Lovin’ Wreck: Blindfold Test #7

The most exciting part of these columns, immediately after I listen to all 25 songs (okay usually I’ll make it 26 just in case I mess up and one of my writeups is completely flat and incoherent), is going back and checking the app queue to find out what music I was just taking notes…

3 New Wave Albums, 1981

Inchoate genre roundup from college newspaper, almost definitely of albums I picked for free out of a giveaway box in the newspaper office. Notes: (1) I call Dire Straits and George Thorogood new wave! Unless I was being sarcastic, which is possible. (2) I like that I call Andy Gibb “teen pop,” generations before the…

3 Indie Rock single reviews, 2004

Grandaddy: “The Rugged and Splintered Entertainment Center” Over repeated Casio tinkles playing an organ-grinder/boombah-stick oompah, and opening appropriately enough with a fake warp (unless that’s just my own worn-out turntable belt fucking up), a lonely where-oh-where-are-you-tonight campfire hymn to man’s best friend—namely, the trusty cabinet containing your TV, VCR, crappy receivers, eyesore knickknacks, and gallons…

A Bubblegum Top 40

Reprinted in the 2001 Kim Cooper and David Smay-edited anthology Bubblegum Music is the Naked Truth; possibly excerpted and/or cannibalized in scores of things I’ve written since. But this is how the original version looked on the page. A year later or decades later — after Debbie Gibson, Tiffany, the Spice Girls, Radio Disney, Aqua,…