Author: Dan Seeger

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Top 40 Smash Taps: “I’ll Be Your Shelter (In Time of Storm)”

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. If a one-hit wonder is an artist who had a single trip to the Billboard Top 40, then Luther Ingram just barely sidesteps that designation. A staple of the R&B charts from the late nineteen-sixties to the end of the seventies — albeit one who had few major hits, even in that specialized realm — Ingram made it all the way up to #3 … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “I’ll Be Your Shelter (In Time of Storm)”

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Top Ten Movies of 2015 — Number Ten

Dan Seeger

With all due respect to the enjoyable spectacle from the end of the calendar year that put more eyeballs on Oscar Isaac and Domhnall Gleeson than ever before, Ex Machina is 2015 science fiction film featuring the two actors that approaches greatness. The directorial debut of Alex Garland, the film casts Gleeson as a programmer drone at a multinational tech corporation who gets selected for an exclusive trip to the home workshop of the company’s CEO (Isaac) with the promise of getting an early glimpse at the latest innovations. The breakthrough device is a robot dubbed Ava (Alicia Vikander), supposedly built … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2015 — Number Ten

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Great Moments in Literature

Dan Seeger

“For a few breaths he forgets himself in the swim of nature around him. Its rhythm is so different from Bit’s human own, both more nervous and more patient. He sees a bug that is smaller than a period on a page. He sees the sky, bigger than all that’s in his head. An overwhelm from two directions, vast and tiny, together.” –Lauren Groff, Arcadia, 2012 “YOU SPEAK SO CASUALLY OF DEATH, VIPER. I GREW UP WITH DEATH. I WALKED HAND IN HAND WITH IT ALL MY LIFE! I SAW CHILDREN STARVE IN THE RUINS OF STALINGRAD, AND MEN FREEZE SOLID … Continue reading Great Moments in Literature

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College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 250 – 248

Dan Seeger

250. The Knack, “My Sharona” By practically any measure, “My Sharona” was the biggest hit of 1979. Given the song’s back story, it was also likely the skeeziest. The debut single by the Knack, a group formed by ex-Sky member Doug Fieger, was targeted directly at a single girl. Sharona Alperin was a high school girl who Fieger had fallen hard for, developing a full-on fixation that was likely only compounded by her reluctance to reciprocate his affection. The most generous accounts place Alperin as seventeen at the time. Fieger was ten years older. Attempts to capture Alperin’s attention didn’t end with naming her … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 250 – 248

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From the Archive: Reservoir Dogs

Dan Seeger

As you can see, getting to my yearly top ten list a little later that most has been a longtime problem. Back when the radio movie review program was a going concern, the program went on hiatus during the college’s winter break. Upon our return, we reintroduced ourselves with our respective top ten lists of the prior film year, which could be a challenge even at this late date, since there were plenty of Oscar hopefuls still dragging their feet when it came to claiming a screen in our humble Midwestern town (the nominations announcement and the ceremony itself both … Continue reading From the Archive: Reservoir Dogs

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One for Friday: Tin Machine, “Baby Can Dance”

Dan Seeger

I doubt there’s anyone who considers Tin Machine to be first tier David Bowie. That includes myself. Even still, I hold a great deal of affection for the digression into clattering rock that Bowie made in the late nineteen-eighties. If Bowie dominated the seventies, the eighties proved to be a touch more complicated. For one thing, his remarkably prolific creativity ebbed somewhat. Bowie issued eleven solo studio albums during the seventies, and only four during the eighties. While he still had hits — he never had as strong of a showing with a trio of consecutive tracks on the U.K. charts … Continue reading One for Friday: Tin Machine, “Baby Can Dance”

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We skipped the light fandango, turned cartwheels ‘cross the floor

Dan Seeger

Hey, as long as the Academy keeps delivering these melanin-challenged rosters of acting nominees, I’m going to keep drawing from “A Whiter Shade of Pale” to headline my reaction posts. I’ll concede that this is something of a case of industry opportunity limiting the viable contenders, but Idris Elba’s performance in Beasts of No Nation had a place in nearly every set of precursor nominations and Michael B. Jordan deserves at least as much consideration for his work in Creed as Sylvester Stallone. It turns out Academy voters were as forgetful about the black artists’ contributions to the film as Stallone was … Continue reading We skipped the light fandango, turned cartwheels ‘cross the floor

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Now Playing: The Revenant

Dan Seeger

It is probably my own fault, believing on the scantest of evidence that director Alejandro González Iñárritu had found a new avenue for his artistic expression. As problematic as Birdman might be as the reigning Academy Award winner for Best Picture, particularly over Richard Linklater’s remarkable Boyhood, it signaled a useful shift in the filmmaker’s blindingly self-satisfied march through ever-mounting misery. The film still trafficked in overt nihilism, but couching it in the wryest comedy gave it just enough of a tinge of enlightenment to make it devilishly engaging rather than redundantly soul-deadening. If The Revenant is an accurate example … Continue reading Now Playing: The Revenant

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Now Playing: The Danish Girl and Joy

Dan Seeger

In this era of Caitlyn Jenner and loads of respectful awards attention paid to the Amazon series Transparent, it’s tempting to look at the tepid, staid The Danish Girl as sadly behind the times in its depiction of an individual coming to terms with their true self. Then Ricky Gervais returns to the Golden Globes hosting gig with a slew of jokes that utilize cheap, hateful mockery of transgendered individuals as punchlines, the least offensive of which is the dig at Jenner which has stirred the most ire. (The casual derision towards Jeffrey Tambor’s work in Transparent, with Gervais, for … Continue reading Now Playing: The Danish Girl and Joy