I’m satisfied and I can’t deny it
Fifth-eighth in a series…. (via) Continue reading I’m satisfied and I can’t deny it
Author: Dan Seeger
College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 44-42
44. Elastica, Elastica I owe the 1995 on-air lineup of 90FM an apology. Down around #67 on our chart, I groused that the self-titled debut of Elastica didn’t show up anywhere on this list. Turns out my research methods were highly faulty, because the post-punk sensation out of London is right here, very respectably taking up territory right around the midpoint of the year-end tally. If the attention heaped on Elastica almost makes this placement seem modest, they were also one of those bands that endured one of those rapid-fire turn-arounds from hyped adoration to snippy backlash. Part of what … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 44-42
From the Archive: Frankie and Johnny and The Player
One week ago, I helped bring the school year to an end at the college generous enough to employ me, thanks to my leadership role with the annual commencement ceremony for graduating students. This made me think back to my own college graduation, two decades (and change) ago. Part of my long goodbye from school involved writing one last movie review column for the student newspaper. I explain what I chose to do in the actual piece I’m transcribing, so I won’t get into the choice here. I will note, however, that I’ve written about both these films in this … Continue reading From the Archive: Frankie and Johnny and The Player
One for Friday: Ed Haynes, “I Want to Kill Everybody”
I’ve written about Ed Haynes’s debut album, Ed Haynes Sings Ed Haynes, in this space previously, bit it’s been a while. In my recollection, this was one of those albums that arrived during the late winter/early spring of 1989, a blessed time that I’ve only partially elevated in grandeur because it coincided with my first semester in a leadership role at my college radio station. Though Haynes had mighty competition in our new music rotation, this album was one that I and my fellow deejays returned to repeatedly, the comic-tinged, upbeat folk songs provided a nice little breather in the … Continue reading One for Friday: Ed Haynes, “I Want to Kill Everybody”
Top 40 Smash Taps: “In the Mood”
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. Thanks to K-tel comedy music collections that would probably strike me as a form of torture if I tried to sit through one of them now, I probably knew Ray Stevens before just about any other artist included in this series. His various Top 40 hits from the nineteen-sixties and nineteen-seventies took up a lot of the vinyl on those compilations that I obsessively … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “In the Mood”
More fun than humans should be allowed to have
I was just about the ideal age for Late Night with David Letterman. The program was there for me throughout my teenaged years, providing absurdist, anarchic, highly ironic comedy at the exact point that my swarming hormones made me inclined to reject staid sincerity and childish silliness. Letterman operated his show with a thin undercoating of hostility for the very showbiz conventions he was charged with upholding, and yet his jagged view of the proceedings was tempered by a Midwestern decency that was very familiar to me as I watched in my small town Wisconsin home. It was this latter quality that his bookers … Continue reading More fun than humans should be allowed to have
And someone said, “Live fast, die young,” but the time runs always faster, son
It has been almost exactly thirty years since George Miller released what all presumed to be the final film in the saga of a post-apocalyptic anti-hero named Max. Miller hasn’t exactly been prolific in the decades since, but his filmmaking journey has definitely been interesting. He helmed a fairly unlikely John Updike adaptation and demonstrated that a movie about disease could bypass typical dewy-eyed piousness and instead be shaped by uncompromising emotional brutality. Maybe most surprisingly, he took a turn towards family fare with a deceptively dark sequel to Babe and a couple of computer animated efforts featuring dancing penguins. … Continue reading And someone said, “Live fast, die young,” but the time runs always faster, son
Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Thirty-Five
#35 — All the King’s Men (Robert Rossen, 1949) Robert Penn Warren’s novel All the King’s Men was first published in 1946, just a few years after he left a teaching post at Louisiana State University. Warren openly acknowledged the heavy influence his time in the Bayou State had on his best-known novel. Willie Stark, the central character of the book, was inspired by Huey Long, the famed and infamous governor and senator from Louisiana who was known for the power he wielded and the astonishing levels of corruption that ran through his career. The totality of the United States … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Thirty-Five
College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 46 and 45
46. Wax, 13 Unlucky Numbers While the nineteen-eighties was surely the peak of influence for music videos, the nineteen-nineties, at least the early to middle part of that decade-long span, represents the stretch of time when the directors behind those promotional efforts had their collective heyday. I don’t remember anyone really talking about the filmmakers behind the seminal videos of MTV’s first years, but director Spike Jonze was as famous — or maybe even more famous at times — as the artists for whom he helped craft music videos. Yes, the Los Angeles punk band Wax had just enough credibility that … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 46 and 45
From the Archive: Ocean’s Thirteen
As I’m getting this in just under the wire for it to still officially be a Saturday post, it should be clear that I’m still highly distracted by a bevy of other responsibilities, compromising my ability to transcribe some old … Continue reading From the Archive: Ocean’s Thirteen
Coffee for Two 