Saturday, April 10, 2004

BEYONCE NO-NOS: Oh, come on, Beyonce... Fur? In the twenty-first century? What are you thinking of?

LET THE GOOD TIMES ROLL - WE NEED TO PAY THESE HUGE LEGAL BILLS FROM SUING OUR CUSTOMERS: Making it ever harder for the American record companies to plead impoverishment at the hands of downloaders, US music sales have exerienced a sprightly rise of nine percent at a time when the level of music downloading was also rising. The shocking and unexpected reason for the rise? They started releasing records that people wanted to buy. (The downside, from our point of view, is that it turns out people were waiting at home for Norah Bloody Jones and Usher, but if that's what it takes to prove that downloading and sales can happily co-exist, so be it...)



Friday, April 09, 2004

NEVER ON A SUNDAY: The good people who live near Slane Castle are planning to take out an injuction to stop Madonna playing a gig there on a Sunday. The last time there was a gig in the castle on a Sunday, Bob Dylan back in 1984, the event ended in about three week's worth of rioting in the castle and in the town. But organisers are convinced that this time things will be different - "Dylan's gig was by a washed-up former icon who was way past his best and who had become little more than a less-than-funny parody of his former self" said the promoter. "Oh, hang on a minute..."

YOU CAN'T KID A KID: There's an interesting survey which should make some grim reading for a music industry desperately trying to convince the world that CDs aren't a format designed purely to maximise profits for record companies. Even children - famous for happily encouraging parents to pump their cash into ridiculously overpriced novelty items featuring pictures of Sarah Michelle Gellar in her pants or poorly animated robots - have twigged that the music industry charges ridiculous prices for CDs and DVDs. Children - children, dammit, who would tell you that a bloody tin of Steps spaghetti shapes is cheap as chips at two quid fifty - think that the price of CDs is way out of what I believe they call "whack." [Thanks to Eleanor G for the link]

[Thanks to Andy for the link]


WELL... I SUPPOSE HE DIDN'T SAY 'LA! ARE YOU READY TO ROCK?": Gawker has got a collection of Julian Casablancas' bon mots from last weekend's LA gig. A sample of the wit of this generation's Wilde:

"Let's go get subs...nick and i used to get subs for lunch in high school, you remember that? these guys, we love each other, man, we're 5 guys from new york city and i fucking love these guys and we used to get subs."

OKAY, OKAY, ONE FINAL KURT COBAIN POST... THEN WE SWEAR WE'LL KICK THE HABIT: But, in what we can only assume would be an anti-intervention, Nigel R pointed us in the direction of Thurston Moore's piece on the boy from Nirvana. Part of his article more-or-less accuses Kurt of taking down any chance alternative rock had of breaking through with him - with the media-friendly figurehead of the movement gone, MTV and the mainstream rapidly lost interest, creating a vacuum which would eventually be filled by nu-metal. If ever you wanted an agrument against suicide, forget 'what about the family and friends you leave behind' - "shooting yourself will create Fred Durst" has to be a great argument for sticking around and working through it.

"Oh, yeah. What is it, again?"
[Sound of rustling paper]
"Marc Riley..."

WHO INVITED HIM?: So, there you are, enjoying a gig by nothern bloke band, when all of a sudden, on shuffles a crumpled figure. Oh, great. Fucking Noel Gallagher's decided to "help out" again. The latest band to "benefit" from Noel's certainty that any set can be enlivened by his magical presence is The Stands, whose Mean Fiddler show got interrupted by Noel clambering onto the stage and picking up a guitar. It's bad enough that he's become so deeply sunk into his Dadrock Ceaser Fixation that he's refusing to let anyone else do anything on the new Oasis album; now he's even stopping the Diddy Oasis from making music for themselves unless he's involved.

Scary fact: The Stands gig audience featured Jade Jagger, Zak Starkey and Sean Lennon. If they'd had Joe Bowie there, it'd have been like the Muppet Babies of Rock.

Thursday, April 08, 2004

SHE'S GOT A STALKER: Good news for Avril Lavigne: Police have arrested her stalker. Except, judging by the reports in the Seattle Times, he's a bit crap at stalking, as he doesn't seem to have done anything apart from sending her some emails and letters. Unpleasant, perhaps, but hardly the stuff of nightmares. Even her stalkers are half-arsed, then.


GRIDDLESTICKS: Jimmy Buffett has made a restuarant change its name - it had been called Cheeseburgers N Paradise, but now has, following a letter from Mr. Buffett's lawyers, become Beef N Buns N Paradise. If it was our place, we'd then have introduced an all you can eat Jimmy Buffett. But we have a habit of talking ourselves into trouble.

SIMPLE MINDS: LEE FROM BLUE: Aw, bless. After seven months thinking about it, Lee from Blue has made an official complaint against the police. He's upset because when he was driving when pissed, the police caught him. They confirmed his address to the press, and he's unhappy. This is a selfish little twat driving with nearly twice the legal limit, who was driving so dangerously and with such little awareness of his surroundings that he cut up a police car, and he's blubbing because they revelaed his address - which, we gather, is routine in these matters? Presumably, had he killed someone with his selfish, ignorant behaviour he would have requested the blanket be put over his head rather than the dead guy. Here's a tip, dickhead: you don't want to have the police release your address, don't drive when you're pissed.

