Song of the Week – Radio Radio, Elvis Costello; Radio Free Europe, R.E.M.; Radio Nowhere, Bruce Springsteen

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Ignored   Obscured Restored

For anyone under 30, it’s probably hard to explain just how important radio once was.

Before streaming services, playlists, and algorithms, radio was how you discovered new music.  A great DJ could change your life.  A late-night college station might introduce you to your next favorite band.  And if you were lucky, some distant signal crackling through the static could make the world feel a little bigger.

As someone who spent time behind the microphone at a college radio station (WZBC), I’ve always had a soft spot for songs about radio itself.  Musicians have long viewed the medium with a mixture of affection, frustration, and suspicion.  Some saw it as a lifeline connecting artists and listeners.  Others viewed it as a gatekeeper controlled by corporate interests. A few managed to see both sides at once.

Three songs in particular capture that evolving relationship: Elvis Costello’s “Radio Radio,” R.E.M.’s “Radio Free Europe,” and Bruce Springsteen’s “Radio Nowhere.”  Taken together, they tell a fascinating story about how artists viewed the airwaves across three decades.

Elvis Costello fired the first shot.

Released in 1978, “Radio Radio” remains one of the most blistering attacks ever aimed at the music industry.  Costello portrays radio not as a source of discovery or enlightenment but as a system designed to dull curiosity and reward conformity.  The song bristles with frustration at executives and programmers who decide what listeners hear and, perhaps more importantly, what they don’t.

What makes “Radio Radio” so effective is that Costello delivers his critique inside a perfect pop song.  The Attractions provide a punchy New Wave groove, the chorus is instantly memorable, and the entire track sounds radio-ready. It’s a Trojan horse — a catchy hit carrying a deeply subversive message.

The song’s reputation was cemented when Costello appeared on Saturday Night Live in December 1977.  Scheduled to perform “Less Than Zero,” he abruptly stopped the band a few bars into the song, apologized to the audience (I’m sorry, ladies and gentlemen, there’s no reason to do this song here) and launched into “Radio Radio” instead.  Inspired by Jimi Hendrix — who had famously defied producers by switching songs mid-broadcast on the Lulu Show — Costello used a national broadcast to challenge the very system he was criticizing.  Nearly fifty years later, it remains one of rock’s great moments of resistance.

If Costello viewed radio as a battleground, R.E.M. saw it as an opportunity.

“Radio Free Europe,” originally released as a single in 1981 and later re-recorded for Murmur in 1983, became one of the foundational records of American college rock.  The title borrowed from the Cold War broadcaster that transmitted news and music beyond the Iron Curtain, but R.E.M. transformed the phrase into something more personal: a symbol of alternative culture operating outside the mainstream.

Michael Stipe’s famously cryptic lyrics are less important than the feeling the song creates.  Peter Buck’s chiming Rickenbacker guitar, Mike Mills’ melodic bass lines, and the band’s youthful urgency combine to produce a sense of motion and possibility.  Unlike Costello’s anger, R.E.M.’s approach is optimistic.  The song sounds like a secret being passed from one listener to another.

For many music fans in the early 1980s, college radio served exactly that purpose.  Long before commercial radio embraced bands like R.E.M., college stations were already spinning their records. “Radio Free Europe” became both a celebration of that world and a rallying cry for independent music.

By the time Bruce Springsteen released “Radio Nowhere” in 2007, however, the landscape had changed dramatically.

Following years of consolidation in the radio industry, many listeners felt that local flavor and adventurous programming had largely disappeared.  Springsteen channels that frustration into one of the strongest songs of his later career.

The opening question — “Is there anybody alive out there?” — immediately establishes the theme.  Springsteen isn’t simply searching for a song.  He’s searching for evidence of life, connection, and authenticity.  The radio dial becomes a metaphor for a broader cultural loneliness.

