The Music vs. The Misery

What came first - the music or the misery? Did I listen to music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to music? Do all those records turn you into a melancholy person?

People worry about kids playing with guns, and teenagers watching violent videos; we are scared that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands - literally thousands - of songs about broken hearts and rejection and pain and misery and loss. The unhappiest people I know, romantically speaking, are the ones who like pop music the most; and I don't know whether pop music has caused this unhappiness, but I do know that they've been listening to the sad songs longer than they've been living the unhappy lives.
- Nick Hornby

Buy: High Fidelity: A Novel (1995)
The book takes place in London, England, and follows the life of Rob Fleming.
Buy: High Fidelity DVD (2000)
The movie takes place in Chicago, USA, and follows the life of Rob Gordon.
They are both great, but, an as American who once lived in Chicago and who has had a crush on John Cusack since Say Anything (1989), I like the movie better.

The Smiths - Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me.mp3
Buy: Strangeways, Here We Come (1987)

Crazy Horse - I Don't Want To Talk About It.mp3
Buy: Crazy Horse (1971, reissued 1994)

Nazareth - Love Hurts.mp3
Buy: Hair of the Dog (1975, reissued 2008)

Bee Gees - How Can You Mend a Broken Heart.mp3
Buy: Trafalgar (1971, CD out of print, buy MP3s only)

Colin Hay - I Just Don't Think I'll Ever Get Over You.mp3
Buy: Transcendental Highway (1999)

Two Dollar Pistols - You Ruined Everything.mp3
Buy: You Ruined Everything (2002)

College Radio

College radio had a huge influence on developing my musical tastes in the 1980s and early 90s. Growing up in small town Wisconsin, I listened to WRST from the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh. They even let some of my high school friends DJ, usually at 4a.m. on Thursdays. My only other source of alternative music came from friends who had older siblings in college, and they passed on what they heard at their local college stations to we high school underlings.

Another recent article in the New York Times talks about how college radio is maintaining its presence, and in some cases thriving, despite the availability of a wide range of music on the internet. Most of these stations are student-run, and allow students to DJ whatever they feel like during certain programming hours. And, according to the article, some actually do influence the success of indie bands, many by integrating their broadcast with a streaming webcast. While commercial radio is run by huge conglomerates and so-called professional "DJs" have no influence on the playlist, its great to see that young people still want to get involved with local radio.

In the future I am going to say a lot more about college radio, but in the meantime here are a few tracks that I discovered by college radio in the 1980s.

Hüsker Dü - Never Talking To You Again.mp3
Buy: Zen Arcade (1984)

The Smiths - Cemetry Gates.mp3
Buy: The Queen Is Dead (1986)

They Might Be Giants -Ana Ng.mp3
Buy: Lincoln (1989)

And here's a song by the Replacements from their most produced record, but a great song regardless. I will have much, much more to say about the Replacements at a later date. Man, I remember seeing this on MTV's 120 Minutes. And now its VH1 Classic? I'm old.
Buy: Don't Tell a Soul (1989, reissued with bonus tracks 2008)