Author: Dan Seeger

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Spectrum Check

Dan Seeger

So this week was all about the Muppets and Miles. A better week of responsibilities could be constructed for me, but it’s hard to fathom how. I’ll cop to not loving the angle I took in writing about the new documentary about Kevin Clash, the Muppeteer who is the man behind Elmo. I feel like I’ve seen similar pronouncements about emotional steeliness in the face of emotional filmmaking as a precursor to confessing to prodigious tears. Still, it was absolutely the most honest way for me to write about the movie. Whatever flaws are in place, I can’t deny that … Continue reading Spectrum Check

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One for Friday: Death of Samantha, “Good Friday”

Dan Seeger

I didn’t know as much as I would have liked when I first walked through the college radio station doors all those years ago, such I really clung to those few factoids that I did have at my disposal. Or at least I thought I knew these things. There was a band out of Cleveland (though, at the time, I didn’t know that was where they were from) called Death of Samantha, and I was completely certain that their name referred to the untimely end of Samantha Smith. She was a young girl from Maine who engaged in unlikely personal … Continue reading One for Friday: Death of Samantha, “Good Friday”

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Top 40 Smash Taps: “Naturally Stoned”

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. Some biographies of Chuck Woolery note that his nineteen-sixties band the Avant-Garde “had one-hit wonder success in 1968 with the top 40 pop hit ‘Naturally Stoned.’” This is absolutely true, fully verifiable. The duo Woolery was part of with some character named Elkin “Bubba” Fowler peaked at #40 with their soft, almost lackadaisical psychedelic song. It was a pretty oddball year for music … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “Naturally Stoned”

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My Misspent Youth: Marvel Premiere by David Kraft and George Perez

Dan Seeger

I read a lot of comic books as a kid. This series of posts is about the comics I read, and, occasionally, the comics that I should have read. When I was in college, I knew a guy who insisted that his copy of Super-Villain Team-Up #12 was the only comic book he needed. The reason? It featured Dr. Doom and Red Skull fighting on the moon, and once you had that, how could anything else even compare? One of my favorite things about superhero comic books in the nineteen-seventies–especially those titles that emanated from the House of Ideas known … Continue reading My Misspent Youth: Marvel Premiere by David Kraft and George Perez

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Spectrum Check

Dan Seeger

This was another fairly light week for me, in part because I’m still trying to catch up on music reviews I owe. One of those went up: an assessment of the new album from Crooked Fingers. This was one of the instances in which I was assigned the release instead of claimed it. It actually took me a really long time to figure out my angle on the review. As the numerical rating indicates, this is one of those albums that was clearly good, but didn’t stir me especially deeply. It’s not background music, but it’s one of those CDs … Continue reading Spectrum Check

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One for Friday: Blackgirls, “Happy”

Dan Seeger

There is some music that simply sounds like 90FM to me. Or rather, it sounds like the version of 90FM that was there for me when I was an undergraduate student. Tuning in to the campus radio station was like reading a letter from my closest friends. The music that achieved the greatest success there often connected with someone there in a deeper way that a simple admiration for its catchy hooks (although, let’s not diminish the importance of that factor). It didn’t necessarily have moony, heartfelt lyrics that expressed some unspoken melancholy among my friends or, conversely, some triumphant … Continue reading One for Friday: Blackgirls, “Happy”

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Top 40 Smash Taps: “I’ve Seen All Good People” and “Rhythm of Love”

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. When I started pulling together the list of songs that qualified for the “Top 40 Smash Taps” feature, my geeky, secret hope was that I’d find at least one artist who accomplished the bittersweet feat of peaking at #40 on more than one occasion. Turns out it wasn’t such a crazy notion; several different acts have watched as two different tracks stalled at … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “I’ve Seen All Good People” and “Rhythm of Love”