WHAT THE POP PAPERS SAY: Plan B From Out A Newsangents in the Lanes

We were delighted to pick up a copy of Plan B while we were in Brighton recently - Ev True might want to think about sketching a Plan C which includes making the magazine available outside of places within walking distance of his house. We're happy to spend ridiculous portions of our predisposed income on magazines, but if they require a hundred mile round trip through that biut of the M1 by Buncefield where everybody slows down and causes a tailback out of thin air, even we start to think twice.

We do wonder why there aren't more magazines like Plan B, though - in this age where anyone can become a small business, you'd expect to see lots more magazines that smell of love and ego springing up. We imagine that the decline of the independent record shop and the decades of stupid management at WH Smiths which now means they only stock magazines if there's a guarantee they'll sell sixty squillion copies is probably part of the problem.

Plan B's report from Ladyfest Brighton is illustrated by a full page of a sexy female drummer in tiny hotpants. We think Brewers Phrase and Fable may use this in future under "cake, having and eating."

Ian from The Go Team (last year's Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, yeah?) explains the blueprint for the band is 'Going The Distance' - the Rocky soundtrack one, not the Cake one, thank god.

Miss AMP is given a while page to remember Bongwater's The Power of Pussy, which is a page well spent. We instantly wanted to dig out the tape we've got with What If on it, although it's buried in a box waiting a proper home. We remember hearing this - and, indeed, taping it - from Radcliffe's old Out on Blue Six show, which would roughly be the old equivalent of Maconie's 6Music Freakzone and... It's a page which makes your synapses bounce off each other making connections.

Brakes file a tour diary - pints knocked over by ten year olds in Tunbridge Wells, support bands who sound like the Soup Dragon, that sort of thing. (The one from the Clangers, not the one that kept following Primal Scream.)

The weekend seems to be littered with EMI mistakes - yesterday, we found Murray Lachlan Young looming out our iMac; today, it's Panico. Panico were signed by EMI and sued them when they were dropped. Why did EMI sign a latin psych-funk act? As a label, they're like the corporate equivalent of Lenny Henry, who popped up in the Guardian G2 showing off his iPod and confessing he puts stuff on so people think he's got catholic tastes. We can picture EMI sitting in a pub going "nah, it's not all Robbie Williams... look, we've got some latin psycho funky thingy here... and... erm, a Marvin Gaye compilation. That's urban, that is."

Chan Marshall of Cat Power is interviewed by Everett - hey, it's his magazine, he gets to choose. He starts the interview with a piece of Amy's interview with her, which is about an interview he did with her for Melody Maker. You could get a masters off the way Ev gets his jollies. "He's a tough guy" quotes Ev, quoting Amy, quoting Chan talking about him, "when he got drunk, he was too much. They told me he discovered grunge music. When we met, he went to take off his gloves, but then he left one glove on to shake my hand. I was like, fuck off."

It's less Careless Talk Costs Lives, it's more Curb Your Enthusiasm. One of the episodes in which Jason Alexander pops up, having basically played Larry David for ten years of his life.

plan b reviews:
live
the research - london luminaire - "she always thought the story about Peel crying when he heard Teenage Kicks was a bit bollocks and sentimental, but Lonely Hearts Still Beat The Same just does it, that wave of emotion which makes her feel both alone and protected, a pre-internet feeling that tastes of Silk Cut and the backs of stamps"
angie reed - london on the rocks - "the disaffected gay looks me in the eyes : 'it's just karaoke with worse songs'"
redjetson - london borderline - "an intense cacophony that's haunting and infectious"

albums
smoosh - she like electric - "asya's 13, chloe's 11; their youth never equates to naivety"
broken social scene - broken social scene - "hold on to your pain to use as a tool to dig yourself out"
kate bush - aerial - "experimenting with music based upon birdsong isn't the province of 'crazy' women; it's a male, classical tradition"

filum
brokeback mountain - "Ledger is tender, as meat is tender, beaten down until love and pain is indistinguishable"

The issue is wound up by Dickon Edwards railing against the effect the internet is having on the written word. He's kind of :-! about it. Or hang on, does that mean smoking a Silk Cut?

