Music is My Radar

Hi everyone.  Sorry for the lack of activity lately.  Teaching two summer classes has been kicking my ass - I didn’t get a PhD to work 8-to-5 hours, buddy - and I haven’t had much time to devote to Music is My Radar.  But since summer school is almost done, I can crank out a few posts without fear of falling behind at work.

And, since summer has just recently arrived, with the attendant heat, humidity, and mosquitoes, I thought I’d update my series of posts of music that is tied to a particular season.  After all, what screams music more than trips to the beach, cookouts, and bikinis?

There’s only one problem: I hate summer.  Always have.  Maybe it’s my general preference for cool-and-dark rather than hot-and-bright.  Maybe it’s my aversion to sweating while remaining utterly fucking motionless.  Maybe I just like my flesh free of blood-sucking-insect-induced welts.  I don’t know.  As soon as the awakening warmth of spring gives way to the stultifying heat of summer, I want to hibernate until October.

The only bit of tunage I remotely associate with summer is the album Houses of the Holy by Led Zeppelin.  I’d say the linkage began in high school, when I first became obsessed with Led Zeppelin - still am, BTW - and discovered Houses, their fifth studio album.  I don’t think the connection is accidental; many of the songs sound downright, well, summer-y.  The opening song “The Song Remains the Same” practically breaks out of its own skin it is so eager to start, just like summer vacation after months of increasingly dull classes.  Yet another opening track that to me is anthemic.  Next, “The Rain Song.”  If I didn’t spend a good amount of time making out to this song in high school, then my life has been misspent. (Full disclosure: I didn’t, and it has been.)  I can still remember two of my female friends from high school - and yes, I tried desperately to date both of them - driving around in one car or another, singing the “oh, oh-oh-oh-oh” (man, that just doesn’t look right typed out) refrain from “D’yer Mak’er” at the top of their lungs.  Ah, teenage silliness.

I won’t go through the rest of the album track by track, but between “Over the Hills and Far Away,” “Dancing Days,” and “The Ocean,” it’s difficult to imagine a more perfect soundtrack to a most miserable season.

As always, comments and nominations are welcome.

In this week’s a recent issue of the Memphis Flyer there is an article featuring nine prominent Memphians, each making his or her own suggestions on how to make Memphis a better city. I won’t go into all the suggestions here, as most of them had little to do with music (the stated focus of this blog), but the first set of ideas, by local blogger and internet radio host Rachel Hurley really touched a nerve here at Music is My Radar.

She wrote about the state of the Memphis music, using as a touchstone the programming format of WUMR, the University of Memphis campus radio station. I’ve never spent much time listening to WUMR; its format is jazz, and while I am a fairly big jazz fan, it’s not what I listen to most. But Ms. Hurley did raise a really interesting point. As the university-sponsored, student-run radio station, WUMR could do a lot to promote Memphis’ music scene, especially to the student body of U of M, many of whom might be completely unaware of the many venues and bands that inhabit their collegiate home. I completely agree, and this brings me to another point - or really, series of blog posts - about the relationship between Memphis and music.

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