Author: Dan Seeger

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Spectrum Check

Dan Seeger

I was back to a fairly typical week for Spectrum Culture, beginning with a movie review. Unfortunately, it wasn’t much a movie. On the surface of it, the film is one of those desperately quirky efforts that is among the most painful material a modern fan of independent cinema is routinely saddled with. It’s even more of a mess than that. I also had a music review go up this week. The record I reviewed is a prime example of one that doesn’t necessary spring to mind when considering the best, most vital or most challenging music of the year, … Continue reading Spectrum Check

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One for Friday: Steve Wynn, “Carolyn”

Dan Seeger

To begin with an enormous understatement, it should be obvious by now that I harbor deep nostalgia for those songs that provided the soundtrack to my years in college radio, especially those that accompanied my time as an undergraduate student in central Wisconsin. There’s an added subset to consider: I reserve a special affection for the music that carried me through the bittersweet stretch of time in 1990 that I lovingly refer to a My Summer in Exile. It was the one summer during my years of higher education that I went back home to live instead of staying in … Continue reading One for Friday: Steve Wynn, “Carolyn”

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Great Moments in Literature

Dan Seeger

“If you’d driven past our house on Wednesday night, noticed our lights burning, seen through the windows my mother in the kitchen cooking dinner, seen the neighbors’ lights on, my father fresh out of the shower, sitting on the front porch steps lacing on his shoes in the cool, humming twilight, the moon high and clear, cars moving beyond the park, his hair wet, smelling of Old Spice and talcum, rehearsing to Berner and me stories of what he’d seen on his ‘business trip’–the prairie like a great inland sea (‘like the Gulf of Mexico’), the northern lights, no mountains, … Continue reading Great Moments in Literature

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Top 40 Smash Taps: “So Close”

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. Diana Ross is very well acquainted with the Billboard Top 40. With the Supremes, both before and after her name officially preceded that of the group, she amassed 26 Top 40 singles, twelve of which topped the chart (the group made seven more appearances in the Top 40 after her formal departure from the group in January 1970, including with one song that … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “So Close”

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Garnett, Gondry, Hitchcock, Sturges, Susser

Dan Seeger

The Postman Always Rings Twice (Tay Garnett, 1946). This adaptation of James M. Cain’s 1934 novel is a film noir classic. It’s an exemplar of the form, and perhaps the perfect introduction to the dark charms of the sub-genre built around the basest of human instincts and the shadows in which the manifestation of those urges are obscured, if only because it spells out its duplicitous so plainly. It’s also, sad to say, only a middling film, unfurling its plot with a rushed anxiousness that sometimes leaves behind necessary depth and character development. Tay Garnett’s directing is moody, but also … Continue reading Garnett, Gondry, Hitchcock, Sturges, Susser

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Spectrum Check

Dan Seeger

This week at Spectrum Culture, I didn’t have a single new piece go up. While I’ve got a whole pile of stuff waiting to be reviewed (four movie screeners and, I think, the same number of new music releases), the site had a low-content week, which honestly couldn’t have come at a better time for me since my work week has been, to put it mildly, exhausting. In place of a weekly recap, it seems like a fine time to offer up a sort of “greatest hits.” Not only because I’ve got a spare week, but because we’re fast approaching … Continue reading Spectrum Check

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One for Friday: The Trash Can Sinatras, “Obscurity Knocks”

Dan Seeger

There are all sorts of bands from my college radio days that I remember fondly for a song or two, but don’t give much of a thought to beyond that. This partially due to the fact that many of the bands that can roughly be categorized as “college radio one hit wonders” had a notably short lifespan, fading entirely into the ether without even the benefit of some version of oldies radio to keep reminding listeners of that one moment in the sun when they created a guitar riff, a beat or a killer hook that kids hovering around the … Continue reading One for Friday: The Trash Can Sinatras, “Obscurity Knocks”