HE MUST FIGHT LIKE A GIRL, THEN: Josh Homme should really be careful getting involved in bar-room brawls. Of course, nobody really gives a shit about his side project Eagles of Death Metal so the news that having been bested in a New York pub punch-up, Homme is too injured to play and cancelled one of their gigs will upset few. But now he's pissed off everyone else in Queens of the Stone Age and the band is just him, he can ill-afford to get beaten up too often. Otherwise he'll be sending the band out consisting entirely of hired hands. Maybe he needs to get Trevor's number from Prince.


"STUNNED AND HUMILIATED": That's how Anthony Fitzgerald was left feeling after Prince's bodyguard lunged at him and grabbed his digital camera. Fitzgerald was trying to take a photo of Mr. Prince at the time, it should be pointed out. Of course,Fitzgerald is now claiming he's having trouble sleeping and so is suing Prince. Eh? How is this causing him trouble sleeping? Is he afraid that Prince might appear in his bedroom, and that the whole thing might happen all over again? The best thing about this whole story, of course, is that Prince's bodyguard is called Trevor. Just Trevor.

OKAY, ONE LAST COBAIN POST: Just because we were always a sucker for when Janet Ellis used to come on Danny Baker and read chunks of her teenage diaries, and because sharing how we were when we were teenagers is something that calls for a deal of courage: Lindsayism shares the poem she wrote to mark Kurt's passing. "Tumbling lemmings with screams and sighs."


SEEING YOUR ARSE: Thankfully, we have no photos of Eminem mooning the audience of German TV programme Pro7. Though we fear it's only a matter of time. Apparently he was making a political point about how much more freedom of expression there is in Germany.


SNOW'S OFF: The troubles of trying to bring a gig to a remote - well, not that remote - island off the Scottish coast have proven too much for Snow Patrol, who've replaced their Isle of Arran dates with one in the Glasgow University union instead. Apparently the police on the Island objected to one venue because it was "too close to the Main Road"; their other objections included the refusal of the band to play inside a giant man made of whicker-work and to dance with a naked Britt Ekland.

MURRAY MINCE: There's an extraordinary piece about the Radio One in The Times
- although Murdoch writing warmly about the BBC shouldn't be discouraged, it's still quite odd. It kicks off with a picture of a dyed-in-the wool Radio One listener: "...those who have been nourished by the station, who learnt their music at Peel’s knee, who first stumbled across Chris Morris on a late-night Radio 1 slot, who taped Danny Rampling for a big Friday night warm-up, who listen to it today..." - a mythical beast, who somehow started thier musical education with Peel (rather than the more likely Powell, or Lamacq, or Jensen, or Long - would anyone start their musical journey with Bogshed and Anal Cunt - that'd be like trying to discover classical through Harrison Birtwistle), managed to miss Chris Morris when he was on in early evening and yet found him late at night, and... well, I don't believe anyone who actually would be going out with friends would have taped Danny Rampling. And even if we know what they're trying to get at - people who've grown up with the station - these are exactly the people who Radio One are trying to shake off; it's precisely the reason why broad appeal presenters like Mark and Lard are being replaced with the the stealing-traffic-cone-tastic Colin and Edith. And it's for Colin and Edith that the Times are here. Mainly Colin, actually, who has a bit of a gob on him:

“I love it when people say Radio 2 is the new Radio 1.” His words spill rapidly from his mouth. “Have you listened to it? It’s not for people our age. To me, Jonathan Ross is an embarrassing dad. And it’s people our age who are listening to iPods and using the internet and downloading Green Day online. Obviously, stations for people over 40 are getting bigger, and stations for younger people are struggling. But the financial agenda behind the attacks on Radio 1 is huge. One out of two kids aged between 16 and 24 listens to Radio 1, and does so in an advertising-free environment that isn’t about the latest trainers you own, or taking a slice of the door of the gigs we recommend.”

"people our age" - by which we take it he means people a bit younger than him, and a fair bit younger than Edith - may well be the only people downloading Green Day online, but we're sure that iPods are more widely owned amongst the Radio 2 audience, who can afford them, than the Radio 1 audience, and his ridiculous suggestion that nobody over thirty uses the internet is the babbling of a man who clearly wouldn't recognise his own arse if it was served up with peas and chips. His defence of an advertising free Radio One would be admirable, if it wasn't for the - ahem - One Big Weekend and One Live in Londonderry type events: they're not the same as yer basic XFM presents, straightforward affairs, but it's still an operation in a commercial realm. We don't think that's wrong, but we would expect a Radio 1 presenter to be aware of them.

Then Edith cuts in with an attack on people who wish it was still Mark and Lard in their slot (i.e. everybody over the age of three):

"I so do not take any notice whatsoever. The people who are slagging us off probably all wanted to be Radio 1 DJs anyway.”
Murray snorts: “The Mark and Lard listeners we’re receiving e-mails and texts from, who don’t like us, are closer to their pensions than to their 18th birthday. And throughout the history of Radio 1, the people who are always complaining are the people who are just getting ready to leave for Radio 2. The point is, they no longer identify with youth culture. The young Mark and Lard listeners have all been welcoming.”

