May 2012
Can Superheroes Stop Torturing People Plz? →
A gross trend in comics, treated w/the anger and contempt it deserves.
The Limits Of Data →
The zeitgeist at times bears an uncannily resemblance to the optimism of a loose-knit group of scientists, social scientists, and philosophers at the start of the 20th century, who thought they could eschew value-laden narratives for an objective, fact-driven model of the world. “Facts are sacred” says the Guardian Datablog and “for a fact-based worldview” says Gapminder....
“Despite the educational potential of computers, the reality is that their use...”
– WELL I NEVER
The ABBA Myth?
oneweekoneband:
Did people actually dislike ABBA in the 70s? The Brian Eno quote I posted yesterday paints a familiar picture - nobody could say they liked them, then gradually people could. But how were they really received in the music press at the time?
Read More
I am still writing about ABBA - I did some actual RESEARCH (i.e. looked at rocksbackpages) for this post. CAUTION contains old...
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Journalism!
I am working on a PROPER ACTUAL FEATURE with INTERVIEWS and everything, it’s a sign of how ass-backwards my ‘writing career’ has been that I’ve never actually done this before.
“opinions are no longer a useful or appropriate organising principle, that...”
– James Bridle tho by the logic of the quote why credit it?
Instagram Is OK, But Photoshop Is Evil? →
THEY BOTH DISTORT IMAGES OMG DO YOU SEE
aka what happens when a weak zing gets parlayed into a whole column.
Anonymous asked: A lurker asks, will Freaky Trigger be hosting a Europop 2012 Tournament this year?
Magic Hour
agrammar:
Lately, the grandest, goopiest, most deliciously unembarrassable impulses of seventies and eighties pop have been in resurgence. Disco glitter, big-haired bluster, Broadway theatrics—these things have become pop symbols of bravery and brashness, open-hearted vitality and emotional fearlessness. (How could they not, coming after years of kids’ using the word gay as an all-purpose...
If I’d known I was going to be Week 69 in One Week One Band I’d have picked Gainsbourg!
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Frida's 10 Best Faces In The "Head Over Heels"... →
Nothing I write about ABBA this week will be as good as this.
One Week // One Band: Coming up: ABBA →
oneweekoneband:
Thanks, Chelsea!
Next week, we’ll take on one of the best and biggest pop acts of all time—Swedish pop superstars ABBA, and for this I’m extremely delighted to be welcoming back Tom Ewing!
Tom has previously written for us on The KLF, is a contributor to Pitchfork and The Guardian, among…
Stockholm calling! This is what I’ll be up to next week, and thanks very...
Euromortem
I am quite glad Pete never got round to doing his “Why Englebert is a good idea” piece for Freaky Trigger.
Anyway, entering a pop record which sounds like the pop records people in Europe are actually buying (i.e. “Starships” in this case) turns out to be a good idea - astonishing, I know.
Big swing back to Western Europe and “pop credibility” since the juries...
Eurovision
It has been a woeful Eurovision, except for Ukraine’s song which was BANGING.
Worst Comic Book Ever! →
If I know my online comics fans, I suspect Tim Marchman will come to wearily regret putting his Twitter name at the bottom of this bracing attack on modern “mainstream” (i.e. superhero) mags. It’s worth reading, though. The main fault with it is that it’s a mash-up of three different articles, viz:
- An article about how Marvel and DC Comics don’t sell as much now as...
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A bad habit that comes with age
The defensive need to prove that what was edgy when we were 20 is still edgy now.
“The good news: Twitter lets you block a person’s retweets while still following...”
– http://www.splatf.com/2012/05/retweeting/
This is the most useful thing I have learned all day.
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“More than 115 racist incidents were recorded in Britain’s schools every day...”
– “Better standards” = “more racism” apparently. Article
katherine st asaph: "They're all just voices on... →
parklakespeakers:
I tried to submit this post from the Guardian’s New Band of the Day column to gazingmales a while back but I guess it isn’t quite the right kind of gross to fit there, that quote up there aside. So I’ll just have to post myself about how much it pissed me off. Not least…
“Personally, the mainstream pop culture of the seventies never seemed entirely...”
– Nitsuh Abebe, amidst his Donna Summer/Robin Gibb obituary. (via marathonpacks)
One of Dominic Sandbrook’s ideas which I do think is quite good is about how a lot of the stuff that we popularly associate with the 60s - particularly the sexual revolution - actually had its mainstream impact in...
