The Wrestling, Simon Garfield (2nd edition)

With hindsight this book had a massive impact on me when I read it back in 1996. Not that it rekindled any childhood desire to take up the grapple game – I may be a big lad but I wince at combing o[…]

What’s next for the Pop Polls?

So, we’re almost at the end of the Modern Qualifiers on the new People’s Pop site. It felt like a good time to take stock of what’s working well and what isn’t in my efforts to move the PPPolls off Twit[…]

I waited ten years for a new Mars Volta record, and when it finally arrived, I began anticipating a follow-up ORL solo release. But wait – there’s more Volta! Que Dios Te Maldiga Mi Corazón is a total reworking of the self-titled album as ac[…]

Uncanny X-Men Masterworks Vol 1

When I clicked on Giant Size X-Men 1 in Marvel Unlimited it definitely wasn’t with the intention of starting a large-scale re-read of the 70s and 80s X-Men. I had a vague urge to find out exactly how different and[…]

ABBA Voyage, The ABBA Arena

In Jim Steinmeyer’s fine history of stage magic, Hiding The Elephant, he goes into detail on the history of Pepper’s Ghost, the illusion that captivated Victorian London and revolutionised the tricknology of magic p[…]

TALK TALK – Laughing Stock (1991)

Written as a “Designated Champion” essay for the Best Album Of The 90s tournament on Twitter.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. It’s 1991 and there’s this band, minor in their gen[…]

The Sorcerer Of The Wildeeps, Kai Ahsante Wilson (2015)

A fantasy novella that gestures at vaster conceptions than its slim length can contain, Sorcerer Of The Wildeeps is at once a rich broth of engagingly florid prose, a pointed lesson in the us[…]

Welcome to the new look Freaky Trigger, which is now 3 sites in a server-shaped trenchcoat.

Popular – my ongoing reviews of UK Number 1 hits, which now has its own dedicated site.

The People’s Pop Polls – arriving from the flaming[…]

It’s relatively safe to say that neither Spotify nor TicketMaster cover themselves with glory in their treatment of musicians or their fans, but I can honestly say I’ve been legit grateful for the both of them since the weekly events email from t[…]

The creations of AI art are truly dreamlike, which is to say, they’re only interesting if they’re yours. The endless scroll of a MidJourney Discord server is an index of desires, dreams, whims, and commercial needs, all compliantly rendered by th[…]