All of them? Isn't it a bit unfortuante though, that the younger Mark and Lard fans will be the ones who, Colin, listen to the internet and will be trooping off to 6Music as fast as their mice and Real Player 10 downloads can carry them. The point is, of course, not that people don't like you and Edith because they're older than you; it's because you're just not as good. It's wrong to say that people who complain are the ones who "no longer identify with youth culture." Sometimes the complaints are valid - like when Joe Mace is given a show, or when Emma Forbes was handed lunchtime for no apparent reason. Or when Colin Murray was wedged onto the Evening Session. The problem with people who've seen a lot of youth culture is not that they're old, Colin. It's that they can recognise a dud when they hear one.

[Thanks to the other Simon, the It's Up For Grabs one, for pointing us onto this]

NEXT WEEK: FREDDY FORSYTH - THE REAL FIGURE BEHIND KURT'S DEATH?: We really, really hope that this is a joke: Otherwise, Steve Lightfoot really does believe that Stephen King killed John Lennon. For, uh, some reason. [Tipping our hat with our cane and offering thanks to Rufus for this.]

Wednesday, April 07, 2004


SINGING CEREAL: We almost wish we were Canadian sometimes, you know. Not only because they're getting berry-themed Cheerios, but some lucky Canadian is going to be the voice of the cereal. We were at this point going to list some artists who started out singing cornflake ad jingles, but the best we could come up with was Michael Portillo in a Ribena advert, and Petra Roddis from The Charlottes being the model on the front of the milk version of Soda Stream. In Germany. But we're sure it'll be a fine stepping stone. Ian Botham? Although he'd not done the Shredded Wheat adverts before he was involved in We Are The Bunnberrys, had he?

WHAT THE POP PAPERS SAY: Kurt's still dead - but Morrissey isn't - edition
Billie Holiday is making a comeback - obviously not an actual one, although it is Easter, and so everything is possible. But her career is up for one of those periodic reinventions, as what the New Statesman calls “a new generation of artists” bring her work into a new context. Well, they say “a new generation of artists”, but it’s neither Amy Winehouse or Jamie Callum who offer any interesting comment on their newly discovered heroine: Cullum sounds like an estate agent showing us around her artistry: “her readings of many standards have become the definitive ones, and the aga is still under guarantee”, while Winehouse blusters like a fourth grader caught unprepared in her book review: “Her range of skills are vast and mostly overlooked.” No, it’s former Chancellor Kenneth Clarke who manages to sound like an enthusiast - like someone for whom music means more than what they do at the office. There’s something of the true fan in his careful decision that “Billie is my favourite jazz singer, slightly edging out Bessie Smith.” No wonder the Tories fucked the economy - Clarke clearly was spending his nights drawing up lists of the ten best jazz standards about the weather, and the ten most ill-fated collaborations.

We try to avoid mentioning the Radio Times letters page much - indeed, we often try and replicate that spell that Willow did when she tried to make everyone forget that she and Tara had had a big row, hoping it will allow us to live in a world where nobody has a recollection that Gill Hudson ever bothers compiling a bunch of letters into the sort of ill-tempered, pedantic whinefest which would make the editors of a freesheet feel ashamed. However, there’s actually a letter making quite a good point this week - that without Mark and Lard, Radio One is going to be even more tightly focused on it’s 15-34 demographic mission (and closer to the youth end at that) and a lot of people who otherwise would have heard some of this modern pop will be completely divorced from the delights of the Radio One playlist. Hudson, of course, misses the point, trilling that Lard’s on 6 and Mark is on Radio 2. Perhaps she was just so thrown by a letter that wasn’t moaning like a wanker in a porn cinema that she paniced. Elsewhere, it’s business as usual, with someone complaining that Pete Townshend featured in the programme about police catching paedophiles - this was, apparently, “gratuitious villification of a good man by association and innuendo.” Which is odd: we could have sworn that it was actual footage of a man who used a credit card to buy child porn, admitted using his credit card to buy child porn, accepted a police caution for using his credit card to buy child porn, and signed the Sexual Offenders Register as a result of using his credit card to buy child porn.

The NME is headlined “Special Commemorative Issue” - No, really, I know it’s a big day in the paper’s history but - this is just too... oh, it’s commeroration of Kurt’s death? Oh. The masthead is made from flowers; it’s quite sweet.

The paper has its findings from its online poll about file-sharing. Although it has to be stressed the poll was an online survey of self-selecting respondents, the figures are still grim reading for the BPI: 85% of people don’t think downloading harms artists; 89% say downloading doesn’t stop them buying music; only 6% saying the BPI’s bullying tactics will stop them from downloading in the future. The NME then runs off to see Matt Phillips, from the BPI. He’s wearing a tshirt, see, because he’s down with the kids. Or maybe he can’t wear a suit because of his forked tail, we’re not sure. Older NME readers will recall when Thrills used to run a feature written by The Man. This week, he’s back, and his name is Matt Phillips. How does he feel about the 12 year old getting sued in the States? It’s a good thing - it brings the message home to parents that they could get sued for what their kids are doing. (Actually, they can’t.) Asked if he’s worried that the BPI are putting a barrier between the Industry and the Music, the Man don’t give a fuck: “people don’t see it as stealing” he trots out, which isn’t answering the question at all. We wonder if the BPI are all like this: “Hello, love, would you like chips or roast potatoes today?” “If people continue to download, there will be no potatoes.” But Matt’s keen to stress that we must pay for our downloads, because without it, the industry would have no money: “the cost [of a CD] is funding the artist, recording the album, paying me to speak to you.” Yes, kids, if you carry on downloading, there’s a very real risk there will be no more BPI to lecture us. A horriffying prospect - at a stroke, that right clicking and “Save as’ dialogue box might as well read ‘Put all the people working in the BPI out of work.’ Have that picture in your mind. And now go and get Bittorrent.

