Bookmarks - Internet stuff: Cloud music

Thanks to Michael M for the link to New Scientist's exploration of music-in-the-cloud, it's glorious opportunity and the potential downside:

Corynne McSherry, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital-rights pressure group in San Francisco, sounds a note of caution over cloud music services. She believes licensing problems like those with Yahoo will be difficult to overcome. "Downloading the MP3, having the actual file, gives you more control over how you use the music," she says.

Ho thinks that while some people will continue to want to own recordings, the culture of music ownership could eventually die out. "You might have a next generation of people who say: 'I don't want to bother with having my own collection of music.' I don't know when that date will come."

Rough Trade tease with expansion plans

Could the Rough Trade twitter poll really be a sign of plans to open a branch in the provinces? Or is it simply a tease?

Listen with No Rock: Superchunk

Hopefully this won't flop out depending on where you live, but... let's cross our fingers:



That's the new Superchunk album, that is, streaming courtesy of NPR.

Duff decision: McKagan quits

Who knew that Janes Addiction picking up the offcuts of Guns N Roses would end in tears?

Just five months after Duff McKagan turned up in Janes Addiction, he's out again.

"Hey, we wanted to thank Duff for helping us write songs for our new record," Jane's Addiction told The AP via e-mail.

"We love the songs we worked on with him - and the gigs were a blast - but musically we were all headed in different directions. From here Duff is off to work on his own stuff so we wish him all the best."

All headed in different musical directions, and yet none of them on the right path.

Darkness at 3AM: John Pilger used to write for the Mirror, you know

I really hope MTV have paid a lot of money for this non-story marketing message to be slipped in as "story" by 3AM:

Mtv news presenter Laura Whitmore has become obsessed with the new MTV urban workout.

She's been busting a groove to various hip-hop classics at her local Virgin Active gym.

We'll pass, thanks...

Is that last line a desperate bid to try and pretend there's a journalist involved here somewhere?

It's almost as if Ringo is being erased from history

With Liverpool City Council happily bulldozing his first house, now the first club Ringo Starr played in has burned down.

(The Kingsway Club in Southport, had it not burned down, was due to be demolished anyway.)

Gordon in the morning: Triangle

Be warned: someone's sold Gordon a blurry, naked photo of Pete Doherty playing snooker.

For some reason, Smart slaps a triangle of snooker balls over Doherty's cock, which makes the running of the photo even more odd. You can't see Pete's penis, you can barely make out the face, and there's no real story stacking it up. It's just one really weak joke:

Thankfully there was no chalk lying around.

He might have applied it to the wrong cue.

Is there nothing so slight it won't go into the column, Gordon?

Pete Doherty naked. It's come to this.

Charlie Simpson has his sort-of integrity, and you can't buy it for a million pounds

God alone knows who would be offering Busted one million pounds to reunite, but Charlie Simpson has told them "no".

He wants to keep on with Fightstar, and he won't be distracted by a million pounds.

Why, I bet if he was even offered a million pounds for real, he'd still say no.

Sharkey tries charm offensive

Given that his attempt to beat ISPs and technology companies into giving money to musicians has been an abject failure, Feargal Sharkey has decided to try and win the cash by adopting a Big Society/"we're all in this together" approach. Thinq was there:

Sharkey, a campaigner against people copying music on the internet and the technology they use, said it had become apparent that technology and creativity were inseparable.

"It's now time for ISPs and tech companies to sit down together and possibly for the first time have a broad adult conversation. Our future is now totally dependent, totally entwined, totally symbiotic," he told an audience of industry, government and media at the Westminster Forum this morning.

Sharkey was on rousing form. The former pop star called dramatically for the mobilization of British music and technology producers: "By 2020. We. Want. To rival. The United States. As the largest. Source of repertoire. And artistry. In. The. World."

I suspect he might have been banging the table where those full stops are.

Is that true, though? Does a vaguely defined "we" really want to set its cape on scale rather than quality?

Is it even possible, given the sheer weight of numbers that the US offers? Wouldn't this "we" be better off creating high-end acts rather than churning out thousands of mass market vehicles?

