Author: Dan Seeger

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College Countdown: KROQ-FM’s Top 40 Songs of 1987, 10 and 9

Dan Seeger

10. “Never Let Me Down Again” by Depeche Mode The second single from Depeche Mode’s Music for the Masses, “Never Let Me Down Again,” was the a fairly weak performer, by some measures anyway, compared to the other tracks released in the first wave of the album’s promotion. Of the first three singles, for example, it was the lowest charter on the U.K. charts and the only one that didn’t manage a Top 5 showing on the U.S. Dance charts (lead single “Strangelove” even managed to top that particular chart for two weeks). Nonetheless, it was one of those songs … Continue reading College Countdown: KROQ-FM’s Top 40 Songs of 1987, 10 and 9

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Spectrum Check

Dan Seeger

It was a fairly light week for me at Spectrum Culture. I have a stockpile of music reviews that will be coming due any minute, but or now I just had one full length piece, a terrible drama that I somehow managed to squeeze out a couple hundred words on even though I just wanted to write “Israeli-Palestinian relations as an ABC After School Special” and be done with it. I also pitched in on our Best Comedic Performances of the 1970s, writing about one Oscar winning turn and another that got a well-deserved nomination. Continue reading Spectrum Check

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One for Friday: Fat, “The Shape I’m In”

Dan Seeger

There are things in my iTunes that I don’t entirely recall how they got there. I mean, I have some vague idea that it involved some internet prowling of dubious copyright legality, but I couldn’t begin to track down where or when I first found the material in question. That’s compounded when even attempting to search for the artist in question proves to be a fairly fruitless endeavor, as in, say, when looking for more information about an obscure nineteen-seventies rock band that went by the name Fat. You can go pretty deep into a Google search of that word … Continue reading One for Friday: Fat, “The Shape I’m In”

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Lincoln, Lincoln, I’ve been thinkin’

Dan Seeger

I no longer offer up predictions of the Oscar nominees, but I can tell you with some assurance that I definitely wouldn’t have seen that Best Director list coming. While there are all sorts of interesting details up and down the list of nominees for the 85th Academy Awards, it’s the five guys cited for directing that stand as the most interesting story from the morning’s announcement. And “guys” is a word that I use very deliberately. After becoming only the fourth woman to be nominated in that category and the first to win, Kathryn Bigelow failed to make the … Continue reading Lincoln, Lincoln, I’ve been thinkin’

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Top Fifty Films of the 60s — An Introduction

Dan Seeger

And here we are again, nary a breath drawn after the completion of one foolhardy countdown and its time to readjust the settings of the Wayback Machine and start over. In introducing the equivalent countdown for the nineteen-seventies, I noted that it was the first venture into films that I largely saw detached from their context, or rather in the context of retrospective adoration (or scorn) heaped upon them. I was forced to meet the films’ respective reputations at the same time I encountered the actual work for the first time. Take that sentiment and multiply it, and that brings … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 60s — An Introduction

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College Countdown: KROQ-FM’s Top 40 Songs of 1987, 12 and 11

Dan Seeger

12. “A Hazy Shade of Winter” by the Bangles “A Hazy Shade of Winter” was first recorded and released as a single by Simon & Garfunkel in 1966, about a year-and-a-half before it took up residence deep on Side Two of their album Bookends. The song charted at #13 for the duo, making it their fifth straight entry in the Billboard Top 40. Around twenty years later, the Bangles were recruited to contribute a song for a movie soundtrack, because it was the eighties and that was what happened then. The band was still basking in the enormous success of … Continue reading College Countdown: KROQ-FM’s Top 40 Songs of 1987, 12 and 11

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Spectrum Check

Dan Seeger

Spectrum Culture eased back into operation after a holiday break this week. Even though we had a very limited amount of content, I still squeezed some of my high-falutin’ words in there. On the film side, I wrote about the new film from director Miguel Gomes, which has been turning up on some of the more esoteric year-end “best of” lists. It’s not quite at that level for me, but I certainly see the appeal. This week also marked the return of a regular yearly feature in which the writers collectively look back at the albums and films from five … Continue reading Spectrum Check

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One for Friday: Randy Newman, “Something Special”

Dan Seeger

Randy Newman is one of my favorite songwriters, which is a phrase that, to paraphrase Jack Donaghy, anyone with two ears and brain should be able to say. Though I revel in the reservoirs of dark cynicism that bubble up into his most famous songs (the bleakly brilliant slavery sales pitch “Sail Away;” the satiric “Political Science” that remains shockingly relevant forty years after he first recorded it; even the widely misunderstood mockery of prejudice in “Short People”), I have to admit to having a particular soft spot for, well, Newman’s underappreciated soft spot. When Newman started penning songs for … Continue reading One for Friday: Randy Newman, “Something Special”