Heads up

Last night's Friday Night With Jonathan Ross had Radiohead on, and we remembered why we loved them so. (Actually, Shania Twain, also a guest, came across as a likeable person, too. Albeit she seemed to be kind of... shall we say modulated?).

Besides the excellent version of Fake Plastic Trees, which the production team had the wisdom to allow to finish before rolling the credits across the screen, there was the delight of Thom Yorke being presented with a Tavares CD by Ross (to give him songwriting pointers) and the shaking of hands on agreement for Radiohead to provide next year's UK entry to Eurovision - which we hope comes to more than just a quick gag; we'd really love to see that.

If you're in the UK, the whole thing gets repeated this evening sometime after midnight. You might want to tape it.

THE LAST LAUGH?: After all the jibes about her being sent so far to the back of the video she was virtually on Vh-1 instead of MTV, Carnie Wilson has shed pounds and is now going to show it all in Playboy. It's just a bit of a shame that Playboy wouldn't have looked twice at her before she dieted, and that she could at least acknowledge the wrinkle in preaching that you should be proud and free with what you are, while flogging diet books...

CHRISTINA - A WARNING FROM HISTORY: A wonderful, obsessive chap believes he predicted Christina Aguilera thirteen years before she forgot to wear clothes. He's obviously nuts, but even so: if you'd had visions of Christina and not warned anyone, would you boast about it? [Link via b3ta.com]

IN THROUGH THE WINDOW: It turns out the rumours of a Libertine gig in a flat in Chelsea were spot on. We didn't go, but Kirsty of You'reSoOldStreet.co.uk did clamber under the sash, and she's agreed to let us use her on-the-spot report:
The gig took place in a tiny one bed flat in Chelsea, complete with a very sweet little garden. which saw the first set of the evening by Peter, and was soon swilled with beer, and very crowded. A folk-ish type took over when the young girl who's guitar it was decided she wanted it back. Pah ;) Back inside the lovely, graffiti covered flat (all done that day, which my dress can attest to since its now covered in red paint) the equipment finally turned up, and random people were dragged in to play drums and guitar since the only libertine that was in attendance was peter. The police soon arrived, well, a few times actually, until they threatened to confiscate the equipment. the band who had brought the stuff in quickly started packing everything away, with peter still singing on. Eventually, the police agreed to a compromise of letting it continue acoustically, which was my highlight of the evening, esp. since Peter relented to my pestering for Bucket Shop and Music When The Lights Go Out. Also played were about three versions of Babyshambles, and 2 of Don't Look Back Into The Sun (which is all finished and being mixed at the moment). And much much more. Then, of course, the police decide its time for quiet, and a very hot, sweaty and shambollic night comes to an end.

GOOD POINT, WELL MADE: Karl has emailed us again, and makes this observation:
I don't mean to pester you again, but after reading your Americans, Eh? post, I thought of a wonderfully flawed argument:  In the nineties we gave them Bush and Reef.  They gave us back Buffalo Tom and Pavement.  We won that one.

IT'S THE SONG I HATE: The ever-wonderful Spizzazz are just coming to the end of their Hate Week, an excellent example to us all of The Correct Use of Bile.

IT'S THE FRIDAY DRUMMER ROUND-UP:
Godsmack singer Sully Erna a little too influenced by Rush drummer Neil Peart
Mickey Hart - the Grateful Dead drummer - seeks 'songcatchers'
Left to do the regional US press, Matchbox 20 drummer announces band are proudly unhip
Mike Heidron recalls his days drumming for Uncle Tupelo
Lars Ulrich says new Metallica album shows gentler side to the band - probably could have done that by Not Pursuing Own Fans

AMERICANS, EH?: They take Coldplay and Travis to their hearts, when they're quite happy to shun their homegrown, much better variety in Buffalo Tom.

AT LEAST SHE'S NOT MEG: The headline says 'Mavericks to support Shania Twain'. The photo suggests that it's actually an awful lot of scaffolding and mesh.

NEWS SO BLEAK, IT COULD CAST CLOUDS OVER A SUNNY FRIDAY: Junior Eurovision. Combining the merits of Eurovision with the joys of kid's talent shows. We wonder if the Carlton spokesperson stopped to consider their quote to the effect that Britain has lots of talent, and this is a great first step for future Britneys and Justins; and if he did, why he had to search for American examples of artists?

IN THAT SAME PIECE: Cary Sherman of the RIAA says that one of their problems is getting the message out to kids "raised on downloading" who've "never been into a store and paid for a CD in their life." What, like six year olds? Cary, if a kid is so uninterested in music they get to 18 without ever having bought a CD, you're not looking at a lost customer, you're looking a dead soul. You're not going to be able to reach out to him and try and tempt him into Tower. Even if the Internet was unplugged tomorrow, someone who reaches puberty without buying a single record is never going to buy a record, period. You really don't understand your customers, do you?

PERCEPTION IS ALL, REALLY: There's a fascinating anecdote at the start of this C-Net article about file sharing:
Mark Ishikawa was eating dinner at the Los Angeles Hilton a few weeks ago when he overheard a couple discussing the virtues of downloading music using free services like Kazaa.
As CEO of BayTSP, a company that tracks copyright infringement on file-swapping networks for record labels and movie studios, Ishikawa had a professional interest in the subject. So when he walked around the corner, expecting to see two college students, he was stunned to find a pair of senior citizens--a sign, he says, of how far the practice has spread.
Righto, so what does this tell us? Firstly, that most of the people working in the computer industry - like those in the music industry - really can't seem to get their heads round the concept that Lots Of Older People Use Their Products.
Secondly, more importantly, the CEO of a company drawing down large sums of money from record labels and studios for their supposed expertise in the area of computer downloads was stunned to stumble on this fact by accident.
Now, if I was paying big bucks to have my copyrights policed by a company like BayTSP, I might be a bit curious as to how much value I was getting for my dollar if the guy who runs the company didn't know that not all file sharing is done by students in colleges. Isn't this a bit like hiring a bodyguard who later visits you in hospital and says 'sorry, mate, it came out of the blue to me that women carry guns as well'?

