12 March 2010
#591, 6th June 1987, video
“I wanna dance with somebody who loves me”: the lyrics on this record suggest vulnerability, but who are they kidding? It’s pure titanium, stadium-ready dance music backing a singer on juggernaut form. I’ve talked a lot in the 80s entries about how bigness for its own sake often misfires as a strategy but if you can do enormity well then you’re laughing. And thanks to Whitney this track pulls it off – the producers can conjure up as much space and scale and decoration as they like and throw it at her in the knowledge her voice can rise above it. more »
Tom in Blog 7 / Popular • 29 Comments
ok i ett this yesterday: had been swimmin w/dr vick near victoria park, and she was keen to check out the weird village-y bit of victoria park road — it comes across like dulwich village except without a not-as-good-as-it-thinks-it-is minor public school — ftb having tea and cake, and we found a bakery/caff called “loafing” (hoho DYS), and yes, it was the best SR i ever had = a fancy cuisine echo of the foodstuff recollected here!
pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør in FT • No Comments
More action now from the group of draws, Group B. Greece ranked as outsiders ahead of the tournament, while Nigeria were hotly tipped in some quarters to go somewhere near All The Way. But the table doesn’t lie and they go into this game all square. Defeat may leave either team contemplating an early exit and no-one wants to go home too soon to their national equivalent of Del Amitri.
Voting for this match ends at midnight on 15 March more »
Tim in FT • 9 Comments
Special DPRK adjutant liaison Mark Sinker again joins Peter Baran and Roger Bozack in PWC2010’s luxurious control suite, this time for some surprising results from the Group H matches between Switzerland and Spain and Chile and Honduras. Juniper Moon, Touch El Arab, Banda Blanca and Kudai all take the pitch. The closing song is “Ella Quiere Ron” by Omar La Chercha.
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Produced by Elisha Sessions.
Tracer Hand in Pop World Cup Podcast • No Comments
People in the Popular comments boxes are talking about “the canon”. I’m always quite curious as to which bits of the canon have ‘taken’ with a broadly pop-positive audience such as we have here. So here’s a poll, very easy to fill in, just say which of the Top 50 albums OF ALL TIME EVER you love. You can interpret how strong an attachment you want “love” to be, of course.
The list of albums is from Acclaimed Music, a kind of ‘metacanon’ which lists the top 3000 albums.
To make it more interesting, answer these questions in the comments box:
1. What’s the WORST record on this list?
2. Which of the records you ticked did you love first?
3. Which of them did you start to love most recently?
Poll below the cut. more »
Tom in FT • 109 Comments
Mars Planets: the atomisation of the Mars Bar. An entropic dis-integration, the tendency of all things to become more chaotic, in confectionery form. I’m trying to resist the impulse to tie this stuff up to no-such-thing-as-Society atomisation because that’s not how we do things, right? And Mars Planets are better to share than a proper big Mars Bar, after all, for reasons of ease and hygiene. Nevertheless, my friends, here’s our chance to take a brave and random stand against entropy, to roll back the ticking clock of chocolate-coated chaos. more »
Tim • Proven By Science/ Pumpkin Publog •
4 Comments
One of the happy upshots of the Bosman Ruling which we have been living with for almost ten years, is the effect it has on players prices near the end of their contract. Take Clinton Morrison (Birmingham wish someone would) the Republic of Ireland striker. Bought for a club record of £4.25 million three years ago, he is certainly not at the end of his playing career. But his contract is up next year, and Birmingham have just realised that if they don’t sell him now, he will go on a free transfer.
Therefore the pack of clubs hovering are in an interesting position. Southampton, Norwich and better the devil you know Crystal Palace have all brandished chequebooks. But are also taking their time? What does this remind us of? Why, its record collectors returning week after week to the Music & Video Exchange in Notting Hill, waiting for a record the really want to go down in price for them to buy it. more »
Pete Baran • TMFD •
3 Comments
Well, that’s that: the machine has been given a good beating and we can look forward to “Bulls On Parade” on the festive Argos ad next year. I will admit I didn’t think the RATM crew could do it: I was wrong. But as the dust settles on this most fractious and increasingly entertaining Christmas No.1 race, who has actually benefited? Here’s my round-up of winners and losers.
Joe McElderry: He’ll be Number 1 next week most likely, but while the ‘battle’ was never about him this puts him firmly in the “Leon Jackson” box, not the “Will Young” one. On the other hand, the constant refrain from the judges during the series was that he had a musical theatre kind of a voice, and this might nudge him in that direction and away from the fickle world of pop. Before dabbing your eyes over Joe’s lost dreams, it’s worth noting that if he’d sold as many as Alexandra did with “Hallelujah” last year, he’d have been #1, Rage or no Rage.
