1. Elvis Costello and the Attractions, Trust Trouser Press wrote: “A confident show from Mr. Reliable before plunging into Nashville terra incognita.” Trust was the first of two albums Elvis Costello released in 1981, and, as the review implies, the … Continue reading College Countdown, The Trouser Press Top 10 of 1981, 1
Merry Christmas, everyone. Continue reading The time is now, the place is here and the whole wide world is filled with cheer
If my rough tally is correct, this is the 150th installment of the One for Friday feature in this space, including the spectacular “Week of Fridays” event in the spring. The name of this weekly exercise in music sharing doesn’t necessarily make all that much sense now. It was a riff on the Friday distraction I used to deploy over on my LiveJournal site. “Five for Friday” made a little more sense, what with that alliterative ring to it. I’d come up with some fairly broad prompt for a music-based list, pop up the five best examples that sprung to … Continue reading One for Friday: Iam Siam, “Talk to Me (Can You Hear Me Now)”
Young Adult reunites director Jason Reitman and screenwriter Diablo Cody four years after their shared breakthrough with Juno. In different ways, to different degrees, both creators come into the movie with a little something to prove. Despite an even better follow-up film, Reitman still has his vocal detractors, those who find his efforts a little too slick and glib. Cody, though an enthusiastic Oscar winner for her Juno efforts, faced an even sterner backlash, largely on the basis of another produced screenplay that was smothered into lifelessness by the same sort of dialogue of inventive slang that gained her attention … Continue reading I never thought I would come of age, let alone on a moldy page
#2 — Tootsie (Sydney Pollack, 1982) Whenever I write about comedies–especially in the context of celebrating them as prime cinematic achievements–I always seem to get to the end of the piece and realize that I’ve almost completely ignored a key … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 80s — Number 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. Ross Bagdasarian famously stumbled upon the the notion of a singing group comprises of small furry mammals by playing around with tape speed in the studio. He was already a relatively successful figure in the entertainment industry, having appeared on Broadway and in several films, including Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window. he also co-wrote the hit song “Come On-A My House” with his famed … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “The Alvin Twist”
Surely Michael Shannon will get the chance to play a nice, normal guy in a prominent role one of these days. He’ll get cast as someone who clearly sees reality just as it is and faces no burdensome difficulty brought … Continue reading Well all right, you gave it all up for a dream, fate proved unkind to lock the door and leave no key
2. U2, Boy Trouser Press wrote: “Raw, quivering messages from the heart. Defiant expressionism at a time we could use it.” Well, credit Trouser Press with the prescience of astute early adopters in this instance. It’s not that U2’s debut … Continue reading College Countdown: The Trouser Press Top 10 of 1981, 2
Once I started writing music reviews for Spectrum Culture, one of my goals was to eventually branch out and try to cover material that’s somewhat outside of my normal range. So for my last album review of the year, I made a point of grabbing a hip hop release. Lucky for me, it just so happens to be one of the best records of the year. I did the best I could, but I wish I’d had a little more concentrated time with the album before I wrote on it. I have a feeling this one is going to age … Continue reading Spectrum Check
At 90FM, certain songs were marked with a little red dot. There were other colored dots used to designate songs that had grown especially popular, either on commercial radio or our own airwaves, but the red dots were the important ones. They signaled to the DJ that there was some word in the song’s lyrics that the average listener or, more importantly, the FCC might find objectionable if we played it. There was all sorts of content that might get a song flagged that way, although, realistically, the red dot usually meant little more than the presence of the word … Continue reading One for Friday: They Eat Their Own, “Like a Drug”
Coffee for Two 