Author: Dan Seeger

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

Dan Seeger

#42 — The Lady Eve (Preston Sturges, 1941) “I’ve got some unfinished business with him. I need him like the axe needs the turkey.” That bit of barbed dialogue is hardly unique within the cascade of knotty language that spilled from movie screens throughout the nineteen-forties. Roughly a generation after movies learned to talk, they’d mastered talking sharp and hard. Any number of offerings — especially comedies — cut like hacksaws, the crazy strong ones made for getting through metal. But few of his contemporaries could weld cynicism and downright meanness onto a script and still keep it paradoxically light … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Forty-Two

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College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 62-60

Dan Seeger

62. Moonpools & Caterpillars, Lucky Dumpling Lucky Dumpling was the one and only major label effort by California band Moonpools & Caterpillars, bookended by a couple of self-released albums. The Fillipino-American band, led by singer Kimmi Ward Encarnacion and guitarist Jay Jay Encarnacion, was supposedly signed to their Elektra Records contract when a label rep saw them opening for a different act that he’d actually shown up to scout. They had some modest success on the college charts, primarily with the single “Hear,” though it wasn’t enough to satisfy their new corporate bosses. Given a taste of the big time (and with bank … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 62-60

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From the Archive: Straight Talk

Dan Seeger

I have a memory that endures far more than seems reasonable of my colleague of the radio show that feaured this review showing up as the station with a cassingle of “Straight Talk,” the song Dolly Parton released in conjunction with the film of the same name. We always tried to get appropriate music to accompany the reviews, so he now had this item in his collection, and I assure you it’s unlikely it would have arrived there in any other way.  There are several significant things that can happen to a film when Dolly Parton is cast in it. … Continue reading From the Archive: Straight Talk

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One for Friday: Joe Jackson, “Stranger Than Fiction”

Dan Seeger

One of the things I appreciated about my particular era of college radio was the sense that we were still allowed to reclaim artists. I get a sense — perhaps incorrectly — that the denizens on the left end of the dial, few as their number may be these days, no longer view that as part of the mission. Once an artist crosses over to more commercial terrain or otherwise falls out of favor with college radio programmers, they seem to be gone forever. The notion of college radio acts still had just a little lingering wisp of that new … Continue reading One for Friday: Joe Jackson, “Stranger Than Fiction”

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Top 40 Smash Taps: “Two Hearts”

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. Get ready for some sugary, blipping R&B as only the early-nineteen-eighties could provide. Stephanie Mills first made her name in 1975, when she played Dorothy in the original Broadway production of The Wiz. She was only seventeen years old when the production opened. It got her a Drama Desk nomination, a signature song, and a recording career, although the latter was only fitfully … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “Two Hearts”

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My Misspent Youth: Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters by Mike Grell

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. I acknowledged before that I absolutely craved a veneer legitimacy for the storytelling form I loved so much through my teenage years — and, ahem, beyond — which could and did lead to me developing an outsized enthusiasm for those titles released under the “prestige format” during the latter portion of the nineteen-eighties. These were comics that were printed on heavier, glossier paper and squarebound like a paperback novel (rather than … Continue reading My Misspent Youth: Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters by Mike Grell

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Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Forty-Three

Dan Seeger

#43 — Riff-Raff (Ted Tetzlaff, 1947) Ted Tetzlaff only directed a handful of movies, but he shot over one hundred. He starting working as a cinematographer in the nineteen-twenties (his handiwork was found in the 1926 films Atta Boy and Sunshine of Paradise), racking up some impressive credits over the course of the next couple of decades. Included in that number is striking, evocative work on Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious. Remarkably, his efforts on that film earned him no official accolades (Tetzlaff’s sole Oscar nomination came a few years earlier, for the George Stevens comedy The Talk of the Town), though it did … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Forty-Three

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College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 64 and 63

Dan Seeger

64. Catherine Wheel, Happy Days Happy Days is the third album by the U.K. band Catherine Wheel and by most measures their most success effort. Riding the surge of interest in any alternative band that built some buzz into their sound, Catherine Wheel broke onto the Billboard albums chart for the first time (though its peak of #163 hardly reaches sensation status) and had a couple modest modern rock radio hits. One of those tracks, “Judy Staring at the Sun,” featured guest vocals from Tanya Donelly during the very thin sliver of time when the Belly frontwoman had enough prominence to nab … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 64 and 63

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From the Archive: Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead

Dan Seeger

This installment of our “From the Archive” feature offers an example of the way I used to occasionally cheat when writing my scripts for the radio show that I co-hosted during the early nineties. Sometimes this stemmed from a lack of available time to write out a full script, and I believe there were a couple instances when my cohort and I agreed that it was worth trying for a looser feel to the reviews (that instinct towards experimentalism likely had a portion of its inspiration in a shared weariness in banging out hundreds of words every weak on the … Continue reading From the Archive: Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead