Author: Dan Seeger

Music7 Comments

Top 40 Smash Taps: “Still Crazy After All These Years” and “One-Trick Pony”

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. While standing beside Art Garfunkel, Paul Simon claimed three chart-topping singles. Garfunkel’s mellifluous tenor was undoubtedly a central part of the appeal of at least two of those major hits, but there was little doubt that the chief songwriter of the pair was going to do just fine for himself when he went out on his own. And so it was, was Simon … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “Still Crazy After All These Years” and “One-Trick Pony”

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College Countdown: The Gavin Report Top 20 Alternative Chart, October 1992, 13 – 10

Dan Seeger

13. The House of Love, Babe Rainbow As I noted in the introduction (see below!), this chart comes from a point in time during which I was keenly attuned to the music moving through our college radio station, knowing full well that this would be my last dance with the wide-ranging genre I loved most deeply. Even though I liked the U.K. band the House of Love a great deal (they were responsible for a single that I’m tempted to claim is one of the ten best released during my tenure at the station), I have no recollection of the album Babe … Continue reading College Countdown: The Gavin Report Top 20 Alternative Chart, October 1992, 13 – 10

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From the Archive: The Constant Gardener

Dan Seeger

It’s about time for a new Greatish Performances post, and I’ve been mulling over which acting feat to select. One that I’ve batted around as a possibility ever since I launched (or, being honest, stole) the series, is Rachel Weisz’s Oscar-winning turn in The Constant Gardener, if only because it seems to be largely forgotten (she’s not the only supporting acting winner from the decade that is rarely invoked as such). By the time of the awards ceremony, I probably felt as strongly about Weisz deserving the win in her category as any other performer (and this was the year of Philip Seymour … Continue reading From the Archive: The Constant Gardener

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One for Friday: Dogs Die in Hot Cars, “Paul Newman’s Eyes”

Dan Seeger

(Disclaimer: Dogs Die in Hot Cars is a terrible, terrible name for a band, and sharing this song is by no means an endorsement for the group’s supposed cleverness in selecting that moniker. Usually it’s fairly easy to avoid holding a suspect band name against a batch of musicians, especially since so many over the years have acknowledged the difficulty of coming up with a smart, original, pithy was to be billed on posters. And the number of band names that actually sound fairly ridiculous but become plain and comfortable over the years is legion. I mean, the Beatles is a … Continue reading One for Friday: Dogs Die in Hot Cars, “Paul Newman’s Eyes”

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Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Four

Dan Seeger

#4 — The Philadelphia Story (George Cukor, 1940) The Philadelphia Story is all about Katharine Hepburn. More specifically, the enigma code that unlocks why The Philadelphia Story is so great begins with Hepburn as the key. In the late nineteen-thirties, Hepburn’s struggles to generate consistent mass appeal among the moviegoing public led to the coining of the persistent dismissive “box office poison” (though the term has historically hung around Hepburn’s neck, other future unquestionaed icons of the silver screen such as Fred Astaire and Mae West were name-checked in the same infamous article). As headstrong in her professional navigation as … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Four

Comics6 Comments

My Misspent Youth: Legends by John Ostrander, Len Wein, and John Byrne

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. Though the two major comic book publishers, Marvel and DC, currently operate with as much animosity towards one another as at any time during their decades-long competition, I’m under the impression, perhaps inaccurately, that the schism doesn’t extend to the fan base. Maybe because the two of them are in a nearly perpetual state of reboot, readers feel free to shift back and forth freely between the lines, opting for whatever … Continue reading My Misspent Youth: Legends by John Ostrander, Len Wein, and John Byrne

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Be careful for the danger there, you just might just be unprepared

Dan Seeger

Like a lot of people that devote themselves to inordinate amounts of time spent in movie theaters, I have a tendency to equate novelty with accomplishment. Though I maintain a thick enough strain of cynicism to avoid knee-jerk genuflection before hollow material tricked up with self-congratulatory narrative gimmicks (this is where I’d link to a review of Fight Club if I had one), I am absolutely more prone to fall for movies that do something decidedly different, filling the screen before me with something that I’ve never quite seen before. I’d naturally assumed that predilection came from an altogether commonplace impulse … Continue reading Be careful for the danger there, you just might just be unprepared

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College Countdown: The Gavin Report Top 20 Alternative Chart, October 1992, 17 – 14

Dan Seeger

17. The Darling Buds, Erotica I don’t really remember if the Darling Buds ever had a college radio hit, the sort that commands such broad-based and intense affection from kids in broadcast booths coast to coast that it feels intrinsic to the era. They were one of the bands that defined my personal haul as a student deejay, thanks in part to the convenience of the calendar. Their debut release, the glistening Pop Said…, arrived when I was a freshman, and their final effort, Erotica, hit the Heavy Rotation shelf as I embarked on my last year in college, grumpily resigned … Continue reading College Countdown: The Gavin Report Top 20 Alternative Chart, October 1992, 17 – 14

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From the Archive: Look Who’s Talking Too

Dan Seeger

Kirstie Alley’s attitude there seems about right to me. I was thinking about typing out a lament over how much terrible fare came dribbling out during holiday movie seasons of old, but it has always been a mix of the great, fine, and dreadful at this time of the year. The very same weekend Look Who’s Talking Too arrived, so to did the magical Edward Scissorhands and the solidly entertaining Mermaids. I don’t remember a bit of this movie, but I find it a little disconcerting that I offered praise — genuine, unguarded praise at that — for the portion … Continue reading From the Archive: Look Who’s Talking Too