Author: Dan Seeger

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Laughing Matters: “Saturday Night Live” Bush campaign ad, 1988

Dan Seeger

Sometimes comedy illuminates hard truths with a pointed urgency that other means can’t quite achieve. Sometimes comedy is just funny. This series of posts is mostly about the former instances, but the latter matters, too. Lorne Michaels smartly maintains that everyone’s favorite Saturday Night Live cast is the one that was in place while they were in high school. The creator and longtime producer (with only a brief interruption in the early nineteen-eighties) of the venerable late night sketch comedy program is certainly correct in identifying the perception bias that compromises any individual attempt to identify one era’s superiority over … Continue reading Laughing Matters: “Saturday Night Live” Bush campaign ad, 1988

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College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 226 – 224

Dan Seeger

226. 10,000 Maniacs, “Peace Train” Ahead of recording In My Tribe, 10,000 Maniacs was noticeably struggling to get a foothold on commercial success, enough so that guitarist Robert Buck reported it stirred somewhat unique worries among his family: “My uncle Charlie read somewhere that we were a cult band so he thought we were playing for the Moonies. He even confronted me with it; he said, ‘Are you giving your money to the Moonies? Is that why you don’t have any money?’” The band’s label, Elektra Records, wasn’t worried about that particular problem, but they were anxious enough to see their … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 226 – 224

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One for Friday: Timbuk 3, “National Holiday”

Dan Seeger

Well, this was bound to happen. After having cause and capability to revisit a college radio chart from 1989 that I helped craft (it was probably from somewhere around my one-year anniversary at the station), my mind’s been awhirl with thoughts of all the more obscure records on it. There were plenty of albums included there that have received at least periodic revisits from me over the years, but I’m currently more intrigued by those that were used to fill the airwaves during that particular week only to see them later fade almost entirely from my attention. Casting back to … Continue reading One for Friday: Timbuk 3, “National Holiday”

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My Misspent Youth: Avengers Annual #10 by Chris Claremont and Michael Golden

Dan Seeger

I read a lot of comic books as a kid. This series of posts is about the comics I read, and, occasionally, the comics that I should have read. I believe I’ve used this space before to expound of my youthful susceptibility to Marvel Annuals, the double-sized bonus issues of the publisher’s most popular titles that arrived every summer. In addition, I was easily enticed by a cover that offered a series of seemingly unrelated incidents that offered a preview of what was inside, effectively promising that the events of the issue in question couldn’t be contained within a single image, … Continue reading My Misspent Youth: Avengers Annual #10 by Chris Claremont and Michael Golden

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Top 40 Smash Taps: “Bewildered,” “Get It Together, Part 1,” “Let a Man Come In and Do the Popcorn, Part 2” and “King Heroin”

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. Throughout this life of this feature, I’ve featured several acts that wound up with two separate singles that peaked at #40 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. As best I can tell, only one artist accomplished the strange feat more than twice. Fittingly, it’s the person dubbed “The Hardest Working Man in Show Business” who did it, putting a total of four singles … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “Bewildered,” “Get It Together, Part 1,” “Let a Man Come In and Do the Popcorn, Part 2” and “King Heroin”

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College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 229 – 227

Dan Seeger

229. Van Halen, “Jump” Eddie Van Halen wrote “Jump” on the synthesizer. Famously and even a bit notoriously, the song was a significant departure for the band the bore his name, a group that forged a fervent fan base largely through their vaunted lead guitarist’s six-string heroics. When “Jump” arrived as the lead single from Van Halen’s 1984, the divergence from the band’s typical sound was all anyone could talk about, a flurry of chatter which served the song well. Interest in the track was high, and it quickly became the most successful single the band ever released, cruising to the top … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 229 – 227

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From the Archive: 90FM’s Top 35, Early September 1989

Dan Seeger

An old friend of mine has recently been moving heaven, earth, and government agencies to get his hands on as much material from the early years of the college radio trade journal CMJ as he can. Among his bounty is a batch of photocopies of a issue from September of 1989, collecting some of the first reports of stations after the start of the school year. The main album chart has Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Mother’s Milk at the top and includes such left of the dial luminaries as the Sugarcubes, the Cure, and the Pixies. Of greater immediate interest to … Continue reading From the Archive: 90FM’s Top 35, Early September 1989