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Here's a nifty little tool - if you've got a website and would like a small ticker which displays the most recent No Rock headlines, download this small text file, past the code into your webpage, and it should deliver a narrow column of news straight to your page.
If it doesn't work, well, it's not our fault, alright.
The phrase chosen to describe DMX's new contact with Sony-Columbia is that he's coming out of retirement. That retirement, of course, was kind of enforced, what with him being sent down after all that business of driving an SUV through airport security while off his head on drugs and pretending to be an FBI agent and... well, DMX clearly doesn't want to focus on the past.
Not his past, anyway. He's happy to investigate the past dealings of his more recent record label, DefJam:
"When I first went to Def Jam it was like a dream come true. It was a blessing because I was invited to a home. Then they sold the house on me and left me with people I didn't know that didn't give a fuck about me."
And what was worse is every time he rang up to complain about the broken tap in that house, he could only get hold of the metaphorical landlord's wife who said the landlord was out helping sick kids for charity and he'd be round in the morning. Or something.
BBC News is assembling a panel of music industry figures who know as much as anyone about what the thinking in the offices of the entertainment corporations are when it comes to the internet to take your questions about it all. Go on, ask them something.
People are already getting straight to the point:
When are the media industries going to stop stealing content from the public by lobbying governments to extend copyright lengths?
We expect to hear nothing but reasonable answers.
Those of you blessed with long memories and cursed with sleeping problems may find yourself wondering, in the small hours, whatever happened to that Murray Lachlan Young? Just under a decade ago - back when poetry was taking its turn as the new rock and roll - EMI signed him up for what was supposedly a million pound deal. Of course, Young was rubbish - his most famous work, Simply Everybody's Taking Cocaine, just reeked of the worst sort of Loose Ends filler material; he dressed in velvet to suggest Lord Byron but looked more like Mr Buyrite; and, of course, EMI had signed up without a clue what to do him. They tried to make him into a popstar; he broke his contract with a Mariah Carey style financial settlement, and he disappeared.
He's back now, though - tempted out of hiding by Attila The Stockbroker. The new material? It's things like "Is It Wrong To Wear The Thing?", so we suspect there's still going to be a welcome at Ned Sherrin's right hand.
There's been some interesting half-assed conclusion drawing from XTN's mini-music-market survey, and if there's half-assed conclusions to be drawn somewhere, we want to be involved.
Much of the excitement has come from the discovery that iPod owners download less illegal filesharing music online than owners of other or no mp3 players. The Register speculated "that iPod users are either scrupulously honest or more paranoid they'll get sued by RIAA than owners of lesser music players."
However, there is another possibility. The survey also found that iPod owners buy 0.14 singles a month, on average, less than other people. Now, they do buy albums in slightly greater quantities than non-iPodders, but the reluctance to invest in the sugary, sweet hit of singles coupled with the purchase of a music player that is as much about style and design as about being able to play music well does raise the question: could it be that a large portion of iPod owners are less interested in music, and so not that arsed about seeking out individual tracks from the internet?
One piece of air-punching joy does come in this morning's 3am column, though: there shall be no Boyzone reunion this year. There's not much that would make us kiss Ronan Keating, but his stubborn decision to concentrate on pushing his own solo album instead of rattling down memory lane has scuppered the plans of his starving bandmates to mop up any cahs left over by the reunions of Take That and East 17 has spared us a horrid fate.
On the other hand, he is releasing another solo album, so it's not like he isn't evil or anything.
It's like the Mirror's 3AM Girls each bring their own bit of literary superpower to the table, as they produce killer pay-off lines crackling with wit. Like these, today:
Still, we doubt that Kate's party animal days are completely a thing of the past - if her impromptu pole-dance with Lindsay Lohan at a New York strip club on Wednesday is anything to go by...
You couldn't make it up...
Frocks to the dry-cleaners, girls - but you're going to have to wait for the babyshower.
Bless!
We're sure you're forgiven...
Same rumour this time next year, boys?
To be frank, rather than calling in a plastic surgeon to estimate the value of the work Pete Burns has had done on his face, the Mirror might have been better off getting Sarah Beeny or one of the chaps off the Antique Roadshow. Anyway, surgeon Alex Karidis was the man they went for, and he's estimated the Burns face at being about fifty grands worth. And not money well spent, either:
"Success is always in the eye of the patient and what the surgeon sees and what the patient sees don't always correlate," he said. "It's not my taste in surgery. I think he looks slightly contrived.
"Whenever I do anything I like to make sure it looks natural. If he came to me asking for those things, I probably wouldn't agree to do them.
"But at the end of the day, if he really wants it, I'm sure there's someone out there very happy to do it for him."
Pete wasn't evicted last night - he was spared, as was George Galloway. Galloway, we suspect, because he'd spent much of the previous evening pretending to be a cat lapping cream from Rula Lenska's hands. It's a strategy he could use if he finds himself in front of the Senate again, we suppose.
Jodie Marsh - who's mainly famous for not being able to put a bra on properly - was evicted, which allowed her to give her opinion on that fifty grand face:
She branded plastic surgery addict Pete, 46, "the most hideous thing I've ever met" and added: "I wasn't sure how much longer I could sit and look at him. I defy anyone to be in there for three weeks and not want to kill themselves or him."
She's probably lucky she didn't have to share a bedroom with him two or three years back. Can you imagine the nightmares?
Earlier: Preston gets outside bookings
Having slagged him in Mojo magazine, Pete Townshend has been unable to sleep for fear that Bob Dylan might have taken the slight badly. So, he did what anyone else might do: he broke out the Basildon Bond and wrote Dylan a letter of apology.
We're betting he gets back a reply along the lines of "Daer Peter, thanks for your letter. Bob has instructed me to thank you for your interest. I have great pleasure in enclosing a signed photograph of Bob, and a 50 cent coupon for whatever shit he's signed up to advertise at the moment."
Meanwhile, the BBC - ironically buoyed by the critical success amongst many university lecturers of their Dylan fest last year - are lining up an Arena special to celebrate the Who's um, 42nd anniversary (in case your wondering, that's Ruby + Cotton, so we'd recommend sending them a wine-stained tea-towel). Regular email correspondent Jim McCabe isn't clearing the space on his Sky+ just yet:
Given that the band's membership has halved over the years, it doesn't seem too much of an achievement for the BBC to announce they've got the band's permission for the project.
Only one snag: how are they going to handle Pete Townshend's brush with the law when he admitted to downloading child porn in the name of "research"?
That's actually an interesting question - you can imagine some bands allowing an official history on the strict understanding that unsavoury incidents are, at most, glossed over with an oblique scripted mention (not too many officially blessed Rolling Stones biographies make much of Bill Wyman not only shagging an underage girl, but then having a hit song about taking her abroad, for example). But The Who have been pretty upfront about Townshend's misadventure, and I suspect they wouldn't turn down another opportunity to push the official line on it again. We shall see in the autumn.
The full line-up for this year's SXSW has been announced:
(This is quite a large, long band list - you could just skip to the bottom if you don't want a long scroll)
AAA
Aberdeen City (Boston, MA)
Aberfeldy (Edinburgh, UK)
Abigail und Hansel (Cedar Creek, TX)
The Adored (Los Angeles, CA)
Adult. (Detroit, MI)
The Aeroplanes (Liverpool, UK)
Afrirampo (Osaka, Japan)
Daníel Ágúst (Reykjavik, Iceland)
Airbourne (Melbourne, Australia)
Aloha (Cleveland, OH)
AM (Los Angeles, CA)
The Amazing Pilots (Dublin, Ireland)
American Eyes (Los Angeles, CA)
American Minor (Huntington WV)
American Princes (Little Rock, AR)
An Albatross (Philadelphia, PA)
Al Anderson (Windsor, CT)
Duane Andrews (St John's, NF)
Animal Alpha (Oslo, Norway)
Animal Collective (Baltimore, NY)
Annie (Bergen, Norway)
The Anointed Voicez (Houston, TX)
The Answer (Downpatrick, UK)
Antietam (New York, NY)
A Pink Cloud (Houston, TX)
Apollo Sunshine (Boston, MA)
The Apples in Stereo (Denver, CO)
Aqueduct (Seattle, WA)
Arab Strap (Falkirk, UK)
The Arm (Austin, TX)
Arnold Dreyblatt Ensemble (Berlin, Germany)
Art Brut (London, UK)
Asobi Seksu (New York, NY)
At All Cost (Austin, TX)
Athlete (Deptford, UK)
The Atomic Bitchwax (Long Branch, NJ)
Audion (Detroit, MI)
Jon Auer (Seattle, WA)
Auktyon (St Petersburg, Russia)
The Avalanches (Melbourne, Australia)
Avotor (Auckland, New Zealand)
Awesome Cool Dudes (Austin, TX)
BBB
Backyard Tire Fire (Chicago, IL)
The Bad Roads (Lake Charles, LA)
Bad Wizard (Manhattan, NY)
Sam Baker (Austin, TX)
Daniel Balthasar (Luxembourg City, Luxembourg)
Barbez (Brooklyn, NY)
Bobby Bare Jr. (Nashville, TN)
Barfield (Austin, TX)
Baroness (Savannah, GA)
Shane Bartell (Austin, TX)
The Bats (Christchurch, New Zealand)
Battle (London, UK)
David Bavas and the Down Comforter (Seattle, WA)
Bedouin Soundclash (Toronto, ON)
Bedroom Walls (Highland Park, CA)
Beirut (Albuquerque, NM)
Belaire (Austin, TX)
Bellaparker (Austin, TX)
Archie Bell (Houston, TX)
Hudson Bell (San Francisco, CA)
The BellRays (Los Angeles, CA)
Bell X1 (Dublin, Ireland)
Belong (New Orleans, LA)
Bend Sinister (Vancouver, BC)
Benko (Austin, TX)
Best Fwends (Denton, TX)
Bexar Bexar (Austin, TX)
Be Your Own PET (Nashville, TN)
Bible of the Devil (Chicago, IL)
Scott H. Biram (Austin, TX)
The Black Angels (Austin, TX)
Blackbud (Bradford on Avon, UK)
Black Diamond Heavies (Nashville, TN)
Black Dice (Brooklyn, NY)
Black Furies (San Francisco, CA)
Black Heart Procession (San Diego, CA)
The Black Hollies (Jersey City, NJ)
Black Joe Lewis (Austin, TX)
Black Moses (London, UK)
Blanche (Detroit, MI)
Sarah Blasko (Sydney, Australia)
Blockhead (New York, NY)
Blood Meridian (Vancouver, BC)
Blowfly (Miami, FL)
Blue Aeroplanes (Bristol, UK)
Bluebottle Kiss (Sydney, Australia)
Blue October (San Marcos, TX)
Harlan T Bobo (Memphis, TN)
Bodhisattva (Phoenix, AZ)
Sarah Borges (Boston, MA)
Bosque Brown (Fort Worth, TX)
Boss Martians (Seattle, WA)
Bottle Rockets (Festus, MO)
Bound Stems (Chicago, IL)
Boy (Toronto, ON)
The Boy Least Likely To (Wendove, UK)
The Brakes (Philadelphia, PA)
Bravo Silva (New York, NY)
Brazilian Girls (New York, NY)
The Brian Jonestown Massacre (Los Angeles, CA)
The Brilliant Mistakes (New York, NY)
The Brokedown (Los Angeles, CA)
Broken Spindles (Omaha, NE)
The Bronx (Los Angeles, CA)
Elliott Brood (Toronto, ON)
Tom Brosseau (Los Angeles, CA)
The Brother Kite (Providence, RI)
Brothers Past (Philadelphia, PA)
the brunettes (Auckland, New Zealand)
Buck 65 (Montreal, QC)
Burden Brothers (Dallas, TX)
Burrito Deluxe (Nashville, TN)
Busy Signals (Chicago, IL)
Butterfly Explosion (Dublin, Ireland)
CCC
Cadence Weapon (Edmonton, AB)
Califone (Chicago, IL)
Calla (New York, NY)
The Capes (South London, UK)
The Capitol Years (Philadelphia, PA)
Carbonas (Atlanta, GA)
Brandi Carlile (Seattle, WA)
Caroline (Okinawa, Japan)
Tia Carrera (Austin TX)
Cary Brothers (Los Angeles, CA)
Neko Case (Tacoma, WA)
Peter Case (Los Angeles, CA)
Cat Scientist (Austin, TX)
Cayto (Glasgow, UK)
Celebration (Baltimore, MD)
Centro-matic (Denton, TX)
Cephalic Carnage (Denver, CO)
Channel 3 (Orange County, CA)
Marshall Chapman (Nashville, TN)
Charanga Cakewalk (Austin, TX)
Chas. Mtn. (Boston, MA)
Chatham County Line (Raleigh, NC)
Rhys Chatham (Paris, France)
Cheater Slicks (Columbus, OH)
Cheeseburger (Brooklyn, NY)
Chingon (Austin, TX)
Chin Up Chin Up (Chicago, IL)
Chocolate Genius Inc (Brooklyn, NY)
Chris & Aurore (Boston, MA)
Chris and Thomas (Los Angeles, CA)
The Chris Vestre Group (Austin, TX)
Circle Takes The Square (Savannah, GA)
Cities (Chapel Hill, NC)
Eau Claire (Austin, TX)
Stephen Clair (Brooklyn, NY)
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah (Brooklyn, NY)
Gary Clark, Jr. (Austin, TX)
Classie Ballou (Lake Charles, LA)
Clem Snide (Nashville, TN)
Clor (London, UK)
Clorox Girls (Portland, OR)
The Clutters (Nashville, TN)
Biffy Clyro (Glasgow, UK)
Coco Solid (Auckland, New Zealand)
Jason Collett (Toronto, ON)
Colored Shadows (Los Angeles, CA)
Colossal Yes (San Francisco, CA)
Jessi Colter (Scottsdale, AZ)
The Concretes (Stockholm, Sweden)
Tony Conrad (New York, NY)
Cooper Temple Clause (Reading, UK)
Cordero (New York, NY)
Sean Costello (Atlanta, GA)
Susan Cowsill (New Orleans, LA)
Crashdïet (Stockholm, Sweden)
Helios Creed/CHROME (Austin, TX)
The Cribs (Wakefield, UK)
The Crimea (London, UK)
Crimson Sweet (New York, NY)
Criteria (Omaha, NE)
A.J. Croce (San Diego, CA)
Crystal Skulls (Seattle, WA)
Cuff the Duke (Toronto, ON)
Jamie Cullum (London, UK)
Cut Copy (Melbourne, Australia)
The Cuts (Oakland, CA)
DDD
Damone (Boston, MA)
Dappled Cities Fly (Sydney, Australia)
Darker My Love (San Francisco, CA)
Dashboard Confessional (Boca Raton, FL)
Dash Rip Rock (New Orleans, LA)
The Datsuns (Auckland, New Zealand)
Grey Daturas (Melbourne, Australia)
Steve Dawson (Chicago, IL)
Deadboy & the Elephantmen (Houma, LA)
Deadman (McGregor, TX)
Death In Vegas (London, UK)
Death Vessel (Brooklyn, NY)
Debris Inc. (Chicago, IL)
Decoder Ring (Sydney, Australia)
Kris Delmhorst (Greenfield, MA)
Dengue Fever (Los Angeles, CA)
Derby (Portland, OR)
Miss Pamela Des Barres (Los Angeles, CA)
deSoL (Asbury Park, NJ)
Destroyer (Vancouver, BC)
The Detholz! (Chicago, IL)
dEUS (Antwerp, Belgium)
The Devil Bat (Austin, TX)
Devil In A Woodpile (Chicago, IL)
Lavender Diamond (Los Angeles, CA)
Diamond Nights (New York, NY)
Andy Dick (Hollywood, CA)
Tina Dico (Denmark, Denmark)
Die! Die! Die! (Auckland, New Zealand)
Die Princess Die (Los Angeles, CA)
Dir en grey (Tokyo, Japan)
Dirty on Purpose (Brooklyn, NY)
Dirty Pretty Things (London, UK)
Dirty Projectors (New Haven, CT)
Disco Ensemble (Helsinki, Finland)
Kevin Divine (Brooklyn, NY)
The Divorce (Seattle, WA)
Dixie Witch (Austin, TX)
Dizzy Pilot (Pasadena, TX)
DJ Di'jital (Detroit, MI)
DJ Dex (New York, NY)
DJ Fontana (Shreveport, LA)
DJ Skurge (Detroit, MI)
DJ S (Detroit, MI)
DMBQ (Tokyo, Japan)
Dmonstrations (San Diego, CA)
Julie Doiron (Moncton, NB)
Dosh (Minneapolis, MN)
Luke Doucet (Toronto, ON)
Daniel Francis Doyle (Austin, TX)
Dr. Dog (Philadelphia, PA)
Jorge Drexler (Madrid, Spain)
Drop Trio (Houston, TX)
Dr. Spock (Reykjavik, Iceland)
Drums and Tuba (New Orleans, LA)
Drunk Horse (Oakland, CA)
Duels (Leeds, UK)
The Duke Spirit (London, UK)
Dan Dyer (Austin, TX)
EEE
The Earlies (Manchester, UK)
Earlimart (Los Angeles, CA)
Echo & The Bunnymen (Liverpool, UK)
Editors (Birmingham, UK)
The Effigies (Chicago, IL)
Ana Egge (Austin, TX)
The Eighteenth Day Of May (London, UK)
The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster (Brighton, UK)
Elbow (Manchester, UK)
The Electric Soft Parade (Brighton, UK)
Eleventh Dream Day (New York, NY)
Ellegarden (Tokyo, Japan)
Ronny Elliott (Tampa, FL)
El Ten Eleven (Los Angeles, CA)
The Emeralds (Yokohama, Japan)
Empire Dogs (Stockholm, Sweden)
End Of Fashion (Perth, Australia)
epo-555 (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Erase Errata (San Francisco, CA)
The Essex Green (Brooklyn, NY)
Et Ret (Brooklyn, NY)
The Evangelicals (Norman, OK)
Ex-Boyfriends (San Francisco, CA)
eX-Girl (Tokyo, Japan)
Exit the King (Austin, TX)
FFF
Facedownins*** (Greensboro, NC)
Billy Faier (Marathon, TX)
Faker (Sydney, Australia)
The Fanatics (Auckland, New Zealand)
The Feeling (London, UK)
Christine Fellows (Winnipeg, MB)
The femurs (Seattle, WA)
The Fever (Brooklyn, NY)
F for Fake (Austin, TX)
Film School (San Francisco, CA)
Final Solutions (Memphis, TN)
Fires Were Shot (Austin, TX)
First Nation (New York, NY)
Tim Fite (Brooklyn, NY)
The Flairz (Fremantle, Australia)
Fleeing New York (Southampton, UK)
Flogging Molly (Los Angeles, CA)
Richmond Fontaine (Portland, OR)
Guy Forsyth (Austin, TX)
Forward Russia (Leeds, UK)
Ruthie Foster (Austin, TX)
The Foxymorons (Mesquite, TX)
Michael Fracasso (Austin, TX)
Donavon Frankenreiter (Laguna Beach, CA)
Michael Franti and Spearhead (San Francisco, CA)
The Freak Accident (San Francisco, CA)
Tom Freund (Venice, CA)
Fridge (London, UK)
Friends of Dean Martinez (Austin, TX)
Frog Eyes (Victoria, BC)
Fuzz Club (Los Angeles, CA)
GGG
David Garza (Austin, TX)
The Gear (Melbourne, Australia)
Gem (Utrecht, The Netherlands)
Gena Rowlands Band (Los Angeles, CA)
Genghis Tron (Poughkeepsie, NY)
Gestalt Switch (Dunedin, New Zealand)
Ghandaia (Austin, TX)
Susan Gibson and The Moving Parts (Wimberley, TX)
Colin Gilmore (Austin, TX)
Girls in Hawaii (Brussels, Belgium)
Gitogito Hustler (Tokyo, Japan)
Glass Eye (Austin, TX)
The Glass Family (Austin, TX)
Goblin Cock (San Diego, CA)
God's Temple of Family Deliverance (Houston, TX)
Gogol Bordello (New York, NY)
Golden Arm Trio (Austin, TX)
Goldenboy (Diamond Bar, CA)
The Golden Boys (Spring Branch, TX)
The Golden Dogs (Thunder Bay, ON)
Goldfrapp (London, UK)
Goldrush (Oxford, UK)
Delia Gonzalez & Gavin Russom (Brooklyn, NY)
Jose Gonzalez (Gothenburg, Sweden)
Goose (Genk, Belgium)
Goran Gora (Riga, Latvia)
Gorch Fock (Austin, TX)
Gore Gore Girls (Detroit, MI)
The Gossip (Portland, OR)
The Go! Team (Brighton, UK)
Jon Dee Graham (Austin, TX)
The Grassy Knoll Boys (Austin, TX)
Flip Grater (Christchurch, New Zealand)
The Grates (Brisbane, Australia)
Great Lake Swimmers (Toronto, ON)
Great Northern (Los Angeles, CA)
Jackie Greene (Sacramento, CA)
The Greenhornes (Cincinnati, OH)
The Guggenheim Grotto (Dublin, Ireland)
Guillemots (London, UK)
Dave Gunning (Pictou County, NS)
The Gun Shys (Orange County, CA)
Gyroscope (Perth, Australia)
HHH
HAL (Dublin, Ireland)
Happy Flowers (Charlottesville, VA)
Sarah Harmer (Kingston, ON)
Harrisons (Sheffield, UK)
Charlotte Hatherley (London, UK)
Taylor Hawkins & The Coattail Riders (Los Angeles, CA)
Richard Hawley (Sheffield, UK)
Gemma Hayes (Dublin, Ireland)
Hayseed Dixie (Nashville, TN)
Head (Seattle, WA)
Headlights (Champaign, IL)
Headphones (Seattle, WA)
Roy Head (Houston, TX)
The Heavenly States (Oakland, CA)
The Hellacopters (Stockholm, Sweden)
Helmet (New York, NY)
Clarence Frogman Henry (New Orleans, LA)
Sarah Hepburn (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Collin Herring (Fort Worth, TX)
Her Space Holiday (San Mateo, CA)
The Hidden Cameras (Toronto, ON)
Missy Higgins (Melbourne, Australia)
The High Dials (Montreal, ON)
The High Strung (Detroit, MI)
Donal Hinely (Denton, TX)
His Name Is Alive (Livonia, MI)
Jolie Holland (San Francisco, CA)
Holy F*** (Toronto, ON)
Jesca Hoop (Topanga, CA)
Hopewell (Brooklyn, NY)
Hot Chip (London, UK)
The Hours (London, UK)
Human Eye (Detroit, MI)
Jana Hunter (Austin, TX)
Hurts to Purr (Austin, TX)
Hayley Hutchinson (York, UK)
III
Ill Ease (Brooklyn, NY)
I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness (Austin, TX)
IMA (St Petersburg, FL)
Immaculate Machine (Victoria, BC)
Immortal Lee County Killers (Auburn, AL)
Indian Jewelry (Houston, TX)
Leif Inge (Oslo, Norway)
Innaway (Huntington Beach, CA)
Inouk (Philadelphia, PA)
Interlope (Paris, France)
The International Playboys (Missoula, MT)
Irving (Silver Lake, CA)
Islands (Montreal, QC)
Dan Israel (Minneapolis, MN)
JJJ
Jacques and the Shakey Boys (Toronto, ON)
Jade Day (Austin, TX)
Jakobínarína (Hafnarfjordur, Iceland)
Elana James and Her Hot Hot Trio (Austin, TX)
Lindsay Jane (Winnipeg, MB)
Garland Jeffreys (New York, NY)
JEL (Oakland, CA)
The Jessica Fletchers (Oslo, Norway)
John Schooley and his One Man Band (Austin, TX)
Jonathan Kane's February (New York, NY)
The Juan Maclean (Dover, NH)
Juliette and the Licks (Los Angeles, CA)
Damien Jurado (Seattle, WA)
KKK
Kaki King (New York, NY)
Kalas (Oakland, CA)
Karsh Kale (Brooklyn, NY)
Seth Kauffman (Durham,NC)
Matt Keating & Emily Spray (New York, NY)
Kid Congo and the Pink Monkey Birds (New York, NY)
Killing Joke (London, UK)
King Britt Experience (Philadelphia, PA)
King Louie One Man Band (New Orleans, LA)
King Straggler (Los Angeles, CA)
King Wilkie (Charlottesville, VA)
Curt Kirkwood (Austin, TX)
Kisschasy (Melbourne, Australia)
Kissing Tigers (Los Angeles, CA)
Sonya Kitchell (Ashfield, MA)
Faith Kleppinger (New York, NY)
The Klezmatics (New York, NY)
K'naan (Toronto, ON)
Knife in the Water (Austin, TX)
Knife Skills (Brooklyn, NY)
Chris Knight (Slaughters, KY)
Chris Knox and The Nothing (Auckland, New Zealand)
k-os (Whitby, ON)
Sharron Kraus & Christian Kiefer (London, UK)
LLL
Lab Partners (Dayton, OH)
Ladytron (Liverpool, UK)
The Latebirds (Helsinki, Finland)
Bettye LaVette (West Orange, NJ)
L-D Section II (Lansing-Dreiden) (Miami, FL)
Leather Uppers (Toronto, ON)
Amos Lee (Philadelphia, PA)
Lenine (Recife, Brazil)
The Len Price 3 (Chatham, UK)
Ted Leo/Pharmacists (Bloomfield, NJ)
Alana Levandoski (Kelwood, MB)
Toby Lightman (New York, NY)
The Like (Los Angeles, CA)
Lil Band O Gold (Lafayette, LA)
Lil Buck Sinegal (Lafayette, LA)
Limited Express (Kansai, Japan)
Linea 77 (Turin, Italy)
Eliot Lipp (Los Angeles, CA)
Live Fast Die (Brooklyn, NY)
Living Better Electrically (Jackson, MS)
The Living End (Chelsea, Australia)
Living Things (St Louis, MO)
LoneLady (Manchester, UK)
Loney Dear (Stockholm, Sweden)
The Longcut (Manchester, UK)
P W Long (Memphis, TN)
The Long Winters (Seattle, WA)
Lord Fyre (Bloomington, IN)
Mary Lou Lord (Salem, MA)
Lords of Altamont (Los Angeles, CA)
Los De Abajo (Mexico City, Mexico)
The Love Experts (St. Louis, MO)
Love of Diagrams (Melbourne, Australia)
Lovetones (Sydney, Australia)
The Low Lows (formerly Parker & Lily) (Athens, GA)
Lucero (Memphis, TN)
Lucky Luke (Glasgow, UK)
Luminous Orange (Yokohama, Japan)
Corb Lund (Edmonton, AB)
Barbara Lynn (Beaumont, TX)
MMM
Madagascar (Baltimore, MD)
Mad Staring Eyes (London, UK)
The Magic Numbers (London, UK)
Magnet (Bergen, Norway)
Magneta Lane (Toronto, ON)
Magnolia Electric Company (Chicago, IL)
The Magnolias (Minneapolis, MN)
Magnolia Summer (St. Louis, MO)
Mark Mallman (Minneapolis, MN)
The Mammals (West Hurley, NY)
Manchester Orchestra (Atlanta, GA)
Serena Maneesh (Oslo, Norway)
Maneja Beto (Austin, TX)
Man Man (Philadelphia, PA)
Milton Mapes (Austin, TX)
Marah (Brooklyn, NY)
Carolyn Mark (Victoria, BC)
Willy Mason (Marthas Vineyard, MA)
Mates of State (East Haven, CT)
Mathematicians (Glens Falls, NY)
Lorrie Matheson (Calgary, AB)
Glen Matlock and The Philistines (London, UK)
Syd Matters (Paris, France)
Cerys Matthews (Nashvile, TN)
Romi Mayes (Winnipeg, MB)
Maylin (Los Angeles, CA)
Matt Mays & El Torpedo (Dartmouth, NS)
Mazarin (Philadelphia, PA)
Kathy McCarty (Austin, TX)
Stephanie McKay (Bronx, NY)
Ian McLagan (Austin, TX)
Ryan McPhun and The Ruby Suns (Auckland, New Zealand)
David Mead (Nashville, TN)
The Meat Purveyors (Austin, TX)
Merz (Huddersfield, UK)
The Mess Hall (Sydney, Australia)
Metal Hearts (Baltimore, MD)
Metallagher (Minneapolis, MN)
Metric (Toronto, ON)
Midori Umi (Austin, TX)
The Mighty Wah! (Liverpool, UK)
Rhett Miller (New York, NY)
