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The New Releases Shelf: Lemonade

Dan Seeger

As the recording industry continues to get hacked into splinters by a rapidly changing media environment the powers that be resolutely refuse to understand, it’s reassuring to discover that an album can still arrive and truly, deeply matter. Granted, it would be myopic understatement to term Beyoncé’s Lemonade as simply an album. It is a full-on cross-media event, complete with an HBO special, an enormous world tour, and an expertly catalyzed supporting campaign of gossipy chatter and rash reaction think pieces. Delivered as a surprise, as Beyoncé is wont to do, the album is cunningly designed to capture attention, filled as it … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf: Lemonade

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College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 202 – 200

Dan Seeger

202. The Who, “You Better You Bet” A necessary piece of music trivia in the arsenal of every fan so inclined to mentally gather such minutiae is the status of the Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star” as the very first music video played on MTV. You’ll never win a bar bet with that factoid, but knowing the first song to be played twice on the network could earn a free drink. Following the Buggles’ inaugurating clip, Pat Benatar’s “You Better Run,” and Rod Stewart’s “She Won’t Dance with Me,” MTV aired the music video for “You Better You Bet,” the first … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 202 – 200

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One for Friday: Great Lakes Myth Society, “Summer Bonfire”

Dan Seeger

As I spend my first spring back in my native state of Wisconsin, I am reminded of the unique feelings that well up when it finally seems that winter, that harshest season, is irrevocably over. Those who’ve never endured the weather of the Upper Midwest perhaps don’t understand that snowy assaults can continue happening well past the point that seems at all reasonable, that these blustery heartbreaks might occur after a the false promise of a long stretch of beautiful, warm days. To live here, one acquires a defensive readiness to face down the cold yet one more time, as … Continue reading One for Friday: Great Lakes Myth Society, “Summer Bonfire”

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The New Releases Shelf: The Hope Six Demolition Project

Dan Seeger

It probably makes sense that Polly Jean Harvey has reach the point of full-on art installation, like Björk at MOMA. Disastrous as that particular exhibition may have been, it was indicative of a certain truth in the notion that the Icelandic performer in her overt and unyielding multifaceted creativity had reached the point where the standard progression of record and tour followed by another record and another no longer seemed sufficient. Similarly, when Harvey released the exemplary, transcendent Let England Shake, it really did seem that she’d come to a creative endpoint, exhausting all the possibilities of the album format. And … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf: The Hope Six Demolition Project

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College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 205 – 203

Dan Seeger

205. Los Lobos, “Will the Wolf Survive” While the track “Will the Wolf Survive” provided Los Lobos with the title, slightly modified, for their major label debut, it was the last song written for the album. According to the band members, the impetus for the song came in part from Dave Alvin, undoubtedly hanging around because of his personal and professional connections with the album’s co-producer, T Bone Burnett. Alvin surveyed the material Los Lobos had assembled for the 1984 release and suggested that what the band really needed was an anthem, something that truly and properly represented the their musical and cultural outlook. The worrisome … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 205 – 203

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One for Friday: Marshall Crenshaw, “Whatever Way the Wind Blows”

Dan Seeger

In my earliest couple of years at the college radio station, I mentally differentiated between those artists who completely belonged to us kids — those that I could see as rough contemporaries — and those who were, for lack of a better term, “adults.” This wasn’t always based purely on chronology. The Cure, for example, released their fourth studio album at around the same time Marshall Crenshaw released his first, but it was the Detroit native who I automatically slotted into a sort of college rock elder statesman role. After all, the Cure were still crafting songs that spoke directly … Continue reading One for Friday: Marshall Crenshaw, “Whatever Way the Wind Blows”

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College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 208 – 206

Dan Seeger

208. King Crimson, “Elephant Talk” Sure, there are many ways the King Crimson single “Elephant Talk” lives on, but perhaps its most unique legacy is lending its name to a groundbreaking web-based fan site. Well before most were adept at relating addresses with a well placed @, King Crimson fan Toby Howard started a newsletter meant to be distributed via email. Dubbed “Elephant Talk,” the first issue was distributed in the summer of 1991. That eventually led to a website of the same name, which further evolved into a wiki-style platform years later, after some twelve hundred plus issues over fifteen years, … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 208 – 206

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One for Friday: Ani Difranco, “When You Were Mine”

Dan Seeger

Though I grew up when Prince was at the height of his chart-dominating powers, I came to Purple One’s music late. It was my own fault. I listened to that melange of inverted pop, fiery funk, rafter-rattling rock, and provocatively challenging lyrics and I couldn’t find my entryway. I even remember standing in a record store holding vinyl copies of both Sign o’ the Times and Paul Simon’s Hearts and Bones, mulling which one to purchase, only to have a friend essentially tell me I wasn’t ready for Prince’s double album masterwork. He was right. (By now, I own it; … Continue reading One for Friday: Ani Difranco, “When You Were Mine”

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College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 211 – 209

Dan Seeger

211. The Boomtown Rats, “I Don’t Like Mondays” I suspect every last one of my college radio cohorts back in the day knew the backstory of the most notable single the Boomtown Rats ever released. At the very least, they had the basics. The band’s lead singer and chief songwriter, Bob Geldof, composed it after encountering a news story about Brenda Spencer, a sixteen-year-old in San Diego who opened fire on a neighboring schoolyard from a window in her family home. When a reporter got her on the telephone, she explained her motivation by blandly noting, “I don’t like Mondays.” (Spencer later … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 211 – 209