No Rock And Roll Fun

POP PAPERS: WORSHIP THE VINES EDITION:
we're always having fun at the expense of just how far behind even GoGirl The once-fashionable Face is these days, and yet, and yet: it keeps throwing us the bait. This month? It's the Strokes, for Christ's sake. Whatever happened to our rock and roll thrills, eh? Next month: Irvine Welsh, we bet...

an apology would have been nice, but at long last, Andy Bell has expressed his regret at allowing a Hurrican Number 1 song to be used to promote The Sun. Not to the extent of giving the money he made from the paper to a worthwhile cause, or anything, but his admission in The Guardian Weekend that it was his greatest regret was welcome. Still doesn't explain how he came to allow The Sun to do it, or why he regrets that more than agreeing to become a tune-humper for the Gallagher Bros, or allowing the wonderful Ride to collapse in a pile of in-fighting and second rate prog rock...

Dionne Warwick talked to the Observer, and came up with a convincing explanation for why she was carrying cannabis when she was stopped at that airport. "Someone must have put it there. Who knows why?" she pondered. But Dionne, stop taking it in such good part - this is a disgrace. If someone could slip blow into your bag, who knows what else they might be able to hide in blameless diva's handbags - bombs, guns, Osama Bin Laden's painkillers? Why, Dionne, rather than agreeing to do community work in order to spare the authorities blushes over this apparent breach of security, we must all bond together and demand the authorities investigate this properly...

meanwhile, in the Observer's OM, Tim Burgess invited us to his favourite restaurant table - it was slightly sad to see it involved eating lobster and drinking Jack Daniels. Long way from Manchester...

Music Week hails Fischerspooner as the Campaign of the Quarter, singling out for special praise the way that, faced with the problem of the album having flopped once on an indie label and that they were basically flogging a rerelease, Best Establishment just pretended it was new anyway - in pretty much the same way that a few jaded rock hacks are happy to pretend that their image is new. "I see them as a Pet Shop Boys for the 21st century" says Blackmore, one of their plug team. We're sending a moist towelette to wipe Neil Tennant's outraged brow...

"No wonder everyone wants to shag Craig Nicholls" proclaims the NME, thinking it might be because of "celebrity fans, awesome gigs and a brilliant album" - no, nme, it's because the Vines singer looks like he's been made from rubbing Kurt Cobain and Damon Albarn's sperm closely together. Someone makes a good and successful album, you want to shake their hand. The urge to tie down, and hold his jaw open comes from a totally different part of the mind...

news: Liam reckons the Appletons' debut is fucking great. Pity, if he'd said 'best record ever', Nicole would have probably rimmed him as well; is there a conspiracy over the failure of Radio 1 to playlist the Vines? (erm, no, just that daytime Radio 1 has been getting so conservative and lo-risk over the last couple of years, it could be mistaken for EMI in a powercut); V2002 are hopeful of Travis appearing this summer, perhaps with a stand-in drummer. If only they could find stand-in singers and musicians, too...; Mike Myers might play Keith Moon - well, at least its not Jim Carrey. Though, maybe he'd make a fine Daltrey; The Mean Fiddler seem convinced that getting a licence for the Leeds Festival is just a question of positive thinking - "we will leave the court with the judgement. if it isn't, we would go to the Crown Court" - although this seems dubious - the appeal is heard on July 24th, and so if it takes a week to go to Crown Court, things are being cut very fine for "alternative venues sixty to seventy miles" away; the ash video features Meg and Jack White snogging - or at least lookalikes, which is either incest or happy married life; the nme gets round to covering the Sony/Jackson clash and George Michael v Noel and the Whole of America...

you can win the shit parka (£650 worth) Liam wore last week in a shit competition. Amusingly, the nme says that the inclusion of the word "Forza" on it is controversial because its "associated with Italian hooligans" - yes, and the ruling party of Italy, too, you twits) but doesn't break a sweat faced with an RAF Roundel - or "randall", as they have it...

on bands - haven't they already done The Datsuns (who seem to confuse being on V2 with being cutting edge) and Goldrush (Truck Festival organising Oxfordites)...

for some reason (not much happening; being for the benefit of a hack's trip to the apple) there's a guide to Brooklyn - wear Cargo pants; listen to lesbian djs; come home...

the rapture are followed round London; they sound potentially great but nowadays, coming from New York is so pages 21-22, isn't it?...

how can I, on a hot summer's afternoon, even pretend to be interested in anything New Found Glory have to say? Let's try - "We play video games"... "we're not very photogenic..." oh, just fuck off...

"Is highly evolved the greatest debut album ever?" asks the nme. It's being serious, too. The nme - who has been round here fifty years, don't forget - is making the sort of overwhelming claim that no artist can ever hope to live up to; and not in the context of an excited review, but in the features pages, where it takes on the taste of Policy, of Law, of Certainty. Of a turn-off. The album is great, the band look great. But greatest? Let's have at least a spot of distance before we start handing out the plaques and hams. Or the six page specials. How long ago was it that we were being assured by the NME that the only way to explain how great Andrew WK was was to put two front covers of him on every magazine? Lessons not learned, the nme suddenly turns into an nme originals - interviews with "eye witnesses" like The Bloke Who Did The Sound When They Supported You Am I and A Bloke Who Lost A Band Competition To Them are rolled out like some Discovery Channel history documentary; the bitter exdrummer gets to have his say; Peter Robinson gets a little over excited about Craig's slightly undone flies which "take us to the very dawn of pop itself"; Steve Sutherland hails Craig as the voice of a generation - he stays in and EATS FAST FOOD. Just like, you know, nme journalists (or at least the ones who don't get the freebie trips to New York) and so on. You get the picture. No interview; nothing much to say, but still spread as thinly as the butter in a works cafe...

It almost makes you glad to get to the live section, for its T in the Park review (Idlewild, primals good; nme clearly went to the beer tent when Morcheba was on); meanwhile, Move in Manchester manages to review No Doubt purely in terms of how much Andrew Future wants to fuck Gwen Steffani. Luckily, he sticks to Green Day's music. Bowie all demigod wonderment, Suede's return all good news. Other live - pulp in eden ("into the spiritual realm"); the bandits in liverpool ("they show their set no mercy"); beth orton in camden ("tender like a rose") and the flaming lips in edinburgh ("Lips on fire. Let them light yours.")...

albums: the coral - the coral ("the most refreshing british debut in years",9); ed case - ed's guest list ("people who buy dancew albums don't buy them for the lyrics, do they?", 7); nore - god's favourite ("what a start", 7)...

sotw is doves - pounding ("ALIVE"); not sotw - death in vegas - leather girls ("propulsive"; natalie imruglia - beauty on the fire ("so close to being a pop star, it must be excruciating"); shakira - underneath your clothes ("celine dion meets catatonia")

beth orton chooses ten tracks for an imaginary cd - randy crawford, vangelis, bobby womack and... erm, maybe we'll go back to mine, eh, beth?...

and finally: "I have a problem with strobing. My weekend TV viewing has been ruined. Bollocks to Faithless." Can anyone explain why having one artist having one song with some strobing would ruin an entire weekend's viewing? I mean, I know Choice did over-rely on plugging gaps with Faithless, but...