Posts from October 2010
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Oct 10
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Oct 10
Popular: The 80s
Another poll! If this one gets a good reaction I’ll go back and do 70s, 60s, etc ones.
Here are the 10 years of the 1980s – you pick your favourite pop year. The definition of pop is up to you – I’ve listed some of the songs we covered here but don’t limit your considerations to those – they’re just a reminder!
Loading ...Popular ’89
I give a mark out of 10 to every Popular entry – here’s your chance to indicate which of the hits of 1989 you’d have given 6 or more to (by whatever criteria you wish!). And use the comments box to discuss the year in general if you like, too.
My top mark this year was a 10 for “Like A Prayer”. And the lowest were a brace of 1s for “Belfast Child” and the third Jive Bunny ‘smash’.
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Oct 10
BAND AID II – “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”
From the biggest-selling single of all time, to the ninth-biggest seller of 1989: charity hit glut illustrated in a single stat. Pete Waterman – pop’s Mr. Rent-A-Conscience with three charity chart-toppers to his name – stressed at every turn that the whole thing was Bob Geldof’s idea. Perhaps he was aware of the potential for anti-climax, or perhaps just nervous of the cynicism likely to greet a record largely manned by the PWL roster. Either way this is the sound of a golden goose croaking its last (for a while).
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Freaky Trigger And The Lollards Of Pop (Series 4, week 5)
Random start point, random guests, random topics. This weeks Lollards is all LOL no LARD, with Kat Stevens, Alix Campbell and Magnus Anderson being herded into opinions about topics they no nothing of by the medium of a fortune telling device and a pound should electronic roulette wheel. So expect discussions of Milford Haven, the Timeline of Glaciation, some future missile and that even at Disneyland Paris there still sin’t nothing wrong with a little bump and grind.
Music comes from unmarked CD’s we found at home somewhere.
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Oct 10
At The End Of The 1980s
On New Years’ Eve 1989, I didn’t go to a party. I didn’t wish anyone a happy new decade. I don’t think I drank any champagne. I stayed at home and watched TV instead, and it was wonderful.
What I stayed home to watch was a special highlights show on the music of the 80s, put together (so Alan tells me) by the Late Review team and shown on BBC2 across midnight. (A Big Ben graphic pops up during a Dead Or Alive performance, discreetly welcoming in 1990). The show had no presenters – it was simply a patchwork of clips, a minute or so long each, vaguely themed (sometimes VERY vaguely) in sections. It started with Hayzi Fantayzee, at the top of a one-hit wonders bit, and ended with the artist of the decade: Prince. In between was almost anybody I remembered and a lot more I didn’t. Here’s the section called “Barking” – essentially, acts who were a bit ‘eccentric’.
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Oct 10
JIVE BUNNY AND THE MASTERMIXERS – “Let’s Party”
A Jive Bunny Christmas medley was at this point probably the most inevitable thing in the entire history of pop music, but that didn’t make its arrival any less painful. And honestly, little could have prepared you for how brazenly shoddy “Let’s Party” actually sounds.
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Oct 10
Unified Theory of Cheeseboard Part 1
From each category of the mainstream bacterial/microbial/fungal actions that make cheese CHEESY, I chose a favourite from what I’d reviewed so far. I assembled them together, and got some folks around to eat them for me, and rate each of them out of ten.
And here, in reverse order, are the best cheeses so far, and how they rated with my tasters.
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Oct 10
NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK – “You Got It (The Right Stuff)”
The arrival of the modern boy band, as much due to demographics as sound. Though Maurice Starr’s concept – New Edition, but white – dates from the mid-80s, the band were an inititial flop. But by 1988 they were a better fit: this pop-R&B sound seemed like the kind of thing a bunch of street-smart white kids might make – or rather, it could be pitched as such to the younger and less street-smart white kids Starr wanted to buy it. The boys’ looks and moves would do the rest.
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Oct 10
Montgomery’s Cheddar (cheesy lover #100!)
Tomorrow I’ll be revealing my favourite cheeses from the 100 I’ve written up here, and I’ll be harnessing the powers of drunken chums science to work out the Supreme Winning Champion Cheese. But for now, here’s cheese 100.
Montgomery’s Cheddar
A hard raw-milk cow’s cheese from Somerset, bought from Neals Yard Dairy.
Monty’s is a real beast of a cheddar; strong and dense and farmy. I think it’s my favourite cheddar, and it’s definitely a classic. The rind of our wedge is pale biscuity white, imprinted with the pattern of the cloth it was bound in. It’s smattered with fissures of a powdery beige – these remind me of lunar craters, but are the work of the cheese mite. Cheese mites love cheddar!
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