It’s April 17, 2019. I’m a senior in college counting down the days until graduation because after four years, I have finally found my footing. I’m driving to campus down a road that’s too cramped to have as many lanes as it does. The weather is nice; Spring has stopped being so wet midwest and given way to blue skies, dappled sunlight, and a whole lot of wind.  (Graduation was overcast, in case you were wondering). I’m listening to “Just Sign the Papers” on Routine Maintenance for the first time and I’m crying.

With an assist from Last FM, I can tell you the exact date I discovered my favorite band. It was September 24, 2018, noon-ish when Spotify feeds me The Hold Steady’s “Sequestered In Memphis” while I was walking for a slice of pizza. By 4 o’clock that same day, I was headphones deep in the Craig Finn fronted group’s seminal 2006 album, Boys And Girls In America, which turns 20 this month.

For five decades, U2 has endured not just as a rock and roll band, but as a singular force that has shaped and defined popular culture through their unique and evolving styles, creating a musical blueprint in which countless artists have built the foundation of their sound and philosophy upon.  As with any long and storied career, there have been praise and protest, contention and compromise, and as far as the charts are concerned, triumphs and trials  Though through it all, U2 have remained together, proving that their brotherhood and their belief are as timeless as their music.

For as long as music’s been recorded, there have been hyped records that have failed to meet listener expectations. I generally have an automatic cynicism toward artists or albums that I perceive to be overhyped. Contrarianism has always been a quality of mine and I’m not proud to admit that, it’s not an admirable trait. For example, James Murphy has been the bane of my existence since the release of his debut. It’s understandable then, that I took some time to come around on WU LYF’s debut – and until recently, their only album – Go Tell Fire on the Mountain.

Within a month I owned dozens of records, and not even losing a job in the spring and unemployment this summer could keep that number from climbing into the hundreds. I always knew it would come to this, and now it has, so I turned into the skid. Now, I’m a full-throated evangelist for physical media and a grubby-fingered treasure hunter for used records.

One day when I was still living with him, he came into my room with a real beat up copy of Marvin Gaye’s I Want You on vinyl. He told me a wide-eyed man came into his shop and traded it away for a nip of whiskey. He didn’t know what he was giving away, my dad said. Or maybe he did and didn’t care.

In October of 1979, this guy Mike and I made a pilgrimage to see the Clash at Kezar Pavilion in Golden Gate Park. I had just turned fifteen, and I had thought of myself as “punk,” sort of, for at least a couple of years, though I had rarely left my room during that time. I was always more of a Ramones guy than a Clash guy, but I had followed the Clash’s career from the comfort of my bedroom with considerable interest.

The first album I ever purchased was TLC’s CrazySexyCool on cassette in what became a core memory. It was at The Wall, one of those physical chain music stores found in malls scattered across the country in the 90s. CrazySexyCool was released in 1994, but I must have bought it a few years later. Largely because of this, 90s R&B became one of my first loves musically and, naturally, the discoveries of Brandy, Mya, and, of course, Aaliyah, followed

I’ve been thinking again about the amazing experience of how songs exist across time, generations, and life’s changes, in this instance prompted by my first vinyl record purchase.

Join us for a conversation with correspondent Owen Brazas and Author Marc Masters, as they talk about the rise and fall and rise of cassettes, recording and buying music, and so much more

Lenny Kaye might hold the world record for the longest time between his first solo single and the arrival of his first solo album (non-compilation). Over 60 years ago he sang “Crazy Like A Fox” as Link Cromwell on a 45 and his Goin’ Local LP arrives at record stores on July 17th via Yep Roc Records.

Finally, thankfully, the CKLC DJ said Rush would play the Memorial Centre this fall, one night only, in Kingston, Ontario, Canada to support their new album Hemispheres. Get your tickets soon, he said. The show will sell out. This, I decided immediately, would be my first live concert. Parents be damned. Well, not so damned. One had to drive me and my friend Al from the suburbs downtown on that circled calendar date October 14th.

Cracking open the gatefold of 2001’s Weezer (“Green Album”) reveals a massive concert photo of Weezer, confetti raining from the sky, and this quote from opera composer Giuesppe Verdi: “Torniamo all’antico e sarà un progresso.” Roughly translating to “[l]et us return to old times and that will be progress,” Rivers Cuomo, Weezer’s primary songwriter and leader, is placing his ambition front and center. Nostalgia is powerful and the old times (i.e., 1994) had been good to Weezer.

