No Rock And Roll Fun

WHAT THE POP PAPERS SAY: Unpleasant Sexual Imagery Edition
Possibly the ultimate boy-loses-virginity moment came in the Buffy episode The Zeppo, when Xander - in between fighting off zombies who want to blow Sunnydale (sky) High - is dragged off by Faith into her motel room, deflowered, and deposited, unshowered just as suddenly. Until this week's heat, there was no image that could stand as the polar opposite. But now we have one - with this week's revelation from Gareth Gates that, yes, he did shag Jordan, while she was six months pregnant (which at least gives her an excuse for having such an odd craving as to want sex with the boy hedgehog). Gates claims he was flattered to be pursued by the plastic tits of self-promotion, which is a bit like being delighted that the Jehovah's Witnesses are taking a personal interest in your redemption. The whole thing is just too, too horrible to think about. Let us never mention it again.

From gross to Goss. Matt Goss - one half of Bros - who's making another one of his period comebacks. Nobody ever seems bothered about what happened to the other one, do they? Anyway, in an interview so flirty it was almost touching him up, Metro found out he was happy this time round as he doesn't feel the whole "is he cool? is he not cool?" pressure - which puzzles us, because we can't think of anybody at all who ever might have mistaken him for someone cool in the first place.

Beyonce is in Sneak, and you know when she says ""I try not to think about [image] I know I'm an average person, I am an average size but on TV I'm curvier than some women. I don't think there's anything wrong with looking different from the person on the cover of some fashion magazine" she's trying to send out a positive message about how you should be happy with who you are, but we can't help feeling it gets lost a little and the line of the day teen girls will be taking away will be "if Beyonce thinks she's too big, that makes me elephantine."

The Flaming Lips stepped into the gap left by Jack White wanking his hand off (or whatever it was that happened) not just on stage at T in The Park, but also on the front of the nme. The whole T in the P coverage is slightly weary; in common with all the London based media there's a feeling that the scots should think themselves bloody lucky that anyone turned up for their festival, and that any coverage will do - and that comes across in the reviews.

News: Kate Moss went backstage to see the Kings of Leon b- we're not sure what the news value of this is, since Kate Moss has been in the dressing room of every band to play in the United Kingdom since 1984. Interestingly, the Darkness news report is also more a list of the people who went to the gig - oh, look, there's samantha morton - which suggests the nme is starting to see heat's pointless tattle as the target to aim for, rather than a source of detached amusement. Likewise, there's a page of bollocks from an astrologer about why (like Jack White didn't) pop stars die at the age of 27 and what we had hoped was an amusing parody of the 'touch becks' ankle and pray' Sun guff with a pciture of 'jack's' finger - but which, in light of the rest of the issue (the laboured Bing Crosby and David Bowie joke, the lame caption on a picture of one Hot Hot Heat) we suspect may not have been a joke at all.

The NME is launching another spurious chart into the overcrowded market - this will be on MTV2 every night and will differ from other spurious charts because the people voting for it will be employed by slightly cooler subsidiaries of the major labels than the ones rigging the Smash Hits chart ("because it will be voted for by nme readers). This magazine, of course, stopped running its indie charts because they considered they had become meaningless. Doubtless the revenue stream from the project won them round.

Cooper Temple Clause are fighting over their new album tracklist.

Two knuckleheads who murdered someone in the states are trying to blame Slipknot on the basis that they'd been told to do it by the lines "I want to slit your throat and fuck the wound/ I wanna push my face in and feel the swoon" - although, apparently, the two twits had slit a throat, the wound-fucking and swoon-feeling hadn't taken place. We assume "Slipknot told us to" is just "not guilty by reason of insanity" in a different way.

"If people want to get an album for free, they can just go into a shop, buy it and then take it back the next day" points out Jason Pierce, asked how he feels about the new Spiritualized album being all over the web like Faith's juices over Xander's jowls. Has the RIAA been alerted to this? Surely they should be taking steps to force Record Stores to stop their returns policies...

The Raveonettes and Elbow have both been driven to want to kill each other. Oh, no they haven't, it's just what happens in their videos blown up for an almost engaging headline. The good people at the nme can be expected to be first with 'Thom Yorke turned into tree' shocker any day soon.

Jack Osbourne blah blah drugs blah killed myself blah blah that close blah blah on the edge blah blah. We've heard of people using suicide bids as a way to attract attention, but he's got to be the first person to try and use his not attempting suicide as a way of making us look at him.

Is Thom Yorke the new Mozart? (nb: no, he isn't)

Stellastar* feel like outsiders in the New York Music Scene, they tell nme. Nme doesn't take the hint that they were dropping, viz. they're the only band from NY who haven't yet been given a big fawning front page feature.

The Donnas burn a CD, with Pulp, Abba and Falco on it. They could be us, except we look a whole lot sweeter in a babydoll nightdress.

Colder's Mar Nguyen is just very, very French indeed.

Steve from Hot Hot Heat went to school with Nelly Furtardo. I wonder who they want to come back to do the alumnus speech.

"Everything's opened up" since Black rebel Motorcycle Club came to Britain. And you know how record companies always tell us their obsession with copyright law is based around a desire to protect the artist? Then why is it Robert feels unable to carry out his dream of burning off CD-Rs of new BRMC material to give out to fans because he "would get into trouble?"

The Darkness are going to re-release I believe in a thing called love - the nme thinks it'll get to number one, or 179 places higher than its previous outing managed. We'll see.

reviews
albums
dizzee rascal - boy in da corner - "one of the most assured debuts of the last five years", 9
movietone - movietone (re-release) - "now a much less interesting proposition", 5
janes addicition - strays - "this rocks, full stop", 8
super furry animals - phantom power - "phantastic power", 9

singles
sotw - thrice/Thursday split single - "honest, impassioned, forward-thinking"
stereophonics - maybe tomorrow - "sub-Faces bollocks"

live
ryan adams - new york battery park - "playful disorder"
slayer - astoria - "before we piss in their graves, we should get rancid hyenas to fuck them in their eye sockets"
the rapture - shoreditchh cargo - "all the compulsion of an early happy mondays"

a very treading-water week for the nme, then. but at least there's no mental image of gareth gates buncing off those silcone orbs. Or maybe he put it between them, which would be like getting a spanish necklace off a pair of spacehoppers. Or... but no, we must go and lay down. Or burn our brains out.