BLACK BOX – “Ride On Time” 4 Oct 2010 The controversy around "Ride On Time" now feels like a mixture of typical sharp practise and unusual naivety. Details are murky, but it seems production team Black Box had obtained…
Popular News 11 Apr 2012 Short version: Popular will be back on Friday and back to a regular schedule. Long version: Obviously Popular posts have been intermittent recently - to put it kindly. There are…
Popular Crystal Ball: 2016 – The Year Pop Broke 18 Jan 2017 Well, that was a year. It’s not what 2016 will be remembered for, but this was the year that streaming broke the charts – or fundamentally changed what they reflect.…
The Freaky Trigger Readers’ Poll 2014: #30-#21 9 Jan 2015 "Hi everyone, I'm Tasmin Archer. You may remember me from The Harry Hill Show on TV's Channel 4, where following a freak accident that NASA have banned me from talking…
About the Author
tafka pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør, Duke of the Rotten Underfelting of All Culture, Marquis of the Mothed Marches, gorgeous as the fifth moon and terrible as a tummy with hammers, i bind your gnomes to slake my bed: ALL SHALL LOVE ME AND DESPAIR AND THEN SUBSCRIBE ---> https://www.patreon.com/marksink3r
13 May 2008
#394, 4th September 1976 In my teens I read a science fiction novel with a startlingly elegant twist. (I won’t mention the book’s name in case you come across it yourself.) It was about a brilliant scientist who vanishes: the book’s protagonist goes looking for clues to what happened, and becomes close to the scientist’s […]
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 […]
12 Mar 2010
People in the Popular comments boxes are talking about “the canon”. I’m always quite curious as to which bits of the canon have ‘taken’ with a broadly pop-positive audience such as we have here. So here’s a poll, very easy to fill in, just say which of the Top 50 albums OF ALL TIME EVER […]
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 […]
29 Sep 2014
#817, 21st February 1999 How was I supposed to know that something wasn’t right? It was a gilded age: the commercial zenith of the music industry at the end of the 20th century. In America, its apex as a money-making force came in 1999 when – adjusted for inflation – $71 per head was spent […]
1 Sep 2002
Spiders: creepy, crawly little critters which seem up to no good – hanging in the corner of your room, leaving webs around just to make a mess – definitely with their own agenda. Not the most obvious creature to base a film on. Yet Hollywood returns to the theme of spiders every ten years or […]
27 Sep 2001
What is “Panic” about? Dismissed and attacked since its release as small-minded, or snobbish, or even borderline racist, The Smiths’ anti-disco broadside continues to intrigue. On this thread, The Pinefox calls it a “yoking of two ideas” – a revolutionary fantasia and an attack on dance music – and claims that it’s the second of […]
1 Jan 2002
British Bubblegum Pop 1968-1972 “Sunday morning, up with the lark, I think I’ll take a walk in the park, Hey hey hey, it’s a beautiful day …” Daniel Boone, “Beautiful Sunday”, 1972 British bubblegum pop, circa 1968-1972 – as distinct from its more worldly and sophisticated American equivalent – is a pure insight into a […]
