Author: Dan Seeger

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College Countdown: CMJ Top 50 Albums of 2001, 38 and 37

Dan Seeger

38. The Shins, Oh, Inverted World The debut album from the Shins holds a special place of significance for me in my return journey through college radio. This was the first CD I bought at the primary local, independently-owned record store in my new city of residence. What’s more, I bought it specifically because of the songs I heard played on WPRK. I think I actually decided I had to have it when I myself played “Know Your Onion” on the air, a return to a happy, costly time several years later when filling out my radio playlist directly coinciding … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 50 Albums of 2001, 38 and 37

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Spectrum Check

Dan Seeger

It can be frustrating writing reviews from my relatively remote outpost (of course, there are greater frustrations here these days than that minor inconvenience). I’m reliant on studios that are willing to send out DVD screeners, and that’s a little harder to come by in the day of prolific online piracy. There are often weeks when the film I’m most interested (or best equipped) to review flatly isn’t available to me. And then there are weeks like this one. I tried and tried and tried to select a film from the limited release offerings that might have a screener and … Continue reading Spectrum Check

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One for Friday: Nuclear Valdez, “Where Do We Go From Here”

Dan Seeger

When I was an impressionable youth working in college radio, I know I was supposed to be learning to love the arch, indie abstractions of bands like Pavement and Guided by Voices. They were releasing their first records then and provoking genuflections from much of the music press, small and eager as it was. Authenticity was always a major criteria for those of us playing music on the left end of the dial, especially as we saw bands that used to operate solely in our territory achieve significant crossover success, a group led by U2 and R.E.M., but also including … Continue reading One for Friday: Nuclear Valdez, “Where Do We Go From Here”

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Don’t you think every kitten figures out how to get down whether or not you ever show up?

Dan Seeger

It never seemed like Whit Stillman was going to be prolific. There were four years between his 1990 debut Metropolitan and the largely forgotten follow-up Barcelona and then another four years before his third film, 1998’s The Last Days of … Continue reading Don’t you think every kitten figures out how to get down whether or not you ever show up?

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Spectrum Check

Dan Seeger

The vast majority of the time, the reviewers at Spectrum Culture choose the material we write on, which means we sometimes build our own trends as writers. For example, I’ve already regularly claimed Vivian Girls and associated acts (including writing about the new Best Coast soon). Turns out I’ve also inadvertently developed a specialty for writing about movies centered on French prostitutes. Last fall, extremely positive festival buzz led me to ask for Bertrand Bonello’s House of Pleasures. Now my willingness to follow Juliette Binoche just about anywhere led to a more modern exploration of that particular European subculture. The … Continue reading Spectrum Check

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One for Friday: Badly Drawn Boy, “You Were Right”

Dan Seeger

When my new position in college radio in 2001 finally allowed me to freshly and fully explore new music for the first time in years, there was a dizzying array of unfamiliar artists to wrap my head around. Making it a little trickier for me, many of them were distinct, singular solo artists that adopted wholly different identities with names that would usually be affixed to a full band. This may have happened a generation earlier when I was a student DJ, but I surely didn’t remember it. Beyond the occasional, “Hi, my name is Steven Morrissey, but just use … Continue reading One for Friday: Badly Drawn Boy, “You Were Right”