Author: Dan Seeger

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College Countdown: CMJ Top 50 Albums of 2001, 2 and 1

Dan Seeger

2. Weezer, Weezer Unlikely as it may have seemed that a band that had only released their debut album seven years earlier was in dire need of a comeback, that was exactly the situation Weezer was in when they released their third album in late spring of 2001. Following a surprising smash with the oddball pop of their self-titled debut in 1994, Weezer’s sophomore effort, 1996’s Pinkerton was widely seen as a failure, although admiration for the record has swelled in the years since. Rivers Cuomo, the main creative force behind the band, put Weezer on hiatus while he toyed … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 50 Albums of 2001, 2 and 1

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Spectrum Check

Dan Seeger

It was a fairly straightforward week for me at Spectrum Culture. I reviewed a film called Breathing, which is the directorial debut of a fairly significant Austrian actor (although not one who’s significant enough for his film to stir much more than a blip of curiosity over on this side of the planet). On the music side, I reviewed the second full-length album from the Australian band Van She. This was one of my periodic attempts to select a release for review that’s somewhat outside of my typical realm, which actually stymied me just enough that I turned it in … Continue reading Spectrum Check

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One for Friday: Velocity Girl, “Sorry Again”

Dan Seeger

It’s almost too easy to keep up on new music while working in college radio. Whether working directly with the music as part of the leadership staff or sitting in the air chair on a regular basis, the great discoveries just keep on coming. Checking the mail is like rooting through Santa’s bag and scanning the new releases shelf could upend even the most meticulously planned playlist. Sometimes all it took was a crazily wonderful album cover to crack open the door to entire new worlds. It gets so much harder after graduation (or some other adjustment) necessitates moving on … Continue reading One for Friday: Velocity Girl, “Sorry Again”

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Top Fifty Films of the 70s — Number Sixteen

Dan Seeger

#16 — The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972) One of the risks in indulging in this ongoing exercise in counting backwards is that all my various cineaste heresies will eventually be revealed. Certainly filmmakers will be underrepresented and specific titles that have earned consensus admiration among learned film viewers (or at least the cool kids among them) will be utterly absent. I think I ultimately have fairly conventional, time-tested tastes when it comes to my tallies, which makes the aberrations stand out all the more. Tracking through the seventies, for example, illustrates that I’m completely out of step with the … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 70s — Number Sixteen

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Donen and Kelly, Frankenheimer, Salina, Skolimowski, Téchiné

Dan Seeger

Flow: For Love of Water (Irena Salina, 2008). Because there are few things we enjoy in our house than watching documentaries that offer an assessment, in painful detail, of how humanity is engaged in self-inflicted extinction through carelessly destructive exploitation of one of the most necessary substances for human existence. It make for a fun night of movie-watching. Real popcorn fare. Irene Salina’s film is compelling and suitably frightening, although it occasionally tangles itself up because there’s simply so much ground to cover. As admirably as it presents the scope of the problem, there are definitely times when it seems … Continue reading Donen and Kelly, Frankenheimer, Salina, Skolimowski, Téchiné

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Spectrum Check

Dan Seeger

I had a busy week at Spectrum Culture, in large part because it was my turn to contribute to the Revisit series on the music side. While my previous efforts were focused on different releases that did require me to give them fresh spins to reacquaint myself with their pleasures (and think about them in a context that now included significantly more hindsight), this time I decided to write about an album that I know extremely well. I’m also quite happy that my observations about the overly self-assured dismissive attitudes about differing opinions among the fans of the band in … Continue reading Spectrum Check

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One for Friday: The Amazing Pickles, “I Like Ice Cream”

Dan Seeger

Thanks to the wonders of the world wide web, I have a more eclectic music collection than I ever could have imagined, and diversity among my music was always a goal. I still have my clear particular favorite sounds and certain genres have only slight representation, but I have stuff in my iTunes that still sort of boggles my mind whenever it shuffles up. For example, thanks to a generous soul who used to employ fair use of his possessions to share some music on a regular basis, I have a copy of a 1969 single by a band called … Continue reading One for Friday: The Amazing Pickles, “I Like Ice Cream”