IT WASN'T US, M'KAY?: This whole tale about a little blind girl who got a brush-off email from someone pretending to be Mariah Carey smells a bit iffy to us. It's not merely because the whole premise sounds like the sort of TV Movie Hallmark would blush to show during daytime, but we can't quite figure out how it all was meant to have happened. The grandmother of the girl visits a website which she mistakes for an official Mariah site, sends an email, gets back a callous brush-off, Mariah gets to hear about it, and now it looks like a meeting will be arranged.
Okay, let's be fair and accept this bit "Hofland said her granddaughter admires Carey so much she has learned to play some of her songs on the piano.
"Mariah is her imaginary friend. She takes Mariah everywhere with her," Hofland said. "When I pick her up, Mariah Carey is in the car. She absolutely adores her." And let's try and pretend that it doesn't sound either like PR guff or the sort of thing that maybe should be seen as a cry for help.
But this still leaves the question: if the site was a Mariah site, it must have been run by a Mariah fan, who presumably wouldn't jerk-off one of her fellow fans in her idol's name? And if it was an anti-Mariah site, how stupid would a person have to be to send such a request to, say these people?
And, finally, how would Mariah have got to hear about this anyway? From some of the press reports, you could think that Mariah doesn't hear the sound of townspeople when they arrive to float her comfort pills up to her on balloons, much less about a blind girl getting the bum's rush. The whole thing smells of PR make-up to us.

GIVE IT UP, LOVE: As the anorak gloss of the tabloid covering makes clear, Victoria Beckham can go and mull exciting new rap directions all she likes. It's still her tits that get the coverage.

PEOPLE YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE NAKED: Are we going blind, or does Eve 6's singer look like a dead ringer for Jamie out of Space? Anyway, blah blah on the road hijinks... walking round naked... arrested.... The key bit of the story, mind, is this: "The bucknaked singer/bassist strode up to the hotel's front desk around 11:45 p.m. Monday evening to ask for shaving cream, according to accounts by hotel employees. Only after he turned around to leave did they notice that Collins had taken the name of the 20,000-population town literally." So, they didn't notice a naked man standing in front of them until he showed them his arse? Is it just us, or is that a code for saying 'Max Collins has a tiny cock'?

ANOTHER FACTORY OPENS: Like that other stalwart of Granada TV, Mike Baldwin, Tony Wilson seems to love opening new Factories. He's already used the name for a label twice, and now he's given his official blessing to a third, FACT:ory. The clumsy pun is being used by Liverpool's post-soviet concete arts mall FACT (dyswtdt?) for a label that seems to be planning on releasing stuff for a future 365 day style project - tower block residents and performance poetry. We're kind of hoping that the label is a roaring success, if only for the look on the faces of Liverpool's other subsidy-hoover LIPA (aka "the Paul McCartney Fame School") if an upstart video gallery manages the kind of success that eludes their highly-trained students.
Talking of LIPA After several years of trying to catapult themselves into the national headlines, they had a limited measure of success in the last couple of weeks. First, one of their lecturers went a bit far in emulating the antics of founder Macca, and got himself banged up for smuggling drugs to Japan and they were able to claim the title of 'least liked songwriters in Europe' - Jemini's shunned Eurovision entry was, erm, written by LIPA's head of music.
Still, one of A1 went there. And, erm, someone in the house band on The Saturday Show. (No, I didn't know they had one, either).

OH GOOD, ANOTHER CHART IN THE SLOT: As if the battle of the charts isn't bad enough (and we can't believe that anyone - hello, Metro - is seriously suggesting that another ITV Network Chart show is going to undermine Top of the Pops, by the way) Xfm is now moving up Music response, its own chart, to enter the fray - giving London listeners a choice of four rival charts at Sunday teatime.
Music Response is, of course, a pure vote chart. Interestingly, when accused of making it a bit meaningless, Xfm bristle that votes "run into the thousands." So, just over the hundreds, then. If it's only 2000 votes, and forty records... well, you do the math...

THERE'S ONLY ONE THING WORSE THAN EUROVISION SHUNNING YOU: And that's kicking a fuss up about it. Tatu seem to have realised their middling performance on Eurovision has marked them out as nothing more than Bardo with strap-ons. But rather than shut up about it, they're launching a challenge to the results. They probably think they can at least salvage some publicity, and they'd be right - but the bad sort.

CLEAR STANCE: We've had the link for Arundhati Roy's lecture on Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy sat in our inbox for a while now [apologies to Eleanor Oguma who brought it to our attention]. In the course of taking a scalpel to the state of US democracy, Roy echoes the reason why we get worried by the dominance of Clear Channel in the US radio market (and the UK, too, the way things are going) - it's not just about what makes the Top 40...

HERRING ON LAVIGNE: With that Sk8r Boi movie already setting the world alight - if I heard one person say "The Matrix Revolutions has no interest for me now; I want to see this story that I actually know the ending of because the song was on the radio every fucking ten seconds" this week, I've heard that a billion times - it's timely to read Richard Herring's closer look at the lyrics. [Thanks to Justin for the link].

BAT OUT OF TEESIDE: Meatloaf is looking for a home in Hartlepool - and apparently he supports the local team, too. Wouldn't that be a delicious episode of Location, Location, Location?
Interestingly, if he moves in it means Peter Mandelson would be his MP.

BLAME CANADA: Toronto have cooked up a plan to persuade people it's safe to visit despite all that SARS business. They're going to have a big gig with Avril Lavigne, Barenaked Ladies and Sum 41. Yes, it might convince people the place is safe, but it's not going to make them any more likely to go there, is it? Faced with a choice between a 28 Days Later style urban meltdown and a gig where barenaked ladies warm up for Avril, I think I'd strap a Hello Kitty facemask over my gob and risk my health.
We did like this, though: "We want summer to start with a real bang, something that's going to bring a lot of livelihood, rockin' and poppin' and all that," Ontario cabinet minister Brian Coburn said. Presumably he's got the Daddio portfolio in the cabinet?

AND SO THIS IS FAB, IS IT?: Emma Bunton to make cameo appearance in new series of Ab Fab. We're just shocked they're both still going so many years after even gay men have given up on them.

HOLMES ALOUD: Very great upsetment caused by Eamonn Holmes puckish insistence on calling One True Voice 'Boys Aloud' all the way through their GM-TV interview yesterday morning. But only to One True Voice fans, which is such a tiny minority even Amnesty would shrug.

