Tag Archives: WBOR

Listen, The Snow Is Falling*

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For an artist to craft something so evocative that when you hear it, read it, see it, you immediately know what their performance/piece/painting/picture represents is remarkable and a gift that they bring to us via their art.

Galaxie 500 were a band with a devoted following during the late 1980s/early 1990s within indie music’s insular community. This three-piece played what I’d call “slowcore” and had an obvious affinity for The Velvet Underground.

The band released three studio albums between 1987 and 1991 when they split apart: Dean Wareham off to Luna and Damon Krukowski and Naomi Yang forming Damon & Naomi, focusing on dream pop splendor. Both post-Galaxie acts have remained active and viable since the three members went their separate ways.

Back of Galaxie 500’s “This Is Our Music” record jacket (Rough Trade, 1990)

When I’m home on Thursdays, I like to stream WFMU’s “This Is the Modern World With Trouble” program. Her station profile describe what she plays as “a viking ship appears on the horizon, a likeness of Loretta Lynn carved into its bow. Rare birds flock together to sing Francoise Hardy as soul hits. A sunset of blips and bleeps fills the air.” Continue reading →

Rattled by the Rush

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I try not to get too nostalgic for the past. Lately, though, I’ve been thinking of a time—back before Google, and their quest to turn our brains into a hunk of Swiss cheese. Was it a better time? I don’t know. There were certainly positives. Oh, I know—thou shalt not speak evil of any technology! And believe it or not, there was life and a social scene before Facebook—arguably a richer one.

A reminder of that time came the other morning, listening to WMBR’s “Boomerang” program, sliding back into some 90s post-punk that I know and love. Erik Morrison is a DJ who once a week (on Tuesday mornings) spends an hour time-traveling back to the days before MP3 players,iTunes, and nearly everyone who is under the age of 25, walking around with earbuds jammed in their ears, oblivious to the world around them. Track lists mattered and artists cared about things like the sequence of 10 or more songs, crafted to fit alongside each other on an album. Granted, we’d transitioned from tapes to CDs, but indie rock still meant independent of corporate control. Obviously, that’s long gone and we’re not in Kansas (or Columbia, Missouri) anymore. Continue reading →

Record Stores and Reinvention

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Long before I had aspirations to take my writing to the next level, I was merely a writer hiding his writing under a bushel. Back then, records and record stores kept me going. Actually, it was less about record stores, and more about the music that record stores carried.

In the late 1980s, I returned with my young family to the place where my roots were the deepest, which also happened to be close enough to the WBOR radio tower to pull-in its meager radio signal, which emanated out from Brunswick for a 15-20 mile radius, barely reaching Durham, where we were living with my in-laws. The signal was slightly stronger on the Lisbon Falls side of the river where we moved waiting for our house to be built, occupying the downtown side of a duplex at 16 ½ Oak Street, one of Marcel Doyon’s many rental properties in my former hometown. This connected me to late 1980s college rock and the likes of They Might Be Giants, Lois Maffeo, The Fall, and The Replacements. A few years later, I became deeply affected by something called alt-country and the band Uncle Tupelo, as well as a host of bands on the long defunct Faye Records label out of another college town, Columbia, Missouri.
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Losing Scott Miller

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I’m sure much of my prattling on about music and my own music listening history seems irrelevant to most of those that stumble across the JBE. I really don’t know why that is.

At Lisbon High School, my friends and I all had tastes that ran counter to the Molly Hatchett, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Eddie Money, and Meatloaf that most of our classmates were listening to. At the time, this difference and separation was a badge of superiority that we wore prominently. Now, I realize that musical tastes, much like food, are subjective. Continue reading →