18. Rusted Root, Remember Surely I’m not the only one who assumed that Rusted Root didn’t exist much past their fine breakthrough single, “Send Me On My Way,” right? Of course, there’s also no real reason I should have jumped … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1996, 18 and 17
When trying to find films and records to write on each and every week, there are time when the material is going to be extremely unmemorable, neither good enough to stir genuine excitement nor bad enough to engender the flush of resentment for the time given away to it. That’s basically where I landed this week with Spectrum Culture. For instance, the film I reviewed had some promising elements, especially when it came to the performances. It was nice to see skilled performers who don’t usually land particularly worthwhile roles getting the chance to dig into some meaty material and … Continue reading Spectrum Check
This weekend I’ll sit down to write about one of my truly formative films, a cinematic effort that helped define my notions of adulthood and especially friendship that endures past the easy cohesion of school years and across the years. All I’ll elude to in the piece, when I first saw the film I was young enough that the portrait of a bond freighted with history was as foreign to me as, say, an archeology professor engaged in feats of borderline implausible derring-do. And yet it struck a chord with me, as if I knew I’d have touchstones that roughly … Continue reading One for Friday: Luka Bloom, “An Irishman in Chinatown”
Forty-ninth in a series… (via) Continue reading I talked to Jesus, Jesus says I’m okay
#6 — Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Mike Nichols, 1966) Let’s start by challenging a myth. Life magazine never actually reported a panicked revolt by Warner Bros. executives against the film version of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, standing up at … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 60s — Number Six
“Steadily the goldfinch gazed at me, with shiny, changeless eyes. The wooden panel was tiny, ‘only slightly larger than an A-4 piece of paper’ as one of my art books had pointed out, although all that dates-and-dimension stuff, the dead textbook info, was as irrelevant in its way as the sports-page stats when the Packers were up by two in the fourth quarter and a thin icy snow had begun to fall on the field. The painting, the magic and aliveness of it, was like that odd airy moment of the snow falling, greenish light and flakes whirling in the … Continue reading Great Moments in Literature
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. By my rough count, the Temptations made thirty-seven visits to the Billboard Top 40, not counting an early nineteen-nineties collaboration with Rod Stewart at the precise moment he gave up all pretenses of being anything other than treacly hack. Of those, four actually made it all the way to #1, beginning with the sweetest of romantic tributes and ending with with a funk … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “Plastic Man” and “Happy People”
20. Various Artists, Supercop soundtrack Yeah, I don’t really get this one. While I’ve acknowledged that well-built compilations hold a special sway over college radio deejays who may be otherwise confronted with the dauntingly unfamiliar across the new music rotation … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1996, 20 and 19
This week at spectrum Culture, I started with an album review. Specifically, this was another of my attempts to write about an artist who I like a great deal, but whose work is a little outside of my proverbial writing wheelhouse. I’m somewhat satisfied with the resulting review of the new record from M.I.A., but I do feel like it could have used more precise and detailed descriptions of the music itself. I was somewhat at a loss to describe the melange of sounds she creates. M.I.A. makes fantastic songs, but I don’t thing she’s yet pulled off a album … Continue reading Spectrum Check
Now that it is completely, definitively, decisively established that the surest route to mainstream chart success these days is repetitive, dance-tinged songs about feeling empowered while dancing all night long in the club, I can’t help but wonder if there are any tracks on those slicked-up albums that take a look at the melancholy downside. It’s not that I think there’s some responsibility of pop culture to provide that balance. Instead, I’m just struck by the way that the college radio playlists of my younger days often seemed to have songs that portrayed drinking cultures in all their permutations, from … Continue reading One for Friday: Mark Eitzel, “Some Bartenders Have the Gift of a Pardon”
Coffee for Two 