You, You Tube and the music: Seth Lakeman

To celebrate Seth Lakeman's victory at the BBC Radio 2 folk awards, some Seth from the YouTube:

The White Hare, live on Sharon Osbourne's ITV show. A working definition of pearls before swine.
Live at Bunkfest
Lady of The Sea, live on GMTV
Lady of The Sea, less unexpectedly live on Channel 4's Transmission
Take No Rogues, live at the 2006 Cambridge Fok Festival
A smidgen of an Exeter HMV performance - from a videophone, which makes everything look like it's beaming live from Beirut

Nice MySpace you've got here: The Berg Sans Nipple

Introducing a new, occasional feature (i.e we'll do it once and forget about it) exploring a semi-random MySpace band page)

The Band: The Berg Sans Nipple

At: http://www.myspace.com/thebergsansnipple

Downloadable tunes? Nope

They say: Tropical / Melodramatic Popular Song / Roots Music

They sound like: Music to skip to in space elevators

They look like: Mathematicians going on A Place In The Sun

How many friends? 2138, including Ghostface Killah, Grizzly Bear and Maggie Horn

Have they reskinned? Nope, it's the standard MySpace skin

Do they blog? A little, but it's mostly of the buy/try sort

Best comment: so i randomly heard your record when it was randomly put on at the record store, and i wasn't even listening to it. i had headphones on. the music got softer, and i noticed the keyboards. i took off my headphones and couldn't stop listening. i listened to two songs and said, "i think i'm gonna buy this!" so i did. and so far, it's my cd of the year. everyone i've introduced to your music has liked it a lot. cheers!

Do we learn anything? "Once rumored to have been Siamese twins separated at birth (according to them, their relationship is really much closer to that of Ghost Dog and the ice cream vendor), the reality is only more mundane at first glance."

Do you really want to add The Berg Sans Nipple as a friend? If you like computery tunes, yes

Please say it'll be a one-way trip

The thought of McFly being blasted into space is one to cheer the sould on a cold winter's morning, although the apparent plans to bring them back as well takes the edge off slightly.

They're supposedly going to do something linked to Richard Branson's supposed holiday-in=space company.

Even if the technology exists, and Branson's underwriters let him go ahead, this won't be until 2009 at the earliest, so it's quite a leap of faith to assume that McFly will still be a going concern by then. It's always dodgy planning to put musicians on spaceflights too far ahead of time - NASA had a terrible time explaining to Eddie Fisher why he lost his seat on the manned trips to the moon - but even if Branson was blasting idiots off into space tomorrow, would the very rich really want to be entertained by a band aimed at nine year-old girls?

Still, at least in space, nobody can hear you scream "they're a bit like a poor man's Busted, aren't they?"

More quality journalism from The Sun

The front of this morning's Sun online screeches out a warning:

iPods could land you in court

MUSIC fans may face a FINE if they're caught crossing the road while listening to their iPods

Surely, you wonder, the paper isn't trying to pass off a four day-old news story about a plan in New York to outlaw any sort of audio distraction while crossing the road as a new story about the UK, are they?

That's exactly what Ian Hepburn - "crime writer" - is trying to do:

iPOD fans face being hauled into court and FINED if they are caught crossing the road while listening to their favourite tracks.

Britain could be set to follow New York, where safety-conscious senator Carl Kruger is tabling a bill to outlaw so-called “distracted walking”.

Hepburn doesn't bother to point out the law targets bluetooth headsets, other mp3 players, Walkmans and crossing the road singing "la la la" with your hands over your ears. But far more interesting anyway, of course, is his real discovery that "Britain could be set" to follow New York.

(Not, of course, that New York has actually done anything yet.)

So, what has Kruger discovered? Oddly, nothing at all - he talks to ROSPA, who don't ask for fines but just suggest you turn your players down while crossing the road. And Labour MP Stephen Pound is given a chance to comment, but far from suggesting that the government is poised to follow the lead of New York, he makes it clear its not likely to happen:

“British people can walk, talk and look at the same time.”

(Actually, Stephen, it's more the walking, looking and listening that's at issue here.)

So, there's no indication of anyone even thinking of suggesting we consider introducing such a ban in the UK. Admittedly, Kruger isn't lying - Britain could be set to follow New York's lead, in exactly the same way that Mariah Carey could try to study law at Harvard, or I could try and declare myself King of Bavaria.

Stop searching for the African Soul Rebels

You'll find them - "them" in this case being Femi Kuti, Akli D and Ba Cissoko - on tour at the following places:

Feb 14 - Leicester - De Montfort Hall
15 - London - Barbican Centre
16 - Liverpool - Philharmonic Hall
18 - Edinburgh - Usher Hall
19 - Manchester - Bridgewater Hall
20 - Gateshead - The Sage
21 - Northampton - Royal & Derngate
22 - Warwick - Arts Centre
23 - Poole - The Lighthouse
24 - Basingstoke - The Anvil
26 - Brighton - Dome
27 - Bristol - Colston Hall

Akli D and Ba Cissoko's sets from Liverpool will turn up later on the Andy Kershaw programme, which - in a spot of Peelesque downgrading - shifts from its usual Sunday night slot to a new home of 11.15 on Monday evenings on BBC Radio 3. We presume that it does a lot of its business on listen again, and so the actual TX doesn't matter much, but it's still a shame to see one of the most consistently interesting programmes on British radio shoved back another hour into the dark.

EMI shrinks a little

The merger of the Virgin and Capitol imprints at EMI has already yielded cost savings: eleven promotional staff and the entire Capitol sales team have been canned.

When management is this poor, all it takes is for Robbie Williams to release a duff album, and all of a sudden families are an income down.

EMI to fund anti-RIAA defense case

A further setback for the music industry's plans to sue everyone: it's just got a lot more expensive. A court has directed Capitol Records to pick up a portion of the costs Debbie Foster incurred proving their attempts to sue her for "illegal" file-sharing. It's the first time the RIAA has been forced to pay costs when one of their shaky cases has been pulled down; the precedent of both the defeat and the costs award might make them think again.

But then again, the RIAA have never done the sensible thing, have they?

Can someone spare Heather Mills a tanner?

Heather Mills insisted just before Christmas that if she was a gold digger, she'd have lots of money. And besides, she had lots of money of her own.

We didn't quite understand the logic. But if she thinks the fact she's not rich proves, in some way, that she's not after Paul's money, she's copper-bottoming the proof: the Evening Standard reckons that Mills has driven herself into debt with the divorce battle.

Or rather, that Mills believes McCartney has deliberately drawn-out the legal battle in order to wear down Heather's resources so that she'll have to accept a lower settlement as she won't be able to afford to carry on fighting. Although the Standard then says that because Paul has drawn out the legal battle, it means Heather is needing to seek more money because she needs to pay more legal bills.

The sense it's all being made up hangs over it all.

Noel on a roll

You know, a while back, Noel Gallagher's tiresome attempts to sound controversial were so dull, like a local radio DJ trying to spark some debate amongst a late-night phone-in audience, we used to find our attention drifted so much we found ourselves imagining what naughty lemurs might get up to, instead of paying full heed to what he had to say. Luckily, we think we've beaten that tendency.

Just in time, as Noel has something to say:

Speaking about bands who focus on political issues rather than playing their back catalogues, Gallagher singled about U2's focus on charities.

He said: "Play 'One', shut the fuck up about Africa."

Gallagher also hit out against Radiohead. He said: "Thom Yorke sat a piano singing, 'This is fucked up' for half-an-hour. We all know that Mr Yorke.

"Who wants to sing the news? No matter how much you sit there twiddling, going, 'We're all doomed,' at the end of the day people will always want to hear you play 'Creep'. Get over it."

Yes... much more interesting and worthwile to sing a song about how much you like doing cocaine, Noel, you're quite... lemurs... sorry... yes, Noel... and Bono. Yes... singling out his... um...

The national Breed

More years ago than I suspect either of us would care to remember, Simon Breed came into the Trading Places cafe in Liverpool to announce he was heading off to London to seek his fortune. Trading Places isn't there any more, swept away as an early casualty of the city council's policy of encouraging the cultural life of the city by making it unsustainable to run a small arts-centred business anywhere near the heart of the place.

Simon Breed is, however, still going (although we have heard speculation that property developers are interested in hollowing out the back of his head to put in an All Bar One) and just about to head off out on tour:

10 February The Stage Door, Waterloo, London
16 The Spitz, London
1 March The Enterprise, London
5 The Bleeding Hearts Club, Prince Albert, Brighton
12 The Social, London
24 The Windmill, London

You might notice a rather Londonesque bias in that tour, but there's a limit to what you can do with an Oyster card. (We're guessing the Brighton date is going to use the old Preston Park dodge.)

Touts, touts, keep 'em out

The dull splosh of a policy initiative from Tessa Jowell's Department For Culture, Media and Sport is always a delight. Now, they're all worried about ticket touts, and have come up with a policy which seems to be, erm, something must be done:

Ms Jowell said: "We want to address the problems faced by fans - paying through the nose for a ticket with a poor view or handing over cash for a ticket that never existed.

"Progress has been made but we're going to continue to work with the industry to cut off the commercial opportunities for ticket touts and stamp out unfair practices.

"But it would be unfair if consumers were unable to sell their own tickets, for whatever reason, and get their money back - we don't want to criminalise genuine fans."

Well, at least she's proposing a system with more flexibility in it than this year's Glastonbury system. We're a little lost as to what "unfair practices" she's talking about though.

Naturally, this doesn't go far enough for the concert promoters, who won't be happy unless they get to see people thrown into prisons:

But the Concert Promoters' Association called for members to pressure the DCMS for new laws banning ticket resale.

A spokesman said: "We welcome the secretary of state's clear statement that the government are against anyone re-selling a ticket for commercial gain.

"But we are frustrated that they have still not acted to give us the necessary tools to self-police our touts."

It's not clear exactly what "tools" they want - we suspect a lot of them might be similar to the sorts of things usually only sold for extreme bondage fun - and the worry has to be that someone in government will think "of course, providing legal support for a trade association to act like a private police force might be dubious at best and dangerous in the extreme, but it would be cheap..."

