On the face of it, there is little that Imperial Life In The Emerald City by Rajiv Chandrasekaran and the musical Wicked have in common, except that they both feature a location called the Emerald City. And indeed if you remove the circumstantial fac[…]

“Track 12” by J.G. Ballard gets Slugged this week, with Richard Thomas joining Mark Sinker and Elisha Sessions to discuss it. Elisha reads this odd story of revenge via home recording in case you haven’t; music comes courtesy of Joh[…]

I have a new Pitchfork column up, called “45 Things I Love About Pop”, which as titles go is among my more straightforward ones. A lot of what I talk about is helpfully linked to thanks to the wonders of YouTube: this post is designed to […]

As Martin S pointed out on the “I Will Survive” comments thread, Pulp have borrowed both lyrics and hooks from this song, the latter in their epic His N Hers track “She’s A Lady” – which shares a theme as well as a[…]

We pick up with Pete Baran joining Mark Sinker and Elisha Sessions for “Zirn Left Unguarded, The Jenghik Palace in Flames, Jon Westerley Dead”, written in 1972 by Robert Sheckley, read here by Elisha. Music includes the Electro Hippies, P[…]

“Until” was the B-Side to “Tragedy”, and well worth hearing perhaps especially if you’re no fan of the A’s more overblown qualities. It’s also on parent album Spirits Having Flown, so it’s not especiall[…]

16. Kicks Like A Mule – The Bouncer
As previously mentioned, I was eager to experience the world of clubbing from an early age. But despite this pre-teen enthusiasm, I didn’t enter my first proper nightclub until I was a disappointingly l[…]

The slugs of time ooze back onto your radio dials tomorrow night at 10pm! The frequency you’ll need to tune into is the perpetually double-booked Resonance FM 104.4 in London, which also does a live web stream. If you miss it however – FE[…]

Like the pictures sleeves, this is something I wish I’d thought of doing aaaages ago, but instead it came to me in a flash tonight when this track showed up in the MP3 player.
A Popular Companion is an MP3 blog, of sorts, accompanying Popular: […]

Never ones to miss the chance of a lovely headline or two, our friends at the Football Supporters Federation had this round the blogs by last night, well done them! I’ve seen some ridiculous measures in place to allow clubs to observe this out[…]