Griffin done... David Cameron

Oh, lord help us. Zoe Griffin has gone all political on us:

I don’t write that much about politcs, but I am shocked by the Mirror’s front page ’scandal’ of David Cameron holding a glass of Champagne at the Conservative party conference in Manchester.

You mean after all the briefings in advance of the conference have been stressing how the Tories aren't at all triumphant and won't be seen guzzling champers while cutting public spending and grabbing money back from benefits?

You don't think it's a strong visual metaphor which deftly deflates George Osbourne's claims that "we're all in this together"?

Ok, the photo was taken on the day that Tory chancellor George Osborne announced economic policy, but was there nothing else happening in the world that merited front page news?

Yes, couldn't the Mirror have picked up on one of the other stories you carry, Zoe, like a free dress you got or one of Girls Aloud having their photo taken?

Firstly, Cameron was photographed at The Spectator magazine party. That is a magazine whose tagline is ‘Champagne for the brain’. The magazine publishers bought the Champagne and handed it to Cameron - he didn’t pay for it himself. And is he drinking it? No! He’s holding it!

Ah, yes. It's better if he guzzles someone else's champagne, because that makes it alright. Obviously, if you receive benefits without working, that's bad, but champagne is fine.

And he's only holding it. How do we even know he's going to drink it? He could be about to stride to the sinks and pour the stuff away. Or he might be about to give it to a homeless person on a bicycle.

Secondly, the alleged scandal comes from the fact that George Osborne announced plans to bring in a one year pay freeze for public sector workers. However, what they also need to point out is people earning under £18K will be exempt from the ban. Plus there will be direct cuts to ministers’ pay.

Given that most of the Tory front bench have already amassed fortunes, they can afford the odd cut in their own wages. And it's not just public sector workers who are having their money reduced in real terms by Osbourne's plans - what about the people on incapacity benefit who are going to be forced back onto JSA, losing twenty five quid a week?

Thirdly, when you really look at Osborne’s speech he didn’t actually spell out HOW he would get the economic deficit under control. If The Mirror wanted to have a go at anyone, they should have directly challenged Osborne.

Well, perhaps they should. But given how dumb the tabloids have got - in part because they've employed slews of simpering idiots to write about Lily Allen's hemlines instead of investing in their political coverage - a front page of detailed economic analysis isn't going to play well, is it? One with words on?

FINALLY, I like a leader who enjoys the finer things in life like Champagne. Why drink beer when you can have Champagne?

Because the theme of the conference is meant to be avoiding looking triumphant and pretending that we're all going to have difficult times ahead.

Tip Of The Day: Don’t criticise unless you have all the facts!

Perhaps Zoe is being satirical.

Streaming now: Mountain Goats

You have twenty-four hours - minus, erm, some - to enjoy the gift of Mountain Goats new album streaming out the front of Stephen Colbert in full.

Gordon in the morning: Fashion logistics

If I've followed Gordon's coverage of Paris fashion week correctly, he's reporting Lily Allen and Katy Perry not meeting in Paris as the result of some sort of superhuman effort:

But organisers had been forced to work diplomatic magic behind the scenes to ensure that I Kissed A Girl singer Katy was not there.

Because they - apparently - don't get on, which means Katy was forced to not go. Although if they don't go on, it's difficult to see why Katy would have gone in the first place to add more lets-call-it-glamour to Allen's show.

'Woman doesn't go to watch woman she doesn't like'? Hold the front page.

Arrests in Noah And Whale case theft case

Apparently, a lot of the kit is still missing, but Greater Manchester Police have made arrests following the theft of Noah And The Whale's stuff.

Metalobit: Michael Alexander

The bassist with Evile, Michael Alexander, has died.

It's believed he died from the effects of a blood clot.

Alexander had joined the Huddersfield-based metal act in 2000, shortly after they formed. At that time, they were trading as Metal Militia and performing covers, but after four years they decided to knock that on the head. Evile was the new shape of the band, making their own music - and with enough success to land a deal with Earache records.

Having spent most of 2008 promoting debut album Enter The Grave, the band went back into the studio this February to work on a new collection, Infected Nations. It was while promoting this record in Sweden that Alexander fell ill.

Michael Alexander was 32.

Darkness at 3AM: Frappobeatles

I've scratched my head, and tried and tried to work out what this 3AM Girls sentence means:

Well it's only fitting... Goldfrapp have written the score for the forthcoming film Nowhere Boy, about the early life of John Lennon.

Surely the idea of Goldfrapp writing a score for a Lennon movie is intentionally picking an act which doesn't seem to be the obvious choice? Perhaps the "only fitting" is a reference to the music being recorded at Abbey Road:

We're told: "The soundtrack was recorded at Abbey Road studios, which the guys loved."

But if so, wouldn't the "fitting" remark fit better at the end?

The ol-factor

I can just about see the thinking behind an X Factor perfume - the sweet smell of quickly fading success in a bottle.

What seems odd is producing a range themed around the judges. Yes, splashing Cheryl Cole and Minogue about might be attractive; maybe even Cowell might attract a certain sort of man.

But who would want to put themselves into this scenario:

- Darling?
- Yes, darling?
- Is there a funny smell in here?
- I don't... think...
- Like a desperate pantomime dame waving the wrong end of a shitty stick about in a bucket of sweat?
- Oh! I'm wearing Louis Walsh toilet water

Gordon in the morning: Inspector remorse

The trouble with the long line of stories promoting Robbie Williams' new record is that they're now starting to contradict each other.