Musically, “Radio Nowhere” is relentless.  The pounding drums, dense guitars, and dark atmosphere create a sense of urgency bordering on desperation.  Even when Clarence Clemons’ saxophone finally breaks through, it feels less like celebration than a brief reminder of what has been lost.

Where Costello fought the system and R.E.M. found ways around it,  Springsteen sounds like a man driving through the wreckage, wondering whether the battle has already been decided.

What strikes me most about these three songs is that none of them are really about radio.

They’re about the search for connection.

Costello hears a medium being constrained by corporate interests and fights back.  R.E.M. celebrates the possibility that somewhere beyond the mainstream, another signal is waiting to be found.  Springsteen arrives decades later and wonders whether anybody is still listening at all.

The technology may have changed, but the desire remains the same.  We still search for voices that surprise us, challenge us, and make us feel less alone.  Radio once carried that promise across the airwaves.  These songs remind us why it mattered — and why we still miss it when the signal starts to fade.

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – Popafangout, Sharp Pins

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Sharp Pins, the Chicago power-pop group led by 21-year-old Kai Slater, released their third album, Balloon Balloon Balloon, last year.  The remarkably prolific Slater keeps himself busy with several projects, including Sharp Pins, the post-punk outfit Lifeguard, and the psychedelic folk duo Dwaal Troupe.  (He also publishes the Hallogallo zine.)

Sharp Pins inhabit much of the same retro territory once explored by XTC’s psychedelic alter ego, The Dukes of Stratosphear.  Their music draws heavily from British Invasion-era garage rock and power pop, packed with jangly guitars, infectious melodies, and enough psychedelic flourishes to keep things interesting.

The album’s opening track, the Cryan’ Shames-inspired “Popafangout,” is a perfect introduction.

“Oh popafangout / She don’t know what you’re shouting about”

I have no idea what this means, and something tells me Slater may not either.  More likely, it’s a delightfully nonsensical phrase chosen for its sound rather than its meaning — a bit of psychedelic wordplay that perfectly complements the song’s kaleidoscopic charm.

If “Popafangout” catches your ear, there’s plenty more where that came from. Balloon Balloon Balloon packs in another twenty tracks, with only one stretching beyond the three-and-a-half-minute mark. It’s a brisk, hook-filled ride that never overstays its welcome.

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – Going, Going, Gone – Bob Dylan

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On November 6, Bob Dylan will release The Rolling Thunder Revue 1976, a boxed set containing 39 discs for the surprisingly reasonable price of about $160 — roughly $4 per disc.  That’s a staggering amount of music, drawn from the second leg of the tour as it wound through the American South.  And it shouldn’t be confused with the excellent two-disc The Bootleg Series Vol. 5: Bob Dylan Live 1975 – The Rolling Thunder Revue, which documented the earlier leg of the tour.

I recently heard a preview of one of the 13 performances of “Going, Going, Gone” included in the new set.  It was a reminder of what a terrific deep cut the song is.  Yet as good as these live recordings may prove to be, they’ll have a hard time surpassing the original studio version from the often-overlooked Planet Waves (1974), the album that reunited Dylan with The Band.

“Going, Going, Gone” has frequently been interpreted as a song about suicide.  I’ve always heard it differently — as a song about loss, resignation, and grief.  Not necessarily grief over life itself, but over life’s accumulated disappointments: failed relationships, career frustrations, declining health, financial worries, and the countless burdens that can wear a person down.  The narrator sounds exhausted, pushed to the brink, and struggling under a weight that has become almost unbearable.

I been hangin’ on threads

I been playin’ it straight

Now, I’ve just got to cut loose

Before it gets late

So I’m going

I’m going

I’m gone

Rock critic Tim Riley captured the power of the performance when he wrote that “The Band’s windup pitch to ‘Going, Going, Gone’ is a wonder of pinpoint ensemble playing: (Robbie) Robertson makes his guitar entrance choke as if a noose had suddenly tightened around its neck.”  Riley also observed that The Band’s accompaniment is so perfectly attuned to Dylan’s despondent mood that “Robertson’s guitar sounds like it’s scratching the itch in Dylan’s throat.”

