As far as masculine role models went, the lads of the early Reagan Era could’ve done worse than Indiana Jones. Rough, rugged, and capable of dealing out (or rolling with) a stiff slug to the jaw, the intrepid archaeologist was also a man of letters whose laconic demeanor masked a sharp wit. Indiana Jones was […]

My sixth grade yearbook is a stack of mimeographed sheets stapled between two pieces of colored construction paper. My entry for the front cover illustration — a row of inelegantly rendered arcade cabinets with “GAME OVER” scrawled above them — didn’t get the top prize but did make it onto the final page. The document […]

It was the week that put the work in “working vacation — eight days to finish getting the house in order before the Kid’s first overnight stay with us. It was also the first truly sweltering stretch of the season, coming right on the heels of having four of my teeth extracted. By the time […]

By my entirely subjective standards, there are few albums as “essential” as Belly’s Star. The fancy-pants 180-gram double-LP reissue of the band’s 1993 debut was one of my first “new” vinyl acquisitions, which was covered (among other tangential ramblings) in a previous post. It has also been spun a grand total of four or five […]

I really wanted to write a detailed analysis about how the Cool World soundtrack manifested from a space-time fold which curved above and below the temporal brane of the Grunge Era, past and future coexisting as pits on photonically agitated polycarbonate… …but I can’t stop wincing about the separate listings for the Thompson Twins and […]

“There is always a disco version.” That qualified truism became a recurring in-joke in our house last autumn, as my excavation of childhood nostalgia hit a rich vein of film and TV soundtrack singles from the latter half of the 1970s. The film-score-to-dance-floor phenomenon didn’t start with Meco’s “Star Wars Theme/Cantina Band,” but the stratospheric […]

Ever since YouTube became a (increasingly problematic) thing, there have been a pair of clips for which I’ve been waiting to get the streaming video treatment. One is of Greg Evigan’s musical performance on Pink Lady and Jeff, where the Man Otherwise Known as BJ attempts to give more than his talent can actually deliver. […]

My love of Josie and the Pussycats dates back to mid-Seventies, when syndicated reruns of the animated power trio triggered early stirrings of Young Andrew’s sexuality. My ignorance about the nature of those feelings, combined with prevailing notions among my peers of it being “a girls’ show,” shamed me into hiding that love through my […]

Although our living room has been reconfigured to accommodate my return to record collecting, space remains a pressing issue. It’s why only about a fifth of my older library got incorporated into the present one, and why I’ve turned to compilations and 7-inch singles for the sake of shelf-maximizing efficiency. The crunch has driven the […]

Most of the singles in my collection are either non-album tracks or one-off favorites where it was easier (and cheaper) to opt for the seven-inch over a full LP. There’s no point in springing for, say, The Best of The American Breed when I know deep down that my turntable’s stylus will only traverse the […]