WE NAME THE SPAM BANDS AGAIN: PolePosition spamming again, this time offering a link to Fischerspooner (or the New Sputniks) as well. Streetteam, then? Bizarrely, the attempted spam claims "there's been a lot of talk about the Fierce..." which is funny, because there hasn't...

CREAMED OFF: As Ministry of Sound tries desperately to avoid become the Department for Pensions - its label is trying to simultaneously spread its wings and keep its core happy by calling its bog-standard Classic FM style album "Classical Chillout" - Cream in Liverpool seems to be starting to curdle after seven years of market leadership. Early signs of panic setting in at Wolstenhulme Square came when the advertising for its core clubnight turned from being the slightly smug, aspirational "It's part of you" glossy close-up of an impossibly sexy clubber grinning to a bargain basement, pub disco listing of who's up to be playing. Now, not only is it offering space to one of its rivals - the Main Event taking rooms there for a special - but the Liverpool Echo is suggesting that it's huddling together with another former rival, the Liverpool Lomax, and a hotch potch of second string educational institutions to put on some sort of something. When the dance lords need the help of guitar venues, it's starting to look like a bubble bursting.

WE NAME THE SPAM BANDS: Akash. They claim to be the most erotic band in the world. They are, rather, simply one of the most annoying...

CHART BEAT: It's been coming for quite a while, but the BPI's attempts to stop people getting hold of the midweek charts seem to finally be biting - as anyone who gets the Popbitch mailout will have seen today. We often lambast the British Record Industry for being stupid, and guess what? We're going to do it again. Back when I was a nipper, Top 40 day was some sort of music highlight, as Tuesdays meant transistors were smuggled into school, and we'd gather round waiting for DLT or Gary Davies (this explains why we didn't take radios in the rest of the week, of course) to announce the only chart that counted. The New. Top Forty. On Radio One. There was a feeling that you were hearing a genuine announcement - the fact it was the middle of the day, and the middle of the week gave the chart a sense of revelation. Straight from the British Market Research Bureau, tabulated and typed, then teletyped over to the Hairy Cornflake. Straight into our ears.
But since the chart started to be done on Sundays, that sense has dissipated. No matter what Goodier may try and convince you, you just know that nobody is sitting in Sony Towers tuned to One FM at seven on a weekend, hoping to hear if they'd have a job in the morning. The Boo Radleys revealed the truth of this that time they had a hit and expressly asked not to be told the position before it got announced on Radio One, so it wouldn't spoil the recreation of a moment of childhood magic.
And as the world sped up, and computers started to monitor everything second-by-second, the weekly chart started to look a bit old-fashioned, stuck in an era of swingometers and Shoot League Ladders. The midweek chart leaks, and then deluges, fought against this - suddenly, you were getting half-time reports. Instead of being "wait seven days and see", the charts became exciting again, as by Wednesday you got a forecast of what was happening. Sometimes it would show the battle over (Will Young and his lips outselling everything 79 to one), sometimes it foreshadowed a real battle. It worked like a mid-campaign opinion poll, or the show of betting while the horses are still in the paddock. Although it didn't really mean you'd be able to influence anything, it turned the chart again from being a dry list of sales figures into a proper league, a battle, something fun.
The BPI wonders why record sales fall. Then it conspires to make the charts dull again. And it doesn't see the link.
Really, the BPI should be starting to issue a daily update - not full charts, but perhaps the top ten risers day-on-day. Make the charts fun. Make the charts interesting. Make being number one mean something in a meaningless sort of way. Is that too much to hope for?

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, NME: WHAT THE POP PAPERS ARE SAYING 17.04.02
a new age, a new dawn, a new nme. or something...

but first: The Stereophonics are advertising alcohol on the continent. Music Week says so. Beer? Good welsh ale? Nope, Martini. We were going to follow Bill Hick's advice and remove them from the artistic roster, but we couldn't find them there to begin with...