So the idea that Robbie Williams only checks into rehab when he's staring death in the eyes? Today, it turns out that he actually went to rehab because he couldn't cope with the job he's paid for:

He added: "I felt great when I started to promote a record but it soon began to kill me.

"I felt worse when on tour. I suffered a nervous breakdown and checked into rehab."

In the same story (not entirely clear why) Gordon exposes Dizzee Rascal's love of history:

DIZZEE RASCAL was filming the video for single Dirty Cash in London yesterday while dressed in a top hat and morning coat.

He shares scenes with a woman dressed as MARGARET THATCHER and suffragettes with huge boobs.

It's what Sylvia Pankhurst was working for, you know.

Muse haven't asked Beck to shut up

Further to the earlier piece about Muse asking Glenn Beck to disendorse them, it now seems that Beck was only joking when he said he'd been asked to stop praising them:

Christopher Balfe, the president and COO of Beck's company, Mercury Radio Arts, released a statement clarifying the situation. "After raving about Muse for four minutes, Glenn made a joke about their representatives e-mailing him to stop," Balfe wrote. "While it is entirely possible that Muse does not like having Glenn as a fan, he was making a joke and their representatives never reached out to him."

In fact, it turns out that Muse aren't prepared to say anything at all:

When asked for a response to the retraction of the fake retraction, a spokesperson for the band said there would be no comment from the Muse camp.

So last week, Matt Bellamy was all for revolution and overthrowing things. Now he can't even be arsed to disassociate himself from Glenn Beck.

Guns N Roses sued in copyright case

Reuters is reporting the launch of a lawsuit by two indie labels against Guns N Roses:

Two independent record labels sued U.S. rock band Guns N' Roses for $1 million, claiming the group used portions of two songs by a German musician on their last album "Chinese Democracy."

Guns N' Roses and Universal Music Group's Interscope-Geffen A&M label were sued by British label Independiente and the U.S. arm of Domino Recording Company, who own the licensing rights to songs by German electronic musician Ulrich Schnauss.

We'd normally mumble about this sort of thing, but - just in abstract - if there was a million dollars you could give to either Domino and Independiente or to Axl Rose, there's no question who would do more good with the money.

Rumours that Rose intends to counter-sue Schnauss for taking too long to produce the work for him to plagiarise cannot be confirmed at time of publishing.

Method fails for filing taxes

If you've got a name like Method Man, you'd hope you'd back it up with a decent filing system at the very least. But it looks like Mr. Man's filing is all awry, as it turns out he's forgotten to pay taxes for four years. He now has to find thirty thousand dollars and faces up to four years inside.

Downloadable: My Tiger My Timing

Hook and The Twin get their, um, hooks - and twins - into the forthcoming My Tiger My Timing single I Am The Sound. It's on YouSendIt, and official and allowed.

Chris TT tours out

Chris TT has updated his list of coming dates with the addition of some sets in support of Broken Family Band. This is the diary, then:

10 October London Flowerpot Lexapalooza Lite (raising money for Breast Cancer Campaign)

SUPPORTING BROKEN FAMILY BAND
21 London The Garage
22 Sheffield Academy 2
23 Liverpool Academy 2

SOLO SHOWS
24 Cardiff Swn Festival 2009
25 Oxford Jericho Tavern
26 Aberdeen The Tunnels
27 Glasgow Nice N Sleazy
28 London Flowerpot
30 Cheltenham Walk The Line 09

14 November London Brixton Academy Jamm – with Carter USM (full band show)
21 Brighton West Hill Hall

Swine flu grounds Backstreet Boys

I'm not sure what is more puzzling: that anyone still bothers to issue press releases saying they've got swine flu...

The Backstreet Boys are sad to announce they have cancelled today's NYC PINKTOBER Hard Rock Café signing due to member, Brian Litrell having been diagnosed with the Swine Flu. The other 3 members, Nick Carter, Howie Dorough and AJ McLean have seen a doctor and are not showing any symptoms.

... or that a four-piece band is unable to sign stuff if one of them is missing. Does Brian look after the vowels or something? Is he the only one who knows how to get the lid off the Sharpie?

Playing soon: Dean and Britta

Yes, that's what it looks like. Click bigger if you don't believe me. Dean & Britta - yes, Luna D&B, Galaxie 500 D&B - are doing a special one-off London show. At St Giles In The Fields Church. November 18th.

Beyonce "breaks silence" on West

Well, how would you feel if you were the unwilling third party in a publicity stunt that misfired like a '78 Ford Escort struggling with two-stroke petrol in slow-moving traffic?

Of course Beyonce felt she had to say something, but what, but what?

In the end, inspiration strikes. Just make some noises. It's what Whitney would do, isn't it?

"Well, I knew his intentions, and I knew he was standing up for art; and he told me before, when they said the nominees, he's like, 'You have this award,'" Beyoncé told O: The Oprah Magazine editor Gayle King after accepting her award. "And when they didn't call my name he was, like, completely shocked. And when he walked on the stage, I was like, 'No, no, no!' and then he spoke, and I was like, 'Oh, no, no, no!'

And we were like "huh huh huh?" and O was all "ooh, ooh, ooh", and everyone was going like "mmmm."

Still, it wasn't all bad, was it:

"But in the end, it ended up being a great night, and Taylor Swift did get her moment," she continued. "And I didn't have to make an acceptance speech."

So, all's well that ends well, if you ignore Taylor's "moment" having been completely overwritten in history by Kanye's prescripted "moment".

