Phantom Power, the new album by the Super Furry Animals is named after a switch you see on lots of mini-amps. It is a switch, and associated light, which has also beguiled me. What is this phantom power, how can it seemingly power the amp to greater[…]

I was having a sniff around for information on Punch Taverns, who are Britain’s second biggest pub owners but who don’t brand their pubs as aggressively as do Wetherspoons. I was doing this because Wetherspoons’ latest results are p[…]

Walking out of the cinema I tried to work out exactly what it was that made me dislike Man Of The Year (O Homem De Ano) so much. After all it was a nicely balanced tragic thriller, almost classical in range regarding an ordinary schmoe who ends up an[…]

CHEAP FOOD I LOVE No.2 ‘ The Kraft Cheese Slice
Individually wrapped! Cheese slices are a very tactile food, which is the secret of their since-childhood appeal to me. The peeling back of the wrap, the separation of slice from plastic, the smoo[…]

In the Ghetto-Elvis
Fat Elvis high on Secanol and fried chicken emotes for the african american children.
The sheer sincere chutzpah of the tune, the belief that he is doing good is so camp that its easy to laugh at it.
Country still does this th[…]

The ape is our era’s creature, we know this now – from Freud who led our animal selves into metaphor and Darwin who led our metaphorical selves into the animal. This history I have written is a re-orienting of the origin ape of Freud (who[…]

Freaky Trigger’s September issue is now online, with a good number of music-related articles.
– The Pinefox on the ATP festival.
– Alex Thomson on the Thrills and Adorno.
– Jerry The Nipper on Paul Morley’s book.
–[…]

Freaky Trigger, September 2003: what is there for Brown Wedge readers? There’s Jerry the Nipper on Paul Morley, Al Ewing interviewing up-and-coming comics artist Dom Reardon, and me writing about – among other things – continuity in[…]

Are you a real fan? The ultimate question to anyone at a football match or who defines themselves as a football fan. It’s a question that’s never answered in the negative and is usually rhetorical. Real fans never get asked it, and if yo[…]

Introducing Proven By Science, by Geeta Dayal
I usually cringe when I see a science story in a newspaper, magazine, or worst of all, TV. ‘CANCER TREATMENT FOUND’, they trumpet. ‘HOW VITAMINS CAN MAKE YOU SMARTER’. Often, the[…]