I QUIT: Pearl Jam seem to be spinning their recent departure from Epic as them quitting. Which maybe they did, in a standing out in the street, screaming "Yeah? Well you can't drop us - we quit" at the closing doors fashion.

AVRIL - THE MOVIE: We're not sure they're going to be able to strecth out the premise of Sk8r Boi into a full length movie - actually, we're not sure that it quite stretches to a three minute pop song. There's a couple of interesting side issues here - despite Avril's claims that the Matrix couldn't possibly have written that song without her, as it was based on something that had happened to her, it doesn't seem that Avril has been given a plum consultancy role on the flick - just the Matrix team. Odd that - supposedly her original idea and yet she doesn't get an input? Unless she was lying, of course...
The other thing that catches our eye is that there's going to be whats being described as an "event album" (a soundtrack, to you and me) with original songs inspired by the movie. Or: songs of the film of the song. Curious.

HAT'S ENTERTAINMENT: Bono is pretty good at lecturing us all about how unfair the world is, and how those with power and money should do more to help those without. So, let's try and be charitable and see his sending a hat on its own first class airline seat not as a disgusting squandering of cash and airline fuel, nor as a nifty way of ensuring one less customer got an upgrade from coach, but instead, as a donation to help the cash-strapped airline industry, shall we?

THE PLACES YOU GET SPACES: Another email, from Aaron Scullion, suggests that the nme's report of empty spaces at radiohead's belfast dates might not be quite as unusual as the paper would have us believe:
As someone who was brought up just outside Belfast, the stuff in the NME about Radiohead not selling out Belfast made me smile. Big gigs by big alternative bands never, ever, sell out in Belfast.

Not sure why, as the alternative community, if small, is quite excitable, and Belfast has many more cool alt club nights and venues than comparable cities have, but just doesn't go for big gigs. Indeed, when Blur did their 'greatest hits' tour a couple of years ago, long after the mainland gigs sold out, I remember being able to buy tickets at the box office just a couple of days before the show.

Plus, the Waterfront Hall, where Radiohead played, is a terrible, terrible venue for gigs, and everyone in Belfast interested in good alternative music knows it.

Anyway, point is, it wasn't Radiohead's fault. And, as I had tickets for the Shepherd's Bush show on Sunday (which was absolutely fantastic), I can tell you, the touts were out in abundance.

On the other hand, maybe it was Radiohead's fault - the Waterfront Hall is a pretty big venue by Belfast standards. Had they played a smaller venue, like the Limelight or the Belfast Empire, then they would have been playing a small show. As it was, they were playing the equivalent of an arena gig.
Must stop rambling..

YOUR FACE IS A FOREIGN FOOD/ I REALLY DON'T KNOW IF I SHOULD: Karl has emailed us to bring daylight where there was only darkness before on two matters of note. First, he confirms that "not only have the House of Love reformed, but they're playing venues as mighty as, err, Bedford Esquires."
Then he points out that Careless Whisper was released outside the UK as "Wham! Featuring George Michael" (which is a bit like saying 'spaghetti with pasta', really). So, um, Rory was right, then, assuming he lives outside of the British Isles. In which case, we'll get some pie made from 'umbles...

GONE TOO SOON: Sorry to hear that Jeremy Michael Ward of the Mars Volta and De Facto has been found dead at home. He was only 27. It's thought to be a drugs overdose.

WHO DARES CHALLENGE THE MIGHTY NO ROCK?: Well, okay, on a good day we might about be able to hold off blogcritics for long enough for us to escape. But Rory Phillips has reckoned he spotted us being factually wrong when we described Careless Whisper as being by George Michael, not by Wham! Rory points out the track appeared on Wham's Make It Big. Maybe, but it was still a George Michael solo single - they threw it onto Make It Big as a sop to ensure the album still sold. I mean, it stretches credibility to suggest that Ridgeley had much to do with the Wham! tracks; let's not start giving him credit for doing George's solo work, too...

CAN THIS BE, TOO?: House of Love have reformed? Again, we're looking at you?

CAN THIS BE?: Secret Libertines gig in Chelsea tonight, which you have to clamber through a window for? Can anyone confirm?

POP PAPERS ADDITIONAL: If you're wondering... no, we didn't forget to say anything about the article relating to the strokes cover. There just wasn't anything about them in the issue. True.

ASH SPLASH FASH HASH... Okay, it's not actually a headline, it's just a lot of rhyming words: Becky Bamboo sees Ash in San Fransisco, and she's smitten...

The sun was still above the horizon when I parked the car and headed to Slim's. There's something just not right about going to a rock show when the sun is up. Rock music thrives in the shadows, in the cramped space between the walls. The sun seems to burn off all the danger. Daylight is safe. Light is certainty. Give me the recklessness of night, the ambiguity of darkness. Or, you know, tickets to the Live 105 BFD all day festival with Interpol and the White Stripes next month. Me and my SPF 60 sublock will be front row center.

First up was a local band from San Francisco named rubbersidedown. They were okay in a perfectly razor-cut, expensive highlights, just dabbling kind of way. I was seriously getting distracted by the fabulous haircut the bass player had. Not to mention the single dangling earring in his left ear. The music was all right. There were a couple of decent songs and the rest were just filler.

You know, I've been wondering lately about my ability to appreciate new bands. I keep going to show after show and my notes are all the same for the opening bands, "generic" "okay" "I've heard worse". I keep thinking maybe I'm in a rut. That I've hit that point at which you stop being able to recognize genius. Am I now just one of those old fogeys who automatically think everything is crap? Luckily the Space Twins came out before I could start freaking out too much. First thing I wrote, halfway into the first song, "now these guys I *LIKE*." The singer looked totally familiar and reminded me of that guy in Weezer. Which is cool because I found out today it actually is the guy from Weezer. Yes, I'm an idiot. Anyway. The songs were great, ranging from dreamy shoegazer type to all out 70's rockers. The entire set had a very Velvet Goldmine feel to it. There were some absolutely gorgeous melodies and great guitar hooks. I'm totally buying their cd. (I would've gotten it at the show but I didn't want to lose my place in front for Ash and the line was crazy insane afterward.)

