25 January 2012
One of the pubs unfortunately missed from our ‘tween christmas and new year pub crawl, for to because it was shut, partly due I suspect to lack of passing trade over the festive period, but also to finish off their very nice renovation work, The Old Fountain, tucked away between Silicon Roundabout and Moorfields Eye Hospital, could secretly be one of the best pubs in London. OK, so it’s been in the Good Beer Guide for five years, but I think it’s massively come on even in the last 18 months. East London CAMRA have been praising it for a while, but it barely gets a mention in Hip Guides To London’s Great Pubs.
The beer is, of course, excellent, with usually 6-8 taps on, but they seem to really push the boat out in getting the specials from Darkstar, Brodies, Ascot and others, although occasionally this can lead to hop bomb overload, there’s usually a decent mix. The bar food is also pretty special, the salt beef sandwich (and I realise this may be regarded as heresy) is as good if not better than the Royal Oak’s, and certainly the equal of the erstwhile Wenlock buttie. They do pulled pork buns too, and a couple of other things, but i’ve never managed to order anything that wasn’t the salt beef…
Oh, and did i mention they usually have around FOURTEEN different kernel bottles in the fridge? it’s the biggest range I can think of that doesn’t involve visiting a railway arch…
You can see what they’ve got on the bar at @OldFountainAles
CarsmileSteve in FT /Pumpkin Publog • 4 Comments
(*in the English language since I read no others)
The disgraced children’s author William Mayne died in 2010, some 57 years after the publication of Follow the Footprints, the first of his more than a hundred books, none of them for adults. A final book came out the year of his death, Every Dog (puissant title in the circumstances), and I haven’t read it yet, though I will. I’ll talk a little about his downfall at the close of this post, and doubtless more later, but what I actually propose to undertake is a gradual reading of these books, such as I can track down, starting with a rereading of the 20-odd that I own and know. more »
pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør in FT • No Comments
Everlasting Pop and Dexys Midnight Runners
There is pop, and there is popular, and then there’s popular. And there’s also “timeless”. Sometimes when people say that a record is “timeless” – let’s pick on, oh, a U2 album – they mean it will be listened to and loved say twenty years from now. What they secretly mean is that it will be listened to in just the same reverent way as now: taste to them is a stock market, and they’re keen to invest emotionally in records which promise steady long-term growth.
You can caricature the pop fan, too – their expenditure is without hope or desire of return, their passions are spent on mayfly records, and this hopelessly compromises their judgement in the eyes of their more sober peers. Particularly if, like me, they’re fool enough to try and write about those records. more »
Tom • FT •
8 Comments
1
The weather matters. Saturday 1st June: 8pm, and the sky out of my window is still fading pale blue, weightless, benevolent. A jubilee weekend of rain would be a symbolic down: but then, we are long used to finding a meaning in the rain. Not just we aesthetes (‘I’m happy when it rains’; ‘You’re happy cos you’re cosy and the rain comes rattling in’), but British Life in its broader-stroking manner. ‘It wouldn’t be Wimbledon if it didn’t rain’: ‘Queuing’s our national pastime – especially queueing in the rain’ – all of that has its kernel, but has been stretched to banality. We may yet be able to test whether it gets wheeled out over these four days. But for now, the miracle of the sun: to which we adapt and flock instantly, despite the myth of a rainy people. more »
admin • FT •
No Comments
“Black Man Ray” is Ray Charles, who China Crisis apparently believe in. Now Ray Charles’ blackness is not a secret, so why did China Crisis see fit to remind us of it on their incomprehensibly awful single? My theories:
i) They were talking about the photographer Man Ray, and asserting that he was black. Which he wasn’t. But this was the 80s and all sorts of people were black back then – Shakespeare, Rick Astley, etc. – generally at the behest of ‘loony lefties’ who The Sun had made up.
ii) The song was meant to be a double A-Side with “White Man Ray” about snooker ace Ray Reardon more »
Tanya Headon • I Hate Music •
17 Comments
In The Beginning There Was Nothingness. IF ONLY.
In The Beginning There Was The Word. NOT THE BIRD FROM L7 PULLING DOWN HER KECKS AGAIN.
But neither of these are strictly true. Because the first book of the Bible Of Badness is Genesis. And if you were ever to question how bad this Bible could get, Collins and the rest set a mighty low standard. One wonders if it really was the Serpent that caused the fall of man, or if Adam just wanted to get away from the prog-rock band noodling in the Garden of Eden. more »
Tanya Headon • FT/I Hate Music •
4 Comments
So we get a winner, down on Brewer Street in Soho, the Glasshouse Stores was voted the number one pub of the noughties by those of us who voted. A nice pub sure, but so much better than the others? To find out why it scored so highly I thought I would canvas a number of opinions – feel free to add your own at the bottom.