And why would the technology companies share the aims of UK Music anyway? It doesn't matter much to Google if you're looking for an act born in Bangalore, Boston or Brighton.

Although Sharkey is abandoning his previous bellicose stance, he's trying to not make this look like a climbdown:

The music industry scored a controversial success in April when the last government passed the Digital Economy Act, which would sanction the removal of people's internet connections if they were suspected of sharing copyrighted music online.

This had helped restore the equilibrium between creativity and technology that had, said Sharkey, been out of kilter. It was but a single "stepping stone" toward the music industry's goal of having people "remunerated for their talent time, effort and ability".

Although the DEA has had no discernible impact on behaviour. Nobody seems to have been bothered by any of the terms of the Act.

Sharkey then goes on to patronise the technology industry:

Internet applications providers should think not about how many users they could get, but how sustainable were their business models.

You think, Feargal? (Interesting that size is the most important when selling music but not when selling applications, though.)

Perhaps Sharkey should have tried the 'working together' approach before beating technologists with a stick. Given nobody believed him when he claimed ISPs owed their profits to musicians' sweat, he's going to have to make a better case if he wants these former rogues to believe they need his self-appointed approval.

Not that Papa Roach take themselves too seriously, or anything

Jacoby Shaddix from Papa Roach has been furrowing his brown to emote out a clear idea of who he is:

He told website theaquarian.com: "The thing I finally realised in my search for the f***ing madman that's been chasing me. I just realised that it's myself.

"It's a hard realisation to take, that all of these people that you resented and all these things that you hate about the world is all a reflection of yourself. It's a little bit of a hard pill to swallow."

Jacoby Shaddix is thirty-four years old.

Tony Blair meets Jedward. Or is it the other way round?

Oh, bloody hell. Thank you Daily Mail for managing to make us feel a shard of sympathy for Tony Blair:

Tony Blair is conducting a whistle-stop tour of the country's radio and TV stations to promote his book, A Journey, and he doesn't seem to care with whom he shares the limelight.

The former PM's tour reached a breathtaking low on Friday when he appeared on Irish television alongside reality TV duo 'Jedwood'.

He was on the same edition of The Late Late Show as Jedward. It's not like he went on their programme or took part in a singsong with them.

There's more than enough inappropriate grinning to throw at Blair without having to pretend you don't understand the make-up of Ireland's main talk show. He dropped depleted uranium on children, which makes sharing a running order with Jedward somewhat small beer.

Even more oddly, despite the headline:

Is there nothing Tony Blair won't do as he tries to flog his book? The night ex-PM posed with Jedward

... most of the article actually talks about Daybreak and ends up churning through quotes about Adrian Chiles from Christine Bleakley. It's the like the article itself knew it was a bit a weak and tried to change the subject.

Gordon in the morning: Come on, Vogue

Seriously, Vogue? You've put Cheryl Cole on the cover this month? What's it going to be for November - "My man turned out to be a vampire - but I love him anyway"?

Still, the magazine's decision to swallow hard and go with sales instead of style has given The Sun's Lynsey Haywood the chance to 'write' a piece by copying out some stuff from a magazine. Cole tells Vogue how terrible it's all been:

CHERYL Cole spoke out over her divorce from love rat husband Ashley - and admitted: "I feel betrayed."

The X Factor judge said: "Yes, definitely I do, but I've got to take everything that's happened and learn from it. I accept that that's a chapter of my life that's finished.

"And I've just got to be grateful that I've got so many good things going on. I have. And there's no children, you know?"

Although Cole has ended the chapter, she seems to spend an awful lot of time going through some sort of comprehension exercise based on it.

It's curious that someone who apparently needed her divorce to be listed in a secret fashion in the court papers is happy to chat all about it in a glossy magazine. It makes it look like the courts were used as an access management tool rather than as, you know, courts.

Rockobit: Deva Pramada (Mike Edwards)

Mike Edwards, founder member of the Electric Light Orchestra, has died in an unusual accident. The van he was traveling was hit by a runaway round bale of hay.