And then we had Ash. I've come late to Ash but am enthusiastically making up for lost time. Tim was wearing jeans and an orange Datsuns t-shirt with the sleeves cut off and Charlotte was in a jeans miniskirt, fishnets, and a black tanktop with sparkles around the arms. And she was barefoot too. They started out hard, with a couple of songs I hadn't heard before. They played a few new ones (telling us they'd be back early next year with a new album) and a bunch of hits: Angel Interceptor, Shining Light, Jack Names the Planets, Walking Barefoot, Sometimes, Girl From Mars, before closing with a furious rendition of Kung Fu. They only did one encore (a new song, Envy - which I still don't like very much, and Burn, Baby Burn). They ended up playing for a little over an hour, but that's totally cool because they put on a great, energetic show. Tim totally bops all around and is damn sexy playing that guitar. I still think Rhett has him beat on that front, but with a few more hip swivels thrown in there Tim could make it a close call. Especially if he broke out those adorable dimples. ANYWAY. I took pictures. Oh yes, I did. I'll try and post them next week. If you're nice I'll even include the one of him all tied up in my garage.

WHAT THE POP PAPERS SAY: Pram style edition
Satire is alive and well and living in Space, the Liverpool Echo's latest attempt to bully any and every possible rival to its lucrative advertising monopoly out of the market by launching a similar, tackier, but much better resourced product to any magazine that looks like it might thrive. Hence, this spoiler for the so-so Your Move. Anyway, it claims to be 'stylish living in Liverpool'. The cover, to demonstrate just how stylish the city is: Atomic Kitten.

If I was Anastacia, I'd be really pissed off today, what with Sun deciding to grant moral equivalence to my story about breast cancer with, erm, geri halliwell banging on about dieting. Again.

"And what happened to androgyny? The androgyny that was so beautiful and that attracted me to the music business in the first place?" Another month, another Word; Chrissie Hynder given the space to get beyond the basic 'you don't eat meat/you don't look bad for an old chick', although space is found for these matters, too. Apparently Hynde has a clause in her will allowing PETA to exploit her image in any way they see fit after she dies; this is a fuck off to Courtney who wouldn't let them use Kurt in an anti-fur advert. Presumably because the concept of someone else using Kurt would have been anathema.

David Gray comes across like Cliff Richard, his self-regard poking through an attempt at what he must assume is self-deprecating humour: "Yeah, there's always a lot of women at gigs, and I don't know why. I think they've got good taste! [...] everyone knows Babylon and Sail Away and Please Forgive Me. It drives me mad. I'll just have to write some more hits!"

The Word team take some CDs with that copy protection which is meant to make them break Macs, and not only get the CDs to play, but also happily rip MP3s from them. Back to the labs, RIAA.

"With the possible exception of U2, there's nobody else in popular music who shares his belief that music is here to both communicate and provide community" opines David hepworth of Bruce Springsteen. This is almost so clearly wrong as to make me suspect it is a troll; intended to set the letters page aflame with letters of a "what about the Levellers/Radiohead/Ozric Tentacles" nature; jesus, even Oasis try to communicate, albeit in grunts, and provide a focus of a community, albeit of grunts.

"I think we need some proper musicians and real, heartfelt lyyrics - particuarly now, with so much pop around." Now, you might not want to argue with this - although "so much pop" is a bit like saying "all this weather" - but if we tell you that the worrier of the swamping power of pop is June Sarpong, she off T4 - the only reason Busted exist - you might think again. And when we tell you that her solution to a world of pop is more artists like Vanessa Carlton - or "Avril Lavigne sitting down" as we think of her - you'll... ah, but you've already wandered off.

Luke Haines had certain reasons for wanting to win the Mercury Prize: "It was just the money I wanted. They could have given the kudos to PJ Harvey or someone."

Charles Shaar Murray reviews the new Buffy DVD box sets - he loves 'em; more surprising, Christopher Bray lavishes praise on the Minder DVDs.

John Naughton's masterly review of the Benny Hill biography makes some good points - most notably that it wasn't Political Correctness that lead to ITV axing his show, but the declining quality of a humour that was already so ropey to begin with it entertained Michael Jackson. But he falls for a spot of historical revisionism, repeating the new line that Ben Elton is "mistakenly seen as the scourge of Benny Hill" while quoting some of the once-funnyman's post-millennium pronouncements. Ah, but some of us have long memories, and we can recall Ben on Friday Night Live banging away about how it's not funny to have men chasing scantily clad women round carparks when real women are really being raped in real carparks. That sounded quite scourgey to us at the time.

Talking of icons of the Thatcher era who've slipped a bit, the main business of Word this month is a trip round Morrissey in America, which has a lot of interesting things about the post-mortem Smiths court cases, but also focuses on Mmmexchange friendly matters, too: "When you live [in America] you learn secret ways of laying your hands on important things like imported teabags. Americans are terrible at confectionary, and cheese, too. [...] BBC America is positively vile, with the worst aspects of British television." He's scant time for Coldplay, either: "if you fail with that amount of promotion, you must be pretty atrocious." Something for Robbie Williams to mull as he signs for the returned copies of Escapology.

Proving what a good push can do, the nme this weeks reports that Coldplay are going to rake in USD7m from their current jaunt round the Americas. The paper, however, puts this down to their "quintessentially British balladry" - which we don't think, indeed, bloody well hope they're not; and even if they were, why the fuck would something so firmly tied to Blighty set the Americans all a twittering - it's not like its a nation supping ginger beer while watching Corrie and eating marmite, is it?

The nme is tricked out like a Summer Special this week. Haven't they done that every May since they first got colour presses? It's starting to look like the designers can't be arsed these days, either. Strokes on the cover, although space has to be found for some model - there to illusrate 50 Great Things That Will Happen This Summer, apparently.

Radiohead failed to sell out Belfast, and touts were selling tickets for face value, which shows that nobody came out well from all that fuss about people selling tickets on. Touts didn't make much; Radiohead had empty seats staring back at them; and dozens of people who would have happily given up their corneas to see Thom Yorke sat at home instead. Result, Thom.

Noel Gallagher can't figure Radiohead, you know: "[they've] sold 20 million albums and they're still miserable." Yes, Noel, there are only Happy Songs, sung by Happy People, and Sad Songs, sung by Sad People. There's no possibility that someone could be quite happy in their private life but also worried or concerned about, say, the way the world is, or the fact that a country could take two Monobrowed Thug Digbots and turn them into heroes, is there? Noel has thirteen new Oasis songs, people.

