A quick note from yours truly to begin. It took me 11 days to listen to 29 record albums by 14 artists and to write a poem-like thing for each songwriter or band filed under the letter A in my collection. There were, in that 29, a couple of double albums, but I have onlyContinue reading “#604: A is for Average White Band”
Monthly Archives: October 2025
#603: A is for Aurora
It’s Halloweenand next up in this October listeningritual is oneof the least frighteningfamous human beingson the planet.But she is kind of other-worldly, sprite-like, impish, adorable, and monstrously talented. Watching her interviewsand clips of her stage banterhas become a favorite pastime. She’s funny, personable, almost awkwardly honest, a kind of personality that is winning, irresistible.It happens,Continue reading “#603: A is for Aurora”
#602: A is for Asia
Get a bunch of superstarprog-rockers togetherin the early 80’s and watch them writehit pop songs. “The heatof the moment showedin your eyes” is objectively a dumb lyric. Does thischorus speed up? I think I inherited this album from my brother’s discardedrecord collection, but it’s got a price tag on it: 95 cents,and I can’t imagineContinue reading “#602: A is for Asia”
#601: A is for Arctic Monkeys
“Can we please be absolutely sure that there’s a mirrorball for me?” I hadn’t heard these guysin nearly a decade and one dayin 2022 their new album came across the radar, as they say, a new album called The Car,and I streamed it out of purecuriosity. This was not your mama’s Arctic Monkeys, but IContinue reading “#601: A is for Arctic Monkeys”
#600: A is for The Appleseed Collective
It’s 2014, my band Here Comes Everybodyhas booked an album release party at a ballroom downtown, the name of whichI can no longer remember. It’s a big deal, our first ever release on vinyl, which at this time, has made a kind of hot wax comeback. We are excited beyond imagination to bring our keyboardContinue reading “#600: A is for The Appleseed Collective”
#599: A is for Apple, Fiona
2012 She’s released five albumsin 24 years. I have them allin my collection, but only the last two on vinyl, the twomost challenging, difficultFiona albums in her catalog. Last night, in an hour or twoof sleeplessness, I knew shewas coming up in the alphabet,and I thought of that, as one does during an episode ofContinue reading “#599: A is for Apple, Fiona”
#598: A is for Angel City
I High school kids these dayshave what they call “lip sync”competitions, wherein two dozen students or more choreograph complex dancenumbers while a smaller group of young people pretend to sing the vocalalong with the elaborate moves. When I was a kid, a “lip sync”was called an “Air Band,” and consisted of smaller numbers of studentspretendingContinue reading “#598: A is for Angel City”
#597: A is for Angel
Let’s say you’re a youngmusician in the early 70’s with big rock star ambition. First, you need a schtick, a look, something glammy, something preposterous. Yeah, Cooper did the make-upthing, but you could go bigger, and you watch as some fellow musicians from neighboring New York Citygo the whole hogon the face-paint, so yougots toContinue reading “#597: A is for Angel”
#596: A is for Anderson, the Laurie Variety
I “O Superman” might have beenthe strangest pop song I had ever heard in my lifeup to that point. I heard it for the first timethe year after I graduated from high schooland I bought the Big Science album.In ’87, in a fit of stupidity, obsessedover the hot new digital medium for music, I soldContinue reading “#596: A is for Anderson, the Laurie Variety”
#595: A is for American Football
Describing genre these daysis like naming every spider species–of which there are 50,000. Wikipedia calls American Footballan “emo” band. I find the term “emo”to be about as helpful in describingmusic as it would be to distinguishwhat you’re doing in the kitchen rightnow as “food cooking,” as if there are types of music out there deliberatelyContinue reading “#595: A is for American Football”
michael jarmer 