Author: Dan Seeger

Music2 Comments

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

Film, MusicLeave a comment

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

Music1 Comment

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”

FilmLeave a comment

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

Books, ComicsLeave a comment

Great Moments in Literature

Dan Seeger

“He assigns the topic. Each writes whatever sentences his or her temperament permits. ‘Write what you know,’ Harmon apes, as if it were possible to do anything else.” –Richard Powers, Generosity, 2009 “OF ALL THE COUNTLESS WORLDS I’VE KNOWN…OF THE MYRIADS OF PLANETS UPON WHICH I’VE TROD…NEVER HAVE I KNOWN A RACE SO FILLED WITH FEAR…WITH DARK DISTRUST…WITH THE SEEDS OF SMOLDERING VIOLENCE…AS THIS…WHICH CALLS ITSELF…HUMANITY!” –Stan Lee, SILVER SURFER, Vol. 1, No. 2, “When Lands the Saucer!” 1968 Continue reading Great Moments in Literature

Music38 Comments

Top 40 Smash Taps: “People in Love”

Dan Seeger

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. The band 10cc started in 1972. At least that’s when the group of British musicians who’d been writing and recording together for a while decided to formally become a band under that name. Before that, they’d operated in several different iterations, including a stint as a band called Hotlegs, as which they had a minor hit in 1970 with the song “Neanderthal Man.” … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “People in Love”

Music5 Comments

College Countdown: KROQ-FM’s Top 40 Songs of 1987, 6 and 5

Dan Seeger

6. “Need You Tonight” by INXS The Australian band INXS could reasonable claim that they’d already broken through on the U.S. charts when they released Kick, their sixth studio album, in October of 1987. Their prior effort, 1985’s Listen Like Thieves, just missed the Top 10 of the Billboard album charts and yielded a Top 5 hit in the lead single, “What You Need,” which MTV seemed to play about as much as their top of the hour astronaut bumper. That taste of success was a grain of salt compared to the deluge of flavor that came with Kick, an … Continue reading College Countdown: KROQ-FM’s Top 40 Songs of 1987, 6 and 5

Film, MusicLeave a comment

Spectrum Check

Dan Seeger

There were plenty of my upstart opinions flung around digitally this week at Spectrum Culture. Among the film reviews, there was my take on a new indie thriller, the sort of neo-noir that had a momentary spell of prominence in the mid-nineties. That’s not to imply that this new effort was outdated. Instead, it’s major sin was its unrelenting dullness. I’ve been sitting on a fair number of albums from late 2012 while still picking up new releases to review, and that stockpiling led to a pair of pieces this past week. I reviewed the second full-length from the Joy … Continue reading Spectrum Check

Music1 Comment

One for Friday: Peter Case, “Put Down the Gun”

Dan Seeger

The first time I knowingly heard of Chekhov’s gun, it was in a song. The monumentally important Russian playwright used the gun as a mean to articulate the importance of efficiency in dramatic storytelling, writing, “One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it.” The way Peter Case put it in his 1989 song “Put Down the Gun” was as follows: “I don’t want to swear it/ But it’s something that I’ve heard/ A gun in the first act/ Always goes off in the third.” So I came to my knowledge … Continue reading One for Friday: Peter Case, “Put Down the Gun”