New York London Paris Munich

Club Action Presents… EUROPOPTIMISM

Club Action returns THIS SATURDAY!

Join DJ Chlorine & The Barnet Ape for a celebration of the best of German technobosh, Italo-disco, Russian girlpop, Swiss post-punk, Irish jigs, Serbian turbo-folk, Spanish holiday hits, Scandinavian hair metal, French house and of course UK Garage (and everything else that could possibly score douze points).

Special guest DJ duties fall to DJ MAXIMATOR who owns at least 7 different versions of Ça Plane Pour Moi and may well play them all at once.

WHEN: This Saturday! 4th May 2013, 8pm-1am

WHERE: New venue! Downstairs at The Hideaway Bar, 114 Junction Road, Archway (nearest tubes Archway/Tufnell Park, 390 & 134 buses both run all night)

WHO: 2 Unlimited, ABBA, Ace of Base, A-Ha, Alcazar, Alizée, Annie, Boney M, Björk, Black Box, Bucks Fizz, Cascada, Daft Punk, Europe, Falco, Giorgio Moroder, Girls Aloud, Infernal, Justice, Kraftwerk, Katy B, Lindstrøm, Lordi, Lulu, Margaret Berger, O-Zone, Plastic Bertrand, Praga Khan, Propaganda, Roxette, Röyksopp, Ruslana, Scooter, So Solid Crew, Stardust, tAtU, Teddybears STHLM, Todd Terje, Tomcraft and of course Yello.

PLUS: Early arrivals can expect a small amount of ORGAFUN (er, mp3s permitting…)

Poptimism presents… CLUB ACTION!

You may have noticed that things have been a little bit quiet on the Freaky Trigger dancing front lately. That’s because DJ Chlorine and The Barnet Ape have been hard at work in secret altitude training up Mount Poplympus, in readiness to bring you…

CLUB ACTION!
WHERE: Downstairs at Ryan’s Bar, Stoke Newington Church Street (by the 73/476 bus stop)
WHEN: Friday 14th September, 8pm-1am
WHAT: Pop music, dancing and highly drinkable real ale!

FREE ENTRY plus a free pint if you show your recently-won Olympic/Paralympic gold medal to one of the DJs. (Half a pint for silver, a lime and soda for bronze.)

(Facebook event link here)

The FT Top 100 Songs of All Time #8: Dexy’s Midnight Runners – There, There, My Dear

It feels a bit wrong, me being the one to write about Dexy’s. I have friends who are much much bigger fans, I have already written about the other Dexy’s track on this list – Come On Eileen. And for a very long time, until I picked up a cheap reissue CD of Searching For The Young Soul Rebels in 2002, Come On Eileen was one of the three things I knew about Dexy’s. The other two being Jocky Wilson Said and the Theme From Brush Strokes. Which for any band would be enough for at least a page in any half decent history of pop.

You see Robin, I’m just searching for the young soul rebels, and I cant find them anywhere. Where have you hidden them?

The FT Top 100 Songs of All Time #11: MR OIZO – “Flat Beat”

Any 13-year-old from 1995 will tell you that the following are vital if you are to be in any way cool:

- attitude of complete indifference to all events
- inside-out knowledge of everything that happened on telly last night, especially Friends
- Rimmel Black Cherry lipstick
- copy of Sugar magazine (RIP :`()
- some trendy jeans

NARNIA WEEK / The FT Top 100 Songs: 12: MC Hammer – U Can’t Touch This

It is serendipitous (in the non Cusack / Beckinsale way) that U Can’t Touch This has turned up in the dying throes of Narnia week. Because MC Hammer’s most well known hit has a surprisingly large number of parallels with the Narnia sequence. Whilst people have seen religious metaphors all over CS Lewis’s fantasy kidlit, well the same it true of this 1990 reworking of Rick James’s Super Freak. Indeed you could say the relationship between the Bible, made of the Old and New Testament is similar to the addition of Hammer’s rap to James’s iconic riff to make You Can’t Touch This. Consider the Old Testament sex and temptation in Super Freak, to the New Testament pacifism and turning the other cheek of Please Hammer, Don’t Hurt ‘Em. Indeed the Gospel According To Hammer is all about not hurting anyone, but just good baggy panted fun.