Two square white plastic tables, side by side, held the turntable, the stereo receiver, with  tall speakers on either side. A tall bookcase held my parents’ album collection on the bottom two  shelves, low so I could reach them. Also on the shelf were two black plastic cases with handles  that held our collection of 45’s.

Q&A is a sometimes feature here at IHTOV, where a person (or persons) is given a set of questions about their record collection. Today’s guest is musician TJ Douglas

I remember raiding my older brother’s CD rack when I was ten years old and finding a copy of Blink-182’s Take Off Your Pants and Jacket. My innocent little mind went, “What kind of a name for an album is that?” My older brother certainly wouldn’t tell me.

Q&A is a sometimes feature here at IHTOV, where a person (or persons) is given a set of questions about their record collection. Today’s guest is musician Darren Hayman

I have a lot of friends who love vinyl, but few who embrace the humble 7” 45-RPM single. The frequent complaint is brevity: You can’t do anything while you’re playing singles, because you have to change or flip the record every few minutes. That’s true, but I see it as a “feature not a bug”: the single enforces focused listening. And that handful (or less!) of minutes can be the perfect amount time to sit and appreciate an appealing or unusual sleeve

I grew up in a small, beaten-down town, one that is both part of the Rust Belt and part of Appalachia; what this means is that one can find their misery often doubled. It’s one of those rare pockets of America that exists in the public eye as pure myth— the red barn and golden cornfield, the football captain and prom queen, the abandoned trailer park with the tattered American flag—but the reality is much stranger and sadder than the iconography. Perhaps no artist manages to capture these images, both their loneliness and their mythic quality, more than the late musician Jason Molina.

If you’re lucky, at a young, impressionable age you’ll listen to an album that will change your life. If you’re luckier, those around you will respond with complete befuddlement. I say this because of my experience with “Vicious Circle,” the 1982 release of the Zero Boys. It only took hearing the opening notes of the album to know something, I don’t know what, changed in me.

…thanks to the video store, we were watching all sorts of messed up stuff that we were too young for: Bloodsucking Freaks, Ghost Story, Kentucky Fried Movie, Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes and Sssssss. Inevitably, that landed us on Repo Man

I Have that on Vinyl is now a year and a half old. 300 essays, 150 pieces from me, 60 interviews. I published pieces at a frenetic pace for a year, then slowed down to one a day, then to every other day. And now IHTOV changes again.

Back then the region was also a “No Depression” hotbed—home to Whiskeytown, Two Dollar Pistols, The Backsliders, 6 String Drag, dozens more. And our latest issue focused on all things alt-twang. My contribution, “An Acuff-Rose by Another Name,” was about the genre’s many labels and how no one could agree on what to call it. The accompanying note said something like, “Yeah, I don’t know what to call it either,” signed Patterson Hood. Cool—someone actually read my piece. So I took it all home and gave it a listen.

Frankly, I’m not sure I have much to say about Slint’s Spiderland that hasn’t already been discussed, but I’m going to try anyway. The seminal 1991 album that was ignored at the time but eventually helped create multiple genres in the span of only six songs has long been viewed as a north star for fans of any guitar-based music that could remotely be considered “underground” since the mid-90s. It was released 35 years ago in March.

During The Great Purge of 2019 I had to part with many things I didn’t want to part with, one being my first record player, a mid-70s portable model made by RCA. It hadn’t been used in years and was just collecting dust. The only value it had was sentimental. In the late 90s I’d seen one identical to it as part of a rock n’ roll themed exhibit at the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh. If you’ve never seen one, it folds up with the speakers in the back and a built-in handle on top. You can swing the speakers out or detach them for more separation.

My original plan was to become a DJ at WKNC-FM when I arrived at N.C. State in the Fall of 1984. I thought there’d be nothing cooler than to play my kind of music on the turntables and give away prizes to the fifth caller. I hung out with Dean Sessions who ran the Nightwave shows that disrupted the stations’ Chainsaw Rock format that dominated the day. Dean even gave me the application so I could get my FCC license.

