New York London Paris Munich

4 U

Six days ago I was about to do an EMP talk and I saw rumours about Prince on Twitter. I thought for a second about what I would do if I had to break the news that Prince had died to a room of women and men who loved him. Only for a second, because the answer was very obvious. I would tell them, and end the presentation, and we would all go to the bar and talk about Prince. Prince had not died. Prince has died. I would prefer to be with the friends I was with then, not in an open-plan office which feels like the least Princely place in the world right now, without any of his music to play. Prince is a star who makes most sense with people – dancing, talking, gasping at his ideas, sharing ideas and memories. There are probably other things you might think of to do with other people that involve Prince.

But I also wish I was there, talking to Americans, because for me Prince was America. My first idea of America as a place that could be wilder, stranger, funkier, deeper, more committed to itself, more religious, more dangerous than where I lived. British stars I understood. Prince was a myth, a creature of scandal and rumour; from Smash Hits I understood Paisley Park as a city of music, an Oz. Prince’s records sounded electric and frightening. At that time he was the centre of pop’s map and its edge at the same time. Nothing I learned about him later changed any of that, or of my sense that he was a key to America’s music and its secrets.

He was a star, I want to say the first, where that dynamic of incomprehension turning into awe hit me, very strongly with “When Doves Cry”. “Do I like this”, “I love this”. The pop uncanny. Without that, pop is just things you like and things you don’t. Prince gave me things that made no sense then suddenly did. Every so often in the decades since I’ve heard something and thought, ah, pop has come back to Prince. He was a meeting point of all the ideas America had about pop, soul, and rock music and the ones it was about to have. This will go on for decades more, there are futures to mine in Prince beyond easy reckoning.

That’s what he meant to me, a long time ago, and as an adult. There is so much more to say and learn. I will read the stories. Thankyou to Prince.

Of Was And When

Rebel Rebel, by Chris O’Leary (Zero Books)

One of the many remarkable things about David Bowie’s career is that it came so close to not happening. Bowie seems like an archetype of individual genius – even his most misguided detours have something interesting about them, as Chris O’Leary’s blog (collected in part in this book) patiently shows. But his career had a multiplicity of false starts – even once he’d scored a big hit, five years in, there was no particular sense he’d become a constant presence in pop. Let alone rewrite or dominate it.

Together! We Will Learn And Teach

I am delighted to share the news that Popular (or rather me) is GOING WEST, with a speaking slot at this year’s EMP Pop Conference in Seattle. You can find full details here. Come along if you happen to be in Seattle and otherwise stay tuned for publication of my paper right here.

What is it about? I’M GLAD YOU ASKED. Here is the, if you will, poposal that got the nod.

VOX POPULAR: The Charts As Soapbox In A Digital Era

Gnome Man’s Land

I wrote a thing for here about David Bowie and how I felt about him and what he meant to me, but then Pitchfork kindly decided they wanted to run it, so it’s below. (Original title: He Could Be Dead, He Could Be Not, He Could Be You). And to any other good pieces I see, or that you want to point me to, or memorial threads.

My Pitchfork piece
Chris O’Leary’s Pushing Ahead Of The Dame memorial thread
Alfred Soto’s obituary, for Spin
Ann Powers ‘Reflections Of A Bowie Girl’ for NPR
Rory (of Popular)’s memorial post

Meanwhile this feels like it deserves more than an RIP on a Popular entry, so by all means use this thread too to post, comment about Bowie, list your favourite songs, fit him into your history or pop’s history. Whatever, really.

David Bowie: RIP

Popular Crystal Ball: 2015 – At Least I Can Say That I’ve Tried

I must glumly report that my relationship with contemporary music seems to be broken. Not because I dislike it. The distillate of year-end lists I’ve been playing this week is full of wonders. But the part of me that knew where and how to find those things for myself has vanished. My desire to gatekeep went years before. And often once I do find new music, it’s like parts of a jigsaw where I’ve lost the box and half the pieces. What consequences this will ultimately have for Popular are uncertain. Still, the hits keep coming and they don’t stop coming, and some of them are better than others. Here are the records that reached Number 1 in the second half of 2015, arranged in order, from best to worst.

The Top 100 Songs Of All Time: 1. Pet Shop Boys – Always On My Mind/In My House

The intro: 00’00 – 00’39

In December 1987 the Pet Shop Boys released “Always On My Mind”, a cover of the song made famous by Elvis Presley and Willie Nelson. It became the Christmas Number One that year. Almost a year later, they released Introspective, their third album, whose fifth track is a nine-minute version of “Always On My Mind”, including an acid house inspired breakdown that features Neil Tennant rapping. Introspective marks, in Tennant’s words, the end of the band’s “imperial phase”, where virtually anything they tried came off and was commercially successful. It charted at number two, behind U2’s Rattle And Hum.

Sixteen years later, at the end of a Freaky Trigger pub crawl, someone said that “Always On My Mind/In My House” was the best record of all time, and around a dozen of us agreed, or at least did not disagree, and that installed it at number one on our list, a list, we promised, that we would write up for the website over the course of 2005. And so we all went home the merrier for it.

And ten years after that, here we are.

The UPDATED Secret History Of Band Aid

The Secret History Of Band Aid

Everybody remembers Band Aid. And – despite everything – most people remember Band Aid 2. And now we have Band Aid 20 30. Which rather begs the question – why does nobody ever talk about Band Aids 3 to 29? Take a trip down memory lane as we remind you of the charity singles we all forgot.

Band Aid 3: Recorded in a secret corner of the Hacienda, “Baggy Aid” in 1990 melded social conscience with a wah-wah break and found Shaun Ryder offering to feed the starving his melons. That Line was sung by Bobby Gillespie, but nobody heard his reedy mewlings and the single flopped.

Band Aid 4: Top One Nice One! Altern8, Shaft, The Prodigy and many more superstars got together to give the classic tune a new boshing 90s sound – though it was B-Side “E For Ethiopia” that found favour with the DJ community. But a secret orbital party for famine relief was busted and the marketing juggernaut found itself turned back at a police roadblock.

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?