Alan Trewartha

This week: free book cover mount worth 79p*!!!

I think we were equal parts pleased and relieved to finish the Top 100 Songs of All Time. That is to say massively so on both counts considering FT’s grand history of unfinished lists. So when Tom turned in his arresting finalé for the #1 at the end of 2014, ten years after the list was “composed”, I found myself further moved to compile the posts into book form. Ebook form of course, we’re not tree-killing monsters, granddad.

You know, because free to read on the mobile internet isn’t enough. Right? Free to read on an ebook reader is what all the cool… LOOK I don’t know exactly why we did this. It’s a sort of experimental ground-breaking I suppose.

So follow the above link to the list’s index of posts and you’ll see we’ve added two downloads at the top of that page. Using one or the other of those you should be able to read the full text of the list with any of the ebook readers out there. We hope you like it.

Keep an eye out for our next mega-listicle: Freaky Trigger’s Top 23 Dogs of All Time!

* 22 galactic groats Mercury, not inclusive of VAT, residents of the EU please calculate your own local VAT and overpay your income tax appropriately, offer not available beyond inner solar system, page count may go up as well as down, may contain fonts, ebook printed on Forest Stewardship Council approved XHTML files

Flash Pop Poll from… Twitter

Today I'm going to decide, once and for all, which one is my favourite. Debbie Gibson or Tiffany. pic.twitter.com/1sD5vl8lXO

— Susan Calman (@SusanCalman) February 18, 2014

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Charli XCXorcism

I need to stop listening to this damn album, so I’m writing in this ever expanding box on the internet, the geography of the mind map I find myself  in. Just in the hope that I can move on – just a little – to the next grid reference. I feel sorry for poor Little Boots and even Rudimental who only got a couple of weeks before relegation to listening time’s opportunity cost.

Every now and then an album digs its many hooks into me and just gloms on and drags me through a cycle of compulsive listening, through a trough of listening and hating-that-I’m-listening-to-it to to the exclusion of all else, and through to the other side to a place where I can consider leaving it, maybe a week, before coming back later with an ‘oh, yes this IS still awesome’. During that, listening out of order is hard (such an album rockist), and the point where I’m skipping around is the point where I know I’m on the voyage home to sanity.

This mania happened to me most recently with the Nero album (yeah, what of it?) but not as intensely (I found quite a few tracks on it patchy in the end), and I have to go back to when I lost all perspective over Late of the Pier (2008, 9?).

Which I think was also the last time I went to a gig (thinks again that doesn’t sounds right, wait there was that Scooter gig). And I did get to the point with Charli of hovering over a BUY button for an Islington Academy gig a few weeks back now. I had to stop myself, because then it started to feel creepy.

Fringe Science

[UPDATE with attributions and conclusion under ‘the fold’ as they say]

Apparently, (apparently), some people are going around saying comedy is subjective – an “art” if you will. Nonsense. Just because the rigours of science haven’t been applied to something, doesn’t mean it can be so wantonly abandoned to the chaos of the immeasurable.

So for the following poll I do NOT want to see any come back guff – “interpretation” this, “define your terms” that. ALL THE WORDS IN THE FOLLOWING POLL QUESTION ARE SELF EVIDENTLY CLEAR, UNAMBIGUOUS AND UNDERSTOOD BY ALL.

OK. Happy? YES YOU ARE HAPPY. ANSWER

Freaky Trigger And The Lollards Of Pop (Series 4, week 6)

Hazel Robinson hosts a discussion of children’s literature and morality tales from Struwwelpeter to Lemony Snicket. Mark Sinker lifts the lid on Victorian nonsense, Julia Heller suggests suitable reading for the “very advanced”, and Tom Ewing goes on a Beast Quest. Will our presenters make it through with thumbs intact? Tune in and find out.

FREE A3 Pop World Cup WALLCHART for ALL OUR READERS

A PDF file worth 500K!!!!! (bytes) when clicked…

Update: Chart with groups info filled in

The Old Suffolk Punch, Hammersmith

The OSP on Fulham Palace Road has had a chequered past. In its glory days it was a boxer-owned pub “The Golden Gloves” but I first knew it as The Old Suffolk Punch and there was a great, if scuffed, geezer feel to the place — my favourite work boozer. Then it went through a refurb and a phase as the (initials only) OSP just when this review in 2003 [fancyapint.com] was written. The OSP at that time was an awful, soul-destroying place. There were light-box murals of grinning early 20-somethings having a GREAT TIME, looking like low-rent Tony Stone stock photos. It was enough to make the gods of the public house weep into their ports and lemons. A wretched attempt to create a terrible West End bar in the terrible West of Hammersmith.

Thankfully that passed — if a little too slowly — and it became The Old Suffolk Punch once again. A reliable if unremarkable Greene King pub. Well I do have one remark, though I imagine it’s about Greene King food menus chain-wide: The Roast Beef and Yorkshire Pudding wrap with gravy (and chips). Behold:

From the menu my colleagues and I were imagining a bread wrap around slices of beef and some tiny Yorkshire puds, but it was probably the IPA getting in the way of the obvious interpretation. A flat Yorkshire pud-style batter pancake was the wrap. Brilliant. You pick it up by the batter wrap with the beef and horseradish sauce trapped inside and dip it in the bowl of gravy. NOM, NOM, and three times NOM.

Well it was new to me. This update on a classic, I can get behind. And in to my tum.

That plan of action in full

In the late 90s, in Action and Drama, Bis cast themselves as meta-pop activists:

Pop music’s not gonna die / It just has no direction / We need a plan of action

But what was their plan of action? The accompanying track Eurodisco (a worry about pop stagnating into inward-looking genres) had its best mix by Stuart Price — an Erasure-ish version that omits Manda’s vocals. Where has Manda gone? Price went on to be the main producer of Madonna’s 2005 Confessions album and the non-more Eurodisco Abba-sampling “Hung Up”.

FT Advent Calendar Of Free Online Games: 24th December

What’s this through the extra-large double-door of the 24th?

You’ve played the freeform Line Rider, right? (And if not, this truly is the best double-dose flash game day of the advent for you.) It’s been given a tiny festive makeover on the original site, but nothing like SNOW LINE. Help Santa collect all the presents. Easy. And no drugs content at all.

HAPPY HOLIDAY AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR

FT Advent Calendar Of Free Online Games: 22nd December

What a lovely day for an adventure with BEARS. WarBears that is. A lot of flash games are there for a 1 minute distracting thrill while a progress bar makes its slow way to the end. But If you fancy actively dodging more work, and why not, everyone else is on Facebook and eating Quality Street, here are some 20 minutes point-and-click adventures with a cute team of techno-ninja bears. Features thrills and excitement, but probably mostly frustration at the unpredicatable, but cute, consequences of your actions.

WarBear Missions Start with Mission 1, but it’s all good. Use the ‘quick start’ button to skip the intro.