One for Friday: The Lime Spiders, “My Favourite Room”
Love at first listen is a wondrous thing. I don’t think the Lime Spiders had an album in rotation when I arrived at my college radio station in the fall of 1988. Their sophomore full-length, Volatile, might have been trailing along in the big batch of recent records that weren’t quite given the full-scale push but also hadn’t transitioned to the greater library. Even if that was the case, Volatile wasn’t the album I found. Instead, for some reason, I slipped their debut, The Cave Comes Alive!, out of its place in the music stacks. Released in 1987, the album … Continue reading One for Friday: The Lime Spiders, “My Favourite Room”
Strategic Acts Donation — March 2017
Thus far, I’ve refrained from posting about a monthly charitable endeavor my household has embarked upon, largely because — a few exceptions notwithstanding and some pretty clear viewpoints creeping into my pop culture commentary from time to time — I’ve … Continue reading Strategic Acts Donation — March 2017
Now Playing: Logan
I’m glad Logan doesn’t end with a bonus scene plopped in the midst or at the end of the closing credits. In the cinematic landscape that is slowly, steadily being engulfed by the mighty Marvel model of moviemaking, the choice is novel enough to prompt a flurry of online interviews that call upon director James Mangold to explain himself. He has a few different explanations, slightly nuanced from each other, but the crux of it is always the same, and it speaks to precisely why I so appreciate the choice. Logan is — being blunt about it — a real movie … Continue reading Now Playing: Logan
But Jesus fever’s fallin’ all over you believers and lovers
Sixty-fifth in a series…. (Source) Continue reading But Jesus fever’s fallin’ all over you believers and lovers
The Art of the Sell: “The Silence of the Lambs” movie poster
These posts celebrate the movie trailers, movie posters, commercials, print ads, and other promotional material that stand as their own works of art. I could definitely be wrong, but this is how I remember it. There was a trip to Madison, an occasional necessity when attempting to generate content for a program filled with movie reviews on a radio station in a modest Central Wisconsin town. I was standing in the three screen bunker of a movie theater located in Westgate Mall, one of those ramshackle outposts of commerce that seemed to be on its last legs from the moment it … Continue reading The Art of the Sell: “The Silence of the Lambs” movie poster
College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 73 – 71
73. Frankie Goes to Hollywood, “Two Tribes” When Frankie Goes to Hollywood released their second single, in 1984, they faced the burden of following up a major smash. “Relax,” their debut, was one of those songs that grabbed pop culture by the shoulders and gave it a good shake, topping the charts in the U.K. despite (or maybe in part because of) its status as a track banned by the BBC. It just barely crossed into the Top 10 on the other side of the Atlantic, but it certainly seemed more ever-present than that peak suggests. For the next single, … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 73 – 71
From the Archive: 3:10 to Yuma
For the opening weekend of Logan, I initially figured I’d simply link to the consideration of the old Wolverine limited series that I wrote for Spectrum Culture ages ago. For reasons I still can’t pin down, this “Revisit” piece was … Continue reading From the Archive: 3:10 to Yuma
One for Friday: Martini Ranch, “World Without Walls”
There’s a long strange history of actors moonlighting in the music biz, from Robert Mitchum’s bizarre shimmy with calypso music to Ryan Gosling’s membership in the indie goth outfit Dead Man’s Bones. Things got especially weird during the nineteen-eighties, the wildest of musical decades. Only on that cultural roller coaster could Eddie Murphy nearly top the charts and Bruce Willis absolutely redefine the scope of vanity project by roping major stars into a fictional rock god history to accompany a record of appalling R&B covers. And only in the nineteen-eighties could character actor Bill Paxton be one-half of a new … Continue reading One for Friday: Martini Ranch, “World Without Walls”
Greatish Performances #30
#30 — Bill Paxton as Dale “Hurricane” Dixon in One False Move (Carl Franklin, 1992) Bill Paxton’s most iconic performances tend toward emotive intensity. To a degree, that’s simply a product of the films that crossed over into broader public consciousness, especially since Paxton was one of director James Cameron’s go-to supporting actors, briefly playing a punk with a hair-trigger temper in The Terminator and famously wailing, “Game over, man!” in Aliens. (The one time Paxton got to try out understatement in a Cameron film, in Titanic, he was saddled with some of the most leaden exposition dialogue in the … Continue reading Greatish Performances #30
Now Playing: Get Out
Sometimes the instinctual filing of a film into a single genre proves woefully inadequate. Get Out, the feature directorial debut of Jordan Peele, is a horror film. On the surface of it, that is clear and almost indisputable. It moves with rhythms familiar from a fleet of jolting predecessors, down to the particulars of a long drive down a highway book-ended by dense forest and a comic relief best pal who seems poised to somehow save the day. There’s a haunted past and a slow accumulation of menace. As a horror film, Get Out is proficient and engaging. It is … Continue reading Now Playing: Get Out
Coffee for Two 