When it comes to pop, “style over substance” is an enduring criticism: almost as powerful as it is dumb. So often pop plays a shell game with the ideas – using style as a mask or code to make sure the right people get the substance; or using the excuse of artistry to get away with the most outrageous leaps in style. “Stand And Deliver” is a stylist’s manifesto in lyric and sound, and in the record’s worst line – “Deep meaning philosophies where only showbiz loses” – Adam buys into the binary himself and betrays a certain fretful conservatism. Why not turn philosophies into showbiz, like the rest of the New Pop was doing? (It hadn’t done the Beatles or McLaren any harm, after all)

But even as Adam sang that line he wasn’t living it: the rest of his song was busy turning showbiz into philosophy. By most accounts Adam was too uptight to fit into the New Romantic, Blitz Kid scene, but this song takes its spirit and turns it into slogans you could understand in the playground: “I spend my cash on looking flash”; “It’s kind of tough to tell a scruff the big mistake he’s making”. Adam is singing about the joy of dressing up, of let’s pretend – grabbing a look or sound and living it. The tribal double drums from his breakthrough singles stayed but the image changed, Native American chic replaced by 18th century loot: highwaymen, Georgian blades, pirates. And that fed back into the sound – instead of the unyielding Burundi patterns of “Dog Eat Dog” or “Kings Of The Wild Frontier”, the rhythms in “Stand And Deliver” are full of flourishes and gallops.

The result was intoxicating, thrilling. Already a star, and a canny, watchful star when it came to his business, Adam Ant must have known that his first new material of ’81 had a good chance of going straight in at the top. To his credit he made a record that deserved to. Later he would play the pantomime card too often, but on “Stand And Deliver” he pitches the costume drama just right – a riot of colour and a tiny hint of danger. Seeing the video I knew this record was more of an Event than anything I’d heard before.

Certainly “Stand And Deliver” is built as an event, from the horns that announce it to the savage “Yah!” that ends it. The thing that strikes me about it now is how fast it is: at a rough estimate it’s topping 140 bpm and it feels like a steeplechase, punctuated by those stick-clashing breaks and accompanied by war whoops. These cries and hollers added needed and marvellous colour to Ant tracks – the man wasn’t a great melodist or harmonist – and also reinforced the impression that being an Ant was a wonderful job, a life of brigandage and comradeship. At the climax of “Stand And Deliver”, the faux-tribal calls of his previous hits are suddenly shifted into the 18th century setting with the gloriously idiotic chant of “fa diddly qua qua!”. Not for the last time one is struck by the loyalty of the resolutely un-dandyish Marco Pirroni et al. as they sang along, but it was so worth it.

What did it mean? It meant Adam Ant had flair and balls and a sense of the absurd. It meant he was a star. The little boys understood: for me everything about “Stand And Deliver” – the music, the look – was brilliant. The moment Adam Ant crashed through the window above the banqueting hall was the moment I became quietly obsessed with pop. I have never had the confidence or dress sense to be a dandy highwayman, but if it’ll have me I’d still pledge my allegiance to the Insect Nation.

This is the problem inherent with rolling news, and with the constantly voracious news agenda. It could be that Israel’s micro-management of the conflict will keep the news organisations more involved, waiting to see who they can get in to Gaza to report. But Afghanistan pootled along for a while without troubling the top of the news, and in no way is the humanitarian crisis Darfur done and dusted. I don’t expect TV news to necessarily have a new package from these war zones daily, but it does strike me that current technology (and a jigging of the presentation) does offer oopportuinities to remind us that these places are still on the news agenda.

Firstly the news ticker. Scrolling away merrily on the bottom of our screens is a slow screed telling us the news we might of missed or might come up. It will all trun up in the nest twenty minutes. Well how about a news ticker for news that will not turn up. Have the fast news ticker at the bottom, the slow news ticker at the top.

Or even better what about in the space behind the news reader, slip in a colour coded board as to global conflict which are still active, perhaps with bringhtness corresponding to how deadly they have been that day. I am sure the bloke who used to make Blue Peter Charity Appeal Totalisers could make something tasteful and yet vital. And then the job is done. People are reminded, can look online for more information and take back their own news management.

Even better they could use the sofa in BBC Breakfast Adverts For BBC Programmes, sorry, I mean BBC Breakfast News, to remind us that real news is going on, not just the new series of Holby Blue. And they could have some sort of warning device as to just how trivial the various segments are.

Stuck may not get a theatrical release in the UK, bearing in mind that it only popped up in one screen in New York and Chicago. Which would be a pity: not because its the best film ever, but it at least tries to do something different. A ripped from the tabloids, based on a true story tale of a hit and run gone wrong (for which read WRONGER), Stuck is most interesting when you consider the genre it exists in. It is in many ways a survival horror film, with the gender and power roles reversed.

Mena Suvari plays a pleasant enough carehome nurse promised a new promotion. So she goes out and celebrates, and has a few too many drinks and drives home. Unfortunately she hits down on his luck homeless guy Stephen Rea. But she doesn’t stop. So far, so hit and run. She can’t believe her bad luck, she refuses to believe the reality of the situation. Which is Rea is stuck in her windscreen, glass spearing internal organs but as she discovers later, still very much alive. What follows is clearly not a portrait of ultimate evil, Suvari does a whole load of bad things but as she is the lone female we are compelled by the RULES OF THE CINEMA to slightly sympathize with her. We sympathize more with Rea, and the terrific sound design that squelches through his every move. You might think there is not much of a film in a man stuck in a domestic car in a domestic garage, but the film offers rays of hope to Rea for them to be dashed at every turn. So it is the most mundane of survival horror films - good versus evil is replaced by down and out versus a refusal to accept responsibility.