Eeny meenie miney mo, which way you wanna go?

This really is the last NYLPM post.

If you’ve enjoyed NYLPM, you might also enjoy:

- the NYLPM archives, which will be staying up.
- the rest of Freaky Trigger, which will sail on unaffected, though with fewer overall hits most likely.
- Popular, which restarts tomorrow with Chris Farlowe and will continue chronologically through the UK’s #1 hits.

So I will be spending 2006 on holiday in the late 60s and early 70s, but will still write a bit about music on various LiveJournal communities, and hopefully one or two things for the Stylus webzine. (If you have a music zine and you’d like me to write something, ask me.)

Meanwhile there are lots of other music blogs. When we started NYLPM in March 2000 there were about three, now there are thousands! Millions! Naturally I don’t actually read any of them but if I find a good one I might update this post with the links. Poke around on the sidebar in the meantime.

Happy 2006, 2007 and ever after. Bye!

I wanna dedicate it, everybody made it

This is the last NYLPM post*.

After five and a half years, 3,500 posts and something like forty contributors I’m pulling the plug on this blog. Once upon a time it was the best music blog in the world, more recently it was just something nice to have around, and even if its best days are some years behind us, a hunt through most of its 70 archived months will turn up something worth reading – a review, a snippet of information, an idea or two ready to be picked up on. I may well hunt through myself sometime, and point you to the best bits.

I’m ending NYLPM because – as should be pretty obvious – I’ve no use for it anymore. Readership has been declining, and it’s been declining because the blog has been neglected, and the blog has been neglected because ultimately I’m bored with writing about music in this format. I dabbled in MP3 blogging to spice things up but my heart was never really in it. When I got back from the EMP conference earlier this year I’d had three days of really stimulating conversation about music, I’d heard some fascinating papers, and I realised I no will or desire to write it all up here. So this cancellation is overdue, but I’m still very proud of NYLPM, in its heyday and after.

This blog was never just a solo effort, and my decision to kill it off is a rather selfish one. Apologies and thankyous to Mark, Pete, Martin and Anthony, who were the most regular current contributors. And mighty thanks to Mike Daddino, Ned Raggett, Dan Perry, Maura Johnston, Fred Solinger, Tim Finney, Sarah C, Tim Hopkins, Dave Raposa, Sundar Subramanian, Jess Harvell, Stevie Nixed, Carsmile Steve, Jel, Marcello Carlin, Dr Alex T, Alan Trewartha, Robin Carmody, Greg Scarth, Tracer Hand, Steve Mannion, Stevie T, Jim Cassius, Peter Miller, Mike G, Ronan Fitzgerald, Andy Kellman, Mitch, William Bloody Swygart, and anyone else who contributed and who I shamefully forgot. And thanks to the linkers, commenters and readers too. It’s been a real pleasure and I hope you remember us fondly.

*but one.

A Top Ten

Oddly enough I’m feeling happier about music, and writing about music, than I have for a couple of years. 2006 is going to be a treat: I want to get there quickly, not look back.

So I got a machine to look back for me. I was a late iPod adopter but it’s come in useful, and it has a neat little feature which counts up how often I’ve played each track on it. So this Top 10 is quite simply the ten current tracks I’ve listened to most. I left out one record – Inaya Day’s “Nasty Girl” – because it was on my wife’s playlists more than mine – but otherwise this seems an accurate half of a story.

That half of the story happened in my living room, and among my fellow message-board co-dependents. The other half happened away from headphones, further out in the world, finding or rediscovering or refreshing places for music to happen to me. Places like:

- Seattle, for the EMP conference. Jetlag and a hectic schedule meant I didn’t spend as much time with the people I met as I’d planned, but the event reminded me how exciting thinking about music can be (and also how boring it sometimes is).

- My office. I’m lucky enough to work with people who I actually like, and who like music enough to argue with me about it. Working there has made me explain things I’d dismissed as obvious and like things I’d simply dismissed. I’m also lucky enough to work at a place that has the radio on all day. Maybe it’s obvious – to everyone but me-as-was – but listening to the radio makes you a better pop critic.