Streaming: Editors

NME.com is streaming the new Editors album through a We7-y widget.

Them Crooked Vultures: No pictures, please

It's something of a forlorn hope on the part of Promowest that they can turn back the tide of technology.

People going to see Them Crooked Vultures (John Paul Jones, Dave Grohl, Josh Homme and a desperate hope that people don't see the words 'supergroup' as a dire warning) are being told to leave their cameras at home:

NO CAMERA’S ALLOWED DURING THIS PERFORMANCE, INCLUDING CELL PHONES. IF YOU ARE CAUGHT TAKING PICTURES YOU WILL BE ASKED TO DELETE THEM. IF YOU ARE CAUGHT A SECOND TIME, YOU WILL BE ASKED TO DELETE THEM AND ESCORTED OUT OF THE BUILDING. THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION.

Back in the 1980s, sure, you could spot someone with a camera and bully them. But when everyone at the gig will have a phone with a camera built in, how is this even going to work?

Beck off: Muse ask Glen to retract

As if it wasn't bad enough that he's just led to Waitrose dumping advertising on Fox in the UK, Glenn Beck has now had to withdraw his endorsement of Muse:

He described the album as "absolutely fantastic" and interpreted the album's political lyrics as an attack on the Obama institution and the dangers of "one world government".

He said: "These guys are brilliant, they know the time that we live in. They are libertarians from England.

"All of the lyrics are... dead on, on what's coming our way."

Oh, dear. Muse asked him to recant, and he did (although The Quietus doesn't mention if he sobbed as he did so):

They would like me to retract my endorsement," said Beck. "My apologies to Muse for saying that I like them. I didn't mean to destroy all their credibility and all their coolness.

"It's an awful album and you should never go out and buy it."

Of course Beck made it sound like the band were upset at being endorsed by a big ole square, rather than rejecting a political misrepresentation of their beliefs by a hectoring blowhard. But then he's a man who wouldn't be able to keep things straight if he had a plumb line and set square stapled to his forehead.

Perhaps if he'd found out about Matt Bellamy's desire for internet users to be taxed, he might never have mistaken them for libertarians in the first place.

[UPDATED: It turns out this is all Glenn Beck's idea of a joke.]

Such a good thing: Woodentops return

It's not, strictly speaking, a complete return (they were doing stuff a couple of years ago) but it is a return to playing live: The Woodentops will be playing the Queen Elizabeth Hall on the South Bank on October 30th

Pete Wentz: Emo no mo'

Pete Wentz is now, officially, no longer emo because he's knocking thirty, worth squillions of dollars and a mainstream entertainerhe's cut off his hair.

Downladable: New Yorke

From You Ain't No Picasso, four new songs by Thom Yorke, performed in LA.

Darkness at 3AM: Has Cowell really only taken half a century to bring us JLS?

You will, naturally, have heard the tales of Simon Cowell's fiftieth birthday party, a glittering, star-studded event. How do you sum up such a historical event? How to grasp the cultural significance of the celebration of a man, without whom, it's likely Piers Morgan would have vanished into the relatively obscurity his talent would suggest? How would a writer manage to sketch the idea of the corona this day offers to our culture?

the 3AM Girls have a crack:

It's the sign of a proper knees-up... Myleene Klass staggered into her waiting car, bare-footed, with her shoes goodness knows where.

Myleene Klass got a bit tiddly and took her shoes off. In a hundred years, such an event will be endlessly recreated in an attempt to try and capture the spirt of this oh-too-belle epoque.

Gordon in the morning: Trouble in paradise

Hard to believe - mainly because of where it's being reported - but the new-look Sugababes might already be cracking:

The barney kicked off last Friday at a photoshoot in North London when AMELLE BERRABAH's mobile kept going off. It disrupted the session and upset HEIDI RANGE and new girl to the trio JADE EWEN.

This might just sound like the sort of thing that happens all the time in the workplace, but - according to Gordon, anyway - it took a two-hour hiatus before things got moving again.

Elsewhere, Gordon proves he's not one to follow the herd, as he turns out to be the only person in the entire world to find Madonna and Lady GaGa's Saturday Night Live sketch in any way amusing.

Eminem and Apple make peace

Eminem's publishing team, Eight Mile Style, and Apple, have come to an agreement over the Em's complaints that Apple had no right to be selling his music, Variety is reporting.

No word on what the deal is, but the smart money is that the millions of dollars demanded won't be turning up anywhere.

Downloadable: Catherine AD

In a straight tracks-for-email swap, Catherine AD is offering a-track-a-day from her bedroom sessions. They're what she was doing in her room when she was meant to be revising for her literature finals. And, happily, that's what they sound like.

Folkobit: Mercedes Sosa

Mercedes Sosa, Argentinian folk singer, has died at the age of 74.

Using a pseudonym - Gladys Osorio - Sosa accidentally embarked on her career when she won a radio talent show in 1950 (making her the Will Young of her time and place, only good.) Quickly finding an audience, she would become one of the nuevo cancionero movement which offered a 1970s Latin American home-grown counterpoint to the influences coming from the North. Her committed, left- and communist-supporting music made her unpopular as Argentina slumped into its era of political repression and, following an incident when she and her entire audience were detained, she left her homeland.

"I knew I had to leave," Sosa told the AP. "I was being threatened by the Triple A (a right-wing death squad that terrorized suspected dissidents during the 1976-83 military junta). The people from the navy, the secret services were following me."