If it had been a young woman stuck in the windscreen, the film would make a lot more genre sense. Then the gender dynamics provide the power dynamics. Here the differential comes from social status. Suvari is pretty poor herself, but Rea is on the absolute skids. Her refusal to accept the situation is because it will scupper her promotion, possibly the most banal (and hence understandable) source of evil I’ve ever seen in a film. And this grounding both undermines the thrills whilst enhancing them. It feels like a very real situation, which garners our empathy. But in the end, how excited can you be about a film where a guy has to escape from a rickety old garage? Fun.

What do you have to do? Well, as you probably know by now the book in question contains short - 200 words or so - pieces on what the Pitchfork editorial crew consider to be the best 500 songs of the last 30 years.

So the competition is simply to write another piece in this format*** and send it to me at freakytrigger@gmail.com. The competition will be judged on the persuasiveness of the entry, taking into account the amount a reasonable judge (i.e. me) might NEED to be persuaded. In other words, given an entry that fully persuades me that Britney Spears’ “Piece Of Me” is one of the best 500 songs of the last etc etc and an entry that makes a fair stab at doing the same for “Dancing In The Moonlight” by Toploader, I will choose the latter. The winning entry***, and probably a few others, will be published here, or perhaps witheld to replace recalcitrant entries in the Top 100 Songs Of All Time.

*that I can remember
**NB this competition is not licensed by Pitchforkmedia.com or the publishers or anything like that: it’s just because I’ve got a spare copy. Other prizes might be thrown in but they won’t necessarily be very good.
***it doesn’t have to be “in the style of Pitchfork” or anything silly like that. Just throw something together, don’t waste too much time on it!
****to be announced after the closing date, which is erm lets say THE END OF JANUARY!

If Rage’s ‘Run To You’ was filled with tame but uncomfortable references to knobbing within a loving relationship, then Blue Pearl’s contribution to Rave ‘92 is a steaming pile of mortification, the heavy-breathing being explicit enough to send good little Christian Kat scrambling for the fast-forward button.

Although (as previously documented) I’d had a massive crush on N1cky H4yden for about six months, it was largely psychological as my pituitary gland was still dozing away in pre-adolescent hibernation. I just about had sufficient oestrogen levels to warrant wearing a skirt to school, and the prospect of kissing boys was unhygenic enough without being reminded of the contents of volume ‘S’ in the classroom colour encyclopaedia, which Ian and Jason had thumbed through so many times that the spine was peeling off. It took a healthy dose of religious cynicism before I was comfortable enough to even listen to ‘Passion’ properly, let alone enjoy it. The fact that kissing boys doesn’t automatically generate a YUCK reflex for me now also helps.

Has anyone ever really been turned on by a pop song that purports to be ’sexy’? Speaking for myself, most attempts are either embarrassing for both me and the artist (this means YOU, Another Level), or my general inattention to verse lyrics means it goes over my head completely, e.g. Tina Turner’s ‘Steamy Windows’ which I naturally assumed was about Tina wearily trying to de-mist her car windscreen on a cold winter morning. It’s all very well trying to set the mood for some romance, but do you really want R Kelly in the background banging on about how great he is in the sack whilst you’re scrabbling around in the bedside table drawer for a Durex? Having lived in buildings with thin walls for most of my life I can confirm that the least embarrassing music to soundtrack sexual exploits is LOUD music, which will help mask any unusual noises and provide blessed relief for/against your less liberal neighbours.

For a volume perspective, ‘Passion’ itself is a reasonably good candidate for above-mentioned sonic shielding (better than ‘Bump’n'Grind’, at any rate). There’s a good meaty techno base with some harsh industrial riffing over the top, and the chorus is one big shameless diva-house pop hook, which we haven’t really seen on Rave’92 since Bizarre Inc. Former Pink Floyd backing vocalist Durga McBroom* seems much more comfortable belting out these big notes than she does on the verses, where she settles for doing her best Grace Jones impression. Unfortunately for Durga if there is one person I DEFINITELY do not want present in the room whilst I am ‘touching the naked steel’ it is Grace Jones. Aaargh!

Watch the remarkably non-sexy video to ‘(Can You) Feel The Passion’ below:

*Best name ever!

Look at the following paragraph regarding the growth of the planet Jupiter taken from the BBC News Science and Environment page (it is bad enough science has to share with environment and is hived off from Technology but…)
“The planet Jupiter must have gained mass fast during its infancy, according to astronomers.”

(I know, to me that’s a sentence but on the Beeb website its a paragraph. In bold.) Anyway that sentence is the justification for the following headline for the article:

BABY JUPITER’S HUGE WEIGHT GAIN

Shall we count the errors in this headline. Not only are they equating a planet with a child, but they make the classic mass/weight error. This would be a childhood which lasted a few million years too. All rolled up into some sort of scare story about how planets are OBESE these days. Such scare stories are the bread and butter of the online news industry and drives hits. Though I clicked on it because I thought it was about the massively fat child of Horton Jupiter of They Came From the Stars (I Saw Them) - FT’s live band of the year in 2000.

(That link does not quite express how impressed Tom was with them in 2000 - sorry.)