Michael Eavis or Glastonbury or someone says the Glasto ticket debacle will never happen again - every Glastonbury promises the last of something: last itched battle with police; last pillaging of Pilton village; last time Ian McCulloch will be allowed to wear white trousers...

In an extraordinary week, something totally unexpected. A Morrissey interview. In the NME. Actually with the NME. For real. (Unless it was Mike Joyce putting on a silly voice and pretending, but there’s no bit about how “the other guys in the Smiths were the best”, so we’re thinking its genuine.) The only downside is some of the new lyrics are so ropey, you could pull a car out a swamp with them - “where the president is never black, female or gay/and until that day you’ve got nothing to say to me...” Pity Billie Holiday’s dead, then. More Mozzer next week, when he’s even - for the zillionth time - on the cover.

Method Man don’t do karaoke. In fact, he tries to kid Peter Robinson that he doesn’t even know for sure karaoke bars exist. Yeah, right.

Durrty Doogz - that’s two ‘r’s, and two ‘o’s. And a z. And... oh, it’s just mispelled. They’re new, and they’re grime, this month’s short lived new genre.

So, that Kurt pull-out memorial in brief: “this issue is for Kurt... 60 of the aspirin-sized Rohypnol pills... grimly awaited news... assassination of JFK... I was backstage at a Wonderstuff gig... Sylvia Plath... he was lactating... inspired me to check out Deep Purple.” One highlight is then-NME editor Steve Sutherland recalling the way the paper dealt with the news - tellingly, “no-one was surprised”; and how it booted Primal Scream from the cover. “It feels like Kurt’s depression is dragging NME and all its readers down with him. But on page 40 [this is the second issue, with the Courtney cover] there’s a review of Parklife...”; another highspot is a glossy reprint of some of the artwork from Godspeed, the Cobain picture book. The phrase “collector’s edition” is thrown around really easily in the magazine world these days, often signalling nothing more than two different Hollyoaks girls in their knickers on the cover, but this really does feel like something you’ll be putting to one side for the grandchildren.

snow patrol - befast mandela hall - “the bands new material outstrips the old by a long way”, 9
shellac (how odd that albini pops up in the cobain edition) - kings cross scala - “endearingly unpleasant”, 8

albums - is it just me, or do the albums reviewers at the nme seem so much (cough, cough) brighter and dazzling this week?
young heart attack - mouthful of love - “stuffed to the gussets with guitars which sound like laughing kazoos”, 8
tears for fears - everybody loves a happy ending - “MAKE IT MORE LIKE GARY!”, 2
xiu xiu - fabulous muscles - “MBV colliding with Interpol”, 7

sotw - the beta band - assessment - “it’s a joy to have them back”
amplifier - drowned in neon - “sounding fucking mighty these days”

and, finally: we guess it had to be Nirvana in the ‘Why I Love’ column this week; and the band have chosen to explain their love of Jo Wylie. Oh, alright, the other way round. But we’d quite like to see Dave Grohl talking about Jo: “Her way of presenting television without wearing shoes was quite unlike anything we’d ever seen before...”


THE OLD BLADDER: Is it just us, or does everyone find that when trying to picture The Darkness playing in a Soccer Six tournament, they always see Billy The Fish in goal?

THE OLD BLADDER: Is it just us, or does everyone find that when trying to picture The Darkness olaying in a Soccer Six tournament, they always see Billy The Fish in goal?

OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF BABES AND H FROM STEPS: For some reason, the slightly dim-looking one out of Steps hasn't taken the chance to shake off the stupid nickname H, and is still answering to it, like a fairly well-trained labrador. He's currently taking time out from a very cheesy - ahem, busy - schedule to do webchats with Sun Readers (the phrase "a meeting of minds" would be apt, if sounding a little bit mocking). It's quite revealing, but for for the reasons H would like to think. The words are his, the emphasis is ours:

Working in theatre is a different experience for me - I'm used to performing in arenas and on TV with in-ear monitors so it's strange to be singing live...

There's been a complete cast change since I joined the show which is nice because it means I haven't started on my own and been made to feel like the new guy...

Claire wants to be Celine Dion...

Being a role model was not something I consciously worried about during my time in Steps...

[An emailer asks 'If you could be in the Big Brother house with absolutely any celebs, dead or alive, who would you choose?]

I'd choose Jennifer Saunders and Rusty (sic) Lee - a TV chef who no-one remembers but who I found hilarious. I would also ask Paul O'Grady (Lily Savage) and Claire Sweeney - who are both good friends of mine - along and maybe the Krankies so I could have two for the price of one! I have been asked to do Celebrity Big Brother before but I've always been too busy. Shows like Big Brother and I'm A Celebrity are only really good for people who want to be famous - that isn't me, I love what I do and fame is just a by-product of that!

