40. Dog’s Eye View, Happy Nowhere Much as I complain about the monolithic grunge sound that dominated any radio station that aligned itself with the “alternative” movement in the mid-nineties, in some ways the real problem was that many of … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1996, 40 and 39
Not that anyone’s likely to notice without me pointing it out, but I’m going to slightly jumble my usual order in listing off my latest contributions to Spectrum Culture in this weekly slot. For example, I usually position whatever list we’re track through as the last bit, almost as an aside. Instead, I’ll put our latest offering in the ongoing effort to count down the greatest greatest hits albums of all time right up front, if only to immediately note to a good friend of mine that I have now managed to make sure that anyone who chooses to search … Continue reading Spectrum Check
I never got all that hung up on record labels during my college radio days. That may have been in part because our station was just small enough that some of the humbler labels–of the sort more likely to inspire enduring affection–chose to keep us off their servicing list, not having the financial wherewithal to cover everyone. It may have simply been because my tastes at the time still had enough mainstream swirled into them, lessening how often I dug deep into the sort of incredibly obscure stuff that might stir my interest in a band’s labelmates in the hope … Continue reading One for Friday: Lush, “Take”
#16 — Yojimbo (Akira Kurosawa, 1961) There’s an automatic cachet that comes with celebrating an Akira Kurosawa samurai film, but sometimes the prevailing sense of coolness–whether from the classic nature of the film or the hipsterish reclaiming of primacy … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 60s — Number Sixteen
Pitch Perfect (Jason Moore, 2012). Much as I can understand how this film turned into a stealth hit–it has the musical liveliness of early Glee combined with the knowing spunk of Bring It On–it’s a fairly clumsy endeavor, with strained jokes and haphazard structure that would almost count as daring anti-narrative if it were done intentionally. It’s also one of those films that has absolutely no idea how college works, not just taking liberties for the sake of the storytelling but completely ignoring any attempt to depict its setting in a way that’s at all plausible. It does have Anna … Continue reading Daldry, Eastwood, Moore, Sirk, Soderbergh
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. Good lord. I suppose this seemed like a good idea to someone in the years immediately following the unlikely success of kiddie rap duo Kriss Kross. The Puppies represented another pairing of youngsters shouting out weirdly provocative nonsense over an insistent hip hop beat. In this instance, it was a brother and sister, Calvin “Big Boy” Mills and Tamara “Dee” Mills. Their self-titled … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “Funky Y-2-C”
Woody Allen has sometimes be accused, not without some justification, of focusing on a certain rarefied version of the New York experience in his art. While he exists in a city teeming with working class people, his urban ecosystem is … Continue reading What a great world we all live in, even better, what a time to be here
42. Odds, Good Weird Feeling The Odds were a Canadian power pop band that were highly successful in their northern homeland, but never quite managed to break through in the States. Wisconsin, of course, is right up there by our … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1996, 42 and 41
This was one of those wholly manageable weeks for me at Spectrum Culture: one album review, one film review. The album review was the tricker of the two, largely because it was another instance of a record that didn’t inspire strong feelings one way or the other. And “It’s pretty good” simply isn’t enough. In my malaise, I completely missed my opportunity to invoke a long dreamed of touring contingent. Since I spent the first part of the review musing on how many different groups shared some variation of the band’s name, I should have suggested that all of the … Continue reading Spectrum Check
When We Were Kings, Leon Gast’s definitive documentary on the fabled “Rumble in the Jungle” fight between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman, started life as a concert film. As part of the associated festivities in Zaire, several funk and soul artists were there to stage a live show, which undoubtedly seemed like perfect fodder for a hit movie release back when Michael Wadleigh’s film of the Woodstock Music & Art Fair was still making the rounds to young, adoring and probably pretty stoned audiences. While there, Gast quickly figured out that the real story was happening over in the training … Continue reading One for Friday: James Brown, “Gonna Have a Funky Good Time”
Coffee for Two 