Mark Millar’s previous run on Wolverine, collected as ‘Enemy of the State’, was fantastic, but this current run may be even better, and the latest issue was one of the best I’ve read in years. The setup: it’s set in a future 50 years after just about every Marvel villain somehow got it together to team up and massacre all the superheroes and take over the world. Wolverine hasn’t fought anyone or popped his claws since then. He’s lived instead as a farmer in Sacramento. The West Coast is now run by the Hulk Gang, descendants of Bruce Banner, and they are leaning on him and his family for overdue rent. Cue the aged Hawkeye, now blind, with some important mission, asking Wolverine to drive across country with him as his minder. This means crossing the territories as divided up by the top villains - segments owned by the Kingpin, Dr Doom and others. It’s a wonderful setup rife with possibilities, and Millar exploits them well. This is the fifth issue, and Logan finally explains why he won’t fight (they have stumbled as far as the Midwest, entering Dr Doom territory, by luck and Hawkeye’s skills), what happened on that day 50 years ago. Plenty of action, as Wolverine recounts the desperate battle with a host of major supervillains (including Dr Octopus, the Green Goblin, the Absorbing Man, Sabretooth, Bullseye) - and this ends with a really devastating twist, featuring a very surprising villain and the fate of the rest of the X-Men, and a full explanation of his withdrawal since that day. This is one of the best and strongest twists I’ve ever read in a superhero comic, and I’ve read tens of thousands of the things. If that emotional charge wasn’t enough, he ends the issue in the future narrative, with a panel providing a scary upgrade for an already major villain - I won’t give it away, but it’s a terrific moment, packed with real thrill power, and once more it leave me looking forward to the next one.

I’m neglecting the artist here because I want to extol the surviving art of the single comic, and the artist has the same job however the story is broken down. Having said that, Steve McNiven does a good job, drawing action and conversation with skill and mostly sound decision-making. The inking is good too - I particularly like Logan’s stubble and wrinkles.

The final drop-off is for 2009, where there’ve only been 3 new entries so far, so the last relevant data point is the one before that - 2008 - which shows a dramatic fall from 2007, but on an already declining recent curve. The number of new entries in the Top 75 last year is less than half what it was in 2004. In fact, last year’s total is the lowest since the chart became a Top 75, back in 1979. (Before that significant changes in the total were largely down to the expansion of the chart’s parameters - from 20, to 30, to 50 to 75.)

What does the graph tell us? That the 90s saw a “pop bubble”, for one thing: the number of new entries peaked in 1997, with an average of more than 20 new entries every week. It seems to me that the bubble was caused by two things: better first-week marketing of new singles (including aggressive discounting and multiple formats) and the explosion of interest in dance music, a genre which thrived on singles formats.

So what’s caused the bubble to finally burst? The really key factor has been the inclusion of downloads in the chart - this started in April 2004, and that’s when we see a really precipitous drop in the number of new tracks charting. From 2007, any download - rather than simply ones tied to physical releases - has been eligible for the chart, and increasingly no physical release is required. This has accelerated the drop in new entries.

But why? After all, the new download rules mean that far MORE songs are eligible for chart status than ever before - almost any track can get into the chart. But this obviously isn’t happening. Some of this is down to the contracting music biz meaning that less acts are getting promotional push, but the main issue is one of shelf life. The freedom from a physical release that opens the charts up to far more songs is also a freedom from the restrictions placed on records by their reliance on physical distribution networks. In the days of Woolworths (RIP) and HMV, a song slipping out of the Top 40 was quickly axed from stock to make way for newer releases: but in a digital world, songs can (and do) bounce around the lower reaches of the Top 75 almost indefinitely. The expanded longevity of each hit song means far fewer spaces for new songs to break through.

In other words, what the charts have become is a demonstration of how the increased choice offered by a Long Tail system actually leads to LESS diversity at the top end (the “hit head”). The forces acting as gatekeepers over what could be bought were also hidden gatekeepers over when things could be bought: this power sped up the pop turnover and helped make the charts more vibrant. (NB: I like having a fast-moving chart with a lot of different records: your mileage may of course vary).

What’s the overall lesson? That when you remove artificial barriers in a content-based system the speed of turnover slows down, perhaps? If you think about a distribution curve, a gatekept system punishes innovators and to some extent early adopters by stopping the kewl things they discover from reaching an audience quickly. But it also punishes late majority adopters and laggards, by artificially curtailing the shelf life of content. And there are more of the late majority and laggards than there are the innovators!

(UPDATE: I’ve now run the figures to find out the “hit rate” for each year - the percentage of new entries as against *potential* new entries - with 100% being some kind of madhouse scenario where the entire Top 75 changes every week. This supports the “bubble” hypothesis - the hit rate is now at a 34-year low, of 12.4% (in the bubble years - 1990 to 2005 - it was above 20% every year). But it’s within the 10-13% range it was in for most of the charts’ first 20 years: the exception being a slump to under 10% at the start of the 70s - the lowest it’s ever been. Whether it will keep dropping is the question - and whether a low hit rate is a healthy sign for a much more stylistically diversified biz than was the case in 1974. Of course, if you believe the singles chart doesn’t matter much, this is all irrelevant, but I think it’s an interesting finding anyhow!)

OK, Cloverfield was not a documentary, but it did pretend to be found personal footage of a city-wide disaster. The heart of Trouble The Water is Kim Richards Roberts (aka Black Kold Medina) own camcorder footage of the hurricane as it hits. It starts playfully with its mock documentary fashion, and kids who ain’t afraid of no hurricane. And then it gets patchy, blurry, and increasingly scary as the flood hits town and people hide in attics and run out of food and water. The biggest issue about the verisimilitude of Cloverfield was that no-one would keep filming (and the battery life would run out). Well Kim keeps filming, once safe at least, and talking. We see flood waters rising and for days we see lack of any kind of support. Though her battery does run out halfway through her story - filled in later by her and her husband Scott.

