There was a time when there seemed to be no more enticing goal than to work eternally in college radio. Just continuing on in broadcasting had its appeal too, although it was hardly a field known for its stability and … Continue reading College Countdown: KROQ-FM’s Top 40 Songs of 1987, An Introduction
This week at Spectrum Culture, the significant mound of assignments I’ve picked up lately started to catch up with me (though not at the level of the next crazy few days). It was one of those rare weeks when I had two new film reviews up. As it turns out, both were documentaries and both were at least somewhat disappointing. First, I offered an assessment of the new film from Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg. I selected it because I figured its subject matter–baseball knuckleballers–made me a little more qualified to review it than many of my cohorts at the … Continue reading Spectrum Check
I have a pretty solid memory when it comes to chronology of the favorite music from my initial college radio days, but I’ll admit that I sometimes get it a little jumbled up. For example, I’m long assumed that Miracle Legion’s sophomore full length, Me and Mr. Ray, came out before I ever showed up at the station. I thought it was one of those hidden treasures that I somehow stumbled upon while scanning the music library during one of my late night shifts (or, more likely, was told about it by one of my station elders) and returned to … Continue reading One for Friday: Miracle Legion, “So Good”
2. Weezer, Weezer Unlikely as it may have seemed that a band that had only released their debut album seven years earlier was in dire need of a comeback, that was exactly the situation Weezer was in when they released their third album in late spring of 2001. Following a surprising smash with the oddball pop of their self-titled debut in 1994, Weezer’s sophomore effort, 1996’s Pinkerton was widely seen as a failure, although admiration for the record has swelled in the years since. Rivers Cuomo, the main creative force behind the band, put Weezer on hiatus while he toyed … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 50 Albums of 2001, 2 and 1
It was a fairly straightforward week for me at Spectrum Culture. I reviewed a film called Breathing, which is the directorial debut of a fairly significant Austrian actor (although not one who’s significant enough for his film to stir much more than a blip of curiosity over on this side of the planet). On the music side, I reviewed the second full-length album from the Australian band Van She. This was one of my periodic attempts to select a release for review that’s somewhat outside of my typical realm, which actually stymied me just enough that I turned it in … Continue reading Spectrum Check
It’s almost too easy to keep up on new music while working in college radio. Whether working directly with the music as part of the leadership staff or sitting in the air chair on a regular basis, the great discoveries just keep on coming. Checking the mail is like rooting through Santa’s bag and scanning the new releases shelf could upend even the most meticulously planned playlist. Sometimes all it took was a crazily wonderful album cover to crack open the door to entire new worlds. It gets so much harder after graduation (or some other adjustment) necessitates moving on … Continue reading One for Friday: Velocity Girl, “Sorry Again”
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 love that … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Tap: “Six Feet Deep”
I had a busy week at Spectrum Culture, in large part because it was my turn to contribute to the Revisit series on the music side. While my previous efforts were focused on different releases that did require me to give them fresh spins to reacquaint myself with their pleasures (and think about them in a context that now included significantly more hindsight), this time I decided to write about an album that I know extremely well. I’m also quite happy that my observations about the overly self-assured dismissive attitudes about differing opinions among the fans of the band in … Continue reading Spectrum Check
Thanks to the wonders of the world wide web, I have a more eclectic music collection than I ever could have imagined, and diversity among my music was always a goal. I still have my clear particular favorite sounds and certain genres have only slight representation, but I have stuff in my iTunes that still sort of boggles my mind whenever it shuffles up. For example, thanks to a generous soul who used to employ fair use of his possessions to share some music on a regular basis, I have a copy of a 1969 single by a band called … Continue reading One for Friday: The Amazing Pickles, “I Like Ice Cream”
6. Stereolab, Sound-Dust Stereolab was just starting to rattle college radio’s proverbial cage at about the time I secured my undergraduate degree, a task undertook in concerted foot-dragging fashion, I assure you. The album Mars Audiac Quintet was released about a year after I graduated, its lead single, “Ping Pong,” nicely mapping out the new path noncommercial radio stations might take now that their profit-driven counterparts further up the dial had fully and completely appropriated grunge rock. The music was poppy and light but also archly different, introducing oddity through the casualness of its mildly disenchanted deconstruction of traditional songcraft. … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 50 Albums of 2001, 6 and 5
Coffee for Two 