His brother, meanwhile, is, for some reason, encouraged in his loutish behaviour by a newsdesk tittering over his brutal treatment of a photographer and his leery, lairy yammering - although they do land a small punch back on him, running his quote "I write the best fucking songs in the world" straight after his observation that "I don't believe in music papers - you only print crap."

In the ad for their new whatever it is, Kelly Jones of the Stereophonics is sporting a Tim Burgess haircut. Except it makes him look like Sharleen Spiterri.

Travis are set to return to play a gig for African famine relief. This completes the list of "like Status Quo", then.

The full Glastonbury line-up is published - Moby headlines Sunday, so making an early exit desirable - you can be back in a city before nightfall. Elsewhere, there's an advert trying to encourage people not to go to Glastonbury without tickets - it shows a man dressed up as a cow with a camera pointing at him. Kind of like the circus field, then.

At the other festival, the NME seems to think that it's averted rail chaos single handed - claiming that following their report last week, South West Trains have decided to add extra services on the other London-Reading route. Nothing to do with the Mean Fiddler organisation contacting Network Rail in March, then?

The gossip pages are so poor and so desperate to dredge up some sort of 'joke' we wouldnt be surprised to see Mr Abusing making a return sometime soon.

Ed Harcourt does the CD - Interpol, Bright Eyes, and the Muppets.

!!! are apparently coming under pressure to change their name from their record company. Maybe someone should take them to one side and point out that Freur, ? and Prince have all been here before, and nobody's impressed. Oh, actually, the nme is , getting excited that if you put their name in a search engine, nothing happens. Yeah. Real handy.

Amongst the fifty reasons why this summer is going to be so good are Christina and Justin touring together in the US, HarMar hosting some Ibiza nights, various festivals, Benicassim and video phones. They don't actually ask poor readers to step aside and let the average disposable income per reader they can flog to advertising agencies rise, but the point is there. Reason 40 is the chance to see Damon from Blur naked - by going to the Tate. Hmmm. Justine didn't seem to think that was so great, so why should we?

The Deftones fight amongst themselves about their hair.

reviews
albums
stereophonics - you gotta go there to come back - "neither exhilerating nor challenging", 6
dave gahan - paper monsters - "dignified, haunted and euro-decadent", 6
british sea power - the decline of... - "out of place, out of time, quite possibly out of their minds... often out of this world", 8
nu - alphabravoshockpopdisco - "archly executed pop album", 7
spaceman 3 - forged prescriptions - "winsome sonic noodles", 7
skin - fleshwounds - "too smart to be pop; too glossy to scrap with pink", 5

sotw - kings of leon - what i saw - "shaggy"
king adora - born to lose - "still going? why?"

live
at ULU, "the Kills know what rock and roll is"
Dandy Warhols - manchester academy - "the xanax paranoia of the madhouse at primetime"

and finally: who is the more over-optimistic: the chap auctioning doctorwinstonoboogie.com domain name on ebay, or the bloke hoping someone will buy his B1 R0K car number plate for GBP15,000? [Both in nme small ads]

WHAT THE POP PAPERS SAY: Pram style edition
Satire is alive and well and living in Space, the Liverpool Echo's latest attempt to bully any and every possible rival to its lucrative advertising monopoly out of the market by launching a similar, tackier, but much better resourced product to any magazine that looks like it might thrive. Hence, this spoiler for the so-so Your Move. Anyway, it claims to be 'stylish living in Liverpool'. The cover, to demonstrate just how stylish the city is: Atomic Kitten.

If I was Anastacia, I'd be really pissed off today, what with Sun deciding to grant moral equivalence to my story about breast cancer with, erm, geri halliwell banging on about dieting. Again.

"And what happened to androgyny? The androgyny that was so beautiful and that attracted me to the music business in the first place?" Another month, another Word; Chrissie Hynder given the space to get beyond the basic 'you don't eat meat/you don't look bad for an old chick', although space is found for these matters, too. Apparently Hynde has a clause in her will allowing PETA to exploit her image in any way they see fit after she dies; this is a fuck off to Courtney who wouldn't let them use Kurt in an anti-fur advert. Presumably because the concept of someone else using Kurt would have been anathema.

David Gray comes across like Cliff Richard, his self-regard poking through an attempt at what he must assume is self-deprecating humour: "Yeah, there's always a lot of women at gigs, and I don't know why. I think they've got good taste! [...] everyone knows Babylon and Sail Away and Please Forgive Me. It drives me mad. I'll just have to write some more hits!"

The Word team take some CDs with that copy protection which is meant to make them break Macs, and not only get the CDs to play, but also happily rip MP3s from them. Back to the labs, RIAA.

"With the possible exception of U2, there's nobody else in popular music who shares his belief that music is here to both communicate and provide community" opines David hepworth of Bruce Springsteen. This is almost so clearly wrong as to make me suspect it is a troll; intended to set the letters page aflame with letters of a "what about the Levellers/Radiohead/Ozric Tentacles" nature; jesus, even Oasis try to communicate, albeit in grunts, and provide a focus of a community, albeit of grunts.

"I think we need some proper musicians and real, heartfelt lyyrics - particuarly now, with so much pop around." Now, you might not want to argue with this - although "so much pop" is a bit like saying "all this weather" - but if we tell you that the worrier of the swamping power of pop is June Sarpong, she off T4 - the only reason Busted exist - you might think again. And when we tell you that her solution to a world of pop is more artists like Vanessa Carlton - or "Avril Lavigne sitting down" as we think of her - you'll... ah, but you've already wandered off.

Luke Haines had certain reasons for wanting to win the Mercury Prize: "It was just the money I wanted. They could have given the kudos to PJ Harvey or someone."

Charles Shaar Murray reviews the new Buffy DVD box sets - he loves 'em; more surprising, Christopher Bray lavishes praise on the Minder DVDs.

John Naughton's masterly review of the Benny Hill biography makes some good points - most notably that it wasn't Political Correctness that lead to ITV axing his show, but the declining quality of a humour that was already so ropey to begin with it entertained Michael Jackson. But he falls for a spot of historical revisionism, repeating the new line that Ben Elton is "mistakenly seen as the scourge of Benny Hill" while quoting some of the once-funnyman's post-millennium pronouncements. Ah, but some of us have long memories, and we can recall Ben on Friday Night Live banging away about how it's not funny to have men chasing scantily clad women round carparks when real women are really being raped in real carparks. That sounded quite scourgey to us at the time.