They survive, though some people we see on camera don’t. They eventually get out, embracing the disaster as an opportunity. Then they come back, realising the social bars to employment and a better way of life evaporated like the flood water, there wa sno consistency or follow through long term. All through though Kim and Scott remain active, focussed for improvements and you end the film willing it to happen. It is a film of tiny surprises, around the now well known fuck ups of Katrina. It is a reminder of individual acts of heroism (Scott rescues a number of people and finds a new voice and self confidence in his own modesty). And the moment when Kim discovers the only suviving copy of her rap demo and flawless raps over it, beats any giant monster stomping on New York.

Trailer below, its on at the ICA for a bit and will probably turn up on BBC4 or More 4 later in the year.

I saw this ad this morning and it told me where all the ad pounds are going.

Singing food stuff in a DEFRA advert for not importing food from outside the EU. It appears the upshot is that as ad prices go down and ad agencies scramble for work the benificiary is THE GOVERNMENT. Yes, its another Government bail-out. And yet thinking about it, the history of British ads is littered (literally) with the morphing of somewhat clunky old school public service announcements into hard hitting or clever ads. From the immensely successful AIDS: Don’t Die Of Ignorance, through to the recent moonwalking bear ads, the UK Government has a pretty good record of tossing out memorable ads. This could be because many of them are warning us, and come it various shades and bone cracks of pain, horror and misery. Which is what makes this DEFRA ad so refreshing, that it uses humour (and well judged humour at that) to tackle and issue that no-one ever really thinks about.

And while ads may not always drive up sales, they do have a much better record in raising awareness. What’s not memorable about singing cheese**.

*OK, I don’t have the Collins Greatest Hits figures.

**Mind you, who would want cheese from outside of Europe? Except aerosol cheese of course.

In some ways Bucks Fizz’ Eurovision triumph is pop’s equivalent of England’s 1966 World Cup win. It encouraged a certain complacency in the victorious nation, who began to convince themselves that not only was the competition eminently winnable but that this famous victory had established a formula for more. For passion, grit and English physicality read bubblegum, camp and dollybirds having their skirts whipped off. There the parallels break down. The subsequent failure to win the World Cup has become something festering, a cultural fixation in its own right that Popular will collide with in due course. Not winning the Eurovision Song Contest has only recently started to niggle in English minds, and the response is often that it’s not worth winning.

Of course it helps that we have won it since Bucks Fizz – but only a bit. Bucks Fizz sunk their hooks deeper into British pop culture than any winner since Sandie Shaw: former band members have hung on to the twilights of their fame; “Making Your Mind Up” has given its name to the BBC’s Eurovision talent contest; as recently as Scooch we’ve tried disastrously to apply the Bucks Fizz model to our entries. Alright, alright, age is playing a part here: the Fizz victory – thrillingly close-fought – was the first ESC I watched, and the skirt-flinging seemed as daring a gesture as any pop moment I’d seen.

Even so it seems to me there’s something at least slightly new happening with Bucks Fizz – for all that the music owes more to bobbysoxers than New Pop. Their brazen good-natured cheapness points forward to SAW’s one-sound-fits-all pop as much as it harks back to 70s bubblegum, which tended to be thicker in detail and more clearly crafted. On “Making Your Mind Up” the most intriguing touch is the jabbing, hustling sax in the background, but it’s never allowed to distract from the single-minded jollity. There’s no shame in that: Bucks Fizz and their writers had a competition to win, and they went out and won it. But it means that when I hear “Making Your Mind Up” today I’m hearing its tactical nous more than any inherent joy.

-Her tits. Let’s be fair, the only film I can think of with Winslett in where you don’t see her saucer sized areolas is the Peter Pan one, Finding Neverland. So her nipples have not stopped her being nominated before. But The Reader is one quarter soft porn and three quarter philosophical melodrama (in precisely that order). Not sure how that will play to the prudish members of the establishment or indeed David Kross’s cock-shot (I wonder if Ralph Fiennes got to approve how large the actor playing his young selfs member was?)

-Her accent. The film is set in Germany, and stars a predominantly German cast who speak in predictable German accented English. Perhaps this is why the two big English actors in the film, Ralph Fiennes and Kate Winslett also do German accented English. But it does nevertheless seem off. It is a step from that to a WWII film and a “Schnell schnell kartofolkopf”. But then Winslett’s Hanna was ex-SS so this may actually be a masterstroke.

-Despite the progession of CGI in the last twenty years, and Winslett being a genuinely talented screen actress, film make-up still cannot adequately age a thirty three year old woman into a sixty six year old. Winslett tries her hardest, but even with a bit of hard-drinking blood shot eyes and unflattering dishrag hair she still seems young. It probably doesn’t help however that when we first see Hanna in the film she is supposed to be thirty six, three years older than Winslett now. David Kross playing the young Fiennes barely seems to age in the 1958 and 1966 segments. (The 1966 segment which I kept thinking the Baader Meinhof’s from two months ago were going to crash).

Dodge all these bullets and the Reader stands a chance, despite having the feel of a rather slow moral philosophy primer. And for all its hand wringing about post-war Germany and collective guilt, the film is really an afterschool special about literacy. Hey kids, it says, learn to read or you too could be responsible for genocide. Which may be more hard hitting than the Government’s Gremlins adverts, but also seems a touch specific to this particular (fictional) case. And on balance, I think I’d rather see Gremlins (or at least Gremlins 2: The New Batch).