Scott Miller & The Commonwealth (Knoxville, TN)
Million Dollar Marxists (Ottawa, ON)
Chris Mills (Chicago, IL)
The Minni-Thins (Newport, KY)
The Minus 5 (Seattle, WA)
Minus the Bear (Seattle, WA)
The Mirrors (Houston, TX)
Miss Murgatroid and Petra Haden (Portland, OR)
The Moaners (Chapel Hill, NC)
Mobius Band (Brooklyn, NY)
Modern Skirts (Athens, GA)
Mohair (London, UK)
Monsters Are Waiting (Los Angeles, CA)
Moonlight Towers (Austin, TX)
Ian Moore (Vashon, WA)
The Morning After Girls (Sydney, Australia)
Morningwood (New York, NY)
The Most Serene Republic (Toronto, ON)
The Motels (Los Angeles, CA)
The Mother Hips (San Francisco, CA)
Moving Units (Los Angeles, CA)
The M's (Chicago, IL)
Peter Mulvey (Milwaukee, WI)
The Mutaytor (Los Angeles, CA)
The Mutts (Brighton, UK)
My American Heart (San Diego, CA)
My Education (Austin, TX)
Mystery Jets (London, UK)
My Summer as a Salvation Soldier (Reykjavik, Iceland)
My Way My Love (Tokyo, JAPAN)
NNN
Nada Surf (New York, NY)
Nadja (Toronto, ON)
Navajo Code Talkers (Montreal, QC)
Navruz (Tashkent, Uzbekistan)
Neck (London, UK)
Neon Blonde (Seattle, WA)
New Amsterdams (Lawrence, KS)
New Buffalo (Melbourne, Australia)
Jud Newcomb (Austin, TX)
New Found Road (Lebanon, OH)
The New Pornographers (Vancouver, BC)
Nic Armstrong & The Thieves (London, UK)
The Nice Boys (Portland, OR)
Nickel Creek (Carlsbad, CA)
Nieminen & Litmanen (Helsinki, Finland)
Willie Nile (Buffalo, NY)
Nine Black Alps (Manchester, UK)
Masahiro Nitta (Sapporo, Japan)
Noahlewis' Mahlon Taits (Tokyo, Japan)
Jim Noir (London, UK)
NOMO (Ann Arbor, MI)
No North (Los Angeles, CA)
Notekillers (Philadelphia, PA)
n0 things (Brooklyn, NY)
Salim Nourallah (Dallas, TX)
The Novaks (St. John's, NF)
Novillero (Winnipeg, MB)
OOO
Oceansize (Manchester, UK)
Office (Chicago, IL)
Of Montreal (Athens, GA)
OK GO (Chicago, IL)
Old Crow Medicine Show (Nashville, TN)
The Old-Timerz (Austin, TX)
127 (Tehran, Iran)
One Umbrella (Austin, TX)
Opiate For The Masses (Phoenix, AZ)
Oppenheimer (Belfast, UK)
Oranger (San Francisco, CA)
Tim O'Reagan (Minneapolis, MN)
The Organ (Vancouver, BC)
Beth Orton (London, UK)
The Others (London, UK)
Carey Ott (Nashville, TN)
Owen (Chicago, IL)
Oxford Collapse (Brooklyn, NY)
PPP
Palm School Choir (Austin, TX)
The Paper South (Austin, TX)
Paris Motel (London, UK)
Anders Parker (Poughkeepsie, NY)
Zeena Parkins (New York, NY)
The Paybacks (Detroit, MI)
Peaches (Berlin, Germany)
Peel (Austin, TX)
Peelander-Z (New York, NY)
James 'Suburban Knight' Pennington (Detroit, MI)
People in Planes (Cardiff, UK)
PE'Z (Tokyo, Japan)
Glen Phillips (Santa Barbara, CA)
Gretchen Phillips (Austin, TX)
Pete Philly & Perquisite (Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
Phosphorescent (Athens, GA)
Mark Pickerel (Seattle, WA)
Pidgeon (San Francisco, CA)
Pilotdrift (Texarkana, TX)
Piney Gir (London, UK)
Ariel Pink (Los Angeles, CA)
Pink Nasty (Wichita, KS)
The Pink Spiders (Nashville, TN)
The Pink Swords (Austin, TX)
Pit er Pat (Chicago, IL)
Joel Plaskett (Halifax, NS)
The Plastic Constellations (Minneapolis, MN)
The Plimsouls (Los Angeles, CA)
The Plot to Blow Up the Eiffel Tower (San Diego, CA)
Po' Girl (Vancouver, BC)
Robert Pollard (Dayton, OH)
Steve Poltz (San Diego, CA)
Pong (Austin, TX)
Poni Hoax (Paris, France)
Pony Up (Montreal, QC)
Portastatic (Chapel Hill, NC)
Andy Pratt (Amesbury, MA)
The Presets (Melbourne, Australia)
Pterodactyl (Brooklyn, NY)
P.u.M.a.J.a.W. (Perth, UK)
Puny Human (New York, NY)
QQQ
Quien es, BOOM! (Austin, TX)
Quit Your Dayjob (Malmö, Sweden)
RRR
Racoon (Goes, The Netherlands)
Radio 4 (Brooklyn, NY)
Radiogram (Vancouver, BC)
Corinne Bailey Rae (Leeds, UK)
Rahim (New York, NY)
The Rakes (London, UK)
Ralfe Band (London, UK)
Ramblin' Jack Elliot (New York, NY)
Jimmy Rankin (Halifax, NS)
RATATAT (Brooklyn, NY)
The Raveonettes (London, UK)
Real Ones (Bergen, Norway)
The Rebel (London, UK)
Redd Volkaert and Cindy Cashdollar (Austin, TX)
Red Jumpsuit Apparatus (Jacksonville, FL)
Terry Reid (Palm Desert, CA)
Reigning Sound (Memphis, TN)
The Reputation (Chicago, IL)
The Resentments (Austin, TX)
Reverend Glasseye (Boston, MA)
Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band (Indianapolis, IN)
Bill Ricchini (New York, NY)
Stan Ridgway (Los Angeles, CA)
The Rifles (London, UK)
Josh Ritter (Moscow, ID)
The Riverboat Gamblers (Austin, TX)
River City Tanlines (Memphis, TN)
Erin Roberts/Porlolo (Denver, CO)
Sam Roberts Band (Montreal, QC)
Lee Rocker (Los Angeles, CA)
Rock Kills Kid (Los Angeles, CA)
The Rodeo Carburettor (Tokyo, Japan)
Roger Sisters (Brooklyn, NY)
Roman Candle (Chapel Hill, NC)
Jack Rose (Philadelphia, PA)
Carina Round (Birmingham, UK)
The Royal Highness (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Xavier Rudd (Torquay, Australia)
Rumpelstiltskin Grinder (Philadelphia, PA)
Russian Circles (Chicago, IL)
SSS
Gordie Sampson (Sydney, NS)
San Agustin (Atlanta, GA)
San Andreas (Rotterdam, The Netherlands)
San Saba County (Austin, TX)
Saturday Looks Good To Me (Ann Arbor, MI)
Savage Republic (San Francisco, CA)
Saves the Day (Princeton, NJ)
Say Anything (Los Angeles, CA)
Sciflyer (Alameda, CA)
Dead Science (Seattle, WA)
Seaflea (Austin, TX)
The Secret Machines (New York, NY)
Sarah Sharp (Austin, TX)
The Sharp Things (New York, NY)
Jules Shear (Asheville, NC)
Shearwater (Austin, TX)
Shellshag (Brooklyn, NY)
Shifter (Brisbane, Australia)
Shout Out Out Out Out (Edmonton, AB)
Sia (Adelaide, Australia)
Sign (Hafnarfjord, Iceland)
The Silos (New York, NY)
Silversun Pickups (Los Angeles, CA)
Since By Man (Milwaukee, WI)
Single Frame (Austin, TX)
Sistas In The Pit (Bay Area, CA)
Sister Pants (Flagstaff, AZ)
the Six Parts Seven (Kent, OH)
Skeletons & The Girl-Faced Boys (Brooklyn, NY)
Skullening (San Antonio, TX)
The Slavestate Sound System (Clearwater, FL)
The Slip (Boston, MA)
Darden Smith (Austin, TX)
Sean Smith (Berkeley, CA)
The Soft Lightes (San Diego, CA)
Something for Kate (Melbourne, Australia)
Soul Position (Philadelphia, PA)
Sound Team (Austin, TX)
South Austin Jug Band (Austin, TX)
South Filthy (Austin/Memphis, TX)
South San Gabriel (Denton, TX)
Emily Sparks (Austin, TX)
Duke Special (Belfast, UK)
Speech (Atlanta, GA)
The Spinto Band (Willmington, DE)
The Spits (Seattle, WA)
The Spunks (New York, NY)
Leeroy Stagger (Victoria, BC)
Chris Stamey (Chapel Hill, NC)
The Standard (Portland, OR)
Standing Waves (Austin, TX)
The Starlight Mints (Norman, OK)
Steve Wynn & the Miracle 3 (New York, NY)
Stinking Lizaveta (Philadelphia, PA)
Warren Storm (Lafayette, LA)
Street Drum Corps (Orange County, CA)
The Stringdusters (Nashville, TN)
Dao Strom (Austin, TX)
Marty Stuart and his Fabulous Superlatives (Hendersonville, TN)
Stuka (Pancevo, Yugoslavia)
Subsonica (Turin, Italy)
The Sun (Columbus, OH)
The Sundresses (Cincinnati, OH)
Supagroup (New Orleans, LA)
Surefire (New York, NY)
Susanna Hoffs & Matthew Sweet (Los Angeles, CA)
Astrid Swan (Helsinki, Finland)
Richard Swift (Los Angeles, CA)
Switches (London, UK)
Swollen Members (Vancouver, BC)
The Sword (Austin, TX)
Sybris (Chicago, IL)
TTT
Kunimoto Takeharu (Tokyo, Japan)
The Talk (Charlotte, NC)
James Talley (Tulsa, OK)
Tangiers (Toronto, ON)
Abi Tapia (Austin, TX)
Tarantula A D (New York, NY)
Tartufi (San Francisco, CA)
The Tearjerkers (Memphis, TN)
Susan Tedeschi (Jacksonville, FL)
Temper Temper (Milwaukee, WI)
The Theater Fire (Fort Worth, TX)
Thee Fine Lines (Springfield, MO)
Thee Shams (Cincinnati, OH)
The.Story.Of (Austin, TX)
Teddy Thompson (New York, NY)
Thunderbirds are Now! (Detroit, MI)
TODD (London, UK)
Tokyo Elektron (Phoenix, AZ)
Toof (Austin, TX)
Towers of London (London, UK)
Tralala (Brooklyn, NY)
Translator (San Francisco, CA)
Tres Chicas (Raleigh, NC)
Tristeza (San Diego, CA)
The Trophy Wives (Brooklyn, NY)
True Nature (New York, NY)
Tsu Shi Ma Mi Re (Tokyo, Japan)
The TunaHelpers (Austin, TX)
