In search of Squirrel – Part two

3 Oct 2004 In search of Squirrel – Part two (warning, contains graphic images) Some of you may remember this article I wrote some time ago about my “failure” as a vegetarian and my quest for the different. Well, I’ve done it. Squirrel had become a bit of an obsession, I’d chased up all sorts of alleys (Julian […]

The Friday Fun Canon Discussion And Monster Poll

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 […]

BAND AID – “Do They Know It’s Christmas”

4 Sep 2009 #543, 15th December 1984, video “Do They Know It’s Christmas” is significant in one way, and insignificant in another. First, it raised a lot of awareness and money and established the pop single as an excellent mechanism for doing those things. This was significant. Gargantuan “supergroups” like this fell out of favour but charity records […]

The Greek Alphabet of Piss-poor Pop: Introduction

17 Nov 2003 I notice elsewhere, in my absence, some young scamp over on NYLPM has started a concept piece, some say think piece entitled the Alphabet Of Pop. Now no-one knows more than myself the beauty of lists, as my Week Of Wank and Breakfast Of Banality proves. Its cheap easy journalism and also gives one a […]

I Want To Know What Love Is – Eighties Revisionism

2 Jan 2001 On Skykicking last week, Tim touched, popwise, on the continuing cultural battle over what the eighties were or are or mean or meant. The story of mainstream rock and politics in the 1990s was among other things the story of a similar battle, that time over the sixties. On the one hand you had the […]

SINEAD O’CONNOR – “Nothing Compares 2 U”

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 […]

THIS IS BIS WEEK

24 Jan 2010 Here at Freaky Trigger we have realised that January has been a bit slow with output. A new year can put new strains upon our writers and what with Tom’s Guardian column and me embarking on a year without cinema, pickings have been slim. What was needed was something that would galvanise all the writers, […]

Pika! Pika! Chu! Chu!

10 Jul 2000 The Pokemon Phenomenon  This piece was going to be an unabashed paean to Pokemania, explaining what a cracking game it was and how the mass tweener hysteria which greets every fresh Pokegame, cardset, pillow-case, or doily was a good thing inasmuch as ten-year-olds are natural obsessives and it wasn’t like they were wasting their time […]