Something to listen to

Over on Sigur Ros' MySpace at the moment, goodly chunks of their 2002 Hlemmur score to listen, and love, and stream.

Cappuccino Is Next: Sonic Youth deal with Starbucks

Sonic Youth have cooked up a deal with Starbucks for a special compilation, Thurston Moore tells Pitchfork:

We sort of devised this idea of a Sonic Youth record where we asked all these different people to choose their favorite song, people like artists and actors and other musicians and what have you. So all these people, from Jeff Tweedy to Beck to Marc Jacobs to Portia de Rossi to Michelle Williams [laughs], they all chose their favorite songs and wrote a little thing about it. So it's a compilation record of artists choosing songs of Sonic Youth. There's going to be one exclusive song of ours that we'll record, so that's something we have to record.

We really wish when they did this they'd make the band invent a special limited edition coffee as well. We'd like a grande Sonic Youth, we really would.

Naked Service man arrested

Services opened last night for The Faint in Omaha, climaxing with such a burst of energy that Tristan Bechet of the band threw his clothes off and ran around naked.

Unfortunately, there was an off-duty cop in the audience, who decided that penises were illegal in Nebraska, and promptly arrested Bechet. He called for back-up, which came in the shape of four on-duty cops and a blanket.

Five policemen. To arrest one nude bloke. We're not sure if that many police were needed, or that's just the average number of Omaha police who will swing by if a dispatcher puts out a message that there's a naked man needs escorting to the station.

Beceht was released on $450 bail this morning, reports Pitchfork; apparently the intention is to make him face a trial.

The number of people who were actually outraged seems to be, erm, none.

Glastonbury: funerals and allegations

The Glastonbury ticket crisis is already starting to turn the pre-festival atmosphere somewhat sour, with BBC News reporting some people attempting to sell their tickets on eBay have received threats of prosecution for fraud:

"I was told they had my details and if I didn't remove the listing immediately Glastonbury were going to prosecute me for fraud," said a 26-year-old student from Hull.

The student could no longer use his ticket because he had to attend his grandmother's funeral on the day he was locked in to traveling down to the event on a coach. Michael Eavis has come through for him, in the end:

When the BBC News website told Mr Eavis his story, he agreed to allow him access to the event at any point during the weekend as long as a death certificate was provided.

For which, two cheers - although it's having introduced the border control and photo ID, for Glastonbury to now suggest that someone has to show a copy of their recently deceased grandparent's death certificate to gain access to the event is a little bit grim. I suppose we should be grateful that they're not asking for some DNA from the corpse to prove that the death certificate was of a relative. Remind me - is this some pop music in a farm in South West England, or has Glastonbury become a communist microstate?

It wasn't just the student who claimed he was threatened:

A 50-year-old man from Cheltenham is also trying to sell his ticket after losing his job soon after making the purchase.

His new job will not agree to give him the time off.

"They said 'we demand that you withdraw the ticket from eBay otherwise we'll take legal action,'" he said.

"If they refund my money then I would take it off eBay, but they won't do that," he added.

It does seem a little rich that Glastonbury refuses to allow people to sell on their tickets if they can no longer use them, but also refuses to hand back money. It suggests that the organisers have become so obsessed with making the ticket tout-proof they've lost site of its role as an entry pass to an actual festival; it's like they're seeing the ticket as being the end in itself.

Glastonbury deny threatening legal action:

[Melvin] Benn admits they have insisted tickets be removed from the auction site, but denies threatening legal action.

"I don't believe it is a fraudulent act, but it's an act that breaks a condition of sale," he "Certainly not to my knowledge has anyone been suggesting that it's fraud," he said.

Breaking a condition of sale, that would be bad. It'd be on a par, say, with promising to not use personal data for any other purpose, and then using it to promote quite another festival, wouldn't it?

It seems odd that two separate people have contacted BBC News under the impression they'd been threatened while the festival has no knowledge of anyone making those threats. We expect its just misunderstandings.