Well, judging by the way single sales for H and Claire's stuff tanked, it's not much of a by-product; like the amount of radiaton given out by those old alarm clocks, we'd estimate.

WE'RE DREAMING OF MEL C AND MARK OWEN MERGING THEIR LABELS, LIKE A LATTERDAY UNITED ARTISTS: As Mel prepares to cut the middlemen out of her daily affairs and go it alone (okay, there aren't that many middlemen who were looking to get involved with a new Melanie Chisholm album), she's announced some "intimate" (i.e. small) dates (i.e. at least they'll probably sell out), mostly at Barfly venues this June: 12 - Glasgow Barfly; 13 - York Fibbers; 14 - Liverpool Loft; 16 - Cardiff Barfly; 17 - London Barfly. It's a whopping great fourteen quid to get in, mind, answering the question of how she'll be funding releasing her own music.

OOH, OUR INDUSTRY IS IN POOR SHAPE: The latest set of global music sales figures have been released by the IFPI, which is the RIAA pretending it listens to what Guatemala thinks. But even the IFPI has trouble with the party line, admitting that much of the decline in world sales (seven per cent) is down to competiton from other media and poor economic conditions as much as the old bugaboo Piracy and those damn kids with their damn computers; and they have to concede that the market is showing signs of recovery in some of the key markets. They don't, however, bother to mention that the seven per cent drop is in the value of sales, and not in the actual number of records being sold.

LIFE IN THE CITY OF CULTURE: Despite bleeding the Beatles bucket dry as a stone, it seems Liverpool City Council still haven't got a clue about how to treat their heritage - they're planning to bulldoze Ringo Starr's birthplace. Maybe the city should decide if it really is Beatlesville, land of yellow submarines and magical mystery tours, or if it's not really that arsed about the Beatles at all. At the moment, Ringo House, 9, Madryn Street, is something of a tourist attraction, bringing thousands of visitors into an area without much to tempt visitors. Rather than deciding to try and make this the focus of regeneration for the area, the council seems set on pulling the whole street down. What makes it worse is the residents of Madryn Street would much rather have their homes tarted up than torn down. But, of course, actually keeping the original building would sit poorly with the council's current policies of turning everything into a one-step removed 'experience' - doubtless plans are already underway to build a Ringoesque House Visitor Attraction in the city centre. Just as soon as the European Union decide to pay for it.


YOU CAN TAKE THE 'RADIO 2 IS COOL' THING A LITTLE TOO FAR: Radio 2 have just announced that Brad Pitt is joining their line-up of presenters - he's presenting a tribute to Nick Drake on Saturday 22nd May at 9.00. Uma Thurman is mulling an offer to sit in for Sarah Kennedy over the summer.


Tuesday, April 06, 2004

BLIMEY... YOU'RE STILL GOING, THEN?: We're surprised to hear that Alex Parks is still going around writing songs for her second album. The Fame Academy winner has, apparently, been in Los Angeles - in America, USA - with "famous songwriters", no less. She's written fifty songs, but that doesn't seem to be enough for the album, which suggests they might just not be very good. And who's the smooth talking PR doing their best to keep Alex in the public eye? Her mam. Bless.


I AM TRYING TO SLAKE MY PARTAKING: It's apparently not going to mess with the scheduled tour later this month, but Wilco's Jeff Tweedy has checked himself into rehab to try and shake off an addiction to painkillers. Tweedy's apparently been self-medicating, and then medicating for a couple of imaginary friends on top, for a couple of years, since being plagued with migraines. The label has shunted the new album back until June to give Tweedy a chance to empty his life of the sad routine of counting out the blister packs.







They all killed their neighbours' wives and children.





They all killed their neighbours' wives and children.

YOU KNOW YOUR MARRIAGE IS IN TROUBLE WHEN...: ...this David Beckham Photographed With His Wife - is considered a newsworthy headline










THEY'VE SUFFERED ENOUGH, SURELY?: Is it really fair to make so much of Courtney Love's admission to the police that she'd taken Hillbilly Heroin? Don't Hillbillies have enough to contend with without being linked with Courtney Love?

MTV PRESENTS THE 'ANTI-POP IDOL': Although, somehow, Breaking Point, the series which claims to follow "proper" bands (i.e. the sort of bands MTV shunts off to MTV2 and VH2) sounds just like Channel Four's The Next Big Thing from about ten years ago rather than an exciting new idea. And whatever did happen to FMB, eh?


THE RIAA GET SERIOUS: Lawsuits haven't helped. The very real fear of Lars Ulrich coming round your house and telling you off in front of your Ma hasn't helped. Now, to stop the curse of downloading, the RIAA is going nuclear: it's called in Mandy Moore. She's starring in a new advert aimed at making people feel guilty:

"I believe in getting quality music in a way that's fair. It takes so many people to produce a CD; illegal downloads deprive every one of those people. You get paid for the work you do, right?"

Some things we do, yes; other times, we produce stuff just because we like doing the work and we enjoy it. There's thousands of bloggers out there, for example, producing quality work for nothing (okay, they all dream of a book deal...)

