I’m going to try and get new Popular entries up too, but there will be a LOT of writing about pop by me this week on the One Week One Band blog, which I’m taking over for a second time – this time to talk about ABBA. Rather than pick songs to write about all by myself, I asked people on Tumblr for suggestions, so I’ve got a very eclectic range of assignments – from “Soldiers” to “Happy Hawaii”. I’m starting later on today – wander over and have a look!
Tom in FT • 4 Comments
Welcome back to the Lost Property Office, where no mention at all is made of a certain track on a new Saint Etienne album, but we do honour the warming crackle of real vinyl on the air. Instead Rob Brennan is my guest who was the first man in space on his street, and had the proof too. We also consider the difficulties of navigating London when you are new, the occasionally pornographic covers of National Geographic Magazine, the biggest disappointment of our shared childhoods and the appeal of cricket is patiently explained to a disbeliever. We also take Michael Gove to task of education and then are instantly silly about it as if to undermine our point.
Music comes from the sleeve of a Mike Sarne singers album, but salty revelations are discovered along the way. If you have any info about the music, objects, trams in Bath or want to book a trip into the office feel free to let me know in the comments, you’ve all been quiet of late…
Length: 45:48 Played: 363 
Or: Games I Have Known. For the sake of my patience and yours, I have mostly restricted this to games I either owned or played – ones where I read a friends’ rulebooks and only dimly remember have been ignored, with a couple of notable exceptions. If you want to know more about any of these, you have but to ask. Games listed in order of my encountering them:
Dungeons And Dragons: The original in its simpler and frankly more elegant form. If you’ve ever played a computer RPG, you’ve played this, pretty much.
Advanced Dungeons And Dragons: Sprawling Gormenghast-like monster with 20 rulebooks that somehow became the most popular RPG in the universe. The default setting for most “I Was A Goblin” posts. more »
Tom • FT • 18 Comments
England is DIFFERENT (or SPECIAL if you want to be polite) to everywhere else for many reasons, but one is because our music “industry” (it’s not an industry – making baked beans is an industry, and nobody does THAT in their spare time, writes fanzines about it or has them poured over themselves at weddings. Usually) is SO virulently centralised. Bands in, for instance, France, do not all dream of moving to Paris the SECOND their first tape demo is posted to Le Fanzine De Pop!, for example, but here it sometimes seems that London Is Everything – the major labels are all there, and the “professional” “music” “press” is too, with its “journalists” unwilling to venture past the M25 when new bands can be discovered simply by asking their idiot friends what group they’re in THIS Friday.
ANYWAY, the GOOD thing about this is that we get to have the LOCAL BAND, “local” here meaning “not from London” – bands from Scotland or Wales are, of course, labelled Scottish Bands and Welsh Bands (in that order). That’s not to say Local Bands are the same throughout England – for instance, Derby Bands will want to ROCK, Leicester bands will never have anything resembling a singer, Bristol bands will think they are much cooler than anyone else, and Birmingham bands will own a Stereolab record – but the Basic FACTS about them will remain the same. And here they are for you to learn and enjoy. more »
Nobody • FT • 10 Comments
Finally, the moment of ABSOLUTE POP TRUTH is upon us! And my goodness, what a nail-biter of a contest this has been. Halfway through the voting, two decades broke decisively ahead of the pack, establishing a lead that proved impossible to catch up with. Although one of them looked to have the edge, its rival chased it hard, making up crucial lost ground in the closing stages and ensuring a RIVETING PHOTO-FINISH. Oh yes.
Meanwhile, the bottom four decades enjoyed a right old ding-dong, jostling each other furiously and never bowing out of the fight. The gap between the lower four was every bit as close as the gap between the upper two, making this year’s “Which Decade” our CLOSEST! CONTEST! EVER!
Shall we proceed? Yes, perhaps we should. Lord knows, you’ve waited long enough.
NOTE: For extra at-a-glance clarity, I have designated the 20 top scoring records as HITS, the middle 20 as MAYBES, and the 20 lowest as MISSES.
Sixth place: The Seventies.
Cumulative average score: 32.31 points.
Share of the vote: 15.39%
HITS:
Norman Greenbaum – Spirit In The Sky. 4.84 points, first place.
Christie – Yellow River. 4.12 points, 2nd place.
MAYBES:
Creedence Clearwater Revival – Travellin’ Band. 3.68 points, 3rd place.
The Moody Blues – Question. 3.41 points, joint 3rd place.
MISSES:
Dana – All Kinds Of Everything. 2.92 points, joint last place.
The Hollies – I Can’t Tell The Bottom From The Top. 2.90 points, 4th place.
Frijid Pink – House Of The Rising Sun. 2.80 points, 4th place.
The Move – Brontosaurus. 2.73 points, 5th place.
Tom Jones – Daughter Of Darkness. 2.70 points, last place.
