With an upcoming trip to Bloomington, I thought I would put together this playlist to celebrate the occasion. I also thought I’d give a little context to this playlist…and my time there.
I should note that I did not attend Indiana University…at least not out of high school. I took classes there as a “non-traditional” student, adding to my bachelor’s at the University of Southern Indiana. I left my hometown in the summer of 1996 to spread my wings and build my career in radio broadcasting. On a leap of faith, I took a part-time gig at B-97, the Top 40 station in B-Town. I eventually moved across town to WTTS, where I found full-time work.
My six years in Bloomington were a sort of high water mark. I met people who still play a significant role in my life. I also discovered tons of music, saw some fantastic live shows, and started writing my first novel. It was also the last time that I felt surrounded by people in the same stage of life I was. We were young, figuring it out, and embraced the life we all chose to live.
We were also all broke.
That leads us to the downside of living in Bloomington. For as freeing as the feel of the city is, it’s also unsustainable. With mounting debt and insulting pay, a choice had to be made at some point, and it came six years later. It wasn’t easy, but it had to be done. As Patton Oswalt put it about towns like Bloomington, “You have to either leave when you’re really young or live in for the rest of your life, because after a certain point, it’s too late for you to leave because you don’t know how the real world works anymore.”
I was also in Bloomington for the last part of what turned out to be the last great American decade, the 1990s. You can offer my Gen X bias and the Rachel as a hairstyle as proof that I’m wrong, which…fair points. However, it was the last time we, as Americans, could unite, set aside our differences, and be a people. The closest we’ve come to that since 9/11 was the universal disappointment at the ending of Game of Thrones. Given that metric, you’d have to admit I’m right.
I loved my time in B-Town. I wrote about it at length in my upcoming “almost memoir” Sundry Notes of Music. Meanwhile, here is an abridged playlist outlining my time in South Central Indiana. There are a few Bloomington bands that I plan to write essays about in the future.
Ian Shane is the author of In Ten Years, Postgraduate and Radio Radio and creator of the blog, Liner Notes. His “almost memoir,” Sundry Notes of Music, is now available in paperback and Kindle. He currently lives in Denver with his cats.