There is no doubt that all of the above contribute to the Spirits’ awfulness, but at the same time the film has a gusto and energy missing from many movies, something which could be down to the writer directors singular vision of the titular character. Which unfortunately boils down to “What if Miller’s Batman moved into Sin City?”. So we get endless voice-overs of how “The city” is The Spirit’s wife and life - which is somewhat ironic as the choice of filming technique leaves us with little image of the city itself except as a black silhouette and a few bricks.

So to take those criticisms above:
a) Frank Miller is not a film director. That co-directing credit on Sin City was a vanity to Robert Rodriguez, which luckily - via Miller’s choice of almost identical shooting style shows who the real director was there. The other criticism of Miller is that he had taken Eisner’s distinctive character and turned him into a stock Miller caricature also holds, but then its not as if anyone outside a small circle knows the backstory of The Spirit.
b) Superhero fatigue has set in already, that was clear well before this summer. What this summer did differently was give us superior films in their genres. And good actors. Which Gabriel Macht is not, even without stupid flapping tie, no motivation and a rubbish mask.
c) The Spirit is stupendously, cartoonily violent. Some of this violence if plenty fun (my views on the use of toilets in fights has been documented elsewhere) but when it is all the film has to offer in the way of conflict resolution it really gets dull quickly. My views on fights between indestructible protagonists are also well documented.
d) Why is it that blue screen digital set building has led, on the whole, to an aesthetic which can only really be called grimy. Every hue of desaturated blacks, greys and browns are enlivened only by the flappy red tie and Tennantesque waffle pattern of the Spirit’s Converse.

What (questionably these days) works for Miller on the comic page, fails him on the big screen. Cinema, even blockbuster cinema, has no room for his unnaturalistic dialogue, and the characters find it hard to move from one set piece to another with motivation and demeanour intact. So in the end what is left is a flapping red tie and the images which luckily do burn themselves into your memory. So not terrible if just for the memory of:
a) Samuel L.Jackson dissolving a kitten whilst dressed as a Nazi
b) The Spirit escaping from a precarious situation with his trousers down
c) The hosts of sixties Batman henchmen with their punning names on their tops.

In all other ways, terrible!

SONGS WHICH ARE AMONG MY FAVOURITES ALL DECADE BUT CAME OUT IN 2007
MIA - “Paper Planes”
Britney Spears - “Piece Of Me”

SONGS WHICH ARE AMONG MY FAVOURITES ALL DECADE AND ACTUALLY CAME OUT LAST YEAR HURRAH
Wiley - “Wearing My Rolex”
Goldfrapp - “A&E”

SONGS IN WHICH HUMAN INTERACTION CONFUSES ROBOTS AND MAKES THEM SAD
Kanye West - “Love Lockdown”
Ultrabeat ft Darren Styles - “Discolights”

SONGS ABOUT FANCYING PEOPLE IN DISCOS
Chris Brown - “Forever”
Hot Chip - “Ready For The Floor”
Usher - “Love In This Club”

SONGS BY NE-YO
Ne-Yo - “Closer”
Ne-Yo - “Miss Independent”
Ne-Yo - “Mad”

SONGS WHICH MIGHT AS WELL HAVE BEEN BY NE-YO
John Legend - “Green Light”

SONGS I TRIED NOT TO LIKE BUT WHOSE CHORUSES GRABBED ME BY THE BOLLOCKS
Katy Perry - “Hot N Cold”
Alphabeat - “Fascination”

SONGS IN WHICH THE SINGER LIKES THIS PART
Britney Spears - “Break The Ice”

SONGS IN WHICH THE SINGER HATES THIS PART
Pussycat Dolls - “I Hate This Part”

SONGS FLICKERING WANLY IN THE DYING EMBERS OF THE 00S POP REVOLUTION
Girls Aloud - “The Loving Kind”
Kylie Minogue - “The One”

SONGS CONCERNING THEMSELVES WITH THE PLEASURES AND PERILS OF DATING KANYE WEST
Kanye West - “Flashing Lights”
Estelle ft Kanye West - “American Boy”

SONGS ABOUT THE LOSS OF VITAL FUNCTIONS
Jordin Sparks and Chris Brown - “No Air”
Hercules and Love Affair - “Blind”

SONGS THAT WERE QUITE GOOD BY STARS WHO CAN AND HAVE DONE BETTER
Britney Spears - “Womanizer”
Mariah Carey - “Touch My Body”
Rihanna - “Disturbia”

SONGS THAT MADE ME WISH MORE BASSLINE RECORDS HAD CHARTED THIS YEAR
H20 ft Platnum - “What’s It Gonna Be”
Platnum - “Love Shy”

OBLIGATORY INDIE SONGS
Santogold - “LES Artistes”
Vampire Weekend - “Oxford Comma”

OBLIGATORY ROCK SONGS
Fall Out Boy - “I Don’t Care”
Ashlee Simpson - “Outta My Head (Ay Yay Ya)”

SONGS I REMEMBER LIKING AT THE TIME BUT COULD NOT IN ALL HONESTY TELL YOU HOW THEY WENT
Taio Cruz - “Come On Girl”
T-Pain ft Teddy Verseti - “Church”
Flo Rida - “Low”

SONGS I REMEMBER NOT LIKING AT THE TIME BUT WHICH CHARMED ME IN THE END
September - “Cry For You”
Eric Prydz - “Pjanoo”

SONG WHICH I LIKED MAINLY BECAUSE IT MADE ME THINK OF HOW AWESOME THE FIRST THREE ISSUES OF FINAL CRISIS WERE
Gnarls Barkley - “Run”

SONG WHICH I WAS SURPRISED TO LIKE
Keane - “Spiralling”

SONG WHICH I CANNOT REMOTELY JUSTIFY ENJOYING BUT WHICH SEDUCES ME WITH ITS PREPOSTEROUSNESS
The Killers - “Human”

OK, of all the accusations that could be thrown at Russell T.Davies, closet prog-rock fan seemed, before tonight, unlikely. He has had ample opportunity to invent a race of armadillo tank monsters in the last few years after all called Tarkus. And whilst he has dallied with the Tudor period in the series, we have never seen The Six Wives Of Henry The Eighth On Ice. So it came as a touch of a shock to realise that all the flim-flammery about David Morrisey’s “Doctor” (that no-one believed going in let alone past the first two minutes) was really a slight of hand for a visual gag which would go over the head of much of its target audience. This truly was one for the dads. Or the grandads these days (King Crimson’s debut being in 1970 I believe). Of course having one of the Cybermen gurn and have massive nostrils would have also helped. Spoilers follow.

