8. The dB’s, Stands for Decibels Trouser Press wrote: “Thanks to an amazing timewarp, this band is with us right now–and almost singlehandedly saving power pop’s reputation.” Some records announce that they’re special from the very first notes. Stands for … Continue reading College Countdown: The Trouser Press Top 10 Albums of 1981, 8 (tie)
This was another fairly light week for me, in part because I’m still trying to catch up on music reviews I owe. One of those went up: an assessment of the new album from Crooked Fingers. This was one of the instances in which I was assigned the release instead of claimed it. It actually took me a really long time to figure out my angle on the review. As the numerical rating indicates, this is one of those albums that was clearly good, but didn’t stir me especially deeply. It’s not background music, but it’s one of those CDs … Continue reading Spectrum Check
There is some music that simply sounds like 90FM to me. Or rather, it sounds like the version of 90FM that was there for me when I was an undergraduate student. Tuning in to the campus radio station was like reading a letter from my closest friends. The music that achieved the greatest success there often connected with someone there in a deeper way that a simple admiration for its catchy hooks (although, let’s not diminish the importance of that factor). It didn’t necessarily have moony, heartfelt lyrics that expressed some unspoken melancholy among my friends or, conversely, some triumphant … Continue reading One for Friday: Blackgirls, “Happy”
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. When I started pulling together the list of songs that qualified for the “Top 40 Smash Taps” feature, my geeky, secret hope was that I’d find at least one artist who accomplished the bittersweet feat of peaking at #40 on more than one occasion. Turns out it wasn’t such a crazy notion; several different acts have watched as two different tracks stalled at … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “I’ve Seen All Good People” and “Rhythm of Love”
8. The Undertones, Positive Touch Trouser Press wrote: “Derry’s finest grow up without growing old. Refined yet rocking, and true to its title.” Naturally, Trouser Press isn’t going to provide a nice, clean exercise in backwards counting. Idiosyncrasy must run … Continue reading College Countdown: The Trouser Press Top 10 Albums of 1981, 8 (tie)
As had been established over and over again in the “Disclaimer” section of this weekly feature, I genuinely try to make sure every song I post here is out of print, at least in terms of physical copies that can be ordered through a record store. Tim Quirk from the great Too Much Joy convinced me a while back that any similar reticence around sharing sound digitally-available music was at least somewhat misguided since I’m not all that concerned about damaging the ability of label bigwigs from lining their already overstuffed pockets (round these here parts, we call it “The … Continue reading One for Friday: Los Lobos, “I Got Loaded”
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. Allan Sherman’s recording career came about because of a performance at a testimonial dinner for an outgoing label president. Jim Conkling was stepping down as the top man at Warner Bros. records in 1961, when the label was still something a fledgling upstart, largely getting by with comedy albums. Sherman worked in broadcasting at the time, most notably as the creator of the … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “Crazy Downtown”
Yesterday, I wrote about Jennifer Jason Leigh’s acting in The Hudsucker Proxy as part of the ongoing Greatish Performances series. As I noted when I first cooked up (okay, stole) that recurring feature, the inclusion of a specific performance doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m declaring it the very best work of the thespian in question. In fact, in the case of Leigh, there’s a very different turn that I instinctively invoke in those rare occasions when I might be asked to name her best screen performance. I don’t think Leigh was ever better than she was in the 1995 film … Continue reading One for Friday: Jennifer Jason Leigh and Mare Winningham, “If I Wanted”
When I was a student treating the college radio station as a second home, one of the music magazines that loomed the largest for me was Trouser Press. And yet, to the best of my recollection, I’d never seen an issue of the publication. After all, it had ceded publication five years before I ever crossed the threshold of the station. Trouser Press co-founder and co-editor Ira Robbins presided over a fat paperback slab of incredibly thorough artist biographies and album-by-album reviews of their respective discographies (it’s the fourth edition of the book that sits proudly on the bookshelf in … Continue reading College Countdown: The Trouser Press Top 10 Albums of 1981, An Introduction
I’ve always liked the idea of a grand artistic community informally springing up in the heart of a robust city. The brand of nostalgia that Woody Allen traffics in (before dismissing it with trademark cynicism) with Midnight in Paris has a high, almost undeniable appeal. If you love some form of entertainment art–theater, literature, painting, film–how is it not a thrill to think of artists at the peak of the form sparking off of one another, intermingling their inspiration like some big, crazy TV sitcom crossover. Pet Sounds is most interesting when considered against Rubber Soul which begat it and … Continue reading One for Friday: Kevn Kinney, “MacDougal Blues”
Coffee for Two 