The cellist was a member of ELO from their first live date in 1972, until he quit in 1975. It was at this time that he embraced Buddhism and changed his name to Deva Pramada.

Sadly, the man believed to be Edwards has yet to be formally identified - local police have used the internet to pull together an ID but are trying to trace a relative:

[Steve Walker of Devon And Cornwall Police said] "this was a tragic accident and we have now identified the victim as Michael Edwards, a founder member of ELO.

'We have used photographs and YouTube footage to identify him but we now need help contacting his family for formal identification.

'We don't believe he was ever married and we have identified an ex-girlfriend but she is currently abroad.'

He continued: 'We think he may have a brother called David in the Yorkshire area and we obviously need to contact him.

'Michael has no immediate family but we believe he may have taught some cello in Devon and would ask his students to contact us if they know of any relations."

Edwards' first experience on stage was playing a ragamuffin in a BBC version of Carmen while a child; he returned to staged musical events in his post-ELO career producing operas for Sadlers Wells and Covent Garden. In 1992, he released a double cassette as part of Tim Brophy & Deva Pramada.

Mike Edwards was 62.

Peter Godwin asks for your help

It's funny, what with labels only doing what they do for the good of the artists, that Peter Godwin is finding he's more or less having to beg Universal to re-release his back catalogue.

Godwin is hoping to persuade Universal through a Facebook campaign that there's a demand there. Really, though, Godwin should be allowed to demand his work back from Universal on the basis that they've not done anything with them, and he could. Restraint of train, surely, to be keeping music out of print and preventing the creator from earning with it?

Parachute Men weekend: Every Other Thursday

A surprisingly beautiful hymn to the rhythm imposed on life by the fortnightly giro cheque:



[Part of The Parachute Men weekend]

The deep thoughts of JLS: Oritsé

Today's News Of The World has a "diary" where the JLS boys share their diary of their amazing climb from runners-up on a talent show to being That Band Who Were Runners-Up On A Talent Show:

"The shoot was great. I fell in love with my video girl.

"While we were trying to get into the moment on set, a kiss happened. Then again. She was amazing, but nothing materialised."

Pssst... Ortise, if you check your spam box on your email, you'll find some advice that might be able to help you with that.

This week just gone

The most-read stories from Septembers past:

1. Robbie William's first love revealed? [2005]
2. Edith Bowman does good work for charity [2005]
3. Paul McCartney's publicist offers Heather Mills nude modeling job [2006]
4. RIAA turn out to not have any evidence for threats [2006]
5. AC/DC not interested in iTunes [2008]
6. Charlotte Church's ex's big reveal: a small bit of blow [2005]
7. Britney Spears at the VMAs: Cool recpetion [2007]
8. Thom Yorke snubs Ronan Keating [2008]
9. Download: Los Campesinos [2009]
10. RIP: Sabine Dunser [2006]

These were this week's more interesting releases:


Everything Everything - Man Alive

Download Man Alive



Rose Elinor Dougall - Without Why

Download Without Why



Philip Selway - Familial

Download By Some Miracle



Claudia Brucken - Love And A Million Other Things

Download Love



Thea Gilmore - Murphy's Heart

Download Murphy's Heart



Liv Kristine - Skintight

Download Skintight

Parachute Men weekend: If I Could Wear Your Jacket

This one even has proper old vinyl clicking at the start:


[Part of Parachute Men weekend]

Kanye West believes sorry is a dish best served ice cold

After nearly a year, Kanye West has sort-of apologised to Taylor Swift for behaving like a cock at the 2009 VMAs:

"I'm sorry, Taylor," he wrote. "We're both artists, and the media and managers are trying to get between us. She deserves the apology more than anyone. Thank you [Twitter co-founders] Biz Stone and Evan Williams for creating a platform where we can communicate directly."

Yes, that'd be why it had taken him the year to get round to saying sorry. Apparently, apart from Twitter, there's no way of having communicating directly with someone. If only the telephone, or email, or carrier pigeons had taken off, eh?