Kerranng has got a pretty nifty freebie ep put together by the Hives, which is better than the Hives album, if you ask us. Clearly, its their plan for a spoiler for the nme relaunch, and it sort of works...

so, the new nme. What a botch. It is smaller, but its not magazine size - or rather, not what the British understand by the term. Its more akin to Rolling Stone, and if their plan is to get off the paper shelf and onto the front facing displays, they've dropped a huge bollock. In my newsagents, they were exactly where they were last week - on top of the Daily Sport. The inners are still newsprint, so smaller amount of cheap paper, plus a two pound "special" cover price probably suggests this shrinkage is nothing more than the idea of accountants on speed. More shamefully, the nme logo has been overhauled into some sort of lame-ass 3D version, which appears to be wrong where the bars enter the upstroke of the E...

ten years ago, the ruby anniversary was marked by Mozzer reading a copy of the paper with Vera Lynn on the cover. This time round, Liam is holding a framed copy of the dead Lennon cover. 1992, and the past was different and fascinating; in 2002, it's preserved and revered. And, frankly, if Liam is the best they can come up with for the 50th, they really should give up right away. Bowie not returning your calls, lads?...

news includes the promise made by coldplay that their next album will be their last (oh, yeah, and the manics released one and split up); Mark Beaumont attempts to recreate the Peter Buck air-rage incident - "seemingly nice bloke turns out to be an arsehole" not offering very much in the way of a challenge, we'd imagine; Craig Vines is sexy, isn't he?; the BPi are investigating that Oasis "leak" - could it be that People From Record Companies are bootlegging, like demons within? For those of you who can't be arsed to steal the thing of audiogalaxy - or, perhaps more likely, are dreading the day when every branch of Mark One has the album on constant loop - there's samples of the lyrical genius we can expect, including "God give me soul in your rock and roll band", "smoking all my stash, burning all my cash"...

gossip redesigned with no names: troubled rock star who used to beat his ex-wife about (most of them?); band overbudget on comeback trail; ex-rock wife bitching about former husband...

on bands - yeah yeah yeahs - at last, a proper, exciting band in on. with a female singer and everything. And big hair; Mum - more women, more iceland; Purplehaze - if you think we need some sort of D12, why not?...

Shirley Manson has done the imaginary CD thingy - she includes Dusty Springfield, Billie Holiday, Marianne Faithfull and Patti Smith. But there's Ian Brown, too, so it's not all bisexual icons. Apparently, Shirl used to carry a picture of Ian Brown in her wallet, Perhaps he's on the tenners in Scotland?...

aha, and it wouldn't be an nme special without a whole new scene - this one's called, um, no name, and seems to be nothing more than a collection of bands that aren't shit. Although in the current nme, that is, in itself, a novelty. No name is apparently Ikara Colt, The Parkinsons, Hoggboy, This Girl, McLusky, Miss Black America, The 80s Matchbox B-Line Disaster, Cooper Temple Clause and The Moonies. They are, mostly, excellent, but so disparate as to be almost an Ikea Scene - open plan and mix and match. Still, nice to see something that isn't shite...

here are the reviews, early, so we can get to the jelly of the 50th birthday jubilations - alec empire - intelligence and sacrifice ("certain there's no future, but one of it's most confident architects..."); Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot ("hard going and that is their point", 8); Safety Scissors - {arts water ("not big, but is clever", 6); Celine Dion - a new day has come ("its not just her heart that goes on", 3)

we'll come back to the special in a moment, but for now - sotw, quite rightly, is the sugababes freak like me. perhaps because nme is getting presents, they don't have a worst single this week...

live: fuck me with a crowbar, Jane Weaver is back. Again. This time she's dazzling and delightful, as she supports badly drawn boy in Manchester. The Vines in Camden ("just a great rock and roll band. That can mean the world"); Pink in Kings Cross ("exactly who are you?"); Garbage in Bristol ("fantastic frontwoman... average songs"); ryan adams in brixton ("the single most important song and dance man in the world")...

so, here's your pull out and discard guide to the anniversary pull out. Current editor (or "IPC head of decline management" stresses that nme stands for New Musical Express - erm, despite being the first issue in its history that doesn't have that on its masthead...

there's a three page overview of "Rock: Our part in its whoring" hats okay, then quickly, they go on to the Top 50 artists of what they call all-time. PJ Harvey just makes the cut, Pulp at our 44, Madonna at 42. Sinatra is at number 37 - one place below the Primals; the Manics edge Roxy down to 32; Dexys at 26 are a place below Frankie Goes To Hollywood. The Strokes, surprisingly, qualify for the number 17 position - Presley only makes 14. U2 are at nine, Pistols at five; and the Smiths, of course, are at number One. The Beatles, controversially, aren't in the list at all. Of course we're joking. Number 2...