Tunng (London, UK)
KT Tunstall (London, UK)
Turbonegro (Oslo, Norway)
Turn Me On Dead Man (San Francisco, CA)
The Twenty Twos (New York, NY)
The Twilight Singers (Los Angeles, CA)
Two Gallants (San Francisco, CA)
Two High String Band (Austin, TX)
Two Hoots and a Holler (Austin, TX)
UUU
Ultimate Power Duo (Saskatoon, SK)
Ume (Austin, TX)
Uncle Earl (Lyons, CO)
Uncle Monk (Phoenicia, NY)
Uncut (Toronto, ON)
VVV
Vallejo (Austin, TX)
John Vanderslice (San Francisco, CA)
Laura Veirs (Seattle, WA)
The Velvet Teen (Santa Rosa, CA)
April Verch (Pembroke, ON)
Tom Verlaine (New York, NY)
Very Be Careful (Los Angeles, CA)
Vetiver (San Francisco, CA)
Veto (Århus, Denmark)
The Village Green (Portland OR)
Viva Voce (Portland, OR)
Von Iva (San Francisco, CA)
Patricia Vonne (Austin, TX)
Rocky Votolato (Seattle, WA)
Voxtrot (Austin, TX)
WWW
Waco Brothers (Chicago, IL)
Peter Walker (Silverlake, CA)
The Walls (Dublin, Ireland)
Monte Warden (Austin, TX)
Abigail Washburn (Nashville, TN)
Imaad Wasif (Los Angeles, CA)
Waterloo (St. Louis, MO)
John Watts (Brighton, UK)
WE (Oslo, Norway)
We Are Scientists (Brooklyn, NY)
Weedeater (Wilmington, NC)
We Insist (Paris, France)
The Weird Weeds (Austin, TX)
Wenge Musica (Kinshasa, Congo)
Mike Wexler (New York, NY)
What Made Milwaukee Famous (Austin, TX)
The Whigs (Athens, GA)
Whirlwind Heat (Grand Rapids, MI)
White Ghost Shivers (Austin, TX)
Whitehouse (Edinburgh, UK)
WHY? (Oakland, CA)
Wideawake (Austin, TX)
Andre Williams (Chicago, IL)
The Willowz (Los Angeles, CA)
Winterpills (Northampton, MA)
Witch (Brattleboro, VT)
Wolf And Cub (Adelaide, Australia)
Wolfmother (Sydney, Australia)
Women & Children (Paris, France)
Carolyn Wonderland (Austin, TX)
Wooden Wand (Knoxville, TN)
Working For A Nuclear Free City (Manchester, UK)
World Leader Pretend (New Orleans, LA)
World Party (London, UK)
XXX
Xiu Xiu (San Francisco, CA)
YYY
Toru Yonaha (Okinawa, Japan)
Adrienne Young & Little Sadie (Nashville, TN)
Young and Sexy (Vancouver, BC)
Young Heart Attack (Austin, TX)
Young People (Brooklyn, NY)
You Say Party! We Say Die! (Vancouver, BC)
Youth Group (Melborne, Australia)
Yuppie Pricks (Austin, TX)
ZZZ
Zakary Thaks (Corpus Christi, TX)
The Zico Chain (Brighton, UK)
Luke Zimmerman (Hanover, MN)
The Zincs (Chicago, IL)
Zolar X (Plutonia, PLUTO)
Zombi (Chicago, IL)
Zom Zoms (Austin, TX)
Zykos (Austin, TX)
ZZZ (Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
See? We told you it was long, didn't we? Nigel R from the reactivated Church of Me points out that there's nothing quite as delicious as Vanilla Ice in this year's line up, although we can't help noticing perpetually irritating real ale flavoured Waterboys spin-off World Party are in there; we're slightly happier to see that amongst the bright young things is our erstwhile next-neighbour Pete Wylie and the Mighty Wah! (his version of Pete Burns' Big Brother appearance, we expect); he'll be kept company by Ian McCulloch and the Bunnymen - that's only a Julian Cope short of a potential Crucial Three reunion right there in Texas.
And while we know Stan Ridgeway probably shouldn't be seen as on a par with Joe Dolce, we still have him firmly pegged as a one-hit novelty wonder.
Still, a cracking line-up - we hope they're doing a music dump through the filesharing netwroks this year.
If it keeps growing at this rate, they'll have every band in the world playing by 2010.
If you're a dj, and you buy your music on CD, you might go out and play for a packed house some time. And why shouldn't you? You've paid for the music, and your venue will have a PRS licence to cover the public performance. If you're a bit more modern, you might download the tracks instead - as we know, there's no great saving for you doing so, as the prices of downloads are artificially inflated so the cost of a track on record and a track without the overheads of physical distribution costs the same. You go to the same venue, with the same public performance licences, and you're sorted. Right?
Wrong. Apparently, for no reason other than the music you're playing is coming from a laptop, you're expected to have another £200 licence. Why?
Because the music industry is greedy. That's not what Peter Leathern, Business Affairs director of the PPL, is saying, of course. They're being reasonable. They are reasonable men:
"Rather than saying stop it, don't do it, we've actually tried to embrace what people want to do and come up with a licence to be able to do that."
Isn't that great of them? What guys. But how can your average dj - a person who's more likely to be an enthusiast than a superstar, making a few quid and possibly being paid in drinks instead of actual money - come up with £200? Isn't that going to wipe out not just the profit margin for a lot of small djs, but also raise their expenses beyond a manageable level?
Leathern reminds them they have a choice:
"You don't actually have to DJ using a laptop. You can use vinyl, you can use CD, so we're saying that if it's not worth your while spending £200 then don't do it."
Yeah, you cheapskates - you keep struggling with your boxes of vinyl if you don't want to help carpet the PPL offices and keep the indoor fountains flowing at record company HQs around the world. The PPL are being reasonable:
Mr Leathem said the licences were intended to make life easier for DJs, who could buy a single licence instead of having to contact the individual copyright owner of each track for permission.
And they're not going to come and seek you out. Not yet:
He said PPL would not take action to enforce the licences in the early stage of the scheme.
But once awareness had grown, it would start pursuing unlicensed DJs, who could face penalties including legal costs and breach of copyright damages.
Venues would be urged to check DJs were licensed before hiring them and those who turned a blind eye could also find themselves in trouble with the law.
Of course, what the reasonable Mr. Leathern doesn't explain is how the venues are to tell the difference between a bunch of tunes on a laptop which have been recorded from someone's vinyl collection (which - and forgive us if we're wrong here, but copyright law seems to shift everytime a guy in a London office fancies a new doughnut - is perfectly okay and covered by existing licences), and which have been downloaded. Of course, if they're going to be forced by the threat of legal action to police the souce of music being played in their rooms, they're going to take the line of least resistance and ban anyone who wants to use digital djing.
But don't worry: they're all reasonable.
The death has been announced of German DJ and producer Mark Spoon.
Despite a life cut short, Spoon - his real surname was Loffel, so it was a direct translation - packed a lot in, making a star of Dr Albarn, running his own label and clubs in his home town of Frankfurt, producing and remixing.
But it will be his partnership with Jam El Mar which he will be most remembered for. In 1992, the pair remixed Age of Love's Age of Love single which got their name known and brought them both the opportunity to release music under their own name, and a slew of high-profile remixing work for other artists, including Moby, Frankie Goes To Hollywood and Moby. 1993 brought the start of a partnership with vocalist Pavka on Right In The Night; it also saw the band moving towards a more commercial sound.
Ironically, the more commercial they tried to be, the less the crowds were pleased. Trying a different tack, they returned in 1996 under the Tokyo Ghetto Pussy brand, which both metaphorically and lyrically made a jabbing grab for the Ibiza crowd's gspots. A 1997 return to their own names with 1997's Kaleisdescope didn't perform as well as the TGP stuff, so the band tried out again in another guise, returning as Storm.
