HOW WRONG THE WORLD IS: Iggy Pop willingly accepts a song from Sum 41. Sinatra had the balls to knock back a song from Paul McCartney; Iggy accepts Sum 41 tracks. Next it'll be Blue writing tunes for The Charlatans.

HEY LOOK, THE SKANKY POPSTAR'S A BEAR: Has anyone yet offered an explanation for why Christian Aguilera is singing her new song 'Stronger' in Fozzie Bear's voice?

WHEN CONFUSING BAND NAMES ATTACK: A glorious moment from the BBC World Service, where a continuity announcer confuses Prince Far-i with ... well, I'm sure you can guess [MP3].

MORE SALES DATA AHOY: It's funny, but we've read some reports about the latest set of figures released by the BPI which make it sound like the music industry is just short of giving up altogether - Forbes, for example, reports that "British music sales tumble 13% in Q1." Blimey. Erm... except things aren't quite as bleak as that would appear. If you visit the BPI site and check their figures, they report that there was a seven percent increase in the number of albums bought by consumers in the UK for the first quarter of 2003 compared with the same period last year. Of course, this positive message would largely destory the notion that people are so busy downloading music for free from that there internet that they're not buying records any more. So, instead, the BPI is pointing to the drop in shipping levels - which have indeed seen a slide, with 5% fewer record going from the labels to stores. But this, of course, is a meaningless guide to the shape of the music market - even allowing for the unattractive range of records released this winter, the drop can be accounted for by wider spasms in the economy leading many retailers to operate with a smaller number of albums in stock - the popular 'just in time' reordering procedure.
And, lest we start to wonder exactly why the BPI are all Boo-Hoo-Hoo, they bury the sales report in the middle of one of their spurious 'piracy reports' - which again tells stories which would make you hair fall out. Providing, of course, your hair accepts the very dodgy premise that the BPI can tell when a blank CD is being sold to have music burned onto it...

SHOWS WHAT WE KNOW: Our confident prediction that The Leeds Festival would go to Temple Newsham for one last hurrah was... erm, right in every respect except being correct.

THE SAD THING IS THEY NEED RESEARCH TO TELL THEM THIS SORT OF THING: Apparently, it's a "shock" to discover that "people in their middle ages" are monsters when it comes to downloading music off the web. Except, of course, it isn't - or, rather, it shouldn't be. People tend to use the new generations of Napster to find music they can't get hold of otherwise - that Wang Chung b-side or Judie Tzuke album track that they love, but has long since retreated to the music industry's vaults; the older you are, the greater the number of your favourite tunes that will have fallen off the market shelf.

ALBARN: 'SO MUCH A COCK HE MAY NEED TO BE GIVEN SOMEWHERE TO ROOST', SAY EXPERTS: Oh, Damon, how did it come to be so? You've always had an interest in Iraqi music and so your desire to record in Baghdad isn't just some lame stunt-jumping? Watching Blur these days must be what it was like getting signed in as a guest at the Drone's club. Alex has always been a bit Bertie Wooster; with his madcap but wellmeaning embrace of any new whim that comes by, Damon is surely the Gussie Finke-Nottle of our times. [If you need further evidence, Dave is clearly Jeeves - watching quietly in the background with a detached raised eyebrow.] The brutalised people of Iraq look to the new occupiers to offer hope and a better future, and we're going to send them Damon from Blur. Right now, people in Pyongyang are muttering "If we can survive, we might get to work with Bernard Butler..."

MATHS IN ACTION: Being the all-consuimg egoists we are, we were delighted to see Ben at Silent Words adopting our mathematical formula for the moment bands become irredeemable, and applying it to Muse, with particular reference to their taking a Nina Simone song and giving it to Nestles for an advert.
Now, because we like KitKats and Alta Rica coffee, we'd be on slightly dodgy ground to condemn Muse simply for working with Nestle on moral grounds. But the point here, of course, is that A Lot of People do have a big beef with the baby milk sister company of the coffee maker, and it's not like this is the first time there's been controversey over Nescafe's invovlement with supposedly socially aware bands. Just from a PR point of view, it was an incredibly stupid thing for Muse to do. And if you can't rely on Muse to be smart, you have to ask what they're actually for.
We are quite excited by our theory, though - it explains, of course, how PJ Harvey can allow her music to be used by T-Mobile and remain unscathed, while Gay Dad's flogging of Joy to that godawful car advert ensures that they will rot in some sort of band-hell-netherworld forevermore.