As a Who Christmas episode it tried very hard to be emotionally investing and gimmick laden. As ever the intricate orphan stealing plot made absolutely no sense, and as ever the new school Cybermen exuded almost zero menace in their stampy about ways*. However the episode did subvert a classic Who plot-trope, the human baddie being destroyed, and almost promised to set up an excellent recurring villain (albeit one who would basically be the Cybermen Davros, the Dirvros** if you will). And of course there will be much fan jizz spilt over actually showing footage of all the previous Doctors. Nevertheless for a Christmas special it did feel special, namely with its giant robots stomping over Victorian London. Doctor Who rarely does giant robots (the most notable exception having the worst special effects of all time) so despite ending like some dodgy steampunk fantasy, or perhaps because of it, there was a notable finale. Of course this, and its ending, yet again tweaks the Doctor’s image of sorting something out in the background, now the much attacked London has a giant robot stomping it in 1851. And what’s worse, it was all a prog rock villain.

* It strike sme the only way to adequately use this new breed of Cybermen is as lone mummylike unstopable warriors. Because en masse they seem all too stoppable by the deus ex machina of the week. And their voices are still terrible. Less said about the cybermonkeys the better.

**The only other obviously menacing aspect of the Cybermen is their rigid sexism. Of course the moment they refered to Divros as the Cyber-Queen the gag would have been spoiled, but nevertheless Cybermen are misogynistic to the max. The one exception (Cyberwoman in Torchwood) was half built and by implication malfunctioning. Cyber-sausage-party more like.

So the existence of Fraser weakens the film, as does his inability to consider how to use his power to help them. In the denouement, his daughter learns to write and then read*, thus neutralising her enemies in one pen stroke. But isn’t that a bit obvious? Indeed the summoned up creatures of fiction add up to:
one ticking crocodile
one of the forty thieves
Toto from the Wizard of Oz.
I’m just thinking a quick trip to a comic shop could aid you in conjuring up powerful allies. Nevertheless all of this is in aid of a nicely puritan message that book are really exciting. Look how exciting they are, look what its like when they come to life. To which a child might add that it is a bit like a derivative kids action movie. Indeed it has the same fundamental problem as The Last Action Hero, both try to celebrate the power of the imagination and their relative artforms (books and films), and create a slightly lacklustre book and film in the process. A film telling you how awesome books are via the medium of special effects seems a bit counter productive. Unless, and we go back to the Britishness of the film, the effects and so on seem a bit cheap. At least then it can suggest that books are awesome because the special effects budget in your head is unlimited**.

*Those who are aware of the game dirty crossword, will be delighted that in the finale Jim Broadbent bellows across to the empowered youngster “WRITE, DON’T READ”.

** An argument I always said phooey too, as I lack a very visual imagination and tend to imagine an explosion as the words “an explosion” coupled with the knowledge of the kind of damage it might do. The fireballs in my head are rubbish.

Disclaimer: I write regularly for Pitchfork and contributed a dozen pieces to the book. I have no insider knowledge of how tracks were selected, had no say in the selection, and any commentary on the book’s purpose etc. is purely speculative.

In this episode: Reggae gets its first look in, and the awkward squad of post-punk gives way to mutant disco…

Kicking off the Jamaican coverage with Althea and Donna’s gorgeously blithe “Uptown Top Ranking” makes a welcome statement of intent: while the book’s tour or the island’s music is going to be a brief one, it’s not going to confine itself to the significant and smoke-fuelled. Not that “Uptown” is any less canonised than Lee Perry these days, but Stephen Trousse’s write-up still offers a great potted history of the song and its riddim and a snapshot of why it matters (insouciance, in a word).

This is also, the book is maybe suggesting, the kind of song Pitchfork might have included in its year-end round-ups had such a thing existed at the time, like Estelle in this year’s Top 10: its pop conversion is not only genuine, but rooted (and backdated!).

Lee Perry himself now, whose “Roast Fish And Cornbread” turns lowing cows into ghost cries for obscure but glorious purposes. This is a recurrent theme in the book – tracks which ask you to take their apparently clashing decisions on trust: a trust which can occasionally seem abused. Though not here, and not on the Perry-produced “Fisherman” – oceanic reggae, rhythms and echoes emerging from the swell and counter-eddy of waves, turning the song more abstract than the lyrics might suggest. (Dave Stelfox’ entries on this set of songs are excellent). [The Congos]

From Althea to Willie Williams’ “Armagideon Time” the songs have arced down through the reggae canon until it reaches its point of contact with the book’s main thread – the patronage of punkers, especially The Clash. “Armagideon Time” is good, certainly, but it’s hard not to feel that its covered-ness is the main point here: a representative of the apocalyptic strand in reggae that the Clash et al picked up on. It’s oddly positioned in a way, since we’ve already seen Joe Strummer (on “Hammersmith Palais”) wriggling with his expectations of reggae.