Talking of icons of the Thatcher era who've slipped a bit, the main business of Word this month is a trip round Morrissey in America, which has a lot of interesting things about the post-mortem Smiths court cases, but also focuses on Mmmexchange friendly matters, too: "When you live [in America] you learn secret ways of laying your hands on important things like imported teabags. Americans are terrible at confectionary, and cheese, too. [...] BBC America is positively vile, with the worst aspects of British television." He's scant time for Coldplay, either: "if you fail with that amount of promotion, you must be pretty atrocious." Something for Robbie Williams to mull as he signs for the returned copies of Escapology.

Proving what a good push can do, the nme this weeks reports that Coldplay are going to rake in USD7m from their current jaunt round the Americas. The paper, however, puts this down to their "quintessentially British balladry" - which we don't think, indeed, bloody well hope they're not; and even if they were, why the fuck would something so firmly tied to Blighty set the Americans all a twittering - it's not like its a nation supping ginger beer while watching Corrie and eating marmite, is it?

The nme is tricked out like a Summer Special this week. Haven't they done that every May since they first got colour presses? It's starting to look like the designers can't be arsed these days, either. Strokes on the cover, although space has to be found for some model - there to illusrate 50 Great Things That Will Happen This Summer, apparently.

Radiohead failed to sell out Belfast, and touts were selling tickets for face value, which shows that nobody came out well from all that fuss about people selling tickets on. Touts didn't make much; Radiohead had empty seats staring back at them; and dozens of people who would have happily given up their corneas to see Thom Yorke sat at home instead. Result, Thom.

Noel Gallagher can't figure Radiohead, you know: "[they've] sold 20 million albums and they're still miserable." Yes, Noel, there are only Happy Songs, sung by Happy People, and Sad Songs, sung by Sad People. There's no possibility that someone could be quite happy in their private life but also worried or concerned about, say, the way the world is, or the fact that a country could take two Monobrowed Thug Digbots and turn them into heroes, is there? Noel has thirteen new Oasis songs, people.

His brother, meanwhile, is, for some reason, encouraged in his loutish behaviour by a newsdesk tittering over his brutal treatment of a photographer and his leery, lairy yammering - although they do land a small punch back on him, running his quote "I write the best fucking songs in the world" straight after his observation that "I don't believe in music papers - you only print crap."

In the ad for their new whatever it is, Kelly Jones of the Stereophonics is sporting a Tim Burgess haircut. Except it makes him look like Sharleen Spiterri.

Travis are set to return to play a gig for African famine relief. This completes the list of "like Status Quo", then.

The full Glastonbury line-up is published - Moby headlines Sunday, so making an early exit desirable - you can be back in a city before nightfall. Elsewhere, there's an advert trying to encourage people not to go to Glastonbury without tickets - it shows a man dressed up as a cow with a camera pointing at him. Kind of like the circus field, then.

At the other festival, the NME seems to think that it's averted rail chaos single handed - claiming that following their report last week, South West Trains have decided to add extra services on the other London-Reading route. Nothing to do with the Mean Fiddler organisation contacting Network Rail in March, then?

The gossip pages are so poor and so desperate to dredge up some sort of 'joke' we wouldnt be surprised to see Mr Abusing making a return sometime soon.

Ed Harcourt does the CD - Interpol, Bright Eyes, and the Muppets.

!!! are apparently coming under pressure to change their name from their record company. Maybe someone should take them to one side and point out that Freur, ? and Prince have all been here before, and nobody's impressed. Oh, actually, the nme is , getting excited that if you put their name in a search engine, nothing happens. Yeah. Real handy.

Amongst the fifty reasons why this summer is going to be so good are Christina and Justin touring together in the US, HarMar hosting some Ibiza nights, various festivals, Benicassim and video phones. They don't actually ask poor readers to step aside and let the average disposable income per reader they can flog to advertising agencies rise, but the point is there. Reason 40 is the chance to see Damon from Blur naked - by going to the Tate. Hmmm. Justine didn't seem to think that was so great, so why should we?

The Deftones fight amongst themselves about their hair.

reviews
albums
stereophonics - you gotta go there to come back - "neither exhilerating nor challenging", 6
dave gahan - paper monsters - "dignified, haunted and euro-decadent", 6
british sea power - the decline of... - "out of place, out of time, quite possibly out of their minds... often out of this world", 8
nu - alphabravoshockpopdisco - "archly executed pop album", 7
spaceman 3 - forged prescriptions - "winsome sonic noodles", 7
skin - fleshwounds - "too smart to be pop; too glossy to scrap with pink", 5

sotw - kings of leon - what i saw - "shaggy"
king adora - born to lose - "still going? why?"

live
at ULU, "the Kills know what rock and roll is"
Dandy Warhols - manchester academy - "the xanax paranoia of the madhouse at primetime"

and finally: who is the more over-optimistic: the chap auctioning doctorwinstonoboogie.com domain name on ebay, or the bloke hoping someone will buy his B1 R0K car number plate for GBP15,000? [Both in nme small ads]

NOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Heather Mills is pregnant with another Beatle-child. That's all we need - a spare in case we ever lose Sean Lennon.

KYLIE DRINKS IN PUB SHOCK: "She was good as gold and happy to talk... but she had to leave or she'd have got mobbed." Irregular verb: I am talking with a famous person. You are invading the space of a celebrity. They are mobbing someone they've seen on telly.

REMEMBER THAT?: After ages, there's a new No Rock colour supplement available - with stuff on new generation mobile phones, how letter writing is the new censorship, the taking blogs out of google panic and the re-positioning of the Tories as the party of the poor. If you're interested, do visit. If you're not, be glad we shoo that sort of thing off to a side project.

DOUBLE OR DROP: A second Liza Minelli/Scary Husband show has been axed, as ITV follow VH1 in pulling the plug on the uncomfortable gawk-fest. This time it's because the couple have signed up with BBC1 as well, which sort of worked against the whole exclusive thing...

GRASP ON RELIGIOUS FACTS AS SLIM AS GRASP ON REALITY: Whitney Houston visits Jewish state to get inspiration for Christmas album.