Rod marries again

In the midst of "footballers marry en masse" (has the FA started to turn itself into some of Moonie-style mass-marriage cult?), Rod Stewart's wedding in Portofino nearly slipped by unnoticed.

Penny Lancaster is now the third Mrs. Stewart.

Portofino. I know.

Blender goes private

Dennis publishing has offloaded its US arm - which publishes Blender, alongside Stuff and Maxim - to A private equity group. Quadrangle Capital Partners II is the fund which has taken the company out of public hands.

Download Squad riposte

Grant Robertson, lead Blogger at DownloadSquad has posted a response to Paul Birch's attempts to bully New Music Traffic from linking to them.

Disconnected: Sony kills its "iTunes killer"

Sony's brave-but-doomed attempt to become a major player in the download retail market has reached its official end: Sony Connect is wrapping up, although some of its team will continue "servicing the Playstation group on the technical needs" and the eBooks wing of the project remains to offer material for the Sony Reader.

There are two sides to every story

Perez Hilton reckons Lily Allen turned up late and drunk for her most recent New York gig:

Starting things off wrong - the Smile singer took to the stage nearly two hours late.

"I didn't even wait this long for Justin Timberlake," griped one angry concertgoer.

And when she finally did get up for the horse and pony show, Lily was unprepared, unprofessional and ungrateful!

"She was so drunk that she forgot the words to several of her songs," one spywitness tells us. "She needed lyrics sheets to get her through the night."

Lily Allen, though, reckons on her blog that she wasn't:

This is all bullshit . doors opened at 6.45 on monday and I had two support acts . Anyone who thought i was going on earlier , im sorry you were missinformed . I would never turn up two hours late for a gig .......EVER . id been in my dressing room since four o'clock that afternoon anyway its not as if id leave 3000 people out there for no reason . I did apologise to everyone for forgetting my words on " not big " , and I also explained that it was a psychological thing that happens to me on stage . I guess its like premature ejaculation , the second you start thinking about it the second it all goes wrong . I actually thought it was a really good gig and really enjoyed myself . I did not get drunk but your right i did smoke a ciggarette on stage , and for that i should have apologised . After the gig i went to the "spotted pig" with my friends and various members of my family , it was really busy so a few of us left and went to the beatrice inn , this nonsense about josh hartnett is exactly that . nonsense

Apparently, Allen is going to blog less on MySpace now because it was only ever a promotional tool in the first place ("it isn't fun any more"):

The thing is , im not going to write here so often now . this used to be one of my favourite things to do . I could come on here and vent how i feel honestly and get feedback from you guys . But the tabloid fucks have ruined it . Everything i write here gets twisted and rewritten buy a bunch of lazy fucks who havent got anything better to write about . And the truth is I don't want to be in their fucking stupid magazines and daily fuck rags . Infact I hate it , i dont want to be a celebrity , I am a singer , I write songs , thats it . I don't sleep and take drugs with famous people( i have a boyfriend ive been with for nearly 3 years ) , I don't go to film premieres . I don't go shopping in the paparazzi hotspots , so please leave me alone . Write about something interesting , and that actually needs to be alked about . I don't want to live in a world where the most interesting thing is Paris Hilton and " how shes doing in jail " . Why do we care , seriously ? Guys the world is MELTING , we are KILLING innocent people , so we can steal their oil , killing them. 400000 people are dead and 2.5 million have no home in Darfur .............. but then again Lindsay did work out at the gym this afternoon and thats what really counts .

Because, of course, Allen is known for her political activism. It's curious why a woman who is happy to trade fame for large cheques from New Look, say, to promote some tshirts simultaneously maintains that she doesn't want to be in the magazines to which she grants interviews to promote said tshirts. It's one thing to avoid fame, it's quite another to play the celebrity press to sell your product and then complain about being in the press.

But maybe we're being unfair. Perhaps Now magazine keeps cutting out all the parts of the interview when Lily Allen suggests the solution for the Darfur crisis.

Queen Joss