former nme writers - but not Danny Baker - are asked about their favourite issue of the nme, which does sadly show up how pisspoor the current bunch are. Nirvana's first cover only came because Sonic Youth and The Cure both failed to turn up, reveals Mary Anne Hobbs; David Quantick remembers his time as "writing the Beano Christmas special, only evil", and Stuart Maconie talking about cockroaches. Marvellous...Sadly, the issue also reveals that jobs writing for the nme are now considered to be competition prizes rather than positions to be attained and cherished and loved...

black rebel motorcycle club remember the time their picture in the nme stopped them being beaten up by thugs...

they trawl through the worst covers ever, again, including the youth suicide one, which was pretty good, i always thought, and the time they painted Jack Barron's head with a globe; there's also a list of bands who got nme covers and... disappeared, including Baby Ampthetamine, The Other Two, SMASH, Campag Velocet, Cud and Terris. Oh, and T'pau...

and, um, that's pretty much it. Nowhere near as good as the 40th anniversary edition, and shockingly not even as good as the Melody Maker's 70th. But then you're not meant to stick around and see more than one of these zeitgeisty zero-ending years, are you? An alright issue for an alright magazine... that'd be yer nme, then.

XRRF IS SAYING YES TO: The New Pornographers. And Yeah Yeah Yeahs, of course.
XRRF IS SAYING NO TO: The next series of Popstars, which is threatening not one, but two new bands - one all girls, and one all boys. Although they say "it depends on the talent of the applicants" - a development from last time round, when breast size and grinning ability seemed to be the deciding factor.

INVESTIGATION CORNER: Never mind how Heathen Poetry came to be circulating on the web, let's investigate: Why?. Surely this has to be the least-awaited album of all time, hasn't it? And while the single may well finally knock Gareth Gate's Unchained Melody off the number one spot, it's standing (currently) a piss-poor tenth in the Amazon.co.uk ratings - the only chart that counts round here, right now.

ALSO IN THE LOGS: "Drawn pictures of Fred Durst killing people"

WE NAME THE SPAMBANDS: Of course, nobody minds over-enthusiastic bands getting a bit carried away and wedging internet communities with material praising themselves under the guise of independent reaction, but when they keep doing it, it gets a bit much, and so we're going to start to name and shame the bands who appear to be the worst offenders. Gorrilaz, surpisingly, are number one on this list, as members of their street team have been routinely trying to spark interest in this one-shot gag band since the word "go", and possibly, "rillaz." Long term inhabitants of webspace will probably have seen the cute fake emails sent by sources close to the band to many egroups asking versions of "Has anyone heard about the new Damon Albarn band? Apparently its called Gorillaz or something...:; more recently we were looking at messages waiting to be approved for bothsidesnow and found a small slew of emails between two members discussing the merits of being on the cartoon act's promo side - all the apparently genuine "So, how did you get involved with that?" and "It was wicked - I signed up at [URL] and get all this cool stuff" were clearly false, because none of the messages had actually made it to the list yet. And yet these two members were somehow having a conversation. Curious.
Another bad SpamBand: Pole Position. We haven't heard you, and we won't. Now, go away.

ACTUALLY, HE LOOKS RATHER SWIFT IN IT: Found in the referring URLs segment of the No Rock & Roll Fun stats: "R Kelly Pedestrian sex video." Ahuh. Dunno about anyone else, but over the weekend we got swamped with spam offering stills of what it claims is the famous video, which were amongst the funniest thing we've seen in a while. We hold no joy or love for R, but based on the stills, even David Blunkett would acquit him of taking part in this film. And, um, if the stills were genuine, wouldn't this mean the person spamming us was sending child porn across the web?

