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Top 40 Smash Taps: “Angel”

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 are at least three waves to Rod Stewart’s solo career: the early years, when he was still an amazing belter with spotty but acceptable taste in material; the middle years, when he was desperately singing any schlocky song he (or his people) thought might become a hit; and the later years, when he lazily crooned standards, knowing that a cushy, lucrative spot … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “Angel”

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College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 44-42

Dan Seeger

44. Elastica, Elastica I owe the 1995 on-air lineup of 90FM an apology. Down around #67 on our chart, I groused that the self-titled debut of Elastica didn’t show up anywhere on this list. Turns out my research methods were highly faulty, because the post-punk sensation out of London is right here, very respectably taking up territory right around the midpoint of the year-end tally. If the attention heaped on Elastica almost makes this placement seem modest, they were also one of those bands that endured one of those rapid-fire turn-arounds from hyped adoration to snippy backlash. Part of what … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 44-42

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One for Friday: Ed Haynes, “I Want to Kill Everybody”

Dan Seeger

I’ve written about Ed Haynes’s debut album, Ed Haynes Sings Ed Haynes, in this space previously, bit it’s been a while. In my recollection, this was one of those albums that arrived during the late winter/early spring of 1989, a blessed time that I’ve only partially elevated in grandeur because it coincided with my first semester in a leadership role at my college radio station. Though Haynes had mighty competition in our new music rotation, this album was one that I and my fellow deejays returned to repeatedly, the comic-tinged, upbeat folk songs provided a nice little breather in the … Continue reading One for Friday: Ed Haynes, “I Want to Kill Everybody”

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Top 40 Smash Taps: “In the Mood”

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. Thanks to K-tel comedy music collections that would probably strike me as a form of torture if I tried to sit through one of them now, I probably knew Ray Stevens before just about any other artist included in this series. His various Top 40 hits from the nineteen-sixties and nineteen-seventies took up a lot of the vinyl on those compilations that I obsessively … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “In the Mood”

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College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 46 and 45

Dan Seeger

46. Wax, 13 Unlucky Numbers While the nineteen-eighties was surely the peak of influence for music videos, the nineteen-nineties, at least the early to middle part of that decade-long span, represents the stretch of time when the directors behind those promotional efforts had their collective heyday. I don’t remember anyone really talking about the filmmakers behind the seminal videos of MTV’s first years, but director Spike Jonze was as famous — or maybe even more famous at times — as the artists for whom he helped craft music videos. Yes, the Los Angeles punk band Wax had just enough credibility that … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 46 and 45

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One for Friday: Pipettes, “Pull Shapes” (Live on NPR)

Dan Seeger

Sometimes you just fall in love with a band. I don’t mean a band comes along and are so great that they are immediately elevated to the level of favorite. I mean genuine, unexplainable head over heels affection that is roughly akin to that first swelling of puppy love when that cute guy or girl made eye contact across the crowded middle school classroom. It’s not love that’s meaningful or long-lasting, nor is grounded in a instinctual need for lifelong commitment. But it also helps define every similar swelling of the heart that follows. From the moment I first heard … Continue reading One for Friday: Pipettes, “Pull Shapes” (Live on NPR)

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Top 40 Smash Taps: “Me (Without You)”

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. For a brief, noteworthy cultural moment in the nineteen-seventies, Andy Gibb was about as big a music artist could get. The youngest sibling of the furry Gibb clan, Andy was so committed to following in his brothers’ footsteps that one of his first bands was named after a Bee Gees song. He was eventually signed as a solo artist to RSO Records, the … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “Me (Without You)”

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College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 48 and 47

Dan Seeger

48. Push, Shamefaced Like a lot of college radio stations, 90FM proclaimed a strong dedication to local music. In the case of our station, we expanded “local” to mean anything that originated, even initially, in the state of Wisconsin. By the time I arrived there in the late nineteen-eighties, no one was really thinking of Violent Femmes as a Milwaukee band, for example, but that’s where they started, so that was good enough for us. There was one band that showed up in the mid-nineties that was not only from our town of Stevens Point, they were populated by, on … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 48 and 47

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One for Friday: The Shaking Family, “Tic Toc”

Dan Seeger

  A debate flared up from time to time at my radio station regarding the relative merits of digging into albums versus concentrating on the singles. It was more of a jabbering-over-beers debate than an almost-coming-to-blows one, but still it was there. Generally, I opted for the deep cuts argument, feeling it was what most differentiated us from just about everyone else on the dial. Especially in an era that found some of the most unlikely college rock bands and tracks crossing over (seriously, how on earth does “I Touch Myself” become a Top 5 song?) sticking to what the labels … Continue reading One for Friday: The Shaking Family, “Tic Toc”

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Top 40 Smash Taps: “I’m Movin’ On” and “Sticks and Stones”

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. Ray Charles is one of the few figures in the history of American popular music who deserves the descriptor “legend.” With well over one hundred singles to his credit, tallying up his total entries into the Billboard Top 40 is beyond my current mental energy, so let’s concentrate strictly on the two songs that qualify for this feature. “I’m Movin’ On” was the … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “I’m Movin’ On” and “Sticks and Stones”