September 24:  Song of the Day.  Jesus and Mary Chain–Head On

I heard this one on the radio this evening as I was driving into Charlottesville and had to turn it up.  It’s from a favorite album of mine when I was sixteen. I think I bought it through one of those Columbia House Music Club deals, you know, where you buy 12 albums for a penny and then in return you have to buy three albums in a year at full price before you can cancel your membership.  My featured music genre at the time was college rock.

This was how you bought music when the nearest music store was close to fifty miles away.  And as crazy as it sounds I still have nearly all of those cassettes.  I don’t think I ever bought my three at full price.  (I just hope there isn’t a Columbia House Music Club detective out there like the book detective from that Seinfeld episode or I’m toast!)

There were two albums in particular that I loved to listen to as loud as possible in my Sony Walkman Cassette Player with the headphones that had the much too large foam earpieces.  The first was Social Distortion’s self-titled album.  “Story of My Life”, “Sick Boys”, “Ring of Fire”, and “Drug Train” (and that’s just for starters).  I actually still love to listen to this one as loud as possible as often as possible.  The second was The Jesus and Mary Chain’s Automatic, even though these days I almost never played it.  That is until about a half hour ago.   “Blues From a Gun”, “Halfway to Crazy”, and “Between Planets”.  I forgot how good these songs were, but if you only know one song from this album, this is the one.  [video for “Head On” after the break].

————

Head On by The Jesus and Mary Chain

————

And for the hell of it, here’s a brief list of the albums I once purchased from Columbia House’s Music Club that I discovered while digging through my tapes in search of The Jesus and Mary Chain.  I’ll keep it down to only ten.

1.  De La Soul–Three Feet High and Rising
2.  The Sundays–Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic
3.  Social Distortion–Social Distortion
4.  The Sugarcubes–Here Today Tomorrow Next Week!
5.  The Cure–Mixed Up
6.  The Red Hot Chili Peppers–Freaky Styley
7.  R.E.M.–Document
8.  Midnight Oil–Blue Sky Mining
9.  Depeche Mode–Violator
10.  The Stone Roses–The Stone Roses

Popularity: 21% [?]