Category: Punk

My 2025 Personal Film Festival, Part 3 and Conclusion

For Parts 1 and 2 of this series, please see here and here. Just to reiterate, I am not a film critic in the traditional sense, merely an autodidactic lover of film and film history who curated his own, somewhat random, film festival over the first four months of 2025. It began when my wife … Continue reading My 2025 Personal Film Festival, Part 3 and Conclusion →

Matt Berger 1980s Teen Films, Alan Moore, All About Eve, Almost Famous, Anne Baxter, Anomalisa, Anthony Edwards, Atheism, Before Sunrise, Blank City, Cameron Crowe, Charlie Kaufman, Dashiell Hammett, David Lynch, David Thewlis, Dazed and Confused, Denis Villeneuve, Don't Say a Word, Enemy, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Fast Times At Ridgemont High, Film, Hammett, HistoryBuffs, Hugo Weaving, I'm Thinking of Ending Things, Interrogating Memory, Jake Gyllenhall, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jim Jarmusch, John Hurt, Kevin Bacon, Liquid Sky, Martin Scorsese, Miracle Mile, Morgan Richter, My life, Nastassja Kinski, Natalie Portman, Paris Texas, Philadelphia, Prisoners, Punk, Richard Linklater, Slacker, Smithereens, Surrealism, Susan Seidelman, Taxi Driver, The Shadow, The Sixth Sense, The Sure Thing, Toni Collette, V For Vendetta, Wavelength, Wim Wenders, Woody Allen 1 Comment May 22, 2025May 22, 2025 16 Minutes

Charting the Second British Invasion: The Singles

Through most of the 1980s, I bought a copy of the music trade magazine Billboard every week. Friends and I pored over its singles and albums charts, seeking insights into that week’s most popular music. I also calculated the top artists each week, as well as the top singles, albums and artists of each year. … Continue reading Charting the Second British Invasion: The Singles →

Matt Berger Billboard magazine, Culture Club, Data Art, Data collection, Duran Duran, Eurythmics, History, Men At Work, Music, My life, New Wave, Punk, Statistical reasonsing, The Police 5 Comments September 18, 2023June 9, 2024 19 Minutes

Organizing by themes V: Popular music

This site benefits/suffers/both from consisting of posts about a wide range of topics, all linked under the amorphous heading "data-driven storytelling." In an attempt to impose some coherent structure, I am organizing related posts both chronologically and thematically. While I have told many stories from my life (and those of my ancestors), I rarely discuss … Continue reading Organizing by themes V: Popular music →

Matt Berger 1984, Billboard magazine, Data Art, Data collection, Genesis, History, Music, My life, New Wave, Pete Shelley, Progressive Rock, Punk, Roxy Music, Statistical reasonsing, Steely Dan, Talking Heads, The Cars, The Smithereens 2 Comments January 24, 2019November 8, 2025 2 Minutes

Pete Shelley, RIP; or my life in punk and new wave

As I walked into my office this past Friday afternoon (December 7), I vaguely noticed our eldest daughter sitting on the sofa reading. Firing up my computer, I turned on iTunes. The 9,560 tracks contained there are sorted by artist, so I only needed to scroll down to the end of the B’s. I clicked … Continue reading Pete Shelley, RIP; or my life in punk and new wave →

Matt Berger Alternative, My life, New Wave, Pete Shelley, Punk 14 Comments December 10, 2018November 30, 2021 12 Minutes

A Musical Mosaic

When I enrolled at Yale in the fall of 1984, I was undecided between majoring in political science or mathematics. A less-than-stellar experience in Math 230—required for freshman mathematics major—quickly decided me: political science, it would be. Luckily, two courses I took sophomore year taught by Professor Edward Tufte—Data Analysis for Politics and Policy and … Continue reading A Musical Mosaic →