Beers I Have Known: Pisgah Valdez
This series of posts is dedicated to the many, many six packs, pony kegs and pints that have sauntered into my life at one point or another. Trivia is pending. My annual excursion into pop culture minutiae and sleep-deprived revelry, primarily grounded in a reunion of my oldest and dearest friends, is a mere ten days away as I type this out. For the first time in fifteen years, I am not making arrangement to cross multiple states in order to get to the camp my team calls its temporary home. The muscle memory of my soul is thusly all … Continue reading Beers I Have Known: Pisgah Valdez
Laughing Matters: George Carlin, “The Planet is Fine”
Sometimes comedy illuminates hard truths with a pointed urgency that other means can’t quite achieve. Sometimes comedy is just funny. This series of posts is mostly about the former instances, but the latter is valuable, too. I was certain I had George Carlin all figured out. I’d been a fan since I was a little kid, when I’d do my best to blend into the furniture at adult parties I got dragged along to with the goal of listening along as the older attendees played Carlin’s comedy records. The mounting haziness and boisterous laughter of those adults thankfully prevented them from … Continue reading Laughing Matters: George Carlin, “The Planet is Fine”
College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 217 – 215
217. New Order, “Love Vigilantes” “Love Vigilantes” was widely considered a significant departure for New Order and something of a statement of purpose, or at least against reflexive pigeonholing, when it notably led off the band’s 1985 album, Low-Life. Though there are familiar sonic signatures throughout the track, it is distinctively lean and even a touch twangy. More strikingly, the lyrics actually tell a story, which was rarely the case with the jagged merging of words and music on earlier New Order songs. According to Bernard Sumner, the song’s lineage begins with a U.K. tour undertaken with the Buzzcocks in the … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 217 – 215
From the Archive: Death Warrant
Shortly after the debut of the radio show The Reel Thing, the film review program I co-hosted from 1990 to 1993, it felt like we were inundated with Jean-Claude Van Damme movies. We weren’t, but there were two within our first few months on the air. That felt like punishment enough. As a general rule, even the worst movies got one star on our four-star rating scale. If I dropped below that, I was really serious about how much I hated it. Deran Sarafian, the director of this film, went on to be a prolific, respectable television director. The screenplay is … Continue reading From the Archive: Death Warrant
One for Friday: Close Lobsters, “My Days Are Numbered”
Continuing to draw inspiration from the recently posted autumn of 1989 90FM album chart, we turn to a band that was one my favorite discoveries upon landing at the college radio station. Close Lobsters hailed from Scotland and played a brand of punchy pop laced with tender paisley twinkling and brutal cynicism in roughly equal doses. In my late teens, nothing could have pleased me more. Headache Rhetoric, the band’s sophomore LP and final full-length release until a reunion some two decades later, landed in rotation during my first summer as a student broadcaster, and I gave it loving attention (though … Continue reading One for Friday: Close Lobsters, “My Days Are Numbered”
Then Playing: Unfriended
I usually reserve the longer reviews for films still playing in theaters, but sometimes a title I’ve caught up on later merits a few extra words. Appropriately, the conversation took place on Facebook Messenger. I was discussing Unfriended with my friend Khaetlyn, who had recommended the film in the first place, offering the assurance that it was far more than the trashy, cheapo found footage horror film it appeared to be from all the floridly urgent promotion around it. Shortly after seeing it, I was about to let her know that she was correct, when she framed her curiosity about my reaction … Continue reading Then Playing: Unfriended
My Misspent Youth: Howard the Duck by Steve Gerber and Gene Colan
I read a lot of comic books as a kid. This series of posts is about the comics I read, and, occasionally, the comics that I should have read. As I remember it, I figured out right away that Howard the Duck wasn’t for kids. The first issue hit spinner racks when I was a mere five years old. At first glance, it bore a resemblance to the material I was excitedly reading at the time. Still, I somehow knew it was a comic for adults. I suspect that was attributable to the fact that adults were reading and talking … Continue reading My Misspent Youth: Howard the Duck by Steve Gerber and Gene Colan
Programming Note
Right now, my lower back feels like Mr. T’s glass of milk: Between that and an oddly demanding day, I’m going to bypass posting more than these few words. Back to it tomorrow, I swear. Continue reading Programming Note
Top 40 Smash Taps: “Love of My Life” and “Bowling Green”
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. By my rough, hasty count, the Everly Brothers placed a total of twenty-seven songs into the Billboard Top 40, including three that topped the chart. The siblings were such a constant presence on early rock ‘n’ roll radio that disc jockeys routinely turning singles over, giving the B-sides enough spins to merit respectable chart placement. That was the case with “Love of My Life,” … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “Love of My Life” and “Bowling Green”
College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 220 – 218
220. fIREHOSE, “Brave Captain” “Brave Captain” was the ideal opening salvo from fIREHOSE. Recorded in October, 1986 at Radio Tokyo studios, in Venice, California, Mike Watt and George Hurley put the song to tape less than a year after the tragic death of D. Boon brought an end to their prior band, the Minutemen. Inspired punk rockers still reveling in acclaim showered on the recent double album masterpiece Double Nickels on the Dime (though the now rarely invoked 3-Way Tie for Last was the band’s true final statement) at the time of the van accident that claimed the life of their lead singer, … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 250 Songs, 1979 – 1989, 220 – 218
Coffee for Two 