Omargeddon #35: Cell Phone Bikini

It’s relatively safe to say that neither Spotify nor TicketMaster cover themselves with glory in their treatment of musicians or their fans, but I can honestly say I’ve been legit grateful for the both of them since the weekly events email from the former resulted in me throwing a box of money at the latter. Meaning, I now have tickets for The Mars Volta at the Troxy this June. It’s exactly what I’ve been hoping for since the Antemasque album dropped in 2014 and what I’ve been daydreaming about since the official reunion last year. I’m already predicting a very ‘Nelson Muntz at the Andy Williams concert’ reaction, with some pre-show tears streaming down my face at the very thought of hearing “Cygnus…Vismund Cygnus”* and a proper ugly cry when I eventually do hear it. 

As on the North American tour, Teri Gender Bender is supporting, so I’ve been listening to the Complexify playlist, made up of all the EPs she released last year, in anticipation. Since I bought the tickets, I’ve been leaning towards her various musical projects to soundtrack my days, with Cell Phone Bikini a recent favourite.

1985 Poll Playlists – Days 6 and 7

A playlist double bill – Day 6 and also Day 7:

Let’s have some explanations:

Donate and Nominate in THE CHARITY CRUSHER

The May pop poll will be an open entry CHARITY POLL, raising money for international aid charity ActionAid and UK refugee education charity the Ruth Hayman Trust. 

I’ve set up 2 fundraising pages.

Ruth Hayman

ActionAid

For each fundraiser you donate to, you can pick 2 songs to go into the poll, so a possible total of 4 songs. No limits (no no there’s no limits) as to what. Well, hardly any.

Details at the links. This doubles as my 50th birthday fundraiser, so throw in a few quid to celebrate that if you’d like and pick a favourite song!

1985 Poll Playlist – Day 5

The halfway point of our daily 1985 playlists. This one’s scheduled to run on Saturday 25th.

The headline group is Group 33 (Stevie Wonder) – this is from the soul/R&B section, Stevie’s track being the most shazamed in that bit of the poll, slightly to my surprise.

Norman Fucking Rockwell: My Adventure In ‘AI Art’

The creations of AI art are truly dreamlike, which is to say, they’re only interesting if they’re yours. The endless scroll of a MidJourney Discord server is an index of desires, dreams, whims, and commercial needs, all compliantly rendered by the machine into artlike images . You can see the wishes the genie grants but you don’t know why these things matter to the wisher. A woman on a beach with green hair, ultra detailed. Men in suits, no beards (“BEARDS”, read the genie, and drew several). A stoat Roman Emperor.

I don’t know what my fellow users thought of my prompts. “A wise old owl telling stories to other woodland creatures, by Norman Rockwell”. “An illustration by Norman Rockwell of a delighted crowd leaving a cinema”. “A Norman Rockwell picture of a beautiful woman disembarking from a ship carrying an old suitcase”. Who was this person with an obsession with Norman, as Lana Del Rey put it, Fucking Rockwell?

1985 Poll Playlist – Day 4

Back once again with the 1985 poll playlists – I said on Twitter these would run on Thursday 23rd but that’s also when I’m launching the PEOPLE’S POP CHARITY CRUSHER so it’ll probably be the Friday.

What have we got? Group 25 (Baltimora) is our headline match, with the Dance-pop/Italo section getting its turn.

1985 Poll Playlists – Day 3

Day 3 of the 1985 poll – you know the drill by now. This’ll be up on Wednesday 22nd March. Here are quick previews of the 8 groups with details of the non-Spotify tracks.

Group 17 (The Outfield) is from the Rock section, headlined by the most-streamed song in that whole segment of the poll, “Your Love” – almost entirely unknown to Brits it seems, which wouldn’t be that odd except The Outfield are British.

Group 18 (The Communards) is our first CURATED GROUP – this one’s curated by user @bisnuts. Curated Groups are given away as prizes to nominators whose tracks do well – you can pick 4 songs with no restriction (unless the track’s already been picked by someone else). We have a missing track here – the fourth song is “Kudendere” by the Harare Mambo Band.

Group 19 (The Hooters) is the first group in our LIVE AID section. This section is pretty simple – if an artist appeared at Live Aid (either concert) or its same-day Australian equivalent, it was put in this track ahead of any others. More eclectic than I expected!

Group 20 (Book Of Love) takes us back to the Italo/Dance-Pop group. The fourth track, though, is not on Spotify, and qualifies by virtue of its producer, Hi-NRG stalwart I. Levine. Yes, it’s “Doctor In Distress” by Who Cares?

Group 21 (A-Ha) – another from the Pop section, and it’s brutal stuff.

Group 22 (UB40 ft Sister V) is an all reggae/dancehall group from the Rap/Electro/Dancehall section.

Group 23 (Silent Track/Fake) – a group from the Global section, which doesn’t really have headliners as such (well, it does, but not in the same way other sections do). The Japanese track here is called “Dancing Hero (Eat You Up)” and the group kicks off with a missing track – “Brick” by Fake.

Group 24 (The Dead Milkmen) – ending the day with another visit to the US college rock groups.

1985 Poll Playlists – Day 2

Another preview, of groups which will (we hope) be up on Tuesday 21st March. As before, 8 groups of 4 songs – my plan is to run them 2 to a post.

1985 Poll Playlists – Day 1

Since the 1985 poll will be running on our soon-to-be-launched People’s Pop Polls sister site, I thought I’d run a playlist preview here.

These groups will open for voting on Monday 20th March (if all goes to plan).

MARIO WINANS ft ENYA & P DIDDY – “I Don’t Wanna Know”

#980, 12th June 2004

If the hits of 2004 have a theme, perhaps it’s men’s hurt feelings. Busted, Eamon, Mario, and more to come, like a damburst of male confusion, spite and woe. The year’s most enduring hit – in chart terms the most enduring hit of any year – finds a singer tormented by his beloved’s life without him, unable to stop imagining the details of her intimacy with another man, equally unable to endure them.

We don’t get to talk formally about “Mr Brightside” here, and in any case its emotional content isn’t the reason it’s claimed squatters’ rights on the charts. But thematically it’s the twitchy rock cousin to “I Don’t Wanna Know”, a song whose peak finds Mario Winans’ loverman cool dissolve into a desperate, unwanted but unstoppable series of questions – “Did he touch you better than me? Did he watch you fall asleep?”