No Rock And Roll Fun

BAR HUMBUG: The Barfly people are hooking up with a bunch of bands to present a charity bash that takes the groups 'Back to the Bars' putting them in the sort of small venues they won't have played for years (except in the case of Starsailor and the Divine Comedy, who probably won't ever have seen that many people in a room at one time). Actually, in the case of Atomic Kitten the Sugababes 'back to' is a bit of a misnomer, too, since they hardly dragged themselves round the toilet circuit to begin with, but let's not quibble. It's all in aid of War Child and Shelter; the other artists involved are David Gray, The Cure, Travis, The Darkness, Ash, Badly Drawn Boy (apparently a favourite amongst the young folk of Weatherfield), Craig David, the Super Furry Animals, Gary Numan, Supergrass, Big Brovaz and Elbow.

Gigs will be sprinkled across the Barfly's network of venues nationwide. And tickets? Ah, here's the rub - you enter a free comeptition by text message, but at the same time pay GBP1.50 on top of the text fee. All entrants are mixed up in a great big cybertombola, and the lucky winners get tickets. And the GBP1.50 is a donation to the charities, right? Erm... not quite - whatever's left after the deduction of "direct event costs", VAT and "network operator costs" will then be split between the two good causes. There's no indication of what a direct event cost might be, or how much of the GBP1.50 will be left after all that whittling. But some of the money will wind up with two well deserving causes, and we guess that's what counts. And you've got to admit that the random element in assigning tickets is a lot fairer than the 'first come, first served, albeit through a telephone network which doesn't offer equality of opportunity' principle embraced by Glastonbury. If you are determined to go at any price, though, there's still a chance as a few tickets are going to be held back and auctioned off. How much would we pay to be close enough to stare angrily at David Gray?