A Mad Man Shuts A Box 9 Feb 2015 Fans of long, chronological blog projects will know that when one actually finishes it's cause for no small celebration. Phil Sandifer's TARDIS Eruditorum reaches its final entry today, an essay…
New Popular Entries: Where And When? 28 Jun 2015 Hello - just a quick note to reassure people that we haven't gone back to the bad old days of no updates. My situation is as follows - I've been…
Of Was And When 24 Mar 2016 Rebel Rebel, by Chris O'Leary (Zero Books) One of the many remarkable things about David Bowie's career is that it came so close to not happening. Bowie seems like an…
Wiki-illiams Quizz 2018. Round 1 31 Dec 2018 RUBRIC: welcome to the FreakyTrigger wing of a quiz sat for a hundred and funfty years by some lucky/isle of man schoolkids etc blah blah bloop. Themed sets of 10…
BACK MARK SINKER'S BOOK!! 27 Jul 2016 UPDATE: the book is funded, so thanks everyone that helped. It is due for delivery in a little over a year. I will keep people up to speed on developments…
TFTACOXS – December 13: Leon Vegan Christmas Wrap 15 Dec 2017 At some point when you're opening the doors of this particular FT advent calendar, you inevitably have to ask, "is that really a sandwich"? Well, pending the intrusion of Wobs…
13 Aug 2008
#428, 18th November 1978 “Rat Trap” is billed – in the Guinness Book Of British Hit Singles, no less – as the first punk No.1. I couldn’t recall it – my memories of the Rats themselves were vague; Geldof I knew for later good works. So I approached “Rat Trap” cold but with a frisson of definite […]
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 […]
9 Jul 2010
So we get a winner, down on Brewer Street in Soho, the Glasshouse Stores was voted the number one pub of the noughties by those of us who voted. A nice pub sure, but so much better than the others? To find out why it scored so highly I thought I would canvas a number […]
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 […]
17 Jun 2010
Finally, the moment of ABSOLUTE POP TRUTH is upon us! And my goodness, what a nail-biter of a contest this has been. Halfway through the voting, two decades broke decisively ahead of the pack, establishing a lead that proved impossible to catch up with. Although one of them looked to have the edge, its rival […]
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, […]
28 Jun 2013
We are now firmly into the BRITPOP YEARS on Popular, oh yes, so it’s time to consider its musical legacy in the only language we truly understand, viz. a ticky-box poll. We have selected 32 bands who someone, somewhere, might possibly have once described as Britpop. Tick all the ones you like and by science […]