Author: Dan Seeger

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College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 71 and 70

Dan Seeger

71. Big Sugar, 500 Pounds Wikipedia describes Big Sugar as “a Canadian blues, reggae band,” which is about as terrifying of a description as I can imagine. They had a decent run in their homeland, with a couple platinum albums. 500 Pounds, their sophomore effort, was the first to go gold, a promising enough turn of events that it was released in the United States. The album was something a slow build, with the group generating a good chunk of those sales on the basis of their live show (you know, the place where blues/reggae outfits prosper, if only because … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 71 and 70

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One for Friday: The BellRays, “Pinball City”

Dan Seeger

My favorite story about the BellRays doesn’t belong to me. It belongs to my friend Jon. As I remember it, he was attending one of the rare but wondrous music festival catering to trashy garage rock and rockabilly-tinged punk that were a little more prevalent a decade or two ago, when the concept of a band like Southern Culture on the Skids having a minor radio hit wasn’t entirely absurd. As one does at festivals, my friend wandered a bit, a little aimlessly and a little attuned to finding the good beer on what was surely a hot day. He … Continue reading One for Friday: The BellRays, “Pinball City”

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

Dan Seeger

#47 — The Shop Around the Corner (Ernst Lubitsch, 1948) Even though he was consistently billed as James Stewart, we call him Jimmy. He is one of the classic movie actors who represents a nostalgic view of America as a land of benevolent geniality. In the collective imagination he is stalwart and kind, always prone to doing the right thing, even when terrible beset by circumstance. It’s part of the reason his overtly twisted turn in Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo is heaped with praise; critics are eager to reward Stewart for playing against type. While Stewart’s placement on a pinnacle of … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Forty-Seven

Music11 Comments

Top 40 Smash Taps: “Let It Be 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. Okay, acknowledging that Wikipedia is a shaky source, here goes: Over the course of a music career that began with “No Place For Me,” recorded when he was working as a disk jockey, Willie Nelson has released over one hundred singles, including five last year. While the red-headed stranger has had an abundance of huge hits on country radio and is at least as … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “Let It Be Me”

Comics17 Comments

My Misspent Youth: Magik by Chris Claremont and John Buscema, Ron Frenz, and Sal Buscema

Dan Seeger

Like a lot of teenaged comic book fans in the nineteen-eighties, I was a helpless devotee of the uncanny X-Men, the group formally tagged as “Marvel’s Merry Mutants” but far more angsty and melodramatic in their iteration two decades in to their publishing history. (They weren’t really all that merry in the nineteen-sixties either, but Stan Lee loved alliteration.) They’d been shepherded from a group perpetually on the brink of publishing extinction to a true sensation by writer Chris Claremont, who became a star creator in the process. The X-Men had so clearly become the line’s prime commodity and Claremont the … Continue reading My Misspent Youth: Magik by Chris Claremont and John Buscema, Ron Frenz, and Sal Buscema

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The Sound of Oscars

Dan Seeger

Those with whom I watch the Academy Awards, both virtually and sharing the same couch, were a little worried about me last night. My praise for the remarkable achievement of Boyhood has evidently been effusive enough that there were nationwide predictions of dire thoughts overtaking me when it became clear the night was turning against Richard Linklater’s film. But I like Birdman, too. (There are some critics out there this morning undoubtedly feeling far angrier about this outcome.) If it had been a night about venerating the dreadful The Imitation Game, exactly the sort of prestige pablum the Academy might have … Continue reading The Sound of Oscars

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From the Archive: Goodfellas

Dan Seeger

Since I invoked Goodfellas as a comparison point for excellence in writing about my clear choice for the best film of 2014, it seems appropriately to reach back to when I wrote about Martin Scorsese’s masterful film for the edition of 90FM’s The Reel Thing that looked back at the top cinematic efforts of 1990. This was my first chance to write about the film (my cohort on the show drew Goodfellas when we originally reviewed it), but it wouldn’t be the last. Though I keep trying, I suspect I’ll never fully do it justice. This is a mediocre piece of … Continue reading From the Archive: Goodfellas

Music34 Comments

College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 73 and 72

Dan Seeger

73. Grant McLennan, Horsebreaker Star By the time Grant McLennan released the album Horsebreaker Star, there were a healthy number of years that had passed since the demise of his band the Go-Betweens. Between the formal break-up, in December 1989, and this album, McLennan released two other solo outings, so there’s no real reason to characterize Horsebreaker Star as some unique statement of purpose, an announcement about his determination for enduring creative relevance. And yet that’s exactly what the record seems like, both in its content and through a few more superficial indicators (it’s the first solo album on which he’s … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 73 and 72

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One for Friday: Cyndi Lauper, “Hole in My Heart (All the Way to China)”

Dan Seeger

There were only three nominees in the Best Original Song category at the 61st Academy Awards, presented to films released in 1988. This was the first time I can recall hearing the argument that it was time to eliminate the category altogether, the proposal accompanied by the insistence that it was a relic of the time when Hollywood was still cranking out original musicals on a regular basis. Even though the nineteen-eighties were boom years for soundtracks, there was a sense that the process of assembling a batch of pop songs that could be slapped onto cassettes (that was the … Continue reading One for Friday: Cyndi Lauper, “Hole in My Heart (All the Way to China)”