Apologies to anyone who wanted to, you know WRITE, about this subject. We couldn’t find anyone on the internet who was interested. In fact, for the life of us we’re not even sure how this entry managed to get this high in the list. We suspect an orchestrated internets campaign on USENET.
What’s the deal with Belle and Sebastian? Loads of people idolise them, perhaps as many despise them. I’ve always just heard pleasant but inessential indie-pop with catchy-ish tunes and fairly lame vocals (though I get that it’s kind of the point), sometimes merry, sometimes wistful but never, to these ears, exciting. “Like The Beatles if they’d all been Paul” is how I once, snidely, dismissed them. This isn’t a ‘why bother with wimpy indie-pop’, I get why people dig that, but why their wimpy indie-pop over anyone else’s?
A Small Reminder 1 Jan 2011 Still plenty of time - well, until Sunday evening - to send your Top 20 Tracks of 2010 (in order if possible!) to poppoll2010@gmail.com - DO SO! If you read…
The Mincer: An Experiment In Gamification 27 Feb 2013 1. Take a large number of individual tracks. 2. Put the first 64 into a playlist. 3. Shuffle. 4. Play (no skipping allowed). 5. After two tracks, decide - as…
STEPS – “Heartbeat” / “Tragedy” 30 Aug 2014 This is the first Popular entry I’ve written in the Southern hemisphere. And while it wasn’t a big hit down under – or, I think, anywhere except the UK –…
Pop World Cup – Radio Roundup 8 12 Mar 2010 Special DPRK adjutant liaison Mark Sinker again joins Peter Baran and Roger Bozack in PWC2010's luxurious control suite, this time for some surprising results from the Group H matches between…
Pop World Cup 2010: The Story So Far 6 Mar 2010 With the first group games drawing to a close I'd like to highlight some of the best music we've discovered in the tournament so far (to draw some new listeners…
ROBBIE WILLIAMS – “Eternity” / “The Road To Mandalay” 24 Jan 2016 The album cycle that began with “Rock DJ” a year before staggers to its end four singles later with “The Road To Mandalay”, a bitter squib of a song, pulled…
Pop World Cup 2010: Group H – Spain 2 Switzerland 0 5 Mar 2010 The last of our 32 teams take the field of pop: Spain open their campaign against Switzerland. Spain's Alberto is new to pop management at this level: his opposite number…
14 Apr 2007
Plenty of words have been written about the seminal Sex Pistols’ seminal gig at the seminal Manchester Free Trade Hall in 1976. There has even been a whole book about it! Everyone knows that the gig was really very important indeed and that everyone who attended became a very extremely important person. HOWEVER does everyone know exactly […]
10 Mar 2015
This is a post listing the records I’m listening to for my YEAR OF ROCKISM**, as outlined here (cut and pasted from Tumblr): I’m going to listen to one album on a once-a-day basis for a week, a different one each week. Not in order to write about them or anything, unless I decide I […]
3 Apr 2017
So for a while myself and Pamela Hutchinson, of Silent London fame have been talking about doing a more regular podcast. And while we love talking about silent films, we also like new films too. And so The Sound Barrier was born over a Campari Spritz or four, we take a new release and we […]
18 Aug 2006
The man who invented the Gala Pie is a hero of mine. Not just because he took one of natures nicest foodstuff (namely the pork pie) and made it even better. He made it better by the addition of the hard boiled egg. But not just any old hard boiled egg. No, not only did […]
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 […]
2 May 2008
#389, 2nd June 1976 I was aware of this song long before I heard it – as a young boy it was quoted at me by my Dad should I ever object to tidying my room. Since my room was rarely tidy, I became very familiar with the central notion of “No Charge”. Like my Dad, I […]
10 Aug 2004
Distilled from several years of pop experience, here from the WORST to the BEST are ways to approach a cover version. The Acoustic Guitar: i.e. “Any good song will sound great on an acoustic guitar”, runs the prized nugget of MOJO wisdom which results in Travis mauling “…Baby One More Time”. Culprits throw up their […]
4 Feb 2014
#757, 25th January 1997 In 1997, talking about music on the Internet means USENET, a Gormenghast of diverging and reconnecting fora whose goblin tribes gleefully rampage through each other’s chosen lairs: a thread will start on alt.music.prodigy, then careen into alt.music.spice-girls via alt.music.misc, while Discordians and trolls plot to spread it still further. Still, there […]
Best post ever.
Apologies to anyone who wanted to, you know WRITE, about this subject. We couldn’t find anyone on the internet who was interested. In fact, for the life of us we’re not even sure how this entry managed to get this high in the list. We suspect an orchestrated internets campaign on USENET.
This song is great, I’m sure I voted for it. I last heard it playing in Starbucks and they cut the song just before the word “wanks”.
Presumably they don’t know what an arab strap is otherwise they’d forego the whole song. FWIW this is my favourite Belle & Sebastian song.
No, Punka was robbed.
What’s the deal with Belle and Sebastian? Loads of people idolise them, perhaps as many despise them. I’ve always just heard pleasant but inessential indie-pop with catchy-ish tunes and fairly lame vocals (though I get that it’s kind of the point), sometimes merry, sometimes wistful but never, to these ears, exciting. “Like The Beatles if they’d all been Paul” is how I once, snidely, dismissed them. This isn’t a ‘why bother with wimpy indie-pop’, I get why people dig that, but why their wimpy indie-pop over anyone else’s?
Which Steps song was in contention?
It was the Best Newcomer award wasn’t it? Rather than an award based on an individual song? Or is my memory playing tricks on me?