Author: Dan Seeger

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One for Friday: Golden Palominos, “Omaha”

Dan Seeger

Anton Fier was a weirdly mythic figure to me when I was in college, plying my trade at the student-run radio station. He existed within the nation of independent music that was beyond my personal level of coolness, like distant figures on the vista. He was a founding member of the Feelies, a band I loved immediately, but he left after the band’s acclaimed, obscure debut, Crazy Rhythms, an album I’d never heard because its status as a low press run, long out of print artifact of greatness put it well out of reach. He was a member of John Lurie’s Lounge … Continue reading One for Friday: Golden Palominos, “Omaha”

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Top 40 Smash Taps: “The Last Word in Lonesome is 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. By my count, Eddy Arnold has fifteen Top 40 singles, include several that were officially charting B-sides. That’s on the pop charts. It’s a very different number when consulting a different section of Billboard. Arnold landed 147 different singles on the country charts, spanning from “Each Minute Seems a Million Years,” released in 1945, to 2008’s “To Life.” Only George Jones could claim more. Happily, … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “The Last Word in Lonesome is Me”

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Bendjelloul, Bobin, Boone, Lee, Stiller

Dan Seeger

Muppets Most Wanted (James Bobin, 2014). Once the cinematic franchise is revived, the next task is to prove it can be prolonged and maintained. Muppets Most Wanted is agreeable but oddly inconsequential. Lacking the fanboy passion that Jason Segel seemed to inject into The Muppets all by his lonesome, this new installment is drab and prone to drifting. The plot manages to evoke The Great Muppet Caper, the original Muppet sequel, while also playing around with a mistaken identity gimmick that takes full advantage of the pliability of the characters’ identity. Yes, it’s amusing at times, and the celebrity “guest stars” are … Continue reading Bendjelloul, Bobin, Boone, Lee, Stiller

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Beers I Have Known: Sierra Nevada Blindfold Black IPA

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’m very pleased that I live in a place that has been dubbed Beer City, U.S.A. More than that, I’m excited that the community continues to live up to the title, years after the sponsor of the annual vote gave up on the process, presumably in part because they got tired of this little North Carolina mountain town winning every year. Among all of our other craft brewers, modest and ambitious, comes arguably the … Continue reading Beers I Have Known: Sierra Nevada Blindfold Black IPA

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

Dan Seeger

#44 — The Lady from Shanghai (Orson Welles, 1947) After his debut feature accomplished nothing less than redefining the possibilities of cinema itself, Orson Welles never delivered another film that wasn’t compromised in one way or another. Even with his smaller, scrappier efforts, on which he came closest to the unquestioned creative authority of Citizen Kane, he was constrained by tight budgets and his own bad habits, which only grew the further away he got from Hollywood’s irritating controls. And when Welles was trying to work within the system, it often seemed as though he was thwarted at every turn, in part … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Forty-Four

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College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 66 and 65

Dan Seeger

66. Alice in Chains, Alice in Chains In the early to middle part of the nineteen-nineties, a band was almost guaranteed some national attention as long as they were from Seattle and knew how to turn their amps up. Alice in Chains officially formed in 1987, when roommates Layne Staley and Jerry Cantrell joined one another’s new bands. The funk band Staley drew Cantrell into fading quickly, leaving the other group, defined by hard rock leanings, as the going concern. For the band’s name, they opted for a modified version of the group Staley was in previously, a glam metal … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 66 and 65

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From the Archive: The Rookie

Dan Seeger

When we were doing the radio program The Reel Thing, we got press kits from a few studios and promotion house, but much of the time we had few supplemental resources (of course, there was also no internet to spill every piece of data we might need). So I distinctly remember sitting through the credits for The Rookie with an intense focus, trying to make certain I had Pepe Serna’s name correct for the review. I knew I’d made the right choice in singling the actor out when me colleague on the other side of the broadcast board laughed and nodded … Continue reading From the Archive: The Rookie

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One for Friday: Gear Daddies, “Color of Her Eyes”

Dan Seeger

I plied my college radio, at least initially, in the Upper Midwest, spinning records at a happy output smack dab in the middle of Wisconsin. Existing in the midst of that frozen landscape stirs a certain kinship with those musical artists toiling at roughly the same latitude. There were simply some bands that sounded right, like they were coming at the world from a vantage point that was recognizably a product of frosty nights and taverns with interiors cloaked in wood panelling. They were of a world we knew. It’s not only the existence of a song all about aspirational … Continue reading One for Friday: Gear Daddies, “Color of Her Eyes”

Comics16 Comments

My Misspent Youth: Marvel Two-in-One Annual #7 by Tom DeFalco and Ron Wilson

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 had a few particular weaknesses when I was a kid, and Marvel Two-in-One Annual #7 hit a bunch of them. I got a geeky thrill from team-up titles, I felt like I was getting something big and important when I bought one of Marvel’s Annuals (double-sized editions of regular titles that typically arrived in the summer months, presumably when young fans both had more spending money and more time to … Continue reading My Misspent Youth: Marvel Two-in-One Annual #7 by Tom DeFalco and Ron Wilson

Music10 Comments

Top 40 Smash Taps: “Clones (We’re All)”

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. In the late nineteen-sixties, a high school student named Vincent Damon Furnier, a recent transplant from Detroit to Phoenix, started a band with a few friends. They called themselves the Spiders, a name they eventually jettisoned in favor of Nazz. That was problematic because there was already a group calling themselves Nazz, with a talented guy named Todd Rundgren in the lineup. By … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “Clones (We’re All)”