After time wandering Europe, Sosa returned to Argentina in 1982 as the junta fell.

In her work over half a century, she released more than 70 albums.

Sosa's family announced her death earlier today. She had been suffering from liver, kidney and heart problems.

This is Sosa performing María Elena Walsh's Como La Ciggara:

Glastonbury tickets update

According to Emily Eavis and her stream of tweets, there's still Glastonbury tickets available - 0844 412 4635 on the telephone, or you could try the website. Although, as is now tradition, that's fallen over.

It's not even surprising that Twitter is full of stuff like this:

i have no idea if ive Glastonbury tkts, im 90% sure, but as the booked crashed, im just waiting for email confirmation now!

and this

Still no Glastonbury email. Might be time to go back to bed and stop worrying for a while

Year after year, the booking system fails to support the level of interest. Presumably since it doesn't mean nobody turns up, that's why they don't bother making it work, even though they must know the load levels they should be having to cope with?

This week just gone

September's most-popular things were:

1. Los Campesinos - mp3 download
2. RIP: Jake Brockman
3. Lily Allen withdraws from copyright battles
4. Kings Of Leon issue needy press release
5. James Blunt loves Lily Allen
6. Wogan quits Radio 2 breakfast
7. Madonna uses kids to shift product
8. RIP: Wycliffe Johnson
9. Phil Collins quits the drums
10. Courtney Love takes to Twitter to deny involvement in computer-game Cobain

This bunch came out this week:


Fanfarlo - Reservoir



Hope Sandoval & The Warm Inventions - Through The Devil Softly


download Through The Devil Softly



Sharon Shannon - Saints And Scoundrels


download Saints And Scoundrels



Stephen 'Where's The TinTin' Duffy - Memory & Desire


download The Ups And Downs



Ian Brown - My Way


download My Way



Maps - Turning The Mind


download Turning The Mind



Kill Hannah - Wake Up The Sleepers



KRS One & Buckshot - Survival Skills



Chromeo - DJ Kicks

Black Lips spill shits

Another part of my Saturday catch-up - thanks to Carrie Brownstein's NPR blog - brings me up to date with the battle fought between Black Lips and Wavves last Friday night in Brooklyn. Or rather, with Wavves' manager.

The details of the fight are as you'd expect - the tiny slights which drive people who you'd prefer to admire to slap each other in a bar.

The queasy part, though, is Jared Swilley's response:

“First of all, I just wanna say that Wavves was NOT involved in that fight. That faggot didn’t even touch me.

I’ve never “come after” that kid, it wasn’t four a.m., that wasn’t my girlfriend, no one was spitting, and I didn’t attack him. I don’t give a shit about that kid and his music.

What happened was, after we finished our set I went to Daddy’s with some friends and saw that faggot from Wavves talking to a photographer friend of mine. The only thing I did was walk up to him and say “You’re that faggot from Wavves and I don’t like you”. He smiled a bit but didn’t say anything.

After that, I went outside and saw their tour manager hanging around with some guys. They started getting all chuckles with me and so I told them I wasn’t gonna have it. After that, Wavves tour manager hit me square in the face with a bottle. Blood started pouring out and six dudes fucking started kicking me until I blacked out.

All I remember is getting hit with the bottle and my friends dragging me to another bar. They wrapped my head up until I looked like a Confederate soldier.

So yeah, I lost the fight.

I also missed three flights. I’ve been in the airport all day having stewardesses cleaning my head because it kept cracking open. You can’t go on board if you’re bleeding.

Bottom line is that faggot from Wavves didn’t even hit me. Never touched me. And he should’ve, cuz he had a free shot.

He’s coming to Atlanta October 3rd and we’re gonna get ugly on him. We’re gonna destroy their van, we’re gonna destroy their faces, we’re gonna get crazy on em’. Nasty style.

Hold on... in amongst the tiresome belligerence, did Swilley just start using "faggot" as a term of abuse?

(That sentence, I think you'll have guessed, was rhetorical.)

Three times.

Something to listen to: Trembling Blue Stars... and more

Dandelion Radio are having a Peel celebration month throughout October, which features a whole bunch of exclusive stuff, specially recorded or snuck out for the site. There's Trembling Blue Stars, The Woodentops, I, Ludicrous, Beatnik Filmstars... and (as they'd say in a Ronco ad) much, much more...

Nicked from Noah

This is what happens when you leave it to the weekend to catch up with the Marc Riley programmes (cracking this week, by the way - Joan As Policewoman, Strike The Colours, First Aid Kit and Ambulances in session): I'd fallen down on the job by missing the news that Noah And The Whale had everything stolen in Manchester in the small hours of Wednesday morning:

We’re sad to report that last night Noah and the Whale had all of their instruments and tour equipment stolen from Trinity Way NCP car park in Manchester. At some point between midnight and 11am this morning, the band’s trailer was taken containing all the equipment listed below, most of which is of great sentimental value to the band.
Many of the instruments were packed in flight cases marked NOAH in 6” high stencil lettering, or gold marker pen lettering NOAH AND THE WHALE or NATW. If you were in the Manchester area and saw anything suspicious, or if you’ve come across any of the equipment listed, please contact the police immediately. You can also contact Coalition management on 020 8743 1000 or zac@coalitiongroup.co.uk

STOLEN EQUIPMENT

Gibson Les Paul Gold Top Deluxe
Fender telecaster – sunburst with black scratch plate

