Posts from August 2007
30
Aug 07
Poptimism – Lesson Forty Five RPM
Paper Planes – M.I.A.
Can I Get Get Get – Junior Senior
Doing It Right – Go! Team
Me, Myself And (I) – Darren Hayes
Her – Kissy Sell Out
You’re Out – Dead Disco
One More Chance – Candie Payne
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29
Aug 07
Blog ’92: JUMP UP JUMP UP AND GET DOWN
2. House of Pain – Jump Around
Is this the most ubiquitous student disco song ever recorded?
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The Freaky Trigger Top 100 Tracks Of All Time: No. 54 WILL YOUNG – “Leave Right Now”
BALLSY! That’s no the first word that springs to mind when I think of Will Young. And perhaps BALLSY is the wrong word to append to “Leave Right Now”, a sappy song of monumental wetness. But let me tell you why I have recently realised that “Leave Right Now” is one of the BALLSIEST songs of the noughties. And before you say it, none of the reasons is that the songs is itself BALLS. No, I think “Leave Right Now” is terrific. Its just that’s not the reason why its BALLSY.
Will Young came to pop stardom late, and via a route usually relegated to lousy thrashalong indie bands. NO, I don’t mean Pop Idol, you wouldn’t have got the singer of Midway Still getting past four seconds with Simon Cowell. I mean he was finishing a Philosophy degree at university. This should not, and does not, qualify you in anyway to be a teenage heart-throb singer. Being gay is not usually a detriment, but you’re not really supposed to tell anyone until a small proportion of the countries teenage girls have embarrassed themselves over you.
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The Prisoner Officer’s Dilemma
The crisis in the UK’s prison service has come to a head today, with the staff of UK prisons walking out. In some cases this has left 2,000 inmates being guarded by governors alone, that’s about 5 people to look after 2,000. A watching brief on that. And I have more than some sympathy for the officers who are at the front line in a society which seems to want to pander to the Daily Mail’s idea of justice more and more custodial sentences. Equally there is little impressive about a government welching on a pay deal which was in the first place below inflation, and then hoping to hide behind a contract with a Union drawn up under the Tory’s saying it is illegal for prison officers to strike. Much like the law which says it is illegal for police officers to strike, it has at the heart of it a big, fat paradox.
If it is illegal for a prison officer to strike then one assumes said prison officer will be arrested (or perhaps his Union leaders). OK, this is going back to the dark ages of labour relations, but it is not unheard of someone wanting to risk imprisonment for belief in their cause. But hold on. Imprisonment? Where? In prison. Imagine how well enforced (and indeed how strict) any serving prison officer would be on another prison officer incarcerated for fighting for the rights and pay of serving prison officers. Same with police officers. Who arrests the police officer who strikes on behalf of his fellow officers.
If you’re expecting society to continue on the goodwill of union scabs, and indeed an entire prison run by scabs, then I fear the crumblin’ fabric is already riddled with cracks.
28
Aug 07
The Third Annual Liz Daplyn Food Science Day: An Introduction
This year food science day moved north of the river. Not that Tim, our generous host of previous years (one and two) was not happy to let us re-use his excellent venue, but we thought that it might be best for his upstanding in his community that the smell of burning cheese, the sight of falling cheese and the remnants of thrown fruit and vegetables should be rests from Peckham. Instead our generous and genial host was Mark S, and his piano. No food science was done with the piano in this period.
Before getting into the grittiness of the real actual science, it is good to remind readers why we do this every year. Yes, there is something of the restless polymath in the FreakyTrigger writers which want to push the limits of science (often to areas where the science no longer has its usual meaning). But we also do it as a tribute to Liz, who we all still miss terribly. Some people may not say the marinading tinned ham in Cava for the want of a simple pun is a strange kind of memorial, or leaves a bad taste in the mouth. And they would be right about the second statement there. But we hope that in our continued relentless pursuit of culinary science we honour her own restless imagination and skills in the kitchen.
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24
Aug 07
OMNOMNOMNOM.com. Crudely drawn faces on inanimate objects turning them into gobbling monsters. TERRIFIC!
23
Aug 07
The FreakyTrigger TOP 25 BRANDS: 18: K-TEL
There are a lot of great record labels out there. look, Apple as a brand has already appeared in this list. And for a bunch of music fans knocking together a list of memorable and great brands, it is inevitable that a few record labels would show up. That said I wonder if anyone sitting around that fateful table own many K-Tel records. It is a great brand, a memorable one certainly, but not really for any of the right reasons.
The K is for its founder, Phillip Kives. The Tel was for Television. Hence me showing you the logo where you often saw it.
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22
Aug 07
Sex Drums Rock n Rave
Awful artwork, terrible title. A compilation of the rocked-up dance scene (do not call it by its name). A high hit rate for a compo, and some of the tracks are storming. Amazon
GARY GLITTER – “I’m The Leader Of The Gang (I Am)”
A question I’m honestly unsure of the answer to: if Michael Jackson had been found guilty of child molestation, what would have happened to his songs? Would “Billie Jean” or “Beat It” have emptied party dancefloors? Would “Wanna Be Startin’ Something” or “Human Nature” suddenly have become harder to like? And if Pete Townshend’s ‘research purposes’ hadn’t kept him out of legal trouble, would The Who’s old tracks have fallen from grace?
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Take A K Away: MIKA vs MIA (A Tanya Competition)
I got mail. Well a comment from someone calling him/herself TamilTyger after my comments about Mika’s probable blindness*:
Dear Tanya, this is a bit of a cheap shot, even for you. Not to mention the fact that whilst that is a terrible cover, I cannot believe you did not notice the covers to MIA’s albums whilst in the MI section of Virgin Megastore. Surely they are much, much worse.
And she always wears dark sunglasses like she is blind.
Whilst I stick by my assessment of the MIKA album cover, TamilTyger does have a point. Of course I did not notice it in the MI section of the Virgin Megastore, because to enter such a place would be putting myself, and everyone at mortal danger of me going on a killing spree. And as we know, presence of dark glasses does not mean that you are actually blind (cf the actually just colour blind Stevie Wonder).
Nevertheless, TamilTyger does have a point. As such I present you with a dangerous competition. I suggest you don dark glasses (or borrow MIA’s or indeed Stevie Wonder’s) before clicking through.
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