The trouble is, Jowells hasn't yet offered an explanation as to why concert tickets should be different from anything else with a finite supply. If its wrong to buy a ticket for the Diana No Seatbelt Driving gig with the intention of selling it on, then why is it acceptable to buy, say, a newly released Nintendo Wii or limited edition Dyson and sell that on upon eBay?

Of course, the response might be that this is different, because it's art and it's scandalous to restrict someone's access to the arts simply to make yourself richer. But then does the DCMS intend to criminalise people who buy paintings as investments and seal them away in bank vaults while their value increases? Or is there a subtle difference I'm missing?

We'd rather the DCMS looked at the shady practice of "booking fees" (or "turn out your other pocket"). Perhaps the public should be given the tools to self-police our scandalously over-charging booking agencies.

Napster announces upturn from "complete basket case" to "basket case"

The increasingly bemusing Napster has posted what it seems to think is good news: Napster has managed to only lose about ten million dollars in the last quarter.

At this rate, they might be within striking distance of seeing the corner they need to turn sometime around the Christmas after next.

Napster are currently claiming a subscriber base of 566,000. We've done the maths, and that means each subscriber equals a loss of USD16.78. Napster would be financially better off if they selected half a million people at random and sent them two free albums on CD.

There's an even more astonishing figure:

Excluding a nonrecurring benefit from prepaid download cards that expired without being redeemed, revenue for the latest quarter was $26 million, the company said.

Let's just not even question what sort of poor company sells gift cards that expire, and look at that figure.

USD26million without the giftcards added in.

With the expired cards not counted, the revenue was USD28.4m.

Which tells us a couple of things - first, Napster is such an unattractive propostion to people, enough people can't even be arsed to use it when someone else is paying for them to add two and a half million dollars to the company's bottom line. If we assume the cards averaged (an unlikely overgenerous) fifty bucks, that's 48,000 people who wouldn't, couldn't or didn't use Napster.

Napster's current opening offer to lure new users is one - yes, one - free mp3.

And if you exclude expired gift cards from the revenue figure, the rise in revenues is just under 6.4 per cent, rather than the 21 per cent headline figure. And - since there is little expense in a card passing its sell-by date - the actual loss figure would be nearer twelve million.

You don't have to be Peter Jones to see a company losing the equivalent of nearly fifty million dollars a year three years into its operation isn't actually a business.

Lily on the wagon

Apparently, Lily Allen's is thinking of quitting drinking:

“I managed to get into a fight with the band JET. I have no recollection of the whole event... precisely why I shouldn’t drink!

Well, yes. If we'd beaten Jet around the head, we'd want to remember every single detail to cheer ourselves up in the year to come.

Donny Tourette: Doherty re-imagined by the Jim Henson workshop

We'll say this for Donny Tourette - he's either got a very thick skin, or a very thick something. Even he, by now, must have realised that even Jack Woolley can spot he's a bit of a laughing stock rather than a threat to the system, man.

But he keeps trying. Ooh, now he's threatening to tup a Princess:

“I’m mad for her [Beatrice, Andrew Windsor's daughter]. She’s definitely hot. She sort of reminds me of Peaches.”

“All I’d need is two minutes to turn on the Tourette charm and she’d be mine.

“I went to Mahiki this week because I heard Prince Harry was there. I thought he could put a good word in for me.

“It’s not just Beatrice’s looks I’m attracted to — she’s fifth in line for the throne. I could handle that.”

Bless him. He's like Benny From Crossroads with a guitar, isn't he?

Spice Girl reunion story spotted

Like the first cuckoo, it's a sign of spring being just around the corner when one of the tabs runs a Spice Girls reunion story.

Don't believe it until you hear Mel C announcing it.

Who owns Paula Abdul's life?

The increasingly murky life of Paula Abdul would make a great reality TV show, were it not for the latest battle being over, erm, her reality TV show. >Abdul is being taken to court by a production company which claims it invented Hey Paula, and then got cut out when Abdul took her show to Bravo.

Abdul's response? "I own my own life."

Didn't look like that when she was on Fox the other week.

Economist on Jobs: Self-serving, but right

The Economist has published its response to Steve Job's call for an end to DRM. They're convinced:

Having seen which way the wind is blowing, Mr Jobs now wants to be seen not as DRM’s defender, but as a consumer champion who helped in its downfall. Wouldn’t it lead to a surge in piracy? No, because most music is still sold unprotected on CDs, people wishing to steal music already can do so. Indeed, scrapping DRM would probably increase online-music sales by reducing confusion and incompatibility. With the leading online store, Apple would benefit most. Mr Jobs’s argument, in short, is transparently self-serving. It also happens to be right.

Of course, it won't be as simple convincing the labels.

Indeed, Warners have already sniffed and turned their back. Breaking into the company's announcement of disappointing results, Edgar Bronfman insisted on business as usual:

"We advocate the continued use of DRM," Bronfman said, adding that music deserves the same anti-piracy protections as software, TV broadcasts, video games and other forms of intellectual property.

"We will not abandon DRM nor services that are successfully implementing DRM for both content and consumers," he said.

But Edgar, as you well know, TV broadcasts don't have DRM on them - at least, not analogue and much digital terrestrial are broadcast in the clear. And yet ITV isn't going bust, is it? Likewise, many other forms of intellectual property are DRM free - books, newspapers, posters - even CDs and cassingles.

"The issue is obscured by asserting the DRM and interoperability is the same thing," Bronfman said. "They are not. To suggest that they cannot coexist is simply incorrect."

To an extent, you're right, Bronfman - asserting DRM and interoperability "is the same thing" is wrong, because, erm, they're not. And, of course you're right, DRM and interoperability can coexist - they do right now.

For example, an iTunes music store track has DRM; an eMusic track is interoperable.

But, assuming you're not a big fat liar, Edgar, you must be totally ignorant if you believe that it's possible for an individual file to both contain DRM and be interoperable. Because, to guarantee the file can be played on any equipment, its DRM would have to be opensource. And if it was open to all, it wouldn't be any good as DRM, would it?

Who, where, when. The why and how is up to you.

The Who are playing some enormous gigs this summer:

22 May Birmingham National Indoor Arena
23 Sheffield Arena
25 Newcastle Metro Radio Arena
26 Hull City AFC
01 June Swansea City AFC
23 Cheshire Knowsley Hall
24 Glastonbury Festival
26 London Wembley Arena

The one in Knowsley Hall sounds like a lovely day out, doesn't it?

What will you do when 10,000 Morrisseys come marching over the hill?

So, this is the future, then: Morrissey fans getting together to propel Life Is A Pigsty into the charts.

Why, though? Why?

Yes, chart rules make it possible. But does that make it desirable?

Surely the danger is that - rather than entering the top five and showing how large Mozzer's fan base is - it limps into the lower reaches of the top forty? It could end up looking like that Frasier Crane demonstration where the depth of affection was undeniable and obvious as its lack of breadth.

A similar project, It Should Have Been Number One, at least has a clearer mission. It's setting out to be like a musical Sam Beckett, seeking to put right what once went wrong, giving songs which never got to the top first time round a second chance. You don't need Hologram Al, though, to see the problems here.

First, there's something noble about the way, say, Vienna never made it to number one - arguably, it's done more to keep the song fresh in the popular memory than if it had got to the very top. The last thing its record needs is a patronising hands-up.

Second, they're starting with Roll With It. Which, surely, is the walking definition of a single that shouldn't have been number one. Unlike Ultravox, who lost out to a song that was tapping a different market, Oasis knowingly and willingly entered into a chart battle with Blur, and were beaten by the better single. Now, much as we'd love to see someone set up a campaign to try and give Brighton and Hove Albion the victory they could have had in the 1983 FA Cup Final, I can accept they were lost and that's why the records say that. Trying to give them a victory on the basis of a show of hands a decade or more later doesn't really count, does it?

Unhappiness in 'slavery?

It could be all over for Audioslave, as Tom Morello tells US radio the band is up in the air:

Morello said that Cornell did not want to tour in support of Audioslave's third studio album, 'Revelations', which came out last Fall. He gave no indication of whether the band would record or tour again.

Morello is busy pouring his energy into Nightwatchman, his poorly-named latest project.

All rock, all the time... except when it's talk

The long clamour for a radio station which mixes speech programming with classic rock is over - at least in Manchester. What do mean, what clamour? Did you miss the march through London, with people chanting "What do we want? Queen's greatest hits and interviews with senior local National Health Managers When do we want it? Well, the speech elements ideally at breakfast and drive time, the music at other points in the schedule, although admittedly that raises questions about the weekend...oh, hang on... you mean Now, don't you?"

Ofcom have awarded Rock Talk the final Manchester FM franchise.

Guardian Media Group's John Myers is quite excited:

The GMG Radio chief executive, John Myers, said Rock Talk would be "another nail in the coffin for the BBC."

Another nail in the coffin for the BBC? Erm... the BBC's stranglehold on UK radio is quite firm, and is hardly likely to be broken by a local network in a northern city mixing travel news and Led Zep (Tailbacks on the M62 and Smoke On The Water).

"At last Ofcom has decided to award something totally different," Mr Myers added.

"The bid led on the whole GMG ethos of offering something different. It is an opportunity to do speech at peak time with classic rock around it. It is a totally new format for Britain.

"We will be targeting BBC Radio Manchester. I think one of the reasons Ofcom awarded us the licence is that we have the facilities in the north-west to make it work."

Actually, old music and some speech features was pretty much the norm on most Gold format stations when the frequencies split back in the 1980s, until the Radio Authority started to loosen formats faster than Chris Moyles loosens his belt at an All You Can Eat Buffet. But we wish them luck, and hope this will be the start of a slew of unusual mix-and-match formats. We can't wait for the dance music/business news network.

Remember... it's not for you: That SXSW list

This is usually the longest post of each year - the official list of SXSW acts. It's long, and may be of less than zero interest to some of you - in which case, click here and leap across the entire list.

