Pop. It is what Freaky Trigger was about. Here, have a look at some of the early articles (COO-EE Who remembers INDIESHITE!). It was Tom Ewing’s pop fanzine, when suddenly fanzine became websites. It was quite a reputable one too. We had favourable reviews left right and centre, well Tom did. Because whilst there were a few articles written by other people, the lions share of the site was written by Tom: it was clearly his website so his gaff his rules. Though as someone who wrote something was back then the rules were pleasantly light (Tom has never been one to insist on a style guide). Just be interesting about pop music. Oh, and try not to make too many typos*.
It is quite hard to remember a world before the internet, and what I believe is called the Poptimist position was less prevalent than it is now. And don’t forget that I Love Music spun out of Freaky Trigger. A simple message board, and also a dalliance with blogs followed. Blue Lines, now long gone, was the diary/random thoughts blog which identified why the form might have legs (if done well – which most people still don’t). But New York, London, Paris, Munich – NYLPM – soon became what people thought of when they read Freaky Trigger. A fast, funny toe dipping into what pop music had done today (and maybe an eyeroll at indie). Tanya popped up around this period too, for good and bad. And with the blog format, more blogs were added. I brought the publog over from my site, and Do You See started. Soon FreakyTrigger was no longer a website about pop.
Except it always was, and it always will be. Even when Tom decided to close down NYLPM, and talk about pop more on LiveJournal – where his obsession with polls could be easily sated, it never went away. This is a pop culture website, but I don’t think it is that controversial to suggest that these days the pop in pop culture has always been defined from pop music. It was pop music which first used the word pop that way. Is Pop Art popular art? Or a stab at some sort of associative mass produced stab of heaven that tries to replicate the pop music experience. Pop is still at the heart of FT and when we say pop we really mean pop music. And of course Popular continues – and you don’t get more pop than that (we certainly don’t on this site!)
And that’s enough of the self regarding nonsense from the Periodic Table. Next time lets see something we define ourselves against.
*This was a rule too far for me.