Friday 80s Flashback for April 29, 2016

[Guilty Pleasures - Redux] -- This Flashback was originally posted on 4/12/2013 at 06:54 PM. We all have guilty pleasures, songs we like even though we feel a little embarrassed about it. I'll bet you just thought of two or three of your own guilty pleasures, right? Now, I count more songs post-1990 among my guilty pleasures than within the 80s. This probably seems obvious: It is easy to estimate that more songs were released in the last 20+ years than between 1980 and 1989, and more songs means more candidates for guilty pleasures. So, yeah, there's that. But mostly, if I like a song from the 80s, I'm not embarrassed about it.

Well, mostly.

If you want to know some songs that rank on my list of guilty pleasures, you can read and hear more after the break.

Friday 80s Flashback for April 15, 2016

[33 Years of Murmur] -- If you're one of the two people who regularly visit this corner of the interwebz, then you must have noticed: I've been remiss in my blogging duties of late. I won't make excuses, and I won't promise a return to the regularity I previously maintained (a year ago?). but I will offer an explanation. My new day job plus the rapidly approaching end date for current students of the School of Sacred Ministries have combined to consume large swaths of my time. After them, I also have to carve out time to do tech work at my theater. What little time is left, I spend catching up on reading or sitting with my wife to follow our shows. And, trust me, I am very far behind in my reading.

Still, I could not let this week's momentous anniversary go by unremarked.

33 years ago this week -- on April 12, 1983 -- R.E.M. released their debut album, Murmur, on I.R.S. Records. Looking back on that last sentence, I am struck by how much those four boys from Athens, GA, must have liked abbreviations that use punctuation. I did not know about the album until three years letter when, in the first semester of my freshman year at Penn State, I discovered R.E.M. and their first four studio albums. Yeah, I'm one of the reasons R.E.M. is considered a vanguard of "college radio." The band was a huge part of my college experience as well as my first several post-college years. And it all starts with this record.

Given vocalist Michael Stipe's vague elocutions, "Murmur" is probably the best name for this particular record (and a great descriptor for the majority of R.E.M.'s recordings). The folks at Diffuser have said it better than I can with their musings on Murmur's anniversary. So I'll just get right to a few songs now. Did I pick one of your favorites? Well, I didn't pick any singles. If that's a deal breaker, you can just listen to the full album and come back next week to see what I have to offer. Otherwise, read and hear my Murmur selections after the break.