Aa (Brooklyn NY)
AA Sound System (Edmonton AB)
A Band of Bees (Ventnor UK)
Aberdeen City (Boston MA)
The A-Bones (Brooklyn NY)
About (Amsterdam THE NETHERLANDS)
A Cursive Memory (Los Angeles CA)
Peter Adams And The Nocturnal Collective (Cincinnati OH)
Pierre Aderne (Rio de Janeiro BRAZIL)
Aesop Rock (Brooklyn NY)
A Fine Frenzy (Los Angeles CA)
After Forever (Reuver THE NETHERLANDS)
Afterhours (Milano ITALY)
Against Me! (Gainesville FL)
Airbourne (Melbourne AUSTRALIA)
Air Traffic (Bournemouth UK)
Akimbo (Seattle WA)
Tetuzi Akiyama (Tokyo JAPAN)
Alabama Thunderpussy (Richmond VA)
Alamo Race Track (Amsterdam THE NETHERLANDS)
The Alarm Clocks (Cleveland OH)
Allison (Mexico D.F. MEXICO)
All the Saints (Atlanta GA)
All Time Low (Baltimore MD)
ALOKE (New York NY)
Alternative Champs (Charlotte NC)
AM (New Orleans LA)
Amber Pacific (Seattle WA)
Scott Amendola (Berkeley CA)
American Flamewhip (Winnipeg MB)
American Princes (Little Rock AR)
Amp Fiddler (Detroit MI)
Amplified Heat (Houston TX)
AM Syndicate (Austin TX)
An Albatross (Philladelphia PA)
ANAVAN (Los Angeles CA)
Keren Ann (Paris FRANCE)
Annuals (Raleigh NC)
A Northern Chorus (Hamilton ON)
Antibalas (Brooklyn NY)
The Apes (Washington DC)
Apollo Sunshine (Boston MA)
Apostle of Hustle (Toronto ON)
The Apples in Stereo (Denver CO)
Aqualung (South London UK)
Aqueduct (Seattle WA)
Arbouretum (Baltimore MD)
Iain Archer (Bangor UK)
Architecture in Helsinki (Melbourne AUSTRALIA)
The Ark (Malmo SWEDEN)
Armor For Sleep (Newark NJ)
Army of Me (Washington DC)
Che Arthur (Austin TX)
ASAKUSA JINTA (Asakusa JAPAN)
Asobi Seksu (Brooklyn NY)
Astronautalis (Jacksonville FL)
At All Cost (Austin TX)
Nicole Atkins & the Sea (Neptune NJ)
A-Trak (Montreal QC)
Attack Formation (Austin TX)
Attractive and Popular (Hot Springs National Park AR)
Audrye Sessions (Livermore CA)
Au Revoir Simone (Brooklyn NY)
Austin TV (Mexico City MEXICO)
The Automatic (Cardiff UK)
Automusik (Austin TX)
The Waiting Hurt (Barstow CA)
Awesome Cool Dudes (Austin TX)
The Awkward Stage (Vancouver BC)
Kevin Ayers (London UK)
Back Door Slam (Isle of Man UK)
Badly Drawn Boy (Manchester UK)
The Bad Rackets (Austin TX)
Bad Wizard (Brooklyn NY)
Balkan Beat Box (Tel Aviv ISRAEL)
The Band of Heathens (Austin TX)
Bang Gang (Reykjavik ICELAND)
Jill Barber (Halifax NS)
Barbez (Brooklyn NY)
Shane Bartell (Austin TX)
Bassnectar (San Francisco CA)
Ceci Bastida (Los Angeles CA)
Bat For Lashes (Brighton UK)
Battle (London UK)
Bayside (Long Island NY)
Beach House (Baltimore MD)
Beangrowers (St Julians MALTA)
The Beasts Of Bourbon (Melbourne AUSTRALIA)
Beat the Devil (Brooklyn NY)
Howie Beck (Toronto ON)
Bedroom Walls (Highland Park CA)
Kim Beggs (Whitehorse NWT)
Beirut (Albuquerque NM)
Marit Bergman (Stockholm SWEDEN)
The Berg Sans Nipple (Paris FRANCE)
Bermuda Triangle (Oslo NORWAY)
The Besnard Lakes (Montreal QC)
Best Fwends (Ft Worth TX)
Jello Biafra (San Francisco CA)
Bible of the Devil (Chicago IL)
Big Balls (Austin TX)
Bigbang (Oslo NORWAY)
Big Business (Los Angeles CA)
Big City (Psycho Les, Al Tariq & Problemz) (Queens NY)
The Big Sleep (Brooklyn NY)
Carly Binding (Auckland NEW ZEALAND)
Bionic (Montreal QC)
Scott H. Biram (Austin TX)
Andrew Bird (Chicago IL)
The Bird and the Bee (Los Angeles CA)
Bird featuring Mark Burgess of the Chameleons (Hamburg GERMANY)
Martina Topley Bird (London UK)
Birdmonster (San Franciscio CA)
Birds of Avalon (Austin TX)
Birthday Suits (minneapolis MN)
Bisc1 (Queens NY)
Bishop Allen (Brooklyn NY)
BJC (Buenos Aires ARGENTINA)
Irina Bjorklund & Peter Fox (Helsinki FINLAND)
The Black (Austin TX)
The Black Angels (Austin TX)
Black Fiction (San Francisco CA)
Blackhearted Force (Minneapolis MN)
Black Helicopter (Boston MA)
The Black Hollies (Jersey City NJ)
Blackie and the Rodeo Kings (Toronto ON)
Black Joe Lewis (Austin TX)
Black Lips (Atlanta GA)
Blacklist (New York NY)
Blackmarket (Lake Havasu AZ)
Black Moth Super Rainbow (Pittsburgh PA)
Black Rose Band (New Orleans LA)
Black Tie Revue (Pittsburgh PA)
The Blakes (Seattle WA)
Bavu Blakes (Garland TX)
Blanche (Detroit MI)
Sarah Blasko (Sydney AUSTRALIA)
Bleubird (Ft Lauderdale FL)
Blindspott (Auckland NEW ZEALAND)
Bloc Party (London UK)
Blonde Redhead (New York NY)
The Blood Arm (Los Angeles CA)
BlöödHag (Seattle WA)
Blues Control (Ridgewood NY)
The Blue Van (Copenhagen DENMARK)
BOAT (Seattle WA)
Harlan T Bobo (Memphis TN)
The Boggs (Brooklyn NY)
Bonde do Role (Sao Paulo BRAZIL)
Bone Box (Manchester UK)
Ray Bonneville (Montreal QC)
Bon Savants (Boston MA)
Boom Bip (Los Angeles CA)
BORIS (Tokyo JAPAN)
Bosque Brown (Ft Worth TX)
Boston Chinks (Memphis TN)
Bowling For Soup (Denton TX)
Robert Bradley (Detroit MI)
Mark Bragg Band (St John's NF)
Doyle Bramhall (Dallas TX)
Brand New Sin (Syracuse NY)
Brave Radar (Sydney AUSTRALIA)
The Bravery (New York NY)
The Breakup Society (Phoenix AZ)
Jake Brennan (Boston MA)
The Briefs (Seattle WA)
Brighton, MA (Chicago IL)
Broadfield Marchers (Louisville KY)
Luke Brodie (Mexico City MEXICO)
Stephen Brodsky's Octave Museum (Boston MA)
Broken Teeth (Austin TX)
The Broken West (Los Angeles CA)
Tom Brosseau (Los Angeles CA)
Brother Ali (Minneapolis MN)
Brother Reade (Los Angeles CA)
Brothers And Sisters (Austin TX)
Marc Broussard (Carencro LA)
Findlay Brown (London UK)
Pieta Brown (Iowa City IA)
Ane Brun (Stockholm SWEDEN)
Brute Force & Daughter of Force (New York NY)
Jim Bryson (Ottawa ON)
Bubonic Plague (Los Angeles CA)
Buck 65 (Mt. Uniacke NS)
Buffalo Killers (Cincinnati OH)
Buffalo Tom (Boston MA)
Vashti Bunyan (Edinburgh UK)
The Burden Brothers (Dallas TX)
Burning Star Core (Columbus OH)
Burrito Deluxe (Nashville TN)
Busdriver (Los Angeles CA)
Johnny Bush (San Antonio TX)
Busty Duck (Brussels BELGIUM)
Nick Butcher (Chicago IL)
Buttercup (San Antonio TX)
Tracy Byrd (Nashville TN)
George Byrne? (Melbourne AUSTRALIA)
Cache Cache (Baltimore MD)
Cadence Weapon (Edmonton AB)
Cage (Brooklyn NY)
Calla (Brooklyn NY)
Callisto (Turku FINLAND)
Call Me Lightning (Milwaukee NY)
Call Me Poupee (Montreal QC)
Canseco (Tijuana MEXICO)
The Cape May (Calgary AB)
The Capitol Years (Philadelphia PA)
Carbonas (Atlanta GA)
The Caribbean (Washington DC)
Brandi Carlile (Seattle WA)
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Adam Carroll (Austin TX)
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Carter/Carter/Moore (Oakland/Northampton )
Eliza Carthy (Whitby UK)
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Deaf in the Family (New York NY)
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Debate (São Paulo BRAZIL)
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Kris Delmhorst (Greenfield MA)
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Damien Dempsey (Dublin IRELAND)
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Brett Dennen (Oakdale CA)
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Die! Die! Die! (Dunedin NEW ZEALAND)
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Don Caballero (Pittsburgh PA)
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Electrico (Singapore SINGAPORE)
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Eli Paperboy Reed & The True Loves (Boston MA)
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Kevin Fowler (Amarillo TX)
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Fujiya & Miyagi (Brighton UK)
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Future Of The Left (Cardiff UK)
The Futurists (Atlanta GA)
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David Garza (Austin TX)
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Gasoline Cowboy (Auckland NEW ZEALAND)
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The Gear (Melbourne AUSTRALIA)
Genghis Tron (Philadelphia PA)
The Gentle Good (Cardiff UK)
Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly (Southend UK)
Ghostland Observatory (Austin TX)
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Laura Gibson (Portland OR)
Eliza Gilkyson (Austin TX)
Girl Authority (Cambridge MA)
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Gitogito Hustler (Tokyo JAPAN)
Michael Glabicki (Pittsburgh PA)
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the Glasspack (Louisville KY)
Glossary (Murfreesboro TN)
Gods and Monsters (New York NY)
GO!GO!7188 (Tokyo JAPAN)
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Golem (New York NY)
Robert Gomez (Denton TX)
The Goodnight Loving (Milwaukee WI)
The Good, The Bad & The Queen (London UK)
Gorch Fock (Austin TX)
Gore Gore Girls (Detroit MI)
Gosling (Tri-Cities WA)
The Gossip (Searcy AR)
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Jon Dee Graham (Austin TX)
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Grand Buffet (Pittsburgh PA)
Grand Champeen (Austin TX)
Grand Island (Oslo NORWAY)
The Grass (Dartmouth NS)
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Great Northern (Los Angeles CA)
The Great Spy Experiment (Singapore SINGAPORE)
Green Milk From The Planet Orange (Tokyo JAPAN)
Greyhounds (Austin TX)
Grimskunk (Montreal QC)
Grimy Styles (Austin TX)
Rob G (Houston TX)
Gustafer Yellowgold (New York NY)
The Hacienda Brothers (Tucson AZ)
Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton (Toronto ON)
Hammers of Misfortune (San Francisco CA)
John Hammond (Jersey City NJ)
Albert Hammond, Jr. (New York NY)
Hank IV (San Francisco CA)
The Hard Lessons (Detroit MI)
Emerson Hart (Nashville TN)
Billy Harvey (Austin TX)
Elias Haslanger (Austin TX)
Kate Havnevik (Oslo NORWAY)
Sean Hayes (San Francisco CA)
Hayseed Dixie (Nashville TN)
The Hazey Janes (Dundee UK)
Headlights (Champaign IL)
HEALTH (Los Angeles CA)
The Heart Attacks (Atlanta GA)
The Heavenly States (Oakland CA)
The Hedrons (Glasgow UK)
Helene (London UK)
Hella (Sacramento CA)
