Sometime during the making of Too True, the third full-length from Dum Dum Girls, frontwoman Dee Dee (also known as Kristin Welchez) literally lost her voice. According to her, that caused a slow-down in the creative process, giving extra scrutiny … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf: Too True
Here is a story told to me lately by a man named John Cronin, who is the director of the Pace Academy for the Environment, at Pace University. Cronin has known Seeger for thirty years. “About two winters ago, on Route 9 outside Beacon, one winter day, it was freezing–rainy and slushy, a miserable winter day–the war in Iraq is just heating up and the country’s in a poor mood,” Cronin said. “I’m driving north, and on the other side of the road I see from the back a tall, slim figure in a hood and coat. I’m looking, and … Continue reading Pete Seeger, 1919 – 2014
The above graphic stands as a nice transition from the previous College Countdown list to the one we’re about to embark upon. The 90FM’s Top 90 list just completed dated from 1996 (going nicely with the edition from 1989 that … Continue reading College Countdown, The First CMJ Album Chart, An Introduction
One of the things I appreciated most from the very beginning with Spectrum Culture was the site’s editorial mandate to reserve five-star reviews–the top of our rating system–for only the very best of the best. There was even a process … Continue reading Spectrum Check
I’m fairly certain I owe my knowledge of the Gay Dad track “Joy!”–and indeed my knowledge of the band at all–to one of the sampler CDs that came bundled in issues of CMJ New Music Monthly. The single was first released in 1999, well past my time toiling in commercial radio and before I reentered the rare air of college radio. In this sonic purgatory, I was trying desperately to keep informed on new music, finding myself increasingly dispirited by the drably catchy material that dominated the other local radio station that was at all palatable. Into this sonic purgatory, … Continue reading One for Friday: Gay Dad, “Joy!”
2. Cake, Fashion Nugget Among college radio kids in the mid-nineties, there was a pretty healthy market for songs that took critical aim at their own music fandom. For example, Ben Folds Five first got noticed with “Underground.” In the … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1996, 2 and 1
The long farewell to my tenure as a Spectrum Culture writer turns this week to contributions made to the music section. As I noted last week, I was originally brought on as strictly a film writer, but I was given … Continue reading Spectrum Check
In the most recent installment of the College Countdown feature, I continued to let the writing be colored by personal disgruntlement over my alma mater station’s embrace of mediocre (to be kind) soundtracks in the mid-nineties. Realistically, though, those student programmers were properly, albeit somewhat painfully, reflecting the state of the music scene at the time. Just as blockbuster, mass appeal soundtrack albums were the norm about a decade earlier, round about 1996, filmmakers and labels were actively pursuing the alternative music fan with soundtrack efforts, maybe in part because the likes of Hole, while big in their own way, … Continue reading One for Friday: Boss Hog, “I’m Not Like Everybody Else”
My strong impression of Bruce Springsteen’s general approach to crafting albums is that he agonizes over every bit of every song, and then he agonizes some more about the way those songs fit together. This leads to the perception (and … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf: High Hopes
4. Various Artists, The Cable Guy soundtrack To the degree that anyone’s especially invested of reevaluating the bygone cinematic output of either Ben Stiller or Jim Carrey these days, I think the critical consensus on The Cable Guy has shifted … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1996, 4 and 3
Coffee for Two 