CAN WE JUST STOP TALKING ABOUT THEM AND HOPE THEY'LL GO AWAY?: Tatu, we mean.




No? Oh, alright then... Their belief that the objections to their tired faux-sapphic schtick is rooted in fear and disgust at unbridled Lesbiania continues to get laughed out of court. It wasn't the frollicking schoolgirls which led to their manager being dragged to court after a Red Square video shoot - it was because neighbours complained about the 'squawking' of their fans.
Meanwhile, Lorraine Kelly doesn't like them, but she sounds more bored than censoroious.

SOMETIMES, THEY'RE JUST SAT THERE WAITING TO BE PLUCKED: Ricky Martin spends some time every evening talking to himself in the mirror - he says this makes him spiritual, which - interestingly - suggests he thinks that 'talking to myself in the mirror' and 'talking to the supreme being, the deity, the creator through prayer' are interchangable.

PLACEBO AND CHARITY GO TOGETHER LIKE...: Well, bread and cheese, actually: The reformed pervs of pop have been the first band to sign up for a new scheme where a portion of their gig tickets goes towards buying instruments for disadvantaged kids.
Well, maybe not totally reformed: there's an x-rated version of the new video This Picture available for streaming from their website...

SHOOTING FISH IN A BUCKET: Isn't arresting Chong (out of Cheech and Chong) on drugs charges a little bit like picking up Bush on his rubbish use of English?

GLUTTONS FOR PUNISHMENT?: Presumably emboldened by taking the decision after the local elections, Leeds Council have surprised everyone by granting permission for the Leeds Festival to take place again at Newsham Park. Mean Fiddler are now weighing up which of the two approvals - Braham Park or Temple Newsham - makes the most sense.
We have a sneaking suspiscion they'll go with Newsham, so as to give themselves a chance to prove they can run it peacefully and banish the ghosts; and, presumably, if Braham had been first choice, they'd never have bothered applying for Newsham in the first place...

NOT MANY GAY MEN HAVE EVER WON EUROVISION: Or so it would seem by the torrents of bitterness being poured out by former winners of the event. Katrina, out of Katrina and the Waves says its like a dog relieving itself in the corner of the room and dismisses it as 'crap' - she claims not to have heard of the contest before entering (hmm, a woman so familiar with the fine print of British Culture she was able to sing about UB40s, and yet unaware of Eurovision - and, presumably, Abba?), but even this doesn't prevent us from asking if it's such a pile of crap, what would you call an entrant that comes on the top of the pile?
Even more mind-blowingly, someone from the Brotherhood of Man says "It's become very boring. It's become mundane." Which has caused something of a logjam in the mote, beam, kettle and black department.

ARCHIVES OF GAIN: Good news that long-hoarded Radio Clyde sessions are being released on CD; but it also stops you short: Clyde's archives can be raided because back in the 80s they were putting out live, exclusive sessions by the likes of the then not ego-stained U2 and Elvis Costello before he became a cockney on Frasier. How many commercial stations in the UK are putting out stuff now that compares with that sort of then-risky programming? X-FM, possibly. And, erm, that's probably going to be it...

LIMPING BADLY: In a bid to make it up to those people disappointed by their non-appearance at Download, Limp Bizkit are promising 'surprise free events' when they make it to Britain in August. If they make it. We suspect this is actually code for "we're being forced to do instore appearances to try and shift the ugly monolith of the album so we're going to try and pretend we're doing them for the fans ratehr than because some exec sat us down and screamed 'listen, porky, even bloody Madonna is having to shake her titties in motherfuckin english record stores; if madonna needs to do it, you double need'."