EUROVISION FALLOUT: We've received a brown paper envelope containing the votes of Simon Tyer's jury for the Eurovision, which we bring you - along with our less-than-measured responses where appropriate:
Since you mentioned it...

Do you think the publishers of Kiss Kiss minded the chorus backing track being used by Turkey?

Ah, but to be fair, Kiss Kiss was originally Turkish wasn't it? It's just taking it back home again...

Billy Joel for Estonia? Ben Folds, surely? As portrayed by a younger Jack Dee, that is. Also interesting to see Breakfast's Natasha Kaplinsk representing Malta and Helen Chamberlain singing for Holland.

I'm sticking with Billy Joel - after all, Ben Folds is little more than someone who thinks its fun to dress up as Billy Joel. The Estonian (and Mr. Joel himself, in between spells of working his way through the Bourbons of the world) thinks its just cool to be Billy J...

Did I miss the byelaw which meant every country had to have at least one of Atomic Kitten on backup? Ireland got all three, I think.

Having said which, many of the backing singers rammed home how unusual it is to see women of a normal shape on the television singing (outside of 4 Goes To Glynbourne). Which makes me feel a bit guilty about the Mandy Dingle / black being slimming jibes, really...

Did you notice some of the bits of film before the songs featured music perhaps betraying what the producers would rather be listening to? Portugal were introduced with La La Love You off Doolittle, then Croatia's ripoff of Christina Milian's When You Look At Me got Stereolab's Miss Modular.

I'd missed this; I was too busy trying to figure out if the constant use of the venue itself for the "postcards" - to use the technical term - had been determined by the lack of spare cash, or if - once you've seen the zoo and the, erm, big satellite dish, you've seen all there is to see of the country?

Did the Ukrainian bloke really sign off with "goodbye, assholes!"?

Probably. Very unusual to hear so much hostility during the voting when Russia kept being booed. Oh, and when Lorraine Kelly replaced Colin Berry. In our house at least.

Tel mumbled at one point about the possibility of a post-Iraq UK backlash, as indeed had some of the previews. If that was so, how come France and Germany both finished in the bottom half when everyone said they'd get votes just for being so openly anti-war?

And Turkey, of course, not noticeably an anti-war country. Indeed, if there was going to be a backlash, surely hitting the place which went "we'll support you, if you settle this large bill, Mr. Bush" would have made more sense? Although the cost of staging next year's contest will probably soak up most of the money the US gave to Turkey for their part in Saddam's downfall...

Of course, gemini today are saying they couldn't hear themselves, and then someone did switch the monitor on and it was way too loud...

Is man really the measure of all things, Austria? Fantastic moment on the BBC3 post-show, er, show, when the roving mike bloke asked him whether he was pleased with sixth place to be met by a half-joking torrent of abuse ending "I fucking hate this contest!" On live TV.

Whatever Happened To Barbie Jane?

There's more than a little bitterness in Dannii Minogue's pleading that Kylie used to be the one in her shadow, you know. Perhaps the saddest part of the desperate debasement is Dannii's claim that when she was on some sort of crapass early eighties kid's talent show "you couldn't be more famous than being on that show." Really, Dannii?

[UPDATED 2013: To fit more recent No Rock & Roll Fun template & link repointed to archive.org capture of original page]

Britney Spears: The Internet is like a massive intellectual department store

To ease your bank holiday, we're reproducing the current edition of the BritneySperms mailing list. What seems to have happened is that some strongly pro-Brit types have discovered the existence of an anti-Britney list, and are desperate to taunt it out of existence. We think it's the sort of high level debate which would make Tim Berners-Lee delighted he did all that work:

[UPDATE: THIS MESSAGE HAS BEEN REMOVED AT REQUEST OF ORIGINAL POSTER 21-01-12. THE PERSON WHO POSTED THE MESSAGE - OR SOMEBODY CLAIMING TO BE THEM - GOT IN TOUCH AND ASKED IF THE COMMENTS, MADE WHEN THEY WERE A TEENAGER, COULD BE DELETED SO THEY MIGHT NOT FOLLOW THEM AROUND NOW THEY ARE APPLYING FOR WORK. IT DOESN'T SEEM TO BE AN UNREASONABLE REQUEST. I HAVE ALSO REMOVED THE COMMENT IN WHICH THE POSTER ASKED FOR THE DELETION SO AS TO PRESERVE THEIR IDENTITY.]
---

Message: 2
Date: Sat, 24 May 2003 02:01:09 EDT
From: name removed
Subject: Re: UR ALL FUCKIN PATHETIC

Every one is subject to a diffrent oppion. I cannot stand stripper hoes who
arn't total ignoramous teraching my 6 year old cousin to dress like a slut. I am in no way jelouse of Britteny Spears, and your jsut a hypocrit because you dont know us, and why would any one wnat to listen to someone who sounds like a dying cow, we all ahve are opion 1st ammendement rights

---

Message: 3
Date: Sat, 24 May 2003 11:08:04 -0000
From: "N/A"
Subject: Re: UR ALL FUCKIN PATHETIC

WHY THE HELL ARE YOU HERE IF YOU LIKE HER SO MUCH YOU KNEW BEFORE YOU SINGED UP WHAT THIS GROUP WAS ABOUT! and it's not about what she does it's the fact that she lies about it all the time.

So, there you have it then. Better than Newsnight, isn't it?

[UPDATED 2013: To fit more recent No Rock & Roll Fun template]

A LITTLE BIT MORE: So, while we're on Eurovision: Tatu's gamble seems to have blown up in their faces, but we're waiting to see how they spin it. But from our perspective, it seems like they've failed. If they'd won, there would have been vindication. If they'd got next-to-nothing, they'd have been able to trot about saying that they'd proved Europeans couldn't cope with the idea of girl love. But to do quite well... that's the worst possible result from their perspective; Europe listened and said "Yeah, it's quite good." They weren't judged to be the best band of the night, but they weren't condemned as being wrong. A middling act.
Meanwhile, still ringing from the first ever zero score for the UK, Gemini have returned to the UK trying to put a brave face on it. The girl from the band was breezing to the BBC that "there's still going to be the single, then the second single, then the album..." We hope that she checked the contract closely.

