Spectrum Check
And so we come to the end of the publication year for Spectrum Culture, which meant a huge batch of “best of” evaluations of the pop culture from the preceding twelve months (well, okay, eleven-and-a-half). I had my couple cents in every last one of them, but I also had one more full-length review to put out there. I was cautiously hopeful about grabbing the new film from Neil LaBute. Though it’s been ages since I’ve liked one of his films, I used to like them, a couple quite a bit. And this new effort seemed like a back-to-basics outing, … Continue reading Spectrum Check
One for Friday: Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, “Cold White Christmas”
My absolute favorite time to be at the college radio station during my undergraduate years was winter break. I liked the isolation that came from being in the station alone, a sensation compounded by the stretch of time when the university was at its most severely underpopulated and the frigid temperatures outside meant that there was even an abatement of general traffic on the road past the windows of the hallway between studios. Although, I must add that there remained a slight problem with the situation until the calendar reached December 26th: I didn’t particularly like Christmas music, but I … Continue reading One for Friday: Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, “Cold White Christmas”
My Misspent Youth: Metal Men #20 by Robert Kanigher and Ross Andru
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. One of the things I most regret about my youthful comic … Continue reading My Misspent Youth: Metal Men #20 by Robert Kanigher and Ross Andru
Top 40 Smash Taps: “Go On”
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. Over the course of his thirty-plus years as a recording artist, George Strait has recorded a total of forty-four #1 songs on the Billboard country chart, more than any other artist. It would be reasonable to assume, then, that he also had some amount of success on the pop charts, especially since the first of those country chart-toppers arrived in 1982, a time … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Taps: “Go On”
Top Fifty Films of the 60s — Number Three
#3 — Persona (Ingmar Bergman, 1966) I expend a lot syllables in these pieces considering how individual films fit in with the shifting trends of the cinematic era. Maybe they connect to the French New Wave, as a representative example of it or a film that bears its mighty influence. Or maybe a film forecasts the dark, intense revolution of American moviemaking on the horizon. And then there are those efforts that stand wholly apart from any such contextualization, that are astonishing entirely on their own terms, set against any era, any place, certainly any trend. That’s where the work … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 60s — Number Three
Peter O’Toole, 1932 – 2013
PLAYBOY: Are you afraid of dying? O’TOOLE: Petrified. PLAYBOY: Why? O’TOOLE: Because there’s no future in it. PLAYBOY: When did you last think you were about to die? O’TOOLE: About four o’clock this morning. A few weeks ago I watched a commercial on television. It was selling insurance, and I had realized how graphic and Grand Guignol they’d got. There’s a fellow on the beach with his wife and ten children romping around in the sand, and suddenly they all dissolve. And he thinks: “Must insure with Prudential” or whatever. But if I was going to die, I’m afraid I … Continue reading Peter O’Toole, 1932 – 2013
College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1996, 12 and 11
12. Possum Dixon, Star Maps This is one of the albums that drove home for me that commercial alternative radio was going to follow a different path than my old, preferred home of college radio. Possum Dixon’s second full-length, Star … Continue reading College Countdown: 90FM’s Top 90 of 1996, 12 and 11
Spectrum Check
The mad rush to the end of the year continues at Spectrum Culture. Everyone’s been doing their best to pull together various “best of” features while still making sure we still continue to crank out the regular new material. It’s fun (especially for a dork like me who enjoys wedging his media interests into list form, which the tags over there on the right certainly indicate), but a little exhausting, too. And it’s made even more busy when a feature we’ve been working on for ages comes to fruition at the exact same time. It took over a year for … Continue reading Spectrum Check
One for Friday: Mike Watt, “Heartbeat”
I’ve usually had fairly conventional picks for the best album of the year, to my dismay (I have a niggling desire to be more iconoclastic than I really am). There have been exceptions, though. One of those occurred in 1995, probably because I was enduring the overly conventional to a tedious degree thanks the playlists I was handed at the commercial radio station where I worked. While most of the cool kids’ lists were topped by the likes of Radiohead, the Smashing Pumpkins and Björk, I was ready to tell everyone who’d listen that the actual greatest achievement in recorded … Continue reading One for Friday: Mike Watt, “Heartbeat”
Fleischer, McQueen, Perry, Sturges, Tourneur
The Swimmer (Frank Perry, 1968). This is definitely an odd one. It’s not hard to see why this has become something of a cult classic, its relative obscurity combining with the floridly executed proto-seventies moody grit creating a fairly singular viewing experience. Based on a John Cheever story, the film casts Burt Lancaster as a middle-aged stalwart of the self-anointed suburban upper class who decides on a whim on day that he can cross the vast distance from one house to his own home entirely by following a path that takes him through all of his many neighbors’ backyard swimming … Continue reading Fleischer, McQueen, Perry, Sturges, Tourneur
