One for Friday: Ed Haynes, “I Want to Kill Everybody”
I’ve written about Ed Haynes’s debut album, Ed Haynes Sings Ed Haynes, in this space previously, bit it’s been a while. In my recollection, this was one of those albums that arrived during the late winter/early spring of 1989, a blessed time that I’ve only partially elevated in grandeur because it coincided with my first semester in a leadership role at my college radio station. Though Haynes had mighty competition in our new music rotation, this album was one that I and my fellow deejays returned to repeatedly, the comic-tinged, upbeat folk songs provided a nice little breather in the … Continue reading One for Friday: Ed Haynes, “I Want to Kill Everybody”
Top 40 Smash Taps: “In the Mood”
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. Thanks to K-tel comedy music collections that would probably strike me as a form of torture if I tried to sit through one of them now, I probably knew Ray Stevens before just about any other artist included in this series. His various Top 40 hits from the nineteen-sixties and nineteen-seventies took up a lot of the vinyl on those compilations that I obsessively … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “In the Mood”
More fun than humans should be allowed to have
I was just about the ideal age for Late Night with David Letterman. The program was there for me throughout my teenaged years, providing absurdist, anarchic, highly ironic comedy at the exact point that my swarming hormones made me inclined to reject staid sincerity and childish silliness. Letterman operated his show with a thin undercoating of hostility for the very showbiz conventions he was charged with upholding, and yet his jagged view of the proceedings was tempered by a Midwestern decency that was very familiar to me as I watched in my small town Wisconsin home. It was this latter quality that his bookers … Continue reading More fun than humans should be allowed to have
And someone said, “Live fast, die young,” but the time runs always faster, son
It has been almost exactly thirty years since George Miller released what all presumed to be the final film in the saga of a post-apocalyptic anti-hero named Max. Miller hasn’t exactly been prolific in the decades since, but his filmmaking journey has definitely been interesting. He helmed a fairly unlikely John Updike adaptation and demonstrated that a movie about disease could bypass typical dewy-eyed piousness and instead be shaped by uncompromising emotional brutality. Maybe most surprisingly, he took a turn towards family fare with a deceptively dark sequel to Babe and a couple of computer animated efforts featuring dancing penguins. … Continue reading And someone said, “Live fast, die young,” but the time runs always faster, son
Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Thirty-Five
#35 — All the King’s Men (Robert Rossen, 1949) Robert Penn Warren’s novel All the King’s Men was first published in 1946, just a few years after he left a teaching post at Louisiana State University. Warren openly acknowledged the heavy influence his time in the Bayou State had on his best-known novel. Willie Stark, the central character of the book, was inspired by Huey Long, the famed and infamous governor and senator from Louisiana who was known for the power he wielded and the astonishing levels of corruption that ran through his career. The totality of the United States … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Thirty-Five
College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 46 and 45
46. Wax, 13 Unlucky Numbers While the nineteen-eighties was surely the peak of influence for music videos, the nineteen-nineties, at least the early to middle part of that decade-long span, represents the stretch of time when the directors behind those promotional efforts had their collective heyday. I don’t remember anyone really talking about the filmmakers behind the seminal videos of MTV’s first years, but director Spike Jonze was as famous — or maybe even more famous at times — as the artists for whom he helped craft music videos. Yes, the Los Angeles punk band Wax had just enough credibility that … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 46 and 45
From the Archive: Ocean’s Thirteen
As I’m getting this in just under the wire for it to still officially be a Saturday post, it should be clear that I’m still highly distracted by a bevy of other responsibilities, compromising my ability to transcribe some old … Continue reading From the Archive: Ocean’s Thirteen
One for Friday: Pipettes, “Pull Shapes” (Live on NPR)
Sometimes you just fall in love with a band. I don’t mean a band comes along and are so great that they are immediately elevated to the level of favorite. I mean genuine, unexplainable head over heels affection that is roughly akin to that first swelling of puppy love when that cute guy or girl made eye contact across the crowded middle school classroom. It’s not love that’s meaningful or long-lasting, nor is grounded in a instinctual need for lifelong commitment. But it also helps define every similar swelling of the heart that follows. From the moment I first heard … Continue reading One for Friday: Pipettes, “Pull Shapes” (Live on NPR)
Top 40 Smash Taps: “Me (Without You)”
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. For a brief, noteworthy cultural moment in the nineteen-seventies, Andy Gibb was about as big a music artist could get. The youngest sibling of the furry Gibb clan, Andy was so committed to following in his brothers’ footsteps that one of his first bands was named after a Bee Gees song. He was eventually signed as a solo artist to RSO Records, the … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “Me (Without You)”
Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Thirty-Six
#36 — Hail the Conquering Hero (Preston Surges, 1944) It was Sandy Sturges, the wife of Preston Sturges, who offered the ideal summation of the writer-director’s approach to tugging his own brand of creativity through the many graters of oversight required during his time in Hollywood. She offered, “What Preston said he did was: ‘Obey strictly the letter of the law…and totally ignore the spirit.’” Sturges had plenty of overseers whose strictures he chose to evade. Not only was he confined by the so-called Hays Code and the constantly voiced dismay of his studio bosses (after leaving Paramount Pictures, Sturges maintained, … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Thirty-Six
Coffee for Two 