Perhaps the Planet Waves recording is merely the opening chapter in the song’s story.  If the early preview is any indication, the newly released Rolling Thunder performances may reveal fresh dimensions of one of Dylan’s most haunting and underappreciated songs.

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – Can’t Find My Way Home & Ain’t No Two Ways About It (It’s Love), Ellen McIlwaine

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Back in the early 1970s, one of my cousins introduced me to the music of Ellen McIlwaine.  At the time, McIlwaine was a singer-songwriter making the rounds in New York’s Greenwich Village, earning a reputation for her dazzling slide guitar work and inventive use of harmonics.

Like many artists who never quite received the recognition they deserved, she gradually faded from my radar.  Recently, however, her name resurfaced in my memory, prompting me to revisit her catalog.  What I found was a reminder of just how original — and ahead of her time — she really was.

One of the first songs that appears on Spotify’s list of her most popular recordings is her extraordinary interpretation of Blind Faith’s “Can’t Find My Way Home” from her 1972 album Honky Tonk Angel.

The performance showcases everything that made McIlwaine unique.  Her fluid slide guitar lines weave around a rich bed of harmonics, while her expressive voice transforms Steve Winwood’s melancholy classic into something entirely her own.  Listening to it today, I’m reminded of Karen Dalton’s ability to sound both vulnerable and commanding at the same time.

By the following year, on We the People (1973), McIlwaine was pushing her music even further.  The album’s opening track, “Ain’t No Two Ways About It (It’s Love),” features a vocal style that blends blues, folk, and African-inspired rhythmic chanting into something difficult to categorize.  It sounds startlingly modern more than fifty years later.

In fact, her vocals on the track immediately brought Merrill Garbus of tUnE-yArDs to mind.  The resemblance is striking enough to raise an intriguing question: has Garbus ever heard these recordings?  Given the adventurous vocal techniques and rhythmic approach that both artists employ, the connection is hard to ignore.

McIlwaine’s career never followed the trajectory her talent seemed to promise.  Yet revisiting these recordings today, it’s easy to hear why musicians and dedicated record collectors continue to speak of her with such admiration.  She occupied a musical space all her own, drawing from blues, folk, rock, and global influences long before such cross-pollination became commonplace.

I’m glad I rediscovered Ellen McIlwaine.  Though she passed away in 2021, her recordings remain vibrant, adventurous, and surprisingly contemporary.  If there is such a thing as a musical buried treasure, McIlwaine’s catalog surely qualifies — waiting patiently for a new generation of listeners to uncover it.

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – Save Me, Joan As Police Woman

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Those of you who have been following the SotW for some time will be familiar with my “Evolution Series.”  That’s where I select a song and trace how different artists have interpreted and recorded it over the years.

In a twist on that concept, the artist known as Joan As Police Woman (Joan Wasser) has recently revisited her own debut album, Real Life (2006), reinterpreting the entire record.  Appropriately enough, she has titled the project Real Life Evolution.

Before emerging as Joan As Police Woman, Wasser was best known as a gifted violinist and as the fiancée of Jeff Buckley. His sudden and tragic death in 1997 left an indelible mark on her life, and the emotional honesty that has characterized her music ever since can be traced, in part, to that devastating loss.

Take a listen to “Save Me” from the original album.

Wasser’s piano-based song captures a sense of emotional desperation as she struggles to salvage a relationship that is “already good as gone.”

In the newly reimagined version, Wasser recruits Iggy Pop to handle the lead vocal.

Pop’s weathered voice, combined with a harsher musical backdrop, changes the song’s emotional tenor.  The desperation remains, but it is now tempered by tension and friction rather than the wounded self-pity that permeated the original recording.

Wasser’s willingness to revisit and reinterpret her early work demonstrates the creative courage of an artist who continues to grow, evolve, and find new meaning in familiar songs.