- Poptimism. I’ve been DJing at club nights for a few years but Poptimism was the one that ‘clicked’, won its own crowd, and turned briefly into something special. To have it suddenly taken away was more than just irritating, but even if we don’t find a new venue in ’06 (and we will), it was a joy to do it, to give physical meaning and expression to our ideas about music, and to get ghastly drunk on cheap wine. Thanks to Steve, Pete and Alan, and thanks to everyone who came and joined in too.

10. Uniting Nations – You And Me: In Feburary I played for 300 or so people at my work company party. It was corny white-collar fuxx like me dancing badly to predictable records, but that didn’t make the delight we all took in filter-disco floorfillers any less glorious. “You And Me” hadn’t been released then but it makes me think of that night when the double-hit drums come in for the chorus.

9. tATu – All About Us: So the lesbian stuff turned out to be a (very profitable) metaphor for indivisibility, the suffocating dangerous closeness of a hyperbolic teenage friendship. The kind of desperate friendship which even as a teen you probably didn’t have but one could recognise anyhow. One of those records that makes me imagine that I might be in a film and that it might end, thrillingly, badly.

8. Field Music – You Can Decide: A song I was surprised to find on the list, I assume I listened to it a lot for Stylus’ Singles Jukebox UK, trying to find an angle. I probably failed and gave it a 6. Stylus gets a good deal of online flak for many reasons – some good – but I’m grateful to it for letting me write uncomplicated silly singles reviews when I needed to. Field Music as I remember make a gentle, slightly fastidious noise which is difficult to dislike or love.

7. Roll Deep – The Avenue: The vibe here is a pop musical, Summer Holiday or something, big characters bursting into rhyme just because they can. At first it sounded ridiculous and clumsy but it seems to have lasted just through exhuberance. “Feel a sharp pain in my left tit” – that’s the best bit.

6. Madonna – Hung Up (Stewart Price Extended Remix Dub): this is the best version, you get more of the ABBA (make that sample pay its way!) and less of the Madonna, which is how I like it. And Price makes the ABBA record tease in a way which is enjoyably un-ABBA-ish. I’ve only heard the Madonna album once but it reminds me of the ‘song-poem’ phenomena somehow.

5. Robyn – Konichiwa Bitches: I was sure Fannypack’s “718″ would end up here, since I’ve been glibly saying it’s my favourite song of the year, but apparently far from it. “Konichiwa Bitches” nods to Fannypack in its closing lines and sounds like a charming home-brewed tribute to pop-hop. It got so many listens because of its payoff, when Robyn finally brings in the synths. It also became a huge cult favourite at work, which made me very pleased.

4. Missy Elliot – Lose Control (Jacques Lu Cont Mix): This is my wife’s favourite record of the year, and I played it even more in our car. She likes the opening couplets – “Cute face / chubby waist / thick legs / in shape” – I like the way Jacques Lu Cont has been so ruthless at stripping out Missy’s old-skoolisms for something more Euro-relevant, a sleek synthpop attack with a rough bootleg edge.

3. Rachel Stevens – Nothing Good About This Goodbye: I’ve listened to this track most because it’s Rachel’s best performance. So many people have mentioned her lack of personality that it’s become a cliche but it works in her favour here – she needs to sound bruised, subdued, slightly crushed, and she does.

2. Girls Aloud – “Biology”: If the year were a few months longer we’d see “Models”, “Wild Horses” et al. on the list too. “Biology” is a hard track to do justice to – its infectious confidence lets it get away with its structural chutzpah, and the tricks and easter eggs never get in the way of the song’s momentum. I especially like how the brazen blues intro is the part that repeats later, dropped in as if to say, “Well, now do you see what it was doing there?”. This is a walking through London song, I try and make sure it’s the last thing playing when I reach the pub.

