No Rock And Roll Fun

WHAT THE POP PAPERS SAY: What Mr Sting Did On His Holidays edition
Last year, Holly vallance made a failed bid to save herself from having to pay cash to her former manager, henry-from-Neighbours, on the grounds that he more or less forced her into doing FHM photo shoots which really weren't her thing. It turns out FHM is too classy for her, because this week she pitched up in Nuts with a bikini top and a hint of upper thigh. Meanwhile, Zoo launched with Nell McAndrew, who is kind of the Jordan you can take home to meet your mother but is so overexposed it's showing there's a desperate shortage of women prepared to do these shoots anymore. Thank god Atomic Kitten have gone solo, tripling the likely cover stars for the new slew of half-stiffy mags. Apparently Bauer are readying a launch, too, which might call for Girls Aloud to split to guarantee the supply.

We happened upon the Daily Mail in a punk mood - the very voice of little middle England seemed charmed by John Lydon's performance on I'm A Celebrity. Now, while it's easy to see how he might appear to be the sharpest platypus beak in his current surroundings, it's stretching the truth to call him (as the Mail would have us believe) a sharp wit. To take a random example from his quoted gems in the paper: He now likes the Royals because "it's literally TV's Dallas." Oh yeah? Leaving aside the misuse of "literally" and the hackneyed "the royal family are a soap opera" sentiment (what next? politicans are liars? footballers are overpaid? policemen are looking younger?) it doesn't even make sense: in what way is the British monarchy resembling Dallas? Dallas had two central plotlines: the feud between two families, and the struggle for the crown inside the family. Is Lydon suggesting that Charles and Andrew are fighting for the succession? Or that, I dunno, the Windsors are fighting off challenges from the Fiennes for the deeds to Windsor castle? A better comparison might be nineteenth century Russian literature and the cult of Oblomovism, the life of superfluous men who have talents but no role.

Elsewhere in the same issue, the Mail has fallen for the 'Sid didn't kill Nancy - Rockets Redgrave did' guff. Alan Parker's book tour has reached Northcliffe House, and for some reason the Mail is keen to clear Sid's name, even although the case is ridiculous: It turns out the details about Sid being killed by heroin Redgrave provided through a third party came from Sid's Mum. Mrs. Vicious is dead, too, of course - like everyone in the whole sorry saga - and she had good reason to finger Redgrave, because it was her decision to tuck Sid up in and bed and let him sleep off his headfull of smack, instead of getting him some help, that lead to Sid being a not very pretty corpse in the morning. And there doesn't seem to be any sensible reason for why Redgrave would be in a room with Spungen and Vicious and heroin, murder Nancy but instead of finishing Sid off in a suicide-y looky way there and then, he'd go to the much more risky trouble of trying to sort him out with an overdose a few weeks later.

The Daily Telegraph Saturday Magazine announces "The Vines had to cancel all their upcoming tour dates because of Craig Nicholls fear of flying" - someone had better warn the band as they plug round the United States.

The magazine also meets Jamie cullum, a man desperate for us to not think he's a middle class knob. He's street - apparently his mother and brother got "racist abuse" shouted at them in wales ("they're the same colour as I am" he says, genuinely puzzled as only a man who's never heard of Sons of Glendower can be) and cullum stresses that his Dad only "recently" became a millionaire - "we had holidays in Devon, not Barbados" he enters as his plea of poverty, which kids who were lucky to have a day at Blackpool Beach might not think sounds that bad. The really annoying thing, though, is that for all his crassness in trying to shake off his silver-plated spoon, he does come across as a likeable enough chap. In fact, we had to watch that advert for his Christmas release six times in a row before we could bring ourselves to stick pins in our little cullum doll.

Over in the Guardian, Thom Yorke was penning a defence of the BBC in the afterburn of the Hutton Report and Lord Ryder's craven apology to Blair. Of course, Thom's not entirely independent - he edited Today over Christmas, remember, so we doubt if he'd win Fox News Channel's stars and stripes lapel pin badge of impariality.

In The Independent, Chrissie Hynde is asked to pick the most promising female solo artists - she chooses Beth Orton, Pink and, um, Ms Dynamite, but admits being 52 she isn't that up on the pop scene any more.

It's Music Monthly week in the Observer, marking 40 years since the Beatles landed in the States - the last time anyone in America beyond immigration took any notice of a bunch of Limey long-hairs pitching up in their airports, of course. "It didn't matter we were big in America" recalls Ringo, "We were big in Liverpool, and that was OK by my family." Oddly, the 'being big in the L postcode area is more than enough' attitude is one you still find in Liverpool to this day, and partly explains why no scouse act has been met at a new York airport by screaming girls since.

Mark Kermode chooses eleven best rock comedies (11 - because of Spinal Tap, see?) including Waynes World 2, head and All You Need Is Cash.

Peter Robinson, the hardest-working man in writing-about-show business - reminds us that Radiohead had promised to enter a song for Eurovision this year, but suspects they won't.

The secret life of Shania Twain is quiet on the actual number of legs, but does mention she used to eat mustard sandwiches.

The Record Doctor has an unusual patient in Ian Rankin - normally the doctor is called upon to minister to a patient with rampaging Didoitis or terminal Coldplaysores. Rankin, of course, loves Mogwai, so out the big black bag comes Air and Explosions In The Sky. And he manages to get him to say nice things about Albarn's world music holiday twoodling.

