Tom Ewing

SAINT ETIENNE – “Popular”

#1976, 21st May 2012

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 • 60 Comments

I WAS A GOBLIN: In Which I Was Actually A Goblin

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

JAZZYJEFF AND THE FRESH PRINCE – “Boom! Shake The Room”

#695, 25th September 1993

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

1993: The Love Post

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’s The New Thing!

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

CULTURE BEAT – “Mr Vain”

#694, 28th August 1993

The formula for 90s Eurodance was well established by now: strobe-lit dancing to urgent beats, big-voiced singers, a rap somewhere in the middle to change up the pace. It wasn’t the most thoughtful of music, but done well it had a real kick. And “Mr. Vain”, latecomer though it was, does it very well. It’s one of the most direct Eurodance hits, and one of the most aggressive. Eurodance lyricists could tend to pseudo-profundity, or calls to spiritual awakening: there’s none of that here. more »

Tom in Popular • 43 Comments

Split And Polish

So what was that poll all about then? (This poll, the one I linked on Twitter and Tumblr – a basic tick-the-box job on the best-selling music acts of last year)

Well, the truth is it was trying something out for my day job. I wanted to try out DIY split-testing tool Optimizely and see how easy it was to run basic experiments. more »

Tom in FT • 6 Comments

FREDDIE MERCURY – “Living On My Own”

#693, 14th August 1993

The original “Living On My Own” was a highlight of 1985’s uneven but likeable Mr Bad Guy album, one of the tracks where the disco backing had enough muscle to carry Mercury’s imagination. That track rides on a steady, ambulatory pulse, creating the space for Freddie to run free, scatting and shrieking. For its 1992 remix, on the posthumous Freddie Mercury Album, the skibbedy-bobbedy stuff was pruned back and the mix focused on the track’s whoops and war cries, leading off with a swaggering yodel. And then for this release – carrying the song to the top of the charts – “Living On My Own” was remixed further, turned a little more sombre, that triumphant opening shout replaced with a slow synth build, in case we’d somehow forgotten that Freddie Mercury wasn’t with us any more. more »

Tom in Popular • 25 Comments

TAKE THAT – “Pray”

#692, 17th July 1993

From my perspective, Take That’s ubiquity was as sudden as a snowfall and apparently as permanent. This viewpoint – 20 years old, indie-leaning, straight, male – was quite irrelevant, and quite wrong: I simply had no tools to conceptualise what the band were doing and what they might mean. I don’t think I even knew what a “six pack” was, for example. For the likes of me, a clip kept circulating – the boys in an early promo vid, in leathers, having – from memory – some kind of jelly fight. Don’t worry, the clip told us, this is camp at best, these are himbos. This will pass. more »

Tom in Popular • 39 Comments

GABRIELLE – “Dreams”

#691, 26th June 1993

Gabrielle starts as she was to go on: a voice apparently soaked in personality singing songs with a total absence of it. Gabrielle’s throaty, worldly tone marks her out as this year’s version of that recurring chimera, the Great British Soul Hope. The GBSH – last seen on Popular in the form of Lisa Stansfield – tends to play out in a broadly similar way each time. A girl, or guy, or group with good voices and the best intentions enjoys early success, but the toxic mix of acclaim and dull material does for them. more »

Tom in Popular • 50 Comments