I nearly forgot that I have a Halloween tradition. For the third year in a row, these are things that I find (or at least have found) scary… Ridley Scott’s Alien was released in theaters six days before me ninth … Continue reading Two steps forward, don’t say I didn’t warn you
Harry and Walter Go to New York (Mark Rydell, 1976). A colleague of mine at Spectrum Culture wrote about this nostalgic caper comedy a while back, calling it “a delightful farce of a film.” Not really, but it’s surely an oddball relic of the era when nineteen-seventies adventurism gave way to self-defeating excess. Clearly inspired by (and given its greenlight due to) the smashing success of George Roy Hill’s The Sting a few years earlier, the film casts Elliott Gould and James Caan as a pair of hackneyed vaudevillians in the late nineteenth century who get caught up in a … Continue reading Kubrick, Kurosawa, Robbins and Wise, Rydell, Wilder
This series of posts is dedicated to the many, many six packs, pony kegs and pints that have sauntered into my life at one point or another. I’ve been to New Orleans many times, including a trip over six years … Continue reading Beers I Have Known: Abita Restoration Pale Ale
32. “It’s Still Warm” by Dramarama One of the things that has sadly been lost in the corporate consolidation of broadcast radio is the concept of the local hit, those songs and bands that maybe make only the mildest headway nationally but somehow manage to absolute enthrall one city or region. While the New Jersey formed band Dramarama had a couple minor hits on college radio and later commercial alternative radio, it was nothing like the impact they made on KROQ-FM. Their song “Anything, Anything (I’ll Give You),” their second single, had no broader chart impact, but it was one … Continue reading College Countdown: KROQ-FM’s Top 40 Songs of 1987, 32 and 31
Since I’ve been traveling the past week, I didn’t contribute much to Spectrum Culture, so I’ll actually reach back a couple weeks to note my contributions to pair of features that I had a hand in creating in the first place. There is an occasional “Playlist” feature at the site, which finds the staff combing through the entire discography of an artist to come to some level of consensus about the best track from each release. For the most recent edition, my suggestion as to who to cover won the day and we examined the collected work of The Cure. … Continue reading Spectrum Check
The simplest way for me to express how important my friend Rhienna is to my life is to include a link to a picture of the little dog we wouldn’t have if not for her. I’m endlessly impressed by the exuberant passion she brings to the things she enjoys. She doesn’t just love, she adores, and it’s wonderful to watch in action. I truly wish I could borrow some of her ambition, energy and fearlessness, especially around Sundance Film Festival time. She’s also the only one of this week’s contributors who can claim to have seen me struggle to recapture … Continue reading A Week of Fridays: Midi, Maxi & Efti, “Bad Bad Boys”
I can think of no better way to explain why I think so highly of Rachel Esser than to share the text she sent me, reporting on her progress in writing this guest post: “I wrote a whole thing for a Bearobics song, but then I remembered ‘Do They Know It’s Hallowe’en.’” Rachel takes special pleasure in anything that can honestly be described as “bonkers,” and especially enjoys movies in which people slice off someone’s face in order to use the resulting nasty sheet of skin as a mask, a quality that would frankly be disturbing in anyone but her. … Continue reading A Week of Fridays: The North American Hallowe’en Prevention Initiative, “Do They Know It’s Hallowe’en?”
The man who provides today’s entry goes by many names. For our purposes, we’ll opt for Phantom Third Channel, the ingenious moniker he adopts when overseeing his regular shift at WPRK. Or, for that matter, one of the countless substitute shifts he takes on during any given week, being a willing slave to music like few others I know. By simply moving his personal record collection to a storefront he would immediately have an inventory that would make any competitors shudder, agape with wonder at how they could ever keep up. Record-shopping with him is a delight, if only because … Continue reading A Week of Fridays: Russ Morgan & the Gay Sisters, “Metro Polka”
Holly Tedder is simply one of the funniest people I know. As is often the case with the individuals in my life who fit into that category, she also loves to laugh (and has a great one), and some of my proudest, happiest moments at WPRK involved coming up with some snarky comment that she found entertaining. I always marveled at her ability to knowledgeably approach music, locking in on how it made her feel, but also how it elicited those feeling, expounding on the impact of minor keys, chord changes and other intricacies of songcraft. The only thing she … Continue reading A Week of Fridays: The Candy Bars, “Enough to Choke a Cold Air”
I usually check with the authors of these guest posts as to how they would like to be billed in their introduction, but I’ve known all along that I was going to insist upon referring to today’s wordsmith as Phil Defiler. Using the moniker that links him to his beloved music project is the best way I can think of to pay tribute to his immense, playful talent, which is itself only made more endearing because of his modesty. I can’t even begin to describe the reasons why, but seeing him play live in the WPRK studios during one of … Continue reading A Week of Fridays: Mary Margaret O’Hara, “Body’s in Trouble”
Coffee for Two 