A few years back, Russ Abbot once did a spoof of the Everly Brothers, which featured the two of them singing at a reunion. One looked old and knackered, one as bright eyed as he was back in the day. The chorus went something like "one looked after his money... and just got incredibly bored." This - vaguely - leads us to the cover of the NME, where the "good Everly" of the Libertines, Carl, looks out with his new backing band, Dirty Pretty Things. (DPT seem to be played by The Boo Radleys.) And despite the heavily lidded eyes, you can see the value of a life lived well. The key question, of course, is if all this clean living will leave him - and by implication, us - bored as well as in need of a slightly more elasticated waistband.

What, you might be wondering, do the band actually sound like? "[The songs are] born of depression, frustration and agony. Some of it's a lot harder [than the Libertines], more gritty, less romanticised." Well, that sounds like fun. (Note to Top of the Pops producers: might not be the time to get the audience wearing party hats again just yet.)

The DPT are in the paper heading off the 2006 Hot List, which actually lists, in rough proportions: 10% bands who were hot in 2005 but already starting to go off the boil (Mystery Jets), 40% bands you'll never hear of again unless you put in an eyeglass and read the gig listings (Shitdisco), 20% actually brilliant bands who have been hot for longer than we can remember (Be Your Own Pet, Boy Kill Boy), 10% bands from genres the NME only features at times like this to pad out the numbers (Sway), 10% who are hot, but come from a scene that they've tipped once already (New Yorkshire's Long Blondes and Forward Russia), 7% Dirty Pretty Things and 3% Clap Your Hands Say Yeah.

The highlight of it all is Kate from the Long Blondes revealing that Alex Turner from the Arctic Monkeys applied for a job in the shop where she works. A vintage clothing shop.

The Arctic Monkeys album has "leaked" onto the internet - more or less by virtue of the band putting all the tracks on the internet - and so they're bringing the album release date forward. Although Domino's official line is that they're doing it because "the manufacturing went quicker than anticipated."

Talking of internet leaks, Radiohead's On A Friday demos have turned up, back from the day when they had two posh dancing girls on stage with them; the band seems to have sort of semi-sanctioned the songs' escape into the wild.

Some of the people who took off their shoes and paid their money to go to Pete Doherty's New Years' bash reckon they saw writing on the wall which may or may not have been a tracklisting for a solo album. Although with phrases like "Fixing Up To Go" and "I Wish" it could all be something else, like plans for a night out.

And while we're on the coke-addled (in the Trademarked drink sense), Jack White's solo-ish single with the sideprojecting Raconteurs could be just weeks away. Oddly, we can't find it in ourselves to get excited.

Ville Valo, him out of Him, goes face to face with Peter Robinson. Villle had his mobile phone pinched while he was in a bar in Minneapolis, which he reckons must have been because someone slipped him a date-rape drug. It's funny how every crime that's committed in bars these days is preceeded by the victim being slipped a date-rape drug. It's curious - do no crims wait until their marks get a bit woozy and take their eyes off their stuff? Is there no patience?

reviews
albums
arctic monkeys - whatever people say I am, that's what I'm not - "what turner has in common with Morrissey and Jarvis is that he's aa funny little fucker", 10
regina spektor - mary ann meets the gravediggers... - "between Bjork and PJ Harvey", 7
james roberts - everything you know is right - "we're glad he's here now", 9

tracks
totw - test icicles (see, it's not all about the arctic monkeys) - whats your damage? - "why aren't all bands like this"
mogwai - friends of the night - "if you believe this band is more radical than snow patrol, you kid yourself"
placebo - nancy boy (a classic single of the week from nine years ago) - "the sound of experimentation"

live
the like - los angeles auditorium - "a mixture of the Pretenders and the Bangles with hints of Hole"
biffy clyro - glasgow king tuts - "come summer, this will be a week to swear you were there" (we have our doubts, actually - they're a band who give off the sense of running down a platform, waving suitcases, desperately hoping they might still make the train even as it pulls out the station)

And finally: you might be interested to know that there's a giant glossy Arctic Monkeys poster inside this week's paper. Personally, we've swapped to using those carpet squares to feed the cat on, but we remember how useful a large poster can be.

music arctic monkeys nme carl barat dirty pretty things cat power long blondes radiohead