TEMPLE OF THE FREE: The Cooper Temple Clause have hooked up with Apple and are going to make available the whole of their Glasgow gig online to download forty-eight hours after the event - which means, like, tomorrow. You'll be able to keep the tracks forever, and there's even a competition to make a video and win an I-Pod and everything.
We imagine this is all a test to see exactly how popular the concept of making whole gigs available for official download would be; something we - straightens tie - were suggesting has to be the next move forward in our Placebo review.
That Apple have chosen the CTC to pilot the scheme makes us very happy indeed - if it had been Microsoft, they'd probably have given us some snatches of Madonna's HMV gig...

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..."

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..."

NOTHING IS ALL BAD: SARS has led to David Gray cancelling his tour of Asia. We're now wondering if the Asians have just been putting this all on.

SHE'S NOW HER OWN GIRL: Vogue conifdently state Stella McCartney has thrown off 'rock star's daughter' tag... at end of very long paragraph detailing the engagements that are going to keep Paul from going to her next show and suggesting that the 'fashion folk' who do turn up do so in the hope of getting a glimpse of Macca.

OH... YEAH... SORRY, HAVE A T-SHIRT: We know that the RIAA has been throwing its weight around, bullying universities and companies over the existence of "illegal" files being shared on their servers. But how certain are the RIAA of their facts before they go steaming in? As their shit-eating apology to Penn State proves, they're really doing little more than leaping to assumptions. Penn State have a bloke called Usher working for them; they also had a totally legal mp3 sound file of some astonomers singing or something. The RIAA concluded that 'usher' and 'mp3' on the servers meant that Penn State was distributing Usher, the singer's copyrighted material, and sent a legal letter demanding the files go, lest the astronomy department feels their wrath and anger.
So, basically, they went steaming in with absolutely no evidence. And there was no evidence, because there was no wrong doing. Penn State, of course, pointed out the error, and the RIAA mumbled an apology, blamed it on a temp, and sent a tshirt by way of recompense.
This doesn't seem to be good enough to us - Penn will have had to spend time and money sorting out this problem, and a crappy tshirt hardly consititutes restitution (although we'd like to see the university stick it up on Ebay.) Even if there had been a transgression, we're still not entirely sure why the RIAA are being allowed to force colleges to waste time and resources on dealign with what are basically their own commercial interests. The organisation points out that this is the first error that's come to light after 10,000 compliance letters they've fired off, but how many colleges are going to be able to investigate the veracity of the RIAA's claims? Most - fearing a legal action in which they'd be easily out-funded by the combined might of the big five record labels - just cave in rather than try to get to the truth. Since now the RIAAS cheerfully admits that it doesn't bother to check the files they believe to be copyrighted actually are the tracks they believe them to be, maybe it should be politely suggested to them they now suspend the shooting-fish-in-a-virtual-barrell hunt altogether?

BRUMMIE AIR: There's a whole heap of applicants wanting to grab the new Birmingham commercial radio licence - ranging from Capital Disney to Kerrang. Most of the focus on the battle is down to the supposed war between Ozzy Osbourne and his son Louis 'no, I wasn't in the show' Osbourne; Louis is involved with the bid from Jump; Ozzy is throwing his weight behind the move to get Virgin Radio an FM slot by this back door. The oz-meister wants Virgin to get the licence because Birmingham is the birthplace of Black Sabbath, so - in some way - he feels it would appropriate to have a rock station there. Why he's therefore supporting Virgin, whose playlist this week consists of Coldplay, Avril, Robbie Williams and so on, rather than Kerrang is anyone's guess. Oh, hang about, we've had a guess - is it because Virgin play old people rock rather than new rock?
To be honest, Jump sounds like a more horific prospect than any of the others - okay, maybe not worse than Capital Disney, but... - "A hybrid mix of modern rock and alternative rhythmic music with news, comedy and info-tainment targeting under-30's." Supported by the ever-declining Cream empire, it appears (so 'alternative rhythmic music' would be dance, then?). No Rock believes that you cannot stab someone who uses the word 'info-tainment' often enough, hard enough, or in a painful enough place; but it shouldn't stop you trying.

