Liquid Days, Indeed

Apparently I wrote a fairly negative review of the Philip Glass album Songs from Liquid Days for the college newspaper toward the end of my sophomore year. This issue was published April 18, 1986. Looking back at what a younger version of yourself wrote can be informative and trippy. The article’s next-to-last paragraph in particular reads very much like something I’d still write — and more to the point: think about — today. (On the other hand, I’m not sure what I meant by “On the end” in that section, or by Kronos “sapping it up” in the final paragraph.) It’s fun to look back at this print-only era, and how sloppy the editing was, especially when it came to trying to stick to the rigors of the column format, like dropping in line breaks to use up the space. Liquid days, indeed. Also, the newspaper misspelled my family name. I think I like the album a bit more now than I did then, though the intervening time has also helped me situate it alongside phases of other artists’ careers…