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FreakyTrigger
  • To Live A Life Of Freedom, Machos Take A Stand: COLONY EARTH!
    This is an entry in Discourse 2000, my year-by-year, story-by-story analysis of 2000AD strips. Contains spoilers for Colony Earth! Which Thrill? A hard-bitten Naval Commander battles an alien invasion, almost single-handedly. If that doesn’t[…]
  • I Was Shocked To Find What Was Allowed: THE VISIBLE MAN
    This is a post in the Discourse 2000 series, looking at 2000AD story by story, year by year. Which Thrill? A daredevil gets into a car accident and ends up with transparent skin. Hijinks ensue. GOT A HEADFUL OF IDEAS AND IT’S DRIVING ME I[…]
  • Space Travel’s In My Blood: DAN DARE ’78
    This is a post in the series Discourse 2000, exploring 2000AD year by year and story by story. It contains spoilers for Dan Dare’s run in the comic. Which Thrill? Dan Dare boldly goes where no pilot of the future has gone before, exploring t[…]
  • Dance Our Way Out Of Our Constrictions: INTRO ’78
    Previously on Discourse 2000: After successfully helping launch war comic Battle, editor Pat Mills had the opportunity to launch a new kind of boys’ comic at publishers IPC – Action, a title which turned the violence and grittiness of typical[…]
  • Omargeddon: Project Closure Report
    My attitude to creative writing projects is best contextualised by misquoting Zapp Brannigan’s take on pick-up lines: write as many of them as you can, as fast as you can. I know this is probably unwise, yet I feel compelled to start a project goin[…]
  • Omargeddon #55: Is It The Clouds?
    Omar Rodríguez-López’s most recent solo album Is It the Clouds? dropped January 2024 (aptly on the Clouds Hill label) and was the first to follow 2016-17’s epic release schedule. While it’s not quite a traditional concept album, themes of gri[…]
Popular
  • 2PAC ft ELTON JOHN – “Ghetto Gospel”
    The pattern for recent hip-hop Number 1s on Popular – Nelly’s pair being the best example – has been the chart-topper as a kind of medal for services rendered, generally coming an album cycle after the artist’s more vital work. Mostly[…]
  • CRAZY FROG – “Axel F”
    In 2004 I took on the worst project of my professional life; worst in the sense that it was miserable and time-consuming and also in the sense that I did it very badly. A certain mobile phone company wanted to know what their rivals were doing online[…]
  • OASIS – “Lyla”
    The long twilight of Oasis is reaching its end, at least in Popular terms. The 00s took them from the kings of English rock to a drab fixture and finally a running joke, bigmouths promising a return to form which never comes. This is almost the last […]
  • AKON – “Lonely”
    This is going to be one of those annoying reviews which takes the billion-view signature hit of a highly successful artist and picks away at production choices which – objectively! – have been extremely successful. “Lonely” is not a o[…]
  • TONY CHRISTIE ‘ft’ PETER KAY – “Is This The Way To Amarillo?”
    The success of Elvis’ reissues – a promotional gimmick which actually managed to hack the charts – made a strong case that the new pop of 2005 simply wasn’t able to capture the wider public imagination. This record makes it inarguable[…]
  • McFLY – “All About You”/”You’ve Got A Friend”
    McFly’s biggest hit, crossing the 500k sales barrier partly because it was the official Comic Relief single. The Carole King cover is doing most of the hard work on that front, with a video involving the lads helping out in Uganda, and the song sto[…]
People's Pop
  • CURRENTLY OPEN POLLS
    In the BLUESKY ERA of Pop Polling we are forced to run polls on Google Forms and it can get confusing. So this is a pinned post which is simply a list of the currently open forms. The highest up ones will close soonest. There are currently no open[…]
  • Peoples Pop 2024: THE FINAL GROUP
    The results are in! We have a final group of 40 songs to vote on in the WORLD CUP OF 2024, and a handy GOOGLE FORM where you can do just that. The form has details on the scoring system, and it’s open until midnight on Sunday 26th January. So o[…]
  • THE WORLD CUP OF 2024
    In case you weren’t aware, the Pop Polls are back back BACK on Bluesky, and we’ve started off with the annual year-end poll, The World Cup Of 2024 (hashtag: #peoplespop24 if you want to play along there) Bluesky doesn’t have poll[…]
  • The League Of Extraordinary Tracks II: 7. BLACK POP HISTORY 1978-1981 – Polls
    This is the POLL POST for the Black Pop History round in the League Of Tracks. Want to actually hear the songs? (And you frankly should) Go to the Playlist Post. As usual the rules are simple. You can vote for UP TO FOUR of these eleven tracks[…]
  • The League Of Extraordinary Tracks II: 7. BLACK POP HISTORY 78-81 – Playlists
    The penultimate round of the League Of Tracks is a companion to the excellent poll we’ve just been going through on the main site, exploring the work of Black musicians between 1978 and 1981, from the zenith of disco through the birth of rap on[…]
  • The League Of Extraordinary Tracks II: 6. NOT THAT ONE! – Results
    Better late than never (well, I hope it is) – here are some results for the “Not That One!” round of the League, a high concept selection where the sole criteria was sharing a title with a more famous tune. So it’s indirect co[…]