Category: Music

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One for Friday: Miracle Legion, “So Good”

Dan Seeger

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”

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College Countdown: CMJ Top 50 Albums of 2001, 2 and 1

Dan Seeger

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

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Spectrum Check

Dan Seeger

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

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One for Friday: Velocity Girl, “Sorry Again”

Dan Seeger

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”

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Spectrum Check

Dan Seeger

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

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One for Friday: The Amazing Pickles, “I Like Ice Cream”

Dan Seeger

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”

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College Countdown: CMJ Top 50 Albums of 2001, 6 and 5

Dan Seeger

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

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Spectrum Check

Dan Seeger

I was back to a fairly typical week for Spectrum Culture, beginning with a movie review. Unfortunately, it wasn’t much a movie. On the surface of it, the film is one of those desperately quirky efforts that is among the most painful material a modern fan of independent cinema is routinely saddled with. It’s even more of a mess than that. I also had a music review go up this week. The record I reviewed is a prime example of one that doesn’t necessary spring to mind when considering the best, most vital or most challenging music of the year, … Continue reading Spectrum Check

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One for Friday: Steve Wynn, “Carolyn”

Dan Seeger

To begin with an enormous understatement, it should be obvious by now that I harbor deep nostalgia for those songs that provided the soundtrack to my years in college radio, especially those that accompanied my time as an undergraduate student in central Wisconsin. There’s an added subset to consider: I reserve a special affection for the music that carried me through the bittersweet stretch of time in 1990 that I lovingly refer to a My Summer in Exile. It was the one summer during my years of higher education that I went back home to live instead of staying in … Continue reading One for Friday: Steve Wynn, “Carolyn”