I’ve never heard This Heat’s “24 Track Loop” before – it’s positioning here is surely down to its use of space and echo, a bridge between the electronic pop experiments of the late 60s (Silver Apples et al), future IDM (those bouncing-ball sounds!), and the “dub virus” which avant-dance ideologues like Kevin Martin will eulogise as they do their edgy thing. When what sound like treated horns shiver in it stops sounding like a curio and becomes something more vital, an intense skeleton dance.

When I first heard The Slits’ Cut, years ago, I couldn’t deal with its shifting and switching at all – now “Typical Girls” has become one of those songs that resolves itself into pop in your imagination when you’re not actually listening to it. Love the intersection of sweet pub piano and deep bass bounce, and the tricksy way the vocals swoop off then coalesce gang-style.

I am not sure if I should find The Pop Group’s “She Is Beyond Good And Evil” as funny as I do. For every awesome line – “my lover was born on a RAY OF SOUND” – there’s a bit of finger-wagging (“she’s one thing that you cannot BUY”) and the crack-up culmination: “Western values mean NOTHING TO HER” sung in stern club-singer style fashion by Mark Stewart. There’s enough fire in the music for me to think an instrumental version would be pretty much perfect (and indeed the B-Side, “3 38”, fits that bill nicely).

I also can’t take “The Guns Of Brixton” particularly seriously, because Beats International’s re-use of it is so fabulous, and because the Zebedee sproing! Noises on the Clash original seem to anticipate that more playful version. I don’t think The Clash are wholly unaware of this, since the song’s at least partly about projecting yourself onto rebel film stars (”Ivan” in The Harder They Come).

“The Guns Of Brixton” tries to resolve fun and threat and can’t quite get there; “Contort Yourself” does it naturally - speed helps them melt together, and James Chance makes a more convincing madman/preacher than Mark Stewart – on the strangled croak-scream near the end I’m wincing at what he must be doing to his poor throat.

“Dream Baby Dream” makes me think that maybe the theme of this section is songs which are secretly (or openly!) put-ons, the sounds of bands pushing on absurdity until it becomes a kind of sincerity. You could lose track of the bands who’ve wandered into Suicide’s po-faced churchy half-pop and either found a seriousness there (Spiritualized) or tried to raise the are-they aren’t-they stakes (A.R.E. Weapons’ “Hey World”). No surprise that, according to the blurb, Springsteen’s a fan of “Dream Baby Dream” – he pretty much invented this so-corny-it-must-be-true move. Unless Lou Reed did on “Berlin”. This parade of influences and inheritors might suggest to you that “Dream Baby Dream” is actually a pretty hard song to concentrate on.

A potential issue: early drum machines (like the ones Cabaret Voltaire used) sound so cheap they make ANYTHING sound like it might be a put-on. Try not to smile at the bibbly-bobbly drum run that’s “Nag Nag Nag”’s rhythmic hook! Not that you’d have the song without it, it offsets the scouring feedback very nicely.

Throbbing Gristle’s “Hot On The Heels Of Love” is also new to me – it reminds me of Cristina’s late 70s art-disco outings. Or maybe of Sarah Brightman’s “I Fell In Love With A Starship Trooper”. I love the synths on this – a bridge between Cluster and space disco.

It’s so easy to just churn out endless references when you can’t get much emotional or physical grip on a track, isn’t it? But no, this is good. Does it do more than be impressively ahead of its time? I’m not totally sure.

[Nothing to say about Devo – “Mongoloid”]

Grand weird synth sounds are the bridge between Devo and Candido’s magnificent “Jingo” – Nate Patrin in his write-up is correct to make special mention of the “Huh!” (picked up later in the book by Frankie Goes To Hollywood!). The version of this I’m familiar with is lusher and longer – but less sci-fi and starkly funky, which means this probably has the edge. The sheer ease with which a good groove can synthesise disparate abstract elements in a track is a source of embarrassment, almost, given how effortful some of the previous songs have been. But effort is its own reward and it’s not that those tracks were bad – they were probably more “interesting” than “Jingo”, more to write about.

But this is the critic’s dilemma – we’re attracted to music that’s incomplete, that needs explaining. Dancing generally doesn’t, so it’s harder to write about. Helps if you’ve got someone like Arthur Russell to hang the description on. Dinosaur’s “Kiss Me Again” rules because it’s a great song that keeps digressing, hinting at unexplored other great songs within its 13-minute bulk. Some of those songs would be realised by the house and handbag tracks that stripmined “Kiss Me Again” for hooks and samples; others are still implicate. The devilish jam at the end, Russell’s cello a spirit guide, remains quite its own thing.

Except, as all Popular readers doubtless know, the claim is COBBLERS.

This feat has been achieved at least once before, in 1967, when Petula Clark’s version of “This Is My Song” kept Harry Secombe’s reading off the top. You’d be forgiven for forgetting this, Mr HMV buyer, as both are godawful. Interestingly, researches suggest that a similar campaign to the Facebook one raged in 1967 in the letters pages of Disc And Music Echo, with the following excerpts from missives received:

“Help keep this manufactured crap off No.1 GO HARRY GO”

“In 31 years time who will remember this so called cover NOBODY THATS WHO Harry FTW.”

Ploo sa chawnge, eh readers!

The last time “This Ole House” came up, a commenter on ILM quite rightly pointed out what I somehow hadn’t twigged – that it’s a song about dying. Of all songs on that theme, it’s surely one of the most stoical in its way – a joyful “whatever” in the teeth of advancing decrepitude. Liveliness was about all Shakin’ Stevens had going for him, but goodness he worked it.

