Author: Dan Seeger

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One for Friday: Kevn Kinney, “MacDougal Blues”

Dan Seeger

I’ve always liked the idea of a grand artistic community informally springing up in the heart of a robust city. The brand of nostalgia that Woody Allen traffics in (before dismissing it with trademark cynicism) with Midnight in Paris has a high, almost undeniable appeal. If you love some form of entertainment art–theater, literature, painting, film–how is it not a thrill to think of artists at the peak of the form sparking off of one another, intermingling their inspiration like some big, crazy TV sitcom crossover. Pet Sounds is most interesting when considered against Rubber Soul which begat it and … Continue reading One for Friday: Kevn Kinney, “MacDougal Blues”

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Top 40 Smash Taps: “Angel in Blue”

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 J. Geils Band had been around a long, long time before they had the kind of commercial breakthrough that’s the stuff of rock ‘n’ roll dreams. They formed in 1967 in Worcester, Massachusetts and undoubtedly logged a lot of hours in the nearby Boston clubs. Their first album came out on Atlantic Records in 1970 and they had significant success over the … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “Angel in Blue”

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College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1989, 1

Dan Seeger

1. Bodeans, Home There are seven other artists with distinct Wisconsin connections in the whole of the 90FM Top 90 of 1989, including three that reside lower within the Top 20. As I’ve noted previously, even if we didn’t have some highly vaunted scene like the one of Minneapolis that was sadly reaching its end, the staff at our central Wisconsin radio station held a collective special affection for performers who shared our Dairyland roots. There was no free pass for these artists, but if one of their respective records somehow hit the station’s sweet spot, it was sure to … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1989, 1

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Spectrum Check

Dan Seeger

So I spent a good portion of this week feeling pretty ill. That’s ill in a lying in bed moaning all day way rather than a nineties fresh beats rap way. I don’t know that my condition compromised my writing at all this week, but let’s just say it’s a little more difficult to write a review of a deliberately languid, existentially fraught Russian mood piece under those circumstances. My other piece of film writing was for the latest entry in our Oeuvre series on Samuel Fuller. After writing on one of his touchstone war pictures, I got a chance … Continue reading Spectrum Check

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One for Friday: The Get Up Kids, “Ten Minutes”

Dan Seeger

The term “emo” meant nothing to me when I bought the album Something To Write Home About by the Get Up Kids. At the time, I was just detached enough from the ever-undulating music fandom community that I didn’t realize the way that music starting to get carved into smaller and smaller categories and subsets. As maligned as the term “alternative music” was back in my college radio days, at least it stood for an admirable breadth and depth of music. It had equal amounts of room allotted for the pile-driving, metallic rock outrageousness of The Cult, the dance floor … Continue reading One for Friday: The Get Up Kids, “Ten Minutes”