Category: Everything Else

Everything Else43 Comments

Top 40 Smash Taps: “What Now”

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. Upon its release in 1964, Billboard reviewed Gene Chandler’s single “What Now” in the following manner: “Tear-jerker tale of a guy done wrong by a fickle gal! Gene wails in fine style backed by driving instrumentation.” The track was Chandler’s fourth song to grace the Billboard Top 40 and the third straight, following “Just Be True,” which peaked at #19, and “Bless Our … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “What Now”

Everything Else20 Comments

College Countdown: KROQ-FM’s Top 40 Songs of 1987, 38 and 37

Dan Seeger

38. “Heartbreak Beat” by the Psychedelic Furs In a stunning example of hubristic hyperbole, Columbia Records saw fit to promote the fifth album from the Psychedelic Furs, Midnight to Midnight, as the band’s “masterstroke.” It had been around two-and-a-half years since the group’s previous album, and their profile had risen significantly thanks to one of their songs lending a title to a high profile John Hughes movie. They even rerecorded the song for the flick, drawing ire from many longtime fans who found the new version to overly slick and commercial. Turns out that was a mere precursor to a … Continue reading College Countdown: KROQ-FM’s Top 40 Songs of 1987, 38 and 37

Everything Else37 Comments

Beers I Have Known: Point Special

Dan Seeger

This series of posts is dedicated to the many, many six packs, pony kegs and pints that have sauntered into my life at one point or another. (image source) Everyone should have the blessing of a local brewery in the town where they attend college. I don’t mean one of the fancy brewers that dominate my current city of residence. Instead, I mean the kind of place that’s been around decades, serving its hometown with sudsy dedication. Being a devoted good kid throughout high school, I’m proud to say that a Point Special in the can (known affectionately as a … Continue reading Beers I Have Known: Point Special

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Great Moments in Literature

Dan Seeger

“If you’d driven past our house on Wednesday night, noticed our lights burning, seen through the windows my mother in the kitchen cooking dinner, seen the neighbors’ lights on, my father fresh out of the shower, sitting on the front porch steps lacing on his shoes in the cool, humming twilight, the moon high and clear, cars moving beyond the park, his hair wet, smelling of Old Spice and talcum, rehearsing to Berner and me stories of what he’d seen on his ‘business trip’–the prairie like a great inland sea (‘like the Gulf of Mexico’), the northern lights, no mountains, … Continue reading Great Moments in Literature

Everything Else50 Comments

Top 40 Smash Taps: “Live My Life”

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. There were few bands that benefited more clearly and distinctly from the launch of MTV than Culture Club. The music video channel launched in the summer of 1981, and Culture Club’s debut album, Kissing to Be Clever, arrived just over a year later. Boasting a sunny, catchy sound that often melded to more melancholy lyrics, the band benefited from their charismatic, attention-getting lead … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “Live My Life”

Everything Else3 Comments

One for Friday: The Soup Dragons, “Pleasure”

Dan Seeger

I think of the Soup Dragons as one of the highly favored bands of the 90FM DJs during the early nineties, but I’m not sure I’m correct about that. As I’ve written before, they were a fiarly unlikely band for me to champion at the time with their glammy, danceable grooves standing in marked contrast with the one-foot-in-the-gutter rough-hewn guitar rock that I favored. The Soup Dragons sounded like they knew what they were doing in a recording studio, understood how to get the most out of the technology at their control. They didn’t sound overly manufactured, but there was … Continue reading One for Friday: The Soup Dragons, “Pleasure”