The Beths – Roundabout
I almost forgot that I’m going to see The Beths this week. How is it already December tomorrow?
Even though I took the week of Thanksgiving off from work, I was busy doing family stuff and I feel kind of spent. It’s going to be a mad dash to Christmas. One of these years I really ought to try and do some holiday prep way early, like in October.
Anyway, thanks for reading through NaBloPoMo 2025. Go see a show. Try not to doomscroll. Get some fresh air. See you around!
Pearl Jam – Even Flow
There were a lot of contenders for this last spot but in the end, I’m giving it to Pearl Jam.
I debated picking one of the shoegaze bands I was really into in the early 90s, or maybe some Madchester band. Then there was my beloved Poi, nothing like any of those. For a while I had In Rainbows by Radiohead but I felt that was too big of a chronological gap.
I love how raw Eddie Vedder is on this album. A friend gave me his copy of Ten on cassette and I would listen to it on my Walkman. I had a lot of pent up anger and I would listen to this while out walking or while using the rowing machine.
Also, Eddie Vedder was smoking hot. That hair, those eyes, his arms, sigh. But the music was also hot, simmering at a low boil. This album was my gateway to the harder stuff, which to be clear, is still not that hard but let’s remember where we started here.
New Order – Temptation
These last ones are the hardest to nail down. The Replacements were a favorite but I don’t think they represent something new in forming my musical tastes. Likewise dozens of other bands that I listened to all the time and loved, but they are pretty much from the same school.
New Order is more electronic than jangle, more dance club than dive bar. One of my sister’s friends from high school was a big New Order fan and anyone who watched a John Hughes movie knew a couple of their songs. .
Substance was big with the college radio station guys and it has the angtsy hits I love. There was still some darkness, not surprisingly, but there was no denying that beat. Growing up in the era of disco meant that I had been hearing dance music for a long time, but it wasn’t music I wanted to dance to. New Order made it possible to retain your indie street cred while also dabbling in the dance scene.
Billy Bragg – A New England
I was introduced to Billy Bragg’s music by a girl who lived across the hall from me my junior year of college. She had his album Back to Basics. I loved his witty lyrics and was charmed by his accent.
Usually when I’m posting a Billy Bragg song it has something to do with politics. But I first fell for Billy because of his songs about unrequited love. He just pierces my heart with his tales of missed chances and failed opportunities.
Seeing as how it’s Thanksgiving, I would like to say that I’m thankful for Billy Bragg. He is funny, smart, courageous, talented, really just everything you want a man to be. Thanks for writing songs that make me smile through the tears and thanks for writing songs that get my fist up in the air in solidarity.
Pylon – Volume
It should come as no surprise that I spent an inordinate amount of my time in college, following leads and going down rabbit holes in the pursuit of knowing as much as possible about anything R.E.M. related. One of those leads was Pylon.
First, there was the cover of Crazy that appeared on the B-side of the Driver 8 single. It appeared again on Dead Letter Office. I was obsessed with this song. Still am. If there were more songs like that, I needed to know them.
Then there was the movie, Athens, GA: Inside/Out. I took the train into Philadelphia and saw it at the Theater of the Living Arts, back when it was still a movie theater. I think I might have gone twice. I saw it one more time at the Waverly Theater in New York when the semester was over and I stayed with my sister at her NYU dorm for a couple days. I didn’t take notes but I had all of the bands featured in the film burned into my brain.
I am pretty sure I bought Gyrate first. To me, it lived up to the hype. It sounded totally different and I found Vanessa’s way of singing, sometimes screaming, emphasizing the wrong syllables, totally infectious.
I was amazed that these songs were created by the people I’d seen in the movie. Michael Lachowski and Vanessa Briscoe Hay looked like the most ordinary people, not people you’d expect to be praised by R.E.M. and the B-52’s as being the best live show they’d ever seen.
I also found a copy of Chomp some months later. Hearing the original version of Crazy was like discovering the song all over again. I really can’t tell you how much that song meant to me at that time in my life. Seeing Pylon live, during their reunion in 1989, at City Gardens in Trenton, NJ felt like everything had come full circle.
