It’s becoming increasingly apparent that I did leave my bag of new CDs on the tube on Wednesday night. This is some kind of karmic payback for either a) picking up and keeping the dropped £20 note outside the Streets ‘gig’ som[…]

Pop Factor: 807 Controversy Score: 153
A little cold, a little forbidding, perhaps even a little too well-drilled: typical Girls Aloud. Their singles are design objects: beautiful, impeccably put together, never neglecting the practical (i.e. you c[…]

Quick Question: what was the first pop song to introduce the idea of jealous people/haters envious of the artist’s success? Does this particular ‘meme’ have a pre-80s or pre-hip-hop life? I’m sure it must but can’t think[…]

Vote Beaker: “the nation’s favourite fictional boffin” is the BBC’s latest wheeze.[…]

Round-up
Head of Frampton found on bikini
I really really dislike “Year Of The Rat” by Badly Drawn Boy. Just so you know. The perils of the mid-paced rocker: don’t try it kids.
Handy summary of the current file-sharing flap.
What fo[…]

You know those things? Toys, right, and you have a horse on a pedestal or sometimes a man, and you can push the bottom of the pedestal and it relaxes the wires in the horses legs? And so the horse can dance about? And if you push it right in the hors[…]

There is a type of critical practise which I have decided to call Carmodism (cf). It involves hearing echoes of political events in contemporary pop records and vice versa – divining invisible connections that can, when the intuition is right, […]

[/emerges from XFM induced catatonia]
Tatwatch and Square Table back tomorrow. For now, the news (no news to most I’m sure) that “Dry Your Eyes” is apparently going to be No.1 on Sunday*. Crikey.
*(and credit where it’s due, M[…]

Grumbleweed Facts for Andrew. I remember nothing about them.[…]

The Advert Channel: standard pub ‘what if’ joke comes true. I particularly like the idea that there will be actual adverts inbetween the, um, other adverts.[…]