Category: Music

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Top 40 Smash Taps: “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)”

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. The Pointer Sisters had enjoyed five Top 40 singles by the time Bonnie, the second youngest of the group, left to pursue a solo career, in 1977. As these things often go, the remaining siblings wound up scoring their biggest hit to date the following year, with a version of Bruce Springsteen’s “Fire”, which became their first Top 10 hit, peaking at #2 … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)”

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College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1996, 34 and 33

Dan Seeger

34. Paul Westerberg, Eventually Officially, Eventually was the sophomore solo effort from former (and, improbably, future) Replacements frontman Paul Westerberg. (I actually consider All Shook Down, the final album credited to the Replacements, to be Westerberg’s solo bow, but I’m letting that go for today’s purposes.) It was also the first indication that things weren’t necessarily going to go swimmingly for the flannel-clad Twin Cities troubadour in his solo career, at least from a critical acclaim standpoint. He was regularly and rightly cited as one of the great rock ‘n’ roll songwriters of his generation throughout his tenure with The … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1996, 34 and 33

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Spectrum Check

Dan Seeger

I actively tried to avoid the film I reviewed this week at Spectrum Culture. It’s not because I thought it would be bad, but instead I was worried it would be good, which would make it disheartening and grueling. Sure enough, the new documentary about the few remaining physicians who provide late-term abortions kept reminding me or the sorry state of reproductive rights in the country. The film is solid. It’s the oppressive, anti-empathetic, woman-hating culture that’s a mess. I also spared a few sentences for our latest Monthly Mixtape, extolling the virtues of a song of the excellent new … Continue reading Spectrum Check

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One for Friday: Gandalf, “Can You Travel in the Dark Alone”

Dan Seeger

By the time I was paying attention, the Middle Earth adventures of J.R.R. Tolkien had fully crossed over into the province of nerd culture. It was exclusively for fans of sci-fi and fantasy, including those budding poindexters who sat alone reading it on the back of the bus carrying them to middle school (that would be me). By now, over a billion dollars in box office has shifted the material into the greater public consciousness and broader respectability, even if referencing a certain overt devotion to the fictional worlds Tolkien created remains a handy way to, say, establish a television … Continue reading One for Friday: Gandalf, “Can You Travel in the Dark Alone”

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Spectrum Check

Dan Seeger

I was kept plenty busy by Spectrum Culture, this week. For one thing, this week was a fairly uncommon instance of me having two films to review instead of one, although that was more a product of a slight tangle with the prior week’s schedule than any ambition on my part. So even though I shouldn’t have been scrambling to get it all in, that’s exactly what happened. I started with a significant disappointment: Lynn Shelton’s new film. I really enjoyed her prior directorial effort, but the new film is a mess, entirely wasting her best cast yet (and sadly … Continue reading Spectrum Check

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One for Friday: Bill Janovitz, “Shoulder”

Dan Seeger

I once had a clear sense of the proper life cycle of a musician. It started with a band, typically lasting a handful of albums, until just enough success was achieved that one or more of the members could move on to solo careers. And that was pretty much the whole story. Led Zeppelin didn’t get back together. The Who Didn’t get back together. The Band or Creedence Clearwater Revival? They didn’t get back together, even if their former members had only the most intermittent solo careers. Sure, the oldies revival in the nineteen-eighties meant there were a bunch of … Continue reading One for Friday: Bill Janovitz, “Shoulder”

Music26 Comments

Top 40 Smash Taps: “Brand New Girlfriend”

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. I find it interesting that so much modern country music has shown up in this feature, as if the chart compilers at Billboard have felt obligated to acknowledge the widespread popularity of the genre, but only want to do it half-heartedly. “This is popular, eh?” the Hot 100 chart seems to say. “Here, it made it to the Top 40. Now leave us … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “Brand New Girlfriend”

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Spectrum Check

Dan Seeger

This week at Spectrum Culture, I did something that I can’t believe it never occurred to me to do before: I wrote about Too Much Joy. I can’t overstate how important the band was to me and the bulk of my friends and cohorts at the campus radio station, and yet I’d never previously thought to celebrate them when my turn came up in the Revisit/Rediscover feature in the music section. I’m pleased to report that what I turned in may be my favorite thing that I’ve written for the site. And it even caught the attention of Tim Quirk, … Continue reading Spectrum Check