Posts from December 2018
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Dec 18
Wiki-illiams Quizz 2018. Round 1
RUBRIC: welcome to the FreakyTrigger wing of a quiz sat for a hundred and funfty years by some lucky/isle of man schoolkids etc blah blah bloop. Themed sets of 10 questions each — a new one every day (or so). COLLABORATIN’ COMMENT CREW (C3) pile in — we can work it out
RULEZ: Don’t put googled answers up till after the next question appears — to let others show off their BRANES — and note where they are googled (or borrowed off of rival sites with good answers). OFF WE GO!
(If you are on old LiveJournalista, WELCOME KOMRADE, yes we are trying out a move here in decadent capitalist pop blog. I don’t know if the FT/wordpress comments can support the hot action, or if the stone cold will to quizz is even there. Let’s find out)
ROUND 1 During 1918:
1 Where did whose reign last for 66 days?
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Dec 18
ATOMIC KITTEN – “The Tide Is High (Get The Feeling)”
Sometimes when this project stalls it’s because there’s a song too tricky or terrible to write about. You might think that’s the case here: it’s not. “The Tide Is High (Got The Feeling)” is indeed terrible, but its wretchedness is banal, readily apparent. There’s nothing here to get your head around: it’s a bad cover version, in an era of bad cover versions, performed mechanically by a band whose character was deliberately bleached out of them when success hit. There’s no long term plan, no devilishly clever marketing scheme – in fact the marketing is as transparent as the rest of the record.
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Dec 18
The Freaky Trigger Movie Poll 2018
“Hi I am an absence of a framing device, and welcome to the annual Freaky Trigger Film and TV Polls”
Thanks, absence of a framing device and welcome to the fourth annual film poll and the second TV poll. The rules are simple – rank your top twenty in both categories IN ORDER and send your vote to:
ftfilmpoll AT gmail DOT com
As long as the film or TV show was properly released in UK cinemas or shown on UK TV in some form (VOD / Multi-Platform) in 2018 in the UK it will be counted. I may be a little more forgiving with TV seeing the multiple ways people watch it, but if anyone votes for Breaking Bad I will shut the whole thing down. You don’t have to vote in both polls. You don’t have to list a full twenty – I’ll take whatever you’ve got. If you want to mention a worst in each category I may do a post about that too. The deadline to submit is 3pm on New Years Day because you might be watching movies up to midnight (again all other film polls neglect this point).
Your number 1 will get more points than your 20. And to make the final countdown, it must have at least two people voting for it and remember, nearly all of last years award winners and a lot of 2017 Cannes darlings were released in the UK in 2018, so I think the start of this year is not without contenders.
So remember:
– The order of your top 20 is important! Your #1 will be allocated more points than #20.
– If you can’t think of 20 items then 10 or 14 or 1 is just fine.
And see you for the rundown in January.
*Cos to qualify at lest two people have to nominate it.
16
Dec 18
The 20th Freaky Trigger Annual Between Christmas And New Year Pub Crawl: The Holloway Road Poker
(A poker as in the kind that comes from a set with a shovel, and a brush that is more ornamental than useful when setting a fire)
Twenty years of the Freaky Trigger Annual Between Christmas And New Year Pub Crawl (or the #FTABCANYPC) and this year we are discovering what all the food and drink supplements are calling “that bit of Holloway Road that has a good Malaysian restaurant on it”. Starting at 3pm on the 29th December, we will take in some interesting architecture, some refurbs, some new purpose builds, a Spoons and a pub which purports to have a crazy golf course in it. I KNOW, right?
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Dec 18
Omargeddon #5: Cryptomnesia
Most Omar Rodriguez-Lopez albums are released under his name, but there a few variations: El Trío de Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, the Omar Rodriguez-Lopez Quartet, the Omar Rodriguez-Lopez Quintet, and when touring, the Omar Rodriguez-Lopez Group, (though Woman Gives Birth to Tomato! was also released under this name). And then there’s El Grupo Nuevo de Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, the least literal and most tongue-in-cheek of them all.
Omar’s “new group” consisted of himself, Juan Alderete, Zach Hill, Jonathan Hischke, and Cedric Bixler-Zavala. He may just as well have called it “I Can’t Believe It’s Not The Mars Volta!” and in many ways, it’s the Volta album everyone was expecting but didn’t get with “acoustic pop album” Octahedron, released the same year. Cedric admitted it himself, noting “if anyone’s bummed that Octahedron is too simple or too pop, they can buy [this] album and it’ll take them right back to that [heavier] kind of sound. It’s one of my favourite things I’ve ever worked on. It’s pretty much a Mars Volta record, just without Thomas [Pridgen], Ikey [Owens], and Marcel [Rodriguez-Lopez].”
When I listen to Cryptomnesia, which is fairly often, I feel like I’m snuggled in a beloved, decade-old Fair Isle knit jumper covered with intricate, brightly coloured patterns. Unfortunately, it’s also very itchy in places, to the point where I have to rip it off and stash it away for a while. And then I remember how pretty and warm it is, so I eventually come back to it.
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Dec 18
when the gang chooses you: or how the
puffin club turned me into a punk rocker
[This post originally went up at my PATREON: subscribers get to read posts and hear podcasts early — and help offset costs and time and help me do more of this kind of thing. Please share widely and encourage participation in the comments!]
This is a lightly edited extract from a piece I wrote for Frank Kogan’s fanzine WHY MUSIC SUCKS (#11, pub.June 1997). The topic was “My First Record”; some of the tone is me not quite sure at that time who I am as a writer any more, especially in this context. All the square-bracket interpolations and footnoted annotations are new.
[…] The first LP I bought was almost certainly Slapp Happy’s Slapp Happy [in 1976]. It was on bargain offer in a local shop, and I remember the grins on the faces of the shop girls when I took it off their hands. But it was very nearly – which would have been hilarious – Metal Machine Music, which was in the same bargain bin. For some reason I decided against MMM. I think that I decided it was too popular: or – since this makes no sense – that someone I knew would have bought it, so I didn’t need to.
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Dec 18
The Freaky Trigger Readers’ Poll 2018
“Greetings, I am the renowned, cross-eyed clairvoyant, Mystic Meg. I’m here, to predict, in a deliberately awkward intonation, that the numbers 3826546, and i, and the colour “bergerac”, will be impoooortant. People who stock up on olives, and loo paper, and prosecco, will be lucky in the post-Brexit bartering economyyyyyy. If you doubt, the accuracy, of my prognosis, then you can take it up with the Broadcasting Standards Authorityyyyyy.”
Thanks Mystic Meg. The Freaky Trigger 2018 poll is now open!
Rules are copied and pasted from last year:
– Choose up to 20 of your favourite tracks of 2018. I am extremely unlikely to check release dates, but if one of your choices appeared in last year’s poll, I’ll get in touch and ask you to choose another track.
– If you don’t have 20 tracks then 10 or 3 or even 1 is fine.
– If you like, put them in order (#1 will get more points than #20), otherwise I’ll assign them a random order.
– Email them to poptimistspoll2010@gmail.com by 23.59pm GMT on 31st December.
– If you are reading this, you are eligible to vote!
Bonus orgafun: tell us one (1) album you enjoyed in 2018. These won’t be ranked, I’ll just post the list of everyone’s choices at the end.
That’s your lot! Feel free to plug your own picks in the comments.
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