The above are both LEFT HANDED

Gibson Goldtone GA-30 RVS Amp
Voodoo labs power supply x3
Ernie ball volume pedal x2
Boss TU2 tuner x 7
Boss EQ pedal
Homebrew Electronics Powerscreamer
Ibanez TS-9 Tubescreamer
Line6 delay
Ebow x2
Electro Harmonix Holy Grail
Marshall Compressor pedal
Behringer acoustic DI box
Fender 66 P-bass
Vox F-hole 60’s sunburst bass
Ampeg B-15
Ashdown 2x10 cab
Z Vex wooly mammoth pedal
Little big muff
Mesa Boogie DC3 amp
Marshall 1 x 12 guitar cab
Line6 Digital delay pedal
MXR boost
Ibanez tube screamer
Fender 1965 Deluxe reverb
Ibanez AD9 Analogue delay
Keeley compressor pedal
Fender Telecaster 1963
Fender Jaguar 1963
Electro harmonix POG
Electro harmonix Holy Grail
ZVEX Distortron
Digitech loop pedal
Ludwig silver/white oyster finish drum kit consisting of:
22” kick drum (1966)
Rack Tom 13”(1966)
Floor Tom 16” (1970)
Zildjian 21” ride
14” Hi Hats
13” Hi Hats
16” Crash
17” Crash
Ludwig black beauty snare 14x5
Brady snare 14x6
Ludwig snare 14x5
2 snare stands
3 DW kick pedals, one with tamborine attachment
2 tamborines, cowbell
2 crash stands
1 ride stand
10 pairs wooden 5a sticks
1 pair brushes
2 pair hot rod brushes
2 pair felt beaters
Roland 88 note stage piano and x-frame stand

Peli-case toolbox
Contents:
Peterson strobo-flip
Boss tu2 tuner
Screwdrivers
Gas soldering kit
Various pliers /cutters
Nut-files/ various files
Music-stand lamp
Guitar Polish/cleaners/switch cleaners

Flightcases:
These are all marked NOAH in 6” high stencil lettering, some also have gold marker pen lettering NOAH AND THE WHALE or NATW
Fender Jag case
Fender Tele case x 2
Gibson gold top l/h case
Fender precision bass case
Vox F-hole bass case
Ampeg B-15 bass cab case
Ashdown 4x10 bass cab case
Fender Twin amp case
Fender Deluxe amp case
Gibson goldtone GA30 amp case
4 x Pedal board cases
Large drum traps Hardcase
Small tom case
Floor tom case
Snare case x 3
Kick drum case
Small traps case x 2
Kick pedal case
Guitar rack case x2

Tool box with various screw drivers etc.

Having all your stuff stolen is the extreme of being shat on (even if Feargal Sharkey would argue it's on a par with having someone download a couple of your songs without a licence) so let's hope that someone will be able to help out.

Gordon in the morning: He really, really, reallys wants to zig... oh, please yourselves

Although he ran exactly the same story a couple of weeks ago, and despite that story being denied instantly by Mel B, Gordon is back with the claims that the Spice Girls are going to reunite.

Again.

Only without Beckham.

And, erm, possibly, without Bunton.

In fact, Gordon does admit - seemingly by accident - that his first story was total bunkum:

I revealed a couple of weeks back that Mel and Stephen had discussed a one-off Spice Girls appearance at the World Cup in South Africa next summer.

It sounds like the response has encouraged talks about another big comeback.

Actually, Gordon, your original story wasn't that "Mel and Stephen" had discussed a one-off comeback - you actually said:

She has already got Ginger Spice GERI HALLIWELL, Baby EMMA BUNTON and Sporty MELANIE CHISHOLM on board.

Did you forget that? Only you have ragged out the story from the paper that you're now trying rewrite, including the bit that you're now trying to conveniently forget.

Meanwhile: How many times has Gordon 'introduced' Dionne Bromfield to the word now? I make it four, but I might be losing count.

Barat to Doherty: Don't look forward in excitement

As the last of September ebbed away, Pete Doherty was telling everyone the Libertines were coming back, back, back:

“I think we’re gonna make a record, and tour. Get the Libertines to take it to the next step, next stage. Next year.”

This comes as news to Carl Barat, who can't get away to marry you today, as his life won't let him:

"I'm too busy next year. Maybe the year after that," he said. "See how it goes. When it needs to happen, it will fall into place. It's more a way of life than a band for me. I’m not going to jump up there and play the songs for some money – if it feels right then it will fall into place."

Admittedly, he didn't say "over my dead body", or "when Nick Clegg becomes Prime Minister", but there's a suggestion that he's not quite so excited by the prospect of reuniting with Pete. "Maybe we'll see how things look for 2011" couldn't be a more effective brushing-off if it came with a tray to collect crumbs and was followed by a little buffing.

And I'm sure the bit about doing it for money wasn't meant to make it sound like, ooh, some other people are desperate to get back together so they can stop relying on collecting the empties at the Black Dog And Handle to scrape enough for a kebab on the way home. I'm sure.

Fame Kills is killed: Gaga/West go West

Nobody quite seems to have a plausible reason 'why', but the Kanye West/Lady GaGa Fame Kills tour has been axed.

To be fair, nobody could quite explain why they were bothering with it in the first place, so perhaps the only explanation we'll get for the axing is "someone woke up and took a good hard look at what we were doing."

Liam Gallagher instructs Carter-Ruck

Liam Gallagher is suing the Guardian over a bad review.