Shenanigans! →
At the end of last week, the time came to decide on the IPO price for Facebook’s stock.
This process was handled by Facebook’s lead underwriter, Morgan Stanley, and Facebook executives.
According to one source (unconfirmed), based on the book of orders submitted by both institutional and retail investors, Morgan Stanley found that there were two distinct price levels at which...
Call Me Maybe: Is this the best pop song ever? →
barthel:
Sean Michaels on how “Call Me Maybe” got made.
Nothing sums up my disengagement w/music more than the fact I’ve still not heard this - some ‘poptimist’ I turned out to be! It’ll happen when it happens.
(This is a good article though!)
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Jonathan Jones on Damien Hirst →
Now THIS is a bad review.
Blue Lines Revisited: G+ Thought →
midwestballadreview:
tomewing:
Is the reason Google+ never took off (yes yes this can and will be argued by G+ nerds) that the big “Circles” selling point - split yr social media life into discrete private groups - had been organically pre-empted by the thin but real walls between identity across niche platforms?
i.e. Google’s…
Google also simultaneously (right?) killed off the...
G+ Thought
Is the reason Google+ never took off (yes yes this can and will be argued by G+ nerds) that the big “Circles” selling point - split yr social media life into discrete private groups - had been organically pre-empted by the thin but real walls between identity across niche platforms?
i.e. Google’s idea was “Everyone is on FB but it’s really hard to separate different...
Dare!
postpunk:
tomewing:
I’ve been listening to the Human League’s Dare recently - it just got a nice reissue for its 30th anniversary (a year late!) w/other League Imperial Phase tracks on.
The League is such a great pop story, and Dare is a great pop LP, partly because it’s the collision of two very potent ideas of pop which have resonated ever since but rarely sparked off one another so well.
...
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Dare!
I’ve been listening to the Human League’s Dare recently - it just got a nice reissue for its 30th anniversary (a year late!) w/other League Imperial Phase tracks on.
The League is such a great pop story, and Dare is a great pop LP, partly because it’s the collision of two very potent ideas of pop which have resonated ever since but rarely sparked off one another so well.
The...
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Men's Writes Advocacy
It seems to me I grew up surrounded by “men’s fiction” - most SF, fantasy (still way more Conan than Marion Zimmer Bradley in those days), almost all superhero comics, “hard-boiled” crime (so much worthier than the ‘cosy’ detective novel written by ppl called Agatha or Dorothy of course!), war novels. I have my likes and dislikes in this - I just blogged a...
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Whooshing Sound
My internal mental rolodex tends to know the month of a deadline but not the actual date. This is not very clever of me, as I automatically assume the deadline “sometime in June” for a long and complex paper means “probably around the middle of June, maybe even a bit near the end, plenty of time for another game of Kingdom Rush” not “June the 4th, Tom, you massive...
Eighties Matchbox Appear In Nike Ad →
It must be an odd place, The Quietus’ world, where advertisers using an obscuro garage rock track is “surreal” and “unlikely”.
Adland
It struck me the other day there’s a shift happening in the way ad people and some marketers see themselves - a move in the dominant metaphor/most co-opted idea from art (“creatives”) to craft (“makers”).
Whether this involves any actual difference in the work they do I’m not sure yet.
marathonpacks asked: "That whole philosophy - a song is as long as it needs to be to express its idea - is so good (it’s also what made ‘blogging’ so exciting TBH) and the music utterly lives up to it." <-- is this sorta/kinda an example of "writing as pop?"
simonlegend asked: 18 and 19??
thisisthewaytorule asked: I think a better question is: What band do you feel is more important: Wire or The Clash?
imathers asked: 2) Which band do you feel is more important: Crass or The Clash? and 7) If David Bowie had looked and acted like Joe Pesci his entire career but still made the same records, would they mean as much to you? How about Madonna, Lady Gaga, Ozzy Osbourne, or other artists?
dubdobdee asked: ANSWER TWO
ABBA - The Visitors →
I reviewed this for Pitchfork. It’s the most satisfying reissued ABBA album because the bonus tracks are all absolute killers (on most of the reissues the bonus tracks are Swedish-language versions of the singles: not quite so vital) (unless yr a Swedophone). If it weren’t for the bonuses, song-for-song I reckon Super Trouper and Arrival are better, but they don’t have The...
