FOUNDERS KEEPERS: Drivin' & Cryin' Scatter Memories Across 'Crushing Flowers'
By '87 Agent Pink had come back from LA with an expensive degree and a lot of experience talking into a college radio microphone. I was the typesetter at a regional music magazine, which paid the rent, promised bylines, and came with the chance to flip through a crate
Black News 
By '87 Agent Pink had come back from LA with an expensive degree and a lot of experience talking into a college radio microphone. I was the typesetter at a regional music magazine, which paid the rent, promised bylines, and came with the chance to flip through a crate of promotional LPs that nobody else wanted.
That was how we came to be sitting on the couch in my tiny apartment listening to the Drivin' & Cryin' major label debut, Whisper Tames the Lion. In the moment it seemed a very strange confection, a disorienting conjunction of indie rock guitar, southern rock chords, careful words, a little hair metal, and a vocalist who sounded at times like Sting. All the sounds of the moment ricocheting. And they were from Georgia, like REM (who remain a mystery to me), but even in 1987, I knew they were…something.
That must all seem very antique, just now. All of it.
College radio is what we had before algorithms, the last iteration of '60s hippie freeform FM broadcasting, when the DJ played whatever the hell he or she or they liked until somebody else kicked them out of the control room or the beer ran out. It made careers, spread the gospel of delightfully obscure music, gave aid and comfort to those of us who wouldn't fit in anywhere else.