Yes, that's right. Liam Gallagher has instructed Carter-Ruck to sue The Guardian because its reviewer claimed he'd "unprofessionally" stormed off stage, when - rather - he was merely taking a scheduled break. The paper's review also claimed that Gallagher hadn't returned, when he actually came back on after ten minutes.

(Liam needs a ten minute break during a set? Really? Is this something he feels the need to have more attention drawn to that?)

The paper has already run an apology and a correction:

"In an earlier article 'Liam Gallagher storms out of Oasis gig' published online on 22 July 2009 we wrongly suggested that Liam Gallagher walked out of an Oasis gig and did not return disrupting the set they were performing.

"In fact Liam Gallagher only left the stage whilst his brother sang two songs as is normal during their performance and returned to continue the rest of the set.

"We apologise to Liam Gallagher for this error."

You'd have thought that would be enough, right?

Not so, reveals Press Gazette:

Gallagher claimed it was not issued on agreed terms, and did not provide the vindication to which he was entitled.

Gallagher complained the apology did to refer to paying damages [sic], was not suitably prominent, and was not linked to the website home page but appeared only as a free standing item for about 60 hours.

The writ issued to the High Court claimed Guardian News and Media made no effort to contact Gallagher, or any representative of Oasis, before the story appeared and has since failed to make offer of amends.

Does anyone really expect to see a review before it's published?

James M - to whom, thanks for the story - isn't impressed:

The fact that the Guardian reviewer was guilty of sloppy journalism is accepted by all. However, there's something rather pitiable & pathetic about Gallagher's stance. Moreover, as a commenter on this story points out, the claim that the Guardian story could put people off attending future Oasis gigs is bemusing, seeing as Noel has taken his guitar home with him

It's equally possible that the discovery that Liam spends some time off-stage might make people feel a bit more well-disposed to going to see an Oasis gig.

It's a long way from fighting the mafia in Munich bars to instructing m'learned friends to extract damages for a minor slight.

Gordon in the morning: A little drink

One of the reasons that The Sun is withdrawing its support for Labour is the boozy, woozy nature of Britain:

Booze ... the number of alcohol-related deaths and violence has soared since Labour came to office

Yes. Who else but the government should be held responsible for the increase in drinking and the belief that getting smashed is cool?

Sorry, we were drifting off topic. What's Gordon got for us this morning? Still at the MOBOs, he's reminding us that getting smashed is cool:

IT was even-stevens with two gongs apiece at the MOBO Awards for N-DUBZ and JLS.

But party animals DAPPY, TULISA and FAZER from N-Dubz put their rivals to shame with some seriously boozy aftershow antics.

The trio lasted the distance during a whisky-fuelled tear-up - while ASTON, MARVIN, ORITSE and JB peaked too early.

Presumably it was Gordon Brown himself who suggested to Gordon Smart that he should write in glowing terms about young people drinking as if the amount you can put away should be a matter of pride. Right?

The D:Ream is over

It's amusing that - having made such a fuss about no longer supporting Labour a couple of days ago - The Sun only seems to have belatedly realised it's meant to offer an alternative and actually has a "oh... we'd better say something about the Tories" this morning.

I'm sure it's not been lost on David Cameron and Andy Coulson that the tone of the Sun's coverage isn't "Cammo is the man for Britain", but rather "god, Gordon is knackered." But as Homer observed, default are the two sweetest words in the English language.

Even today, as the paper finds some room to let Dave tell us what his plans are, they're still more interested in kicking Labour than actually endorsing the Tories. And, oh, how cruel the sting of the turncoat:

THE pop star behind New Labour's anthem insisted last night Things Can Only Get Better - if voters DUMP the Party.

D:Ream singer Peter Cunnah - whose track was Tony Blair's theme tune when he swept to power in 1997 - backed The Sun as he declared: "We need to give David Cameron a chance."

The fed-up dad of two, 43, said: "It's time for a change. If Gordon Brown called me today I wouldn't sing for them again."

I suspect it's hugely unlikely that anyone would be putting in a call to D:Ream HQ for an endorsement this time round, given that next year's first-time voters would have only just been born the year the song came out and so doesn't quite have the youthful relevance it once did.

It's worth pointing out that Cunnah isn't "backing The Sun" at all, either - the paper is saying 'vote Tory' (except, confusingly, to its Scottish readers) and Cunnah... well, he isn't:

Peter said the Conservatives had to show that they offered Britain a PROPER alternative.

He admitted that currently he was frustrated at not seeing "a real choice". That was because "the Conservatives are so red and the reds are so blue".

Peter added: "I think, 'Should I use my vote?' I'm still floating."

Not quite agreeing with the

Mobos moaning: Kelly Rowland's not happy

Perhaps the only piece of comfort for Kelly Rowland - livid at the poor sound of the MOBOs stage - is that it was only the MOBOs, and so it's not like anyone would have heard her performance.

What's hilarious is the way the MOBO organisers are trying to deny there was a problem at all:

A Mobo spokesman said: "Kelly Rowland looked at the BBC's iPlayer and thought her performance was better than she initially thought when she came off stage and is completely happy with her performance."

That seems a little unlikely, given that it sounds rotten on iPlayer and - even if you could ignore the muzak-in-a-cow-shed mix, that she is pulling a face of a woman trying to hold a feisty kitten in a room full of birds throughout suggests that she wasn't comfortable while it was happening.

Her Twitter stream recorded her anger...

