Author: Dan Seeger

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College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 205 – 203

Dan Seeger

205. Los Lobos, “Will the Wolf Survive” While the track “Will the Wolf Survive” provided Los Lobos with the title, slightly modified, for their major label debut, it was the last song written for the album. According to the band members, the impetus for the song came in part from Dave Alvin, undoubtedly hanging around because of his personal and professional connections with the album’s co-producer, T Bone Burnett. Alvin surveyed the material Los Lobos had assembled for the 1984 release and suggested that what the band really needed was an anthem, something that truly and properly represented the their musical and cultural outlook. The worrisome … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 205 – 203

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One for Friday: Marshall Crenshaw, “Whatever Way the Wind Blows”

Dan Seeger

In my earliest couple of years at the college radio station, I mentally differentiated between those artists who completely belonged to us kids — those that I could see as rough contemporaries — and those who were, for lack of a better term, “adults.” This wasn’t always based purely on chronology. The Cure, for example, released their fourth studio album at around the same time Marshall Crenshaw released his first, but it was the Detroit native who I automatically slotted into a sort of college rock elder statesman role. After all, the Cure were still crafting songs that spoke directly … Continue reading One for Friday: Marshall Crenshaw, “Whatever Way the Wind Blows”

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Daley and Goldstein, Dougherty, Letterman, Ritchie, Silverstein

Dan Seeger

Vacation (John Francis Daley and Jonathan M. Goldstein, 2015). Like any Freaks and Geeks devotee, I’m rooting for Sam Weir as he transitions from actor to one half of a comedy filmmaking team, but this thing is hideous. A supposed continuation of the Vacation franchise, it’s more of a lazy remake of the 1983 Harold Ramis film, replacing what minor vestiges of wit it carried with hollow raunch. There’s nothing inherently wrong with raw, audacious comedy, but there’s still an obligation to actually structure humor. Instead, Daley and Goldstein have a kid hurl blue insults at his older brother and … Continue reading Daley and Goldstein, Dougherty, Letterman, Ritchie, Silverstein

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My Misspent Youth: Marvel Team-Up Annual #4 by Frank Miller and Herb Trimpe

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. When I committed to superhero comic books in the early nineteen-eighties, I was immediately enraptured by the connectivity of the Marvel universe. While the storytelling practice has reached levels of pure tedium these days, marked by supposed “event series” that pile as many costumed figures as possible into plots as hopelessly ensnarled as the wires behind a media obsessive’s entertainment center, there was still a frisson of excitement to be had back then when … Continue reading My Misspent Youth: Marvel Team-Up Annual #4 by Frank Miller and Herb Trimpe

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Laughing Matters: “Cheers,” The Dime Bet

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 is valuable, too. Once, while bemoaning a generation’s regrettable reliance on television rather than books as a conduit to learning, the great novelist Kurt Vonnegut had to allow for an exception to his complaint. He famously noted, “I would have rather written Cheers than anything I’ve written.” Obviously, this is no faint praise, given than it emanates from the author of some of the most justly revered novels … Continue reading Laughing Matters: “Cheers,” The Dime Bet

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College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 208 – 206

Dan Seeger

208. King Crimson, “Elephant Talk” Sure, there are many ways the King Crimson single “Elephant Talk” lives on, but perhaps its most unique legacy is lending its name to a groundbreaking web-based fan site. Well before most were adept at relating addresses with a well placed @, King Crimson fan Toby Howard started a newsletter meant to be distributed via email. Dubbed “Elephant Talk,” the first issue was distributed in the summer of 1991. That eventually led to a website of the same name, which further evolved into a wiki-style platform years later, after some twelve hundred plus issues over fifteen years, … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 208 – 206

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One for Friday: Ani Difranco, “When You Were Mine”

Dan Seeger

Though I grew up when Prince was at the height of his chart-dominating powers, I came to Purple One’s music late. It was my own fault. I listened to that melange of inverted pop, fiery funk, rafter-rattling rock, and provocatively challenging lyrics and I couldn’t find my entryway. I even remember standing in a record store holding vinyl copies of both Sign o’ the Times and Paul Simon’s Hearts and Bones, mulling which one to purchase, only to have a friend essentially tell me I wasn’t ready for Prince’s double album masterwork. He was right. (By now, I own it; … Continue reading One for Friday: Ani Difranco, “When You Were Mine”