File Under Pop

Long time, no post. I know. I have moved to Greenpoint, Brooklyn. While my new job is many more hours than the old job, that isn't my only excuse. It just took a lot of time to get unpacked and settled in. I am pretty much at that stage now, and I have promised myself to keep up the blog in the new year.

Let me explain the name change to "File Under Pop". This blog used to document my radio show at WQFS in Greensboro, NC. The blog and my show were, in turn, named after the underground rock show at WHRB in Cambridge, MA, where I was a DJ in college in the early and mid-90s. I did this because I found myself having to choke back from saying "you're tuned to the Record Hospital" when I was first at WQFS and decided I might as well nick the name because who would know the difference. Now that I am radio show-less for the time being (although I would love to start up an MP3 based internet radio program at some point in the future), I hope to make this largely a music criticism site. You can expect record reviews, show reviews, and the odd historical piece. I will not, for now, change the address because I would lose my accumulated linkage.

File Under Pop was a band that put out a great little noise/industrial 7" on Rough Trade 11. Two of the tracks on the 7" were recorded live at Heathrow Airport. Otherwise, I don't know much about the band. There is no other information on the sleeve and the labels are blank. A web search doesn't show much about them. The International Discography of the New Wave only lists the one 7". People are going to google "File Under Pop" (as many have), my site is the first hit, and they are going to think I am an expert on the band. Unfortunately, I'm not. Though I do have the feeling that it may have been a one-off sort of thing. Hopefully I can learn more about the band/record and publish it here.

Mainly, I just think it is a great name for my mostly-music blog. First as a record collector, I give too much thought to how to organize my records and have changed my mind several times as my collection has grown. "File Under Pop" tells you exactly where to put the 7". It also identifies the nature of my blog. It is about pop music. However, just like the 7", the music I care about isn't pop music in the normal sense of whatever they are playing on the radio or even "indie pop." I was a punk rock kid, and although my tastes have mellowed some, in other ways I have come to embrace noise more over the years, so I still don't have a pop sensibility. But in the end, who are we kidding; it is still popular music. Thus, this is the blog of a person who collects vinyl records, goes to shows, and listens to new music. The blog will mostly cover these pursuits. Expect about a post once a week. Flog me if I don't live up to that.