76. Warren Zevon, Transverse City It was a major comeback for Warren Zevon when he released Sentimental Hygiene in 1987. His first album in five years, the release found Zevon addressing his own recent troubles, most notably with drug addiction. … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1989, 76 and 75
Yeah, this is going to get into my dreams somehow tonight. Thanks, Comic Book Legends Revealed. Continue reading I find you in the morning after dreams of distant signs
At 90FM we used to have these stretches of programming that we called, admittedly without much ingenuity, Free Music Weeks. Making one of these happen started with us pulling something that was especially tricky for a little station like ours. We needed to convince a label to give us fifteen copies of a new release. That was our minimum for running a Free Music Week, the number of freebies we decided were needed to make it feel like the programming week was suitably inundated with one particular new album. Since our protocol at the time involved the DJ playing a … Continue reading One for Friday: Kingmaker, “Really Scrape the Sky”
Today I wish I was this guy: Continue reading Come and go with me, it’s more fun to share, we’ll both be completely at home in midair
Separate Lies (Julian Fellowes, 2005). Following his Oscar win for scripting Robert Altman’s exemplary Gosford Park, Julian Fellowes made his directorial debut with an adaptation of an an old novel by Nigel Balchin. The film focuses of a busy, distracted solicitor whose marriage begins to fray, a situation compounded when the death of a local man in a hit-and-run car accident brings secrets to light and sets everyone reeling into a series of moral compromises. The stuff of high drama is certainly present in abundance in the story, and with Tom Wilkinson, Emily Watson and Rupert Everett at the head … Continue reading Almodóvar, Argott, Butterworth, Fellowes, Scorsese
Never Let Me Go is built upon some fairly commonplace themes. Unrequited love, the pains of growing up, the burden carried by the underclass all get an airing in the film. At times it feels very conventional, very plain. It … Continue reading Your footprints still they are in the sand, everything else washed away
#9 — The Crying Game (Neil Jordan, 1992) How long does a gag order on movie secrets last? Years before the term “spoiler alert” was coined and became part of the shared vernacular of moviegoing, Miramax was able to parlay the … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 90s — Number Nine
78. Ella Mental, Ella Mental A little time with an atlas is going to be useful to anyone trying to track the path of the band Ella Mental. They formed in South Africa when guitarist and chief songwriter spotted Heather … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1989, 78 and 77
Today, kind friend, I will direct you elsewhere for an example of my word putting together skills. Continue reading Though to say we got much hope, if I am lost it’s only for a little while
I feel very fortunate to have landed in college radio just when I did, but I must admit that sometimes I wish I’d gotten there just a couple years earlier. There was a lot to get excited about during my tenure: the emergence of Sonic Youth as a left of the dial powerhouse, the flaring Madchester scene, the seismic impact of Nirvana, and I’ll always remember the spring of 1989 with great fondness as a time when there was an overwhelming avalanche of great records. Still, I never had the pleasure of seeing a brand new album by either Hüsker … Continue reading One for Friday: Chris Mars, “Popular Creeps”
Coffee for Two 