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – Allentown, Billy Joel; Rage in the Cage, J. Geils Band; Out of Work, Gary U.S. Bonds

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I’ve been reading Won’t Back Down: Heartland Rock and the Fight for America by Erin Osmon, and it’s an outstanding book. Osmon traces the evolution of Heartland Rock throughout the 1980s, with each chapter devoted to a single year.

Right off the bat, I’ll confess to stealing an idea from the book.

In the chapter covering 1982, Osmon highlights several songs she calls “recession rock” — songs that “proffered evocative vignettes of those without work or much hope.”

Since this is Labor Day weekend, it seems like the perfect time to revisit a few of them.

First up is Billy Joel’s “Allentown.”

The second single from Joel’s The Nylon Curtain, “Allentown” tells the story of a city and its people struggling with the decline of the manufacturing industry that had once been the engine of its economy. The song is less about the demise of a single steel town than it is about the people left behind when the jobs disappear.

Next is “Rage in the Cage” by the J. Geils Band.

Built around a prominent horn-driven riff and the band’s mix of rock and early-’80s new wave, the song captures the frustration, boredom and desperation of a young working-class person stuck in a dead-end town with few prospects.

And then there’s “Out of Work,” recorded by Gary U.S. Bonds but written by Bruce Springsteen.

Bonds takes a somewhat lighter, almost tongue-in-cheek approach to a decidedly unfunny subject, offering a relatable portrait of unemployment — standing in line, looking for work and finding precious few jobs to be had.

What struck me about Osmon’s “recession rock” selections is how little the underlying subject matter has changed. The economic circumstances may be different, but the anxiety that comes with not being able to find work, make ends meet or see a better future is hardly confined to the 1980s.

With so much of today’s economic conversation focused on affordability — the rising costs of gas, groceries, housing and healthcare — these songs from more than four decades ago sound surprisingly timely.

Maybe that’s the thing about good songs: Sometimes they don’t just capture a moment in time. They capture something that refuses to go away.

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – Brown Eyed Handsome Man, Chuck Berry; Brown Eyed Girl, Van Morrison; Good Times Bad Times, Led Zeppelin; Brown Eyed Women, Grateful Dead

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The use of the term “brown-eyed” as a coded or sanitized lyrical euphemism for a person of color has served as a clever way for R&B and rock artists to signal racial identity, celebrate Black beauty, or sidestep segregation-era radio censorship for decades.

One of the earliest and most famous examples is Chuck Berry’s “Brown Eyed Handsome Man,” released 70 years ago in 1956.

Written during the last gasp of the Jim Crow era, Berry employed the title phrase as a winking, multi-layered code for a brown-skinned Black man.  By framing his subject in terms of attractiveness, charisma, and resilience, Berry created an anthem of pride that celebrated Black identity while remaining accessible to mainstream audiences who might miss the song’s deeper social commentary.  The result was both subversive and commercially viable.

A decade later, Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Girl” carried similar implications.  The song was originally written and recorded under the title “Brown Skinned Girl,” a phrase that more directly suggested an interracial relationship.

Concerned that such an explicit reference might provoke controversy or limit radio airplay in the late 1960s, the title and key lyric were changed to the more generalized “Brown Eyed Girl.”  While Morrison later suggested that the change may have resulted from a recording mix-up, music historians have long viewed it as a practical concession to the racial sensitivities of the era.

Led Zeppelin offered another intriguing variation in “Good Times Bad Times.”

Good Times, Bad Times, you know I had my share / When my woman left home for a brown eyed man, well, I still don’t seem to care.

Rock historians and musicologists have frequently debated the song’s reference to a “brown-eyed man,” with many interpreting it as a nod to Chuck Berry’s vernacular.  Given Led Zeppelin’s deep immersion in — and frequent borrowing from — African American blues and early R&B traditions, some critics view the phrase as an intentional coded reference to a Black man.  Within the blues tradition, losing a romantic partner to an outsider or a person of another race was a recurring lyrical theme.