Rage Against The Machine: It’s good profile-raising stuff for them and their other material will do well from it, though unless MP3s come with reading lists in their IP3 tags the ‘educational’ element of RATM may be a little missing. The downsizing of their song’s target from “institutional racism” to “Simon Cowell” is probably a fairer reflection of their listeners’ concerns anyway but it’s left them looking a little… cuddlier… than once they did (and their participation in a classic British radio brouhaha has only helped). They themselves have joined in with gusto, of course: “RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE THANKS ‘EVERY FAN AND FREEDOM FIGHTER’ FOR THE ‘ANARCHY CHRISTMAS MIRACLE OF 2009′” blared their press release. more »
Tom • FT •
57 Comments
WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING IS NOT A PIE?
i. shepherd’s/cottage pie
ii. cheese flan/pizza
iii. scotch egg
iv. boiled egg
actually i am not going to bother you w.all the ins and outs of the GREBT PIE DEBATE, as i wz not in on its inception, and besides the militia are now formed and a stiff crackdown ordered on heretics and dissidents. Hunting last night for back-up for solid new outlier positions – i naturally supported iv. but did not come up with any of these – i discovered that the linguistic origins of the word “pie” are entirely uncertain: best guess, apparently, being that more »
pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør • Pumpkin Publog •
6 Comments
Or: Games I Have Known. For the sake of my patience and yours, I have mostly restricted this to games I either owned or played – ones where I read a friends’ rulebooks and only dimly remember have been ignored, with a couple of notable exceptions. If you want to know more about any of these, you have but to ask. Games listed in order of my encountering them:
Dungeons And Dragons: The original in its simpler and frankly more elegant form. If you’ve ever played a computer RPG, you’ve played this, pretty much.
Advanced Dungeons And Dragons: Sprawling Gormenghast-like monster with 20 rulebooks that somehow became the most popular RPG in the universe. The default setting for most “I Was A Goblin” posts. more »
Tom • FT •
18 Comments
11 March 2010
The first round of games in Group B finished all square – draws all round. It’s a position to conjure with, as fancied outfits try to recover from the disappointments of points dropped, while outsiders find their confidence boosted by points unexpectedly gained. Anything could happen from here, but failure at this stage could be fatal for any of the four teams.
Voting for this match ends at midnight on 15 March more »
Tim in FT • 16 Comments
First-round Group G results here as Roger Bozack returns to the booth with Peter Baran and special deputy ambassador Mark Sinker to discuss all the high and lowlights. Despite a temporary hostage situation order is restored at halftime of DPRK vs Brasil and we also take in an eerie match between Portugal and Ivory Coast. It’s Wangjaesan Light Music Band, Los Hermanos, Bab Lee and Mikado Lab, with Kocani Orkestar to take us out.
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Produced by Elisha Sessions.
Tracer Hand in Pop World Cup Podcast • 1 Comment
10 March 2010
Tymsboro
A raw-milk goats cheese from Somerset, bought from Neals Yard Dairy
This is a little pyramid of goaty goodness, covered in a fuzzy white mould and with a layer of dark grey-green ash peeking out from underneath it. Inside the cheese is soft, and white, turning liquid underneath the rind. This is fresh new-season SPRING goat cheese and this means BABY GOATS as well as delicious fresh goats cheese.
It’s a smooth cheese, very soft and fluffy and mousse-like. The rind has a bit of chewy, solid texture to it. It reminds me of banana skin (in texture, not taste!), and it contrasts with the softness of the curd inside. The curdy paste tastes fresh and salty. It’s got a pale nuttiness – macadamia and almond – and a sweet creamy flavour. There are lots of bright fresh fruity tastes; green apples, lemon, a hint of gooseberry. The rind’s a little more bitter and astringent, tasting slightly of straw and slightly of splinters. more »
marna in Pumpkin Publog • No Comments
9 March 2010
Kat graciously offered to come and lend her tastebuds to science. She is not a fan of blue cheese, and I wanted to test some tasty, friendly and approachable blues on some blue-hater. We got some sqidgy creamy dolcelatte and some spicy cashel blue, as well as an emergency backup goat cheese, and armed with knives and bread, we sat down to do some serious tasting.
Gorgonzola dolce
A blue cow’s cheese, made in Italy, and bought from The Tasting Room
We have a slice of this milky, melty, sparsely blue-smattered cheese. It’s pale and creamy, with a slightly darker rind. It’s got an almost jelly-like soft texture, smooth and silky, and very melt-in-the-mouth-ish.
This is very exciting! Kat smears a wedge of this soft cheese onto her piece of baguette, and chomps down on it. It ‘tastes of blue cheese’, unsurprisingly. It’s tangier than she anticipated, and soggy. She gamely eats the rest of the piece – it can’t be terrible – but declines to try another piece.
The taste – and this is not meant as a complaint, at all – reminds me a little of the toilets at Glastonbury. I’m not sure that I want to examine this thought any further. As well as a whiff of long-drop, this is a very sweet and milky blue cheese. The blue taste is quite mild, and the caramelly fudgey milk taste is like milkshake. This cheese is smooth, sweet and gentle. It’s possibly a little too unassuming but gorgeously gloopy.
Cashel Blue
This was written about in more detail here.
Next up is this soft and spicy blue; it’s been a favourite of mine for years. Kat tries it and declares that it ‘doesn’t taste of blue cheese’ (I dispute this assertion) and proceeds to munch her way through this with relish. SUCCESS!
Next up, in the Kat Cheese Challenge, will be some Roquefort.
marna in Pumpkin Publog • 1 Comment
Well this is going to be a titanic struggle, if either France or Mexico lose this one they’re on the first flight to face the brickbats (and possibly bricks) of the fans back home. Tom and Alex will both be hoping it’s not their head the press are calling for…
Voting for this match ends at midnight on 15 March.
more »
CarsmileSteve in FT • 14 Comments
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