Could America have tired of Victoria?

The latest news on TMZ suggests that, just perhaps, Posh has worn out her welcome:

Victoria Beckham blah blah shopping blah L.A. blah blah Friday. Blah blah!

Posh, 33, blah blah Kitson -- blah blah purple dress blah, Spice blah blah photogs blah blah blah blah!

Paparazzi crush blah blah Robertson Blvd., blah blah emaciated blah blah blonde bob blah blah blah. Blah!

Good lord, when a news service which reports Kelly Clarkson's doings as if they might mean something starts to take the piss quite so violently, your stock has really tanked.

Killers flee Colorado

Poor value for money from The Killers at their Red Rocks show: They managed one and a half shows before Brandon Flower's voice gave out.

They're going to try again in September, but even so, the haul out to Red Rocks isn't a simple one and the fans aren't happy, reports the Rocky Mountain News. The paper has been on the internets:

"I seriously can't believe he walked out on a sold out crowd at Red Rocks. He should have been honored to see all those people singing his lyrics!" one fan posted.

Another took umbrage with the fact the band was still scheduled to play in Los Angeles on Friday: "Wow so you guys are playing (Friday night)? What a miraculous recovery. Ya know, there's nothing like showing your fans you don't really give a (expletive) about them."

The paper also says the audience has "sat through Hot Hot Heat", suggesting this was the injury to which insult had been added.

3AM Girls have trouble counting

Perhaps part of the reason why fans couldn't get in to the Underbelly Show was the presence of media. Although we don't expect the 3AM Girls were actually there, and are probably working from pictures for this:

LOOKS like Beth Ditto's auditioning for The Vagina Monologues...

The Gossip singer stuck her head up Scissor Sister Ana Matronic's frock at the Great Escape Festival in Brighton.

So, erm, that would be a vagina dialogue, wouldn't it?

Bet it left Ana Comfortably Numb!

Eh? Has Beth Ditto's breath got anaesthetic properties, then?

Winehouse married - for quarter of a million

How charming - Amy Winehouse and Blake Fielding-Sillymidoff have had a secret wedding in Miami-Dade ("the Hanging Chad County" as it says on their signs). It's been kept secret not for any silly old reasons like privacy or dignity, but because they've flogged the exclusives to some magazine for quarter of a million.

Victoria Newton congratulates herself on the exclusive to fill up the space:

But, as usual, I found out anyway — beating my half-asleep rivals to the story in the process.

Or, rather, a stringer agency in Florida phoned up and told you, Victoria - otherwise, erm, the photos wouldn't have been bought in, would they?

Still, Newton does get an exclusive from the bloke who did the marriage:

Clerk Sammy Calixte, of the marriage license bureau, confirmed: “They came in this morning to get married and they were alone. I read the vows and each one said ‘I do’. When I pronounced them man and wife, they hugged and kissed.”

Youd have thought at least Amy would have said "No no no... oh, alright I do." No sense of occasion, that one.

Dope is great, says George Michael

George Michaal's seeking out of a remote new home in Scotland could be explained by his new-found enthusiasm as a spokesperson for cannabis. It's great, he tells Michael Parkinson:

Singer George Michael has said the world would be an "easier place to live with" if cannabis was legal.

Speaking to ITV chat show host Michael Parkinson, the star said he was not "advocating" the drug for everyone.

"Nobody ever came home stoned and beat up their wife," the 43-year-old former Wham! singer said.

Well, not quite, but there is a disturbing amount of evidence starting to build up that people do act quite violently after smoking skunk, isn't there?

George also revealed he was addicted to prescription medicines, too - which is like being addicted to ordinary drugs, but your man gets pens and mousemats from his supplier, rather than threats of violence and a semi-regular beating with a baseball bat.

It's all a result of depression following the death of his Mum:

"I know I have a very self-destructive tendency since my mother died, I have got to be honest. That has kind of made itself clear in other ways," he said.

Interestingly, despite having pleaded guilty to driving while unfit, and thus having told the courts he broke the law, he tells Parky he hasn't broken the law at all:

"Ultimately I didn't break the law. I did something stupid, and doing something irresponsible is not a position that I am normally used to defending myself in," he said.

But, George, by saying "guilty" in a court, you are admitting you broke the law. Just because something is also irresponsible and stupid doesn't mean it can't also be illegal. Let's hope that they don't take this sudden public 'not guilty' plea into account when you go back for sentencing - because you know how judges hate scofflaws, George.

T-Mobile cause fans cow at Udderbelly

Trouble at the Udderbelly Festival tent in Brighton (we've been flicking through The Argus, can you tell?). Fans who'd called up the T-Mobile site for tickets to the taping of Channel 4's Transmission with The Gossip and the Scissor Sisters and had been told to turn up didn't realise they were only being invited to hang about outside the tent with an air of disappointment.

One upset reveller told The Argus: "I had a ticket and all these other girls had tickets as well. Everyone was told to get there at 6.30pm, all dressed up for it, only for us to be let down."