BANGS AND CRASHES: The Guardian Review chose this weekend to get Nick Kent to run a piece in praise of Lester Bangs, which, of course, found room to lament that there ain't nobody nowadays doing it like Bangs did. Which is undeniable, of course, but also as much Bang's fault as it is anyone elses. Bangs was the Beatles of music journalism, working without a template, literally often making it up as he went along. And along he went. He had excesses, he had talent, he also had a lot of crap published under his byline. Just like John Paul George and Ringo. And, like the "Fab" Four, the industry he worked for saw what he did, and saw that some of it was more popular than other bits, and calculated you get get someone to do the good stuff, and not do the rubbish, and for less trouble, too. Bangs could get away with what he did because there wasn't a grid in place, but he surely spun the web out behind him that has strangled rock writers ever since. His extremes made the people in the magazine offices which had adding machines rather than typewriters on the desks see how much was "too much", and to fight shy of any sign of individualism, lest it led to a lot more unfilled space and unexpected expenses. He was the alpha and the omega; the start of something, but also its downfall. The fear of Bangs finally won out when NME pulled its Censorship issue at the instruction of IPC, and set about turning the title into the Consume With Mother it is today. It's all very well for Nick Cave to lament that nobody can write like Bangs today - they can, there's hundreds of great music writers out there. It's just that after Bangs, none of them can get fucking published anywhere.

A FIVE PER CENT FALL IN THE MIDST OF ALL THIS: So, world music sales fell by five per cent last year - the first time since the CD was foisted upon us that the number of units sold has dropped, for example. Of course, the big companies are using this as a reason to call for even more cracking down on "pirating", with a mix of sleight of hand ("If nobody is buying records, it must be because they're stealing them") and obvious utter bollocks ("Since Linkin Park was the best-selling album in 2001 and yet sold less than five million copies, we can conclude there are four million pirated copies circulating in the US.") But, as we've said before, this is ignoring other factors. There is a grudging acknowledgment made that there has been an economic turndown, but this is being cited as making a bad situation worse, rather than the root cause. Oh, yeah? Music-as-a-mass-commodity - the way most people experience it, like sugar or beer, not the way we do - is a luxury. In hard times, people will simply cut back on their CD purchases. Since very few people buy more than a solitary album a month - if that - even if they drop one purchase, you're looking at quite a huge percentage drop. Then, you've got accept that nearly everybody who used to have a vinyl player will, by now, however reluctantly have upgraded to CD. Even people who think that the Unabomber was a bit too flashily cutting edge with his use of hammers and chairs did, a couple of years ago, recognise it was time to get something to play their Cat Stevens records on. For the past decade, the record industry has been artificially boosting its sales by flogging stuff for a second time. And while that gravy train has come to an end, the film industry has kicked off its version of the great CD bonanza, with the launch of DVD. Suddenly, cash is being swapped from buying records to replacing perfectly adequate VHS tapes with the exact same thing on DVD. That's gotta hurt music sales.
But, more crucially, the fall in sales - especially in the US - is clearly down to a critical decline in quality. In 2000, there was an N"Sync album, the Marshall Mathers album, Opps I Did It Again, the Beatles Number Ones. Last year, there was a less-than-alluring new Britney, another N'Sync, already past their best, Linkin Park, for god's sake. Alicia Keys is being touted as a genius, which shows just how dry the well has run in the past twelve months. People might still want to buy music, but there's precious little to buy.
The most interesting thing about the sales charts for the previous two years is the performance of the american version of Now That's What I Call Music... - in 2000, volume 5 sold just over three million copies, putting it at 17. The next year, volume six sold the same number, but was at number 10. Since you'd imagine that the sort of people who only want the singles are the types who'd be most likely to resort to taping off their computers, the fact that Now has kept its sales up seems to point out what a bunch of liars there are at Sony and Universal these days.
Of course, the truth doesn't matter - the downturn will be used as justification for putting out more shabby records that don't work properly - um, sorry, copy protected "compact discs" - and even more dubious acts, such as the tarriffs imposed against Ukraine by the US as a "punishment" for failing to control piracy in the country. This is an interesting concept in itself - the Bush administration having foreign policy dictated to them by the music industry - and raises a glorious possibility of precedent. Because, since the record industry are claiming that four million fake versions of Linkin Park's hybrid theory were created, and are circulating, in the US, surely the States should be taking action against themselves?

WE'RE SO PRETTY: The Charlatans have started to fulfill their promise to get the now-dropped single We're So Pretty out as a web-only thingy, though sadly it's in Windows Media Format and will expire on May 5th, so it's time to put cables across your PC, people. Their site is also reporting that Melting Pot, the Charlies-so-far album from a while back is being re-released, while a long-awaited DVD compilation is about to be spewed forth. Called Just Looking, it's going to have lots of Tim looking gorgeous on it, and amongst the extras seems to have bits of early Granada live gigs on it. Hurrah for that, then.
They'll tell you all about it - how, exactly, will it expire? In a puff of smoke, we hope