Mark Spoon was 39; it's believed he died of a heart attack.
A slightly alarming new feature in the latest version of iTunes is causing worries amongst privacy campaigners, after bloggers discovered Apple is getting sent information about artists, titles and computer identification numbers when users play tracks. Even tracks that aren't sourced from iTunes. Unfortunately, they'd forgotten to mention this to iTunes users when they upgraded.
You can switch off the feature - called by the slightly benign sounding name MiniStore - but only by disabling access to the iTunes store as a whole; if you want to buy music but not have Cupertino scoffing that you play the Sideboard Song when you think nobody's looking, you're more or less buggered.
We're guessing the magistrate's bench are just lining her up for a sleepless weekend followed by a "however, we have noted your previous good behaviour and your willingness to admit your offence..." and a swift bout of community service, but Ms Dynamite has been warned she could go to prison when she returns to court for sentencing on Tuesday.
Ms Dynamite pleaded guilty to assaulting a police officer and disorderly behaviour outside a nightclub. Doubtless she'll have the following words ringing in her ears:
"I would love to see basically everything in the dreams of young black people and how we are seen, how we see ourselves, how we are treated and how we treat each other change."
Her own words, of course. Or perhaps she'll be thinking of her rewriting of George Michael's Faith from the Brit awards a couple of years back, when she lectured us all about how a "wise man fights with words" - a rewriting, she explained, to make the song "about love and peace and understanding and appreciating each other, and definitely not killing each other."
To be fair, she didn't actually kill anybody, but slapping a copper because you've been locked out of a chi-chi nightclub doesn't really do much in the interests of promoting love, peace or understanding.
The curious ecard which forms the advance campaign for the new Pink album, and lead-off single Stupid Girls, suggests an interesting attempt to have cake, and eat it. If Pink is planning on dissing through parody Paris Hilton's carwashing burger advert and Jessica Simpson's near-remake for her Boots Are Made For Walking video, that's all well and good... but isn't then using a still from the video swimming with them rather than railing against them?
You can see why they think the idea is worth getting excited about, but we can't really see the mp3-extension idea of giving cashback on downloads being a USP which leads to the mass desertion of iTunes. Indeed, the sites sums don't even seem to actually add up:
Registered members have access to every song in the MP3 Extension catalog, and for each download, they notch up a Reward Limit of 10 times the value of the download. The Reward Limit indicates the amount of cash that a member can earn from the site. Members can then drive up their earnings by referring other people to MP3 Extension, getting paid $1 for each member that signs up from a referral. In addition, members also earn commissions from all downloads made by their referrals.
We're a little loss as to how they expect to turn a profit at all...
If the story told by two employees at the Silverton Casino, Las Vegas is true, then Paula Abdul might be in need of a good hard look at herself. Carol Good and Damon Rosa have been sacked after Abdul threw a hissyfit. Abdul had decided at half five in the morning to get her flight changed for one at 7.40, and somehow came to blame the two hotel staff when she wasn't able to get on a new flight. The hotel - which had been negotiating to get Abdul to put on a dance show for them - responded by canning the assistants. One of them had just worked fifty-one days in a row without a break over Christmas.
Of course, Abdul could probably get the pair re-hired with just a brief phonecall.
Great meeting of minds of our time, number 377: Yoko Ono taking Lindsay Lohan for dinner. A smart move by Ono - choosing a dinner date who is hardly in a position to stand up and say "you're talking rubbish, woman." And for the famously cash-conscious Ono, Lohan would be the sort of guest she wouldn't expect to be running up much on the bill. Apparently, the dinner was so Ono could give advice to Lohan on her role in the forthcoming movie Chapter 27, which is to form a new part of the Lennon myth.
Meanwhile, the New York Daily News claims that while Lohan and Kate Moss did pole-dance together, there was nothing even slightly lesbianical about their behaviour. "They did not grope or kiss each other." We'd much rather have that confirmed about Lohan's meeting with Ono than her one with Moss.
It might seem a bit blase of Kevin to shrug and say he couldn't care less if people like him or not, but it turns out that he's working on a misapprehension that for everyone who doesn't like him, there'll be someone who does:
"I don't think it's gonna be all that hard. The more I talk, the more I come out and people get to know who I am and what I'm about, it's only gonna help. And if you don't like me, hey, cool. Everything in life is 50/50, I accept the good and the bad and just move on."
Oh, Kevin. You might think that letting people see your true personality will make more people like you; actually, it just generates more sympathy for poor Britney.
"I believe that no matter what, if it's real and people feel it, that's what it is, it doesn't matter," he said. "They'll look past what I look like if they know I'm pouring my soul out on this and I'm serious about it. It's not like I think this is a joke. It's not a joke to me. This is my emotion, this is everything, the past two years where I haven't said anything or came out and talked to anybody, I held it all in here so I can do this."
So the rap is going to go something along the lines of "Bloody hell, Mr. Spears, I can't believe my luck/I hope she doesn't sober up, and say what the..." repeated over and over again.
Once he's gotten out of the Big Brother house, Preston is going to be set straight back to work with The Ordinary Boys getting a date as part of the NME awards shows.
Meanwhile, back in the house - or quite close by - the parents of Jodie Marsh popped up on yesterday's Richard & Judy show to complain about how Pete Burns, George Galloway and Michael Barrymore had been ganging up on their poor daughter, wot never did nobody no 'arm. It didn't exactly help their case that the clip they showed to demonstrate how terrible it is for poor Jodie was her stood pouting defiantly as an elderly man in a cardigan (Galloway) and a middle age man in a dress (Burns) gave her gentle ticking off for her behaviour, which had led to another elderly man (Barrymore) sitting in the garden crying his eyes out. It was a bit like Gripper Stebson's parents asking us to object to the way Mrs McCluskey treated him.
They did find some support, though, from Pete Burn's bloke, who was also on and agreed that the whole thing was going a little bit far. But, he said, Pete sometimes doesn't realise how he's coming across - which makes you wonder what he thinks the impression he's making on people is.
Earlier: Big Brother sales bounce
In what would seem to be a curious decision, Micrsoft has announced that its Windows Media Player will no longer be updated for the Mac. Yeah, the current version is going to be as good as it gets. (Not very, in other words.)
In future, there's going to be a Microsoft-sanctioned third-party plug-in for Quicktime. In other words, you'd have to fiddle about a bit, hope the third party continues to develop its software, trust that everyone else does...
Microsoft explain:
[PR honk Adam] Anderson said the decision to halt work on Windows Media Player for the Mac was a matter of prioritizing for Microsoft's Windows Media unit.
"It's basically a business decision for Microsoft," Anderson said. "Like any other company, we have business priorities. Our focus really is in delivering the best experience to Windows customers."
But wasn't Microsoft just in the middle of trying to unseat Apple as the number one music download provider? Pushing its DRM windows media files instead of Apple's DRM AAC format? How come MS isn't bothered about delivering the best experience to the customers it hopes to find for its music downloads?
Unless - and it's very unlikely - the event in Chicago Millennium Park that they've been knocked back from was to be a one-off Radiohead concert, it looks like the band are lining up a US tour for the high summer.
The City of Chicago have turned down their requests to play two nights there because the Grant Park Symphony Orchestra had plans to rehearse in the venue on one of the days.
Mylo has been forced to cancel a Pacific Rim tour - apparently he picked up a virus over Christmas and can't hear a thing; even "superstar djs" need to be able to hear something through their headphones to be able to do a set. Although if just bunged on a mix CD and stood on stage waving his hands about, it'd probably satisfy people.
"Hey, look, that guy we paid to see play records is... erm, just playing a record... oh..."
We scan through the 3AM Girls Mirror column to bring you their payoffs. Why? Because with wit this razor sharp, you'll need to be prepared:
It's just one Shambles after another for Pete...
Well, it's always handy to have a back-up in case the modelling work dries up...
We won't tell a soul, love, promise...
It does wonders for the appetite.
Can't imagine how old Liz forgot to give Posh an OBE for her services to shopping!
We bet it was...
The setting of the Babyshambles tour at just three venues seemed to offer a good chance that the band might make it through a complete circuit this time. No such luck. Having already mislaid a guitarist, Pete failed to turn up for their Stoke gig. A fan tells the NME:
"After fully expecting Babyshambles to be on at 10pm, it then went an hour before we heard anything at all, being told that he was 'in a car' and 'on his way'. Of course, knowing the man, we thought it was in typical Pete fashion that he was running late and that he would be there to tear the place up.
"(Band collaborator) The General then made an appearance. People's hopes then started to pick up again, with the rest of Babyshambles coming out with The General to play a few songs. After five minutes of the General leaving the stage, officials informed us of Pete's absence for the night."
To make matters worse, Kate didn't turn up to do her bits on the songs, either.
(If you have it to hand, you might want to play the theme from Neighbours here.)
Paul McCartney and Fatboy Slim live near each other in Brighton, and in a sweet moment of neighbourly advice,
Macca helped Norman out with fatherly advice when he and Zoe went through their awkward bit a few years back.
And how did Norman say "thank you"? He tried to kill McCartney's dog.
Well, not quite:
“The worst problem with having Paul as a neighbour is that we put our old food out on the beach for the foxes and he has a vegetarian dog.
“I had a birthday barbecue last year and threw all the old meat out — and his dog went and finished the lot. I felt really bad.”
Hmmm. It actually sounds like the dog isn't as vegetarian as Paul thinks; we bet it chooses the duck in Chinese restaurants and justifies it as "it's less a bird, much closer to fish."
Anyway, the dog's system wasn't used to the meat, and it threw the lot up. He did make a full recovery.