Last Fall, Erik, one of my oldest friends (who lives halfway across the country), hit me up and asked, ”If I buy Nine Inch Nails tickets for their Austin show, would you go with me?” Obviously, the answer was “yes,” and we planned a trip for him to spend about a week with us. I told him that I wanted to go to every record store in Austin with him when he’s here. He’s the reason I got into collecting records over 10 years ago, and because of that, I decided he would be the perfect person to go on this adventure with.

I spent most of my first year in Korea listening to LCD Soundsystem’s This Is Happening and wishing I was in New York City. I’d walk through the streets of the small town I was placed in, the night pitch black and silent and I would imagine skyscrapers and noise crowding in around me. I’d listen to This Is Happening, trying to lose myself in the rhythm and pretending that I was anywhere else. Sometimes, I’d imagine I was home, This Is Happening spinning lazily on the record player.

I had no reservations about Jarrod when Mark introduced him as a “friend.” For many months after that, the three of us met up a few times a week almost always at shows. We were in our mid-20s with voracious appetites for music. We had an ear to the ground on local bands and flavor of the week indie rockers. There was never a lack of options.

My older brother started it. Dave taught me about Rush in the 1970s and let me sit in his room listening to the Marantz stereo setup. I’d kick back with 2112 and read about the temples of Syrinx and its great computers, as Geddy sang and Neal drummed. It was convenient then, to be an audiophile, even if the stereo was in Dave’s bedroom, not mine. He had the whole deal. It helped that Dad sold milk for a living and supplied us with the good plastic milk crates, aka shelving foundation and record storage. Yes, there was a beanbag chair; how did you know?

It’s 2007 and I’m laying on some shitty guy’s awful mattress on the floor and he has music on the laptop. It sounds familiar, really familiar. I’m pretty sure I know who it is, but I ask anyway- “who is this?” He stops what he’s doing and laughs at me. “You don’t know?” he says, relishing it. “It’s The Shins, I thought you liked them” god damnit, The Shins. Of course it’s The Shins. That’s why it sounds like a jamboree on a spaceship hosted by a very sad but enthusiastic man, which is your favorite style of music.

It’s sometime in fall 2015. A teen is standing along a reservoir dam a bike ride away from their house. They’ve got a journal full of poems about the guy in Germany they’re in love with. The twilight shines over the water, gloom hiding in the shadows. In just a few months they’ll be back here with a bottle of sleeping pills in their hand, trying to keep their balance as they walk along the reservoir dam edge. This was their sea. They wanted to take their own life. For now, they pick up their mountain bike and set off north into the endless trails of the forest. “Can you see the real me?”

My memories of listening to Philly soul music on a transistor radio under my pillow after I went to bed, starting when I was seven or eight are very clear and I still love the music from that period, which has been a source of joy and, more recently, sweet feelings of melancholy ever since. As I write this, “Oh Girl” by the Chi-Lites is playing via a Spotify playlist that the service created ‘just for me’ based on my listening habits. There’s something transcendent about that genre of music that opened the floodgates for my love of soul music and all of the other pop music genres that I later came to love and which still hold so much sway over my life.

The first time I heard a song from Pete Yorn’s debut album musicforthemorningafter, it was almost a decade old. For the life of me, I still can’t remember exactly how it came across my radar, or which song it was that initially captured my attention. But over the last 16 years, it’s been in regular rotation for me, always there when I need it.

On Thursday, May 14th, 1982 I was finishing up my second year of college at Rutgers University in New Brunswick NJ. It had been over two years since a high school classmate had turned me into a diehard fan of The Clash by giving me a cassette of his older brother’s copy of London Calling. Since that time, I had pretty much worn out the grooves of my own copy of that record. Sandinista! came out during my freshman year of college and, while I certainly like a lot of it, its breadth of songs and styles, plus its sheer size, meant that I didn’t play it quite as often.

Back in 1993, an unlikely band recorded two songs for a holiday single. The band, the Scottish Dream Pop pioneers, The Cocteau Twins. The two songs. Frosty the Snowman and Winter Wonderland. Strange bedfellows indeed.

I got my first records when I was three: a Sharon, Lois & Bram album, in recognition of my love of “The Elephant Show” after we got a satellite dish, and a vintage Superman radio drama LP that my aunt found at a yard sale. I couldn’t play them myself, but at every opportunity I would ask my mother to spin them for me.

