Bop Spotter

Bop Spotter is an interesting little curio; take an Android phone, set it to run Shazam on a loop, and then hide it somewhere (in this case San Franciscos’s Mission district) with a solar panel attached and suddenly you have the the culture-tasting equivalent of ShotSpotter, generating the unique soundtrack to a particular location. San Franciscos’s Mission is, of course, a very particular environment with a distinct feel too it, so it’d be interesting to see how it would contrast with other locations around the world – though I do suspect that most would end in the brief bang of a controlled explosion.

Harrowdown Hill / Thom York (2006)

Thom York’s catchy 2006 polemic on the Iraq War and the death of Doctor David Kelly. For a music video that first premiered on a mainstream commercial TV station, Harrowdown Hill turns out to be bloody difficult to find in any quality better than ‘potato’. Indeed, the version above – while still not proper HD and occasionally raked by compression artefacts – appears to be the best one currently available and its hidden away on director Chel White’s Vimeo page! The version on XL Recordings YouTube page? Just a squidgy mush!

Random Acts of Top of the Pops: #5 – February 25th, 1988

Episode Number: 1250
First Shown: 7.00pm on February 25th, 1988
Presenter(s): Peter Powell and Mark Goodier
Official Top 40: @The Official Charts
Studio: BBC Television Centre
iPlayer: Top of the Pops – February 25th, 1988
BBC Genome: Here!

Top of the Tops logo from February 25th, 1988

Intro

After our jaunt to the cold of February 1994, it’s time to slip six years back to the equally freezing wastelands of February 1988. Yes, pop pickers, it’s time for another Random Acts of Top of the Pops!

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