What the pop papers say: The pre-festive edition

The Wall Street Journal has rumbled that certain American groups are playing off the two sides of Atlantic against each other. The way they reckon it works is a bunch of good looking young Americans fly to London. Englanders, perhaps still recalling all the glorious pantyhose brought to us during the war, fall for these kids and assume they must be cult heroes. As a result, the nme annoints one or two of them The Greatest New Band Ever each week. Whereupon, the band returns home, shows off their fawning UK press coverage and the Americans - who still have a soft spot for the Beatles - decide that if the country that names its airports after hypocritic guitar players likes 'em, there must be something to them, and enthusiastically adopt them. Mind, if even the WSJ can see through the process, it can't have much more life left in it, can it? And it only seems to work for the pretty and good acts - Andrew WK still flounders round in mid-Atlantic...

Liam's fight gets the sort of coverage the tabloids would give to pictures of Cherie Blair fisting Michael Barrymore, spreading his dull brawl over pages 1, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7. The lowlights of this unedifying coverage of an unedifying event include speculation that it cost Oasis a million (although two pages later, it costs them six million); a picture of Tony Soprano (because the fight was with Italians, see?); a photomontage of Liam decked out like Gladiator - presumably because Russell Crowe is another cunt who punches people more or less at will; a photo of a dental x-ray captioned "how an x-ray of Liam's teeth might have looked" and "Could this be the end for Noel and Liam" (erm, they don't know). Presumably if he'd lost an eye, we'd have had a few extra pages of coverage...

In 'other news' (or, rather, actual news), there's that story of how the Blur single got mistaken for a bomb and blown up - since its likely to look like a bomb when it's released, police are already courdoning off the lower end of the Top 50 for a controlled explosion; the Serbs are pissed off that they have to fork out nearly a third of a month's wages to see the Rolling Stones - lets hope they don't get faced with having to fork out for the current Michelle Shocked tour; the nme "exclusively reveals" that Major Record Labels want to sign the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (next week: major governments want to arrest Osama Bin Laden - exclusive); Kelly Osbourne got the hump because the Sugababes didn't come out to talk to her at the Smash Hits parties - but Kelly, they're very busy. Maybe if you ask your daddy nicely, he'll take you to another one of their gigs; Zwan's new album is going to be called Mary Star of the Sea - Billy Corgan is just rubbish at names, isn't he?; the White Stripes are putting out a special Christmas single, but the nme is very disappointed that Jack hasn't responded to Ryan Adam's taunts from last week - maybe Jack had more important things to do; like re-order his spice rack or apply Bible Code principles to discover hidden messages in Bloomberg TV's news ticker; and the nme tells us what to expect from Jackass the Movie - puerile humour and some stupid people injuring themselves - am I right?...

Erol Alkan, trash club supremo, does the make-believe CD, including Moose's Suzanne - one of the greatest records ever made, of course. Russell Moose - what would we have let that man do to us? Even beyond the point of passing out?...

hot new band is the star spangles, who get bored and go for McDonalds instead of waiting to be interviewed...

in a nice touch, you the reader are asked to choose between two things in about a dozen categories - spit or swallow; red or black; melody maker or select - and next week you can compare your responses to your favourite stars and find out if that stalking actually does have a basis to it after all...

one of the hellacopters is called Boba Fett - not, we'd imagine, his given name...

we're also not convinced one of the soledad brothers really is called Johnny Walker - we're guessing he's just a big fan of radio 2's hookers and gin king...

we're banging our head with spoons - the nme has got a big interview with pink in which they overwhelm her by pointing out she does what Kurt did, but while selling records - and yet they give the cover to fucking chimpy boy chimp gallagher. Way to go, nme - still, at least you've spared yourself six "How dare you give the front page to Pink" letters. She claims to be "apple sauce on the inside" which we don't know means anything, but certainly opens up the chance for us to sink to a new low for pop papers and say "can we dip our pork into that, love?"...

reviews:
lps:
new order - retro - "tries to make schizophrenia fashionable", 7
wit - whatever it takes - "electroclash is evolving", 7 (nb: WIT are scary looking bananarama of electroclash)
fat joe - loyalty - "a niche, but a big one", 6

singles
sotw - jet - dirtysweet - "the rest is going to be history"
others - the white stripes - merry christma from - "it's ace"
avril lavigne - sk8r boi - "in years to come, will be alongside 'I think we're alone now' and 'mickey'

live
ikara colt - london ica - "defy health and safety"
brmc - leeds black canvas - "the word is 'summer'"
jackie o - manchester roundhouse - "genuine contenders"

and, finally, "it was great" wibbles some loser in the photo section "to be able to tell Liam he is the best singer in the greatest rock & roll band in the world." Yeah? Why not go out and tell six year olds they can fly, you cruel fuck.