Pop World Cup – Radio Roundup 5

Our Group E round-up sees Roger Bozack off to cover the Pop Winter olympics so it falls to analyst Pete Baran to helm the coverage in South Africa. The first all Europe tie, Denmark vs Netherlands, followed by the very intriguing Camaroon vs Japan. Pete is joined in the studio by New Zealand manager Steve Mannion, and between them they raise the spectre of Amy Winehouse, the Sultans of Ping and of course, up from the depths, thirty storeys high, Godzilla. So join Baran and Mannion for all the highlights and results.

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Pete Baran in Pop World Cup Podcast • 3 Comments

The FT Top 25 Pubs of the 00s No 7: The Head Of Steam / Doric Arch, Euston

This is the only pub on our list to have changed hands, its name and still retained a degree of quality. We came into the new millennium with this odd station pub being called the Head Of Steam, and left with the much grander name of the Doric Arch. Internally the changes were merely cosmetic, a new brewery had all its ales on all the time, but maintained a rotating batch of guest ales. The Railway tat was toned down a bit, but only a bit. And the code on the toilet, that remained. Head Of Steam? Doric Arch? Just call it the HASDA and its appeal becomes clear. There are some days when it just HASDA be this pub.

Under all the rules of the game, the HASDA is a station pub, though the bounds and catchment area of Euston Station means that there is a far nastier station pub directly inside the frame of Euston (the Britannia – handily twinned with the walk-in Medi+Care Centre). But then Euston is a funny place, a new build carved out of the old, all black and concrete. The old name conjured up athe glorious age of rail travel, steamy engines which had long gone. The new name conjured up the old Euston Station, with its Doric Arches, rather than all new Euston’s Dullish Arses. But even in ten years this has changed; the slightly overgrown concourse of what may well be Euston Square has become slowly inhabited by swish looking portakabined Nandos and the like. It is like the Harlequin centre in Watford had sent its food court on holiday, with Krispy Kreme and Banger Bros missing the return train. Sometimes I look out of the windows in the Doric Arch and remember when it was all distressed concrete and weeds around here.

Actually the HASDA is that even rarer of breeds. A successful, brutalist pub in an office block adjoined to a BUS STATION. A pub which is on the first floor, with its toilets locked away two floors below, locked for fear of vagrants living in them. I once went to a Izikaya on the ninth floor of a tower block in Nigata in Japan, and it had a similar feel of locked in grimness, which vanished as soon as the first beer was drunk. And luckily the beer in the HASDA has always been good. This gives the HASDA its edge, and makes it much more than a quick commuter turnaround pub. It is perfectly set out for a quick drink. But we have had quite slow, long and protracted drinks here too. The Top 100 Films of All Time In 2003 was worked out in the Head Of Steam around a nice big central table, and other short drinks have lasted until closing time. Indeed this very list of pubs was supposed to have been worked out in the Doric – except it was too full.

Which does bring us to the HASDA’s downfall (for this list at least). It is a commuter, station pub and therefore can get unfeasibly rammed at times. There are not that many tables (and you can never get the train carriage table these days), so for a big group it is sometimes suicide in there. Bearing in mind its proximity to a number of other great pubs, losses are often cut and the party moves on. Leaving a bitter taste about this otherwise wonderful pub.

It is also one of the few pubs where the landlord, or chief barman, or whatever his sarcastic but perfect job title is, has stayed the same for a long period of time. I cannot help but think that this is the main reason it still offers so many interesting other beers after Fullers bought the place. Its also why the sport is never too loud, why the beer is kept well and the food is adequate. I know there are others who want to declare a sort of seedy love for the HASDA, so I will leave it to them too. All I have to say is “CX4321” and it all comes flooding back.

Pete Baran in FT / Pumpkin Publog • 6 Comments

BIS WEEK: How Bis Are Responsible For Twilight

The short answer would be the Secret Vampire Soundtrack, but it would only be a superficial answer. Sure Secret Vampires makes explicit the link between vampirism and pop music, but you would be hard pushed to think that it is any particular clarion call for more vampires in the media. Except at this point of 1995, vampires were at a pretty low ebb. A couple of years after Francis Ford Coppola’s disappointing Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the poor Interview With The Vampire adaptation and the ropey Buffy film, vampires couldn’t be caught dead in the media. Which since they are undead is possibly the point but I digress.

The Secret Vampire Soundtrack contained Kandy Pop which was the track that broke Bis and was responsible for making them the first unsigned band on Top Of The Pops*. As such Bis not only made Vampires fashionable again, they toyed with the idea of vampires not being scary. If Manda Rin, chirpy chanteuse, was a vampire then suddenly the idea of the gothic immortal vampire was turned on its head. more »

Pete Baran in Do You See • 3 Comments

BIS WEEK: Which Is The Best Bis?

