December 2010
Also
IT IS ALMOST 2011. Never mind snackifying and drinkifying, what Pepsi need to be working on is PILLIFYING food.
“We see the emerging opportunity to ‘snackify’ beverages and ‘drinkify’ snacks as...”
– Pepsi’s CEO
Aside from the fact that this is horrible corporate-marketing speak, Pepsi’s CEO may also have been paying too much attention to Web 2.0 company names.
(via jonathan-deamer)
The actual product they’re pushifying is basically fruit puree baby food with more sugar, no?
The 20 Non-2010 Tracks I Played Most In 2010...
Royksopp ft Karin From The Knife - This Must Be It
Alpha Jet DJ - Premier
Britney Spears - 3
T Rex - Mambo Sun
Liz Phair - Fuck And Run
Lady Gaga - Bad Romance
Laura Branigan - Gloria
Pan African Cosmic Tone - Da Fulani
Paul Simon - Graceland
New Order - World In Motion
Gary Numan - I Die:You Die
Bikini Kill - Rebel Girl
Pet Shop Boys - Heart
Princesa - Mas Fuego
Rihanna - Fire...
Cornell On Pertwee →
When those shirts of his were originally fashionable, they were the costume of the gentry. At the time of transmission, they were the uniform of the counterculture. On Jon Pertwee, they’re both.
Exist Yesterday.: The Unread →
I’m in the middle of packing all my books (to move, eventually, but in the meantime just to have somewhere to put them), but if I did this list it would dwarf the list of books I own that I have read. The last couple of years have, uh, not been good on the compulsive-book-buying front.
My compulsive book-buying tended to cluster around payday and a session on Amazon, which I’ve now...
The Unread (Dark Matter Section)
timocraticyouth said: of these i have read seven and own ten more, of which i have started five. also: that’s a pretty small number of unread books.
Well, my house is small and has two small children in it, so their books encroach on mine a lot. I have learned to be ruthless...
The Unread
This is a list of the books on my shelves which I haven’t read. Titles in italics have been started at least once. Not included are:
- Books I have no intention of ever reading (or finishing). These should really just go to the charity shop now.
- Books I have lost, obviously.
- Books stored at my parents or my in-laws’ house. I have read most of these, but by no means all.
I do...
Online Notebook: 'He called the essay “a naughty,... →
Seriously, a return to the things they seek would be regression, and it would get boring really fucking fast. How many times can someone review a record with a snarky one-line quip? Yeah, I know: “Ryan Adams, Gold: pyrite.” HAW HAW HAW, that’s genius, right? But no—in reality, that kind of shit is good for one worthwhile review a year, MAYBE.
If I was an editor - with, like, money to...
The Dictionary Of Received Ideas →
One of my favourite books. If I were ever forced away from the internet I would certainly pack the Dictionary to remind me of it.
Recipe for grumpiness
Thin skin + vanity searches. I’m stuck with the one and I won’t give up the other.
“The American elite is almost beyond redemption… . Moral relativism has set in so...”
– Charles Dickens (via azspot)
Lololololol yeah the ordinary salt of the earth “folks” are saving us with moral absolutes.
(via tristn)
The quote sounds entirely invented to me.
(via tomewing)
Googled it, found it attributed to author Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in The Secret Life of Bill Clinton in...
“The American elite is almost beyond redemption… . Moral relativism has set in so...”
– Charles Dickens (via azspot)
Lololololol yeah the ordinary salt of the earth “folks” are saving us with moral absolutes. (via tristn)
The quote sounds entirely invented to me.
Good Christmas
It all worked! The turkey tasted of something, or the gravy did at least. The trimmings were good, the roasties were fluffy, there was almost nothing left over. Nobody cried, nobody fought, the boys didn’t try to steal each other’s presents, well, not often. People were happy! I was happy! There was even a Doctor Who I didn’t need Christmas Goggles on to like.
I’m...
Glutcore
Some chat on ILX about how many records ppl listen to in a year - as in, enough to have an opinion on by the end of it. This being ILX, the people answering are often critics, and the answers end up at between 100 and 300. It’s interesting to me - this is the first year since 2002 (i.e. since before I started Popular) where a main focus of my writing has been on current music, and the first...
Digging Deeper Into The Aesthetic: Alex... →
alexmacpherson:
My kind of epic attempt to round up/rabbit on and on about R&B in 2010.
Yeah this is excellent - so many good albums released late in the year too!
Can Top Of The Pops Be Resurrected? →
My Christmas Eve Guardian column, doing pretty much what it says on the tin.
