Category: Music

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Top 40 Smash Taps: “Crazy Eyes for You”

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. Apt Records was started in the late nineteen-fifties as a subsidiary of ABC-Paramount, which itself is widely considered to be the first major label to be formed after the rock ‘n’ roll era truly got underway. Whether by design of happenstance, Apt Records stuck solely with singles, apparently releasing not one one full-length album during its eight years of existence. In that span, … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “Crazy Eyes for You”

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College Countdown: CMJ Top 50 Albums of 2001, 34 and 33

Dan Seeger

34. Mogwai, Rock Action The Scottish band Mogwai is named after the critters in Joe Dante’s 1984 dark comedy Gremlins. It was intended to be a temporary name, but the band never switched it and it eventually took hold. Certainly, they were locked into it by the time their third album, Rock Action, was released. Mogwai had a reputation for ethereal, meditative music, largely delivered as instrumentals, although Rock Action featured guest vocals by the likes of Gruff Rhys of Super Furry Animals (singing in Welsh, no less) and David Pajo of Slint. Further demonstrating their fascination with bygone pop … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 50 Albums of 2001, 34 and 33

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One for Friday: The Replacements, “Beer for Breakfast”

Dan Seeger

Admittedly, I’ve sort of got beer on the brain these days, something that’s hard to avoid in my neck of the nation. But I swear there are other things my mind wanders to during the day. Like fabulously messy songs about drinking beer at unlikely hours of the day. While I’m anticipated that our household will drink more than its fair share of beer over the course of the next several days, I don’t think we’ll be resorting to beer for breakfast anytime soon, even though we have a couple remaining bottles of an especially suitable choice for that activity … Continue reading One for Friday: The Replacements, “Beer for Breakfast”

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Top 40 Smash Taps: “Limbo Rock”

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 think it’s fair to type that the Champs are known for one song: “Tequila.” That song was originally issued as the B-side to “Train to Nowhere,” a single released on Challenge Records, the label started up in part by Gene Autry. The song was recorded in late December of 1957 and released less than a month later. Once DJs flipped the record … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “Limbo Rock”

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Spectrum Check

Dan Seeger

This week at Spectrum Culture, I started with a piece on the music review side. I’ve previous written on Vivian Girls and La Sera, so it only seemed logical to me that I should continue weighing in on all the groups bobbing across that shared orbit. That meant writing on the second Best Coast album, not really knowing when I claimed it that the band was on the receiving end of enormous antipathy. That at least gave me an angle with which to start the review. I also had my regular contribution on the film side, writing about the new … Continue reading Spectrum Check

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Top 40 Smash Taps: “The Last Time I Made Love”

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. Jeffrey Osborne was the lead singer for the R&B band L.T.D. when they had a Top 5 hit in 1977 with the song “(Every Time I Turn Around) Back in Love Again.” He put out his first solo album in 1982, doing well on the R&B charts but struggling to generate the some heat on the Billboard Hot 100. In fact, one of … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “The Last Time I Made Love”

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College Countdown: CMJ Top 50 Albums of 2001, 38 and 37

Dan Seeger

38. The Shins, Oh, Inverted World The debut album from the Shins holds a special place of significance for me in my return journey through college radio. This was the first CD I bought at the primary local, independently-owned record store in my new city of residence. What’s more, I bought it specifically because of the songs I heard played on WPRK. I think I actually decided I had to have it when I myself played “Know Your Onion” on the air, a return to a happy, costly time several years later when filling out my radio playlist directly coinciding … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 50 Albums of 2001, 38 and 37

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One for Friday: Nuclear Valdez, “Where Do We Go From Here”

Dan Seeger

When I was an impressionable youth working in college radio, I know I was supposed to be learning to love the arch, indie abstractions of bands like Pavement and Guided by Voices. They were releasing their first records then and provoking genuflections from much of the music press, small and eager as it was. Authenticity was always a major criteria for those of us playing music on the left end of the dial, especially as we saw bands that used to operate solely in our territory achieve significant crossover success, a group led by U2 and R.E.M., but also including … Continue reading One for Friday: Nuclear Valdez, “Where Do We Go From Here”