13. Michelle Shocked, Short Sharp Shocked I’m going to flip the script for this week’s entry. Usually, I track through where I was at in my musical growth when I first encountered the record featured, talk about the actual merits … Continue reading College Countdown: Rockpool’s Top 20 College Radio Albums, November 1988, 13
I’m overjoyed that I’m presenting a review in which I use the word “downright” twice. As the Gone Girl think pieces begin to pile up, let’s revisit the last decent work of a director who has genuine threads of misogyny running through his work, shall we? This was written for the Reel Thing Reports that ran a couple times a day on WWSP-90FM after my graduation necessitated retiring the weekly program of the same (or same-ish, to be accurate) name. Almost all of director Brian De Palma’s films include at least one passage that is put together with such impressive … Continue reading From the Archive: Carlito’s Way
Mick Jones won the break-up of the Clash. While the intense animosity that led to the dissolution of The Only Band That Matters didn’t necessarily last (Jones and Joe Strummer, the primary combatants, were working together again by 1986, a … Continue reading One for Friday: Big Audio Dynamite, “The Battle of All Saints Road”
I think of the focus on and fascination with television showrunners as a relatively new phenomenon. There were a handful of producers whose names meant something to viewers a generation or two earlier (Aaron Spelling and Steven Bochco, to select … Continue reading That Championship Season: Gilmore Girls, Season Three
#13 — Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954) Sometimes when a work of art can reasonably be deemed prescient, what’s actually happening is the fiction is tapping into a fundamental truth about human nature, something that can carry forward and be … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Thirteen
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. The U.K. blues-rock band Ten Years After was only together from 1966 to 1974, but they were incredibly prolific in that span, releasing eight studio albums and two live discs, the second of which was, of course, a double album. In 1970 and 1971 alone, the band issued four albums. As with many other hard rock bands of the era, Ten Years After … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “I’d Love to Change the World”
The Skeleton Twins begins with the siblings of the title a continent apart, but both at the same dismal low point. It turns out that Milo (Bill Hader) is a step ahead of his sister, Maggie (Kristen Wiig). As she’s … Continue reading Poor skeleton steps out, dressed up in bad blood
14. They Might Be Giants, Lincoln When I arrived at the campus radio station in the fall of 1988, I was a relative neophyte when it came to college rock. I certainly put on airs that I knew more than … Continue reading College Countdown: Rockpool’s Top 20 College Radio Albums, November 1988, 14
It makes me a little sad that it’s now been well over two years since the last time I had cause to offer a Bad Movie Night post. This used to be one of our proudest household traditions. Well, wait. … Continue reading From the Archive: Ghost Rider and The Wicker Man
There are so many albums out there, meaning countless efforts that once stirred interest, even in a small pocket of listenership, get entirely left behind. My recollection is that when the self-titled, debut release from Boston’s East of Eden arrived … Continue reading One for Friday: East of Eden, “Mystic Love”
Coffee for Two 