WHAT THE POP PAPERS SAY: My tennis partner knows the Queen

It's an Observer Music Monthly week, with a cover dedicated to Paul McCartney. Jim McCabe had got in touch with us earlier today about this, and his remarks seems to be spot on:

I was struck by the oleaginous tone of this piece by Sean O'Hagan (a failing which is only partially redeemed by the article's footnotes).
The veneer of critical impartiality is ascibed to Nigel Godrich, but how many producers would actually stick their necks out & tell McCartney that much of his post-Beatle output has been, well, variable? I recall McCartney taking exception to a few home truths from Elvis Costello when they collaborated in the late 80s. Since then the cocoon has strengthened.

To be fair, Sean O'Hagan does admit that there's a degree of start-struckedness to be expected when a High Llama meets the high priest ("When McCartney finally breezes into the studio, my journalistic objectivity momentarily evaporates, and I suddenly feel exactly like my mum predicted I would feel. 'A Beatle!' I think, standing up to shake his hand, 'an actual Beatle!'"); if you're looking for an unglossed version of the meeting, the Guardian website has the transcript alongside the interview. (Talking of the Guardian website, to celebrate the launch of their new look, the papers are being made available digitally for free, so if you're curious, you can see how the OMM looks in pdf format right now).

The standfirst for the rundown of the 10 most influential radio djs probably tells you all you need to know about the choices which will follow: "Alastair Campbell? I don't think so. These are the real spin doctors..." Dewey Phillips takes the number one slot; Peel comes in at number two. The Ranking Miss P is at number six. Yes, that the Ranking Miss P. Now, her record in pirate radio was astonishing, but we're not sure that her brief spell tucked away in the out-of-sightline sectors of Radio One back when the station used to closedown overnight doesn't really suggest she was much a major influence on the wider scene.

The Record Doctor takes the sometimes lachrymose From Our Own Correspondent mainstay Fergal Keane to one side and attempts to persuade him of the merits of Stephen Fretwell ("I like his honesty... no fucking around") and Guru's Jazzamatazz ("really good night listening.")

In one of the oddest pairings we've seen for a while, Lord Lichfield does an interview with Rachel Stevens. To call it a love-in would be to underuse the word love:

LL: After photographing you recently, I must say you seem to find it quite easy. Do you know you're photogenic?
RS: I feel quite comfortable in front of the camera most of the time... and, of course, I was extremely honoured to be photographed by you.

Apparently, the OMM is keen for anything approaching a coherent new music scene in Britain to fail - Sarah Boden explores the brave seedlings in the music field and pours the salty, boiling water of the phrase "the new breed of Britpop" all over them. In Liverpool, any appearance of more than one band able to get to the end of their set without setting fire to each other would result in a cry going up of "It's a new Merseybeat era", whereupon the scene would collapse in shame. Now, with "it's a whole new Britpop", we have a phrase which will destroy a generation of the entire nation at a sweep. Don't you love progress?

The curious decision by ITV to mark its 50th birthday by creating an "Avenue of the Stars" comes in for a bashing at the hands of the Sunday People - not because it's a rubbish idea, the belief that an artistic achievement is best responded to by the presentation of a paving stone; the creepy similarity between this way of marking a life, and a graveslab's marking of a death. Oh, no, the People is angry that Status Quo haven't been given a pavement slab of their own. To be fair, if Robbie Williams qualifies for one - and, oh he does - and even Ant and Dec (not, sadly, under their PJ and Duncan alteregos) get a chunk, surely this paving is crazy enough to find room for Status Quo. The People, however, decides to overstate its case, claiming that Status Quo have sold more records than any other band. Well, maybe.

Over at the now-only Guardian Review, Paul Morley is darfted in to review Tony Parson's Stories We Could Tell, his reworking of his time at the NME as a novel of sorts. The NME becomes - and here we can calibrate the level of inventiveness - The Paper; Morley remains unimpressed: "The matiest of pop writers ultimately hides behind his jaunty frankness, revealing nothing about his real life... you'd swear Tony wasn't there, as he gives bands names like Leni and the Riefenstahls and the Sewer Rats. Parsons turns the NME years into a kind of Jennings adventure." (For American readers, Morley is alluding to the prep boy hero of Anthony Buckeridge and not the newsreader Peter).