OK. So, I'm at the MoBo's and getting ready to have a GREAT show with David and the MoBo's F'd my sound up!!!!! PISSED!!!!!

HONESTLY, that just makes me work harder! But, what I will say is the MoBo's owe me an apology!!!! I was LIVID after the show!

I wanted you guys to be the 1st to hear it from me! rehearsals. were fine. soundcheck. was fine. performance, wad a struggle at 1st

But, I got through it!!!!!!!! So-----It happens! The next show will be Better!--------TRUST!!!!!!!!!

Poor woman. Not only was her sound awful, but it looks like her exclamation mark key is sticking too.

There is, it's worth noting, no further tweet going "oh, it looks fine on iPlayer. Chill!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Embed and breakfast man: The Bravery [NSFW]

The young people do the sex.

This video is by The Bravery, and off the new album. It's not a single, it's called Hatefuck, and has naked rudery in it. In other words:

DON'T PRESS PLAY IF YOU'RE AT WORK, OR IN CHURCH, OR SHY OR WHATEVER

The Bravery - "Hatefuck" from the hassle on Vimeo.

The Bravery are at The Ogden in Denver tonight, a week too early for us.

What's a nice Girl Like You not doing on a MySpace like this?

Huge thanks to Robf for tipping me off about the post of Edwyn Collins' MySpace by his manager Grace.

It details the struggle Edwyn's had trying to offer his music for download:

At the beginning of this year I noticed that Edwyn's myspace had gone bit wonky and I tried to upload the tracks back on to the music player. His most famous track, which he owns the copyright in, as he does for most of the music he's recorded in his life (preferring to go it alone than have his music trapped "in perpetuity" to use the contract language of the major record company) is called A Girl Like You. It's quite famous. Lo and behold, it would not upload, I was told Edwyn was attempting to breach a copyright and he was sent to the Orwellian myspace copyright re-education page.

It turns out that Warners was claiming copyright and - despite repeated attempts to persuade them - nobody has yet relinquished the false claim.

I'm not sure how one would even go about getting an ISP to punish Warners for this claim, even although falsely claiming ownership of something is a crime at least on a par with sharing an unlicensed file. At least unlicensed downloading doesn't preclude the legal owner from using their own material.

But it's worse than that:

A Girl Like You is available FOR SALE all over the internet. Not by Edwyn, by all sorts of respectable major labels whose licence to sell it ran out years ago and who do not account to him. Attempting to make them cease and desist would use up the rest of my life. Because this is what they do and what they've always done.

Now, people swapping files for free on the internet, they're perhaps breaching the letter of the law, but at least they're not doing it for financial gain.

Even when Edwyn was really skint at the fag end of the eighties, I remember being in Camden market and seeing some tapes of a couple of his shows on sale. I tried to buy them but the stallholder somehow knew who I was and said "free to the management." I failed to see how that guy selling tapes of Edwyn or even U2 or anybody on the list of signatories above could harm their career. But anyway, as an earlier post said, this is not really an argument worth having. The gig's up. You might as well take a position about when you want the sun to come up in the morning. It's over. Now let's get on with working out a wonderful new way for music lovers to enjoy music for free or for a small subscription that makes it legal and easy to hear ANYTHING and allows the artist to reap the rewards of such freedom of access. Viva la revolution!

Spot on. And yet the Featured Lily Coalition still seem determined to believe that if they make enough people miserable enough for long enough, they can make the sun rise in the South.

Downloadable: Florence And The Machine / The XX

You'd have to hope there isn't too much of a "you were the future - once" element to having the XX remix Florence And The Machine. It does sound good, though - RCRDLBL are doing the hosting, and the track is You've Got The Love. I wonder who'll be adding a bit of bright-eyed lustre to The XX by remixing them next year...

Embed and breakfast man: Polvo

I used to have a problem with Polvo. Whenever they'd be announced by Peel, I'd be convinced that I didn't like them. And then the record would start, and I'd remember that I did, and that I always forgot. I don't know what it was about them which left me suffering this mild amnesia. It might have been the unprepossessing name.

Now, they're back, though, and I'm able to remember that they were alright. Amd they're doing a special for Noisemakers on Noisevox.

Look:


That's Beggars Bowl filmed live at The Bell House in Gowanus, Brooklyn, that is.

And there's more:


Right The Relation. Same venue.

There's more where that came from, and an in-depth interview with the band over on Noisevox.

LaToya: Murder was the case. Or maybe stress.

It was quite clear that LaToya believed that Michael Jackson was murdered, right?

Oh... maybe not. Now she seems to have been persuaded by Paris Jackson's claims that he was worked to death:

La Toya, 53, reveals: “She said, ‘No, you don’t understand. They kept working him and Daddy didn’t want that, but they worked him constantly’. I felt so bad.”

No... hang on, it was murder:

She says: “I thought that from day one. You must understand something Michael always told me.

“He said, ‘If anything happens to me, if I die, it’s because someone murdered me. They’re trying to kill me’. It wasn’t that he was being delusional, they did this over the catalogue.

“He owned the Beatles catalogue. Most entertainers out there, he owned their music. He would say, ‘They’re going to kill me over that catalogue. It’s dangerous.’ Look what happened.”

He owned "most entertainers" music? Really? Do you want to nip off and check that before you want to decide which claim you'd like to believe?

Future of the Left, future of music

I was asked on Twitter yesterday if I was going to say anything about the UK Music advert from Monday's Guardain, which repeated (making it clear it was with permission, of course - Feargal isn't going to make a rookie mistake like Lily Allen) a blog post from Andy Falkous on Future Of The Left's MySpace blog.

