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”
In honor of the spooky holiday coming up this weekend, I could be trying to come up with a kick ass jack-o’-lantern, but I’m afraid the bar has been set too high for me. So instead, I humbly present a … Continue reading I saw a vampire, I saw a ghost, everybody scared me but you scared me the most
Lolita (Stanley Kubrick, 1962). Vladimir Nabokov’s novel was less than ten years old when Stanley Kubrick took a swing at it, so he was working with a best-selling sensation instead of a revered part of the canon. That–combined with the significant detail that he was Stanley Kubrick and he plainly did want he wanted–gives the director great latitude in his adaptation. Nabokov himself is the credited screenwriter, but much of that material was jettisoned by Kubrick on the way to making his own distinct, darkly comic work. James Mason is marvelous as Professor Humbert Humbert, the man who becomes smitten … Continue reading Altman, Clements and Musker, Gordon (and others), Kubrick, Weir
#10 — Dead Man Walking (Tim Robbins, 1995) When a filmmaker is active politically outside of their chosen profession, it can disrupt the balance of their art. That’s especially true when the work in question is itself political in nature. … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 90s — Number Ten
Today is a good day to look elsewhere for my flowery words. Continue reading Boxing’s been good to me, Howard
80. Flesh For Lulu, Plastic Fantastic Tim Burton directed Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson to unprecedented box office heights in 1989, but the caped crusader isn’t the only associated with The Batcave that can claim significant success in the calendar … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1989, 80 and 79
I’ve been waiting for quite some time for this to show up on the Interweb: Continue reading Well it happened years ago when you lived on Stanhope Road
My college radio career was filled with bands that were staples at the time only to fade into the mist in the years after. I suspect that’s fairly common. Even putting aside the artists that took their turn at the top of the CMJ charts and faced eternal indifference outside of the blissful bubble of noncommercial radio, each college radio station always seemed to have their own set of favorites with each new record by the performers in question treated with the same adoration usually reserved for the likes of R.E.M. and Sonic Youth. Often these were local (or at … Continue reading One for Friday: The Darling Buds, “If”
