Why God Put A REPEAT Button On Your CD Player.

I guess most big-time record geeks have an album or two that they play the crap out of on a regular basis. Something that stays on the turntable or in the CD player for days (or weeks) on end, much to the dismay of anybody within earshot. My best friend used to play Bowie's "Diamond Dogs" for what seemed like months. Lucky for me, I love that album. Another friend drove his Toyota pickup from L.A. to Raleigh armed with only a cassette of "Nashville Skyline." (When you figure that thing lasts less than half an hour, and the United States is over 2,000 miles long, that's a lot of "Lay Lady Lay.")*

Here's one I occasionally play over and over till everyone wishes I was dead: "Field Day" by Marshall Crenshaw, from 1983. His second LP.

I was a freshman at North Carolina State when this thing came out, and it hit my heavy rotation almost immediately. I was struck right away by how Powerful it was, a pop record that really pounded out of the speakers, something I don't think I'd heard before. Power Pop people like Matthew Sweet and Sloan and stuff became real good at this later, but I'm gonna say MC was the first--and he took all the heat for it.

You see, while I was spending the Summer of '83 in absolute Power Pop bliss, thanks to this record, a lot of people were most certainly NOT grooving on it. You heard a lot of bad stuff. Muddy. Drums too loud. Over-produced. And all about the oft-mentioned, really stupid "sophomore jinx." We record collectors are such losers.

But as I said then, to anybody that gave a rat's ass (and come to think of it, that would've been, uh, NOBODY), this record is great. Marshall's lyrics are a little darker than on his debut from the year before. His vocals seem a little more world-weary (and that's a good thing), probably the result of a year of massive touring. And his guitar's crunchier--which is always a good thing, unless you're Joan Baez or something. All of these things, as far as I'm concerned, were improvements on the sound of his first. (Please don't think I'm dissing "Marshall Crenshaw.")

Response to the record's production (by Steve Lillywhite, giving it a sound much like he did on XTC's "Black Sea") was such that a few songs were remixed and released as an import EP. Basically, they tried to make this second record sound more like the first one that everyone loved so much. It didn't really help, though it gave me another import 12-inch to search for (there are now two copies in my collection; why, I don't know).

Anyway, I love this record. I even love the cover, which everyone (including MC) will tell you is awful. It's one of the few records from the Eighties that I still really appreciate as a whole.

I'd like to see it get the deluxe re-issue treatment Marshall's first album got (loaded with B-sides and demos and junk), to perhaps spur a tiny reappraisal of it. I ain't holding my breath. So, I'll go on pulling my old copy out every six months or so and playing it non-stop for about a week. Or until I decide to play "Fun House" by The Stooges non-stop for about a week, followed by the same treatment with "(The) Ventures In Space" and "Blonde On Blonde."

By the way, James, when was the last time you listened to "Diamond Dogs?"

* On a similar note, I once drove straight from Flagstaff, Arizona, to Knoxville, Tennessee, with "Everywhere At Once" by The Plimsouls playing the whole time. My other CDs were in the back of the car and I didn't feel like digging for them.