It was an odd choice for UK Music to use to make its case - sure, you can see the idea of taking a smaller act, a struggling band, and sharing their frustration at the new shape of selling music. Somewhat surprisingly, I don't think the advert actually even bothered to mention the band's name, though, and just shared the full URL of the original MySpace post. Given that UK Music had probably spent more on this advert than all the promotional spend on Future Of The Left records ever, it seems a bit churlish to have not given the band a bit of a bigger mention.

But it's also odd that UK Music used a MySpace blog to make its point - for didn't MySpace build its business on wanton disregard of copyright? Oh, sure, after it had built a userbase it went legitimate, cleaned up its act and licensed in all directions. But there wouldn't be a MySpace business if its founders hadn't adopted a blind eye to the letter of copyright law in the first place. Perhaps UK Music thinks what it is doing is rejoicing over a repenting sinner, rather than suggesting it's okay to do what you like, providing you get your house in order once you've built your business. Because that would be a strange message.

Now, I love Future Of The Left, but the problem with Andy's post is that it merely reflects the problem the major labels are having - he's trying to work in a digitally-connected world using a model established to cope with the limitations of a physical product.

Most of his concerns seem to be about the leaking of the album before it was due to be released. Upsetting, certainly, but that's not a problem caused by filesharing, even if filesharing exacerbates the effect. The leaking - the original leak - must have come from someone working in the wider music business (there's no suggestion that cat burglars are lifting tapes from recording studios), which would seem to be the sort of thing that UK Music could be sorting out within its own ranks.

But it's not just people in the music industry leaking records; it's the business model that the labels and UK Music are trying to cling to that makes leaking possible. Why are you collecting tracks until you have enough to fill a 12 inch disc rotating at 33 and a third before you release them? And if you must work in "albums" of tracks, why would you leave them sitting around for ages before putting them up for sale? Don't you think that this gap between creation and distribution is just opening a window for leaking? (Although I suppose if you had an open window, it wouldn't be a leak. But you get my drift.)

More to the point, though, is this bit:

I'm not angry (in fact I
don't blame you, unless you leaked it, in which case I WILL KILL YOU),
just a little worried that the record we made will get lost amongst
the debris and leave us playing shows like we just weathered at the
laughably bad Camden Crawl this last weekend - fifteen people and a
world of disillusion.*

It doesn't give me any great pleasure to say this, but if you're only able to scrape together an audience of fifteen in Camden at the weekend, your actual problem isn't really that people are filesharing your album.

Gordon in the morning: He went to Glasgow

First, let's just be fair to Gordon Smart: He did actually bother to head off to Glasgow for the Mobos.

And - given how the winners were drawn heavily from the sort of people that Smart plugs his column with when there's nobody interesting to write about - it's no wonder Gordon was thrilled. Thrilled to the point of awkwardness:


But The Sun has been pretty sniffy about the Mobos in the past - how can Gordon save face?

THE MOBO Awards have been rubbish for years.

Bizarre dubbed them the "no goes" a few years back when half the celebrity nominees failed to show up for the bash.

But this year, on my home soil in Scotland, the McMOBOs were finally something to celebrate.

It's unclear if - when writers from the English Sun travel north, they suddenly cease to believe the Tories are a good thing, in line with their newspaper's somewhat odd double-dealing, and sadly Gordon doesn't let on if he suddenly finds Cameron vapid once he's out of Northumberland.

Nor does Gordon seem to have noticed that, yes, the winners did turn up in Glasgow, but that this might be more because the prizes have gone to bands which issue press releases when one of them buys a drink in a bar or has a bad head cold.

Gordon shares an astonishing statistic with us:

It was a brave shout, considering only five per cent of urban sales come from north of Watford.

What? So - generally - people in Manchester, Liverpool and Bradford don't buy music by black artists? Or is a Scottish journalist making the Southern solecism of assuming that "anything outside London" counts as Scotland?

Mobos proudly celebrate all music of black origin, regardless of how good it is

It's perhaps indicative of how far the Mobos are from being a national staple that BBC News treats the story as one of the "TOP GLASGOW, LANARKSHIRE AND WEST STORIES" rather than an entertainment one.

Mind you, given the results, it's not surprising:

JLS and N-Dubz win two Mobos each

Really? That's the best we can do?

Accepting the award for best song for "Beat again", JLS's Marvin Humes said: "The band's success would have been inconceivable just a year ago."

It's still pretty hard to get your head around right now, Marvin.

Even the winners seem to have noticed that the prize giving seems to have spotted that there was something terribly wrong:

Speaking after the awards, N-Dubz's MC, Dappy, said rapper Tinchy Stryder should not have been overlooked.

"There's no-one like Tinchy, nobody's doing what he's doing, nobody's got his swagger," he said.

"I'm really upset. He should have won something."

Those winners in full:

Best UK: N-Dubz

Best Newcomer: JLS

Best Song: JLS, Beat Again

Best Album: N-Dubz, Uncle B

Best DJ: Trevor Nelson

Best Hip Hop: Chipmunk

Best R&B: Keri Hilson

Best International: Beyonce

Best Video: Beyonce, Single Ladies

Best Reggae: Sean Paul

Best Jazz: Yolanda Brown

Best Gospel: Victizzle

Best African Act: Nneka

JLS winning... well, anything. Whoever would have thought? Hang about... that's going to make someone happy, isn't it?