The Drovers

In what is either an act of extreme generosity or career surrender, 90s Chicago mainstays the Drovers have MP3'd their great debut album, World of Monsters, and put it up on their website. I've loved this album non-stop ever since I first heard it, back in 1992, and I strongly encourage you to check it out. I've always thought of the Drovers as what the Pogues would have sounded like had the latter grown up in the jangle-pop 80s instead of the punk 70s.

World of Monsters played a major role in one of those transcendent experiences that make life worth living. Back in 1995, I was working at IBM in a thankless, heavy-workload, deadline-obsessed operations job. On one particularly frenzied day, I was leaving the office at 8:30 PM in a daze, the last person out the door, and dragged myself to my car, dreading the hour-plus drive home.

My radio station of choice back then was WCBR ("The Bear") which was a wonderfully eclectic commercial station, now sadly defunct. In today's homogeneous, Clear Channel/Infinity era, it's hard to imagine that a station like WCBR ever existed, and so recently. The night DJ was an oddball named Psycho Nicely, who came across like your goofy bachelor uncle, the one with the great and bafflingly diverse record collection who offers you a beer when you visit, even though you're well underage. The one who laughs at your stories about what idiots your parents are--and readily agrees they're idiots, while quietly encouraging you to get along with them as best you can. And if all else fails, you can always crash on his couch.

So I climbed behind the wheel, still wired with stress, and started the car. And almost immediately, from the radio I heard the opening strains of the Drovers' "The Boys and the Babies". My spirits immediately lifted, and I was almost in tears in relief. I started driving home, but about three or four minutes into the song I pulled off the road and idled next to a payphone. I dropped in some coins and dialed the 'CBR studio--I had the phone number memorized back then--and Psycho himself answered. I told him my story, how I had a horrible day at work and how the first thing I heard in the car was that great Drovers song and how he had totally rescued my psyche and how I couldn't thank him profusely enough. He laughed and said no problem, glad to have helped, all in a day's work. I drove home in a dramatically improved mood.

Such is the redemptive power of radio, or at least radio as it used to exist.