Month: May 2013

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Spectrum Check

Dan Seeger

I spent much of this week in recovery, in a sort of spiritual and mental hangover over the insanely busy stretch of work that preceded it. So I’m a little worried that my contributions to Spectrum Culture were a touch discombobulated. On the music side, I wrote a piece on the new album from Montreal’s No Joy. It sounded pretty good to me, but I did struggle in the writing process to find the hook of the review. It’s definitely one of those times when I wanted to write, “It’s pretty good,” and be done with it. The chatting-with-buddies version … Continue reading Spectrum Check

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One for Friday: Gunbunnies, “Put a Tail on Your Kite”

Dan Seeger

There were all sorts of bands and albums from my old 90FM days that I returned to repeatedly because they carried with them some sort of added import and history, even it was something as simple of a strong memory of playing a track on the air and having my appreciation kick in sharply. But there were so many more than I had only the vaguest recollections of, even at the time. These were albums that I would stumble upon anew while browsing through the stacks, remember that I liked it when it moved through rotation, play it again, nod … Continue reading One for Friday: Gunbunnies, “Put a Tail on Your Kite”

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Top 40 Smash Taps: “I Can’t Wait”

Dan Seeger

These posts are about the songs that can accurately claim to crossed the key line of chart success, becoming Top 40 hits on Billboard, but just barely. Every song featured in this series peaked at number 40. Patrick “Sleepy” Brown is the son of Jimmy Brown, who served as the lead vocalist and saxophonist for the nineteen-seventies funk band Brick, best known for the mid-decade hit “Dazz”. With seventies soul music wrapped into his DNA, Sleepy Brown brought that bygone sound into more modern music as one of the co-founders and primary creative forces behind the Atlanta production outfit Organized … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “I Can’t Wait”

Film, MusicLeave a comment

Spectrum Check

Dan Seeger

This week has been a blur for me, thanks to a stupefying number of hours at work. If questioned without any external references, I’d have no idea what I wrote for Spectrum Culture. Luckily, I can scroll through the site and find out. Of course, I may have already forgotten about The Numbers Station by now under just about any circumstances. I presume this may be the film that sets John Cusack to considering nabbing himself a short-season cable series. On the music side, I reviewed the new album from the Black Angels. It’s fine, but I found very little … Continue reading Spectrum Check

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One for Friday: Diesel Park West, “All the Myths on Sunday”

Dan Seeger

When I got started in college radio in the late nineteen-eighties, there was still a lingering myth about broadcasting being a good route to do something truly daring, even subversive. It was, after all, a radio station that had played George Carlin’s routine about the seven words that can’t be said on television, leading to a landmark Supreme Court case that got the great comedian’s brilliant skewed linguistic analysis forever entered into the federal record. And the notion of the darkly philosophizing deejay still cropped up every now and again, as if everyone who got behind the microphone could hold … Continue reading One for Friday: Diesel Park West, “All the Myths on Sunday”