26. Bruce Springsteen, Darkness on the Edge of Town If there’s a single album that defines who Bruce Springsteen is, especially to his most devoted fans, it’s probably Darkness on the Edge of Town. This is partially due to … Continue reading College Countdown, The First CMJ Album Chart, 26
When I joined the writing staff at Spectrum Culture, I was probably most looking forward to having access to the sorts of small, independent films that either took months to get to my humble mountain town or bypassed our local … Continue reading Spectrum Check
First impressions can be a strange thing, especially when personal first impressions are out of whack with actual chronology. Those with a deeper musical knowledge than I generally greeted the 1988 appearance of the Wire album A Bell is a Cup…Until It is Struck and its immediate predecessor, 1987’s The Ideal Copy, with a mixture of surprise and confusion, perhaps joined with the adhesive of derision. For them, the reunion of this founding father band of the post-punk movement sounded so far removed from beloved early works like Pink Flag and Chairs Missing–all rawness and jagged sonic challenges–that the newer … Continue reading One for Friday: Wire, “Come Back in Two Halves”
Sometime during the making of Too True, the third full-length from Dum Dum Girls, frontwoman Dee Dee (also known as Kristin Welchez) literally lost her voice. According to her, that caused a slow-down in the creative process, giving extra scrutiny … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf: Too True
In some quarters, the effectiveness of 12 Years a Slave was attributed to the emotional distance director Steve McQueen had from the specter of American slavery, since he was born and raised in England. That theory ignores McQueen’s own record … Continue reading Top Ten Movies of 2013 — Number Eight
Here is a story told to me lately by a man named John Cronin, who is the director of the Pace Academy for the Environment, at Pace University. Cronin has known Seeger for thirty years. “About two winters ago, on Route 9 outside Beacon, one winter day, it was freezing–rainy and slushy, a miserable winter day–the war in Iraq is just heating up and the country’s in a poor mood,” Cronin said. “I’m driving north, and on the other side of the road I see from the back a tall, slim figure in a hood and coat. I’m looking, and … Continue reading Pete Seeger, 1919 – 2014
#49 — The Day the Earth Stood Still (Robert Wise, 1951) Flying saucers raced across the movie screen with impunity in the early nineteen-fifties. In the first two years alone, there was Flying Disc Man from Mars, The Flying Saucer, The Man from Planet X and The Thing from Another World. That doesn’t even take into account all the movies dependent on more conventional rockets to get eager youngsters into the mayhem of their weekend matinees. Most of these sci-fi offerings (and “sci-fi” seems far more appropriate a term than “science fiction” in this instance) show off their dashed-off, cash-in … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Forty-Nine
The above graphic stands as a nice transition from the previous College Countdown list to the one we’re about to embark upon. The 90FM’s Top 90 list just completed dated from 1996 (going nicely with the edition from 1989 that … Continue reading College Countdown, The First CMJ Album Chart, An Introduction
One of the things I appreciated most from the very beginning with Spectrum Culture was the site’s editorial mandate to reserve five-star reviews–the top of our rating system–for only the very best of the best. There was even a process … Continue reading Spectrum Check
I’m fairly certain I owe my knowledge of the Gay Dad track “Joy!”–and indeed my knowledge of the band at all–to one of the sampler CDs that came bundled in issues of CMJ New Music Monthly. The single was first released in 1999, well past my time toiling in commercial radio and before I reentered the rare air of college radio. In this sonic purgatory, I was trying desperately to keep informed on new music, finding myself increasingly dispirited by the drably catchy material that dominated the other local radio station that was at all palatable. Into this sonic purgatory, … Continue reading One for Friday: Gay Dad, “Joy!”
Coffee for Two 