Hello Stranger (Los Angeles CA)
Hell Razah (Brooklyn NY)
Hera (Reykjavik ICELAND)
Ray Herndon (Phoenix AZ)
Ari Hest (New York NY)
Hey Besala (Ciudad Juarez MEXICO)
Taylor Hicks (Birmingham AL)
High Class Elite (New York NY)
The High Dials (Montreal QC)
The High Strung (Detroit MI)
KJ Hines (Austin TX)
Micah P. Hinson (Abilene TX)
Hiromi (Shizuoka JAPAN)
Robyn Hitchcock (London UK)
Eric Hofbauer (Boston MA)
Hogpig (Denton TX)
The Holloways (London UK)
The Holmes Brothers (New York NY)
Holy Fuck (Toronto ON)
Holy Shit! (Milwaukee WI)
Home and Garden (Cleveland OH)
Honeycut (San Francisco CA)
Honeydogs (Minneapolis MN)
Honky (Austin TX)
The Honorary Title (Brooklyn NY)
Hoodoo Gurus (Sydney AUSTRALIA)
Hopewell (New York NY)
The Horrors (London UK)
Hot Club De Paris (Liverpool UK)
Hot IQs (Denver CO)
Hot Live Guys (Winnipeg MB)
The Hot Puppies (Cardiff UK)
The Hourly Radio (Dallas TX)
The Houstons (Charlotte NC)
Houston's Nawf Side All Stars - Magno, Big Tike, Lester Roy, Lil Mario, Big Pic, Blyndcyde (Houston TX)
Benji Hughes (Charlotte NC)
The Human Abstract (Los Angeles CA)
Human Giant (Los Angeles CA)
Hummersqueal (Mexico City MEXICO)
Jana Hunter (Houston TX)
HY (Okinawa JAPAN)
Hyakkei (Osaka JAPAN)
Hypernova (Tehran IRAN)
Frida Hyvönen (Stockholm SWEDEN)
Iamx (London UK)
I Can Lick Any Sonofabitch in the House (Portland OR)
The Icarus Line (Los Angeles CA)
i heart hiroshima (Brisbane AUSTRALIA)
iLiKETRAiNS (Leeds UK)
Illinois (Bucks County PA)
I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness (Austin TX)
Imaginary Icons (New York NY)
Immaculate Machine (Victoria BC)
The Immediate (Dublin IRELAND)
Imperial Teen (San Francisco CA)
Indian Jewelry (Houston TX)
Infadels (London UK)
Inward Eye (Winnipeg MB)
Ruby Isle (Athens GA)
The Isles (Long Island NY)
Joseph Israel (Fayetteville AR)
IV Thieves (Nottingham UK)
I Walk The Line (Helsinki FINLAND)
Jack (Brooklyn NY)
Jack O and The Tearjerkers (memphis TN)
Jack's Mannequin (Los Angeles CA)
The Jack West & Lalo Vibe (Guerneville CA)
Essie Jain (New York NY)
Georgie James (Washington DC)
Jamie T (London UK)
Jandek (Houston TX)
Jape (Dublin IRELAND)
Garland Jeffreys (New York NY)
Jel (Oakland CA)
Ben Jelen (New York NY)
JESU (Birmingham UK)
Jets Overhead (Victoria BC)
Eilen Jewel (Boise ID)
Alih Jey (Miami FL)
JJ Grey and MOFRO (Jacksonville FL)
Joan as Police Woman (Brooklyn NY)
Johnossi (Stockholm SWEDEN)
Daniel Johnston and the Nightmares (Waller TX)
The Jonbenet (Houston TX)
Mike Jones (Las Vegas NV)
Junior Boys (Hamilton ON)
Junior Senior (Copenhagen DENMARK)
Junk Science (Brooklyn NY)
Jyrojets (Inverness UK)
Kaki King (New York NY)
J. Kapone (Austin TX)
Karkwa (Montreal QC)
Kathleen Grace Band (KGB) (Los Angeles CA)
Kava Kava (Huddersfield UK)
The KBC (Preston UK)
Stephen Kellogg & The Sixers (Northampton MA)
Paul Kelly (Melbourne AUSTRALIA)
KENNA (Virginia Beach VA)
Dustin Kensrue (Orange County CA)
Kid Beyond (San Francisco CA)
Kid Sister (Chicago IL)
Kidz in the Hall (Chicago IL)
Christian Kiefer (Rocklin CA)
Kiiiiiii (Tokyo JAPAN)
Keith Killgo Jazz (Washington DC)
The Kingdom (Portland OR)
King Louie One Man Band (Harahan LA)
Dawn Kinnard (State College PA)
Kinski (Seattle WA)
Bill Kirchen (Austin TN)
Oleg Kireyev and Exotic Band (Moscow RUSSIA)
David Kirton (BARBADOS)
The Kissaway Trail (Odense DENMARK)
Kissing Tigers (Los Angeles CA)
Kiss Kiss (Milton NY)
K'NAAN (Toronto ON)
Kneebody (Los Angeles CA)
Kraak & Smaak (Leiden THE NETHERLANDS)
Viktor Krauss (Nashville TN)
The Krum Bums (Austin TX)
KTU (Pohjonen, Gunn, Mastelotto) (Helsinki FINLAND)
Kudu (New York NY)
Kylesa (Savannah GA)
Ana Laan (Madrid SPAIN)
Lab Partners (Dayton OH)
Lack (Copenhagen DENMARK)
Aaron Lacrate (Baltimore NY)
Mike Ladd (Brooklyn NY)
The Ladybug Transistor (Brooklyn NY)
Ladyhawk (Vancouver BC)
Jimmy LaFave (Austin TX)
La Gusana Ciega (Mexico City MEXICO)
Dawn Landes (Brooklyn NY)
Land Of Talk (Montreal QC)
Jon Langford (Chicago IL)
Langhorne Slim (Langhorne PA)
LAPKO (Helsinki FINLAND)
Jeremy Larson (Springfield MI)
Jim Lauderdale (Nashville TN)
Tracy Lawrence (Nashville TN)
Chris Lee (Oslo NORWAY)
Left Alone (Wilmington CA)
Le Meu Le Purr (Ventura CA)
Lemurians (San Francisco CA)
The Lennings (Austin TX)
Sondre Lerche (Bergen NORWAY)
Lesbian (Seattle WA)
Lesbians On Ecstasy (Montreal QC)
Les Breastfeeders (Montreal QC)
Les Claypool/Electric Apricot (Sebastopol CA)
Les Georges Leningrad (Montreal QC)
Les Savy Fav (Brooklyn NY)
Chris Letcher (London UK)
Lethal Bizzle (London UK)
Let's Go Sailing (Los Angeles CA)
Lexie Mountain Boys (Baltimore MD)
Lil Buck and the Top Cats featuring Stanley Buckwheat Dural (Lafayette LA)
Li'l Cap'n Travis (Austin TX)
Lily Allen (Hammersmith UK)
Limbeck (Orange County CA)
Lionheart Brothers (Oslo NORWAY)
Lions (Austin TX)
Lions In The Street (Vancouver BC)
Eliot Lipp (New York NY)
LITE (Tokyo JAPAN)
Little Barrie (London UK)
Little Man (Minneapolis MN)
Little Man Tate (Sheffield UK)
The Little Ones (Silverlake CA)
Live Fast Die (New York NY)
Lodger (Helsinki FINLAND)
Loer Velocity (Yonkers NY)
LoneLady (Manchester UK)
Lonely China Day (Beijing CHINA)
The Lonely H (Seattle WA)
Loney, Dear (Stockholm SWEDEN)
The Long Winters (Seattle WA)
Looker (New York NY)
Lords (Nottingham UK)
Los Abandoned (Los Angeles CA)
Los Burbanks (Seattle WA)
Los Straitjackets (Nashville TN)
Bobby Lounge (McComb MS)
Charlie Louvin (Manchester TN)
Lovedrug (Canton OH)
LZ Love (Austin TX)
Lower Class Brats (Austin TX)
Lower Life Form (Houston TX)
Low Line Caller (Austin TX)
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Gary Lucas (New York NY)
Lucero (Memphis TN)
Lucky Tomblin (San Macros TX)
Ludicra (San Francisco CA)
Cara Luft (Winnipeg MB)
Luminous Orange (Yokohama JAPAN)
Barbara Lynn (Beaumont TX)
Tammy Lynn (New Orleans LA)
Macromantics (Sydney AUSTRALIA)
Magik Markers (Brooklyn NY)
Magnet (Bergen NORWAY)
Magnolia Summer (St Louis MO)
Malajube (Montreal QC)
Jesse Malin (New York NY)
The Mall (San Francisco CA)
Mammút (Reykjavik ICELAND)
Mando Diao (Borlänge SWEDEN)
Maneja Beto (Austin TX)
Dan Mangan (Vancouver BC)
Jo Mango (Glasgow UK)
The Manhattan Love Suicides (Leeds UK)
Manic (Los Angeles CA)
Manikin (Austin TX)
Maps & Atlases (Chicago IL)
Margot & the Nuclear So and So's (Indianapolis IN)
Marit Larsen (Oslo NORWAY)
Marjorie Fair (Los Angeles CA)
Carolyn Mark (Victoria BC)
Marked Men (Denton TX)
Josh Martinez (Vancouver BC)
Willy Mason (Marthas Vineyard MA)
Masta Killa (Brooklyn NY)
Mastodon (Atlanta GA)
Matt & Kim (Brookyln NY)
Scott Matthews (Wolverhampton UK)
Mau Mau Chaplains (Austin TX)
Melissa McClelland (Toronto BC)
Eugene McGuinness (Liverpool UK)
Mark McGuinn (Nashville TN)
Ian McLagan (Austin TX)
Jon McLaughlin (Anderson IN)
Shawn David McMillen (Austin TX)
Meat Puppets (Austin TX)
Medicine Fuck Dream (Oakland CA)
Walter Meego (Chicago IL)
Melee (Orange CA)
The Melismatics (Minneapolis MN)
Menomena (Portland OR)
Menwhopause (New Delhi INDIA)
Meriwether (Baton Rouge LA)
Messiah J & The Expert (Dublin IRELAND)
Metalchicks (Tokyo JAPAN)
Metamorphosis (Vienna AUSTRIA)
Metro Riots (London UK)
Mexican Institute of Sound (MIS) (Mexico City MEXICO)
Mezklah (Los Angeles CA)
Michael Zapruder's Rain Of Frogs (Oakland CA)
Michelle Shocked (Los Angeles CA)
Midival Punditz (New Delhi INDIA)
Midlake (Denton TX)
Midnight Movies (Los Angeles CA)
Midnite Snake (Pittsburgh PA)
Mika (London UK)
Mika Miko (Los Angeles CA)
Lynn Miles (Ottawa ON)
Amy Millan (Toronto ON)
Chris Mills (New York NY)
Minipop (San Francisco CA)
Ruth Minnikin (Halifax NS)
MINSK (Chicago/Peoria IL)
The Mint Chicks (Auckland NEW ZEALAND)
Miracle Fortress (Montreal QC)
Misfats (Portland OR)
Mistress Stephanie And Her Melodic Cat (Austin TX)
Anais Mitchell (Montpelier VT)
Mittens on Strings (Chicago IL)
The Moaners (Chapel Hill NC)
Mobile (Montreal QC)
moe. (Buffalo NY)
Mogwai (Glasgow UK)
Mohair (Watford UK)
The Mohawk Lodge (Vancouver BC)
moi Caprice (Copenhagen DENMARK)
Pete Molinari (Chatham UK)
Monahans (Austin TX)
The Monas (Miami FL)
Money Mark (Los Angeles CA)
Money Waters (Dallas TX)
Monotonix (Tel Aviv ISRAEL)
Monotract (Brooklyn NY)
Monsters Are Waiting (Eagle Rock CA)
Montefiori Cocktail (Forlì ITALY)
Monty Are I (Providence RI)
The Moog (Budapest HUNGARY)
The Mooney Suzuki (New York NY)
Moonlight Towers (Austin TX)
Ian Moore (Seattle WA)
Shannon Moore (Los Angeles CA)
Thurston Moore (Northampton MA)
Moros Eros (Atlanta GA)
James Morrison (London UK)
Mor Ve Otesi (Istanbul TURKEY)
mothercoat (Tokyo JAPAN)
Mother Mother (Vancouver BC)
The Mother Truckers (Austin TX)
The Mountain Goats (Chapel Hill NC)
The M's (Chicago IL)
MSTRKRFT (Toronto ON)
Muck and the Mires (Boston MA)
Muddy World (Tokyo JAPAN)
Krista L. L. Muir (Montreal QC)
The Mullens (Dallas TX)
Alexi Murdoch (London UK)
MuteMath (New Orleans LA)
MV/EE and The Bummer Road (Guilford VT)
My Brightest Diamond (Brooklyn NY)
my!gay!husband! (Vancouver BC)
My Latest Novel (Glasgow UK)
My Second Surprise (Tel Aviv ISRAEL)
Marissa Nadler (Providence RI)
Johnette Napolitano (Joshua Tree CA)
The Narrator (Chicago IL)
Nina Nastasia & Jim White (New York NY)
Nathan (Winnipeg MB)
Navruz (Tashkent UZBEKISTAN)
Nayrok (Dallas TX)
Necropolis (Columbus OH)
The Needles (Aberdeen UK)
Nekomushi (Hiroshima JAPAN)
Nethers (Washington DC)
New London Fire (Oakland NJ)
New Violators (Trondheim NORWAY)
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Night of Pleasure (Columbus OH)
1986 (Austin TX)
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No Age (Los Angeles CA)
Scott Nolan (Winnipeg MB)
NOMO (Ann Arbor MI)
Nothington (San Francisco CA)
Novillero (Winnipeg MB)
Nuclear Family (Brooklyn NY)
Nudo de Espejos (Lima PERU)
Gary P. Nunn (Marble Falls TX)
Paolo Nutini (Paisley UK)


