The Freaky Trigger Movie Poll 2015 18 Dec 2015 "Hi I am Kevin Costner, star of Waterworld and The Postman, but in this instance from the poorly German Dubbed Version of Swing Vote, here to sell to you the…
Great News For All Our Clients 11 Jul 2013 I was reading this piece on Ernst & Young and it struck me - not for the first time - that growing up reading IPC comics was the best possible…
911 - "A Little Bit More" 4 Sep 2014 The formation of minor boyband 911 is a telling vignette of how pop in the late 90s was working. The general boyband narrative is one where a managerial Svengali recruits…
The Freaky Trigger Movie Poll 2018: #20 – #11 14 Jan 2019 Into the top-twenty-verse, as all the cool kids would say. A lot of good films here (a few I cared for less too but hey, opinions are like arseholes right?)…
ROBSON AND JEROME - "I Believe"/"Up On The Roof" 28 Jul 2013 A bit of business I need to take care of, here. I owe Frankie Laine - and you - an apology. The review of Frankie's "I Believe" is from the…
WESTLIFE - "Queen Of My Heart" 24 Apr 2016 Back to 'Life, back to reality. The charts' burst of Autumnal energy fades, the novelties and classics depart, and it's a return to business very much as usual, the first…
OLIVE - "You're Not Alone" 2 Mar 2014 “You’re Not Alone” walks a line between the mind-expanding and the tediously polite, a nexus point for a handful of mid-90s trends and ideas. There’s trip-hop in the mildly skippy…
WESTLIFE - "My Love" 4 Jun 2015 “My Love” is Westlife in their pomp - a seventh straight number one, leaving records trailing. They were as popular as they’d ever been, which is to say, not as…
About the Author
Tom invented Freaky Trigger on a bus journey in the mid-90s. A page about what he's up to can be found here
20 Jun 2005
Last week saw the release of not one, but two films about previous films. And I don’t mean Batman Begins (which should be retitled Batman Starts for Essex). Inside Deep Throat, a documentary about the making of and the effect of notorious porn film Deep Throat. And Baadasssss!, Mario Van Peebles film about the making […]
18 May 2009
#516, 5th March 1983 Michael Jackson came to the title “King of Pop” in the style of a medieval ruler, carving out his realm piece by piece across a hard year of campaigning. He won some of his new subjects when he performed this song as part of a Motown anniversary special: others when he […]
14 Nov 2006
In The Beginning There Was Nothingness. IF ONLY. In The Beginning There Was The Word. NOT THE BIRD FROM L7 PULLING DOWN HER KECKS AGAIN. But neither of these are strictly true. Because the first book of the Bible Of Badness is Genesis. And if you were ever to question how bad this Bible could […]
24 Nov 2006
Tarmac? What kind of a brand is that, its just the pavement, right? Wrong my friends. Tarmac is a brand and an awe-inspiring dominant one at that. I love brands whose names are synonymous with their main product, it shows an awesome degree of brand dominance when the brand name becomes subsumed into language. But […]
4 Jan 2005
An OLD MAN and a WISE MAN are sitting on a bench. WISE MAN: Tell me, Old Man, if you had one piece of advice to give young students, what would it be? OLD MAN: I would tell them to be neither too proud or too ashamed of their music taste. The music you hear […]
8 Feb 2001
Charlemagne Palestine – Four Manifestations on Six Elements 1. Charlemagne Palestine approaches a piano like a climber approaches a mountain. He does not play the instrument so much as he lets it test him: he starts each performance like an ascent, knowing that somewhere ahead there are the limits of the piano, and also the […]
1 Jul 2013
This article by Laurie Penny on the pervasiveness and persuasiveness of the manic pixie dream girl trope is really good. I’m the same age as Laurie Penny, so was plagued by the same cultural stuff as her- I don’t know if it’s just egocentrism for my own timeline but I feel like the 90s marked […]
24 Dec 1999
Low’s Christmas tree is a simple one, with eight plain wooden baubles. The band write four tracks themselves, offer interpretations of two carols and crooners’ favourite “Blue Christmas”, and nobody’s bothered to take credit for “Taking Down The Tree” (but it sounds like one of Low’s own). The record is packaged – beautifully – like […]