PLEASE, DON'T HAVE NIGHTMARES: This is, apparently, what Alanis thinks nudity looks like:

VICTORIA BRINGS TELSTAR CRASHING DOWN: Telstar's big adventure - attempting to spin a 'proper' record label out of a Ronco-cum-KTel style compilation outfit - seems to be over, with the label going in to administration. The company made a loss of GBP8.5m in 2001, the last year for which accounts were available, and since then stuck out Victoria Beckham's clunking solo material, which has been expensive and often unreleasable. The label's other bright move - signing the Cheeky Girls and trying to desperately keep them going long after they'd passed the 'Best Before' date and had turned green and slightly runny - has outweighed their smarter actions, such as signing Mis-Teeq and The Hives.

Mr. Pickwick is rumoured to be reconsidering his plans to approach Kylie Minogue.

Britney Spears Tour Bus Driver Chased, Stopped By Police
Pop Star Not On Bus During Traffic Stop

ALL DOWN THE LOOS?: "A royal wedding we adore/ the pomp and pagentry of yore/ we'd just as soon headline, of course/ a scandalous royal divorce" - Leon Rosselson.

Of course, the press have been waiting for something like a schism in the Beckham's perfect world for years - happy couples sell papers, but unhappy couples sell far more. And so they've taken great care not to set their hares running too soon, waiting until something meaty enough to at least please the braver of their lawyers came along. And now, in Rebecca Loos, they've got security guards witnessing kisses between David and his PR girl, or so they say; dubiously obtained text messages which may or may not have been filthy and even more dubiously sourced quotes, apparently spoken in pure journalese. Beckham, of course, is denying it all; the Sun can barely contain itself: Victoria is 'ashen faced' and 'deep in thought' (well, that's a first) - but taking care to run the Beckham denial next to a picture of Posh Spice looking like she was caught mid-puke (at least let the lady finish her morning beauty routine, guys), producing a handy guide for choosing sides if, you know, the worst happens and getting way too excited that "Beck's Girl" is bisexual ("lusts after both men AND women", the paper explains for the benefit of its slower readers.)

It's difficult, though, to feel any sympathy for either Victoria or David in this whole mess - they ignored the advice about using long spoons to sup with the devil, virtually inviting belzebubb to a finger buffet by turning their love affair into a commodity to be sold to the highest bidder. All couples choose their wedding colours to look good in the pictures; the Beckhams picked theirs to go well with the blue and red of the OK! masthead. And when the public appetite for happy, snuggly pictures starts to wane, it's only to be expected that the press will try to work their investment in some other way.

Monday, April 05, 2004

MORE BOLLOCKS FROM THE BPI: Why does a download cost more if you buy it from a legal British download site than an American one? Because the theiving shysters can get away with it, of course. It really is that simple. But, of course, they can't say that, so the BPI have worked up a new justification:

"The US benefit from a) Greater economies of scale b) Smaller sales tax (6% as opposed to 25% in some places in Europe) and c) Lower costs,” argues Matt Phillips from the BPI."

Greater economies of scale? Is this to be a new factor we should be using when we work out if a record is good value? Only at the moment, BPI members don't bother to reduce prices of the biggest selling singles - Kylie records enjoy far greater economies of scale than Victoria Beck... (sorry, it'll be Victoria Adams again, won't it) Adam's records, and yet the prices don't seem to reflect this.

Taxes? But records are cheaper in continental Europe where sales taxes do, indeed, rise as high as 25 per cent, whereas in Britain CDs cost more and the VAT rate isn't as high; likewise, sales tax in the US varies from State to State (the BPI's figure of six per cent is plucked at random - it varies from zero in Alaska to 7.25% in California) and yet the price of a download is uniform right across the country - because on ninety nine cents, we're talking piddling little differences.

And lower costs? But with downloads, the costs of additional sales are almost zero - a tiny bit of computer bandwidth, a sliver of storage. The main costs are in the production, and the cost of The Rolling Stones making a track that sells in the US are identical to those of making a track for the British market. And, the other beauty of downloads is the company can site itself wherever it chooses, wherever costs are lowest - are we expected to believe that MyCokeMusic has got all its servers in Britain?

No, we suspect the real difference between the British and American markets, the thing that really distorts the prices, is the huge mark-up. But when they try and sell it to us, they could at least try and come up with something a bit more convincing.


INTO THE NEW THING: The Charlatans have announced two London gigs on May third and fourth, which will be given over to playing stuff from the new album, and almost exclusively so.

REPORTS SUGGEST JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE IS GOING INTO HIDING - "WHEREVER OSAMA IS": While we count down the hours until Todd finally gives in to his throbbing inner turmoil and kisses the gay nurse from Weatherfield General, George Michael is trying to line up another top celeb snog, dropping not very subtle hints that he'd like to rub his greying stubble against Justin Timberlake's bumfluff. But although Michael, 72, says he'd like to be the thrusting force behind a male answer to the Madonna-Britney kiss at the MTV awards, he's got more self respect than to try and, you know, go further with Timbo. He wouldn't want more than a snog; a full-on, manly collaboration would be wrong, somehow:

"I couldn't bear people saying there's this old guy clinging on to a young talent. Maybe I'm a little less worried that my star might fade than Madonna."