I very deliberately avoided any mention of the likely quality of the music featured: I am not sure this has ever been as much of an issue re. TOTP as people think it is - if you look at its heyday the number of shows with more than two good acts on are few.
I will say this for Katy Perry: she reminded me to...
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Protest Christmas →
But more often you see a desire to politicise or subvert the Christmas song tempered by a powerful affection for it.
Hence Rotary Connection’s Christmas Love (1968), which woos the listener with the usual seasonal cliches before slipping in topical references to Vietnam and the violence in Chicago without killing the mood, perhaps because Minnie Riperton’s voice was incapable of nagging or...
Anonymous asked: When did you first start to think of yourself as a person who likes pop, as distinct from other forms of popular-and-potentially-popular contemporary music that some of your demographic peers might have liked?
Anonymous asked: When did you first start to think of yourself as a person who likes pop, as distinct from other forms of popular-and-potentially-popular contemporary music that some of your demographic peers might have liked?
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My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2010-12-19) →
Kanye West (23)
The Four Tops (18)
Kelis (18)
Madonna (17)
Girl Unit (10)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
marathonpacks: Matthew on Sleigh Bells’ Treats: To... →
marathonpacks:
Matthew on Sleigh Bells’ Treats:
To some extent, it’s a meta conceit not unlike the way lo-fi and chillwave artists present their songs with a deliberate patina of age and grit intended evoke the aesthetics of recording and playback devices of the past. The obvious difference is that …
I like Matthew’s take on Sleigh Bells a lot. It sort of reminds me - perhaps...
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The Best Things You Wrote All Year →
A few days ago I asked people to name the best thing they’d written all year. The linked post is simply a compilation of all the answers I got. Happy reading!
Incidentally, if you regularly look at my website Freaky Trigger can I ask you to take part in its Readers Poll? Thanks!
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“Ours is not the first generation to think that what younger people listen to is...”
– Alexis Petridis. (via slightly)
i love him. this is good.
(via ungainlysweaters)
This has long been one of the topics I have in my locker of “can’t think of a column - help!” emergencies, so on the one hand it’s a bit annoying Alexis has got there first. On the other hand, I can only heartily...
Pitchfork Albums Of The Year: Nos 20-1 →
I got to write about my favourite album this year on the Pitchfork countdown, which is always nice. The thrust of my argument is, of course, nicked from Tumblr - I think girlboymusic was the first to come up with it, or possibly barthel.
Parental Dilemmas
The question of what music L and D will like has never been particularly acute. If I don’t like it too, that’s my problem, and if I do, that’s theirs. My wife hardly listens to music, perhaps they’ll take after her.
But L is now getting to the age where he’s just starting to graduate from short done-in-one picture books to longer stories, and I worry a bit about...
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“Ours is not the first generation to think that what younger people listen to is...”
– Alexis Petridis. (via slightly)
i love him. this is good.
(via ungainlysweaters)
This has long been one of the topics I have in my locker of “can’t think of a column - help!” emergencies, so on the one hand it’s a bit annoying Alexis has got there first. On the other hand,...
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DJ Mgo - "Yes (Bongo Disco Mix)" →
This is a soundcloud file so you’ll have to wander elsewhere and hear it. It’s from one of my favourite albums of the year, Ayobaness! a compilation of South African house tracks from the last five years. This is a lot rougher than the Liquideep track I posted a few days ago - an intoxicating mix of bleep riff, female backing vox and male post-Kwaito chant-rapping, it’s pretty...
Fluxtumblr: Two Things I Dislike In Music Writing →
cureforbedbugs:
perpetua:
I’m not calling out anyone in specific here, but I do not like when a critic feels compelled to change their voice/writing style to discuss a genre of music. Most commonly, this applies to when critics write about rap, but you get it with more academic-leaning genres like art music, modern…
I think we should use more goofy nicknames to describe indie artists. “The...
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The 20 Worst Songs of 2010, #6: Salem, "Trap Door" →
perpetua:
Every word of this is hilarious and ruthlessly on-point. This is why I am proud to say that Christopher Weingarten is my friend, and why I am so glad that we’ve got someone this good out there on the front lines calling bullshit on this terrible music.
Lots of good points, and “Trapdoor” is terrible - as are the other ‘screwed’ tracks on King Night...
Best Of Your Year
I asked this last year and was really pleased by the replies, so I’ll ask it again here (and on Twitter).
What’s the best thing you wrote this year?