I recently got a few boxes delivered from a storage unit I had more or less forgotten I had.  One of them had photos in it.  It was marked, “Photos.”  Another had scratch-and-sniff stickers in a jewelry box, an orange stopwatch in a plastic bag with some loose Euro coins, and approximately seven different guidebooks of Washington, D.C.  It was marked, “Random.”  The third box was marked “DO NOT PUT ANYTHING ON TOP OF THIS BOX” and was filled with all of my old CD binders dating back to senior year of high school.  Oh man.  This was going to take some time.

Leafing through page after page of CDs was way more intense that looking at old snapshots of myself and my degenerate college friends.  It was a tour of my innermost thoughts and – worst – tastes and preferences.  “Oh Christ” was a common thought that sprang to mind every three or four page-turns.  Talking about this with some friends over beers last week, it became clear that they – and therefore the entire universe of still-alive humans – have music that they still love but are too ashamed to tell people about.

I am not ashamed.  I am going to air my dirty musical laundry for all to see.  Welcome, dear readers, to Shame Week.  We begin our tour with the odd little British group The Dream Academy, whose song “Life In A Northern Town” is a nice pre-chewed bite of moodiness, punctuated by a howlingly out of place “African”-style chant in the chorus.  Oh, and there’s an oboe.  Okay.