Thursday, January 19, 2012

John Hiatt's "Little Head"

There is not a lot about 1997 I remember fondly, but listening to "The Wave" when I was making one of my then-frequent trips to DeRidder/Leesville is an exception. I should point out that KROK no longer calls itself "The Wave" and has even switched numbers on the dial, but it is still essentially the same low-budget radio station it was then. The fact that their official website is a Tumblr should bear that out. Absolutely charming.

Anyway, "The Wave" introduced me to a lot of music that I was missing at the time, thanks to Lake Charles' two primary non-country stations BOTH programming an "Adult Contemporary/Easy Listening" format. Seriously, who thought this was a good idea? I wasn't even a regular listener and I still managed to hear "Love Lift Us Up Where We Belong" enough to last me a lifetime. I think there were even times when it was playing on both stations simultaneously.

"The Wave" was a nice tonic to the repetitive blandness of Lake Charles radio at the time. One of my favorite discoveries was John Hiatt's "Little Head". It was my first exposure to Hiatt's music, in addition to being hilarious to me. Sadly, it seems to have tanked with the critics and the public. Neither the album or the song are available for legal download as near as I can tell. However, that doesn't stop me from posting a video for it!

2 comments:

  1. Members of Camper Van Beethoven were backing him at about this time; I liked the roughage they brought to his sound. This one and Walk On are my two favorite Hiatt albums.

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  2. I still need to buy it, alas. Who knew CDs would disappear?

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