Author: Dan Seeger

Music18 Comments

Top 40 Smash Taps: “Love Rollercoaster”

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. This feature has gone on far longer than I expected. Just look at all those songs underneath the Previously… down there. When I started this, almost four years ago, I had a nice, tidy list of singles that peaked at #40. As I poked around for other writing, I kept stumbling on other songs that qualified, enough so that I eventually decided I … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “Love Rollercoaster”

Everything Else9 Comments

Beers I Have Known: 3 Sheeps Hello, My Name is Joe

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. I have been vociferous in my praise and appreciation for the tremendous craft brewery scene in the city I currently call home. It’s robust enough that I can sometimes lose sight of the fact that similar bounties are being brewed up all over the place, including my native state, which has its own storied history with beer, after all. Luckily, I’ve had regular trips to my dairyland homeland every spring and a batch of … Continue reading Beers I Have Known: 3 Sheeps Hello, My Name is Joe

Film1 Comment

Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Thirty-One

Dan Seeger

#31 — Edge of Darkness (Lewis Milestone, 1943) Sometimes the quality that really distinguishes a film is commitment. The bigger the concepts and the more intense the conflicts within the film, the more tempting it is to default to the counterbalance of restraint. Edge of Darkness takes the opposite tack, heartily embracing its own heightened emotions with a acceptance of the natural floridness of the tale. Trafficking in the fervid narrative grammar of wartime propaganda, director Lewis Milestone’s film ratchets up the tension at every opportunity, at times threatening to push the material into a sort of perversely grounded fever dream. … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Thirty-One

Music19 Comments

College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 35-33

Dan Seeger

35. The Rugburns, Taking the World by Donkey I have no recollection of the Rugburns. While there are plenty of acts on this list that barely registered for me because I was insulated from some of the more adventurous picks by working for a commercial “new rock alternative” station at the time, I think there may have been other things dissuading me from looking into this band’s musical oeuvre. Like their name, and the name of their album. And the name of their preceding full-length, which was called Morning Wood. It seems their records were dominated by acoustic-guitar based, mildly … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 35-33

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One for Friday: Flesh for Lulu, “Decline and Fall”

Dan Seeger

When I was still on the outside of it, Flesh for Lulu both sounded and looked like college radio to me. Launched as a band during the heyday of MTV and when the aftershocks of the nineteen-seventies punk explosion still shook the firmament, Flesh for Lulu simply looked the part on those occasions when they slashed across the television screen as I fulfilled my duty as an eighties teen and watched music videos as if it were the earned spoils of a social justice movement. The band had the necessary teased up hair and elaborate outfits, not to mention the immediately identifiable … Continue reading One for Friday: Flesh for Lulu, “Decline and Fall”

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The New Releases Shelf: Holly Miranda

Dan Seeger

These Holly Miranda albums take time. After the 2004 debut release that she hawked at shows, the by-then former Jealous Girlfriend released a proper solo bow in 2010. That didn’t even have a quick turnaround time from studio to record store, with it sitting idly on the shelf until Miranda signed with XL Recordings in 2010. That pairing of artist and label wasn’t meant to last, though, and Miranda started working on her next album on her own, eventually connecting with Dangerbird Records. The result is technically her third album, and yet it bears her own name. Like all self-titled releases … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf: Holly Miranda

Books7 Comments

My Writers: Anthony Bourdain

Dan Seeger

I own a Global kitchen knife because of Anthony Bourdain. Kitchen Confidential, originally published in 2000, was one of those rare books that became a sensation, stirring up interest among a wide range of readers, most of them charged up by the sense they were receiving a glimpse of something wonderfully secretive about the restaurant industry. At the time, Bourdain was the head chef at New York’s Brasserie Les Halles, but he was also an accomplished enough writer that he had a couple food-themed crime novels under his belt. Kitchen Confidential was his coming out as a nonfiction writer, providing a … Continue reading My Writers: Anthony Bourdain

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Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Thirty-Two

Dan Seeger

#32 — Suspicion (Alfred Hitchcock, 1941) Alfred Hitchcock had an abundance of theses he kept circling around to during his career, a natural outcome of his prolific nature and usual ability to take his pick of projects. That’s a significant part of the reason cineastes tend to flip over Vertigo: it’s the one instance in which the master filmmaker took a swing at the piñata of his creative psyche and every laced candy came tumbling out. Part of the fun of examining the best films of Hitchcock’s career, then, is considering precisely where they fit into the puzzle of his … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Thirty-Two

Music1 Comment

Top 40 Smash Taps: “Spinout” and “Until It’s Time For You To Go”

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. Elvis Aaron Presley had a few hits during his career. According to Joel Whitburn, who is as definitive of an expert as the field of counting chart hits gets, say he made the Top 10 thirty-eight times and claimed the coveted #1 position on eighteen occasions. For our purposes, what’s important is that two singles out of over one hundred peaked at #40. … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “Spinout” and “Until It’s Time For You To Go”