No Rock And Roll Fun

WHAT THE POP PAPERS SAY: Rare lull between Vines features edition:
Apparently, Liverpool's great again. We know this because the New Statesman says so, over a four-page spread led by Holly Johnson writing about his exhibition at the Hanover Gallery. Interestingly, everybody they speak to for the piece - from Holly to George Melly - has chosen to not live in the city. One or two - Edwina Currie, for example - make a few lame excuses as to why they haven't moved back. Doubtless with the way the City Council likes to build up any praise into a marketing campaign (the city spends three quarters of a million a year on PR now), they'll stick a sign up on the M62 reading "Liverpool - okay for a visit, like". Still, nice to read a puff for the place that doesn't rely on The Coral to support its theory. The city of culture judges surely won't swallow all this flim-flam, will they?...

Well, possibly - one of them, the usually wonderful Miranda Sawyer has obviously had her brains turned to mush by the process of visiting all of the city of culture entrants. How else can you explain someone as sharp as her falling for the "EMI sign Robbie for £80m" lie? Still, writing in OM, she's strong on the reality of the music business today. The head of EMI came from United Biscuits, as part of the current malaise in the industry - nobody knows a thing about music, it's run by career-end hobbyists looking for something cool to impress their kids with...

talking of career-ends, here's the nme. Only joking, lads. This week's cover is the Libertines, and it's probably the sexiest front page since Petula Clarke was swathed in rubber and naked members of the Shadows danced round her. Or something. Unfortunately, there is a small picture of Chris Martin on the cover, too...

news: strokes go go-karting at harvard (is it me or does this sound made-up?); BBC want Zane Lowe for new Evening Session, but Xfm are refusing to release him from his eighteen month contract; the nme is counting down to its list of 'who's cool' list - two weeks to go, if you can bear the excitement; Julian Casablancas has threatened to kill the queen - but he was very, very drunk (watch out, Mr. C - carry on like that and the next time the Strokes try to come into the country, you could have Tory MPs calling for your visa to be blocked; just imagine all that publicity, young man); The Coral's second album will be ready by Christmas - if they were in the studio any longer, they would add the bloody kitchen sink to the mix; New Zealand is in love with The Datsuns, happy to have their own bona fide local musical heroes. Well, apart from the singing cows in the butter advert, but they didn't play their own instruments; meanwhile, the Vines are bitching about the lukewarm press response in Australia to their homecoming - apparently, the Australian press only gets its nmes on surface mail and so hasn't yet been told they're the future of everything; nme froths up over Karen O from the Yeah yeah yeah's catsuit falling apart while she was on stage but "fortunately the white lining remained intact"; the picture of monkey protests outside Ian Brown's house suggests that, actually, the protestors were dressed as a wolf and - oddly - celine dion; the paper makes it to page 12 before announcing another Best New Band In The World - this time its Jet. They're australian, and - potentially "bigger than The Vines." Front cover pencilled in for the slack after-Christmas, pre-awards period, then; Limp Bizkit 's new album's theme is less is more. Let's hope they carry the logic right the way through; Blur have brought Phil Daniels back for this album, which surely marks them out as having Jumped The Shark, scraped the barrell, blown the gaff, doesn't it?; Chris Martin of Coldplay plays an FBI agent in the Ash Slashed horror flick - apt, since if the hunt for Al Qaeda and the Sniper investigation proves anything, it's that the FBI are the Coldplay of law enforcement - well meaning, polite but ultimately pointless ineffectual; Roddy Woomble insists that the loss of Bob from idlewild "changes nothing" except, of course, fewer people to split royalties between; Sum 41 have made a video in which they parody The Hives and The Strokes but their lawyers have stopped them from releasing a track called Anna Nicole Smith Is A Cunt, which apparently would be libel. We can only assume their legal team believes that she has more than one...

And here's Fred Durst: "I'm actually now finding the real Fred Durst. I have always been Fred Durst and I've always been me... You wake to your own mind every day. That's your best friend and your worst enemy - your own brain." Mmmm. That must explain why it keeps playing pranks on you like making you talk absolute shite...

Karen O - you see, you could almost have seen her tits, if the fabric had fallen apart a bit more, and it hadn't been lined, and she'd lent over further, and maybe jiggled a bit? - does then ten tracks on CD thing - First Lady of Cuntry, Salt N Pepa, Shannon's Let The Music Play and Flux Information Science's Charlotte Rampling ...

on bands: bolton's Kinesis - punx wear white tops and... hang on... can this be?... an all girl band? In on? No, surely it must be men dressed up... Erase Errata. Who are, by the way, very good indeed...

Blur "never had honesty and communication" says Graham Coxon - it took you twelve years to notice? "In the end" he says "we were business partners. That's what Blur became as a band."
If Mogwai are smart, they'd be sending him an :are shite tshirt right away...

Unbelievably, the nme are still repeating the "this wasn't a far-flung war zone; it was two hours by plane" line they used about Bosnia in 1995 - despite the outrage implying that Bosnia was important because it was nearby (and, therefore, starving kids further afield weren't worth bothering about) caused at the time. There is worse to come - Kelly Jones face morphed with that of Sinead O'connor...

anyway, here comes the puppy fat pudgytastic Libertines. Like Little Donny Osmond with an arm full of Bad Drugs. The nme perches its spectacles on its nose and asks "Your songs have a certain colloquial Englishness, a sense of fun with language that's made people think of the Kinks." Carl kicks back with "Its better than saying we sound like Rick Astley," which is true...

reviews: albums: j mascis & the fog - free so free ("teach young dogs old tricks", 7); richard ashcroft - human conditions ("clangers wrestle good bits to the ground", 6); the libertines - up the bracket ("[won't] smite the Vines and the Strokes with the sword of albion, but...", 8); feeder - comfort in sound ("cathartis is frequent to the point of voyeuristic", 7); gus gus - attention ("unpleasant echoes of Kosheen", 5)...

sotw: brendan benson - good to me ("sublime"); not - idlewild - live in a hiding place ("delicate mini-marathon"); justin timberlake - like i love you ("conviction falters"); (dirty) harry - so real ("madonna-ish sang froid")...

live - interpol in cardiff ("the banquet to the Stroke's tooth-rot bubblegum"); toplaoder in kentish town ("a less miserable Oasis wearing worse clothes"); the D4 in WC1 ("nothing but electric shocks")...

and finally, the response to last week's nme student guide (which this year was so slight we didn't even remember to mention it) is a lot of outraged people from Sheffield and Cardiff complaining that their choice of study-hole (or second choice, depending on how accurately their A levels had been marked at first) had been skipped...