Oakley Hall (Brooklyn NY)
The Octopus Project (Austin TX)
Odd Nosdam (Oakland CA)
O'Death (Brooklyn NY)
OFFICE (Chicago IL)
Oh No! Oh My! (Austin TX)
Okkervil River (Austin TX)
Ola Podrida (Brooklyn NY)
The Old Soul (Toronto ON)
Old Time Relijun (Portland OR)
David Olney (Nashville TN)
Fionn O Lochlainn (London UK)
120 Days (Kristiansund NORWAY)
One Mississippi (Austin TX)
One Umbrella (Austin TX)
Onion Creek Crawdaddies (Austin TX)
Onl (London UK)
The Oohlas (Los Angeles CA)
Oppenheimer (Belfast IRELAND)
Oreskaband (Osaka JAPAN)
Ours (New York NY)
Outformation (Atlanta GA)
owkmj (Tokyo JAPAN)
Ox (Vancouver BC)
Oxbow (San Francisco CA)
Oxford Collapse (Brooklyn NY)
Ozomatli (Los Angeles CA)
The Pack (San Francisco CA)
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Palm School Choir (Austin TX)
Pamela Des Barres (Sherman Oaks CA)
Panda (Monterrey MEXICO)
Panda & Angel (Seattle WA)
The Panda Band (Perth AUSTRALIA)
The Pandas (Las Vegas NV)
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Paper Moon (Winnipeg MB)
Paris Motel (London UK)
Graham Parker (Boiceville NY)
The Parlor Mob (Red Bank NJ)
Pattern is Movement (Philadelphia PA)
Bobby Patterson (Dallas TX)
Patty Hurst Shifter (Raliegh NC)
Patuá Tronxo (SÃo Paulo BRAZIL)
Paul Collins Beat (New York NY)
Pawa Up First (Montreal QC)
The Paybacks (Detroit MI)
Peaches (Berlin GERMANY)
Peekaboo Theory (Houston TX)
Peel (Austin TX)
Peelander-Z (New York NY)
Pela (Brooklyn NY)
Pelican (Chicago IL)
Joep Pelt (Amsterdam THE NETHERLANDS)
Jack Penate (London UK)
Elvis Perkins (Providence RI)
Persephone's Bees (Oakland CA)
Pete and the Pirates (Reading UK)
Peter and the Wolf (Austin TX)
The Phantom Family Halo (Louisville KY)
Grant-Lee Phillips (Los Angeles CA)
Phonograph (New York NY)
Picastro (Toronto ON)
Luke Pickett (London UK)
Adrienne Pierce (Vancouver BC)
The Pigeon Detectives (Leeds UK)
Pigeon John (Los Angeles CA)
Patrice Pike (Austin TX)
The Pines (Minneapolis MN)
Ariel Pink (Los Angeles CA)
The Pinker Tones (Barcelona SPAIN)
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The Pipettes (Brighton UK)
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Plaster (Montreal QC)
Play-N-Skillz (Dallas TX)
± {Plus/Minus} (Brooklyn NY)
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Josh Pyke (Sydney AUSTRALIA)
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Quien es, BOOM! (Austin TX)
Qui w/ David Yow (Los Angeles CA)
The Race (Chicago IL)
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John Ralston (Lake Worth FL)
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Rapid Ric's Whut it Dew Family feat. Magno, Chalie Boy, Bavu Blakes, Black Mike, Gerald G, Rob da Ryno (Austin/Houston TX)
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Lou Rhodes (Bath UK)
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Robbers on High Street (Poughkeepsie NY)
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RockFour (Tel Aviv ISRAEL)
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Rock Plaza Central (Toronto ON)
Carmen Rodgers & Geno Young (Dallas TX)
Rodrigo y Gabriela (Terra Acida MEXICO)
Carrie Rodriguez (Austin TX)
Dex Romweber Duo (Chapel Hill NC)
Roommate (Chicago IL)
The Rosebuds (Raleigh NC)
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The Rub (New York NY)
Rubicks (London UK)
Rubik (Helsinki FINLAND)
Ruidos en el Techo (Nuevo Léon MEXICO)
The Rumble Strips (Devon UK)
Bic Runga (Auckland NEW ZEALAND)
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Justin Rutledge (Toronto ON)
RWAKE (Little Rock AR)
Serena Ryder (Peterborough ON)
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Shawn Sahm and the Tex-Mex Experience (San Antonio TX)
The Saints (Australia AUSTRALIA)
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The Sammies (Charlotte NC)
Sam the Sham (Memphis TN)
San Saba County (Austin TX)
Satellite Party (Los Angeles CA)
The Saturday Knights (Seattle WA)
Saturday Looks Good To Me (Portland OR)
Danny Saul (Manchester UK)
Say Hi To Your Mom (Brooklyn NY)
Harvey Scales (Milwaukee WI)
Scanners (London UK)
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John Schooley and his One Man Band (Austin TX)
Scissors for Lefty (San Francisco CA)
Christian Scott (New York NY)
Secondhand Serenade (Menlo Park CA)
Second Movement (New York NY)
Seoul Electric Band (Seoul KOREA)
The Servant (London UK)
The Service Industry (Austin TX)
Seth Lakeman (Devon UK)
7 Shot Screamers (St Louis MO)
Ron Sexsmith (Toronto ON)
Charlie Sexton (Austin TX)
Shapes and Sizes (Montreal QC)
Ray Sharpe (Dallas TX)
Shearwater (Austin TX)
Shedding (Louisville KY)
Duncan Sheik (New York NY)
Shellshag (Brooklyn NY)
Shitdisco (Glasgow UK)
Shot x Shot (Philadelphia PA)
Shout Out Out Out Out (Edmonton AB)
Michael Showalter (Brooklyn NY)
The Shys (Orange County CA)
The Sights (Detroit MI)
Signal To Noise (Denver CO)
Silver Daggers (Los Angeles CA)
Simian Mobile Disco (London UK)
Simon Dawes (Los Angeles CA)
Alina Simone (Carrboro NC)
Simple Kid (London UK)
Single Frame (Austin TX)
The Sippy Cups (San Francisco CA)
Sissy Wish (Bergen NORWAY)
Sister Flo (Riihimaki FINLAND)
SixNationState (Reading UK)
Six Parts Seven (Kent OH)
65daysofstatic (Sheffield UK)
Skye (London UK)
Slaraffenland (Copenhagen DENMARK)
The Slats (Minneapolis MN)
Sloan (Toronto ON)
Slot (Detroit MI)
Slough Feg (San Francisco CA)
Slunt (New York NY)
Smalltown DJs (Calgary AB)
Smallwhitelight (Brighton UK)
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Chris Smither (Boston MA)
Sahara Smith (Austin TX)
Smut Peddlers (Redondo Beach CA)
Clem Snide (Nashville TN)
Snowden (Atlanta GA)
Social Code (Edmonton AB)
Softlightes (San Diego CA)
Sole (Flagstaff AZ)
Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin (Springfield MO)
So So Modern (Wellington NEW ZEALAND)
Soulico (Tel Aviv ISRAEL)
the soul of john black (Los Angeles CA)
Sound Team (Austin TX)
South Austin Jug Band (Austin TX)
Southern Intellect (Houston TX)
Soweto Kinch (Birmingham UK)
Spark Dawg (Killeen TX)
Sparkle Motion (Austin TX)
Spektrum (London UK)
Spigga (Los Angeles CA)
The Spill Canvas (Sioux Falls SD)
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Spoon (Austin TX)
The Spores (Silverlake CA)
The Spunks (New York JAPAN)
SSM (Detroit MI)
Leeroy Stagger (Lethbridge AB)
Stardeath And White Dwarfs (Oklahoma City OK)
Starky? (Sydney AUSTRALIA)
