Eric Fetters-Walp

I knew I could no longer be a journalist by 2007—even though it was the only job I’d ever wanted, and I was 14 years deep into a career...

He’s almost impossibly gaunt. One eye seems partially open, and his mouth is agape. But he is unconscious, out of pain. His paper-thin...

As baseball season started a year ago, in spring 2023, my dad had been in his retirement community’s memory care facility for just a few...

It’s the 20th anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001, when terrorists took over airplanes and slammed them into the World Trade Center and the...

(Or “how I learned to embrace an album that’s messy and way too long even though I love the band that made it”) I first heard The Clash...

Rolling Stone magazine called “London Calling” the best album of the 1980s—even though it was released in 40 years ago this weekend in...

I’m not a list maker by nature. But spending too much time listing my favorite top 20 songs of the past year has become my annual...

I saw the SUV speed around the corner of the intersection, swerve a few times and then head straight toward my vehicle. That part now...

The raw horror of that day comes back so easily. For me, it just takes an image of those smoking skyscrapers. I own a book that simply...

When I was a kid in the mid-1970s, I dressed up like Steve Garvey, the Dodgers’ great first baseman at the time, for Halloween. In other...

So many things swirling in the big world right now, but all I want to write about is radio. It’s appropriate timing, at least, because...

Today, Feb. 7, is International Clash Day, which started as a Seattle radio DJ’s lark and now is an international event of sorts. And...

I don’t have a good story about how I started listening to Leonard Cohen. He and his music snuck up on me over the course of a few years,...

“Nirvana already did their first song—it’s from the new album that came out just this week. The song was different—but a good, raw...

There is no happy happy, joy joy in Springfield today. Yes, I know I’m mixing my 1990s cartoon references. The tide of social progress,...

“What a drag it is getting old,” Mick Jagger sang well before he got old. He turned 23 the same month the song with that lyric came out....

Our first two children were born through emergency Cesarean sections, scary moments that ushered them into the world. Our oldest, now on...

Why does history in books seem so far away, while history you’ve lived through seems like yesterday? That question hit me when I realized...

Dolores O’Riordan died yesterday. The lead singer of The Cranberries was a year younger than I am. After the shock of yesterday’s news...

This full list first appeared in pieces on my Facebook page over the past few weeks ... First off: Listen to the music you like, the...