Author: Dan Seeger

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College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 115 – 113

Dan Seeger

115. Peter Gabriel, “Red Rain” Lest there be any doubt about the prog rock foundations of Peter Gabriel’s musical artistry, even the seemingly straightforward ballad “Red Rain” has its beginnings — its genesis, if you will — in one of those profundity-laced song cycles that serious minded pop musicians were pursuing in the nineteen seventies. Though released as the lead track on So, the 1986 album that represented Gabriel’s major commercial breakthrough, “Red Rain” was first composed several years earlier, in conjunction with the songs that made up Gabriel’s sophomore solo album, self-titled but often referred to as “Scratch.” It … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 115 – 113

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From the Archive: Bruce

Dan Seeger

Usually this weekly glimpse in the rearview mirror dredges up some ancient review I wrote, along with an introduction that involves varying degrees of current anguish over the wonky way I put the words together way back when. This time around, I’m going to opt for something a little different. In honor of Bruce Springsteen receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom, here is, as best as I can digitally collate, everything I’ve written about The Boss. –One of the first time I put fingers to keys to reflect on Springsteen’s work, it was to level a negative assessment of the … Continue reading From the Archive: Bruce

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One for Friday: Caterwaul, “The Sheep’s a Wolf”

Dan Seeger

Realistically, it was all about R.E.M. I arrived at the college radio station in the fall of 1988, one year after the little ol’ band from Athens, Georgia released Document, the album that can be fairly termed their breakthrough into broader commercial success. Even before that, though, the were in complete command of the college charts. The dominance was so complete that any artists even mildly associated with R.E.M. got a boost. By the time I arrived, that absolutely extended to any band on the same label that launched R.E.M., the mighty I.R.S. Records. It’s not unusual for college radio … Continue reading One for Friday: Caterwaul, “The Sheep’s a Wolf”

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Now Playing: The Edge of Seventeen

Dan Seeger

In The Edge of Seventeen, Hailee Steinfeld plays Nadine Byrd. She’s a high school junior beset by a fairly typical array of problems: family that doesn’t understand her, a small cluster of friends whose loyalty is continually tested, the always baffling pile-up of signals from boys. If the issues aren’t familiar from life, they certainly will tickle the recollection of anyone who’s watched a movie about teen-aged existence, at least those that flowed downstream from the rough seas sailed by Commodore John Hughes. Even as I type that out, becoming approximately the ten million and seventy-seventh person to handily categorize The … Continue reading Now Playing: The Edge of Seventeen

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The Unwatchables: The Beaver

Dan Seeger

There was a time when I was absolutely convinced that Jodie Foster was the future of U.S. cinema. In 1991, she starred in The Silence of the Lambs, giving a riveting performance as Clarice Starling that justly earned her an Academy Award, her second Best Actress win in the span of three years. That same year, she delivered her directorial debut in Little Man Tate, an imperfect but insightful drama about precocious talent that benefited from the sense Foster was drawing on her own experience as a child actor who could somehow slip comfortably between a loopy Disney comedy and … Continue reading The Unwatchables: The Beaver

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Bird, Coon and Skousen, Garrone, Huston, Paradisi

Dan Seeger

Tomorrowland (Brad Bird, 2015). There’s nobility in Brad Bird’s oft-stated aspiration to use Tomorrowland to reanimate the futuristic optimism of his youth, countering the long meander into an endless procession of sci-fi dystopias. Intent is one thing. Execution is quite another. Bird’s second outing as a director of live-action features is a muddled, overbearing squawk of condescending nonsense that too often barrels headlong into disastrous inane storytelling choices. As a grizzled, grumpy outcast of a once-proud secret nation of innovators, George Clooney is in the mode of hammy, insistent twitches that rightly earned him derision when he made his initial … Continue reading Bird, Coon and Skousen, Garrone, Huston, Paradisi

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College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 118 – 116

Dan Seeger

118. The Jesus and Mary Chain, “Just Like Honey” “People don’t realize you can make much better records our way,” Jim Reid insisted, back in 1985. “A good record is a good record. What difference does it make how you get it? I realize you can make a good record going through the same process that others have done in the past, but it’s not vital.” Appropriately for a band whose music rattled the senses with abrasive pop lushness, the Jesus and Mary Chain always thrived on that sort of concerted contradiction. The group, led by brothers Jim and William … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 118 – 116

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One for Friday: Mose Allison, “What’s Your Movie”

Dan Seeger

I’ve tapped out plenty of words about the glory of having ready access to an array of new music in my college radio days, an advantage of the gig that has been somewhat blunted by the clicking immediacy of the internet that has emerged in the years since. But the wild west of the worldwide web lacks the intensely personal recommendations that I found in those poster-adorned hallways of my past. The algorithms will keep improving, but I doubt they’ll ever truly catch up to a pal with different music tastes who alights on just the right track to share … Continue reading One for Friday: Mose Allison, “What’s Your Movie”