In the same issue, Michel Houellebecq enthuses over Neil Young: "He follows his intuition, and in the end it's almost all good - even his jazz album." What about the Icicle Works stuff, Michel, what of that?

The new Films & Music section on Friday gives a perfectly formed Berliner page over to the Sugababes. The band were in a good mood, which seems to mean they smiled as they knifed each other in the back:

"And what about the claims that Mutya went out of her way to make life difficult for Heidi, when she joined? "I never argued with her," corrects Mutya. "I just didn't speak to her. I thought: I've worked from the youngest age to get where I am and here she is, just jumping in. I found that really hard."

The most telling detail is that when they write, they sit in different corners of the studio and do their own bits - this is why "Round Round makes no sense", apparently.

It's that time of the year again to recall that the day I started university, Bananarama were on the front of the NME ; as the Student Guide rolls out this year, the slightly more credible (but also slightly less pop) Bloc Party are on the main picture. So what do we learn from this year's student guide? In a marvellous spot of devolved democracy, the magazine suggests that there's as much to see and do in Exeter as there is in London; The Rakes smoked tea leaves; Ricky Wilson got a first - in Graphic Design; Kele from Bloc Party is currently on hiatus.

We also learn something interesting about the nature of the magazine - so bloke has NME become now, it gets sponsorsed solely by Top Man, rather than Top Man/Top Shop. Also interesting is that when the Bristol guide suggests students avoid Broadmead, they do add it's worth venturing into "onyl for quick trips to Virgin or Top Shop. The Fan Boy cartoon guide to student clones, though, does manage to sneak in a snook at the people who shop there: "The Twattish: heard the Bravery in Top Shop once and thought they were 'fucking ace'".

The magazine proper dedicates its news pages to the War Child "event", which also allows them to shoehorn in an interview with the Mercury Prize Guy Antony "and the Johnsons". Why did he work with Boy George on the charidee project? "War Child is an important organisation and is doing great things." We don't know if War Child have this mission statement on their letterhead, but they really should. It makes everything so much clearer.

Peter Robinson takes on Annie: "Are you the pop Van Gogh?" he asks. "I'm more like the pop Edward Munch" she suggests.

Radar band is Duels; a band who, in an earlier form, managed to get dropped without playing a single note.

Bloc Party are lined up to a reader's Q&A session, with questions which are borderline Smash Hitsy ("Why did you change your name from Roland to Kele?") - it's less the Fannish Inquistion as more a drunken giggle over a crate of Bacardi. And none the worse for that.

Two pages are given over to 'who killed Jimi Hendrix', which attempts to draw parallels with life of Kurt Cobain. In a sense, that's true - both were drug casualty screw-ups; both weren't killed by anyone else.

reviews
live
franz ferdinand - princes street gardens, edinburgh - "wonderfully, unashamedly, uncool"
pixies - manchester apollo & alexandra palace - "at least they're not too old to make [the adoration] embarrassing"
iliketrains - leeds hifi club - "tales of bonkers former chess champions"

albums
goldie lookin' chain - safe as fuck - "not played so much for laughs", 7
shout out louds - howl howl gaff gaff - "some sports channel is bound to pick up on The Comeback", 7
echo and the bunnymen - siberia - "mcCulloch's voice is a rather knackered instrument", 3

tracks
totw - bloc party - two more years - "strong words, softly spoken"
ladytron - destroy everything you touch - "a little lost robot"
her space holiday - a march made in texas - "sadly, slightly bad"

Next week, the NME is redesigning again - another new look, another relaunch. We think this is the seventeenth minirelaunch since Easter, and we look forward to a new slew of features which we'll come to know and love over the next three weeks before they disappear again.

And, finally: Peter Hardy wins some sort of prize for his piece on James Blunt in the London Evening Standard. Namedropping is fine, of course, but Hardy manages to double namedrop, reporting the dropping of a name in the course of dropping a name of his own:

"'What's your rock star son doing?' I asked when I telephoned my old friend Jane to arrange a game of tennis. 'Having lunch with the Queen', she replied."

music bloc party sugababes james blunt nme ladytron pixies franz ferdinand tony parsons antony and the johnsons echo and the bunnymen Michel Houellebecq neil young paul mccartney status quo rachel stevens