No Rock And Roll Fun

WHAT THE POP PAPERS SAY: Slightly later than early evening edition
Charlotte Church - you can see why the Face might have thought it was good idea to give her the cover; expensive makeover, she's all grown up now; the very model of a modern teenage rebel. To be fair, they couldn't have predicted the awful, vaccuous, car crash that was her chairing of Have I Got News For You, which showed her up as little more than a highly sheltered teenager allowed to stay up late and drink a glass of wine with the adults, all of whom were hoping she'd soon have to go to bed.You'd have thought they'd learned their lesson with the Macauly Culkin cover; that young star teenagers are never going to be able to deport themselves in such a way as to be a shining icon for those just a couple of years older; no 18 year old is going to adopt someone from the lower school as a herom and the Face might as well seek out this year's Ruth Lawrence as give their vital front page to Charlotte 'rubbing hands' Church.

On the cover of the nme, Damon from Blur has his mouth open and a swinging gold chain, pop Idol gone Vegas.

Over the page news, in what we imagine Kings Reach Tower would think of as an ironic juxtaposition, kicks off with Noel's solo set at the Zanzibar; unsurprisingly, the slavish fools who fought to get to see Madonna at the record shop thought she was wonderful; for some reason they report on what the new Electric Six video looks like - presumably for those people who don't own a television and haven't seen it; we get a report on the progress of the Tenacious D movie - still not in turnaround, I'm afraid; The Strokes have kicked Nigel Godrich out of the studio; there's a photo of Alex James and his lovely wife... well, all brides are beautiful, aren't they? Or at least you have to say they are; Forty one million quid is being spent on festival tickets this summer, not enough to stop Reading/Leeds booker Neil Pengelly observing wistfully that while gig tickets have leaped from £6 to £15, "you can't put [festival prices] up by anywhere near the same percentage" - although Glastonbury has tried; the desperate bid to fill space has led to a new low of how Donald Duck looks like, erm, Courtney Love wearing a Donald Duck suit.

Lou Barlow is the CD compiling guest artist - Kleenex; Yeah Yeah Yeahs; Velocity Girl; Lilput (pre-riot grrl punk a favourite, Lou?)

Rooney are the anti-White Stripes - "we like the big sounds, we love the new technologies of today, the computers, the Pro Tools."

Peter Robinson - in light of that PJ harvey ad for T-Mobile - asks if alt rock has finally sold its soul to adland. Matt Hales from Aqualung is honest about the motivation for taking cash from VW - he'd been begging for work, the creatives he dealt with were, actually, creative; and besides the ten grand, he got a great career boost.

An eight page pull out offers a massive rock quiz, like what you used to get in the Christmas issue. the prize is a stereo - a rather nice one, a Denon, but a stereo nonetheless, which is charming and oldeworlde.

We're sort of getting the feeling that the Claire Short cabinet resignation story was merely just a metaphor for the Blur-Coxon split - a member of the group who'd kept the faith for half a decade starts to have doubts, continues to keep turning up nevertheless, really wants out; starts to make public utterances suggesting they're not happy with the way it's all going; eventually walks out as the remaining members shrug, carry on regardless, but with the sense that the last piece of credibility has gone through the door. It's perhaps appropriate that Damon feels that Britpop and Blair are merely two sides of the same twelve inch single - "[Britpop] is not resolved until President Blair steps down." So, you're saying if Blair resigned, it'd be all over for Oasis? Add that to his behaviour in Iraq and surely we've got to be praying for him to hand over to Gordon right away?

reviews
albums
dandy warhols - welcome to the monkey house - "the band attempt to recreate Heart of Glass at every opportunity", 7
cerys matthews - cockahoop - "wllder than jack white, warmer than ryan adams", 6
tricky - anti-matter - "as good as it sounds", 8
the go - the go - "the nearest comparison is status quo", 1

singles
sotw - stellarstar - somewhere across forever - "new york does the 80s in fast forward"
tatu - never gonna get us - "eurovision's too good for 'em"

live
the music - blackpool and bridlington - "muscly rather than sinewy"
deftones - new york - "less a concert venue than a post-metal sanitarium"
blur - astoria - "welcome back"

and finally: under 'artists wanted' - "Fame Academy is back..."