GOOD NEWS FOR PEOPLE WHO FLOG LAGER FROM BAGS: There's def going to be a Leeds Festival of some sort, as Leeds City Council have approved Brammal Park as a location - even if tonight's application for Temple Newsham gets knocked back.
Apparently, Mean Fiddler have got "new, non-combustable" toilets lined up - a major breakthrough in portable toilet technology that sounds more like hope than a guarantee; if not an outright challenge.
What has emerged during the planning meeting is that the new venue has got one small shop nearby, and the nearest supermarket - four miles away - is going to be closed. No Rock is currently forecasting, then, that lads selling cans of lager will be charging two quid per can; and by the middle of Blur's set packets of biscuits will have become an official currency.

WE'RE HAVING AN APPEAL TO TRY AND BUY ROBBIE SOME DIGNITY: We thought begging people to request your record was low, but there's always a step down to be had - Giving Simon Cowell a lap dance on TV might have worked if he was on British TV, but did nobody explain to Robbie Williams that - since nobody in America knows who he is (apart from the 31,000 people who've bought Escapology over the last five weeks), it looks more like discovering the cleaner trying to chat up your wife.

THINGS JUST GET WORSE AND WORSE FOR HER: When Mariah feels things are tough, Ms Carey can always rely on her fans, can't she? Erm... nope. Her Australian fansite has closed, ostensibly in protest at the lack of interest her label shows in promoting her in Australia (hmmm, wonder why they're not keen on sending her over to Oz? Surely not a lack of willingness to stump up the heavy investment involved in such a jaunt; that would kind of imply a lack of faith in your artist, wouldn't it?). Even her most ardent fans are losing the will to live ("finding it hard to be there for her").

OH, YES...: Mylene's million quid contract? It's a six album deal. So, the money isn't quite as silly as reports yesterday wanted you to believe...

FAIRYTALE RENDING: Mylene Klass spills about the Hear'say experience for her and Noel - she became a paranoid wreck; got so thin her friends dubbed her Boney M; broke down in tears on TV; hit rock bottom; she feels like she's thirty years older than she really is; he's on anti-depressants. "But I still want the fairytale" she trills - presumably because she only needs to be eaten by a wolf and locked in an oven and she'll have completed the full set of misery.

A WORK IN PROGRESS, WE THINK: An attempt to explain why bands can ebb and flow in how good they are, how tolerable they are, but that there always comes a point where they just go beyond the pale:
each band is granted, by God, or Paul Morley, a fixed amount of goodwill when they start out. For some bands, its a lot (Blur, apparently); for others, it's less (Shed Seven).

But all have a certain degree of goodwill. Let's call it x.

As they slug away making records, they can add to the goodwill (making good records, playing small venues in Northumberland, being amusing in interviews) which will increase x.

Or, they can sap the goodwill (putting out the same single three times because its been used in a mobile phone advert, cancelling gigs to do ToTP, releasing albums of Malawi musicians because you think its cool, taking loads of drugs to the point where they believe we actually are interested in the drugs they take). x diminishes.

There comes a point - and, i think this what happened with Blur - that x eventually sinks below zero. And once that's happened, there's no way of getting any more. You can build on goodwill, but once it's gone, it's gone.

NINE OUT OF TEN OUR RECORDS ARE RUBBISH: A new neurosis for the stressed record exec: what if they prune a healthy branch? Inspired by Sony's turned-out-to-be-wrong dumping of Alicia Keys and 50 Cent, now the time of the year for slamming the door on the way out has come round, labels - especially the Makers of Walkman - are shit-scared they're going to get it wrong again.
Seriously, we're meant to be sorry for these guys and their dwindling sales, and yet they almost brag that nine-tenths of the stuff they put out nobody wants; now they're throwing the baby out with the proverbial bath water. They really don't have a clue, do they?

ALL THE HITS THAT FIT: A dismal piece in the Chicago Tribune introduces Hit Song Science, which uses maths and computers to help all of the big five labels decide what tracks to release from albums as singles. Of course computers are going to be good at spotting hits - it's their friend computers over in radio which are programming the shows and making the hits.

