth in a series: The first one had 25; the second one had 24; the third one had 23; the fourth one had 22; the fifth one had 21; the sixth had 20; the seventh had 19; the the eighth had 18 and the ninth had 17.
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It has been four months since I’ve done one of these, a far cry from my original plan of doing one a month, and I can’t promise when the next one will be, or even if there will be a next one.
So, really quickly, the ground rules. These aren’t about artists, or albums, or even songs, but rather, moments: that piece of a song that draws you into it; that piece of a song that you wait to happen again; that piece of a song that is running in your head when you can’t sleep; that piece of a song that you find yourself humming at inopportune times.
That piece of a song that you can’t live without.
This is the ninth in a series: The first one had 25; the second one had 24; the third one had 23; the fourth one had 22; the fifth one had 21; and the sixth had 20; the seventh had 19 and the eighth had 18.
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It’s a given that the upcoming Rock Band: The Beatles, is going to be a huge, huge success, and the hope is that it will simultaneously spur both the gaming and music industries. Which is why many many more bands are jumping on the Rock Band, er, bandwagon.
Yesterday, on Twitter, of all places, it was revealed that artists such as Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, U2, and The Rolling Stones all have editions in the pipeline. Naturally, each version has its own idiosyncrasies, based upon the artist to which it is dedicated. Since a lot of you still aren’t on the Twitter, I thought that I would give you a sneak peek at what you can expect when you buy some of the upcoming special editions of Rock Band.
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