Ramblings about My Records
Having grown up on ’70s hit radio, for several years I was more familiar with the Beatles’ solo works than with actual Beatles music. John, Paul, George, even Ringo were all having at least...
As iconic as their first album was, The Left Banke pretty much split up before “Walk Away Renee” was even a hit, coming back together and then breaking up again. Various iterations of the...
This is truly one of the most important albums in my life. I’m sure I picked it up in those early days of my record-collecting, when any oldie was a good oldie (almost), and...
See my last entry on Larkin Poe’s “Self Made Man” for the story of my discovery of Larkin Poe. One of the delights of this pair of sisters is their obvious joy in just...
Listen, when a new artist comes out, everybody says that they’re the latest and greatest, that they’re the heirs to this and that, that they area doing something amazingly new, taking it back to...
How did I discover Christine Lavin, several years before my big neofolk immersion? I think it had to have been through NPR. In the mid-’80s, and especially in my grad school years, NPR was...
I first heard of Bettye LaVette seven or eight years ago – I can’t remember if it was pre-move, or mid-move. Lee had been driving somewhere and listening to NPR’s “All Songs Considered” and wrote...
It’s hard to express how big this album was in 1984, how ubiquitous it was, and how long it was on the charts (77 weeks). Released in October 1983, the single “Girls Just Want...
A silly name and cover concept, though I liked it at the time, which was 1980. This is also a promo and I’m honestly not sure whether I bought it used or got it...
Things We Said Today