One for Friday: Joe Jackson, “Stranger Than Fiction”
One of the things I appreciated about my particular era of college radio was the sense that we were still allowed to reclaim artists. I get a sense — perhaps incorrectly — that the denizens on the left end of the dial, few as their number may be these days, no longer view that as part of the mission. Once an artist crosses over to more commercial terrain or otherwise falls out of favor with college radio programmers, they seem to be gone forever. The notion of college radio acts still had just a little lingering wisp of that new … Continue reading One for Friday: Joe Jackson, “Stranger Than Fiction”
And it was fine while it lasted
Plans for writing tonight were decisively dashed, though for good reason. Thanks to Lloyd Cole and Peter Mulvey for a fine evening. Always nice to discover a new gem during a live show. Regularly scheduled programming returns tomorrow. Continue reading And it was fine while it lasted
Top 40 Smash Taps: “Two Hearts”
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. Get ready for some sugary, blipping R&B as only the early-nineteen-eighties could provide. Stephanie Mills first made her name in 1975, when she played Dorothy in the original Broadway production of The Wiz. She was only seventeen years old when the production opened. It got her a Drama Desk nomination, a signature song, and a recording career, although the latter was only fitfully … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “Two Hearts”
My Misspent Youth: Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters by Mike Grell
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. I acknowledged before that I absolutely craved a veneer legitimacy for the storytelling form I loved so much through my teenage years — and, ahem, beyond — which could and did lead to me developing an outsized enthusiasm for those titles released under the “prestige format” during the latter portion of the nineteen-eighties. These were comics that were printed on heavier, glossier paper and squarebound like a paperback novel (rather than … Continue reading My Misspent Youth: Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters by Mike Grell
Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Forty-Three
#43 — Riff-Raff (Ted Tetzlaff, 1947) Ted Tetzlaff only directed a handful of movies, but he shot over one hundred. He starting working as a cinematographer in the nineteen-twenties (his handiwork was found in the 1926 films Atta Boy and Sunshine of Paradise), racking up some impressive credits over the course of the next couple of decades. Included in that number is striking, evocative work on Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious. Remarkably, his efforts on that film earned him no official accolades (Tetzlaff’s sole Oscar nomination came a few years earlier, for the George Stevens comedy The Talk of the Town), though it did … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 40s — Number Forty-Three
College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 64 and 63
64. Catherine Wheel, Happy Days Happy Days is the third album by the U.K. band Catherine Wheel and by most measures their most success effort. Riding the surge of interest in any alternative band that built some buzz into their sound, Catherine Wheel broke onto the Billboard albums chart for the first time (though its peak of #163 hardly reaches sensation status) and had a couple modest modern rock radio hits. One of those tracks, “Judy Staring at the Sun,” featured guest vocals from Tanya Donelly during the very thin sliver of time when the Belly frontwoman had enough prominence to nab … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1995, 64 and 63
From the Archive: Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead
This installment of our “From the Archive” feature offers an example of the way I used to occasionally cheat when writing my scripts for the radio show that I co-hosted during the early nineties. Sometimes this stemmed from a lack of available time to write out a full script, and I believe there were a couple instances when my cohort and I agreed that it was worth trying for a looser feel to the reviews (that instinct towards experimentalism likely had a portion of its inspiration in a shared weariness in banging out hundreds of words every weak on the … Continue reading From the Archive: Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead
One for Friday: Golden Palominos, “Omaha”
Anton Fier was a weirdly mythic figure to me when I was in college, plying my trade at the student-run radio station. He existed within the nation of independent music that was beyond my personal level of coolness, like distant figures on the vista. He was a founding member of the Feelies, a band I loved immediately, but he left after the band’s acclaimed, obscure debut, Crazy Rhythms, an album I’d never heard because its status as a low press run, long out of print artifact of greatness put it well out of reach. He was a member of John Lurie’s Lounge … Continue reading One for Friday: Golden Palominos, “Omaha”
Top 40 Smash Taps: “The Last Word in Lonesome is Me”
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 count, Eddy Arnold has fifteen Top 40 singles, include several that were officially charting B-sides. That’s on the pop charts. It’s a very different number when consulting a different section of Billboard. Arnold landed 147 different singles on the country charts, spanning from “Each Minute Seems a Million Years,” released in 1945, to 2008’s “To Life.” Only George Jones could claim more. Happily, … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “The Last Word in Lonesome is Me”
Bendjelloul, Bobin, Boone, Lee, Stiller
Muppets Most Wanted (James Bobin, 2014). Once the cinematic franchise is revived, the next task is to prove it can be prolonged and maintained. Muppets Most Wanted is agreeable but oddly inconsequential. Lacking the fanboy passion that Jason Segel seemed to inject into The Muppets all by his lonesome, this new installment is drab and prone to drifting. The plot manages to evoke The Great Muppet Caper, the original Muppet sequel, while also playing around with a mistaken identity gimmick that takes full advantage of the pliability of the characters’ identity. Yes, it’s amusing at times, and the celebrity “guest stars” are … Continue reading Bendjelloul, Bobin, Boone, Lee, Stiller
Coffee for Two 