I was thinking the other day, why is it that I get all wistful and nostalgic come September? Well, the obvious answer is that it’s the start of the new school year.  The excitement of all the college radio stations coming back on the air with new and returning deejays and great tunage.  The remembrance of another year hanging out with friends on a daily basis.  The Best Laid Plan of trying to do better this semester.  And of course, the start of the fourth quarter when all the really good albums by the best bands start coming out.

That’s not to say it’s all about my days in the late 80s.  Growing up in central Massachusetts (in “Radio Free Athol”, where stations came in depending on where in town you were and how strong your antenna was), the fourth quarter is when the Day Job started getting busier.  At the record store, that meant a larger volume of stock I had to process.  At Yankee, that meant earlier hours and a busier day.  Some things never change.  But regardless, that was when the days got a little shorter and a little cooler.  The slow pace of summer replaced by the fast pace of autumn.

Love and Rockets often pops into mind at this time of year as well.  For one reason, their first four albums were all released around this time (Seventh Dream of Teenage Heaven, 11 Oct 1985 in the UK and reissued in the US Nov 1988; Express, 15 September 1986; Earth Sun Moon, 9 September 1987; Love and Rockets, 4 September 1989), and I bought them all soon after release.  For another, I really grokked onto the acoustic/psychedelic sounds of those first albums at the time.  I’d taught myself the basics of guitar playing (both on bass and my sister’s acoustic), and Daniel Ash’s dreamy 12-string work was exactly what I was trying for.  It would take some time for me to get to that level, but those songs definitely left an impression on me.

I mean, take “Saudade”.  It’s often considered one of their best songs.  It’s nearly thirty years old, but it still stands out as an absolute classic.  An aptly titled song at that.  A hint of melancholy and nostalgia in the melody, but also a consistently driving energy that keeps building until it can no longer contain itself.  It’s a lovely, gorgeous song, and also one of the reasons I finally bought myself a twelve-string a few years back.

It’s that time of year again, so of course I’ll be getting all wistful and nostalgic once more, listening to older tracks, playing a few tunes on the guitar, and perhaps even tuning into the local college stations again.  It’s been years since I’ve set foot in a classroom; I can bump into my buddies online whenever I want.

But there’s still something about September that still sticks with me.  For the past few years I’ve been hearing a lot of young, new bands playing the same kind of music I grokked to back in the 80s.  A resurgence of shoegaze and reverb-drenched mood music.  Young bands reinterpreting the sounds their parents and older siblings listened to, and making it their own.

The end of something old and the start of something new, I suppose.