Category: Music

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Spectrum Check

Dan Seeger

So while I spend my morning wishing some rain away, I’ll share the pieces I contributed to Spectrum Culture this week. I was present in both the film and movie sections, including a review of the sophomore effort by Little Boots. I’ll admit — as I essentially do right in the text of the review — that I sometimes feel a little out of my depth when writing on more electronica-based releases, but I must admit that I’m fairly pleased with the way in which I described the song “Every Night I Say a Prayer.” On the film side, I … Continue reading Spectrum Check

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One for Friday: Karel Fialka, “Hey, Matthew”

Dan Seeger

During my first semester of college, I had a happy Sunday night ritual. After listening to The College Count-Up on 90FM–both before and after I became a member of the on-air staff there–I would head downstairs with a select group of discerning music fans from neighboring dorm rooms. We’d take over the TV room, usually with a ridiculous assortment of snacks and beverages–I recall mixing up jugs of Kool-Aid and consuming unseemly cheese spread on crackers–and watch MTV until after midnight. Our viewing typically started with an episode of The Young Ones, but we were really there for 120 Minutes, … Continue reading One for Friday: Karel Fialka, “Hey, Matthew”

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Spectrum Check

Dan Seeger

I spent much of this week in recovery, in a sort of spiritual and mental hangover over the insanely busy stretch of work that preceded it. So I’m a little worried that my contributions to Spectrum Culture were a touch discombobulated. On the music side, I wrote a piece on the new album from Montreal’s No Joy. It sounded pretty good to me, but I did struggle in the writing process to find the hook of the review. It’s definitely one of those times when I wanted to write, “It’s pretty good,” and be done with it. The chatting-with-buddies version … Continue reading Spectrum Check

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One for Friday: Gunbunnies, “Put a Tail on Your Kite”

Dan Seeger

There were all sorts of bands and albums from my old 90FM days that I returned to repeatedly because they carried with them some sort of added import and history, even it was something as simple of a strong memory of playing a track on the air and having my appreciation kick in sharply. But there were so many more than I had only the vaguest recollections of, even at the time. These were albums that I would stumble upon anew while browsing through the stacks, remember that I liked it when it moved through rotation, play it again, nod … Continue reading One for Friday: Gunbunnies, “Put a Tail on Your Kite”

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Top 40 Smash Taps: “I Can’t Wait”

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. Patrick “Sleepy” Brown is the son of Jimmy Brown, who served as the lead vocalist and saxophonist for the nineteen-seventies funk band Brick, best known for the mid-decade hit “Dazz”. With seventies soul music wrapped into his DNA, Sleepy Brown brought that bygone sound into more modern music as one of the co-founders and primary creative forces behind the Atlanta production outfit Organized … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “I Can’t Wait”

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Spectrum Check

Dan Seeger

This week has been a blur for me, thanks to a stupefying number of hours at work. If questioned without any external references, I’d have no idea what I wrote for Spectrum Culture. Luckily, I can scroll through the site and find out. Of course, I may have already forgotten about The Numbers Station by now under just about any circumstances. I presume this may be the film that sets John Cusack to considering nabbing himself a short-season cable series. On the music side, I reviewed the new album from the Black Angels. It’s fine, but I found very little … Continue reading Spectrum Check

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One for Friday: Diesel Park West, “All the Myths on Sunday”

Dan Seeger

When I got started in college radio in the late nineteen-eighties, there was still a lingering myth about broadcasting being a good route to do something truly daring, even subversive. It was, after all, a radio station that had played George Carlin’s routine about the seven words that can’t be said on television, leading to a landmark Supreme Court case that got the great comedian’s brilliant skewed linguistic analysis forever entered into the federal record. And the notion of the darkly philosophizing deejay still cropped up every now and again, as if everyone who got behind the microphone could hold … Continue reading One for Friday: Diesel Park West, “All the Myths on Sunday”

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College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1996, 78 and 77

Dan Seeger

78. White Zombie, Supersexy Swingin’ Sounds Perhaps every generation gets the Renaissance Man it deserves. The former Robert Bartleh Cummings first found fame as the co-founder and driving creative force behind the band White Zombie, a group with which he shared an adopted second half of a name. The group released four proper studio albums from the late-eighties to the early-nineties, with the remix effort Supersexy Swingin’ Sounds serving as their official parting shot in 1996. Featuring modified fan favorites with parenthetical names such as “Meet Bambi in the King’s Harem Mix” and “Sex on the Rocks Mix,” the album … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1996, 78 and 77