Author: Dan Seeger

Music3 Comments

The New Releases Shelf: Art Angels

Dan Seeger

(photo source) I really liked Visions, the album released by Grimes in 2012. But I also found it to be a little uneven, prone to digressions that didn’t quite spin into full-fledged, satisfying tracks. Peaks and valleys are to be expected (and the peaks were absolutely glorious), but it’s nice when the valleys are worth strolling through, too. Still, every indication was there that Grimes was poised to make an album that could be deemed great without reservation. All she needed to do was take another artistic step forward. Turns out that step I hoped for is more of a … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf: Art Angels

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Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Six

Dan Seeger

#6 — Sullivan’s Travels (Preston Sturges, 1941) This particular fifty film list should make it abundantly clear that I have a pronounced appreciation for the singular cinematic voice of writer-director Preston Sturges. I’d argue that no other filmmaker quite pulls together his collection of traits on the same piquant combo. Billy Wilder probably comes closest, with his mixture of bleakly brilliant comic cynicism and fundamental decency. Yet Wilder doesn’t have the same propensity for pointed social commentary nor a similar weakness for daffy pratfalls, presented not to deviously undercut the more serious subtext but for the far simpler reason that Sturges … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Six

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Baker, Baumbach, Endfield, Hall and Williams, Jacobs

Dan Seeger

Big Hero 6 (Don Hall and Chris Williams, 2014). Like just about everyone else, I believe The Lego Movie should have been Best Animated Feature Academy Award nominee (and I appreciate the creators’ inspired cheeky resilience in the face of the snub). After seeing Big Hero 6, though, I’m not sure naming the most worthy victor in the category was quite as simple as the chagrined consensus suggested. Developed after Disney Studios rummaged through the big trunk of misfit concepts stored up by their acquisition Marvel, the computer animated film about a young robotics genius who responds to personal hardship … Continue reading Baker, Baumbach, Endfield, Hall and Williams, Jacobs

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College Countdown: The Gavin Report Top 20 Alternative Chart, October 1992, An Introduction

Dan Seeger

I’m going to concede up front that this chart is presented as something as a place-holder. I have a much more significant countdown all cued up on one of the theoretical turntables, but I need a touch more time to get ready for it. Looking for something to carry this feature through to roughly the end of the calendar year, I landed on a chart from the fall of 1992. This isn’t purely random. For reasons not entirely unrelated to the next chart we’ll use, I was thinking a lot about my last year as a student in college radio. … Continue reading College Countdown: The Gavin Report Top 20 Alternative Chart, October 1992, An Introduction

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From the Archive: Hocus Pocus

Dan Seeger

This is another one of the record reviews I wrote for the short-lived but dandy Central Florida publication The Independent Journal. Enon was a band I hadn’t heard of — to my recollection, anyway — before becoming the General Manager and Staff Advisor for the campus radio station at Rollins College, but they were a favorite of some key staff members. The students even got the band to come into the station and play a live, on-air set. I carried around a CD copy of that performance for ages. It was my actual favorite Enon album. I’m selecting this for … Continue reading From the Archive: Hocus Pocus

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One for Friday: John Lydon interviewed by WPRK

Dan Seeger

So I’m going to do something a little different today. Usually I reserve this Friday feature to share an MP3 from some bygone record that I treasured in my college radio days, with the occasionally foray into music that was released after I got my paper and I was free. But the college radio experience was about more than the actual records to me. It was also about making connections with the performers that I enjoyed so much. While I didn’t have the opportunity to do it all that often, I retain a tremendous affection for those instances when I … Continue reading One for Friday: John Lydon interviewed by WPRK

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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

Books, Comics5 Comments

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