#12 — Stop Making Sense (Jonathan Demme, 1984) There are few movies that bring me as much immediate and consistent joy as Jonathan Demme’s Stop Making Sense, the brilliant concert film featuring Talking Heads. From the very beginning, with opening … Continue reading Top 50 Films of the 80s — Number Twelve
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. One of my favorite comic book artists when I was in … Continue reading My Misspent Youth: Nexus by Mike Baron and Steve Rude
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
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
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”
#13 — Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee, 1989) I first saw Do the Right Thing in the apartment of an upstairs neighbor when I was in college. We watched a rented VHS copy on a tiny little television–though a … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 80s — Number Thirteen
I’ve already posted this elsewhere, but I like it enough that it’s worth including here. I made this. Because I feel that cast member of Sesame Street would be a good option for Michael Stipe now that R.E.M. is done. Continue reading Monsters having fun, happy, happy
The Marvel Age of Comics was marked by scintillating storylines full of careening colorful characters. Still, those four-color feasts might have gone unread if not for the pulchritudinous panache employed by the marketing mavens who put together the “Bullpen Bulletins” … Continue reading Mighty Marvel Checklist HyperboleCheck: Captain America #131
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. By the time Janis Joplin’s famed version of “Me and Bobby McGee” was released, the song had already been recorded by Roger Miller, Kenny Rogers and the First Edition, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Gordon Lightfoot, original songwriter Kris Kristofferson, Bill Haley and the Comets and Sam the Sham. And that was all in the year-and-a-half span after Miller’s initial recording of the song was … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “Me and Bobby McGee”
2. 10,000 Maniacs, Blind Man’s Zoo Right from the top, there’s a unique detail regarding 90FM personnel that seems pertinent in considering the high placement, arguably unusually high placement, of the fourth full-length album from 10,000 Maniacs on the year-end … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1989, 2