stars of track and field (Portland OR)
Steaming Wolf Penis (Seattle WA)
Marnie Stern (New York NY)
The Sterns (Boston MA)
Robert Stillman (Portland ME)
Stinking Lizaveta (Philadelphia PA)
The Stitches (Orange County CA)
Powell St. John (Austin TX)
Stolen Babies (Los Angeles CA)
Samantha Stollenwerck (San Francisco CA)
The Stooges (Detroit MI)
Storyhill (St Paul MN)
The Storys (Swansea UK)
The Strange Boys (Dallas TX)
Straylight Run (Long Island NY)
Street To Nowhere (Oakland CA)
Studemont Project (Houston TX)
St Vincent (Dallas TX)
Stylofone (Brooklyn NY)
The Subjects (New York NY)
Suishou no Fune (Tokyo JAPAN)
The Summer Wardrobe (Austin TX)
Sunburned Hand Of The Man (Boston MA)
The Sundresses (Cincinnati OH)
Sunshiners (Paris FRANCE)
The Sunshine Underground (Leeds UK)
Sunwrae (Melbourne AUSTRALIA)
Supagroup (New Orleans LA)
Super Creep (Los Angeles CA)
Astrid Swan (Helsinki FINLAND)
Swan Island (Portland OR)
The Sway Machinery (Brooklyn NY)
Sunny Sweeney (Austin TX)
Richard Swift (Portland OR)
Sybris (Chicago IL)
Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hearafter (Seattle WA)
Takka Takka (Brooklyn NY)
Talkdemonic (Portland OR)
Tall Firs (New York NY)
Tally Hall (Ann Arbor MI)
The Teeth (Philadelphia PA)
Teeth of the Hydra (Columbus OH)
Willie Tee (New Orleans LA)
Teitur (Faroe Islands DENMARK)
Telephone Jim Jesus (Oakland CA)
Luke Temple (Brooklyn NY)
Temposhark (London UK)
Pete Teo (Kuala Lumpur MALAYSIA)
Terribly Empty Pockets (Columbus OH)
The Theater Fire (Ft Worth TX)
The50Kaitenz (OSAKA JAPAN)
Thermo (Guadalajara MEXICO)
These Arms Are Snakes (Seattle WA)
31Knots (Portland OR)
This Moment In Black History (Cleveland OH)
This Will Destroy You (San Marcos TX)
Thriving Ivory (San Francisco CA)
Through the Sparks (Birmingham AL)
Thunderbirds Are Now! (Detroit MI)
The Thunder Boys (Ventura CA)
Tia Carrera (Austin TX)
Cortney Tidwell (Nashville TN)
Tiger! Tiger! (Atlanta GA)
Pam Tillis (Nashville TN)
Tilly and The Wall (Omaha NE)
Times New Viking (Columbus OH)
Sally Timms (Chicago IL)
Mary Timony (Washington DC)
Tiny Masters of Today (Brooklyn NY)
Tiny Vipers (Seattle WA)
Todosantos (Caracas VENEZUELA)
Tokyo Police Club (Newmarket ON)
Tolidos (Ciudad Juarez MEXICO)
To Live And Die In LA (Portland OR)
Totimoshi (Oakland CA)
Toubab Krewe (Asheville NC)
The Tragically Hip (Kingston ON)
Trainwreck Riders (San Francisco CA)
The Trashies (Seattle WA)
emma tricca (London UK)
The Trucks (Seattle WA)
Tullycraft (Seattle WA)
Tulsa (Boston MA)
Tunng (London UK)
Turbonegro (Oslo NORWAY)
Turn Me On Dead Man (San Francisco CA)
TURZI (Paris FRANCE)
Harris Tweed (Johannesburg SOUTH AFRICA)
28costumes (Liverpool UK)
22-Pistepirkko (Helsinki FINLAND)
The Twilight Sad (Glasgow UK)
Two Dollar Bash (Berlin GERMANY)
Two Hoots and a Holler (Austin TX)
Two Ton Boa (Olympia WA)
Tyvek (Detroit MI)
The Ugly Beats (Austin TX)
Ume (Austin TX)
Unbusted (Martha's Vineyard MA)
Uncle Earl (Lyons CO)
Uncle Monk (Phoenicia NY)
UNCUT (Toronto ON)
Under Byen (Århus DENMARK)
Under the Influence of Giants (Los Angeles CA)
Unified Tribe (Austin TX)
Upground (Los Angeles CA)
Vague Angels (New York NY)
Vains of Jenna (Falkenberg SWEDEN)
Valient Thorr (Chapel Hill NC)
David Vandervelde (Chicago IL)
Chad VanGaalen (Calgary AB)
Idgy Vaughn (Austin TX)
Via Audio (New York NY)
Via Tania (Melbourne AUSTRALIA)
Vic Thrill (Brooklyn NY)
The Victorian English Gentlemens Club (Cardiff UK)
Video Hippos (Baltimore MD)
VietNam (Brooklyn NY)
The View (Dundee UK)
The Village Green (Portland OR)
Vincent Black Shadow (Baltimore MD)
Vincent Van Go Go (Copenhagen DENMARK)
V.I.P. (Philly) (Philadelphia PA)
The Virgins (New York NY)
VivaL'AmericanDeathRayMusic (Memphis TN)
Viva Voce (Portland OR)
Patricia Vonne (Austin TX)
Rocky Votolato (Seattle WA)
Voxtrot (Austin TX)
Waco Brothers (Chicago IL)
Ian Wadley (Melbourne AUSTRALIA)
Peter Walker (Los Angeles CA)
Peter Walker (Woodstock NY)
Seth Walker (Austin TX)
The Walkmen (Washington DC)
Kate Walsh (Brighton UK)
Warmer Milks (Kentuckyville KY)
Jeremy Warmsley (London UK)
Krystle Warren (New York NY)
Sara Wasserman (New York NY)
Waterloo (St Louis MO)
WATIV (New Orleans LA)
Patrick Watson (Montreal QC)
The Watson Twins (Los Angeles CA)
John Watts (Hove UK)
Wax Fang (Louisville KY)
Waxplanet (Manchester UK)
The Waybacks (San Francisco CA)
We Are the Fury (Toledo OH)
We Are Wolves (Montreal QC)
Weatherbox (San Diego CA)
Levi Weaver (Birmingham UK)
Weedeater (Wilmington NC)
The Weird Weeds (Austin TX)
Mary Weiss (New York NY)
West Indian Girl (Los Angeles CA)
What Made Milwaukee Famous (Austin TX)
When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth (Austin TX)
The Whigs (Athens GA)
White Barons (San Francisco CA)
White Christian Romance (Brooklyn NY)
White Denim (Austin TX)
White Ghost Shivers (Austin TX)
White Mice (Providence RI)
White Rabbits (Brooklyn NY)
Ralph White (Austin TX)
Who's Your Favorite Son, God? (Sacramento CA)
Wibutee (Oslo NORWAY)
The WiLd EyeS (Cape Town SOUTH AFRICA)
The Wildhearts (Newcastle UK)
Wiley and the Checkmates (Oxford MS)
Nathan Wiley (Summerside PEI)
White Williams (San Francisco CA)
Kelly Willis (Austin TX)
Willowz (Los Angeles CA)
Abram Wilson (London UK)
Dan Wilson (Minneapolis MN)
Jonathan Wilson (Los Angeles CA)
Windom Earle (Halifax NS)
Amy Winehouse (London UK)
WinterKids (Peaslake UK)
Winterpills (Northampton MA)
Wintersleep (Halifax NS)
Andrew Winton Duo (Perth AUSTRALIA)
The Woggles (Atlanta GA)
Wolf & Cub (Adelaide AUSTRALIA)
The WOMBATS (Liverpool UK)
Carolyn Wonderland (Austin TX)
Wooden Shjips (San Francisco CA)
Working For A Nuclear Free City (Manchester UK)
The Wrights (Nashville TN)
WZT Hearts (Baltimore MD)
xerox teens (London UK)
X-Wife (Porto PORTUGAL)
YB (Seoul KOREA)
Yeasayer (New York NY)
Yip-Yip (Orlando FL)
The Yoko Casionos (Vancouver BC)
Yolz in the Sky (Osaka JAPAN)
Yo Majesty (Tampa FL)
You Am I (Sydney AUSTRALIA)
Young Galaxy (Montreal QC)
The Young Knives (Oxford UK)
Young Love (Austin TX)
Roger Dean Young & the Tin Cup (Vancouver BC)
Young Widows (Louisville KY)
You Should Go Ahead (Lisbon PORTUGAL)
Youth Brigade (Venice CA)
Youth Group (Australia AUSTRALIA)
Yuppie Pricks (Austin TX)
The Zebras (Brisbane AUSTRALIA)
The Zico Chain (London UK)
The Zincs (chicago IL)
Zoe (Mexico City MEXICO)
The ZOOBOMBS (Tokyo JAPAN)
zZz (Amsterdam THE NETHERLANDS)