It doesn’t end there though. I bought the CDs Chain and Hits, then Pylon Live in 2016, and then Box, the four album box set with a fabulous accompanying book. I will be a fan and supporter for as long as I live.
The Smiths – William, It Was Really Nothing
I wasn’t so sure about The Smiths the first time I heard them. Morrissey’s voice wasn’t what I was used to. My best friend had bought the 12″ of How Soon is Now* and after repeated listens, I decided that actually, I need to hear more.
Back down to Plastic Fantastic I went. It’s crazy to think that it has been 40 years since these songs first came out. Hatful of Hollow is a compilation album but at the time I didn’t realize that. No matter, l would end up picking up the other albums over the next year.
The Smiths helped describe my life and gave me endless quotes to trade with my friends. Plus Johnny Marr’s signature sound, what’s not to love?
*I was so sure that it was the How Soon is Now 12″ but according to discogs, the lead track was actually Barbarism Begins at Home.
R.E.M. – Shaking Through
You knew it was coming.
The way I remember it, my brother loaned me his cassette of Murmur over Christmas break my freshman year of college saying, “here, I think you’d really like this.”
So while you could say that this was another case of me just absorbing what my older siblings were listening to, it’s not the same. For one thing, my brother let me take it away to college, so clearly he wasn’t listening to it that much. Plus it was a cassette so when I was listening to it, it was on my Walkman with the headphones on and not a case of just being in the room while it was playing. It was my choice.
To say I listened to it a lot is an understatement. I particularly remember playing it while I was walking from my dorm on campus over to the women’s college a mile away, where I had a job in the dining hall. There’s something about having the music go straight into your ears that feels more intimate, more private. It can only have been a couple of weeks before I decided I needed to have my own copy. Off to Plastic Fantastic, where I then discovered there were more records by R.E.M. At that point there was Chronic Town, Murmur, Reckoning, and Fables. I can’t remember if I left the store that day with both Murmur and Reckoning or if I went back for Reckoning a different day. I just know that by the time spring break rolled around the first week of March, I insisted on taking both of them with me to my best friend’s house where I was going to spend the week. I couldn’t live without them for even a week. In short order I went back to the record store and completed my collection. I was also buying any zine I could find that had any article about R.E.M. Word was a new album would be coming out in the summer and I needed to know everything.
Sometimes I wonder, if we had never moved up to Maine halfway through my high school years, surely I would have heard R.E.M. before I got to college. I probably could even have gone to see them in concert. But we did move up to small town Maine in 1983, just when Murmur came out, and as we were so far removed from everything, it took two years before I knew anything about it. At the same time, having them to myself, in my Walkman, in my dorm room, meant I was free to binge listen as much as I wanted. I spent hours looking at the cover and the inner sleeve, hunting for clues. Could I have done that with my siblings around? The answer is no.
Everything in my life changed once I had this album. It’s like the part of my brain that feels music had a combination lock on it, and all the music I heard before Murmur was the numbers you spin clockwise and counter clockwise, before you finally get to the right number and click! The lock opens.
English Beat – She’s Going
To me, this album is synonymous with summer, parties, drinking and dancing, and every time I hear it, I am transported back to June 1983.
This was also my introduction to ska. I suppose I knew songs like “One Step Beyond” by Madness, or “A Message to You Rudy” by the Specials, both of which might be more true to that genre, but I’ll tell you what the English Beat had that they didn’t, Saxa.
So often a saxophone in popular music is going to just be so cheesy that you roll your eyes. My mind immediately goes to Glenn Frey’s “You Belong to the City” and other Miami Vice-esque songs. But the way Saxa played the saxophone was the element that made these songs soar. Sure, Dave Wakeling’s voice was swoony, and he was easy on the eyes, but the saxophone set these songs apart. I offer as evidence that General Public (which is Dave Wakeling and Ranking Roger, the two front men of the Beat) was a shadow of the Beat’s greatness. I don’t mean they were bad, I liked them, bought the album, and I even saw them in concert.