NO SECOND DATE: We're hugely amused that LavaLife, the interweb dating people, are attempting to bark up new members by offering people the chance to win a dream date in New York... watching Coldplay. Surely "Do you want to see Coldplay?" is a chat-up line that can only translate as "Mother is going out on Tuesday, it will be safe if you come back to mine to lose your virginity afterwards"?

LOU'S FLUSHED WITH SUCCESS: Lou Rawls has had his domestic assault charges against him thrown out because the alleged victim wouldn't testify. We thought it only fair to point that out. Buggers his chances of a top three single this week, though.

KLASSIKAL MUSIK: Mylene Klass, part of the Hear'Say experiment, has been given a contract that you can apparently total up to be worth a million quid by Universal Classical. The idea, it seems, is to bridge the gap between classical music and pop music. Since the presence of Pop Star Mylene Klass couldn't persuade pop music fans to buy pop music, we're not sure how she's suddenly meant to persuade people to change their musical tastes. Unless, of course, the idea is for her to continue releasing pop songs until everyone tramps over to Classic FM just to escape her?

OF COURSE, THEY'VE NOT BEEN CONVICTED OF ANYTHING: But the midweeks are currently showing R 'child skiddling' Kelly at number one and Girls 'racial abuse' Aloud at number two. Chart full of people being tried as chummies, then. Isn't it about time they stopped allowing people to release godawful records as part of the bail conditions?

REET FOR DROS: Aretha Franklin is holding a vigil for Luther Vandross. With that whole house-burning down thing still waiting to be resolved, let's hope its not a candelit one.

NOW IT'S ROSA PARKS VERSUS OUTKAST - AGAIN: Rosa Parks has been given the right to revive her case against Outkast over their use of her name as a song title. Previously, in a lowe court, Outkast had won claiming she was an icon and saying it was freedom of speech. Um, lads? How great do you think it makes you look that you're forcing a 90 year old hero through the courts because she doesn't want you to use her name? This isn't like when Disney wouldn't let Bomb Dinseyland use their name; this is slightly different. The right thing to do would have been to have said "sorry" and changed the title of the track.
Of course, what Rosa should have done was go and sit down on Outkast's tourbus until they did they right thing.

NO NOEL? OH, 'ELL: Sad to hear of the death of Noel Redding, Hendrix's bassist... perhaps slightly sadder that for his obituary, they couldn't turn up a picture of him and so used one of Jimi instead. Even in his own death, he's getting second billing.

JUST WHAT ARE THE PROBLEMS WITH LIMP BIZKIT?: The album title keeps changing; the release date keeps sliding; now Limp Bizkit have pulled out of the Download Festival. Fred Durst says "we've been kept back until we make something the record company can put out with a straight face" (' "sometimes you just have to go with flow of creativity" ').

THE PEOPLE THE RIAA ARE ATTACKING ARE THE ONES WHO FEED ITS CHILDREN, PART 3322: Another week, more evidence that downloading tracks tneds to generate real sales rather than replace them: Researchers have found a correlation between music downloading and music purchases. Nielsen/NetRatings (NTRT: news, chart, profile) reported 22 percent of Internet users downloaded music during the past 30 days, and 71 percent of them bought music online or offline in the past three months. The most popular genres for purchases were rap, dance and club, R&B, soul music and rock. "Understanding the music that sells well online and offline will be crucial to generating revenue along the way," said Greg Bloom, senior Internet analyst. [Source: CBS Marketwatch] Now, maybe they'll stop fretting about the downloads and get round to releasing some new stuff worth our money?

NEW PORN: The New Pornographer's new album Electric Version is 6Music's album of the day, and sample tracks are available for streaming right now from the BBC website. Hurrah!

