This week just gone

Seven days on No Rock and Roll Fun:

The ten-most accessed articles:

1. Lily Allen briefly wearing no clothes on a train
2. The courts will show a video of R Kelly having sex
3. Larry Mullen buys a block of flats in Bolton
4. McFly take their boxer shorts off
5. Beth Ditto: naked if she wants to. Only with airbrushing
6. Akon distributes vouchers for free sex toys to kids
7. Radio 1 announces 40th birthday album line-up
8. The Google search 'Edith Bowman topless' becomes popular again
9. RIP: Tony Wilson
10. Simon Cowell dumps six year-old Connie Talbot

Also this week:
Amy Winehouse didn't need rehab. And then then she was getting care in the community. The she was was in rehab. Then she popped out to get a guitar, although it was only a retreat anyway. Hovering over her druglife was Elvis: A Warning From History.

Elsewhere, the music magazines sloughed off readership as quickly as Capital Radio lost listeners; Russian courts said that Allofmp3 weren't breaking copyright law; Johnny Borrell put his pants up for sale; ITV admitted that it kept the cash it made selling adverts during the Challenge Anneka programme while George Michael got his hands dirty doing community service.

You can read the whole week on one page or
skim the previous week in one post

Five years ago:
When a fifteen year-old suggested that Soul Train had made a mistake giving its Aretha Franklin Award to Ashanti, they were rewarded for their efforts with a vituperative email and Soul Train published a long essay saying how, effectively, they knew better than their audience and the complainant probably wasn't even black; Jarvis Cocker as Rolf Harris ruled Stars In Their Eyes; Chinese proto-Allofmp3 Listen4ever vanished from the internet; did a group of deaf people really see posters advertising Queen Of The Stone Age's Songs For The Death leading to humourous misunderstandings?; Justin Timberlake's grandma worried that dating Britney would distract her grandson from his career; British troops would be entertained by Mark Page and DLT; Paul Simon wouldn't let a little thing like the Iraq war put him off having a dinner with Bush and Colin Powell; a Yorkshire farmer played Goth music to his sheep; it turned out Cream was being investigated by the cops Melvin Benn was sniffily dismissive of Clear Channel's attempts to muscle in on the UK festival business - "it's a fact that Clear Channel aren't succeeding to impress themselves on the UK festival market". They bought his employer out shortly after.

Oh, and we found what we believe to be the very first mention of Britney Spears on the internet. Surprisingly, it wasn't an upskirt.

These releases interested us:


Single of the Week is The Beep Seals debut, available for real and download from Heron Recordings


Is that Speke Hall in the background of Monkey Swallows The Universe's second album?


Chungking add some 21st century spritz to their usual 80s sound


It's a good week for Brighton, as Monster Bobby's Gaps also launches


The BBC archive spits out some Sandy Denny...


... and a little Therapy? (There's also an Ocean Colour Scene one, but we're not recommending that, obviously)


Indie movie, indie soundtrack: Orange Juice, Sons and Daughters, Clinic


She Wolves rope in Jayne County for help on Mach One...


... while Jayne also pops up in this comprehensive punk doc. How comprehensive? There's space for Sham 69


Not, perhaps, as awaited as the Alistair Campbell diaries, but Horace Panters memoirs of his time as the Specials bassist are still worth a look