The Strange Death of the UK Charts

22 Jan 2009 This is a graph – done by anatol_merklich off the Poptimists LiveJournal community, so massive thanks to him – showing the number of new entries in the UK singles chart for each year from 1952 to the present. The final drop-off is for 2009, where there’ve only been 3 new entries so far, so the […]

The Secret History Of Band Aid

16 Nov 2004 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. Which rather begs the question – why does nobody ever talk about Band Aids 3 to 19? Take a trip down memory lane as NYLPM reminds you […]

Freaky Trigger: Cure Site Central

1 Apr 2001 freaky trigger : all cure, all the time everyday – beach kyoto paris siam : : i love the cure : : cure artefacts How To Join In Cure Discussions Cure Reviews Cure Articles Other Cure Articles Cure Albums of the 90s Cure Singles of the 90s Cure Links E-Mail every week Am I Bob […]

ABBA – “Dancing Queen”

13 May 2008 #394, 4th September 1976 In my teens I read a science fiction novel with a startlingly elegant twist. (I won’t mention the book’s name in case you come across it yourself.) It was about a brilliant scientist who vanishes: the book’s protagonist goes looking for clues to what happened, and becomes close to the scientist’s […]

The New Adventures of Tarkus

24 Jul 2002 Tarkus vs The Strokes

Selling In The Name Of

15 Dec 2009 One of the things that’s fascinating about the UK Top 40 is that a device designed to be a pure expression of popularity also works as a reflection of so many other things. People buy songs: if enough people buy a song it gets into the charts, or to #1. Simple! But so simple that […]

Trashes To Trashes

1 Mar 1981 My name is Tanya Headon. I hate music. All of it. And I’m bloody good at what I do. Which is why, when picketing a gig of The Feeling I managed to get over 90% of the fans to agree with me that they are just soft rock bobbins and their new album is just […]

Pokémon X And Why

9 Jan 2013 GET UR FROAK ON While most of my online acquaintances were geeking out today at the thought of a new David Bowie album, our house was far more excited by the announcement of new Pokémon games – Pokémon X and Pokémon Y, the first on Nintendo’s 3DS console(1). The announcement was made by the President […]