911 - "A Little Bit More" 4 Sep 2014 The formation of minor boyband 911 is a telling vignette of how pop in the late 90s was working. The general boyband narrative is one where a managerial Svengali recruits…
The Freaky Trigger Readers' Poll 2018 2 Dec 2018 "Greetings, I am the renowned, cross-eyed clairvoyant, Mystic Meg. I'm here, to predict, in a deliberately awkward intonation, that the numbers 3826546, and i, and the colour "bergerac", will be…
Bedtime Story Watch I 27 Nov 2012 At the weekend I finished reading The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe to my kids - audience L (almost 6) and D (3 1/2) liked it, or maybe they…
GARETH GATES ft THE KUMARS - "Spirit In The Sky" 17 Dec 2019 This is Comic Relief getting back to its roots - a familiar song, disrupted by the comic turn. I never watched the Kumars, and the clips I looked at for…
2001: A Poll Odyssey 1 Sep 2020 As you probably know, I’ve been entertaining myself - and others, it seems - by running themed music polls on Twitter. The next one is based on the year 2001…
21 Lists 26 Jul 2017 A list in which the descriptions match the wrong entries. A list in which the order is determined drunk and the descriptions are written sober. A list in which the…
The Pollards Of Lop Episode 1: Cover Versions 1 Jul 2020 Last month's Twitter poll was about Cover Versions, and to accompany it, I was joined virtually by Cis, Mark and Pete to CAST THE PODS and talk about cover versions…
About the Author
writer and editor bit by bit fashioning a history of the UK music press HERE https://www.patreon.com/marksink3r/posts
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 […]
1 Sep 2002
I don’t think much of the idea of ‘guilty pleasures’ but there’s guilt and there’s guilt, isn’t there? There’s guilt for something you might be doing wrong – breaking some invisible law of taste, maybe – and that guilt you can and should kick aside. But then there’s guilt for the things you have done, […]
1 Jan 2019
Hello and happy new year! It is I, Cameron Mackintosh, the world’s most powerful and most 80s theatre producer. Les Miserables, The Phantom of the Opera, CATS – I’m kind of a big deal guys!!!!! Thanks Cam! On the principle that every drunk idea at Pete’s flat is a good idea, today now presenting the […]
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 […]
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 […]
23 Mar 2014
#773, 13th September 1997 “Whenever we played that live there would be rows of grown men crying. It was almost like these guys couldn’t cry when they needed to cry, but that song operated like a pressure valve for them and it was okay for them to cry at a big rock concert.” – Richard […]
1 Jul 2013
This article by Laurie Penny on the pervasiveness and persuasiveness of the manic pixie dream girl trope is really good. I’m the same age as Laurie Penny, so was plagued by the same cultural stuff as her- I don’t know if it’s just egocentrism for my own timeline but I feel like the 90s marked […]
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 […]