We're not entirely sure how far up one must dress to stand in the crowd at an indie gig being taped for late night Channel 4, but even so, there's little worse than the feeling of being closed out of a gig you'd believed you'd got into.

Slim skates sideways

It makes you wonder why anybody would bother trying to help out their fellow man, doesn't it? Fatboy Slim made a generous payment to try and help bring a skateboard park to Hove Lagoon.

The residents got worried. Skateboards? Aren't they full of drug addicts on drugs, drugs bought by the proceeds of stealing old ladies' handbags?

Norman tried to persuade the company managing the project, Skate Expectations (a company name that sounds like the sort the lost-in-suits of The Apprentice might come up with) to meet up and talk through the resident's concerns. But they wouldn't.

So Slim asked that the money go to a different good cause instead. Great Expecskateions just sent the money back, and now skateboarders are turning their ire, in turn, on the dj.

Norman Cook sighs:

I tried to get Skate Expectations to meet up with the residents and they refused.

"They didn't seem to be listening to the local community.

"I was going down there with my son and people were saying things like 'you're not really welcome here'. I just didn't want to be associated with something people didn't want."

The skateboard lobby is being represented by Outreach worker Graeme Reece, who isn't exactly reaching out to Fatboy:

The 34-year-old said Mr Cook was 'two-faced' because his own events have encouraged hedonistic behaviour.

He said: "I attended his party on the beach where there were lots of people drinking and taking drugs. In fact at most of his gigs you would expect to find people doing all kinds of illicit drugs."

So... people take drugs at music events, so, erm, musicians shouldn't worry if they're funding an organisation incapable of communicating with its neighbours? And isn't his role more to point out that it's a bit of a lazy stereotype to suggest that skateboarders are going to be eating heroin and mugging, rather than nodding and saying "yeah, but what about people who take drugs in nightclubs>, eh?"

Reece then starts to rave about the Man:

He said residents might feel threatened by a sudden influx of young people to the skate park, but their fears did not necessarily reflect reality, and said hiring security guards to police the area was not a good idea.

He said: "Any young person who skates is likely to be a bit rebellious and they will not react well to a man in a uniform telling them what to do. It would be more effective to employ an adult skateboarder - someone straight-talking who they'd respect and listen to."

But surely the point of having a bloke in a cap is more to reassure residents that the Hove Lagoon hasn't suddenly turned into a hellmouth; and, if we were fifteen, we'd have had more respect for a security guard, however cheap his nylon uniform might have been, than some middle-aged bozo who thought they spoke our language because "I'm a skatie too, check?"

MicrotonalObit: Rod Poole

We've just been alerted by Karl T to the heartbreaking, pointless death of Rod Poole, Oxford guitarist. He was stabbed to death in the car park of a Hollywood restaurant, the LA Times reports:

The incident occurred about 9:45 p.m. Sunday in the parking lot of Mel's Drive-In in the 1600 block of Highland Avenue. Officers answered a call of an assault with a deadly weapon and found Roderick Poole, 45, with multiple stab wounds. He was taken to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where he died at 10:06 p.m.

It appears that the husband and wife who have been arrested and charged with Rod's murder had nearly run him over; Poole's remonstrations with them had escalted into an argument which ended in the stabbing. The couple, Michael and Angela Sheridan, are being held in jail with bail set at a million dollars per head.

Poole was born in Oxford in 1962, finding his first musical feet in the Oxford Improvisors' Cooperative in the early 1980s. The group, of which he was a founder memeber, promoted gigs in the city featuring the earlier generation of free improvisers, with members taking the chance to offer support for them.

It was during his time with the co-operative that he developed a solid friendship with Shake Appeal, the band who would eventually transmogrify into Swervedriver.

In 1989, Poole relocated from the City of Dreaming Spires to the City of Angels, and in his new home Poole carved himself out a career as one of the very few musicians for whom the term "genre-defying" is apt rather than an empty cliche. Ink Blot Magazine attempted an explanation:

Rod Poole uses just intonation, a tuning system with different underlying mathematical relationships from conventional western turning, to coax overtone-rich sounds from his guitar. His music doesn't progress along a linear melodic path, but it also avoids the pronounced discontinuity characteristic to free improvisation. Instead, it focuses on gradually evolving changes in timbre and texture. Poole plucks intricate figures which become surrounded by an aura of ringing overtones; as his finger-picked patterns change, that aura shifts and shimmers like St. Elmo's Fire around a ship's mast. The effect is a little like that achieved by an Indonesian gamelan orchestra, but Poole does it with one guitar.

Talking to LA Weekly, Poole came up with a slightly simpler description of what he did:

“I just look at it as... improvised acoustic-guitar music,” he says, weighing each word. “Tuned, improvised acoustic- guitar music”

His body of recorded work isn't the widest, but his enthusiasm and skill made him one of the key figures in LA's mainly-underground microtonal movement. Beyond his solo work, Poole also played in two bands: Voice of the Bowed Guitar and the Acoustic Guitar Trio.