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June 27th, 2008

political correctness gone sensible

we-got-you-10-litres-of-perry-but-we-drinked-it

News reaches us from blackleg our intrepid reporter, MattDC, that scenes like the above are no longer permissable at Glastonbury as THE MAN has BANNED brothers from selling plastic 2 litre bottles of their yellow nectar. We are not yet sure if this is due to the plastic making a right old mess or the fact that each bottle contains approximately 14 units of alcohol.

If you have joined our Pilton Boycott this year (and thank you all 850,000 of you* that have) but are still hankering after peary goodness, brothers is now available quite widely. Use their excellent ciderfinder to find yr nearest stockist!

UPDATE: This just in “Theres a dude selling rockingdadchairs! ACTUAL ROCKING DADCHAIRS! Omg”

*based on reports in previous years of a million people trying to get tickets on the first day

Posted by CarsmileSteve in Drink, Pumpkin Publog | No Comments

March 21st, 2008

baconbaconbacon!!!

from our friend ms llaura llllew, comes this astonishing piece of high quality pig-based cookery!

spread_cupdetail.jpg

what’s next? steak plates? lamb chop pans? or just HOVER BACON?

Posted by CarsmileSteve in Food, Pumpkin Publog | No Comments

March 14th, 2008

Hurry up Harriet!

weeeeeeeere going down the pub!A friend who was attending london drinker last night pointed me to this new ale. She was as gobsmacked about this as I was. It’s very difficult to think of what else to say really, a lot of my female friends enjoy their ale already, and those who don’t are, I think, unlikely to change their mind just because some 19 year-old has lucked into being able to brew her own ale. The Birmingham Post ran an article that, if anything, compounds the badness:

I didn’t actually approach the longed-for experience with the serious intention of ending up semi-conscious on the bathroom floor, but that is indeed where I found myself after a night swigging alcopops like it really was lemonade.

I can inform ms easton that a night on her beverage (at 4.2%, stronger that bacardi breezers and only just weaker than smirnoff ice) would almost certainly result in exactly the same outcome and, if my experiences are anything to go by, probably a much worse morning after…

I suppose it’s quite handy when your mum runs a social enterprise body though…

Posted by CarsmileSteve in Drink, Pumpkin Publog | No Comments

February 7th, 2008

Freaky Trigger Top 100 Songs of All Time - Number 47

Doop - Doop

It’s March 1994 and i’m helping to set up at our “end of rag week” ball. As usual there are twice as many people as are actually needed due to being able to get in for nowt if you do a bit of humping and shifting. Both the ents and rag gangs (separate, yet overlapping) were pretty much, to a person, INDIE, one might even go as far as to say PROPER INDIE (with maybe like three dance kids). And yet, and yet, about every five minutes, one of us without fail would start humming or whistling or quietly singing to ourselves “doo-de-ah doo-de-ah doodoodoo” without even realising until someone went “GAH, THAT BLUDY SONG AGAIN!!!” and then five minutes later it would be them whistling it. Honestly, it went on all day. The sound engineer, who was a truly miserable bastard having spent ten years on the road with hawkwind (and had the track marks to prove it), was beside himself, because we just couldn’t stop doing it. I’m sure that Doop was not one of the songs discussed on How Pop Songs Work the other month, but it clearly was very very effective somehow…

Blimey, for a three minute song, it goes on a bit, eh?

Posted by CarsmileSteve in Pop | 4 Comments

February 5th, 2008

Twelve Inches of Loveliness

Maura has linked to this guy a couple of times recently, but i make no apology for linking to him on here too. DUDES! 12″ remixes of all yr 80s and 90s favourites! Dub mix of Magic Dance! Extended mix of (Forever) Live and Die, ripped from the original vinyl!!
Also, rather buff gentleman’s six pack on the blog, there…

Posted by CarsmileSteve in Pop | 1 Comment

January 10th, 2008

If you’re havin’ tent problems, I feel bad for you son…

following the actually not great time i had last year (PLEASE, someone take forward the supporters trust idea with my blessing), i have comprehensively and unequivically sworn off going to glastonbury this year (it will be the first one i’ve missed since 1995), but for those of you still interested, it’s the same registration process as last year (pound to a penny that they extend it past the end of february again as well), no doubt with the same passing on of emails to mean fiddler to cross promote events.
Jay-Z, waterproof trousers not pictured
but, hey, good news for all the “teens” out there who have been staying away in droves over the last few years as the site has filled with 30-something middle managers like me, Michael (or MC ME (OBE) to his “homies” in the pilton ‘hood) has got some exciting news:

I’m putting on a black American headliner, who’s absolutely terrific that’s going to appeal to those people.

