Author: Dan Seeger

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Top 40 Smash Taps: “It Should Have Been Me”

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. Amazingly, Gladys Knight and the Pips never had a chart-topping single for Motown Records. As towering as the act was, the closest they came was with their version of “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” which was passed around to all of the label’s stars, including Smokey Robinson. Of course, it was Marvin Gaye who owned that particular number. His take was recorded … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “It Should Have Been Me”

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Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Seven

Dan Seeger

#7 — The Grapes of Wrath (John Ford, 1940) I stand by my longtime belief that John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath is the tome most deserving of the well-worn honorific The Great American Novel. The appeal of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, the default choice, is completely understandable given the way it weighs the toxicity of craving upper mobility along with the hollowness of wealth itself, but I find the gut-punch grimness of Steinbeck’s story to hold greater, more resonant truths. Gatsby has added layers, which tickles the inner intellect of literature aesthetes. The Grapes of Wrath gets … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Seven

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My Writers: John Byrne

Dan Seeger

When it came to my comic book reading, I was always fiercely devoted. Completist tendencies are embedded deeply within me, which I directly attribute to my time perusing the unkempt racks of comics at the local supermarket or convenience stores, desperate to make sure I got every last issue of my favorite titles, handily numbered to help me track the the effectiveness of my efforts. While I was still comfortable in my tender youth when I started reading superhero comics — barely able to claim an age in the double-digits — I soon realized that being committed to certain series and … Continue reading My Writers: John Byrne

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Great Moments in Literature

Dan Seeger

“My favorite bit of Outside is the window. It’s different every time. A bird goes right by zoom, I don’t know what it was. The shadows are all long again now, mine waves right across our room on green wall. I watch God’s face falling slow slow, even orangier and the clouds are all colors, then after there’s streaks and dark coming up so bit-at-a-time I don’t see it till it’s done.” –Emma Donoghue, Room, 2010 “THE ROARING SILENT SCREAM OF INTERSTELLAR SPACE RUSHES THROUGH THE SENSES OF THESE ONCE-MEN…SENSES ROOTED FIRMLY TO THE EARTH. THE GLOW OF A LIFETIME … Continue reading Great Moments in Literature

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College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 1

Dan Seeger

1. Marques Bovre and the Evil Twins, Flyover Land Though I wasn’t at the station at the time, I can provide all sorts of reasons as to why Flyover Land predictably landed at the top spot of 90FM’s year-end chart. The simplest explanation involves the radio station’s biggest event of the year. A weekend-long affair modestly billed as The World’s Largest Trivia Contact takes place every April. Throughout much of the nineteen-nineties the weekend prior was marked by a couple of “Kickoff” programs: a midnight movie and a concert. In 1995, the movie was an indie crowdpleaser that likely challenges the sensibilities … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 1

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From the Archive: Run

Dan Seeger

One of the main reasons I could never take the concept of Patrick Dempsey as “McDreamy” seriously is that I remember all too well when he was a young actor in terrible movies, many of which oddly featured him seducing older women. I don’t remember a bit of Run, beyond lumping it into the big, vague category of Indistinct Junk We Used To Need To See In Order To Fill Out A Weekly Radio Show. Here’s yet another in the brief procession of reviews that needed to employ the nonsense word “thrill-omedy.” I notice I did a terrible job keeping my … Continue reading From the Archive: Run

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One for Friday: The Plugz, “Achin”

Dan Seeger

Sometimes I have no recollection of how a track came into my digital possession. Much as I appreciate the wide open bounty of the interweb, especially when it comes to those old and new acts that I surely would have never discovered without it, I sometimes miss the bygone ability to always identify the rough moment of discovery, to conjure up the origin story of each personally held piece of music, as it were. The vastness of what I can access now is better. But I can still be a little wistful about portions of the experience that are chipped … Continue reading One for Friday: The Plugz, “Achin”

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Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Eight

Dan Seeger

#8 — Letter to an Unknown Woman (Max Ophüls, 1948) Max Ophüls worked on five films during his aborted tenure in Hollywood, including Vendetta, which would have been his U.S. debut had he not been fired from it (one of several directors who passed through the troubled shoot). The moody, elegantly visual style favored by the European director fit awkwardly into the stateside model, even as it had obvious connections to the deliberate film noir approach that prevailed at the time. His movies were too deliberate, too cerebral, too firmly serious to truly succeed in a U.S. market that, even … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Eight

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Oh don’t lean on me, man, ’cause you can’t afford the ticket

Dan Seeger

There’s no disparaging the intent of the film Suffragette. To a large degree, the sterling motivation is spelled out by a crawl ahead of the closing credits which details when various countries across the globe first extended women the right to vote, including more than a few territories that did so only ridiculously recently. In depicting the harrowing track women had to follow to win suffrage in England, which was granted in compromised fashion in 1918 and then more in line with what was afforded men ten years later, director Sarah Gavron and screenwriter Abi Morgan strive for a echoing … Continue reading Oh don’t lean on me, man, ’cause you can’t afford the ticket

Everything Else5 Comments

Beers I Have Known: 3 Floyds Gumballhead

Dan Seeger

This series of posts is dedicated to the many, many six packs, pony kegs and pints that have sauntered into my life at one point or another. Since relocating from the one true Beer City, U.S.A. (stuff it, Grand Rapids) back home to my native state of Wisconsin, I’ve been slowly, not-so-carefully been becoming reacquainted to the brews crafted in America’s Dairyland. But there’s been another element in play. Being back in the Upper Midwest has given me far readier access to the creations of Indiana’s 3 Floyds Brewing Company. What used to be a special treate procured once or … Continue reading Beers I Have Known: 3 Floyds Gumballhead