Talking of music discoveries, when Amy Winehouse was 11 she discovered TLC and formed a rap duo called Sweet and Sour. "I was sour, of course." She gently slags her svengali Simon Fuller and claims "I don't think he cares if he gets a return on me." Hmmm. Fuller isn't the sort of man to worry about credibility, so it's unlikely he's running Winehouse for the same reason that Richard Desmond would love to get hold of the Telegraph. We're guessing he sees Winehouse as a long-term investment, and expects her to turn in modest returns over a long period, long after the more lucrative S Club 8 have grown breasts and bollocks and broken up. In the reviews section, the very similar Joss Stone is marked down as "an artist in it for the long haul."

Sting files a report from Katmandu, which actually is a pretty interesting read; but you can't shake off the gnawing feeling that it's like when the class had to read out 'what I did on my holidays' and the rich kid always had a tale about going to Yugoslavia when everyone else had been to Devon - it leaves you frothing "Oh, you had to take your son to bloody Katmandu, didn't you? You couldn't just take him to bloody Alton Towers like everyone else..."

Oi... Kitty Empire: Do you really believe the sound of 2004 is going to be Jaga Jazzist, a ten piece Norwegian Jazz Band? Really?

The Obs bundles together Kurt and Sid for a one-off comparison piece by Sean O'Hagan, which makes some punchy points. Cobain's stated desire to return to the "numbness" of childhood and Vicious' disgust with adult world are compared; Cobain is chided for failing himself and the world at large comes in for stick for mythologising the dead icon rather than paying attention to the lost child. But there's also a curious claim that rock deaths post-punk (Curtis, Thunders, Vicious) are more depressing than the pre-punk sort (Jones, Morrisson, Hendrix) - although really the difference is that since the mid-70's, the deaths are a lot less colourful (no more Parisian hotels; it's suicide in a semi). If it's more depressing, it's because the pretty corpse has become such a cliche. Richey Edwards probably appreciated that to avoid seeming dully derivative in death, it's actually better to just fade away than burn out.

And what of those left behind? NME has another naked Courtney shot on the cover. She looks tired. The pose is tired. Everyone's tired. inside, the interview is one-part unbridled invective to three-parts 'shilling to view the inmates of bedlam': "My video is like a whole fucking thing - I wake up in a coffin [didn't Geri Halliwell do this?] and have little girls with machine guns [Bugsy Malone] killing paparazzi [If]." Not only tired, but self-obsessed - who outside of those that take tea with elton john really cares about photographers? An obsession with people who snap for the tabloids shows a lack of a real life; Courtney's equally obsessed with the idea that the New York Times has prepared an obituary for her, as if not everyone of certain age and a certain fame has got one held on the NYT server somewhere. The trouble which lead to the court case was, she claims "a bunch of really bad luck stuck together" and "even the American public doesn't know what this fucking case is about." Oh, and it turns out the cocaine in Britain has no ether in it, which means its not really cocaine at all. And on she goes.

The big picture is a fuzzy Franz ferdinand live shot, although the paper also has what it describes as "a series of horrifying photos" depiciting Ryan Adams after his accident - they're not kidding; he looks like Garth from Waynes World in one of them.

Vernon kay does the CD: the Verve, Billy Joel and DJ jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince.

Peter Robinson takes on Edith Bowman who reckons you get paid more for doing a night shift in a cab firm than for doing TOTP. Although you'd spend less time with a bucket cleaning up sick. Unless Girls Aloud are on.

The NME Brain question is: "was Lydon's other band, PiL, any good?" Why ask the NME, you dolts; that's what kazaa's for.

And one for TV Cream, we suspect: there's a letter which mentions Blue Peter. The paper's response mentions defectaing elephants.

Radar act Regina Spektor is a former Strokes Collaborator and, because she couldn't afford records, grew her musical teeth on friend's mix tapes (the old skool MP3 illegal download, of course)

Lostprophets think they scared kids when they were on CD:UK (They really feared they were going to be bored to death, I guess).

Asking the questions that other fear, the NME raises the question 'Is Detroit Dead?', prompting Dan Miller from Blanche to observe "if the fight hadn't been between Jack & Jason, it would have been nothing at all." Erm... yes, that would kind of be the point, wouldn't it? Anyway, the general consensus seems to be that detroit is still great, but these things are cyclical.

In a second piece about downloads, there's a prediction that "CD albums look like they'll eventually be a luxury item" - since the BPI thinks they're worth about thirteen quid, less with the eventuallys, already.

NME reports from the Big day Out, with posters - Justin looks like a Tory MP's eldest son; there's another bloody Kings of Leon pin-up and Jet, who look a little more like oasis every time.

reviews
live
The Icarus Line - london metro - "flying high", 8

albums
franz ferdinand - franz ferdinand - "two deviations from the messy end of sex bookend the album", 9
von bondies - pawn shoppe heart - "musically, the equivalent of being run over by a truck", 8
courtney love - america's sweetheart - "what's missing are the chilling lyrical imprecations she used to do so well", 6

singles
sotw - the rapture - love is all - "like the moment you fall in love, extended over 154 delicious seconds"
kings of leon - california waiting - "background music; jangly and flimsy"

matt davies of funeral for a friend likes Jawbreaker

and finally: Paul Morley on jamie Cullum: "an unsettling blend of Ant, Dec, jack Wild, kermit the Frog's nephew and all the Balls: Michael, Kenny, Bobby and Alan."