There... see you in 2008, then

Galaxy and Kiss snuggle up

The Chrysalis-owned Galaxy radio network and EMAP's Kiss are to work together in a bid to take on the might of the BBC.

Yes, that's what they say, anyway.

We know that some Galaxies used to be Kiss anyway before EMAP threw a brand-hissy, but let's let that one lie, shall we?

Galaxy and Kiss already share a dance music Top 40 chart, the Fresh40, on Sundays. We do wonder, though, if one side is a little keener on the link-up than the other:

The Chrysalis Radio group head of programming, Pete Simmons, told MediaGuardian: "We are talking at management and programme director level, both commercially and in terms of programme content.

"We won't be sharing a breakfast show Monday to Friday, but there are other ways we can complete with the BBC.

"The figures for Kiss and Galaxy are great at the moment. People talk about kids not listening to radio anymore and it's just not true."

An Emap spokeswoman said the new radio projects were still at the discussion stage.

Now, if that's not one side booking the church and flicking through wedding invitation designs while the other is still wondering if he's going to return her calls, we don't know what is.

Chiefs at home

Tomorrow night, the latter-day Fagin's gang that is the Kaiser Chiefs are playing Doncaster, live, for the benefit of Radio One listeners. In order to be at their best for this occasion, they're doing a somewhat hastily-arranged warm-up at Leeds Poly tonight. (Oh, alright, Metropolitan University.) You have to buy a ticket in advance, whereupon a wristband will be slapped on you to ensure you don't get lost. Or tout the tickets, or something.

Monkeys shop themselves

When he bumped into a fan while out shopping in Sheffield, Arctic Monkey Alex Turner whipped out his laptop and played a forthcoming b-side. We hope it was a fan, anyway.

Whoever he was, Ian Theasby was impressed:

Ian Theasby told NME.COM the track "could be one one of the most classic B-sides for the greatest hits in 10 years time".

As good as one of the better tracks on a contractual-fulfilment album, eh? Can't wait.

Jones raises half a cheer for EMI

The eggs-in-one-basket for EMI that is the Norah Jones album has done well, but possibly not well enough. Never Too Late did debut at number one on the Billboard album charts, but sales were a surprisingly thin half a million.

Further down the list, the US outing of Alright Still managed to limp in at number twenty, with just 34,000 copies sold - not a bad start for most British acts, but since Lily Allen is supposed to have MySpace-enabled superpowers, probably a bit disappointing for all concerned.

Moss bans Doherty

We're not entirely sure he'd have been going anyway - although his enthusiastic embrace of The Madonna Lifestyle doesn't make it impossible - but, alledgedly Kate Moss has told Pete Doherty he's not allowed to go to the Brits.

Apparently she's "jealous" of his "friendship" with "Lily Allen".

Oh, if only there was some sort of unnamed source to explain to us what's going on.

Hang about - there is:

And things came to a head when Kate discovered a gift Lily had given him among Pete's stuff. Our source tells us: "Kate went ballistic and kept shouting about why he had kept the thing from Lily after all these months.

"Pete insisted that she was being paranoid, they were just mates.

"But Kate was having none of it and said that there was no way that Pete was going to the Brits if Lily was going - especially as she wasn't going herself.

"Pete was gutted as he was looking forward to it."

Of course, the real problem is that the Brits are taking place on Valentine's Night. It does raise the question of what bunch of dipping dots arranges the work's night out on February 14th. Especially when you're live on TV, to a nation of living rooms deserted by young people out eating spaghetti in a bid to get off with each other.

Jamelia: ...or maybe an astronaut or an engine driver

Fancy that - having failed to sell many records, Jamelia has decided it's time for a career change:

“I’d love to do acting but I’m not sure if I’d like to play the part of a singer."

Probably wise - don't want to stretch yourself too far on your first outing, eh?

3AM slips deeper online

The horse-frightening Daily Mirror website redesign this morning (and who knew that the terrible Times Online wouldn't be the worst national newspaper web relaunch this week?) must send something of a shudder through the four remaining shoulders of the 3AM Girls - they've slipped from having a direct link just under the masthead to being two-clicks from the front page. And the "showbiz extra" which used to sit beneath their page has now risen to push them below the fold.

We're sure this has been explained positively to them, though, in the same way old people in hospital are told they're being moved closer to the door for the view.

Jacko calls in career support

We're starting to think that Michael Jackson has already remade his career, and rather than returning to music, his new job is popping up talking to rich people all over the place.

He's now allowed himself to be spotted taking lunch with Simon Fuller, setting a tongue-clack that Fuller is going to bring Jackson back to the top.

After all, if Fuller could make a success out of such difficult cases as Victoria Beckham solo, the movie from Justin To Kelly, S Club 8 meets Kids From Fame series I Dream, and the 21st Century Girls, how could he fail with a one-man circus widely perceived to have got up to funny business with young kids, whose creative peak was getting on for three decades ago?

Unless Fuller has connections to Ripleys Believe It Or Not.

But "lesbian" isn't a bad word, Britney

Upset and alarms ringing over claims made by Omar Iceman Sharif in the current issue of Touch, where the friend of Federline mutters how he bets that Britney Spears is, you know, like, gay:

He went on to claim he and Kevin watched as Britney and her female pals romped together at their Malibu home.

Omar claimed: “They were friends of hers who she would invite to her house and they would drink and party.

“They had their hands all over each other.”

Actually, that's not really lesbianism, is it? That's just touching. Doubtless Iceman and Kevin would sometimes party, drink and - yes - even touch each other.

As if aware that Sharif sounds less like an eyewitness than someone talking about something he once imagined while knocking out a single shandy, Touch drags up an unnamed "insider":

The magazine, released in the US yesterday, also quoted “insiders” who told how Britney would often disappear with girls during her two-year marriage to Kevin, which ended in November.

One told In Touch: “Sometimes it was three girls, and sometimes there were more like six.

“I heard about her being with girls at least 20 times while they were married.”

Didn't we also hear about Federline being with girls at least 20 times while they were married, too?

The curiosity is that at least twenty occasions with as many as six girls - that's a bare minimum of 120 women, and yet none of them have popped up selling "I done it with Miss Britney" stories. Curious, huh?

Gina Orr, spokesman for Britney’s record label Jive, last night denied the star had ever indulged in lesbian romps.

She said in a terse statement: “It’s not true.”

There's some suggestion that this has all been cooked up to help Federline win custody of the children. But at times like this, you really need some cool-headed analysis. So, let's turn to Victoria Newton, shall we?

I knew the singer was up for a snog with a woman when she kissed MADONNA live on stage at the 2003 MTV awards. But these latest claims are quite shocking.

Shocking? Lesbianism and bisexuality shocks you, Victoria? Where did you go to school - 1845?

Still, well done you for spotting that Britney didn't mind kissing women by reading the subtle sign of her kissing a woman on television. Nothing gets past you, does it?

Mooney caught in V2 lock-up

The collapse of V2 has hit The Mooney Suzuki especially hard - their album, Have Mercy, has been locked inside the record label's vaults:

[Sammy] James still remains confident Have Mercy will be released. "The world is going to hear the record in one way or another," he said. Although currently in talks with numerous labels about distribution deals, James has already conducted a little circulation of his own by adding Have Mercy tracks to the band's MySpace page. And confesses he may go all the way, "I could put the whole album up online...what are they going to do, sue me?"

The record industry suing an artist in the interests of an artist. You can picture it, can't you?

Recked

According to something we heard Danny Baker saying the other day, Reckless Records in Soho has closed down. The second hand micro-chain apparently closed down last Wednesday, somewhat unexpectedly. No word yet on what will happen to the stock in the stores.

