Musical memories of a well-spent youth
As a kid, nearly every spare dollar I had went to LPs, gasoline, and concert tix. Or, namely, the raw materials for these essays. Release dates: 1st Mondays of the month, starting New Year's Day 2025.
Welcome! You’re here. That’s amazing. Thank you!
“One Track Memory” is a monthly newsletter that features an essay about a single song and its resonance in my life. So it’s mostly memoir, a bit of musical analysis, and a few facts about the artist you’re not likely to find on Wikipedia. (But hey: some entries on wikipedia are great and accurate.)
Memoir + music + history. 600 to 1500 words. Select essays for 2025 explore songs by The Pretenders, The Smiths, De La Soul, Johnny Cash, and Amy Winehouse.
Above: A few items from our shelves of music media.
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It’s a nice way for you to get reacquainted with some of the greatest tunes of semi-popular music from the Gen X era (mostly). It’s also a way for you to get a good sense of where I’ve been, what I care about, and some of the friends I’ve made along the way. I do, of course, look forward to hearing about how these musicians mattered to you.
In the comments section.
Over a coffee. Or a pint.
Maybe we’ll even strike up a friendship, too.
The plan: 12 essays a year. And maybe a few more, if I simply can’t bear to keep a story from you.
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And heck: in the meantime, tell your friends!
To tide you over
ICYMI: these essays will be tidier versions of the one I wrote about Orville Peck and Bronski Beat awhile back: “Beneath the Mask, a Veil: Orville Peck shows his true coloratura.”
Here are the first coupla paragraphs and a link to the essay. Enjoy!
Editor’s Note: This essay includes certain slurs to illustrate the prevalence of homophobia in America during the 1980s. Asterisks have been used within these words.
At Lincoln High School, in Stockton, California, in the mid-1980s, a bevy of football players patrolled the boundaries of taste and pleasure and issued verbal sanctions for any behavior they deemed transgressive. So, in 1984, when my friend Dean handed me an oil-pastel portrait of Boy George, lead singer of Culture Club, I knew the picture was worth at least a thousand words. “It’s fantastic!” I said. “You don’t want it?” He shook his head and smiled. Dean then held my English binder steady while I slid the picture beneath its transparent cover and tapped its top edge into place. Like border collies (minus the discerning intellect), the patrol hounded me back toward the middle, with curses of “Fa**ot!” or “You f*g!” Their acronymic creativity included “Got AIDS yet?” and “Adios, infected dick sucker!” and coincided with early reports in Rolling Stone about a mysterious virus spreading in San Francisco.
But the heart wants what the heart wants, and my heart beat for the rigid rhythm schemes of Blancmange, New Order, and Bronski Beat. With Bronski Beat, that vein was wide enough for two tracks, “Why” and “Smalltown Boy,” and lasted for decades. Masked man Orville Peck, with his swinging Western cover of “Smalltown Boy,” as part of Spotify’s Pride Single Series, reminds us of the song’s enduring celebration of difference and departure . . .