But this isn't really about Kanye feeling sorry - except, perhaps, for himself:

Kanye went on to say that the media vilified him. He alluded to his claim during a 2005 NBC telethon for Hurricane Katrina that "George Bush doesn't care about black people," as a point for which the media was looking to pay him back. He noted that in the VMA aftermath, the media played the race card and turned it into an angry black man versus innocent white girl issue.

"Even though the NBC telethon was widely praised y'all didn't think they was just gone let me get away with that did y'all???!!!" he questioned, rhetorically. "The media has successfully diminished the 'receptive' audience of... KANYE WEST. ...taking a 15 second blip the media have successfully painted the image of the 'ANGRY BLACK MAN.' The King Kong theory. With the help of strong will, a lack of empathy, a lil alcohol and extremely distasteful & bad timing ... I became George Bush over night."

With all due respect, Kanye, this is total pantwash. During the Katrina telethon, you said something needed to be said. It might have made others uncomfortable, but it doesn't make you wrong.

At the VMAs, on the other hand, you behaved like a boorish jock. It's not about race, although it is about gender. Whatever caused your little trot onto stage doesn't excuse it, and people call you out on it because you were wrong, not because you were black.

Yes, it can be argued you've played into a cultural stereotype by, erm, playing into a cultural stereotype. Do you think people should have looked away because of that? Are you saying you should be allowed to clamber onto the stage and honk away because to call you on it makes the complainant racist?

Frankly, trying to get a free pass on your drunken behaviour by waving the 'racism' card around makes you look an even bigger jerk than the original stage invasion did.

Perhaps there's a reason that your management try to stop you talking directly to people these days, Kanye.

Parachute Men weekend: Sometimes In Vain

So, onto homemade videos inspired by the then-current Chart Show approach to 'bugger, there's no video for number seven in the Indie Chart, what the hell shall we do?'



[Part of The Parachute Men weekend]

Gordon in the morning: At last, a good reason to buy a Katy Perry single

Because apparently, if Olly Murs beats Perry's current single to number one tomorrow, he's going to take his clothes off.

Gordon (or whoever is writing the column at the moment) is very, very excited by this:

And the big-talking Essex lad let me know last night that if he had to choose a fruit to cover his modesty it would be: "Without doubt a pineapple."

Glad he didn't say satsuma.

Why glad? And why, exactly, would you be asking him what sort of fruit he'd use to hide his cock in the first place?

Olly Murs in with a shout of a number one single. If ever there was a sign that the charts are without any value as a guide to the taste of the nation, that would be it.

Embed and breakfast man: The Parachute Men

A quick dip into some late 80s northern indie today. Fire Records' finest*, The Parachute Men:



As far as I can tell, this is the only moving video of them online - later on it's going to be stills and music. You've got to love that Carry On Disarming video from the NME, haven't you? After putting in about two years as 'the only thing Planet X had to show on its TV screens', it's now enjoying a healthy afterlife as 'the only online video presence of some great lost bands'.

So, the Parachute Men. Two Greggs, and drummer who also played keyboards; blonde hair and black leather jackets. They were - if you'll take a breath and follow me on this - the sort of band who would be put together to appear in a TV programme which needed an indie band, before their sort of band was considered to be an archetype.

And, perhaps surprisingly, that song up there, Leeds Station, turned up on the Chris Moyles show just last year. Albeit smuggled in by Steve Lamacq.

Buy
Earth Dogs And Eggshells

Background information
Because Midway Still Aren't Coming Back on the Parachute Men
Parachute Men on Last FM

More...
Some more Parachute Men stuff during the next few hours
Sometimes In Vain
If I Could Wear Your Jacket
Every Other Thursday

* - well, up there with Bark Psychosis and Pulp. And Spacemen 3. And... oh, one of Fire's finest.

Morrissey, I'm sure, will be ready to explain why this doesn't make him tiresomely racist

Yes, he's done it again:

[H]e reignites a simmering row about his views on race in an interview in Guardian Weekend magazine, in which he describes Chinese people as a "subspecies" because of their treatment of animals.

