(RUBRIC’n’RULEZ can be found in the first post)
1 To what See was Aramis appointed?
2 Who was credited with “style” by Calverley?
3 Who banished the three Fathers to Craggy Island?
4 Who was preferred to Dr Grantley for what position […]

Hello and happy new year! It is I, Cameron Mackintosh, the world’s most powerful and most 80s theatre producer. Les Miserables, The Phantom of the Opera, CATS – I’m kind of a big deal guys!!!!! 
Thanks Cam! On the principle that ev[…]

RUBRIC: welcome to the FreakyTrigger wing of a quiz sat for a hundred and funfty years by some lucky/isle of man schoolkids etc blah blah bloop. Themed sets of 10 questions each — a new one every day (or so). COLLABORATIN’ COMMENT CREW (C[…]

Most Omar Rodríguez-López albums are released under his name, but there a few variations: El Trío de Omar Rodríguez-López, the Omar Rodríguez-López Quartet, the Omar Rodríguez-López Quintet, and when touring, the Omar Rodríguez-López Group[…]

“Greetings, I am the renowned, cross-eyed clairvoyant, Mystic Meg. I’m here, to predict, in a deliberately awkward intonation, that the numbers 3826546, and i, and the colour “bergerac”, will be impoooortant. People who stock […]

I’ve been stuck in a funk of late. Sadly, not a George Clinton-flavoured funk, but a stank, stuck funk of my own making. My compulsive need to trace the original sources for all the revised riffs, beats, and samples that crop up in later Omar Rodr�[…]

Being a melancholy appreciation on his passing of this nation’s pioneering reggae writer: the great PENNY REEL
“Sing great song, down inna Babylon, show them your culture, down inna Babylon”
— ‘M.P.L.A.’, Tapper Zukie
It was October 1978[…]

[This post originally went up at my PATREON: subscribers get to read posts and hear podcasts early — and help offset costs and time and help me do more of this kind of thing. Please share widely and encourage participation in the comments!]
A week […]

It would be inaccurate to say Octopus Kool Aid passed me by, but by the time I learned of its existence, I was too depressed about The Mars Volta’s breakup and too ready to blame this album for causing it. It’s only been recently that I’ve take[…]

Hello everyone!
This is just to say that the Pop World Cup and Popular will be back in September*. Thanks for waiting and huge apologies for disappearing – family health and work issues have taken their toll (again).
*very possibly before! But […]