LEEDS UNITED: Leeds City Council adopt half-hearted, fooling nobody position by saying that even if licences are granted for both their suggested Leeds Festival venues, Mean Fiddler may still decide to not hold a northern leg of the Carling Weekender at all. Now, while this may calm down some residents, the chances of MF going to all this trouble and then saying "... but, actually, we won't really bother" are probably lower than my chances of developing the power of unaided flight before the end of the year. We suspect Leeds Council are merely pre-empting a backlash amongst the residents nearer the likely site of the festival, Bramham Park by suggesting that it may all come to nowt in the long run anyway.
Dawn Hindle, who works the tickets at Red Rhino records in Leeds, suggests "It’s a fantastic thing for Leeds, it’s such a good thing to have here. If you have to go to Reading or Glastonbury, it’s quite a way to travel from the north of England. And it brings a lot into the city. But isn't the lot it brings into the city the problem - the rioters, the arsonists, the police, sons of Labour MPs running amok...

CRASH, BANG, WALLOP: Last week a survey found that Eminem's great artwork Lose Yourself is the most popular song for football teams about to go on the pitch; this week, we discover that it's also the song most likely to make you crash your car. We wonder if this explains Brighton and Hove Albion's recent form?

YOU CAN TASTE THE NON-BITTERNESS: Lisa Scott-Lee claims to not be bearing grudges against H and Claire; still feels need to point out they "ruined Christmas."

BOOK, ALBUM AND CANDLE: We wonder if Suede's decision to publish an official story has been influenced by the John Harris Britpop book The Last Party, in which Brett plays rather a large and slighlty oily part? Whatever, the official book is going to be put together by - says a Suede official mailout - "author David Barnett, who has worked at the heart of the Suede organisation for 8 years." So, that's going to be someone who'll be happy to bite the hand which has poured the Lassie Meaty Chunks into his bowl for the best part of a decade then. We expect there will be some heroin revelations, but we'd imagine that if Brett ever believed his penis to be the King of France and spent four nights puking into his underpants, we'll not be getting the full picture. Nevertheless, David is promising much for the work: "it's going to make 'No One Here Gets Out Alive' look like Enid Blyton." he says. Although he does seem to be having some problems, as the same mailout begs anyone who's got any memories or stories to send an email to him to help out. We wouldn't be as childish to suggest you sent him emails saying "While camping on summer hols, Brett and Richard stumbled on an abandoned castle, where tyre marks suggested someone had recently been by...". And certainly "Bernard had a massive row with Brett. He was so very, very cross he played his guitar quite loud. And then got into his little car and drove across poptown to see his new friend McAlmont...." isn't the sort of thing they're after.
Anyway: new album of all the singles ("greatest hits") to come soon. The candle was merely a headline device.

NOW ALL WE NEED IS A PAUL MORLEY BLOG: Apparently, Google are mulling chasing blogs off to a separate part of the search engine because we're 'distorting' the results of searches. This seems a little bit harsh - sure there are some blogs which are little more than link regeneration, but most of them contain original material that shouldn't be treated as invalid simply because it's expressed through a rolling service rather than created in an HTML laboratory somewhere. It almost starts to suggest a world where Google thinks that web pages are only worth it if they've been constructed by official sources. Some blogs, however, are written by distinguished men of letters. Such as the great Ian Penman, who's got online and is spewing out his thoughts on a regular basis.

OH... O: I know it shouldn't make a difference, but... discovering Karen O has a personal stylist does take something away from how cool she looks. Or is that just me? Especially since she doesn't seem to have very much input to it at all - "make it debauched" is as far as it seems to go; she more-or-less implies that some of it makes her feel a bit uncomfortable. We'd give Avril a kicking for less, so it's worse when its the Yeah Yeah Yeahs...

PUFFED-UP PEOPLE OF POP: We've always suspected that Eminem's self-directed humour was stirctly licensed, so long as he retains control - like the Lord of Misrule in Medeaval times was supposedly an upsetting of the social order but only ever within strict boundaires. And now, it seems, we were right. Eminem won't let Weird Al Jankovitz do a parody video of Lose Yourself. His spokesperson says ""It's an important personal piece of music for him, a piece of art," spokesman Dennis Dennehy said Friday. "He doesn't mind him doing the song, (but) he didn't want to change kids' visual perception on what that image was. He wanted to make sure the image would remain intact."
Don't mess with the piece of art, man. This, of course, is the same Eminem who happily guyed One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest for a video, is it? But maybe the rules are different for Eminem.