2018 Music Diary Week 2: The Week Of Intensity 15 Jan 2018 NEW MUSIC Day 12: Camila Cabello – Camila: Short, well-put-together pop LP which puts “Havana” fourth – I don’t really get how post-physical media track ordering works, but back in…
Twenty Eighteen, A List (i) 1 Jan 2019 This list was inspired by Brad Nelson in another place, and their excellent idea of just smushing together the things which stood out in 2018 regardless of media or format…
Album-A-Day #8: The Unquiet Groove 8 Apr 2019 This is a document of my album-a-day listening project. Each entry originally comes out as a tinyletter and subscribers to that get framing content and non-music miscellanea as well as…
2018 Music Diary Week 7: The Week Of Unsettlement 23 Feb 2018 This is late, and brief, as I’ve been in France helping my parents as my Dad’s been ill. NEW MUSIC Day 43: TAL NATIONAL – Tantabara: Pell-mell afro/jazz/rock from Niger,…
2021: Son Of Poll! 8 Jan 2022 Thanks to getting Covid (again!) I've made only slow progress on the poll track write-ups - in fact I only finished this selection after all the matches ended (oops). YouTube…
The Freaky Trigger Movie Poll 2018: #10 – #1 4 Feb 2019 And here it is, after leaving a slightly longer gap than hoped - the Freaky Trigger Top Ten movies of the year. Firstly, before anyone says anything, Paddington 2 came…
“ITES, REEL” 19 Sep 2018 Being a melancholy appreciation on his passing of this nation’s pioneering reggae writer: the great PENNY REEL “Sing great song, down inna Babylon, show them your culture, down inna Babylon”…
1 Oct 2002
Introduction It was about 2 in the morning and I was trying to get a handle on Alexander the Great. I had a final exam coming up and I’d missed half the syllabus – and something else was missing; a way into the man’s head. Alexander had single-handedly destroyed the world’s largest Empire and put […]
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 […]
10 Jan 2012
Hi, I’m Lauryn Hill circa my breakthrough role in Sister Act 2: Back In The Habit, and it is a real pleasure to be able to present to you the top ten FreakyTrigger tracks of the year. When my mother told me I couldn’t join the choir run by a fake nun, I got really […]
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 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 […]
30 Jan 2000
I. The cod-philosophical question at the centre of pop fandom is this: is pop a genre or a state? Not all records designed to be ‘great pop’ – in the sense of being good for the feet, the heart and the bank balance – make it to the Top Forty, or anywhere near. But not […]
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 […]
29 Oct 2010
#641, 3rd February 1990 Sinead O’Connor is one of the finest song interpreters not just because she thinks hard about the material and the feelings locked in it, but because she’s so good at placing songs into a situation. A great example of this is her version of “Chiquitita”, warm and homely where ABBA’s is […]
