Author: Dan Seeger

Music16 Comments

Top 40 Smash Taps: “Kissing You”

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. Keith Washington was a soul singer in the nineteen-nineties who regularly landed tracks on the Billboard Hot R&B/Hip Hop Singles chart, but had only one of those songs crossover to the regular Billboard Top 40. Not surprisingly, that was his lone chart-topper on the R&B charts, a slow-moving, tender, highly emotive ballad called “Kissing You.” The second single from Washington’s debut album, Make … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “Kissing You”

Books7 Comments

My Writers: Roger Angell

Dan Seeger

I was in a creative writing class in college when one of my fellow students asked the professor if it was acceptable for him to write his stories about sports. When the professor was reluctant to agree, my classmate added that his desire was to write a series of loosely interconnected stories about baseball. As I recall it, the professor settled immediately in the affirmative given the additional information. Baseball, he said, was the one sport that actually merited literary attention. If I weren’t already inclined in that direction, I’d have to accede the point every time I read one … Continue reading My Writers: Roger Angell

Music1 Comment

From the Archive: De-Loused in the Comatorium

Dan Seeger

Since I evoked my Mojo phase in yesterday’s post, it seems only appropriate that today’s sheepish looks back towards old writing should present my most overt attempt at writing in that British publication’s style. Taken from my brief, happy tenure with Central Florida’s The Independent Journal, this review covers a unlikely blast of 21st century prog rock that–in a turn even more unlikely–I liked a great deal. It also inspired me to give it my best Mojo review section try, particularly when it came time to pile up quasi-arcane references. I remember being very happy with the results. And I … Continue reading From the Archive: De-Loused in the Comatorium

Music1 Comment

One for Friday: Earth Opera, “The Red Sox are Winning”

Dan Seeger

Thought I can’t necessarily parcel my personal journey as a music fan into clear, clean divisions, I have had a few distinct phases, stretches when the material I sought out was actively influence by one source or another, be it individuals or, in a couple of case, entire radio station music libraries. And then there are the periodicals, led by the foundational and sometimes regrettable impact of Rolling Stone on my taste. I hold far greater fondness for a later period of time I think of, as I must, as “The Mojo years.” I started buying the U.K. magazine after … Continue reading One for Friday: Earth Opera, “The Red Sox are Winning”

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Frears, Kurosawa, Robson, Sturges, Taylor

Dan Seeger

Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa, 1954). I sometimes identify Akira Kurosawa’s Ran as epic filmmaking writ as large as the screen allows. Seven Samurai, made over thirty years earlier, is epic filmmaking in the inverse, pruned and delicate and piercingly intimate. There are major moments to it, too, and scenes of pounding cinematic glory, but what really makes it work is the painstaking intricacy of Kurosawa’s storytelling. There’s a reason other creators return to it time and again, extracting what is useful for their own tales of valor and ironic victory. Kurosawa and his collaborators (Shinobu Hashimoto and Hideo Oguni are … Continue reading Frears, Kurosawa, Robson, Sturges, Taylor