Norman, just between ourselves... you need to get a huge anvil, and suspend it from a cliff, and some bait...
Good news this morning - Kylie Minogue's been given the all-clear from breast cancer. A "source" has been enthusing:
“For the past couple of months she has been feeling very positive and healthy. She has put a bit of weight on and has been feeling confident about the future.
“Her hair is even beginning to grow back, which she is tickled pink about. So this news really is the icing on the cake.”
Hang about... did the source just say "well, the main thing is that she's got her hair growing back, but the news that she's no longer got cancer is the icing on that cake"?
In the mistaken belief that growing up in a single-parent, multi-racial family is interesting in itself, UPN is turning Alicia Keys childhood into a TV drama. Kind of like Little House On The Prairie, only without the comedy shopkeeper and set in Hells Kitchen.
Graham Coxon has elected to continue as a solo artist, so the next Blur album is going to be a three-piece, although these days Alex James has become such a slight figure they're virtually a duo:
"There is a Blur record at the moment but it's very basic," explained Albarn of the album, which could be out next year. "The reason why it's so basic is we decided that if we're going to make another record it's just got to be the three of us and I've got to play guitar. And because I'm such a rudimentary guitarist it has to be really stupid and basic punk rock."
Hang about... "next year"? That's, at the very least, another fifty weeks away. How can you spend twelve months making a punk rock album?
According to a bunch of University types, the existence of music on demand through the internet and ringtone downloads and so on is leading people to lose the emotional connection with songs:
"The accessibility of music has meant it is taken for granted and does not require a deep emotional commitment once associated with music appreciation," said Dr Adrian North, who led the two-week study - one of dozens into the "psychology of music" carried out by his team at the school of psychology. It suggests we are becoming more passive than ever when it comes to tunes - because so much is available.
The team monitored 346 people to see how they related to music: they were sent a text daily, asking them to describe any music they could hear, or had heard since the previous message. It revealed that people are listening to a lot of music, most frequently on their own, and at home in the evening.
A key difference compared to previous generations is that mass media has made music much more accessible, removing its aura of selectivity. To the MP3 generation, music is a commodity - produced, distributed and consumed just like any other.
Dr North said: "In the 19th century, music was seen as a highly valued treasure with fundamental and near-mystical powers of human communication." But nowadays, "the degree of accessibility and choice has arguably led to a rather passive attitude towards music heard in everyday life".
On the other hand, if people are starting to view music as being less special than they did in the 19th century, could that be because back then they had Beethoven, Wagner and Brahms and in 2006 we've got James Blunt, the Gallaghers and Daniel Powter?
We're sure that when Outkast's manager Blue Williams says that their Idlewild movie and soundtrack is nearning completion, he's telling the truth:
"You gotta let creative be creative, that's what it is," he said earlier this week about why it's taken Andre 3000 and Big Boi so long to complete the soundtrack to their oft-delayed film "Idlewild" (not to mention the film itself). "It ain't always when I want it. What it comes down to is, even when I'm ready to hit people with the wham-wham, the guys gotta be ready. I might be sitting there with the ill marketing — 'We gonna do this, this and this' — [but] if they ain't ready, they ain't ready."
Of course, they don't need to hurry - they can eat out twice a week on the money from the number of plays Johnny Vaughan gives Hey Ya on Capital.
The band are also thinking of doing something to put things right with the late Rosa Parks:
"We're trying to do a tribute special for her and get a lot of entertainers involved," Williams said. "Then turn the special into a DVD we can put in the schools and let teachers have it to show kids. It'll be performances, people speaking on there, a history montage. A nice special that would give her just do especially for people who don't know what she did.
"I thought it would be a great way to show we always had good intentions," Williams added about honoring Parks despite her suing Outkast years ago. "It was my idea to figure out how we could ensure that everyone always understood we always had good intentions towards Ms. Parks."
Outkast's naming of a track Rosa Parks led to Parks taking the band and their label to court; Outkast were released from the lawsuit but Sony-BMG continued to force the case to continue. The work promoting her memory was actually part of the settlement agreed with her estate.
We were so much older then, we're younger than that now. If you have a glass, mug or some other sort of drinking vessel to hand, you might to like to raise a surprised toast to the fifth anniversary of No Rock & Roll Fun today; coincedently on the same day that, in about twenty minutes, the turnstile will click on our semi-arbitrary counter to record the 1,000,000th visit.
It's not a bad run for a thing I only really started because my old iMac used to be on a very low coffee table in the corner of my bedroom, and sitting underneath it to create HTML pages for the bothsidesnow site in Dreamweaver used to take longer than my legs could take without going to sleep. I think the first few posts suggest that there never was a masterplan, and it's kind of shaped itself - luckily, there seems to be enough people interested in what we do here to make it worth the time I spend on it.
The first proper post also established our habit of being wrong - we'd misheard Steven Malmkus sing "Jennifer dates a man in a sixties cover band" as "Pixies cover band", which would have been a much better line; we've gone on to be wrong many times since - we've probably never been more than wrong than when we noisly suggested the casting of Billie Piper as Dr Who's assistant was probably a worse idea than Bonnie Langford had ever been.
But here we still are - I've changed jobs twice (yes, I do have a day job, despite what some people assume) and moved office seven times; moved house three time and are on the cusp of a fourth, including one move of 350 miles; got married (I suspect this fact surprises some readers more than the having a job part); had one minor visit to casualty; said goodbye to three cats; redesigned five times (more or less) and filed posts from Liverpool, Milton Keynes, Hull, Berlin, Fort Worth, Colorado, Tunbridge Wells, Newcastle and Brighton. We've seen the mooted "Radio One and a Half" be born as 6Music, Top of the Pops shunted off to the weekend, Oasis scrap an entire album in disgrace, Jack White turn to the darkside, the Melody Maker and Select cease publication, Mariah's career crumble and then reform, Avril Lavigne pledge to never sell herself on her body, John Peel die and Apple become one of the key players in the music industry. Countless posts have been eaten by Blogger quirks, and a few others I wish had been. I think I'm just starting to get the hang of this blog business now. Another five years, and it might just be coming together.
In what sounds like evidence that wishing properly when you blow out birthday candles can work, Lindsay Lohan and Kate Moss were spotted pole dancing together. Presumably Lohan was dancing with the pole, and Moss was improvising using Lohan's freaky stick-thin body.
A judge in the US has approved the proposed settlement in the case where Sony included malware on CDs; it's going to be costly for Sony, but as a comment on the subject pointed out a couple of weeks ago, they're getting off lightly - they could have been forced to repair or replace all infected computers, which could have cost them much, much more. No wonder Sony are happy to get away with just a few million.
If the concept of a Johnny Cash musical sounded tacky, the execution seems to be lacking a little something, too. Like a direction. Director Richard Maltby doesn't even seem to know what he's meant to be directing:
"This isn't a biography. It's 38 songs without connecting material, but it's not a revue. It has a story, it has characters," he continued, but no plot. It's some other kind of theatre piece, a play made up of songs. It's a book-musical without a book."
Well, that's cleared that up.
A worried email reaches us from Gareth Jones, fretting over the non-appearance of Gennaro Castaldo, HMV's actual voice, in recent reports of Big Brother boosted sales. He clipped this from ContactMusic:
Says Gideon Lask, HMV Head of Internet: "We sometimes wonder why any celebrity would put themselves through Big Brother, but now, I think, we have the answer. These guys have only been in the house for a few days and, while admittedly building from a relatively low sales base, they are already seeing some benefit to their recording careers.
(Let's just pause awhile and wonder if its really taken four seasons of Celeb Big Brother for HMV to twig that people go on it to boost their careers.)
Perhaps Gennaro has been busy preparing his responses to HMV's poor trading over Christmas and the early departure of chief executive Alan Giles.
If reports on the Express/Star webhole the Daily Snack stack up, Robbie Williams is as stupid as we've always assumed - they reckon he's been persuaded to join the Scientologist cult. By Geri Halliwell.
It's one thing to join a bullying, cash-greedy cult which ruins people's lives. But to take spiritual advice from Geri Halliwell?
Scientologists - who took a religion L Ron Hubbard founded for a bet and turned it into a money-making scam - deny they prey on the weak-minded and gullible. But signing up both Halliwell and Williams doesn't exactly help their case.
Still, it's not all bad news from the Williams camp - apparently there's not going to be a huge earthquake in San Francisco any more:
"Latest news about San Fran is aliens fixed it. That's seriously what I heard - they fixed the Fault."
Oddly, the US Geological Survey doesn't seem to have noticed yet.
How much do EMI rely on Williams to shore up their bottom line?
The chickens are falling! The chickens are falling! Richard Ashcroft has been more than a little frightened by the birdflu panic - apparently he was going to stockpile food and lock himself away from human contact if the slightly-worse-than-normal-flu reached the UK. Even if it stopped him making records.
I don't supposed someone wants to train a turkey to sneeze and send him off in Ashcroft's direction, do they?
If you had three people sharing your byline, you could turn out well-considered pay-off lines like these, from today's 3AM column in the Mirror:
Ooh, you little Rascal.
Hmm, not so rock 'n' roll after all, are you Rick?
Let's hope they're not sharing a dressing room.
Time to give those stylists a raise, girl.
Fortunately they all behaved impeccably, so there was no dressing down from their dads afterwards.
And so can her little sister, soccer star Wayne Rooney's fiancee.
And, while we're looking at the 3AM girls, in a piece "Peaches Geldof wears a dress" or something, they trill:
But 16-year-old Peaches Geldof is not exactly short of self-confidence - after all, she supposedly pinched Pete Doherty's bum just before his shambolic Live 8 appearance.
