Posts from 2019
31
Dec 19
Popular Crystal Ball 2019: You can say I’m hatin’ if you want to
As is the annual tradition, a look over the year’s number ones, from best to worst. After a couple of years where this was an exercise in barely managed apathy, there are songs here I actually love. Save a chart, ride a cowboy! Behind the scenes, the machinery required to shape “the chart” is creaking badly, though.
TOMCRAFT – “Loneliness”
Andrea Martin’s “Share Your Love” is an attractively crafted 1998 R&B tune about loving a philanderer. She opens with a sad idea, “Happiness seems to be loneliness, and loneliness killed my world / How could you guess, when you’re only thinking of yourself, and how you look to other girls”. In Martin’s song, she develops the feeling, but Tomcraft, a German DJ, saw the potential in the lines as a pure moment.
30
Dec 19
King William’s College Kwizz 2019. FT Round 2
1 which Aberdonian became a general in the Tsar’s army?
2 what is the traditional site of pilgrimage in the last Sunday in July?
3 whose father practised inoculation until it was made criminal in eighteen-forty?
4 which very dry concoction came from the eponymous warehouse in the Calle Divina Pastora?
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28
Dec 19
BUSTED – “You Said No”
While Busted enjoy a warm second career on the reformation circuit, time hasn’t always been kind to the hairy-palmed pop-punk they kicked off with. The line between cheekiness and creepiness has shifted in the last fifteen years, and a song like “Britney” (“Tracking you down on the internet / Cos I ain’t seen you naked yet”) was likely on the wrong side to begin with.
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King William’s College Kwizz 2019. FT Round 1
REASON: Welcome one and welcome all, to the FreakyTrigger wing of a KWIZZ (quiz) sat for a hundred and blimey years by Isle of Man schoolkids. (“Please return your answers to the Principal’s Office by Monday 13th January.”)
RHYME: Themed sets of 10 questions each — a new one every day (or so). COLLABORATIN’ COMMENT CREW (C3) pile in — we can work it out.
REGZ: 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!
RIP: LiveJournal
Scire ubi aliquid invenire possis quod post omnes est maximus onus sutorum – Plautus
Round 1. During 1919:
1 which Giant was mauled by the Kid?
2 which keyboard virtuoso achieved premier status?
3 whose first edition of what was inspired by Paul Gauguin?
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20
Dec 19
The Freaky Trigger Movie Poll 2019
“Hi I’m Alita – some say Battle Angel – and me and my big eyes would like to welcome you to the 2019 FreakyTrigger Movie Poll. When I was rebooted in Iron City in 2563 the first thing I did was try to work out who the creepy Dr. Dyson Ido – who revived me – reminded me of. It was also a bit odd that he had a name which was half Japanese era half vacuum cleaner, but even though he seemed benevolent, he just seemed naturally villainous. So searching my incomplete historical database when I wasn’t beating the crap out of baddies in half decent but weightless CGI, my cybernetic brain came across a name. Christoph Waltz. Who apparently was a movie star in the 2010’s. Further searching in the hours I did not sleep, I became obsessed with the films of 2019 – and in particular what the readers of FreakyTrigger thought of them. So I sent this message back in time just before my important Rollerball game to find out (its not Rollerball but it is)”
Thanks, Alita, and I bet with your big eyes you can watch more movies at once. Including your own one – how self reflexive. Though don’t hold your breathe for it cracking the top ten. But thanks nevertheless for the welcome to the fifth annual movie poll. And the third TV Poll*. The rules are simple – rank your top twenty in both categories IN ORDER and send your vote to:
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19
Dec 19
The FreakyTrigger Top 30 TV Shows of 2018
Sooo…… Sorry.
Four years ago I started the FT Film poll (to ape Kat’s music poll – but also because they are pointless fun things to do – and might be better than just putting my own top ten up). Two years ago, in the flush of the film poll going well, and the realisation that most FT readers were watching more TV than films, I thought to throw more visual media into the mix. It was the Golden Age of TV so it seemed to make sense.
The thing is, I don’t watch much TV. I go to the movies. So whilst I could cobble together a list of twenty shows for myself, it was a list that I knew would miss plenty of the best of the year because I had made a decision to not watch them due to time (or couldn’t watch them). So after putting together last years list – I was stuck having to write about thirty TV shows where I had watched just ten of them.
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18
Dec 19
ROOM 5 ft OLIVER CHEATHAM – “Make Luv”
The sound of a subgenre on its deathbed. We’ve had some good times with filter-disco, or French touch, or whatever you want to call this woozy sound. At its best the filter effect worked like shades in a solar eclipse, a hazy distancing effect protecting you from druggy emotion too bright and stark to confront head-on.
“Make Luv” is the sound long past its best, though. Everything about the record feels half-arsed, as if adequacy was the aim. (It’s achieved, not that it matters.) The name of the act – a disguise for Italian house producer Junior Jack – the title, the earthbound trundle of the sounds, even the origin of its popularity in an ad for tacky lad’s deodorant Lynx… it could all have been designed to feel as devitalised as possible, a set of words and images entirely free of resonance. Poor Oliver Cheatham, sampled to give the record its hooks and spine, ends up just another part of the listless whole. “I like to party,” he sings, and then, in case you thought he might be staking a claim on a life of devil-may-care hedonism, “everybody does.” Well, quite.
17
Dec 19
GARETH GATES ft THE KUMARS – “Spirit In The Sky”
This is Comic Relief getting back to its roots – a familiar song, disrupted by the comic turn. I never watched the Kumars, and the clips I looked at for research don’t make me feel I missed too much – a take on the fake chat show subgenre, cosy enough to be long-running (i.e., it didn’t make idiots of its guests). This single mirrors the set-up – Gareth is the bemused outsider, Sanjeev the earnest wannabe, the rest of the family scuppering his plans and his “big sitar solo” in their bustling eagerness to get involved. And the cast get stuck in to the concept with professional gusto. Fun is being had, though perhaps not by you.
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10
Dec 19
The 21st Freaky Trigger Annual Between Christmas And New Year Pub Crawl: Back To TCR
Twenty Years Ago (1999) I decided to organise a pub crawl on the quietest pub day of the year, and thus the Freaky Trigger annual between Christmas And New Year Pub Crawl (henceforth #FTABCANYPC) was born. Since then we have crawled annually on the 29th December (except from when it wasn’t) around nineteen different parts of London. But for this special 20th anniversary I thought I would go back to the source, the very first route. I am not doing exactly the same pubs, some have changed their names (one four times), and a few are off the main drag. But I’d live you all to come and join the day of the year when you can celebrate friendship and London without it being tied to religious and/or calendrical bullshit.
The route on the day will be:
3pm The Flying Horse (Oxford St opposite TCR Station)
4pm The Jack Horner
4.45pm The Rising Sun
5.45pm The TCR Lounge Bar (previously The Bar @ TCR, The Castle and The Olde Surgeon)
6: 30pm Fitzrovia Belle
7:15pm Carpenters Arms (Whitfield Street)
8pm The Prince Of Wales Feathers (Warren St)
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