32. Death By Chocolate, Death By Chocolate Becoming reacquainted with the popular peaks of college radio in 2001 meant learning a lot of new terms. Sadcore? Yeah, that was a real thing. With some dismay, I came to terms with … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 50 Albums of 2001, 32 and 31
While I’m falling a little behind in my music reviews, I still had two new film pieces go up at Spectrum Culture this past week. First there was a review of a new documentary that uses one man’s personal experience, documented with a series of video cameras, to illuminate the ongoing challenges of the conflict between Israel and Palestine. While its homemade origins instill some humility into the film, it was also fairly complex and required a certain amount of deftness to detail its strengths and weaknesses. It was a nice challenge to write the review. I also wrote on … Continue reading Spectrum Check
I wish I were better at coming up with titles. There’s few things more satisfying than a great title for an album, a movie or a book, something that immediately grabs attention and is smart and memorable enough that it engenders goodwill right off the bat. There’s some added pressure with a song, of course, because the hope and expectation is that the cleverness of the title will fully and cleanly carry over to the track, especially if the title is actually used in the song. It’s easy enough to pile up an assemblage of clever words if they don’t … Continue reading One for Friday: Mental As Anything, “If You Leave Me, Can I Come Too?”
#32 — Husbands (John Cassavetes, 1970) Like most of his very best work, Husbands practically seethes with the enraged creativity of filmmaker John Cassavetes. Notoriously disenchanted with the Hollywood system (or at least whatever splintered remains were left of it … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 70s — Number Thirty-Two
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. Apt Records was started in the late nineteen-fifties as a subsidiary of ABC-Paramount, which itself is widely considered to be the first major label to be formed after the rock ‘n’ roll era truly got underway. Whether by design of happenstance, Apt Records stuck solely with singles, apparently releasing not one one full-length album during its eight years of existence. In that span, … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “Crazy Eyes for You”
Throughout my high school years, I was a member of the Quality Paperback Book Club, an outfit that offered big, thick trade paperbacks, often exclusively, under the same rough model as the more famous Book of the Month Club. Part … Continue reading My Writers: Margaret Atwood
My friend Steve recently tagged me on Facebook, challenging me to come up with a list of “fifteen authors who have been an influence and you’re confident will always stick with you.” It was intended to be a brisk, modest exercise. The instructions even insisted that as little time as possible be used in the construction of the list. So naturally, I thought about it a lot. I didn’t agonize in the selection of the fifteen writers; I dutifully followed the instructions in that respect. But I did think about the list quite a bit after I shared it with … Continue reading My Writers: An Introduction
34. Mogwai, Rock Action The Scottish band Mogwai is named after the critters in Joe Dante’s 1984 dark comedy Gremlins. It was intended to be a temporary name, but the band never switched it and it eventually took hold. Certainly, they were locked into it by the time their third album, Rock Action, was released. Mogwai had a reputation for ethereal, meditative music, largely delivered as instrumentals, although Rock Action featured guest vocals by the likes of Gruff Rhys of Super Furry Animals (singing in Welsh, no less) and David Pajo of Slint. Further demonstrating their fascination with bygone pop … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 50 Albums of 2001, 34 and 33
This week for Spectrum Culture, I reviewed a new film that fell into the category of earnest attempts sadly lacking in real chops in the execution. This is the sort of offering that I suspect plays like gangbusters at the smaller festivals on the circuit. I also contributed a short piece for our weekly List Inconsequential feature, because I simply will not pass up a chance to write about “Rowdy” Roddy Piper’s finest film performance. Sorry, friends, but his turn for director John Carpenter ranks second in my book. Continue reading Spectrum Check
Admittedly, I’ve sort of got beer on the brain these days, something that’s hard to avoid in my neck of the nation. But I swear there are other things my mind wanders to during the day. Like fabulously messy songs about drinking beer at unlikely hours of the day. While I’m anticipated that our household will drink more than its fair share of beer over the course of the next several days, I don’t think we’ll be resorting to beer for breakfast anytime soon, even though we have a couple remaining bottles of an especially suitable choice for that activity … Continue reading One for Friday: The Replacements, “Beer for Breakfast”
