Top 40 Smash Taps: “Your Time to Cry”
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. Joe Simon was a major player on the R&B charts during the late nineteen-sixties and early nineteen-seventies, including a million-seller that nabbed him a Grammy Award. As was too often the case, that success didn’t completely translate to the pop charts, where Simon had a respectable number of Top 40 hits (eight in total), but was largely unable to push his material to … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “Your Time to Cry”
College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 7
7. Matthew Sweet, 100% Fun Matthew Sweet was probably alternative rock’s official King of Power Pop in 1995, not that there were many combatants for that particular throne. Sweet bounded from obscurity to the upper reaches of the college charts a few years earlier, upon the release of his brilliant 1991 album, Girlfriend. With a big guitar sound and deliriously catchy hooks, Sweet scratched an itch most college programmers (myself included) didn’t even know they had, sending legs thumping as joyously as that of a dog whose human pal has found just the right spot behind the ear. This underserved subsection of the … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 7
From the Archive: The Good Shepherd
The late career of Robert De Niro has been an odd one, an almost entirely unexpected procession of choices from an actor who once intimidated everyone. There certainly aren’t an abundance of meaty roles for a guy in his seventies, … Continue reading From the Archive: The Good Shepherd
‘Cause when life looks like Easy Street there is danger at your door
Uncle John feels like a first feature. In this instance, I mean that as a compliment. The directorial debut of Steven Piet (who co-wrote the screenplay with producer Erik Crary), the film has a small-scale resoluteness, a commitment to telling an understated story with care and calmness. While the occasional evocative shot springs up, the film mostly proceeds with a smart humility. Piet isn’t trying to dazzle the audience. Instead, he wants to tell his story well, which is a far more admirable goal than wrenching attention with anxiously gaudy visuals. In assessing Piet’s commitment to the integrity of his narrative … Continue reading ‘Cause when life looks like Easy Street there is danger at your door
Beers I Have Known: One Barrel Brewing Company Bilbo Baggins Black IPA
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. In just a few weeks, I’ll be moving away from Asheville, North Carolina, the wonderful mountain town that began properly earning the title of Beer City, U.S.A. shortly after I arrived, some eight years ago. Leaving behind so many favorite local brews and breweries has stirred up some wistful feelings and inspired me to load down the car with cans and bottles on a road trip that also served as a first pass … Continue reading Beers I Have Known: One Barrel Brewing Company Bilbo Baggins Black IPA
Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Fifteen
#15 — The Heiress (William Wyler, 1949) Technically, a period drama can be set in any past era, but the term immediately calls to mind a certain slice of the human timeline, long on corsets and stiff gatherings and short on electricity and rambunctiousness. In my informed but admittedly prejudiced view, a great many of these sorts of films are overly staid, buffed up with refinement and lacking in passion. The older the copyright date on the piece of cinema, the more likely my uncharitable prejudice is to be accurate, the confinements of still developing film stylings accentuating the already rigid, regimental … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Fifteen
College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 8
8. Garbage, Garbage I’m pleased that I sit in Madison, Wisconsin as I write this post. Seattle was the epicenter of the explosion of grunge rock that shifted, defined, and to a large degree eventually decimated college rock in the early-to-mid-nineteen-nineties, but the state capital of Wisconsin is connected to a murky asterisk in any geographic history of that shifting music scene. Madisonian Butch Vig had been in a few small, locally notable bands, Spooner and Fire Town among them. More importantly, as it turned out, Vig partnered with Steve Marker to open Smart Studios, a recording facility housed in … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 8
From the Archive: Arachnophobia
I suspect I thought I was pretty clever for the way I structured the beginning of this review. If nothing else, I was probably pleased that I included a Supertrain reference. Arachnophobia was a movie I needed to work hard to see, since it barely eked into the box office top ten for the summer of 1990 (our debut radio show counted down that top ten). It’s entirely possible it was one of the first movies that made me wonder what the hell I’d gotten myself into by committing to a weekly movie review show. This review was written for the home … Continue reading From the Archive: Arachnophobia
One for Friday: Don Dixon, “Girls L.T.D.”
It sure seems like the most appropriate follow-up to last week’s One for Friday involves a song from Mr. Marti Jones. Most of the Girls Like to Dance But Only Some of the Boys Like To, Don Dixon’s solo debut, was first released in the United States in late 1986, only after it had proven successful as an import in Europe, where it had received distribution the year before. Making the journey seem even more arduous, most of the material on the album was first peddled to labels well before. As Dixon acknowledged at the time, practically every song on … Continue reading One for Friday: Don Dixon, “Girls L.T.D.”
He’s out slipping through Jesus’s hands
Fifty-ninth in a series… Continue reading He’s out slipping through Jesus’s hands
Coffee for Two 