No Rock And Roll Fun

JUMPIN JACK SLASH: Stones boycott spreads south to the US. Jagger says, bemusingly, "I feel bad for the stores that aren't going to have the product but they have lots of other products, and music videos don't sell anything like movie DVDs." Erm... that's conciliation right there then - chin up, HMV, you weren't going to be selling thousands of the DVDs anyway. He could have added that Rolling Stones DVD do even worse business than music DVDs by groups who can't remember the Jazz Age, but for some reason chose not to.

Tower aren't going to black the band, says their man George Scarlett: "The fact that the Rolling Stones are going to bed with an electronics retailer shows how out of touch they are. Best Buy has done more than anyone to bring down the quality of music retail. But the band is a cornerstone of popular music. You can't just pull it off the shelves in a snit." There's nothing snitty, of course, by claiming that Best Buy has "brought down the quality of music retail" - and we're not sure what he means by that, unless it's their awkward habit of charging less for CDs than their music-only competitors. Scarlett also seems to contradict himself, suggesting that its out of touch to hook up with Best Buy, and yet also demonstrating that its Best Buy who are setting the current standards in music retail in the Americas. Clear?