It has been the question on everyones lips this week, which exactly is the Best Bis? We bring you the final of this hard fought battle below:

(Note: The department of Business & Information and Skills had a hard fought battle to third place, mainly by virtue of also having a Mandy in charge, but David Lammy is no Sci-Fi Steve. The British Interplanetary Society were also in with a shout but keep arguing about whether Pluto is a planet or not.) So over to our adjudicator Magnus Anderson:

BIS (BAND)

vs

BIS (Bank for International Settlements)
more »

Pete Baran in FT • 4 Comments

BIS Week: What Is Bis’s Favourite BIScuit

Often in scholarly discussions of the revolutionary impact of Bis on the cultural scene in the late nineties, little notice is taken of the trivial. Nevertheless to understand exactly how the Teen-C revolution came about, sometimes the trivial becomes a solid motivational factor. And a key question stands there in plain sight, staring us down with its obviousness. But as pointed out by no less that Garibaldi, many revolutions are predicated on trivial tipping points, and perhaps the blue touch paper of the Teen-C revolution stares at us from their name.

Ie, what did they like to eat with a cup of tea?

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Pete Baran in Pumpkin Publog • 3 Comments

THIS IS BIS WEEK

Here at Freaky Trigger we have realised that January has been a bit slow with output. A new year can put new strains upon our writers and what with Tom’s Guardian column and me embarking on a year without cinema, pickings have been slim. What was needed was something that would galvanise all the writers, a shared passion, a subject with suitable artistic depth that that everyone young or old could contribute to. When framed in those terms there was really only one possible subject that in 2010 needed the kind of re-evaluation and celebration that only FT could provide.

BIS.

Manda Rin, Sci-Fi Steve and John Disco’s manifesto for a Teen-C Revolution may now be generally forgotten in the merry-go-round of the British charts, but after BIS WEEK you will have no more illusions of the vital importance of this small Scottish band at the turn of the millennium. Ground breaking, historic and influential in fields that may surprise you, BIS WEEK will demonstrate the tendrils of Fake DIY which have infiltrated nearly every facet of the arts. From film, to books, to reality TV, to even the British food revolution of the 00’s, Bis can be seen to be the secret architects of so much that makes current life so interesting. (Hell, I believe one of us may even suggest that Bis basically invented the internet). more »

Pete Baran in FT • 2 Comments

The FT Top 25 Pubs of the 00s No 10: The Pakenham Arms, Mount Pleasant

There are two words that according to modern usage I pronounce wrong. I will hold my hand up to “Colander” – which I pronounce “cullander” to rhyme with Wallander* as a throwback to believing it etymology being tied to the cauliflower I often saw being drained in one. The other word I annoy everyone with pronounce differently (correctly) is the name of this pub. I give it the long A – to me it is the PAY KEN HAM. Everyone else says PACK EN HAM. But PACK EN HAM sounds a bit too harsh to me, a bit too much like Pack It IN! Which is part of the point of the Pakenham, it doesn’t ask you to pack it in at all. Indeed it is quite happy to let you drink well past midnight.

The Pakenham is a posties pub, backing on to the wasteland at the back of Mount Pleasant Sorting Office, and fifty percent of the drinkers there are usually postal workers. As such you would not be surprised to find big projected sports screens, a dartboard and plenty of rushed pint vertical drinking space. But its horseshoe bar also keeps its beers very well (I think of it as the spiritual home of Doom Bar in London), and the excellent bar staff know how to work their crowd. more »

Pete Baran in Pumpkin Publog • 6 Comments

Poptimism Into 2010

29th January at the Horse, 124 Westminster Bridge Road.

Just saying like!

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Pete Baran in FT • 4 Comments

The FT Top 100 Tracks Of All Time #19: Michael Jackson – Billie Jean

There really isn’t much to add about Billie Jean that wasn’t mentioned in Tom’s excellent piece for Popular, or indeed in this Freaky Trigger & The Lollards Of Pop episode where we heard Jackson’s slightly ramshackle unformed demos of the song. So I will give you the one thing that always made me wary of Billie Jean, bar it being on an album that my family had already dismissed for being “silly”. The name. Who is called “Billie Jean”?

So in lieu of saying anything about Billie Jean, here are some other prominent Billie Jeans, or Billies Jeans.

Billie Jean King: Probably the most famous Billie Jean, and almost certainly the most important female tennis player of all time. But was Michael Jackson a big tennis fan. It would certainly make sense when Mike says she is not his girl though, by 1983 she had been outed. Certainly if Mike chose the name to honour her, he would have been way ahead of the US: she did finally receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama last year. But apparently Quincy Jones (who never liked Billie Jean anyway) wanted to change the name of the song because he though people would think it would be about Billie Jean King.
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Pete Baran in FT • No Comments