Category: Music

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Top 40 Smash Taps: “Clones (We’re All)”

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. In the late nineteen-sixties, a high school student named Vincent Damon Furnier, a recent transplant from Detroit to Phoenix, started a band with a few friends. They called themselves the Spiders, a name they eventually jettisoned in favor of Nazz. That was problematic because there was already a group calling themselves Nazz, with a talented guy named Todd Rundgren in the lineup. By … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “Clones (We’re All)”

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College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 69 – 67

Dan Seeger

69. The Caulfields, Whirligig Much as I’ve groused about the bland uniformity of alternative rock radio circa 1995, dominated as it was by pallid echoes of the Seattle sound that crashed playlists a couple years earlier, largely thanks to Nirvana and Pearl Jam, there were a couple other dismal genre subsets that had secure footholds on the airwaves. The Caulfields nearly represent one of those. Hailing from Newark, the band was part of the long death rattle of A&M Records, the once prestigious imprint of Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss that had a self-destructive proclivity through the late-eighties and early-nineties … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 69 – 67

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One for Friday: The Darling Buds, “Burst”

Dan Seeger

I’ve featured the Darling Buds in this space once before, writing about the way my affection for the band was compounded by their recording life cycle synching up exactly with my tenure as an undergraduate student who basically set up camp in the college radio station. At that time, I included a track from the band’s swan song. Today, it’s time to consider their debut. I don’t recall with certainty when I first encountered Pop Said… but online sources suggest it was released very early in 1989. That would certainly help explain why it locked in so solidly with me. … Continue reading One for Friday: The Darling Buds, “Burst”

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The New Releases Shelf: I Love You, Honeybear

Dan Seeger

Though I suppose it doesn’t matter so much on record, Father John Misty definitely looks the part. The identity adopted by Josh Tillman, at least as far back as the exemplary 2012 album Fear Fun, calls to mind some odd and mildly lackadaisical man of the cloth, which is roughly what the singer-songwriter presents with his lanky frame, propensity for bargain suits, and a beard so thick and bodacious it looks like the merest provocation could send it scuttling off to begin a new life as an especially posh footstool. He looks like he’s comes in from a gnarly forest after … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf: I Love You, Honeybear

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College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 71 and 70

Dan Seeger

71. Big Sugar, 500 Pounds Wikipedia describes Big Sugar as “a Canadian blues, reggae band,” which is about as terrifying of a description as I can imagine. They had a decent run in their homeland, with a couple platinum albums. 500 Pounds, their sophomore effort, was the first to go gold, a promising enough turn of events that it was released in the United States. The album was something a slow build, with the group generating a good chunk of those sales on the basis of their live show (you know, the place where blues/reggae outfits prosper, if only because … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 71 and 70

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One for Friday: The BellRays, “Pinball City”

Dan Seeger

My favorite story about the BellRays doesn’t belong to me. It belongs to my friend Jon. As I remember it, he was attending one of the rare but wondrous music festival catering to trashy garage rock and rockabilly-tinged punk that were a little more prevalent a decade or two ago, when the concept of a band like Southern Culture on the Skids having a minor radio hit wasn’t entirely absurd. As one does at festivals, my friend wandered a bit, a little aimlessly and a little attuned to finding the good beer on what was surely a hot day. He … Continue reading One for Friday: The BellRays, “Pinball City”

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Top 40 Smash Taps: “Let It Be Me”

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. Okay, acknowledging that Wikipedia is a shaky source, here goes: Over the course of a music career that began with “No Place For Me,” recorded when he was working as a disk jockey, Willie Nelson has released over one hundred singles, including five last year. While the red-headed stranger has had an abundance of huge hits on country radio and is at least as … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “Let It Be Me”

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College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 73 and 72

Dan Seeger

73. Grant McLennan, Horsebreaker Star By the time Grant McLennan released the album Horsebreaker Star, there were a healthy number of years that had passed since the demise of his band the Go-Betweens. Between the formal break-up, in December 1989, and this album, McLennan released two other solo outings, so there’s no real reason to characterize Horsebreaker Star as some unique statement of purpose, an announcement about his determination for enduring creative relevance. And yet that’s exactly what the record seems like, both in its content and through a few more superficial indicators (it’s the first solo album on which he’s … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 73 and 72

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One for Friday: Cyndi Lauper, “Hole in My Heart (All the Way to China)”

Dan Seeger

There were only three nominees in the Best Original Song category at the 61st Academy Awards, presented to films released in 1988. This was the first time I can recall hearing the argument that it was time to eliminate the category altogether, the proposal accompanied by the insistence that it was a relic of the time when Hollywood was still cranking out original musicals on a regular basis. Even though the nineteen-eighties were boom years for soundtracks, there was a sense that the process of assembling a batch of pop songs that could be slapped onto cassettes (that was the … Continue reading One for Friday: Cyndi Lauper, “Hole in My Heart (All the Way to China)”

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College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 76 – 74

Dan Seeger

#76. Various Artists, Gag Me with a Spoon This album practically seems like it was genetically designed to earn spins at my radio alma mater. Packed full of Wisconsin bands (label Don’t Records was, I believe, based in Milwaukee), the conceit of the release finds the group delivering reinventions of some of the most familiar songs of the nineteen-eighties. There’s also a nice hat tip to local heroes Violent Femmes with a cover of “I Held Her in My Arms,” hardly a smash hit but still a damn fine song. The compilation is spotted with bands not all that well known … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 76 – 74