Author: Dan Seeger

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Spectrum Check

Dan Seeger

I pitched in for both of my regular areas this week at Spectrum Culture. On the film side, I wrote a review of a new documentary on the widely protested incarceration of Mumia Abu-Jamal. I actually took this one on for a very specific reason: I’ve now spent at least twenty years hearing cries of “Free Mumia” from a certain, impassioned subsection of society, without ever hearing a corresponding explanation for why his sentence is unjust. I presumed the documentary would provide that, but it instead glossed over the particulars of the situation in much the same way I was … Continue reading Spectrum Check

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One for Friday: Cruel Story of Youth, “You’re What You Want to Be”

Dan Seeger

As is often the case when Friday comes around this space, it’s time for another tale of the 90FM “C Stacks.” When I arrived at the University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point, the greater music library was divided into three sections, the bands placed in them sorted roughly by notoriety: the A,B and C Stacks. Obviously the C Stacks was where the most obscure music went to live out its days at the radio station, until some college kid a generation later pulled it out, muttered, “What the hell is this?” and relegated it to the deep storage in the … Continue reading One for Friday: Cruel Story of Youth, “You’re What You Want to Be”

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College Countdown: KROQ-FM’s Top 40 Songs of 1987, 4 and 3

Dan Seeger

4. “Lips Like Sugar” by Echo & the Bunnymen I was still playing catch-up with college rock in 1987, so my true first impression on many of the bands that prospered there, including those that had been around for a while, was based on how fans were viewing the music they were making right that moment. So I was under the impression that Echo & the Bunnymen were some sort of perpetual disappointment. I’ll admit it: I was sort of a dumb kid. The British band’s fifth album was released in 1987. Self-titled, it was inspired a lot of agitated … Continue reading College Countdown: KROQ-FM’s Top 40 Songs of 1987, 4 and 3

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Spectrum Check

Dan Seeger

I had a fairly light week on Spectrum Culture, in part because the film I chose for this week never came through. As I recall, it had something to do with Wisconsin. Sorry I couldn’t write about you, native state. So I had only one full-length review this week: Willy Mason’s Carry On. He’s one of those performers who first edged onto my personal radar because of some gushing write-ups in Mojo magazine, which contributed to my take on him perhaps becoming overly concerned with the relative success he’s had in the U.K. That’s what happens when I don’t actually … Continue reading Spectrum Check

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One for Friday: The Weeds, “Better Now”

Dan Seeger

If the tag tally on my dashboard is correct, this is the 201st edition of One for Friday. I was properly trained by my time as a fervent comic book collector to find great significance in recurring publications hitting the big round numbers, but last week’s 200th go-round with the feature is less momentous than this week’s comparatively clumsy number. The reason is simple: with this point, One for Friday officially outlives the weekly Friday distraction it originally spun off from. Back when all my digital words were dispensed exclusively via a different platform, I spent the end of every … Continue reading One for Friday: The Weeds, “Better Now”

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Top Fifty Films of the 60s — Number Forty-Eight

Dan Seeger

#48 — Hud (Martin Ritt, 1963) Eight years before Peter Bogdanovich’s exceptional adaptation of The Last Picture Show, writer Larry McMurtry had his first dalliance with the silver screen when his debut novel, 1961’s Horseman, Pass By, was transformed into Hud. This film holds a defining star turn by Paul Newman and an astonishing, Oscar-winning performance by Patricia Neal. It also inspired a vital early essay by Pauline Kael in which she laid bare her own conflicted feelings about the work in such compelling terms that it was one of the cornerstones of her legend and could legitimately lay claim … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 60s — Number Forty-Eight