28. Barenaked Ladies, Born on a Pirate Ship Being cult heroes to chipper nerds can be highly lucrative. Even before that bit of cultural cachet undoubtedly helped Barenaked Ladies land the job of providing the theme song to The Big … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1996, 28 and 27
In only had one full-length review at Spectrum Culture this week, but it was a fairly big one. When music reviews for the week were handed out, I picked up the new album from Cults. While I think the writing sums the record up well enough, I struggled to figure out the numeric ranking. On a gut level, it felt a little lower than the 4.0 I wound up with, but aside from one blip of a song, I also couldn’t find anything particularly problematic with the album. We’ll see how it ages for me. I also pitched in a … Continue reading Spectrum Check
As I’ve acknowledged previously, I and my college radio brethren shared a certain susceptibility to cover songs. That weakness increased immeasurably when the song getting the cover treatment was something that already fit into our alternative music format, a track we’d played exhaustively in its original derivation. It’s not like the Pixies had trouble getting airplay on their own, but covering a Jesus and Mary Chain song could make even their most skeptical fans in college radio (that would’ve been me) swoon. At my station, it was also sort of a stealth means to get around programming policy designed to … Continue reading One for Friday: The Wonder Stuff, “Closer to Fine”
30. Paul Cebar and the Milwaukeeans, Upstroke for the Downfolk Paul Cebar, like his band, is a Milwaukeean. His band’s sophomore release, Upstroke for the Downfolk, came out in 1995 and, like a lot of the music that fell in … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1996, 30 and 29
It was a fairly standard week for me at Spectrum Culture: one film review and one album reviews. On the movie side, I covered an entry in that most woeful of categories: the genially dark indie film comedy. I’m not sure why these sorts of films are so hard to pull off, but the art houses are littered with dismal examples of underdeveloped comedies every year. And, as is the case with the one I reviewed this week, a remarkable amount of the time, the films in question are blessed with incredible casts. On the music side, I drew the … Continue reading Spectrum Check
It’s clear that individuals can dictate how an entire radio station–especially one as loosely structured programmatically as a college radio station–sounds. Commonly, this comes from those in leadership positions, particular whoever has the task of sorting through the various music that shows up in the mailbox and making sure it gets into the studio, probably with some sort of note on guidance affixed to it for deejays who may never have heard of the artists in question. Sometimes, though, it manifests as a broader tribute. At the station of my undergraduate years, there was a long-lasting, I believe wholly unintentional … Continue reading One for Friday: In Tua Nua, “All I Wanted”
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. Rexton Rawlston Fernando Gordon was born in Jamaica, in 1966. By the time he arrived on American soils as a music industry figure in the mid nineteen-eighties, rubbing shoulders with the diverse likes of Chuck Berry and KRS-One, he had rechristened himself Shabba Ranks. He employed the Jamaican deejay practice of toasting (which was basically rapping), which made him sound especially unique to … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “Mr. Loverman”
32. Various Artists, Beautiful Girls soundtrack I’ve tended to denigrate the various soundtracks that have cropped on this list, implicitly–okay, sometimes directly–questioning the judgment of the on-air personnel that played them enough to necessitate their inclusion on this list. But … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1996, 32 and 31
Now that I look at it, this week at Spectrum Culture was entirely about music for me. Even the film review I contributed was bursting with it, appropriate considering it was about the legendary Muscle Shoals recording studios that have factored into countless classic rock songs. It’s a good thing the director was able to drop in plenty of the songs (which must have cost plenty), because the film doesn’t have much else to recommend it. On the music review side, I covered one disappointment and one winner, and they didn’t fall into those categories in quite the way I … Continue reading Spectrum Culture
I wanted to hear the Papas Fritas song “Smash This World” for a long, long time before I actual got the chance to do so. Well, maybe the double use of “long” is stretching it, but any span that stretches past weeks in our instant-gratification-takes-too-long world seems an eternity. I had “Smash This World” on an unofficial list of songs I needed to seek out when I make my yearly trek up to Stevens Point to pitch in at my alma mater radio station on Christmas Day, excursions I made in the late nineteen-nineties. The was culled from the reviews … Continue reading One for Friday: Papas Fritas, “Smash This World”
Coffee for Two 