38. Reel Big Fish, Turn the Radio Off Good lord, just look at that hideous album cover. Turn the Radio Off is the sophomore effort for punk-ska band Reel Big Fish and their first after being signed to the Mojo … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1996, 38 and 37
This week at Spectrum Culture, I did something that I can’t believe it never occurred to me to do before: I wrote about Too Much Joy. I can’t overstate how important the band was to me and the bulk of my friends and cohorts at the campus radio station, and yet I’d never previously thought to celebrate them when my turn came up in the Revisit/Rediscover feature in the music section. I’m pleased to report that what I turned in may be my favorite thing that I’ve written for the site. And it even caught the attention of Tim Quirk, … Continue reading Spectrum Check
I have my list. It’s not written down or recorded in any way. It floats freely in my head, taking on an losing names with the shifting tides of my memory and preferences. I presume most music fans have their own similar tallies. It’s those bands, performers, artists that I haven’t yet seen play live despite my strong desire to do so. There are loads of missed opportunities on the list (Sleater-Kinney, the White Stripes, and it seems Sonic Youth) and a handful that I’m actively plotting about (Arcade Fire). Last night, I didn’t necessarily cross a band fully of … Continue reading One for Friday: The National, “Start a War (Live at KEXP)”
#15 — Lolita (Stanley Kubrick, 1962) From 1956’s The Killing on, every one of Stanley Kubrick’s films was drawn from a novel, many of them the sort of prickly, complicated tomes that are tagged as “unfilmable,” a term the director … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 60s — Number Fifteen
For some indiscernible reason, today’s date is weighing on me a little more heavily than in past years. I think the pervasive attempts to use the ever-distancing tragedy of that 2001 day to prop up political agendas and inspire cheap shots against the other side have simply done me in this year. It’s worth noting that the disheartening spectacle is coming from all parts of the political spectrum, even from those I consider fairly closely aligned with my own views on the issues of the day. With that in mind, I’ll just yield the space to a track from what … Continue reading Clear blue holds its breath
#14 — Rachel McAdams as Lisa Reisert in Red Eye (Wes Craven, 2005) I think one of the marks of a good actor is the determination to treat theoretically trashy material as seriously as anything else that might land on … Continue reading Greatish Performances #14
Not to get overly mired in the process that led to this recurring feature, but I’ll note that when I made my original list of ten writers that had special meaning to me–prompted by a Facebook meme–Jonathan Franzen was one … Continue reading My Writers: Jonathan Franzen
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”
Coffee for Two 