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“Halloweenhead” - Ryan Adams When Halloween falls on a Friday, I kind of have to play this.
“Anywhere” - Ratboys Second pre-release banger from the next Ratboys album, which has officially been given a February release date.
“Paint Me A Picture” - Magdalena Bay MB just released two pretty good singles, I slightly prefer this sultry one.
“Doldrum Days” - Miki Berenyi Trio Berenyi still makes music that has strong ties to her days in Lush, this one a perfect match of title and tone.
A week into the NBA season and I’ve already listened to two podcasts and read one article that tries to decide if early developments are legit or not. Based on 2–4 games. Because that’s the world we live in. I thought I would take that concept a different direction and work through several subjects to determine if they are dumb or not.
Darryn Peterson Not Playing Because Of “Cramps and Soreness” Oh boy.
Chart Week: November 2, 1985
Song: “Lovin’ Every Minute Of It” - Loverboy
Chart Position: #9, 11th week on the chart. This was its peak.
First off, shout out to my brother-in-music E$ for messaging me when he heard this song on an old AT40 while driving through Iowa recently. Astute listeners may recall that I heard my first throw-back countdown show on a drive through Iowa many years ago.
What a weekend. S and I were actually social three days in a row! That’s a record or something. Thus I’ll break it down a little differently than normal.
Getting Out Of The House Friday we went to a fund raiser some friends were hosting for a lady who is running for secretary of state here in Indiana next year. On our way over we were wondering if we would know anyone else there.
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“Stay In You Lane” - Courtney Barnett Our Aussie queen is back!
“Talk To You” - Sam Fender featuring Elton John Last week Fender won the Mercury Prize for best album from the UK or Ireland. The next day he announced a deluxe version of People Watching that will come out in December. Good timing! This song features Elton John on piano. On the credits I can find, the rest of the backing band is listed as Sam’s usual crew, but it sure sounds a lot like The War on Drugs.
Just one book in this entry, as I’ve begun a trilogy that might take a week or so and don’t want to forget about this one in the interim.
The House Across The Lake - Riley Sager I read a couple of Sager’s thrillers last October, and they had a nice dose of spookiness that butted up against the supernatural without being too weird. Most of his books were already claimed at the library and this was the one that remained, so download it I did.
The wonderful piece I’m linking to below reminds me that I missed a golden opportunity this time last year when I failed to post a retrospective on my 30th anniversary of first getting online. Sadly, for some reason, it whizzed by without me realizing the significance of the moment. Which is a damn shame because you know I would have cooked up something really good to honor it.
So let’s do it for year 31!
A very busy weekend centered on the entire family getting together to watch football. Or at least prepare to watch football.
Friday M came home Friday afternoon, so we got to hang with her for the second time in two weeks. We sat around catching up while listening to Cathedral’s regular season finale against 6A #10 Warren Central. To complicate matters the Irish were again missing seven starters, including their quarterback.
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“House Of Dead Memories” - Sugar OH SHIIIIIIIIIIT!!!!!!! SUGAR IS BACK!!!!! Like, seriously back. This isn’t a song that was recorded 35 years ago and lost on a master tape hidden in a producer’s basement and unearthed when he died or something random like that. Bob Mould, David Barbe, and Malcolm Travis got together this summer for the first time since 1995 and recorded it. It may be something leftover from their original run that was just demoed back then, or it could be the first step in a full return of the band.
As we are in the back half of October, that means I am officially halfway through my current auto lease. With 18 months in the books as an EV owner, and 18 months left before I need to make a decision on my next car, it seemed like a good moment to check in and see how I feel about things.
It is a fraught time to be an EV owner.
Steven Hyden with a wonderful retrospective on one of the great American bands that never really went away, at least on classic rock radio, but also never had a big revival.
Listen to the Cars in 2025, and you’ll hear the accumulated history of 20th-century rock music—the elemental directness of Buddy Holly and Elvis records, the songwriting sturdiness of the Beatles and Beach Boys, the art-pop leanings of the Velvet Underground and Roxy Music, the electronic minimalism of Brian Eno and Kraftwerk, the arena-rock accessibility of Tom Petty and Cheap Trick.
A bit of a slog lately, as I’ve worked through a group of books that I did not love. These are the risks you take when you grab suggestions from many different sources.
Swag - Elmore Leonard Last month I came across an article that was an appreciation of some of Leonard’s lesser known works. I’ve read several of his most famous novels but never really dove into his deep catalog.
Another weekend that was brightened by visits from college kids and a few more signs that we are deep into fall.
Fall Break Part 1 M came home Wednesday evening. UC had a two-day fall break this year, but she had to go back Friday evening because her boyfriend’s fraternity had their annual trip to the horse races in Lexington, KY Saturday. She’s doing well. In fact, her life got even better while she was home.
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“October” - The Helio Sequence We’ve finally had a couple of cool days and chilly mornings, although temps will creep back up closer to 80 next week. Close enough for me to bust out this fall classic, at least classic to me.
“Break The Girl” - Florence Road Wonderful, bouncy track by some young ladies from Wicklow, Ireland.
“Automatic” - Spiritual Cramp In their write up about this song, Stereogum compared this band to early ‘00s’ bands like the Killers or TV On The Radio.
Chart Week: September 24, 1983
Song: “It’s A Mistake” - Men At Work
Chart Position: #38, 13th week on the chart. Peaked at #6 for two weeks in August.
What clichés about Eighties music jump into your head the quickest? Big hair and spandex? Synthesizers? Gender ambiguous British men in suits wearing more makeup than your mom? Artists with little-to-no musical talent earning hits based on the quality of their videos and/or the prettiness of their appearance?
We’re a week into the fourth quarter of the year[1] and I bet a few of you are annoyed with me for not sharing my latest fitness update. My bad. Here it is.
Q3 was my best of the year so far. Which makes sense as it was the warmest, least stormy stretch of 2025 so the pool was always available, even if I had to kick the heater on in the morning to get it warmed up a bit over the past month.
A much better weekend of football compared to a week ago. Added bonuses of fun stuff involving two of the kids, and maybe the last summery weekend of the year. Let’s get into it.
Friday Friday was L’s 17th birthday. To celebrate we took her and some of her friends to our local hibachi place, which is always fun, more-so with six goofy high schoolers. Our dinner overlapped with the start of the big Cathedral-Center Grove game, but none of us cared, as we expected it to not be much of a game.
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“Summer Soft” - Stevie Wonder You find It’s October, and she’s gone…
“Dipped” - HighSchool Earlier this year Aussie band CIVIC released a song called “Chrome Dipped.” Now we have another Aussie band, which does not sound very Aussie at all, with a similarly named track.
“Light Sleeper” - Home Front One of my top 5–10 post-punk bands making music right now.
“DCWDTTY” - Bartees Strange Strange takes some post-punk, mixes it with some Tunde Adebimpe-sounding vocals, and turns it into an ode to his hometown of Washington, DC.
In the Weeds: Around the World and Behind the Scenes with Anthony Bourdain - Tom Vitale A book that has been out three years but I managed not to hear about until just now. Written by one of Anthony Bourdain’s closest associates, it is definitely a warts and all accounting of what it was like to work with the late chef/TV personality. It should not be a surprise that Bourdain was, at times, prickly, quarrelsome, thin-skinned, impatient.
September seemed like a long month. Yet here we are and I only watched one TV series and zero movies? The first holiday baking show of the season is already stacking up in my YouTube TV library, so next month should be better.
Also, over the past week or so I’ve been dialing back my YouTube usage for various reasons. So that part of these posts may get leaner beginning next month.