I saw the actor Michael Jeter in a movie the other day, and it just made me sad. It wasn’t because of the quality of the film or the performance–although the movie was certainly one that came to define what ludicrously-budgeted Hollywood junk looks like–but simply because it was a reminder that he was gone. Jeter died in 2003 at the age of fifty, no kid but still too young. Though he won both a Tony and an Emmy, his opportunities in movies were spottier, usually relegated to something a little odd over on the fringe of the plot. Jeter’s … Continue reading One for Friday: Michael Jeter, “Everything’s Coming Up Videos”

When I’d transitioned from the exploratory freedom of college radio to the stifling monotony of commercial radio in the mid-nineteen-nineties, I worked very hard to keep myself reasonably well-versed in music that was distinctly different from the jackhammer awfulness I was charged with lobbing out onto the airwaves. I used every resource at my limited disposal, leaning especially heavy on the monthly magazine that had recently been launched as a companion to CMJ, the trade journal of college radio. I’m fairly certain it was within the pages of one of those issues that I first read about Ben Lee. More … Continue reading One for Friday: Ben Lee, “How Can That Be?”