England World Cup Squad – Back Home. 2.21 points, last place.
more »
British Bubblegum Pop 1968-1972
“Sunday morning, up with the lark,
I think I’ll take a walk in the park,
Hey hey hey, it’s a beautiful day …”
Daniel Boone, “Beautiful Sunday”, 1972
British bubblegum pop, circa 1968-1972 – as distinct from its more worldly and sophisticated American equivalent – is a pure insight into a country long gone. It’s simplistic, childish, over-excited, innocent, full of absolute certainties and safe knowledges.
It’s fabulous stuff.
It essentially bridged the gap between the poppier end of the mid-60s beat boom and glam rock more »
Robin • FT • 4 Comments
HOW TO DO A COVER VERSION
Distilled from several years of pop experience, here from the WORST to the BEST are ways to approach a cover version.
The Acoustic Guitar: i.e. “Any good song will sound great on an acoustic guitar”, runs the prized nugget of MOJO wisdom which results in Travis mauling “…Baby One More Time”. Culprits throw up their hands in innocence – “It’s not ironic, it’s a great tune”, not any more it isn’t mate.
The ‘Gary Jules’: When in doubt SLOW IT DOWN. Close relation of above, guaranteed to leech all life, rhythm and joy from a song. Critical banker, though (“Nick Cave’s sensitive reading of Bombalurina’s hit reveals the deep psychic wounds beneath the original’s flimsy pop etc etc.”)
The Atomic Kitten: After a karaoke night you maybe remember a quarter or a third of the performances more »
Huge weepy thanks to Bob, Pete and Sarah for immortalising us in song. And thanks to commenters past and present for making it worth immortalising.
Tom in Popular • 63 Comments
I was suspicious of Live Action Role Playing for a long time. I had three excellent reasons: it couldn’t possibly work, it verged dangerously close to SPORTS, and most of all White Dwarf strongly hinted it was a stupid idea. At the time I took White Dwarf very seriously. There was a whole underworld of role-playing fanzines who saw White Dwarf as the enemy of all that was righteous in the hobby, intent on straitjacketing the minds of infant games with their barely disguised pimping of glossy, shallow Games Workshop products. These fanzines were broadly right. But I didn’t read them: as far I was concerned, the Dwarf was mega and skill.
Games Workshop – White Dwarf’s publishers (hence the pimping) – had placed certain bets on the direction the HOBBY OF THE 80S was going to swing in. Their bets involved carefully painted dioramas rather than minibus rides to wet caves, so the magazine spent a lot of time taking the piss out of LARP. Some of this was also the unslakable thirst of the nerd to find someone they can look down on – sad we may be, but we don’t wave rubber swords around (we only paint lead ones). And some of it, it must be said, was justified. Like a lot of geek businesses in the 80s, LARP attracted a few thrusting young Thatcherites whose bold entrepreneurial spirit was matched only by their willingness to scarper with the money at the first opportunity. It gained a reputation for spivviness. more »
Tom in TMFD • 8 Comments
After last weeks unfortunate unplanned hiatus, we are back, back, back with a thoughtful contemplative episode which stretches the format to the edges of acceptability. Along the way we discuss the stupid naming of stations on the Chicago subway, if “finding £20 in the street” is a satisfactory story for even the most banal of radio shows, how to make a flump, the joys of soft furnishings and Bath Moles is yet again name checked. Music comes from the big floppy folder (people just don’t lost mp3 players any more), and an artist whose name is either really Niel Armstrong, or the person who wrote on the CD can’t spell Neil. In English at least.
Oh, the guest is “Carsmile” Steve Hewitt of FreakyTrigger. And I took all the swears out of the rapping so your kids can listen to it and everything (unless they listen to the show backwards in a Dark Side Of The Moon way in which case the only legible words will be the swears. Perhaps worth doing?
Length: 42:32 Played: 1668
At this point, what differentiates the hip-hop that tops the UK charts from the stuff which peeks in lower down is legibility: not too much slang, metaphors spelled out, a flow any kid could follow. At a time when the public face of rap in Britain was Snoop Dogg on the front page of the Daily Star – “KICK THIS EVIL BASTARD OUT!” – the material crossing over commercially wasn’t likely to cause any moral panics. So the “harder edge” promised by DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince on their final album, Code Red, was highly relative. more »
Tom in Popular • 50 Comments
There is a game that is played between critics and films sometimes. Occasionally a film comes along which is kicked to death in the street like some sort of cathartic act of bullying. I can only imagine critics walking out of certain films with some sort of mob mentality dropping on them like a Derren Brown collective piece of mind control. What causes this is the perfect storm often of excess onscreen, excess offscreen (in particular the press notes) and the film itself being no good. There are other things that will help this along. A commercially successful director who has never really produced anything all that brilliant. Use of the word vision: as in “from the visionary director”, or his own “unique vision”. Sometimes I wonder if it is just a matter of critical flexing of their otherwise weedy and Vitamin D deprived muscles. Certainly we saw it earlier this year with John Carter, a perfectly amiable folly which I rather enjoyed. Because that is the thing with these follies, they often aren’t the worst thing in the world, they are often rehabilitated, enjoyed for what they were, or even ironically taken up. As I said above it’s a game, and getting to the end of this list it is a game I am playing for the second time. I already slagged this film of last year, and had a perfectly good time in doing so. And a year on, I am starting to feel a bit bad about it, whilst having committed to playing this game one last time.
