Author: Dan Seeger

Music79 Comments

Top 40 Smash Taps: “Just Like Heaven”

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. The Cure were hardly new faces in the mid-nineteen-eighties when they first started to garner some significant commercial attention in the United States. The band first got together in 1976 and released their first single, the controversial and occasionally disowned “Killing an Arab”, two years later. They quickly developed into a perennial presence on the charts in their English homeland, but had to … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “Just Like Heaven”

FilmLeave a comment

Spectrum Check

Dan Seeger

This week, I had the chance to write about one of those dark indie sensations with the stuff to become an instant cult classic. This is exactly the sort of film I would have probably missed out on without this side writing gig, so it was a nice reminder of the ample perks that go along with the banging out a few hundred words a week for the site. I also contributed to a feature about the best movies of the past ten summers, getting a welcome opportunity to profess my affection for Toy Story 3. I would, however, like … Continue reading Spectrum Check

Music3 Comments

One for Friday: Lone Justice, “Shelter”

Dan Seeger

Lone Justice was supposed to be huge. Admittedly, there’s no shortage of bands that fall into that category from the era of burgeoning college radio influence from the mid-eighties to the early-nineties, but Lone Justice has long struck me as one of the more perplexing near-misses. They surely had the industry support with major figures like Tom Petty and Linda Ronstadt extolling their virtues and a major label plucking them from the L.A. club scene to make the band a showcase act on their roster. The press, too, lined up to celebrate the band, reserving special praise for the rich, … Continue reading One for Friday: Lone Justice, “Shelter”

Books, ComicsLeave a comment

Great Moments in Literature

Dan Seeger

“I snuck in between some boats that were being repaired and lit a cigarette; I had no idea what time it was, but I felt relaxed. From my hideout I could watch her at my leisure, without risk: she seemed terribly sad, like a tree that had suddenly sprouted from the seawall, a mystery of nature. And yet, when some precise spring-loaded mechanism set her in motion again, that impression disappeared, leaving only a trace like a photo and one thing for sure: solitude.” –Roberto Bolaño (as translated by Chris Andrews), The Skating Rink, 1993 “NEXT, AMID SNOW-PEAKED GRANDEUR: A … Continue reading Great Moments in Literature

Music10 Comments

College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1989, 10

Dan Seeger

10. The Pogues, Peace and Love There’s a picture of the Pogues on the back cover of the soundtrack to the 1987 Alex Cox movie Straight to Hell. In the photo, the members of the band are dressed in bandito garb and lead singer Shane MacGowan sits right in the middle, with a pistol pressed against his temple as if he’s about to pull the trigger and kill himself. My friend Colin, an aficionado of all things Pogue, once remarked that the picture would be far more accurate if MacGowan were holding a whiskey bottle to his skull, since that … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1989, 10