It was spring of my senior year of high school and I think there were six of us crammed into a two-door car, driving up to the University of Maine at Orono. That was pretty far away, close to 2 hours, so I had lots of time to talk with the friend whose lap I had to sit on because there was no other way for us all to fit. I feel like this story is better if you know this friend was a dude with long curly hair and a mustache and very much looked like a metal fan. We both agreed General Public were good, and we were excited to see them, but both hoping they’d play some English Beat songs even if it was a shame that Saxa wouldn’t be there. To our great surprise and delight, about 2/3 of the way into the show, they strike up an English Beat song and then, walking on stage comes Saxa to lend his signature sound to the song. We both looked at each other and shouted, “Saxa!!!”
I would also like to take this opportunity to point out that R.E.M. opened for the English Beat in 1983 and there’s a picture of Peter Buck wearing an English Beat T-shirt while hanging out with Paul Westerberg. Of course I knew the English Beat before I knew anything about R.E.M.
Talking Heads – Don’t Worry About the Government
I am pretty sure that Psycho Killer was something we’d heard on WLIR but I don’t think we had much more of an awareness of the Talking Heads than that. Eventually though, this album made its way into our house.
I can remember sitting on the floor with one of my older sisters and some of her friends, listening to this song, while we dreamed up what the perfect building to live in would be. A building with every convenience.
I could be wrong about the timing but I kind of think this would have been around the time that my two oldest sisters had summer jobs in the city working at MoMA as guards for the big Picasso exhibit. I feel like the weeks they worked there and the people they met broadened what they, and by extension the rest of us, were listening to.
For me this album, and Talking Heads in general, was a real eye-opening experience. They weren’t like the other punk bands, they were out there in left field singing songs about books, making decisions, and civil servants. From here began a life-long love of the Talking Heads, but maybe more importantly, an ear for the more arty punk bands.
A little earlier this evening I made the mistake of going on Instagram and quickly got sucked into the vortex. At some point I stopped to watch a video of Heather Cox Richardson saying that she really wants people to be thinking about what comes next. Kind of warning that if/when it all comes truly crashing down, people need to keep their heads and not look to a strongman to try and restore order. We need to be thinking about building coalitions and pathways for what a better society could look like, and look for an institutionalist with a new vision who will be able to harness those ideas and bring people together around them.
I see the states, across this big nation. I see the laws made in Washington, D.C. I think of the ones I consider my favorites. I think of the people that are working for me.
I do worry, massively, about the government. Everyone always says don’t be cynical, but I have operated on an expect-the-worst mindset for a long time and it’s hard to not do that. I’d like to imagine there’s another Zohran out there; who can come from relative obscurity, articulate a better way of living and how we can make it happen, and inspire the largest turn out of voters in 50 years. But we still have a long way to go before the midterms, or even 2028.
The Police – Next to You
I was reading up a little on the early days of the Police and one of the things the Wikipedia article mentioned was how they had tried to shift their sound to be more punk because that was selling in England in 1977.
But they were all much better musicians than those bands. I was always pretty amazed by Stewart Copeland’s drumming. There’s no denying his drumming gave them their signature fast driving sound. But as I listened in the car the last couple of days, I really noticed Sting’s bass playing. You can hear his interest in reggae coming through on some songs. Of course Andy Summers was an accomplished guitar player, and ten years older than Sting and Stewart Copeland.
I suspect that my brother, who had been listening to all the same music I’ve been posting about, actually really liked that the Police were good at their instruments. Even if he loved the Ramones and the middle finger to the establishment that punk had at its center, he also appreciated talented musicians playing more complex songs.
I might be biased because I was young and impressionable but to me, early Police songs sound just like what you want from a band. Like a lot of people, he was less enamored with the later albums. I think he has no use for solo Sting at all.
The other thing I learned from Wikipedia was that Stewart Copeland’s dad was a founding member of the CIA and a raging conservative. His mother had been a UK secret agent during World War II. Wild.
Noisy Cats 