more »
Marcello and Lena have both reported getting either “you just posted that” (when they didn’t) or “You are posting comments too quickly. Slow down” messages from the WordPress bots. Is anyone else routinely getting these? I had a quick trawl through the support forums and this issue seems widespread (tho not very recently). I don’t understand the explanation myself, but I didn’t expect to.
(If you’re having trouble posting in this comment thread, email me! marksink3r at g00glemail d0t c0m)
There’s been some discussion on the latest Popular post about 1993 being a particular musical doldrum. I was 20 at the time – so enormously biased of course – but I don’t remember it like that, so I’m republishing an old post I wrote on my Tumblr about it.
1993 in Britain was the apex of scene-a-week genremaking by the UK music press: history focuses now on the proto-Britpop stuff (because it ‘won’ and because it was pretty good) but at the time that wasn’t such a sure thing at all and there was a forest of other stuff going on.* Such as!
New wave of new wave – reputationally poor punkiness, aggressive and political (SMASH, These Animal Men) – all the bands involved released second records which were apparently a lot better than their first ones but by that time Britpop had come along and their fate was oblivion.
Collision pop – sample-heavy ravey rock, hip-hop influences, aggressive and political though also danceable – Senser, Back To The Planet, Chumbawamba, Credit To The Nation, Hustlers HC
Any excuse for a Back To The Planet picture. more »
Tom in FT • 31 Comments
It struck me this morning that it has been a while since I saw an article comparing social media to punk rock. This is a shame. For a time articles comparing social media to punk rock were one of the great growth areas in our dynamic knowledge economy, as the parallels were obvious. Both were about people doing stuff themselves and to hell with THE MAN, unless the man is Mark Zuckerberg. Also – Lurkers! The Lurkers! Need I say more?
But nothing lasts forever – in today’s disruptive environment you must ADAPT OR DIE, and this even goes for blog posts making vague comparisons between technology and music. If comparing social media to punk rock has run its course as a “meme” – to use a bit of socal media jargon – then something else must take its place.
Social media is all about sharing, a bit like hippies – NO WAIT that can’t be right, a bit like living in a squat and listening to Crass. So here are some social media and music articles you could go away and write yourselves: I’ve even included example sentences to get you started.
SOCIAL MEDIA IS THE NEW NEW ROMANTICS: “Like the Blitz Kids of the 80s, today’s youth construct fleeting but highly visual images of themselves. Gary Kemp wore a curtain: his 21st century descendant simply ‘pins’ it on Pinterest.”
SOCIAL MEDIA IS THE NEW SHOEGAZE: “Kevin Shields took 30 years to update his status, today’s “scene that celebrates itself” do it every 30 minutes. Like shoegazers, they’re in love with otherworldly effects – but from Instagram filters, not guitar pedals.”
SOCIAL MEDIA IS THE NEW HIP-HOP: “Gen Y grew up with the idea of ‘sampling’ and now they apply it to every part of their rich media lives as they curate and ‘remix’ media. But instead of turning snippets of tracks into a beat today’s young people take a tiny loop of video and make an ‘animated gif’.”
SOCIAL MEDIA IS THE NEW DANCE MUSIC: “Today’s millennials are DJs, cutting and mixing seamlessly between platforms and screens as they try to ‘move the crowd’. But instead of hands in the air it’s “likes” and “Retweets” these social DJs crave.”
SOCIAL MEDIA IS THE NEW MOD: “Today’s mobile generation seek authentic social experiences, but instead of scooters they have iPhones, and rather than gathering in cafes or clubs they mark their territory with Foursquare check-ins”
SOCIAL MEDIA IS THE NEW INDIEPOP: “Today’s young creatives may have Tumblrs instead of fanzines but both rely on a ‘culture of making’ whose heartfelt honesty is a challenge to the old business models.”
SOCIAL MEDIA IS THE NEW CRUSTY: “These days it isn’t soap young people fear, it’s privacy. The layers of encrusted data their elders want to strip away are what defines their identity.”
Next: How Dubstep, Chillwave, Witch House, Vampire Weekend and Black Metal Are A Bit Like Facebook If You Think About It
Tom in FT • 4 Comments