so if you are “those people” i’m sure you’ll have a lovely time. Speculation is RIFE about who this person might be, from Little Stevie Wonder to Natalie Cole, but we can EXCLUSIVELY reveal that one major star has, in fact, attended Glastonbury previously, although he did encounter a few challenges or, some might say, “problems”, which we list for you below: … read on …

Posted by CarsmileSteve in Blog 7, Pop | 26 Comments

January 9th, 2008

Paul Morley, what is he good for?

art.jpgPop, What Is It Good For (BBC4, last night) was kind of the centrepiece of BBC4’s Giant Month O’ Pop and it was a rather interesting beast. Obviously an hour of Morley expounding on music is unlikely to be a bad thing, he’s one of the few journos who can really do public speaking in the same way he writes and only seem slightly ludicrous, but, certainly for anyone who read Words and Music, there was little new. I got the feeling that we weren’t the core audience though, that it was aimed at people who hadn’t read W&M, people who would be surprised at the programme starting with 15 minutes on Can’t Get You Out Of My Head and, although it covered similar ground, there were some new twists and turns, mainly added by the range of interviewees.

The six tracks he concentrated on (and then spun off from to talk about All Pop Ever) were:

CGYOOMH - Kylie
Ride a White Swan - T-Rex
Lola - The Kinks
This Charming Man - The Smiths
What Do You Want - Adam Faith
Freak Like Me - Sugababes
… read on …

Posted by CarsmileSteve in Do You See, Pop, TV | 42 Comments

September 14th, 2007

BBC Exceeds Recycling Targets!

One of the rounds of last night’s Mock the Week (itself recycled from old bits of Have I Got News For You, Whose Line Is It Anyway and leftover Radio 4 panel quizzes) asked the comedians to suggest “Letters That Would Never Get Read Out on Points of View”.

Straight to the front of the stage was Hugh Dennis, a glint in his eye. Before he moved his lips I knew what was coming, and he didn’t disappoint, although Meg was rather surprised as I joined in rather too loudly:

Why, oh why, oh why IS THE STRUCTURE OF MY CHROMOSONES!!

mary-white.jpgThis, to my knowledge, first appeared in a Mary Whitehouse Experience sketch about Points of View, when MWE was still good on Radio One*, almost twenty years ago, well done Hugh, no need to waste resources. I look forward to forthcoming jokes about Henry Kelly (what a Henry Kelly), f3ltching and david baddiel being funny again rob newman being sexy again over long agatha christie based skits (BABABA BAAAAAM).

*quick plug for No Rock & Roll Fun’s Radio One More Time which hasn’t yet mentioned the comedy half hour, but top reading none the less.

Posted by CarsmileSteve in Do You See, TV | 1 Comment

September 13th, 2007

The Freaky Trigger Top 100 Tracks Of All Time: No. 53: Wham! - Wham Rap

hmmm, where shall i put this shuttlecock...They rly don’t make ‘em like this any more. Boy bands singing about unemployment? Mentions of governmental departments in choruses? Comedy rapping? OK, there’s still comedy rapping.

My “best of wham!”, which features the 12″ mix of wham rap (all 6:46 of it!), credits the song to michael and ridgeley, I’d kind of always assumed it was written for them, otherwise why is the george michael “character” so very far from the different corner/careless whisper big girls blouse GM we grew to love (and which was clearly much more commercially successful)? In terms of early 80s english rap singles, it’s probably the best though (not that there was a lot of competition). It does kind of capture the Chic groove that eg rappers delight has, and is arguably no more lyrically niave, why shouldn’t essex boys do rap? I think it works because they’re singing about what they know, what three million people knew at the time (although I doubt whether dole money stretched to buying singles, which might explain why this was their lowest charting proper single). Interesting that the lyrics on the 12″ version include the wonderful line “i choose to cruise”, but this is excised from the single version, Tom Watkins’ idea not to raise suspicions perhaps?

Posted by CarsmileSteve in Pop | 13 Comments

August 21st, 2007

The Freaky Trigger Top 100 Tracks Of All Time: No. 55 DAVID BOWIE - “Suffragette City”

Dame David in 40 years timeWham bam, thank you mam, well quite. Having just looked up the lyrics (having sung them phonetically all these years), is this like bowie trying to be bolan or summat? The other thing is I seem to spend most of the time thinking about other songs whilst trying to think about SC. If it’s not surfin’ usm it’s rock & roll suicide (now i no longer listen to alBUMs this very rarely happens with new tracks, but i have played ZS&TSFM once or twice over the years). maybe it’s the way the wham bam thank you mam bit (the most memorable bit of the song) drags you to the end before you’ve sung the beginning to yrself, thus leading you into the next track on the alBUM, or it being the sample makes you think of the other song (see also cloudbusting vs the u-u-utah saints). … read on …

Posted by CarsmileSteve in Pop | 2 Comments