Author: Dan Seeger

Music50 Comments

Top 40 Smash Taps: “Sweet William”

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. Jamaican-born Millie Small was just sixteen years old when she had a smash hit with “My Boy Lollipop,” a cover of a song originally performed by Barbie Gaye. The track went all the way to #2 on both the U.K. and U.S. charts (held out of the top spot on the latter by the first #1 single by the Beach Boys), and insinuated … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “Sweet William”

FilmLeave a comment

Jason, Milestone, Minnelli, Scorsese, Shelton

Dan Seeger

Humpday (Lynn Shelton, 2009). While I don’t always give the background on my viewing choices, I will note that this finally made its way from out queue to our screen in preparation for watching Lynn Shelton’s excellent follow-up. I’m mostly sharing that to give myself a public chastisement. Humpday is pretty terrific, providing a surprisingly plausible narrative progression to an utterly implausible scenario. Mark Duplass and Joshua Leonard play old college buddies whose reunion after several years apart winds up involving an odd pledge to make a man-on-man pornographic film together, in direct opposition to their heterosexual tendencies, for Seattle’s … Continue reading Jason, Milestone, Minnelli, Scorsese, Shelton

FilmLeave a comment

Spectrum Check

Dan Seeger

I had a busy week at Spectrum Culture, and one that was significantly more time-consuming than I initially anticipated. As I’ve noted before, we writers largely select exactly which films, CDs and books we want to review. When I picked out the new documentary from Goncalo Tocha, I swear I read that it was ninety minutes long. Then the screener showed up, spread across two DVDs. So on a weekend that I was already somewhat pressed for time, I suddenly had a three-hour film to watch (after I’d already committed to watching a very different one in the theater that … Continue reading Spectrum Check

MusicLeave a comment

One for Friday: Noise Addict, “Boyfriendship”

Dan Seeger

Growing up is dumb. Okay, okay, so it has its rewards too: wisdom, accumulating authority, stabilizing emotions and all that junk. Whether that’s due compensation for the virtually inevitable dissipation of passion and energy is a matter of debate. Perhaps nothing crystallizes the supremacy of youth quite like the realm ruled in benevolent partnership by rock ‘n’ roll and pop music. I don’t know that I’ve ever heard a great song about yard upkeep or renegotiating mortgages rates, but first kisses and tragic, heated love affairs certainly fit snugly into a three-and-a-half-minute single. That’s one of the reason that teenage … Continue reading One for Friday: Noise Addict, “Boyfriendship”

Everything Else8 Comments

College Countdown: CMJ Top 50 Albums of 2001, 18 and 17

Dan Seeger

18. Travis, The Invisible Band I didn’t have a working familiarity with a lot of the artists on this list when 2001 began, even those that could reasonably claim to already be well-established in the realm of college. I certainly knew Travis, though, largely because I had completely bought into their brand of lush, emotive pop at the time. It was an understandable (and, I’d hazard, commonplace) position to hold at the time, collecting music crafted in the rhythmic aftershocks of The Verve’s Urban Hymns, the 1997 album that housed perhaps the most rapturously wonderful single of the decade. The … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 50 Albums of 2001, 18 and 17