Yog cancels Prague after prang

The young people of Prague were, this evening, supposed to have been enjoying the music and showbiz stylings of George Michael. And, you know, sitting through the less good bits of his live show. It wasn't to be, though, as one of the vans carrying part of the stage had an accident in Romania and the special podium couldn't make it in time.

Is it just us, or is there something a little obscene about driving a stage halfway across Europe in the first place? Do they not have stages in Prague he could have used?

Still, let's hope the truck wasn't in collision with a car being driven by a drugged-up driver, although, of course, George doesn't believe that's breaking the law.

Embed and breakfast man: Creep

This does take a little while to turn into something interesting, so we'd suggest pausing it while it loads and whipping through to about one minute forty or so. It's Amanda from the Dresden Dolls playing Creep. On a bar. With ukulele accompaniment - it's what George Formby would have wanted...


[Via Brooklyn Vegan]

Bill Gates likes music

Apparently unconcerned that "We write the code which drives the software which allows Excel to add up on spreadsheets" isn't perhaps the coolest of backgrounds, Microsoft has created an initiative it's calling Ignition, which will promote a "new" band across the entire spread of Microsoft's activities. So the video will pop up on X-Box, it'll get streamed on MSN or Windows Live Live Windows or whatever it's called, there's to be some secret special stuff for the relatively tiny Zune market, Bill Gates will wear a band tshirt, that sort of thing.

Oddly, Maximo Park has been the first to sign up for the campaign; as part of the deal they've had to create locked-in content for Microsoft. It's supposedly offering them access to 30 million. That's a combined audience and will include people using XBox Live for gaming and checking email on MSN, so not really a totally useful guide to the size of crowd Maximo Park will be exposed to. We're also not sure if having a single month of ubiquity is going to charm more than it turns off.

Police: criticism from own ranks

Victoria Newton, oddly, managed to run a review of the Police's comeback gig under her own byline, despite it happening in Vancouver and her being in London. Perhaps that's how she was able to report that it was GRATE:

[A]n encore featuring Every Breath You Take finished their comeback in style.

Sting owned the stage and did son JOE SUMNER. whose band FICTION PLANE was the support act, very proud.

Meanwhile ANDY SUMMERS wowed fans with his guitar solos, and STEWART COPELAND proved he is still a great drummer . . . despite the dodgy headband.

... while someone who was there, Stewart Copeland in fact, didn't think they were up to much:

“Whenever you’re ready Mr. Copeland” says Charlie, the production manager, as two crew members hold aside the giant gong, creating just enough space for me to slither onto my percussion stage, which is still down in its pit. I leap on board but my foot catches something and I sprawl into the arena in a jumble as the little stage starts to rise into view. Never mind. The audience is screaming with anticipation as I collect myself in the dark and start to warm, up the gong with a few gentle taps. But I’m overdoing it. It’s resonating and reaching it’s crescendo before the stage has fully reached its position. Sort of like a premature ejaculation. There’s nothing for it so I take a big swing for the big hit. Problem is, I’m just fractionally too far away and the beater misses the sweet spot and the big pompous opening to the show is a damp squib. Never mind.

I stride manfully to my drums. Andy has started the opening guitar riff to MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE and the crowd is going nuts. Problem is, I missed hearing him start. Is he on the first time around or the second? I look over at Sting and he’s not much help, his cue is me – and I’m lost. Never mind. “Crack!” on the snare and I’m in, so Sting starts singing. Problem is, he heard my crack as two in the bar, but it was actually four – so we are half a bar out of sync with each other. Andy is in Idaho.

Well we are professionals so we soon get sorted, but the groove is eluding us. We crash through MESSAGE and then go strait into SYNCHRONICITY. But there is just something wrong. We just can’t get on the good foot. We shamble through the song and hit the big ending. Last night Sting did a big leap for the cut-off hit, and he makes the same move tonight, but he gets the footwork just a little bit wrong and doesn’t quite achieve lift-off. The mighty Sting momentarily looks like a petulant pansy instead of the god of rock. Never Mind. Next song is going to be great…

But it isn’t. We get to the end of the first verse and I snap into the chorus groove – and Sting doesn’t. He’s still in the verse. We’ll have to listen to the tapes tomorrow to see who screwed up, but we are so off kilter that Sting counts us in to begin the song again. This is ubeLIEVably lame. We are the mighty Police and we are totally at sea.

And so it goes, for song after song. All I can think about is how Dietmar is going to string us up. In rehearsal this afternoon we changed the keys of EVERY LITTLE THING and DON’T STAND SO CLOSE so needless to say Andy and Sting are now on-stage in front of twenty thousand fans playing avant-garde twelve-tone hodgepodges of both tunes. Lost, lost, lost. I also changed my part for DON’T STAND and it’s actually working quite well but there is a dissonant noise coming from my two colleagues. In WALKING/FOOTSTEPS, I worked out a cool rhythm change for the rock-a-billy guitar solo, but now I make a complete hash of it – by playing it in the wrong part of the song. It’s not sounding so cool.

It usually takes about four or five shows in a tour before you get to the disaster gig. But we’re The Police so we are a little ahead of schedule. It’s only the second show (not counting the fan gig – 4,000 people doesn’t count as a gig in the Police scale of things).

Perhaps it sounded so much better if you were a little off from the stage. Like Wapping.

Somethings to listen to: More Songs To Learn And Sing

Sweeping The Nation is reprising Songs To Learn And Sing, the micro-essay and mp3 festival, right through the month of June. They've got me out the way first, which means it's uphill from here...