The context? He's talking to Simon Armitage for the Guardian weekend magazine, when he gets on to China. And animals:

"Did you see the thing on the news about their treatment of animals and animal welfare? Absolutely horrific. You can't help but feel that the Chinese are a subspecies."

Is it not possible to raise ill-treatment of animals without slagging off all the Chinese?

If past form is anything to go by, we'd expect Morrissey to have his people issue a statement claiming misquotation, followed by dark threats of legal action.

Which does remind us: whatever happened to the supposed lawsuit against the NME after they ran his last ill-considered "oh, it's not racism" dribbles about foreign people in the streets of London. He did, in a rather Bob Maxwell style, sue a third party, but the supposed action against the paper which "misquoted" him? Not a dickie bird.

One further curiosity: on that occasion, the journalist he accused of misrepresenting him was Tim Jonze. The same Tim Jonze who is currently music editor of... guardian.co.uk.

Small world, isn't it, Morrissey? Although obviously not as small as you'd like it to be.

Guns N Roses more fun as targets than musicians

"Here's the deal: One more bottle and we go home."

Axl Rose offered the deal. The Dublin audience took it up, and continued the bottle-hurling.

In the end, though, the band returned and played a set which didn't end until 1 am. Which is a bit ironic, since the original bottle-throwing was sparked off by the band turning up an hour late.

Embed and breakfast man: The Drums

A spot of officialage from The Drums, supporting Down By The Water:


[Buy: The Summertime ep]

Gordon in the morning: Scenes from the end of a marriage

Without much of a sense of shame, Richard White and Sean Hamilton (Gordon must be on holiday, then) claim an exclusive on, erm, a court list:

CHERYL COLE is due to divorce love rat hubby ASHLEY in the High Court today.

The couple's case - referred to only by their initials - tops a list of splits scheduled for this morning.

It appears the Coles asked to be listed by initials to "avoid publicity". That worked, then.

You might wonder that, given the marriage was all over the papers, and Mr Cole's errors of judgement were all over the papers, and the split was all over the papers, and the early stages of the divorce were all over the papers, and the decision of Mrs Cole to remain Mrs Cole was released to the papers, that now is perhaps a little too late to be trying to keep things quiet. Indeed, wouldn't you want the divorce bit to actually be public?

Still, it's nice that - as Gordon promised us - it's all being sorted out before the World Cup.

Bono's friends: Tony vouches for him

In Tony Blair's new book, The Journey Which Apparently Ends With Me Turning Into Ted Heath, there's this:

A passage on page 555 of 'A Journey', Blair writes that Bono "could have been a president or prime minister standing on his head. He had an absolutely natural gift for politicking, was great with people, very smart and an inspirational speaker ... motivated by an abundant desire to keep on improving, never really content or relaxed. I knew he would work with George [W. Bush] well, and with none of the prissy disdain of most of his ilk".

In other words, Bono was one of them. I don't think this counts as a revelation - nobody has really ever thought that Bono was one of us for years, right?

A gift for politicking. That would be on the money.

Blair also touches on Red Wedge, Spinner points out:

"Back in the late 1980s there was a group of musicians called Red Wedge, fronted by people like Paul Weller and Billy Bragg, who came out and campaigned for us. It was great. But I remember saying after one of their gigs ... 'We need to reach the people listening to Duran Duran and Madonna.'"

Really? When Red Wedge were active, Duran were in their Warren Cuccurullo wilderness. Surely the sort of people clinging doggedly to a cause that had long since lost its relevance was what Blair was against, not for?

Katy Perry feels so validated

Apparently Katy Perry feels she's matured since her last album.

You know, like a cheese does. Becomes just a little more ripe; you need to hold your nose a little more firmly before consuming.

She's told the AP that this new record is "really validating". In the sense of 'I'm not wearing any clothes at all for the sleeve this time round' is validating.

Perhaps she can explain what she means?

"It's really validating, but not in like a mean girl's kind of way feeling," she said. "I've always believed in myself and it's just wonderful that people can finally jump on the train and be a part of something really exciting."

Ah, it's not validating in a mean girl's kind of way of feeling. Of course it isn't. It also isn't a feeling that's a girl's mean way of kindly validating really.

