BILMS playlist entry #3

Railroad Jerk: “Clean Shirt”

“Clean Shirt,” comes from Railroad Jerk’s final album, 1996’s The Third Rail. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any videos on YouTube for this song. As an alternative, I’m posting the live footage of the band playing “Gun Problem,” the opening track from 1995’s One Track Mind.

From 1995, when I moved back to Los Angeles from Davis, until 1998, when I moved to Santa Barbara, one of my obsessions was Tricia Halloran’s show, Brave New World, on KCRW. Since it broadcast between ten and midnight and I often didn’t get home from work until after it had begun, I would set my stereo to record the show and then listen to it in my car the next day. I got so obsessive about Brave New World that I would record my favorite songs from these tapes to a second set of tapes to keep and replay. I believe that I labeled this second set of tapes the “Stuff Taped off the Radio” series and that they are still sitting in a drawer at my mom’s house.

I have Tricia Halloran to thank for many of the CDs in my collection, and she introduced me to many of the artists in this playlist, Railroad Jerk included. Most significantly, I heard Yo La Tengo for the first time on her show. I still consider them one of my favorite bands, and two of their songs show up on this playlist.

Let me say here that I have a love/hate relationship with KCRW. (Reason to love them: Michael Silverblatt’s Bookworm; reason to hate them: they fired Sandra Tsing Loh. I could go on.) Most of all, I’ve never forgiven KCRW for taking Tricia Halloran off her Monday to Friday spot. Last year, they let her go from the station entirely. On her My Space page, Halloran says she is “at peace with it.” Good for her…but I’m still angry with the station’s music programming.

Her bio is still posted on the KCRW website. She is a computer programmer by training, which I never knew at the time I listened to her show, but makes me like her even more in retrospect. This quote from her on the KCRW page also caught my attention:

“Alternative music can be world, punk, acoustic, country, dance, or rap. It can be on a major record label, an independent label, or even a self-produced CD. Alternative music always captures the moment, the feel of the world, or one person's world, right NOW. It's about substance over style, and following your heart."

I am drawn to her non-idealistic approach. Basically, if it is good, it qualifies as alternative. I like to think I have the same approach to literature: If it speaks to me, regardless of the category, I’ll take it.