Kelly Osbourne goes back home

And as Paris Hilton's music career evaporates, Kelly Osbourne goes back to the only thing that's ever worked for her: sShe's filming for a "reality" television series. With, for no apparent reason, Kimberley Stewart.

Hilton's music career: loose ends tied

Warner Music has confirmed that Paris Hilton's half-hearted attempt to use music to give something to define her other than having been created from the sperm of a rich man has been drawn to a quiet close:

A spokesman for the record label confirmed: "We are not expecting any new Paris Hilton material in the foreseeable future."

Still, it's a bit of a blow to the postproduction music video industry - they earned quarter of a million dollars, and she only made one promo. Nothing is totally without some suffering.

It was twenty years ago today...

... that John Walters pointed out that the twentieth anniversary of Sgt Pepper should really be celebrating the fortieth anniversary of the Lonely Hearts Club Band, which would have made yesterday the 60th, we suppose. Did we really hear during the Today newspaper review that one of the papers actually claimed to be "revealing" the Lucy from Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds. (The Times, apparently) to be Lucy O'Donnell. It wasn't about LSD at all - how can it be that we've thought that all these years, eh? Despite Lucy popping up every two or three years giving interviews about how a drawing of her by Julian Lennon being the inspiration for that song?

Actually, you know, we don't believe it for a minute - we know this is the official Beatleography line, and it chimes with Lennon's claims in Rolling Stone back in 1970 that he swore to God he didn't "realise" it spelled LSD. Yes, yes, there was a picture, but are you seriously trying to tell us that Lennon wasn't gurgling with delight at the coincidence?

Meanwhile, the Sun has "updated" the cover with what it claims are more contemporary versions of the faces on the sleeve. It actually starts out fairly well:

1. Indian mystic Sri Yukteswar Giri replaced by Buddhist leader the Dalai Lama.

2. Sinister occult leader Aleister Crowley replaced by Scientology founder L Ron Hubbard.

But then, either the paper is trying to signal desperately to its readers that we live in a decaying culture, where the taint of celebrity has debased everything it touches, or else they just don't have a clue, really:

3. Bawdy hellraising actress Mae West replaced by rehab hellraiser Lindsay Lohan.

4. Offensive stand-up Lenny Bruce replaced by edgy stand-up Ricky Gervais.

Ricky Gervais "edgy"? Perhaps in a culture where Lindsay Lohan is seen as a latter-day Mae West, but Lenny Bruce was repeatedly arrested for obscenity, banned from several cities, barred from nearly every nightclub in the United States, sentenced to four months in the workhouse because of his act. Ricky Gervais writes children's books and makes charity videos with Bono.

5. Pioneer of electronic classical music Karlheinz Stockhausen replaced by electro-wizard Moby.

We're sure even Moby would argue there's no equivalence here.

6. Comedian and actor WC Fields replaced by pint-sized funnyman Danny DeVito.

"I have been in the entertainment business some forty-three years, and I have never said anything detrimental or anything that might be construed as belittling any race or religion. I would be a sucker to do so because you can't insult the customers." versus "I think it was the seventh Limoncello that got me."

7. Founder of analytical psychology Carl Jung replaced by hypnotist Paul McKenna.

One man created a whole way of looking at the world and exploring the way our minds work; the other, a former Capital Radio dj who sells self-help tapes.

8. Dark crime writer Edgar Allan Poe replaced by darker crime writer Ian Rankin

This one's not a bad substitution.

9. Dancing movie legend Fred Astaire replaced by Dirty Dancing’s Patrick Swayze.

But Swayze made one movie about dancing twenty years ago - couldn't they have thought of another dancer? Like Wayne Sleep, maybe? Or perhaps Natasha Kaplinsky?

10. Leading artistic chronicler Richard Merkin replaced by graffiti commentator Banksy.

Maybe, although Banksy's field of reference is totally different - Julian Opie might have made a bit more sense, based on the Blur pictures in the NPG if nothing else.

11. Painting of air force icon Varga Girl replaced by Forces beauty Nell McAndrew.

That works, although it shows how far the concept of "forces sweetheart" has been watered down since the second world war - McAndrew's basically one step away from Force's Readers Wives.

12. Big-faced actor Huntz Hall replaced by big- faced actor Nicolas Cage.

13. Genius builder and designer Simon Rodia replaced by architect Sir Norman Foster.

Again, not bad choices, although we suspect Foster was the second answer shouted back when the newsroom was asked "does anyone know any architects?" (after "my brother-in-law had a good guy for his loft extension.")

14. Cutting-edge beat poet Bob Dylan replaced by a crustier but still cool Bob Dylan.

In other words, the picture researcher called back with an "are you sure there's even a man called Murray Lachlan Young?"

15. Fifth Beatle Stuart Sutcliffe replaced by fifth Arctic Monkey Andy Nicholson.

This is insulting to Sutcliffe, and completely fails to understand why he was there in the first place - I guess at least they didn't replace him with Bonehead. Dylan gets to stay, but the pretty Beatle doesn't? You could argue, if you had to swap him out, that Yoko should have taken his spot. But some chump from the Arctic Monkeys?

16. Controversial cartoonist Aubrey Beardsley becomes Simpsons creator Matt Groening.

Groening would have been the perfect man to replace Disney; really, though, this is where Banksy should have been stood.

17. Old mannequin replaced by Topshop mannequin.

If the Sun had any creativity left in its paper, they'd have put Kate Moss in here.<