1. The Killers – “Mr Brightside (Thin White Duke Remix)”: I was surprised to see this top my list but it makes sense – I listened to it incessantly when I heard it, and rarely switch it off now, it’s made the switch from inspiring to comfortable without ever slipping through ‘annoying’. When I started my new job the original “Mr Brightside” was barely off the radio and I grew to hate it, for reasons I can’t remember. All I hear now when I think of the original is what this remix found in it, qualities I’d hardly noticed myself. The remix slows it down, lets it flower into an epic of self-regarding heroic woe, vanity in vain, which might only be a stately bore but the beats give it just enough momentum and direction. It ends up in some unsought sweet spot between “Jungleland” and a ZTT 12″.

So that’s what I listened to this year.

Is there even a word for it

There are lots of warning signs in pop: many of them can be easily paraphrased as “You Are Now Leaving Pop”. Getting in orchestras, concept albums, sacking the entire band*. But certainly when you find out that your favourite band has made “too much good music to fit on to one album”, you know the words double album are not far away. And there are very few great double albums. At least very few which could not be boiled down to a much better single album.

Now Chris Rea has not been pop for a very long time. But who knew that when leaving pop your compass can go so awry to end up in a truly audacious position. You see Chris’s latest project is so much more than just a double album. It puts The Clash’s Sandinista in the shade, if the individual elements are built into a wall. Chris’s new project : Blue Guitar : is an elevenuble** album. 11CD’s of music. And a DVD in case.

I would say hats off to Mr Rea for such an astonishing production. But I have to get it for my Dad for Christmas.

*Of course like any rule, there are occasions when these have been the best thing ever.

**Not a real word clearly.

The Afterlife Of Pop

Frank Kogan’s Real Punks Don’t Wear Black is a devastatingly good book. The first evening I read it I found that it shook me up a lot – I recognised the ideals and ideas Frank was chasing, even if I couldn’t have articulated them, and I was ashamed of my own inability to follow then. Not that Frank is appealing for ‘followers’. Not that I want to ‘follow’ him. But the first chapters made me feel tentative and timid. After that initial cold splash, the rest of the book has been exhilarating: I’ve been reading it in a more positive mood, feeling stimulated and inspired. I’m not sure I’m ready to respond yet to the ideas in the book – either intellectually or by example (though the rest of this post has turned into a partial response).

Partway through the book, in the chapter discussing “Superwords”, I get quoted, a quote from this odd piece, which I’ve not dared read since I wrote it. My reluctance was based around my never finishing it – I never wrote the subsequent parts, and after a couple of weeks I’d forgotten what was meant to be in them. I was also afraid I’d read it again and think it was wrong – which I now do, but it’s not wrong in any terrible or humiliating way so I don’t know why I was so fussed.

The ‘death of pop’ piece sits as one of my most grievous examples of that Kogan bugbear, not following through ideas. I’m never sure how seriously I take this – I think a lot of ideas are un-follow-through-able, or rather than if you try to follow them through you get ground down and tired, so it’s better to just spray them out and see if anyone else can do anything with them. This was always a guiding notion behind ILM, which I actually started half-based on a description I’d read of a Frank Kogan zine (its other parent was the “Question of the Month” box on 80s Marvel editorial pages). But maybe when I say “better” I simply mean “more fun” or “lazier”.

This actually ties in a bit with what I was talking about in the Death of Pop piece. The bit I like most in the piece now is the section near the end about stage magic and pop existing in the same precarious showbiz state. In stage magic, pretending that it’s all for real (i.e. that you actually possess supernatural powers) is seen as vulgar or a cheat; showing the wires is also frowned upon. A magic performance, in other words, is an idea that refuses – or cannot survive – a follow-through. Somewhere in the tangle of the article I’m suggesting a similar thing about manufactured pop.

Except stage magic is – or used to be, I don’t know enough about how it works these days – a stable form where this refusal is built-in and understood by performers and to an extent by audience. Pop is unstable, judging by the continual movement of its performers towards perceived autonomy and credibility (which very rarely translates to achieved cred). The ‘death of pop’ I was getting worked up about four years ago is always with us, a constant career trajectory. So the question is: why? And also – to paraphrase a question Frank Kogan asks a great deal – what do the performers gain by that? What does the industry gain? What do we listeners gain?