Erm... only if believed Pete Doherty's claim when he was trying to explain away his shit performance. And, erm, only if you then disbelieved his more sober admittance that it never happened. The girls might want to try googling for that story, in case the've forgotten running Doherty's apology to Geldof as an exclusive just a few months ago:
"Hello it's, errr, Pete Doherty here and I'm a little bit concerned about a story that's been going about saying one of Bob Geldof's kids is harassing me.
"I've been trying to ehhh, get hold of his number myself, but I've had a bit of, errr, trouble.
"So could you put in your paper Pete Doherty would like to apologise to Bob and his daughters."
Perhaps the 3AM Girls don't read their own column, either?
In the sort of desperate move which you don't actually need hindsight to see is a bad idea, Paris Hilton is being lined up to present an award at the Brits. The organisers think it'll add some glamour and a "did you see" factor; plus, since Warners help underwrite the event through the BPI, they'll see getting their "new Britney Spears" into a music event as a marketing return on their investment. Even better, of course, as she won't be singing, which wouldn't exactly help her sell records.
Paris Hilton is rich.
Earlier: 2006 Nominations
Happy news from the Foo Fighters camp: apparently, we weren't meant to know, but Taylor Hawkins has let slip that Dave Grohl is going to have a baby. Or, rather, his wife is; he's already had his fun.
The peace that came from Linkin Park being locked in a battle with their label is broken today - sadly, the band and Warner Music have buried the hatchet and it's a joint statement, agreed by all sides:
"We would like to thank Linkin Park fans worldwide for their continued support.
"Despite the initial concerns after last year's change in ownership, the band is pleased with the direction of the company and in Warner Bros Records' ability to effectively market their music worldwide."
We love the idea of Linkin Park sitting down to watch some sort of powerpoint presentation from Warners, before going into a huddle and deciding they liked the sound of the plans. Of course, it's more likely that their lawyers said "you're stuck with this contract, let's just work through it as fast as possible".
The Scissor Sisters reckon they're going to have an album ready for a late spring release - when we'll tell if they're going to turn out as just another Electric Six - and are starting to talk up the record. You just won't believe it, what with Elton John, Def Leppard and twenty-five unemployed Brooklyn barbers working into the new myth. It's already starting to sound like they're trying a little too hard.
We can see the reasons for the existence of a gay media - even with the semi-grudging folding in of bisexual and transgendered people into the same fold. But why on earth is Sony trying to create a Gay and bisexual and transgendered record label?
Sony Music Tuesday said it was launching the first major music label dedicated to nurturing lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans-gendered artists.
Surely every major label spends much of its time nurturing lesbian and gay artists? Indeed, music is probably one of only three or four industries in the world where being gay isn't going to hamper your chances (yes, really, Robbie).
We're sure it's well-meant, but the whole thing sounds like a terrible, terrible occurence of business-plan-by-cliche:
The label also plans to release various compilations geared toward gay and bisexual audiences, as well as music fans everywhere, featuring hit songs by established artists that have been embraced by gay, bisexual and trans-gendered audiences as well as tracks from emerging gay artists.
Because, of course, being gay does mean you're only going to like the same acts as all the other gays. Village People, a few showtunes, a bit of hardhouse. Oh, and Madonna, because she's just so camp, isn't she?
Only the RIAA companies could come up with an idea where the signing policy will be based on sexual preference. Universal is expected to be revealing plans for a label signing breakthough acts who are all six feet two or more tall within days.
Staying up late for the Brits nominations meant the 3AM Girls didn't arrive online on schedule. But these are their pay-offs for today:
Bring on the battle!
Paul Weller
It's all a bit of a shambles for Babyshambles, really.
Talk about keeping it in the family..
Looks like she'll be the one making the Confessions...
Forget about Chico, it must be Kanye time...
Obviously, if his allegations against Michael Jackson are true, the poor chap who's trying to bring a civil action against Jacko has had a terrible time. But, just as the police couldn't quite see his story standing up in a criminal case, the details are just a little too perfect to accept.
Apparently, Jackson abused the child from the age of two up until his fourteenth birthday. At the same time, the complainant was coming up with ideas for songs and tunes which Jackson was stealing. And then, to top it all, Jackson made the boy have cosmetic surgery to make them look alike. It's only short of him being forced to share his bed with a monkey and record a duet with Paul McCartney to actually contain elements of Everything The World Knows About Michael Jackson. We're not sure what the motivation would have been for trying to force the kid's face to resemble Michael's own botch-up - perhaps he was hoping that if he made the boy look as repulsive as that, he might lose the predatory impulse.
Nobody wants to prejudge a case, but... shall we just set the doves free now?
Pete Doherty's appearance in court today - where he pleaded guilty to possession charges - got off to a bad start as he turned up over an hour late. If Ealing magistrates have ever read the NME, they'd have known to expect that; they'd also have expected him to blame it on other people:
"Mr Doherty travelled in a car and he had traffic difficulties and I am told was being followed by a number of other individuals," said [Doherty's solictor Eamonn] Sherry.
"Given the press activity that there is in relation to this gentleman, that is the reason."
Ah, yes, nothing causes a traffic jam like, erm, being followed. My uncle used to say that when he drove for a living, he could never go faster than ten miles an hour when people were following him. Mind you, he drove the hearse for the Co-op.
Doherty had less than a gram of heroin and about a fifth of a gram of cokem said the prosecution. They also said that Pete had been driving when he was stopped; something which Doherty had appeared to be denying during his last spate of messageboard postings.
He's back in court for sentencing on February 8th. Or thereabouts.
Here's a quiz question for you: How many Grammy nominations has David Bowie had during his long and illustrious career?
One. In 1985. For the prestigious "best video album" award, which sounds like something they'd have presented in the car park before everyone arrived.
And he didn't win that one, either.
Which probably says all you need to know about the value of this sort of awards ceremony as a way of spotting and rewarding talent. In a bid to make ammends, they're giving him a lifetime achievement award, although since they don't think he's ever done anything worth giving a prize to, it'd be interesting to find out why they now think he's achieved something.
Bowie, of course, was once caught up in a Nazi incident; curiously, the Grammys are also giving a lifetime achievement to Cream, with Enoch-loving Eric Clapton on board, this time round.
Guaranteed evil radio company Clear Channel is expanding many of its US radio station's websites by adding a video on demand service. The new service will offer thousands of music videos and a bunch of ho-hum "interactive" features (vote for your favourite video in some kind of chart); a big "buy this" button and the opportunity to upload homemade videos for everyone to ignore as they punch the code for that one of a semi-naked Christina Aguilera mudwrestling again.
It's a tricky line to walk: how do you make your money jiggling about in your pants for the lad's magazines while not having your grandparents think you're the kind of girl mothers warn boys about? For Girls Aloud, it's leading a complex double life, hiding things:
Kimberley Walsh said: "We are adults and our families are generally pretty cool about it, but sometimes bits have to be hidden from my grandma and grandad.
"There are certain things we don't want them to see."
Yeah, some of the album tracks were the sort of thing it's better for people who care about you to be spared from.
Cheryl Tweedy added: "I don't talk about my sex life, but it is a thing that we all do, it's normal. Obviously when it comes to your family, you are more sensitive about what they read and hear."
It must have been a pain having to get up, cut all the reports about the toilet attendant attack from the paper, and then go to face another day in court on top of that.
The band don't explain why, if what they're talking about is something they wouldn't share with those closest to them, they're comfortable sharing it with complete strangers in return for cash.
It was being shaped up as this year's Live8, but the planned Climate Change Now gig looks to be turning into a latter-day NetAid. On Monday night, a few more mid-ranking names (Embrace, Elbow) had been added to the bill and fans encouraged to get tickets for the Millennium Stadium event as soon as possible; last night, the whole thing was "postponed" without any explanation. There might be a clue in the Millennium Stadium's words:
Millennium Stadium chief executive Paul Sergeant added: "Whilst we acknowledge it is disappointing for those who have already bought tickets, if the event can be made bigger and better and attract more of the highest profile names in the music industry then it is the correct decision to make.
"Music lovers are assured the event will still take place at the Millennium Stadium and we're working with the event organisers to find a suitable date later in the year."
It's the words "bigger and better" that might be the clue - the top name on the bill this far has been The Strokes, which while holding out the prospect of a nice evening out would hardly have been likely to guarantee the global TV coverage they'd been looking for.
Beanie Sigel, the man who's got more convictions than a member of Opus Dei, has added another line to his sheet, pleading guilty to simple assault. This time it's punching a bloke and breaking his eye socket outside a Chinese restaurant (we'd hate to hear what they'd consider a complex assault to be - something involving a giant anvil and a trail of bait?); Sigel cops two years' probation and £120 court costs. That might not seem like much, but he's going to be assigned the nasty probation officer.
The period of incarceration in the Big Brother house might not be doing much for Faria Alam - although a few members of the MCC have expressed in looking at a rate card - but it's doing wonders for The Ordinary Boys and Pete Burns. The Boys sales have trebled since Preston went into the competition; Dead or Alive records have also started to sell in numbers unheard of for years ("some" and "a few" say retailers, although there are also reports of unsrupulous shops flogging copies of Bon Jovi's Wanted Dead or Alive and pretending its the real thing.)
We were deeply impressed that George Galloway fell asleep after making his nominations; and that he then fell asleep again after being told that he was up for eviction. Does he spend every day sleeping? Is this his reason for going on the show, to try and find a place where he could get some kip without constituents turning up to bang on about leaking taps and dangerous dogs?
Earlier: Pete Burns monkey coat causes government anger