Tom Says:
My memory may be cheating me but I think the first time we ended up in the Glasshouse Stores it was due to a power cut a pub or two along. Marvellous serendipity if so, and appropriate: an accidental pub becoming a shrine to the unintended social consequences of setting up an online community. This is the top pub of the 00s and is tied firmly to the 00s: I can quite imagine never visiting it again, which isn’t something I can say about several others. The regular ILX meet-ups we held there are mostly a thing of the past, for the happy reason that participants basically stopped being “message board posters” and started being simply ‘friends’. What that misses out is the random element, of course – the sense on entering a get-together that you never quite knew who would turn up. Sometimes new faces, occasionally unwelcome ones – the internet meet-up pitches itself halfway between the cosy drink with mates and the party. more »
Pete Baran • FT/Pumpkin Publog •
10 Comments
20 January 2012
Some time in the mid-70s, I went on a school trip to the Ludlow Festival, to see (I think) Cymbeline: six kids crammed in the back of a teacher’s little van, five in their late teens actually studying it for A-level, and me, experimenting and showing off. So naturally they were all having fun amiably teasing me, and hit on POP as a topic to trip me up. As a gamble — early version of a dodge I make to this day — I declared my Young Person’s admiration for my dad’s favourite singer: Eartha Kitt. Which paid off — they’d none of them never heard of her, and with no comfy take, to needle or muddle me with, preferred to chuckle a bit at my weird obscure tastes and went back to earnest Sabbath-chat.
Funny thing is, I grew up and through a life writing about and categorising music, exploring and improving histories, and still Eartha feels more like a handy prevarication move than a name to conjure with: someone people kind of know about, for sure, and maybe like (maybe a LOT), but without a set place, or role, or handy symbolic meaning. more »
pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør in FT • 5 Comments
Back in the Summer of 69. And the Spring, Autumn and other bits too. A missing Popular year poll for you to keep your spirits up while Tom regroups. Tom’s standing orders are:
I give a mark out of 10 to every single featured on Popular. This is your chance to indicate which YOU would have given 6 or more to, by whatever standard you wish to impose. And if you have any ‘closing remarks’ on the year to make, the comments box is your place!
Loading ...
admin in Popular • 41 Comments
15 January 2012
10 January 2012
Hi, I’m Lauryn Hill circa my breakthrough role in Sister Act 2: Back In The Habit, and it is a real pleasure to be able to present to you the top ten FreakyTrigger tracks of the year. When my mother told me I couldn’t join the choir run by a fake nun, I got really surly and pouted a lot – which some of you may recognise from my recent career. Later in the film I stepped up to the plate and delivered this inspirational, hip as 1993 could ever be, version of Joyful Joyful. But enough of my career highlights, back to the FreakyTrigger top ten of 2011.
Its a real privilege to reveal to you that this top ten is entirely female, so much so that I might be inspired, much like Whoopi Goldberg inspired me in Sister Act 2: Back In The Habit to make a comeback and win next year. I’ve got a soup tureen full of Grammy’s you know.
more »
katstevens in FT • 34 Comments
9 January 2012
“I am mullet-progeny Miley Cyrus and in 2011 I was totally on the telly loads instead of making music so let’s forget all about my dodgy birdcage video, shall we? Here’s a Miley FACT: You know that if you type in ‘Miley Cyprus’ in to Wikipedia it goes STRAIGHT TO ME? I call that ‘conflict resolution’. Am I a UN ambassador yet? If so I hope it won’t interfere with my upcoming starring role in the major motion picture LOL: Laughing Out Loud.”
I’m sure it won’t Miley. Let’s have a look at entries #20-#11: more »
katstevens in FT • 17 Comments
“Hi! I’m serial tweeter Kanye West, and despite all evidence to the contrary I have enough marbles to introduce this section of the FT Reader’s Poll Results! I’ve even listened to a few of them and everything. I like the ones with me on best. Hang on… there must be a mistake here. WHERE AM I???”
Cheers Kanye. Tracks #30-#21 under the cut! more »
katstevens in FT • 5 Comments
7 January 2012
“Hi! I’m Pop Idol winner and all-round charming individual Will Young, here to introduce the next batch of delights for this year’s Reader’s Poll. Sadly I’m not among the tracks below (possibly due to my recent habit of sporting an inadvisable cowlick) but I’m sure they’re all lovely nonetheless! P.S. Watch my dog video.”
Thanks for that Will. Poll results #40-#31 under the cut! more »
katstevens in FT • 5 Comments
6 January 2012
Without further ado, let’s plunge headfirst into your top 50! more »
katstevens in FT • 17 Comments
« Older
