Posts from November 2012
27
Nov 12
Bedtime Story Watch I
At the weekend I finished reading The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe to my kids – audience L (almost 6) and D (3 1/2) liked it, or maybe they like the ritual of bedtime stories and found it tolerable content to fill said ritual, I dunno. My Dad thoughts follow.
This was never my favourite Narnia book as a kid – some of which was budding contrarianism and some of which was that it’s all over the place in terms of pace, plot, mood, you name it. Lewis has three stories here: the one he wants to tell, the one he insists on telling, and the one he fakes the reader out into thinking he’s telling.
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26
Nov 12
Poptimism presents… Club Action POPULAR SPECIAL
It’s been 60 years since Al Martino was the UK’s first #1 record*!
To celebrate this sensational sexagenary, DJ Chlorine and The Barnet Ape will be playing only #1s all night** – all the boshingest chart-toppers from Aqua to Zager & Evans.
Assisting them in this noble endeavour will be our very own Popular maestro Tom Ewing and Popular superfan Bob Stanley.
WHERE: Downstairs @ Ryan’s Bar, 181 Stoke Newington Church St
WHEN: Friday 30th November 2012, 8pm-1am
FREE ENTRY also we know where the air conditioning button is now
So come along, to (probably) the only club night where you will hear both Coolio AND Doris Day!
*YES YES WE KNOW
**NO EXCEPTIONS***
***EXCEPT THAT ONE
15
Nov 12
Last Stand Of The Trenchcoat Brigade
I remember Hellblazer being announced, way back whenever it was, and feeling underwhelmed and disappointed: a silly name, and not even written by Alan Moore. And the truth is I never warmed to the comic – now axed by DC after a 300-long run. Sometimes because I was too callow for it, sometimes because I felt I could see through it, and occasionally just because it bored me.
But also always with the sense that John Constantine simply shouldn’t have his own comic in the first place. I was firmly in the camp who had loved the character and wanted to see him slip quietly away from DC Comics as unpretentiously and oddly as he’d arrived. False hope: that kind of thing didn’t happen then and certainly doesn’t now – if you have a breakout hit, you milk it.
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14
Nov 12
DOOP – “Doop”
One of the divisive things about disco was the apparent will to discofy anything and everything: no style, era, film theme or rock classic was safe. To haters it was proof of disco’s stultifying lack of creativity – why make something new when you could slap strings and a beat under the old? But there’s something a little utopian about it too – a sense that disco was the philosopher’s stone of pop, the perfect unifying sound that could turn anything into dancefloor gold.
Something of that survived in commercial dance music. While club music continued mutating and innovating at bewildering pace, its leaps forward took it into the charts less often. The gap was often filled by novelties – raved-up TV themes, videogame music, cover versions, and finally stand-ins for whole genres with a 4/4 thump grafted on. Hence “Doop”, some Europeans building their money-making vehicle from a xerox of a memory of a decade that had happened somewhere else, souping its engines up and letting it loose.
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