Posts from September 2009
25
Sep 09
Welcome to Popular
Now I’ve got today’s actual post up I’d like to say hello to any newcomers who’ve arrived via Bob Stanley’s Times article on this project. I see some new faces in the comments boxes already, which is just fantastic – any undertaking like this needs refreshing occasionally. I hope you stick around and wade in to any new entries (as well as restarting debate on old ones, of course).
Also a reminder for old and new alike that next Friday night it’s Club Popular, where we play only #1 hits all night, and next Sunday afternoon (the 4th) we’re invading the Hangover Lounge, at the Lexington in Islington, where Mr Stanley and I will be spinning some of the mellower #1s, and the regular DJs promise “number one themed” sets. Hope to see some of you one or both of those.
Lunch with Katie (Cheesy Lovers 20 – 23)
I met up with Katie for a cheesy Friday Borough Market lunch-and-review the other week.
This is our lunch! Clockwise from the top left you have salty ricotta, Raschera, St Denis and Roquefort.
Raschera
Mostly cow, with a bit of sheep, Italian, from Gastronomica
This is a soft pale elasticy wedge of cheese, scattered with little holes. It’s initially very creamy, and melts in the mouth, leading to both a sharp fruity bite – think gooseberries, and a contrasting sweet milkiness that reminds me of those pink and white milk-teeth sweets
Katie’s verdict: ‘Delicious – a bit like dairylea for grownups.’
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PAUL HARDCASTLE – “19”
Before writing this entry, I spent a while researching Paul Hardcastle’s later career as a highly successful figure in the land of Smooth Jazz. I cannot tell you how long this actually took, as time can have no meaning in a world where tracks are called things like “Visions Of Illusions” and “Constellation Of Dreams”. But what this voyage of illumination showed me is that “19” is a very odd fish indeed: even Hardcastle’s prior output, if YouTube is any guide, sounded like the on-hold music for a flotation centre. What happens when such a man decides to make a cut-up electro record?
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DIXIE CHICKS – “Not Ready To Make Nice”
I’ve never really cared about the Dixie Chicks beyond this record, and I had to look up what they did that was so terrible. So I don’t like “Not Ready To Make Nice” (embedding disabled) because of its political relevance, but because of its cultural and personal resonance. Even though it’s not really ‘about’ this at all, it’s the best song I’ve heard concerning the moment when some ridiculous situation tips over from “WRONG ON THE INTERNET” into actually surreal rage and wild, disproportionate hate.
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24
Sep 09
SUBEENA – “Boksd”
A few weeks back The Lex alerted me to this as part of a raft of stuff he was calling, somewhat reluctantly, “post-dubstep”. Not his coinage, but I was immediately heartened. Not only was the music excellent I also knew that no matter what I ended up writing about it, no matter how airily uninformed I sound, I could not make it sound more rubbish than “post-dubstep” seems to imply.
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My Ten Favourite Films Of 2008: 1. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
Hooray for Romanian miserabalism. Really, I don’t think I saw a more depressing film in 2008 that 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. And I don’t think I saw a film that affected me more, possibly in the last decade. Don’t want to spoil any eventual decade list that I might do in 2015, but expect to see this in the area. Because even now, thinking about it, so much of the feel of the film comes back, specific events too, but the overarching sense of dread. Because while 4 Months. 3 Weeks and 2 Days is a historically set film about getting an illicit abortion in Ceauşescu’s 1980’s Romania, it is also a visceral horror movie and a nailbiting thriller. And for such a specific setting there are aspects which are easily universalised.
The plot is simple, two friends, one gets pregnant. The passive pregnant one, Gabita needs an abortion, which was illegal then in Romania. Otilla, her more assertive friend pretty much does everything to procure one for her.
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23
Sep 09
The Most Important Game Ever Made #8: Special YOU LIE Edition
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPgPQkBD8fU
Anyway, it turns out the Beatles never did perform “Can’t Buy Me Love” on the Ed Sullivan show, which makes them LYING LIARS WHO LIE. Were they even born in Liverpool? I’ve seen an ungrammatical placard that says otherwise and I refuse to let the SOCIALISTS silence me.
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PHYLLIS NELSON – “Move Closer”
For all that “Move Closer”‘s intro positions the song as a see-what-you’re-giving-up-boy move, on the surface there’s something surprisingly chaste about this record – maybe it’s Nelson’s high-register sweetness, or just the way she calls her lover “my dear”. It’s the sort of song people make Hallmark Card-style videos for, all soft focus and sunsets.
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My Ten Favourite Films Of 2008: 1.5: Summer Hours
(Doesn’t count cos I saw it on DVD).
Perhaps I wasn’t clear at the start of this little project, but the list of favourite films from last year were films I saw in the cinema. This is not a problem because I tend to see over 100 films in the cinema a year, and so rarely miss something I want to see. It does mean occasionally I catch something on DVD later which is good, but usually i am excited enough about a release for it to get me to see it. Summer Hours, last years pastoral piece by Olivier Assayas managed to sneak past me in the summer. Possibly because I didn’t find the description (middle class family bicker about what to do with the family house when the inherit it) very exciting. But I really like Olivier Assayas, Irma Vep, Demonlover even Clean are all really good films to me. But DVD was how I saw Summer Hours, and yet it gripped me like no other DVD I have ever seen.
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