One for Friday: Marshall Crenshaw, “You’re My Favorite Waste of Time”
It always seemed that Marshall Crenshaw was genetically engineered to be a cult hero. Even though his very first single, the utterly wonderful “Someday, Someway,” made it into the Billboard Top 40, it was hardly a thunderous success, peaking at #36. That seems simultaneously appropriate and a little tragic. Crenshaw created songs that were made for the radio, albeit maybe a different era than the one he was in. This was the early nineteen-eighties, when new wave was ascendent, punk was morphing from broad-ranging alternative to almost myopic jackhammer anger, and electronic was still trying to find its footing in … Continue reading One for Friday: Marshall Crenshaw, “You’re My Favorite Waste of Time”
The New Releases Shelf: I Never Learn
(Picture credit.) Pop music is always at its truest when it’s speaking about heartbreak. When tougher guitars and a racing, drum-driven backbeat start infringing and the music tips over more clearly into rock ‘n’ roll there are other aspects of … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf: I Never Learn
Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Thirty-Four
#34 — The Asphalt Jungle (John Huston, 1950) It’s all right there in the name of the film: the promise of soot and grit and anger, the heat of savagery played out on pavement, the hardness of untamed wild disguised … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Thirty-Four
My Writers: Bill Watterson
I operate under the belief that I saw the very first Calvin and Hobbes comic strip when it appeared in the newspaper. I have a vague memory of being in one of my high school classrooms, a social studies course where the teacher had the daily newspapers and a bevy of weekly current affairs magazines delivered and on display, actively encouraging us to peruse them while others were completing assignments. (He also regularly made us watch C-SPAN, which is a sort of torture for adrenaline-fueled, hormone-addled teenagers, as well as forced us to sit through entire Mark Russell comedy specials, … Continue reading My Writers: Bill Watterson
Great Moments in Literature
“Paul Espeseth, who was no longer taking the antidepressant Celexa, braced himself for a cataclysm at SeaWorld.” –Jonathan Lethem, “Pending Vegan,” 2014 “THE BEAST’S SCALES ARE CUTTING EDGES THAT WELT HIS FLESH, TEARING HIS UNIFORM INTO BLOODIED TATTERS! THE MONSTROUS TAIL LASHES IN DEADLY FRENZY, WHIPPING THE WATER TO FOAM, FRAGMENTING ITS REFLECTIONS–AND STRANGELY, IN THAT MOMENT, THEY ARE IMAGES THAT HAVE A STABBING CLARITY THE MIRROR-PERFECT FIGURE LACKED! PAIN BIRTHS INSANITY WITHIN HIS MIND…AND DESPERATION IS THE MID-WIFE. HIS BOOTS PURPOSEFULLY GOUGE INTO THE YIELDING, SALIVATING MOUTH, AND ITS TONGUE BULGES BENEATH AND AROUND HIS HEELS! HOLD ON! PLEASE, … Continue reading Great Moments in Literature
College Countdown, The First CMJ Album Chart, 13
13. Bryan Ferry, The Bride Stripped Bare In the great mushy mess of classic rock chronology that exists in my head, there are a few standard patterns that I grab tightly on like handlebars that will help me steer through … Continue reading College Countdown, The First CMJ Album Chart, 13
From the Archive: Popcorn
I marvel at the things we needed to watch. The little burg where I started as a film critic at my beloved college radio station rarely played art house fare and was even late in the run of higher profile prestige material. When we started our movie review show in the fall of 1990, the screens always had plenty of room for cheapo horror flicks, though. Popcorn is almost entirely forgotten now, but I stand by my laudatory evaluation of the early scene found at the front end of this review. I actually still think of that passage from time … Continue reading From the Archive: Popcorn
One for Friday: Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, “Where Have All the Rude Boys Gone?”
When I was a college radio kid, heading off to New York City for the annual CMJ Music Marathon was a pure pipe dream. We simply didn’t have the sort of money for that sort of thing, and our different advisors and on-campus advocates decided, probably accurately, that it was a bit of a boondoggle, not worth fighting for. When dryer, more professionally respectable student-oriented broadcasting conferences cropped up more regionally conducive locations, they made university funding available to us. Again, they were probably correct to do so. Considering the sort of shenanigans we got up to in our posh … Continue reading One for Friday: Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, “Where Have All the Rude Boys Gone?”
Top 40 Smash Taps: “Ticks” and “Letter to 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. Brad Paisley absolutely owned the country charts in the aughts. After nabbing his first country #1 (and Billboard Top 40 hit) in 1999, with “He Didn’t Have to Be,” Paisley had an even more prodigious stretch in the following decade, including ten straight chart-toppers at one point, which was then a record. (Shameless country huckster bested that feat just this year.) Maybe even … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “Ticks” and “Letter to Me”
Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Thirty-Five
#35 — Rio Bravo (Howard Hawks, 1959) The default tendency when looking back at films from a few generations back, especially those presided over by those filmmakers who’ve been anointed auteurs by all the right authorities, is to find all … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 50s — Number Thirty-Five