The Grateful Dead’s “Brown-Eyed Women,” however, occupies murkier territory.  Unlike the Berry, Morrison, and Zeppelin songs, there is little evidence that the title was intended as a racial reference.

Brown-eyed women and red grenadine / The bottle was dusty but the liquor was clean

Instead, the song unfolds as a Depression-era narrative populated by bootleg whiskey, family hardship, and fading memories.  The phrase “brown-eyed women” functions primarily as part of the song’s rich tapestry of Americana rather than as an obvious racial signifier.  Lyricist Robert Hunter was famous for writing evocative, open-ended lyrics and generally resisted providing definitive explanations for their meaning.  Neither Hunter nor Jerry Garcia ever suggested that the title carried a racial dimension.

As a result, “Brown-Eyed Women” remains an interesting outlier.  While listeners are free to interpret the song through a racial lens, there is no persuasive evidence that such an interpretation reflects Hunter’s intent.  Yet its title inevitably invites comparison with a long tradition of songs in which “brown-eyed” served as a subtle marker of race, identity, and cultural expression.

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – Helpless, Sugar

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Bob Mould made his first big splash in the music business with the band Hüsker Dü.   The Minnesota-based punk rock band, founded in 1979, released a string of critically acclaimed albums on the independent SST label, including Zen Arcade and New Day Rising, before moving to Warner Bros. for Candy Apple Grey.  Dozens of bands that followed have cited Hüsker Dü as a major influence.  In fact, it is hard to imagine the grunge movement of the 1990s taking the same shape without Hüsker Dü paving the way.

After Hüsker Dü dissolved, Mould embarked on a solo career, releasing a series of albums between 1988 and 1991.  The first of these, Workbook (Virgin, 1989), was outstanding.

By 1992, Mould was feeling the urge to play with a band again.  He teamed up with bassist David Barbe and drummer Malcolm Travis for a few informal jam sessions.  Having lived in Boston during the last quarter of the 20th century, I was already familiar with Travis from his work with Human Sexual Response — a band I saw live numerous times — as well as the Zulus.  The chemistry between the three musicians was immediate, so they decided to stay together under the name Sugar.

Today’s SotW is “Helpless” from Sugar’s debut album, Copper Blue.

“Helpless” is a perfect example of the Sugar sound: layers of melodic guitar, driving rhythms, and Mould’s unmistakable blend of power and vulnerability.  The song captures everything that made Copper Blue such a compelling record.

The band — especially Mould — had modest expectations for commercial success. Instead, Sugar quickly found an audience far larger than anyone anticipated. Within a couple of years they were playing arenas.  Mould often remarked that Sugar became the most commercially successful project of his career.

The Sugar story is told in the short documentary Changes: The Story of Sugar, which is currently streaming on YouTube.  At just 21 minutes long, it is well worth your time.

And for fans of The Daily Show, there’s one more bit of Mould trivia: his song “Dog on Fire” serves as the show’s theme song.

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – I’m Only Sleeping, The Beatles; Visions of Johanna, Bob Dylan

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Sixty years ago, two of the most groundbreaking and important albums in the history of rock and roll were released within weeks of each other: Revolver by The Beatles and Blonde on Blonde by Bob Dylan. Both albums are frequently cited as their creators’ finest work, and both represented the culmination of remarkable artistic evolution.

In Rolling Stone’s most recent list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, Revolver ranks at #11 and Blonde on Blonde at #36.

To mark this anniversary, let’s focus on one song from each album that explores the world of dreams and altered consciousness.

John Lennon’s “I’m Only Sleeping” celebrates the simple pleasure of staying in bed and letting the world drift by.  To mirror this dreamlike state musically, engineer Geoff Emerick recorded George Harrison’s dual guitar solos and then manually reversed the tape, creating an ethereal, melting soundscape unlike anything heard in pop music at the time.