When writing my book exploring Nick Cave’s music  Darker With The Dawn, I asked many friends for their go-to Bad Seeds record. The results were various, there is so much to praise, and little to dislike or reject–indeed–I would cite Nick Cave as one of the most consistent album artists I’ve ever known.

We talk about our love of vinyl records, but have you ever seen where vinyl records come from? I never thought I’d have a chance since the stickers on the back of new albums seem to always declare they were manufactured in distant countries. What are the chances of visiting a factory without renewing my passport? I learned a few months ago that there was a record pressing plant in Raleigh, North Carolina just down the road from me. So I made a call to see if I could visit and they invited me over for a tour.

It’s January 2023. I sat listening to This is Why’s debut while working from home. Hayley’s words pierced straight into my psyche. It felt like a part of my soul lifted, hearing those lyrics for the first time—an admission. An epiphany.

As an avid 90s music listener, one band I always felt that’s been overlooked, despite being a prominent band in the alternative rock and grunge world, was The Melvins. Their fifth and most popular release from 1993, Houdini, co-produced by legendary 90s figure and Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain, is an album I highly recommend for any other alternative rock listener to indulge themselves in.

My shopping strategy at this point is well established. I head over to the least crowded area and immediately start flipping through the bins, frantically in search of something. I’m never really sure what. I spent the first decade of my career running a record store, which led to a massive collection. Marriage led to an equally massive culling. So, at this stage in the game, my only rule is that any new purchase has to be an album I’m actually going to listen to. I don’t need to own it just to own it.

…it is easy to forget that the Stonewall riots did in fact take place at a music venue–and many queer liberationist movements, including the much-beloved BashBack! tendency, came out of punk subculture. In these times of fascism, we need a little trans joy, a little inspiration, songs we can mosh to and cry to and even find relatable. So, like the Gallae before me (okay, that’s a high bar, but still), I’d like to share my recently created Trans Joy Mixtape.

Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly became a seminal album in the hip-hop space, especially in 2015 when the album was released. From musical influences of jazz and funk blended with Kendrick’s lyricism of political consciousness and overall Black culture in the U.S., the album was universally acclaimed and remains one of the best modern hip-hop albums.

The most important thing, whether you’re talking from a musician, performer, or music appreciator, is to retain that sense of wonder and that sense of connection for what drives your taste, but it’s actually a little bit more primal than that. It’s this thing that moves you. And the truth is that I was moved just as much by American football (the band, not the Packers), as I was, by, for example, Miles Davis’s soundtrack for Lift to the Scaffold, which is just this beautiful, almost ambient jazz record. And, keeping up this balance between, essentially, like, always reminding myself I’m studying this theory so that I can utilize it for expressive purposes.

That record player was fantastic. It was a portable player that looked like a suitcase. It was all white with baby-blue trim and a sticker on the front featuring the mouse himself in a red circle, indicative of his club logo. When you opened the player, Mickey’s smiling face greeted you. He was painted on the inside cover, cheerily saying, “Hi Kids!” via a word balloon.

Records are fun. They are large waxy discs containing musical messages, and they are not that serious. I have many records from many places, records of many colours and expressions. Records, records, records, boxes of records to sell, cubes full of the bloody things. I often fib the answer to the question “what was the first record you ever bought” because Joni Mitchell’s ‘Blue’ was not my first ever record. This is a made-up lie by a made-up liar.

IHTOV correspondent Owen Brazas chatted with former MTV VJ and current Esquire editor Dave Holmes about music discovery, and buying and listening to records.

In high school, during my prime obsessive music nerd years, I should have been diving headfirst into Joe Jackson, Elvis Costello, The Clash, The Specials, Talking Heads, all that late ’70s magic. Instead, I had my heels dug in like a stubborn mule. Punk? New Wave? Short hair and suits? Absolutely not. As anyone with a functioning brain knew, today’s music sucked.

I have a litany of albums that take me through those treacherous times—new albums by Soccer Mommy and Ratboys, old albums I’ve accumulated through the years like Aztec Camera’s High Land Hard Rain and Joe Jackson’s Look Sharp. These albums buoy me, make me feel comfort when I need it most. It’s Bright Eyes’ I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning that really permeates my heart, that gets me through some awful times, globally and personally.