My Nul Point Hell: Eurovision 2003

Eurovision, 2003. From Latvia. No Rock used hard liquor and a biro to get right the way through. Unsurprisingly, we completely disagreed with everyone else. These are our notes, more or less, turning into some sort of review:
Iceland - Big flares, big eyes, big flower in her hair and white trousers. "Just open your heart to me" she sings. It's all a bit over-ambitious - the string arrangement isn't lush enough; her vocals can't cope with ranges; her lungs can't make the length of word needed. The backing singers cling together out of fear.

Austria - His backing musicians are cardboard cut outs with cat and cow heads stuck on top. He's a character, you see - wearing a beret and singing a song that is the sort of oompah nonesense that fills much of Saturday night TV light entertainment shows in Austria and Southern Germany, only with a heavy metal chorus.

Ireland - This year's attempt to avoid winning the contest entering a Pop Idol type with a green guitar and - in lieu of a song - the repeated contention that "we've got the world tonight." Later, viewers in the UK will vote this the best thing - showing how polluted Simon Cowell has made our collective judgement.

Turkey - Belly Dancing and J-Lo impersonation - together at last. The wannabe J-Lo is dressed as if she's just had to parachute onto stage. "You make me want to uh-ah" she says. The feeling is mutal for No Rock; but the rest of europe seems to want to, as this is the eventual winner.

Malta - She starts sitting at the piano deliverign a song which sounds like the theme tune to a second string Australian soap. But just when you're reaching for the "Victoria Wood" reference, she's stood up. More white trousers, and apparently Mandy Dingle is one of her backing singers.

Bosnia & Herzegovina - As Terry Wogan points out, this is Sex Bomb delivered not by Tom Jones but by a bunch who hope black will turn out to be as slimming as everyone claims. They swap to English halfway through - "is it true I was the fool who would die for you?" - but its passionately delivered. In the same way as the chef's special in a Harvester would be.

Portugal - Blimey, it's Shakira. Only she's singing a Celine Dion song.

Croatia - Steps under Communism, then. Bright eyed boys and girls (three pairs of lilac trousers and one bikini from Ethel Austin) sing and dance to a song that might be about love and joy, but inescapably sounds like an update on tractor production in the Balkans.

Cyprus - Enrique Ingleisias, only with a much tighter budget. Fewer shimmering dances, spending the savings on a lyricist would have been a plan.

Germany - A short, red-haired woman who looks and sounds like "only" sonia from Fresh Fields sings a positive song about how a fight in the disco can be averted because everyone should be friends. The lyrics were clearly spewed out by a teenager on their first tab of E, but the tune is the best thing so far. It's the first song that sounds how a eurovision winner is supposed to sound.

Russia - shorn of Trevor Horn's production, they're very shrill and rather mechanical - in fact, this sounds exactly like the sort of Euro entry the east would offer before the collapse of communism. After all the rumours and threats and teases, the performance is limited to the pair of them wandering round stage and a little bit of hand holding - all rather sweet and chaste. There's absolutely no chemistry between them at all, and if they're really lovers, they need to get in touch with Relate quickly. If we hadn't known who they were, we'd have been reduced to making cheap cracks about the poor state of post-soviet hairdressing.

Spain - More white trousers, but coming straight after Tatu gives her a boost because here's a girl who realises that a song, to be sexy, has to be sung in a sexy way; not merely dressed up with the impression that it's sexy because the singer has mumbled in interviews about being a lesbian. A spot of spanish guitars gives just enough taste of national identity to keep the purists happy. Not great, but about thirty times better than Tatu.

Israel - The backing singers start out dressed like Tatu, which may be an amusing in-joke or just a lazy coincidence. That they then have their clothes ripped off (a la Bucks Fizz) makes me think it was knowing all along. The singer clearly loves himself so much no mere voting is required for him to get the affection he needs.

Netherlands - A dutch cruise ship is missing its star turn tonight. But not much.

UK - She looks and sounds nervousd, as if she's suddenly realised that offering up something that sounds like a Rick Astley b-side (off the second CD) isn't going to cut it. He still looks like a farm hand's son who's found a talking pig. The moment where he yells out "c'mon Latvia" is the precise moment where the UK is doomed to a shaming nul points.

Ukraine - A dancer in turquoise pirroutes and contorts while a singer who really wanted to be doing opera tries to come to terms with the demands of this 'pop music'. "Hast la vista, baby, baby bye-bey" he sings, like The Terminantor at a Bay City Rollers Gig. It reflects badly on all of us, I think.

Greece - It's Shakira again. Only this time her breasts are struggling to break from the confines of her pleather dress. The song is another ballad with an awful lot of ice, like David Arquette's coke.

Norway - He looks ever so slightly Osmond, and his song is a little Peter Skellern. It's pleasant, and we'd give him a bed for the night.

France - The dress is cheap, but she's actually quite sexy in a not obvious way. Or maybe I'm getting tired. The song sounds fully formed, too, unlike most of the things tonight which come across like they're first drafts. France knows: cheese, wine, singers, songs - some things improve with maturity. This would have been our winner. It ends quite near the bottom. Shows what we know.

Poland - A peace song in Polish, Russian and German - throw in Klingon and Esperanto and you'd have all the languages of romance there. Sung by Rob Newman with red hair, and Jo S Club.

Latvia - The hosts offer two clean cut young men in white suits and a girl with that body glitter that everyone was wearing in last year's contest. They sing about saying hello from mars. Although they go down well with the gay viewers, their efforts go largely unrewarded.

Belguim - A whole mess of folk music, like Kershaw playing three CDs at once. Over a dance beat. Despite the accordian, they manage to pull it off. This is about the only track No Rock and the Great European Public seem to agree on.

Estonia - It's called 80's Coming Back. And they're not joking - here's Billy Joel to prove it.

Romania - The dancers hold up the things those floor cleaning machines use to scrub, for some reason. The singer has a red suit, a powerful voice and some music looking desperately for a John Hughes movie to soundtrack.

Sweden - It appears to be the bloke from Norway again, this time in an Abba-stye arrangement. Thank god Britain don't keep entering Cliff Richard over and over again.

Slovenia - Dressed as a bridesmaid, the Slovene sings a song called Na Na Na. It's not good, but it's as good an ending as we're going to get.

[UPDATED 2013: To fit more recent No Rock & Roll Fun template]