Well, yes. You wouldn't want to actually record some music, would you? That might make you look a little sad. Much better to sit around salivating about the possibility of getting a quick fumble off of Justin whenever an interview light comes on, eh? There's your actual dignity for you.


scared now

MODERN LIFE IS RUBBISH: With his daughter safely off to rehab, Ozzy Osbourne has been taking time to fret about the way the internet is a threat to us all. The Prince of Darkness says that he's shocked by drugs being available on the internet, which is understandable - his vague grip on the modern world would mean that discovering that hooking a typewriter to the telly allows you to do shopping at all would probably give him cause to spend a few hours lying down in a darkened room; he then starts to sound just like someone's Dad: In this day and age, the availability of getting drugs is incredible. You can get it online. In my day, you couldn't get it online, and thank God. I would have been dead if I could have gotten it online" Okay, someone's alcoholic Dad, but a Dad nonetheless. Yeah, just imagine if Ozzy could have got drugs online - it might have left him permanently fucked, unable to string together a coherent sentence and in such a bad way that he could be lead like a puppy into making a twat of himself on television to help feed someone else's Godzilla-sized monster need to be famous in their own right. We must be thankful that the difficulties Ozzy faced in getting hold of drugs - sometimes, it could be as difficult for him as having to open a door and remembering how to ask for some drugs - ensured he survived into a fit and healthy old age.


BETTER SOLVE THAT WORLD AIDS PROBLEM QUICK, MIKEY: Apparently, the judge overseeing the Michael Jackson molestation case has "no doubts" it'll proceed to trial.

BABES MOURNED BY MOZZER: For the bsides to his next single, Morrissey is exploring a subject usually only dealt with in graffiti on bridges across the M62. 'Munich Air Disaster 1958' is, of course, about the deaths of eight of the Manchester United team as their plane crashed on take-off at Munich airport in a blizzard. In all, twenty-three people died in the crash, which is still remembered with pain in Manchester and as a cheap, ghoulish taunt amognst football crowds on Merseyside.

I AM TRYING TO TAKE YOUR ART: If we'd just stuck up a band's album onto the internet several weeks before release, we doubt if we'd be sending the songwriter our transcribed lyrics for his yea or nay as to their accuracy. But Wilco fan Rone Givony is made of stronger stuff than us, and also he doesn't find himself in the unpleasant position of being a Metallica fan; so he sent Jeff Tweedy an email promising to buy the album when it eventually came out (we're sure he didn't mention 'just as soon as the guy outside the Frisco Burger has got them burned off and the artwork laser-printed out'). Tweedys response was to launch, offering fans the chance to donate a few quid in compensation for the ill-gotten gains. In less than a day, it pulled in USD1,500 (the sort of cash-sign-up that would have had Glastonbury ticket servers falling over, in other words.) Not only has Tweedy and Wilco demonstrated that people who share illegal files would give money if only they could, but the bucks raised by Just A Fan will all be going to Medecins Sans Frontieres, the charity established to help Stuart Hall, stranded in Southern Italy since Its A Knockout was axed. Oh, alright, the International medical charity. Point proven; honours even and some cash in the back pocket of a well-deserving cause. If only Metallica had been half as smart, eh?





BOB DYLAN IS PANTS: What product would you associate with Bob Dylan? Perhaps whiskey of some sort, or maybe even rugged outgarments. Saucy undies, perhaps not so much. Nevertheless, Bob Dylan is set to appear in an advert for Victoria's Secret. The ad sees Bob play a seedy old man in eyeliner leering at young, flighty things in their pants, which will call for a lot of acting on Bob's part as he doesn't usually wear eyeliner. As part of the deal, Victoria's Secret stores will sell a special album of Dylan tunes - because what could go better with a spot of hows yoru father in expensive knickers than Bob Dylan squeewailing his way through Maggie's Farm?


PRESUMABLY COURT TV WOULD BE AT THE FRONT OF THE QUEUE: In happier times, fallen stars would turn to drugs and booze to make their problems go away. Nowadays, drugs and booze are suddenly part of the problem - whatever happened to a Hollywood where, so long as you turned up to do the Carson show and you had some whites of your eyes still visible, and didn't leave drool on the sofa, you were left alone? With the needle no longer an acceptable way to escape the miseries of being rich and able to shag your way through any cheerleader team you choose, stars are being forced to find a new way to cleanse themselves, and, unfortunately for us, it's the fly-on-the-wall series; the addiction which delivers a daily hit of Feeling Like A Big Star. Bobby Brown is reported to be currently attempting to turn his spectacular fuck-ups into a thirteen part series. It was better for the rest of us when they'd just retire to a penthouse with a dozen call girls and enough smack to becalm an angry elephant. At least they left the TV schedules alone.




BACKSTREET'S BACK... IT SEEMS: Sometimes, you have to accept that the tide of pop has turned and run away from you; face up that trying to restart a motor that's been idling too long is just going to end up in bitterness of defeat; take a look in the mirror and say "We've gotten too old for that schtick." Or, you could be like the Backstreet Boys, reunite three years after your last album and try to hope that those intervening years of legal struggle haven't seen all your fans grow pubic hair, get married, move out to the suburbs and take up a firm place on the local church flower rota.

