One for Friday: Ednaswap, “Torn”
By the summer of 1998, the song “Torn” was practically unavoidable. I used to join a friend on an annual summertime jaunt intended to hit as many Major League ballparks as we could over a long weekend. While we always made sure the vehicle was stocked with plenty of mix tapes (competitively so), part of the ritual was scanning through local radio, including carefully cataloging which songs we heard the most. On that trip, “Torn” was the clear winner (though, to be fair, we likely zipped right past “The Boy is Mine,” which topped the Billboard charts for essentially the … Continue reading One for Friday: Ednaswap, “Torn”
The New Releases Shelf: Pageant Material
Best as I can determine, the only significant flaw of Pageant Material, the new album from Kacey Musgraves, is that it seems to inspire a unstoppable fleet of music writer think pieces, the sort of essays that helplessly consider music only in the context of some imagined greater trend. It can’t simply be that her second album for Mercury Nashville is a splendid example of songcraft, warmly and wittily performed. It somehow has to provide entry to commentary of the very nature of modern country music, usually delivered with withering condescension by music writers who’ve probably not listened to more … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf: Pageant Material
Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Twenty-Seven
#27 — To Have and Have Not (Howard Hawks, 1944) Lauren Bacall was nineteen years old when she made her film debut in To Have and Have Not. Famously spotted on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar by Nancy Keith, the wife of director Harold Hawks, Bacall was given the role of Marie Browning. Nicknamed Slim, just like Keith, the character was a singer in a bar, spotted by Harry Morgan (Humphrey Bogart), the captain of a small chartered fishing boat. More importantly, Slim was designed to provide the formidable match for the film’s leading man. As Hawks explained to Bogart, “You … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Twenty-Seven
Top 40 Smash Taps: “Sweet Maxine”
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. “Sweet Maxine” is a song by the Doobie Brothers. Released as the second single from their 1975 album, Stampede, it brought them their eighth trip to the Billboard Top 40, although just barely. Across their career, they’d make it into the Top 40 a total of sixteen times, including two instances when they topped the chart. Not knowing anything about this particular song … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “Sweet Maxine”
Some are dying slowly, some are dying fast, some of us hold on to life as long as we can last
In Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, the “Me” is Greg (Thomas Mann), a high school senior who has successfully navigated the perils of that particular treacherous habitat by expertly positioning himself as innocuously forgettable. As he explains in listing the various cliques that exist in his school, he’s managed to make himself a casually likable acquaintance to everyone. That is, he stays on the safe periphery to everyone except Earl (Ronald Cyler II), someone he’s known since kindergarten and who he refers to as a co-worker, due the dozens of silly amateur films they’ve directed together. Greg’s precarious equilibrium … Continue reading Some are dying slowly, some are dying fast, some of us hold on to life as long as we can last
College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 27 – 25
27. Smoking Popes, Born to Quit Smoking Popes hailed from the ‘burbs of Chicago and played exactly the sort of brash, punk-punched pop music that was necessary to get noticed in that noisy, busy city. Born to Quit was the band’s sophomore album, released initially on the local ultra-indie Johann’s Face Records before being picked up and reissued by Capitol Records, effectively making it their major label debut (though it would be entirely reasonable to affix that descriptor to their follow-up, 1997’s Destination Failure, which was actually recorded for Capitol and lived down to its title as it was a … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 27 – 25
From the Archive: Terminator 2: Judgment Day
I find it a little dismaying that I can reach back twenty-five years to find reviews that are incredibly pertinent to new blockbuster-wannabe releases. James Cameron attests that the latest stab at perpetuating the franchise, Terminator: Genisys, is the true follow-up to his own final cinematic word the adventures of Sarah Connor and the cyborg assassin from the future. (I’m pretty sure he also once maintained that the theme park attraction he helped direct is also canon.) I don’t blame him for disavowing the other movies, but I know at least a couple people who would argue vehemently (preferably over beers) … Continue reading From the Archive: Terminator 2: Judgment Day
One for Friday: Sam Phillips, “Tripping Over Gravity”
I’m fairly certain I found my way to Sam Phillips through Rolling Stone magazine. As I’ve noted before, I was a devoted disciple on the magazine through my high school years, doing the best I could to glean from it what I needed to know about the vast land of rock ‘n’ roll that my local radio stations weren’t providing. That got me trapped in the magazine’s wearying predilections (Neil Young is an important artist, but not every damn album in a masterpiece), but I occasionally had just enough of an instinct to remember the albums that were offered effusive if … Continue reading One for Friday: Sam Phillips, “Tripping Over Gravity”
Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Twenty-Eight
#28 — Notorious (Alfred Hitchcock, 1946) It seems Notorious began with a desire on the part of director Alfred Hitchock to cast Ingrid Bergman as a woman involved in deceits and duplicitous machinations at the highest levels. This inkling would have come to him at right around the time Bergman was collecting accolades and a bright, shiny Academy Award for her work in Gaslight and as he was on the cusp of working with the actress on Spellbound, a film similarly preoccupied with the way madness can infiltrate as person’s psyche, including through the manipulations of others. Whether or not Hitchcock … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Twenty-Eight
Garland, Howard, Mangold, Ross, Taylor
Ex Machina (Alex Garland, 2015). Novelist and screenwriter Garland makes his directorial debut with this smart, chilly science fiction film about a reclusive tech magnate (Oscar Isaac) who flies up an employee (Domhnall Gleeson), supposedly selected at random, to help him test out some remarkable new artificial intelligence he’s created. Complicating the test subjects reactions is the little detail that the A.I. has been loaded into an android with a notably lovely female form and visage (Alicia Vikander). Garland builds his script with almost malicious psychological cunning, fomenting uncertainty as to whether the genius inventor is a simmering madman or … Continue reading Garland, Howard, Mangold, Ross, Taylor
Coffee for Two 