Bedtime Story Watch II: Beorn Again 5 Jan 2013 Reading The Hobbit to Lytton (just turned 6) - Beorn has just sent the party Mirkwood-bound and re-ponied, and this (plus recent Hobbit-discussion on here) seems a good place to…
The Canon Crawl 16 Sep 2015 This is another one of my 'listening exercises' - in a world of enormous musical choice, I find games like these are a good way of structuring what I hear,…
R. KELLY - "Ignition (Remix)" 4 Jan 2020 So here we are. In 2014, when I wrote the entry for “I Believe I Can Fly”, acknowledging the monstrousness of R Kelly, I had plans to make this piece…
The Freaky Trigger Not-A-Poll Films Of 2014: 5-1 23 Feb 2015 "Hi I am Lorelei Linklater and I am here to present the top five Freaky Trigger Not A Poll movies of 2014, even though it is well into 2015. I…
2018 Music Diary Week 3: The Week Of Appropriation 22 Jan 2018 NEW MUSIC Day 19: FALL OUT BOY – Mania: Short, and making no secret of its modern pop inspiration (there’s a song here with a reggaeton beat!), Mania underlines Fall…
They Ask Me What The Use Is: Pop Conference 2017 5 May 2017 Last year’s Seattle Pop Conference, on Voice, was an epiphanic experience for me, reviving a part of me that had become burnt out since I stopped writing regularly about current…
Omargeddon #6: Corazones 12 Jan 2019 There’s the Mars Volta and there’s the Mars Volta Group, and it’s important to understand the difference between the two. The Mars Volta is the partnership of Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and…
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
9 Jul 2002
Andrew WK: I Get Wet: Pitchfork Review: Remarkable write-up of the Andrew WK album from Ryan Schrieber, Pitchforkmedia’s editor-in-chief. Remarkable because it gets Andrew WK’s music so descriptively right – “Nothing could penetrate a sound that dense. I was overcome. I tried to remember the last time anyone dared to push rock so poppily over […]
4 Jul 2018
An intriguing group for this third Pop World Cup match, with two of the sleeping giants of pop football – Sweden and South Korea – lined up against the always capable Germany and dark horses Mexico. Group of death? In a sense, they are all groups of death when YOU have the casting vote. Pick […]
12 Nov 2014
The Secret History Of Band Aid Everybody remembers Band Aid. And – despite everything – most people remember Band Aid 2. And now we have Band Aid 20 30. Which rather begs the question – why does nobody ever talk about Band Aids 3 to 29? Take a trip down memory lane as we remind […]
19 Jan 2002
Everlasting Pop and Dexys Midnight Runners There is pop, and there is popular, and then there’s popular. And there’s also “timeless”. Sometimes when people say that a record is “timeless” – let’s pick on, oh, a U2 album – they mean it will be listened to and loved say twenty years from now. What they […]
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 […]
2 Feb 2001
The Usual Excuses Bowery Electric’s “Freedom Fighter” is bewitching and worrying, and not just because it was made by a band I’d put down as America’s most useless. In fact the beat Bowery Electric use on “Freedom Fighter” sounds as familiar as ever, but that for once works in the song’s favour, in the same […]
28 Dec 2019
REASON: Welcome one and welcome all, to the FreakyTrigger wing of a KWIZZ (quiz) sat for a hundred and blimey years by Isle of Man schoolkids. (“Please return your answers to the Principal’s Office by Monday 13th January.”) RHYME: Themed sets of 10 questions each — a new one every day (or so). COLLABORATIN’ COMMENT […]
5 May 2011
#667, 13th July 1991 Sixteen Listens For Sixteen Weeks: An Everything I Do Liveblog This song got to number one for 16 weeks, so I decided to play it 16 times in a row, writing as I went. Play 1: And we’re off. I’ve honestly hardly heard this in the last twenty years so I […]