In Tell Me Why: The Beatles — Album by Album, Song by Song, the Sixties and After, author Tim Riley writes:

“I’m Only Sleeping captures the bleary-eyed mood of returning to consciousness after a midday nap, and everything about the song is drugged with weariness, from the laid-back drumbeat to the yawning bass solo at the end of each refrain.”

Dylan’s “Visions of Johanna” (originally titled “Freeze Out”) is one of his greatest artistic achievements.  The entire song unfolds in a quiet, claustrophobic room during the early morning hours.  Its lyrics flow like a drug-fueled stream of consciousness in which time seems suspended.

“The ghost of ’lectricity howls in the bones of her face.”

“Inside the museums, infinity goes up on trial”

The song captures the heightened sensory distortions of a pre-dawn comedown, where memories, desires, and hallucinations blur together.

Wikipedia cites the perspective of music critic and Dylan biographer Robert Shelton:

“…Dylan’s technique of throwing out ‘skittering images’ evokes ‘a mind floating downstream’; these ‘non-sequential visions’ are the record of a fractured consciousness.”

Both songs invite listeners into dream states, but from opposite directions.  Lennon finds comfort in retreating from the waking world, while Dylan wanders through a restless landscape where reality and imagination become indistinguishable.

It is difficult to imagine two more consequential albums being released within six weeks of each other.  Sixty years later, Revolver and Blonde on Blonde remain towering achievements — not only because they expanded the possibilities of rock music, but because they continue to illuminate the strange and fascinating terrain of the human mind.

Enjoy… until next week.

Song of the Week – The Passenger, Iggy Pop

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I’ve always been a fan of Anthony Bourdain.  I read his 2000 memoir, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly.  I watched his television series, Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown.  I even own a couple of his cookbooks (I love his recipe for French onion soup), and we both favor a classic Negroni as our cocktail of choice.  So I was excited to learn that a Bourdain biopic, Tony, co-written and directed by Matt Johnson, has been receiving positive reviews from critics.

The film opened in select U.S. theaters yesterday and will expand to nationwide release on August 21.

News of the movie reminded me of my favorite use of music in Parts Unknown.  In Season 5, Episode 2 (“Miami”), Iggy Pop’s “The Passenger” plays in the background during a beachside conversation between the two men.

Bourdain felt a close kinship with Pop, drawn to their shared anti-establishment attitudes and rebellious personalities.  Although Bourdain interviewed countless celebrities throughout his career, he was rarely starstruck — except when it came to Iggy Pop.  In his field notes for the show, Bourdain wrote:

“It was a dream come true to actually hang out with my hero and (for better or worse) early role model for the filming of the Miami episode of Parts Unknown.”

More importantly, “The Passenger” perfectly reflects Bourdain’s worldview, travel philosophy, and complex psyche, both musically and lyrically.

“I am a passenger / And I ride and I ride”

Bourdain famously rejected labels such as “journalist” or “expert.”  Instead, he saw himself as a witness — a passenger moving through other people’s worlds.  His approach was built on listening, observing, and experiencing cultures on their own terms rather than imposing his own perspective.  Like the song’s narrator, he was content to look out the window and take it all in.

“He sees the stars come out tonight / He sees the city’s ripped backsides”

There is a persistent undercurrent of melancholy and detachment running through the song. Despite having a job that millions envied — one that allowed him to travel the world and experience its many wonders — Bourdain often wrestled with loneliness and existential fatigue.  He was constantly surrounded by people, yet frequently seemed to view himself as an outsider looking in through a pane of glass.

“So let’s ride and ride and ride and ride”

Bourdain maintained a relentless travel schedule, spending nearly 250 days a year on the road filming. The song captures that sense of perpetual motion — the feeling that there is always another destination, another story, another meal waiting around the corner.  For Bourdain, the journey itself became the destination, and movement was both a calling and, perhaps, a necessity.

As audiences discover — or rediscover — Bourdain through Tony, “The Passenger” endures as his unofficial theme song: equal parts wanderlust, loneliness, curiosity, and the perpetual search for what lies just beyond the horizon.

Enjoy… until next week.