Sunday, April 04, 2004

I REMEMBER KURT: A round-up of some of the early coverage of the tenth anniversary:

Dominic Moron, sorry, Mohan (that never gets tired, does it?) calls Kurt the “last great Rock hero” in The Sun, a paper which somehow you can just picture Kurt sitting down to enjoy of a morning. He’s fighting, dammit, for Cobain’s legacy: ”Do you really think The White Stripes, Radiohead and Coldplay would exist if there hadn’t been a Nirvana? Not to mention Grohl’s Foo Fighters and the nu-metal movement, of course.” Erm... Dominic? Radiohead were contemporaries of Nirvana; Coldplay clearly draw on the influence of Oasis and Suede and Britpop, which was more of a ‘despite’ than ‘because of’ grunge movement, and The White Stripes? Would they have existed without Nirvana? Almost certainly; if you knew half as much about creativity as you claim to you’d see that Jack White is a man who would be producing music even if he’d been brought up in a small, soundproofed box for the first twenty years of his life. Dominic could have cited Dizzee Rascal, who's busily citing Kurt as an influence at the moment. But we’re sure Dominc really was a fan. We can picture him singing along and shooting his guns, right down the front row.

Writing in The Age, Helen Razer struggles to cope with the Cobain myth. Rather clunkily, she kicks off "In the first quarter of the past decade, any kid with their antennae trained to pop culture knew and understood an object called Kurt." An object? And surely, erm, part of the problem was that while everyone thought they knew Kurt he kind of pointedly revealed that nobody ever quite understood him. But nice to reduce the man to an object as his memorial. It gets worse: "To gauge Cobain's popularity is simple: he claimed enough airtime, ink and eyeballs to be a bona fide celeb." He may also have made a record or two, we hear. Tim Rogers, of You Am I, toured with Nirvana, and remembers the night his death was announced: "Our band was playing a gig in Perth and the club DJ made an announcement before playing a song from (Nirvana album) Nevermind. Something very cheesy and cynical like 'This one goes out to you, Kurt!'
Not entirely sure what a club DJ would be expected to say that wouldn't be seen as "trivialising" his suicide, and why it would be any worse to dedicate a song to the recently deceased than, say, take part in a Ten Years On background colour piece.

Of course, if he hadn't died, Kurt would have been able to clear exactly what did and didn't count as proper respect for us, but we're left to speculate. In the same way, the Tacoma News Tribune speculates on what might have happened if Kurt had survived that night - by now, he might have been recording with Michael Stipe. Or, on the other hand, he might been swept back into obscurity. Oddly, the don't bother to suggest other, equally plausible possibilities: he might have joined the church, or co-anchored the Daily Show alongside Jon Stewart, or moved to England and opened a pottery shop, but the News-Trib had already filled the space up and didn't need to. has got a wider range of contacts and far stronger credentials to fall back on - after all, there's no doubt that the world's biggest selling rock weekly (and, more especially, the now-defunct Melody Maker folded into it) got Nirvana, and got Nirvana quickly. Although it could perhaps do a bit better on the website than pieces by Evan Dando and, um Lars Ulrich, but then much of the paper's powder is being kept dry for this week's special edition, we guess. And they have taken the trouble to remember the man through his music, compiling the 20 best Nirvana tracks.

The Associated Press’ standard drop-in to mark the anniversary reminds us all that we don’t actually know quite when we’re meant to be lighting the candles - although we all know when the body was discovered, the closest we actually have to a fixed point of death is a vague “within 24 hours" - so it could be that we've all missed the moment, or are all jumping the gun, in a kind of grim, literal way.

The timing of Cobain's death gave rise to another commonplace misconception, that we can remember trying to squish back in 1994 through the pages of an almost unread fanzine: that the mainstream papers chose to ignore Kurt's suicide. We were surprised to see the same complaints resurface this weekend in the Independent [subscription required] when David Lister tut-tutted over how few column inches Kurt received the morning after the electrician came a-calling: "The Times just had a short report on page three; the Guardian a mere 147 words... The Daily Telegraph also a short, page three report. The Independent did better, running the story at the foot of page one. Younger readers were bemused at this lack of coverage..." Maybe they were, David, but surely a person who works in the newspaper industry would not be so surprised that a death that by eight in the evening, British time, hadn't even been officially confirmed didn't pick up very much coverage in a Saturday paper? With very little time before the presses rolled - and certainly no time to get a reporter up to Seattle, and most of the obvious people to call for quotes already out drowning their sorrows (or preparing elaborate 'I remember where I was when I heard the news' myths), there was precious little for the papers to put into their reports; so little it would hardly have been judged worth massively overhauling the layout of the paper to make extra space to fit in what would have been little more than cuttings and puff. It's true, as Lister says, that no subsequent extinguishing of an icon has been quite so under-reported (least, not in proportion to their perceived cultural significance), but that's because the only icon who's died at such an awkward time for the UK press was that former Princess, and she was deemed worthy of a last-minute rejig or two.

PARTRIDGE SEASON AGAIN: We're a little surprised to read via the Rock and Roll Report that VH1 is planning on remaking the Partridge Family - we presume it would have to be made as a period piece, because to try and set the series in the present would mean the younger Partridges would spend their time being sent to rehab, only emerging for the inevitable legal battles when they discover mama and papa Partridge have been bleeding their trust accounts dry...








The newsagent nodded, puzzled - where was this going?