Shaky sidesteps new wave and new pop and reaches back to the rock’n’roll revival that played such a part in the mid-70s’ charts. That had a cabaret tinge and so does he, but there’s an energy in his pastiche that – at this stage anyway – keeps it bearable. His other great advantage over fellow revivalists was knowing how to present that energy on video – on the clip for “This Ole House” he’s in perpetual motion and as the song cuts from room to room to roof it’s like Shaky’s dancing with the house itself.

A band who helped define the 70s cover a song from the 70s by a man who barely outlived the 70s - and yet the cool precision of “Jealous Guy” makes it a recording utterly of the 1980s. The record’s attention to clinical detail seems to will compact discs into being: every instrument is perfectly, unhurriedly placed. Synthesiser washes like marble tiles; thick brushstrokes of guitar; the thread of whistling that plays the song out - “Jealous Guy” is immaculate.

But somehow incomplete. There’s a hollow, a loss at the record’s heart - not of John Lennon mind you; there’s been enough mourning, and Bryan Ferry respects the song too much to twist it into an overt tribute. But while Lennon’s hesitant original is recognisably being sung to someone, you don’t get that feeling with Roxy. Lennon’s is a plea for forgiveness; Roxy’s is a post-mortem. Its well-tailored arrangement is futile in its perfection, mocking almost: Ferry is wandering around an empty penthouse, pleading with a lover who won’t be coming back. And so that whistling again, going on so long it’s almost absurd, through romantic to pathetic and ending up the loneliest sound in the world.

Whilst I might not have experienced the (ahem) primary effects of rave culture aged 11, I definitely succumbed to the vast swathe of hippy b0ll0cks that seemed to permeate the early nineties. Commune with nature! Tap mystical leylines to enhance your psychic powers! Own a minimum of three crystals and ensure that one of them is purple! Be ready to welcome our new alien overlords now they can safely invade Earth through the hole in the ozone layer! Draw all over your Girl’s World head in biro labelling the different bits of brain! And why not save the humpbacked whale while you’re at it?

I was well jealous of my best friend Karina (co-member of my Bizarre Inc tribute band and militant vegetarian), who not only owned a pack of tarot cards but some of those Chinese-style clanky metal Peace Balls as well. The closest I got was getting a book on palm-reading out of Ickenham library, and buying some incense sticks (vanilla flavour) for my bedroom, but Dad wouldn’t let me light them in case i) learning to ignite things turned out to be a gateway drug to smoking cigarettes ii) I ended up engulfing the entire house in flames by leaving them burning whilst ‘meditating’.

Opus III (and singer Kirsty Hawkshaw in particular) seemed to me like the musical embodiment of all this New Age nonsense. Plus, along with the Shamen and 2 Unlimited, Opus III were one of the priveliged few artists on Rave ‘92 whose faces I had actually seen on the telly. Bald girl in a black bodysuit wiggling her hands above her head, right*? Having an an approximate image to visualise in one’s head was a big help during the countless hours of practicing doing the wiggly hand thing in my bedroom. I hope Kirsty realises that she’s partially responsible for the continued popularity of poi among my generation.

As I mentioned on the ‘Assassin’ post, Orbital were strangely absent from Rave ‘92 and I only really became aware of their existence when ‘The Saint’ came out, so hearing ‘Halcyon’ for the first time a few years ago knocked me for six. Kirsty’s original vocal on ‘Fine Day’ is a dreamy utopian ramble over a shambling beat and a fluttering synth, perfect for attempting to communicate with dolphins. Chop it up and play it backwards though, and it becomes haunting and melancholy, like she’s trying to put a brave face on everything but the cracks in the facade are showing. In terms of winning my affections, ‘Fine Day’ may have ten years’ head start on ‘Halcyon’, but I know which one is more likely to make me burst into floods of tears.

Watch the video to ‘Fine Day’ below - do have a butchers at the video to ‘Halcyon’ as well, as it also features Kirsty H (with slightly more hair) doing the washing up.

*For a long time I kept picturing Sinead O’Connor in the black bodysuit instead, yikes.

“As part of the project, 100 student volunteers were asked to watch the 2001 romantic comedy Serendipity, while a further 100 watched a David Lynch drama.”

OK, there are a number of things worth pointing out about this research:
a) Serendipity STINKS. Its a good choice because it does have at its heart the most unrealistic “love at first sight and if we were meant to be then we will be together” plot ever, but it is so bad it should really turn you against romance forever and lead to a life of empowered monogamy.
b) What David Lynch Film
c) Actually scratch that, the idea that a David Lynch film (DUNE!) is the polar opposite of a romantic comedy is possibly something worth following up.
d) Were the Lynch audience also tested for a shift in their beliefs after seeing it. As Tom just pointed out to me, “Students watching the romantic film were later found to be more likely to believe in fate and destiny. Students watching the other film were later found to be more likely to believe that a l3sbian dwarf guards the hidden door to the spirit world.”

When boiled down the thesis seems to boil down to “people like stuff that reinforces their world view”. What will be a lot harder to prove is what comes first, love for unrealistic romantic ideals or the love for romantic comedies. And since this one is still way up in the air when if comes to violent films, I’d be surprised if anything particularly conclusive will come out for this one.

But if you want to help and take part in the study, you can go to the website here (and find out more about the research). Note it is being done by the Family And Relationship Laboratory at Herriot-Watt University, which I assumes can also titrate pure sadness from the tears from a tiny baby, and developed the Tantrumeter to measure arguments. Which begs the question, what is the SI unit for argument?