Fopp buys upwards

Fopp Records has more-than-trebled its size overnight, by buying up the best of the Music Zone stores.

Music Zone went into receivership in January, just twelve months after buying up 41 MVC stores. They'd been in receivership since December 2005, in turn just four months after Woolworths had offloaded the chain. The inability of so many management teams to turn a profit from the locations doesn't seem to have phased Fopp.

There had been 35 Fopp stores; now, there are to be 102. For a while, at least.

Garcia's wife sues to free recordings

Deborah Koons Garcia, widow of Jerry Garcia, is suing the company which administers his estate. Koons Garcia claims the company - of which she is a member - is frustrating attempts to release unheard Garcia material, and should have packed its affairs up at the end of 2005 anyway.

Other beneficiaries of the estate, including Jerry's daughter Keelin Noel Garcia, have their own legal battle already running with Deborah. Keelin claims Koon Garcia's handle on financial affairs has been "shoddy".

A judge will affect to care as soon as April 13th.

Jazzobit: Frankie Laine

The family of Frankie Laine have announced his death.

Laine was born Paolo LoVecchio in 1913, to a father who would sometimes cut Al Capone's hair. Growing up in Chicago, Paolo sang for church and school choirs, but first made headway as a performer at Chicago's notorious Merry Garden venue. Laine hadn't been supposed to be singing - his role at the venue had been as a dance instructor, but he'd been tempted on stage during a break. Laine didn't realise at first how popular he was:

"Soon I found myself on the main bandstand before this enormous crowd. I was really nervous but I started singing 'Beside an Open Fireplace,' a popular song of the day. It was a sentimental tune and the lyrics choked me up. When I got done, the tears were streaming down my cheeks and the ballroom became quiet. I was very nearsighted and couldn't see the audience. I thought that the people didn't like me."

It turned out, though, the audience had fallen silent because they'd been transfixed by Laine's music. The management signed him up, and before long he'd been sent to Baltimore to host a Merry Garden dance marathon on tour.

In 1937, Laine heard that Perry Como had been planning to quit The Ted Weems Orchestra. Hoping to take Como's role in the band, Laine sounded Perry out, only to discover that Como had changed his mind. However, Como made an offer:

Como apologized and said, "Would you like to go to Cleveland? I can make a call and maybe get you a job."

So it was that Frankie - still trading as Frank LoVecchio - found himself in Ohio, filling a role with the Freddy Carlone band that Como had held a year before.

However, two weeks into his new job, Carlone sacked everyone due to poor ticket sales. Broke and stuck in Cleveland, Laine managed to get another gig, singing at The Ace of Clubs. That lasted a week before the place was razed to the ground.

You'd start to think you were jinxed, wouldn't you?

A few sightly longer lasting singing jobs came and went, and by wartime, Frankie was working at Parker Appliance. It might not have been music, but Laine remembered it as having a major plus:

"The first week, I made 150 bucks, so I said, 'The hell with singing.'"

By 1943, though, he was keen to pick up his musical career, and got transferred to a Parker factory in California. It wasn't a successful move, and Laine saw his life bottoming out living on a diet of four chocolate bars a day while sleeping in Central Park.

A move back to Los Angeles started to bring some breaks - a friendship with Carl Fischer turned into a songwriting and musical partnership which would last until 1954; Hoagy Carmichael heard him singing at a nightclub which led to a deal with Mercury Records.

That's My Desire was to become his signature song at the time - recorded in his first session for Mercury, it went on to make it to number four in the pop charts, even although the song's writer supposedly didn't even recognise his work in Laine's version.

A string of hits followed, including Two Loves Have I, but it was when Mitch Miller came to Mercury as A&R man and spotted that Laine's voice could make him attractive to a wider market that Laine moved into the mainstream. Miller had himself made some pretty shameless singalong pop albums, and the pairing of Laine's gravitas with Miller's finger on the public gspot was a formidable proposition.

Miller jumped ship to Columbia in 1950; Laine remained at Mercury just long enough to see out his contract before moving with his mentor. The addition of Columbia's marketing muscle to the pairing of Miller and Laine made for a pop team unsurpassed until Parker, Presley and RCA came together, and produced an astonishing number of records (39) achieving enormous sales. Amongst these was The Kid's Last Fight, a track which would make a deep, lasting impression on a young John Peel:

That [record] can still stand up in any company. Which is more than The Kid could do, of course.

In coronation year, Laine's I Believe went to the top of the UK singles charts, and stayed. And stayed, and stayed. Despite the best (or rather, worst) efforts of Bryan Adams and Wet Wet Wet, his run of eighteen weeks at number one remains unchallenged.

He flirted with other genres, releasing jazz, gospel, rock and folk albums. Frankie also tried his hand at acting, but while British audiences took to his work, it never found enough favour at home to allow him to give up the day job, and his connections to the movie and TV world were better served by his themes for Rawhide and Blazing Saddles and his regular Oscars mid-show numbers.

Frankie Laine also played his part in the civil rights movement, in a highly visible way. When the Nat King Cole show was in danger of going down due to the difficulty of attracting a sponsor for black-fronted entertainment, Laine made a point of guesting on the show, even waiving his usual fee. (The gesture, though, didn't entirely work - Cole left the show after a year, as sponsorship still proved elusive.)

Meanwhile, his music career developed along unconventional lines - an unhappy period at Capitol and a renaissance with ABC (yielding the hit Lord You Gave Me A Mountain amongst others) was followed by a move to Amos. This was a strategic decision, as Laine believed the smaller company would give him more room to experiment. It did, but it was also a bad commercial decision - Amos didn't have the cash to get behind his quirky, rock tinged albums, and the records flopped.

Laine moved to establish his own label, Score, which is still a going concern - albeit one most concerned with releasing Laine's back catalogue. His last record was a 9/11 benefit, Taps/My Buddy.

His career saw him much garlanded - he was even officially declared a "national treasure" by the US congress. Laine's first marriage, to Nan Grey, lasted from 1950 until her death in 1993; he's survived by his second wife, Marcia Ann Kline.

Frankie Laine died at the age of 93 on February 6th, 2007, from cardiovascular disease.

Womad add names

The line-up for this year's Womad is starting to take shape - Candi Staton is on board, alongside Toots and The Maytals, Sheila Chandra and Baaba Maal. And all these:

Baaba Maal ( Senegal )
Balkan Beat Box ( Israel / United States )
Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni Ba ( Mali )
Ben Taylor ( United States )
Bill Cobham ( United States )
Candi Staton ( United States )
Cesaria Evora ( Cape Verde )
CJ Chenier ( United States )
Daara J ( Senegal )
DJ Shantel ( Germany )
El Tanbura ( Egypt )
Imagined Village ( United Kingdom )
Kronos Quartet ( United States )
Kung Nei & Ouch Savy ( Cambodia )
Lila Downs ( Mexico )
Mariza ( Portugal / Mozambique )
Marzoug ( Algeria )
Sam Tshabalala ( South Africa )
Samba Mapangala & Orchestre Virunga ( Kenya / Congo Dem. Rep. )
Serta-Gesar Troupe ( Tibet )
Sheila Chandra ( United Kingdom )
Steel Pulse ( United Kingdom )
The Dhol Foundation ( United Kingdom )
Toots and the Maytals ( Jamaica )
Toumast ( Niger Republic )
Warsaw Village Band ( Poland )

If you live near the new Womad home of Charlton Park, you can get a cheapie ticket for just fifty quid; usual price is £120, so that's quite a good deal/

Conor in Europe

Lovely-eyed beauty Conor Oberst is coming to Europe, for a few Bright Eyes dates:

22nd March Oslo Compolite
24th Stockholm Debaser
26th Berlin Columbia Club
27th Cologne Gloria
30th Paris Cafe de la Danse
31st Amsterdam Melkweg

Aah... Conor... in the Rhineland... Following Conor up the Koln Dom's narrow, spiral staircase was tantalising... just in front of my eyes, his perfect little arse, pumping up and down, up and down, as his breath came in short little bursts. "Nearly there... nearly there... nearly there" he kept muttering to himself, gently under his breath, for all the world like he was attempting to hold off the moment of ejaculation...

Glitter cut - but not by much

Gary Glitter's hopes that his child molestation sentence would be ended as part of the Vietnamese Tet festival amnesty have ended in disappointment.

He is going to get a reduction in his sentence - but only by three months. He'll still be in prison until August 2008 under the redefined sentence.

Bad news for Lily Allen

Allen had been hoping to flee to America in a bid to avoid Amy Winehouse's overpowering shadow.

Bad news, Keith Allen's daughter: While you're slogging it round on an MTV package tour, fighting for column inches, Winehouse is already soaking up fawning press coverage by the acre. The :Washington Post is in thrall to the myth of the tortured artist:

To witness Winehouse is to wonder why art and self-destruction so often dance together. Insiders wonder if she'll keep it together long enough to fulfill her glittery promise -- or at least the promise that music marketers hold out.

Of course, rather than suggesting that Winehouse take care of herself, the Post just suggests we pull up a chair.

[Thanks to Jim McCabe for the link]

Ozzy goes free

Bloody hell, Sharon must be winning a fortune on that Gala Bingo website. This year's Ozzfest is going to be free, with all costs being met by tour sponsors.

It's quite a gesture, although we can't help wondering if the motivation is in part allowing Sharon to exercise more control over the lower orders. After all, when people are buying tickets with the hope of seeing, say, Iron Maiden, it's hard for Sharon to throw Iron Maiden off the tour if they fall out, and so she's reduced to humiliating herself with a childish stunt or two. After all, nobody wants to have to refund tickets, do they? But if the cost of the tickets has been picked up by Nike or Snickers or whoever... well, that shifts the balance of power.

And, in passing, Kelly Osbourne appears to have been the victim of a Freudian slip during the business news on the World Service this morning - ending a report on Windows Vista complaints, the anchor asked if "geek" was now an acceptable term. "Kelly Osbourne likes geeks..." volunteered the business reporter:

"Kelly Osbourne? Who's that?"
"Ozzy Osbourne's son..."