What I've done is a little unfair; I've scrambled up the words Perry said and come up with something meaningless.

She's included a song on this record which is about a man taking drugs:

"It was difficult to write it because it's not where I am now, but it was a feeling that I had stored away a long time ago, in my emotional filing cabinet."

Emotional filing cabinets are quite tricky things; just when you really need to dig out the details on the Paxton account for a meeting, it suddenly bursts into tears because its father never loved it. Or, worse, it reorganises all your files in order of who needs a hug the most. Really difficult to keep track with one of those, but slightly less physically damaging than a hysterical Rolodex.

But why would Perry write a song about a man doing drugs instead of another one about kissing boys or sometimes kissing girls? It's range, you understand:

"Sure, I wanted to make a record with more tempo, but I didn't want that to mean that I had to write about just DJs and dancing and getting drunk… I need a soundtrack for all the rest of my emotions, and that's what I really wanted to provide with this."

A soundtrack for all the non-getting drunk emotions Katy Perry might experience. I think we all need an album like that, don't we?

Perry doesn't list what her 'not getting drunk' emotions consist of, but I'm reliably informed they are mostly 'grimly deciding to take top off for photos', 'pretending to be a little bit bisexual again' and 'look, look, there's a camera, did it see me?'

Any last words, Katy?

"This record is going to kind of solidify the fact that I have something different to offer, a different perspective."

Yes. Some songs about getting drunk and a record about a man taking drugs. We have never had their like before.

I think I feel a little more validated, too.

Radiohead provide soundtrack for fan-made movie

Hello, large labels, management companies and record labels spokespeople! Can we just take as read your grumpy response to the following story will be the erroneous 'they can only afford to do that because of the investment the existing music industry put in the band'? Thank you.

Bunch of fans went to see Radiohead at Prague with handheld digital movie cameras; they got together afterwards and made it into a crowd-sourced live DVD. Radiohead found out, and rather than send a grumpy legal complaint, chipped in with the desk recordings for free.

This is what Nude looks and sounds like:



The whole thing can be downloaded from the Prague fan site.

The RIAA are offering to donate an explanation of why this can't and musn't work.

It's not all about Apple

Yesterday's launch of 'oh, so it's a bit like Last FM' Apple's Ping service and rather lovely-looking new iPods might have overshadowed somewhat - yes - another supposed iTunes killer from Sony.

It's not, of course. It has a silly name - Qriocity - and is more about keeping the Playstation on a level with other games devices:

Fujio Nishida, head of Sony's Networked Products & Services Group, said users would be able to transfer the music they download across any platform including smart phones.

He said: "We are excited to offer our customers high-quality, cloud-based entertainment experiences across many of Sonys network-enabled devices."

The flexibility - at least within the brand - is to be welcomed, but it sounds much more about making it easy for Sony to sell video to their existing customers than an actual bid to topple iTunes.

Gordon in the morning: Watch out, Gordon

I suspect Mr Smart must be on holiday right now. He might find this disturbing:

Yes, that's one of his deputies, Sean Hamilton, appearing in the 'awkward-shot-with-celeb' photo. Supposedly Usain Bolt is "editing" Bizarre today, although it doesn't look like he's done anything other than give a brief interview. I can't really believe that Bolt had much to do with a story about Danny Dyer making rubbish films or something about Amy Winehouse's boyfriend.

ContactMusic know what they're doing here

In a story about N-Dubz launching a brand of cheap clothes with their logo on:

The male members of the band - Fazer and Dappy - will release t-shirts, trousers and accessories through their line, Nanawear, while Tulisa will work on a womenswear label called TFB.

The male members of the band? Yes, that would be about right.

Gordon in the morning: Unlikely uses of the word unlikely

While you have to admire Mark Ronson's brave attempt to recast being in a jazz choir as a "Glee-like singing group", did Gordon really think when writing this bit?

Mark is an unlikely fan of the camp telly hit

First, it's not camp. More importantly: it's one of the most popular television programmes of these times. Why would a musician be an "unlikely" fan of something everyone seems to like?