The Instant Fan Chronicles, Part 4

"Heavy Coat," Buddy Mondlock
I first saw Buddy Mondlock's name as a songwriter in the liner notes of a David Wilcox album — more on him in a minute — but it took me about ten years to hear something by the man himself. As has been discussed in this space an infinite number of times, context is everything, and given that I was in the long and torturous throes of a slow-motion breakup when I picked up Buddy's 1998 Poetic Justice album, his song "Heavy Coat" hit me at exactly the right moment. It's a pretty sour song, honestly, although the corrosive, self-pitying edges of its lyrics are somewhat disguised by his ever-gentle vocals. I felt them anyway, and at that particular moment, it was exactly the feeling I was looking for.

"Tangerine," Buffalo Tom
I can't remember whether I bought Buffalo Tom's Sleepy Eyed on a whim — that's a pretty killer album cover — or if it came to me because I was still on a label mailing list. Either way, they had the perfect opening track with "Tangerine," a song I have never gotten tired of hearing over the nearly 30-year timespan that has elapsed since. "Just a little haiku / To say how much I like you"? Come on, that's fuckin' poetry.

"Chains," Chicago
As recently discussed on the Record Player episode devoted to Chicago 17, my parents had Chicago 16 on cassette, and given the relatively small amount of music available to me during my earliest moments as an active consumer of the stuff, I spent a bunch of time listening to this record as a kid. For that reason, I could probably pick any random track from 16 as my gateway to what would become many years of Chicago fandom, but I remember having a particular fondness for this one — maybe because it was a relatively rare opportunity for Peter Cetera to do something other than croon.

"Living with the Law," Chris Whitley
If you aren't old enough to have known the pure joy of making a pilgrimage to Tower Records, you have my sincerest condolences. That place was basically my church as a teenager — not only to get music, but to pick up trade magazines like Billboard, which is where I saw an ad for Chris Whitley's 1991 debut album. Why was that enough for me to buy it without hearing a single note? I don't remember the answer to that question, but I can tell you that this record made me a Whitley fan for life, and also started an equally long love affair with the sound of the National guitar.

"Ever Since I Lost Your Love," Cliff Eberhardt
How the hell did I end up on the mailing list at Shanachie Records in the early '90s? Given that Shanachie is a Jersey-based label still largely known for its presence in the reggae market, I have absolutely no idea, but I'm glad I did, because aside from releasing albums by Bunny Wailer and Lucky Dube, they also had a pretty solid roster of folk artists — including Mr. Ebarhardt here, who won me over from the opening notes of the opening track to his 1993 album Now You Are My Home. Writing about it now, I'm realizing all over again that this record gave me my first exposure to "You Really Got a Hold On Me," which is one weird gateway.

"When You Come," Crowded House
Crowded House is a band most people would assume I love — and that's largely true, although it took me some time to get there. About ten years, actually; I'm pretty sure my gateway was an impulse purchase of a used copy of their 1996 best-of set. Given that I was ambivalent about the stuff I'd heard on the radio to that point, why did I pick it up? No clue. Perhaps it was because I liked "Locked Out" after hearing it on a CMJ sampler (remember those)? Well, whatever the impetus, listening to Recurring Dream converted me, and "When You Come" — a long sex joke too subtle for me to immediately appreciate — was a particularly strong and enduring favorite.

"Little Victories," Darden Smith
Man. When I think about the late summer and fall of 1993, I think a lot about Darden Smith's Little Victories, which I played the hell out of while doing everything from driving through the desert after dropping off my then-girlfriend at college in Utah to falling for someone new in the months shortly thereafter. This whole album is tops in my book — and this is also true for Darden's 2002 album Sunflower, which I will most likely get around to writing about in more detail here at some point — but I'm picking the title track because it includes some lovely high background vocals from Darden's bud Boo Hewerdine. (Another fun fact: Little Victories was issued via Columbia's Chaos imprint, which was also the label that released Onyx's Bacafucup around the same time. I remember Darden joking that his next release would be titled Please Step Aside.)

"Robert Bradley's Postcard," David Mead
By the late '90s, buying copies of Billboard was no longer sufficient; I was also surveying the weekly charts at Radio & Records (R.I.P.), which is where I learned about all sorts of new singles that were bubbling too far under to attract the attention of the tallies in its better-known sibling's charts. That trade will always have a fond place in my heart for introducing me to David Mead, whose absolutely fucking killer first single should have been a massive hit. How did we let this one miss? Was it the kinda weird song title? Was it because he's a redhead? Any reason's as good as any other, which is to say they all suck. This song rules, and I'll still buy anything David Mead releases. Goddamn, what a songwriter. What a voice. What a missed opportunity for our poor, stupid Top 40.

"Chet Baker's Unsung Swan Song," David Wilcox
Back to Billboard again! In late-ish 1991, A&M made the quite ballsy move of placing an ad in the magazine on behalf of this record, offering to send a copy to anyone who dialed the 800 number listed therein. Suitably intrigued, I requested my copy; the day it arrived, I put it in the CD player, sat down to listen, and did not get up until it was over. (This happened one other time I can remember during this phase of my early years as a music writer; I was usually a pretty tough sell.) I loved this record from top to bottom, which I had the opportunity to tell David Wilcox when I interviewed him for Home Again's 20th anniversary; I could really pick any song to include here, but I'm picking "Chet Baker's Unsung Swan Song" because of the hauntingly beautiful way it describes the final moments in the life of a brilliant yet hopelessly doomed artist. Naturally, as a teenager, I listened to it and thought about my own "addiction" to a certain blonde in my life; I hear the song more clearly now.

"Kiss This Thing Goodbye," Del Amitri
Just a fantastic time-to-break-up song, delivered with the sort of weary, tuneful purpose that only Justin Currie can bring to bear. It took me a long time to actually get around to buying a Del Amitri record, but this song definitely marks the spot where I became interested in their music, and the "Kiss This Thing Goodbye" cassingle held a place of honor in my collection for a really long time. (It didn't hurt that I was feeling a lot like the song's protagonist when it came to my girlfriend at the time. Again, context is everything.)