Music Blogs

Matthew Sweet is GetBack's guest blogger all week. Here he is discussing his new album, Sunshine Lies. Click here for a full song performance.

Without Dirt Cheap, we might never have known. Dirt Cheap was a downtown record store in the college town of Lincoln, Nebraska, where I grew up. Located next to campus, the store was a haven for the ’70s second-wave hippie crowd. Half the store had records, then across the way and up the stairs was the dirt cheap head shop. The head shop looked about like one would now, so I guess in its unusual case it’s true that some things never change! But I digress. Only the sweet smell of Indian incense wafting across to the record store is relevant here.

On the record side, there were so many things to look at, so many albums, double albums, singles, etc. But there was one section of particular importance. The imports section. Starting small in the late ’70s, this section would grow to major proportions over the next decade as punk and the new wave let loose on the world. In fact, whole stores would live and thrive selling only imports and independent releases.

If you were really interested in an album they might play it for you on the store stereo, before you had to commit to buy. It was cool because all of us who had access to this place, the staff and the customers, started to network on which records turned us on. A lot of it was from England. The Buzzcocks, Elvis Costello, XTC, Generation X, the Clash. There seemed to be no end to the flow of fresh new music, simpler and more direct, with more than a little attitude. It was an anything-goes attitude too, which was good for the music. Lots of unique artists were starting to make a mark, without mainstream commercial support. The great new U.S. bands of the day soon turned up in the racks alongside our British heroes — Television, Richard Hell & the Voidoids, the New York Dolls, X, Blondie, the B-52s, Talking Heads, and later R.E.M., Let’s Active, and the dB’s made their own stand in this exciting new music landscape. I took it home and took it all in.

But back at high school, the current popular artists weren’t going anywhere: Journey, REO Speedwagon, Styx, etc., still ruled supreme in the parking lot. But in the underground something new was happening. Soon there would be a confrontation — between the jocks (who ruled) and the “punkers” (a term used for almost everyone but jocks and nerds).

You know how the rest of this one goes. The jocks don’t like the punkers. Amazingly, nerds were now unexpectedly spared at my high school. The most violent jocks (only a few were in reality bad apples) were seemingly attracted like wasps to the louder hairstyles, clothes colors, and provocative sounds of the new-wavers. I kept my head down. Revenge Of The Nerds was still years away. Valley Girl later resonated. I stuck to my music.

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