Tom Jones goes vinyl only

This is lovely: Tom Jones has created a limited-edition, coloured-vinyl version of his Jack White collaboration Evil, and is only selling it through Spillers.

Spillers being the shop in Cardiff where he bought records when he was a tiny Tom.

Michael Jackson tribute turning into poorly-executed shambles

When they said they were going to pay tribute to Michael Jackson, who knew they were going to focus on the 'quite often didn't turn up and when he did it was disappointing' aspects of his career.

Parts of the plan have been dropping off like arms falling from a Thriller Zombie. We've had Kiss quit after they remembered how they'd slagged Jackson off.

Yesterday, the Black Eyed Peas announced they won't be in Wales this weekend:

"Due to unavoidable circumstances, the Black Eyed Peas will be unable to perform at this Saturday's Michael Forever event," said Chris Hunt, head of Global Live Events which is staging the concert.

Hey - "unavoidable circumstances" is no way a sign that they couldn't even be arsed to come up with an excuse.

Today, domestically violent Chris Brown said he wouldn't be coming, either, as he couldn't get a visa. But just as the organisers of Michael Forever were absorbing this good news came another problem: the company which had promised to run the gig as a pay-per-view event through Facebook has said it won't be:

Due to legal challenges brought by the music labels that own the rights to Michael Jackson’s lyrics, we have been notified by concert promoters Global Live Events and Ridgeline Entertainment that the live Facebook broadcast of the Michael Forever tribute concert has been cancelled. As the technology provider behind the live Facebook broadcast, Milyoni will fully refund all customers who pre-purchased access to the concert using Facebook Credits or PayPal.

“While social media presents a new opportunity for artists and concert promoters to reach global audiences, it is still a new and disruptive frontier ripe with challenges. Milyoni will continue to work closely with our music and entertainment partners to pursue this new channel of distribution, beneficial to both artists and fans worldwide.”

That's literally several people being mildly disappointed.

Gennaro Castaldo Watch: Wales and the West

You know how the PRS insists that everything it does is for the benefit of the its members? Somehow, they've stretched the definition of this to producing a pointless survey:

The Performing Rights Society used its 65,000-strong database to locate the birthplaces of its membership and work out Britain’s most musical cities.

Wales Online is quite excited at Cardiff coming, erm, second:

CARDIFF has beaten the birthplace of The Beatles and the home of Oasis to become the UK’s second “most musical city”.

The birthplace of Dame Shirley Bassey was named ahead of Liverpool and Manchester but lost out on the top spot to Bristol, home of Massive Attack.

The flawed nature of this survey is probably shown by how excited the Cardiff team are at coming higher than Manchester or Liverpool, which more or less concedes that, when thinking of musical cities, it's not Bristol that springs to mind first.

Still, with Cardiff celebrating, who to turn to but town-centrist expert Gennaro Castaldo, of the HMV people. Can he explain the musicaliscature of Carddif?

HMV pop guru Gennaro Castaldo said Cardiff’s place in the music world should be celebrated.

He said: “People think of Liverpool and Manchester as being the musical cities, and Cardiff is often forgotten. They forget the amazing contributions of Tom Jones and Shirley Bassey, the male voice choirs, when somewhere like Liverpool is living off the history of one type of music and hasn’t produced any outstanding musicians since then.”

Now, I might sometimes be critical of Liverpool for living off the Beatles myth, but a man who is lauded as a pop guru casually writing off the Bunnymen, Wylie, Cope, OMD, Frankie Goes To Hollywood and the people who coagulated around Cream seems a little intemperate.

Hats off the Wales Online, by the way, for having a report which contradicts itself but doesn't seem in the least bothered:

Radio One DJ Bethan Elfyn said the region’s music scene centred on the city.

“It’s so exciting at the moment with loads of pubs and clubs putting on gigs,” said the Cardiff-born DJ.

“In the city there are four or five venues showcasing live music every night, all the way up to the Coal Exchange, and even the Millennium Stadium. The best thing is we have so many different types of music on offer.”
[...]
Carol White, a tutor at Grassroots City Centre Youth Project, which gives young bands and performers a chance to record and rehearse without spending a fortune, said she was not surprised at Cardiff’s position in the table.

But she said musicians were not given the opportunity to showcase their talents due to the closing down of many of the city’s venues.

She said: “Compared to Bristol, which has loads of great small venues that up-and-coming bands can play at, Cardiff has hardly any.

“We’ve already lost the Point, the Globe has been trying to soundproof so it’s not closed.

“Why can’t the local authorities help them out so we’ve got plenty of venues? The bands just don’t get any support.”

A city simultaneously packed with loads and loads of great venues, busy night after night, and suffering from a terrible shortage of venues. I'd imagine one of those would have to be right.

Manics mate makes a holy show of himself

Remember Patrick Jones, brother of Nicky Wire and former Manics collaborator? He was worried you wouldn't, as it turns out, so has taken to trying to promote his new book Darkness is Where the Stars Are by sending copies to extremist Christian, Right-Wing and Muslim groups with a nudge that, ooh, he'd love to know what they thought of the poems that attack their deep-rooted beliefs.

Some think he was hoping to provide a common enemy that would see the likes of Combat 18, strident Muslims and Christian Voice uniting in the face of their common enemy, realising they have more in common than that which divides them, kissing each other and then rushing off to have a gay wedding in any place where they've not campaigned it out of existence.

Others think that Jones might have been working with a Far East betting syndicate, creating a market in bets on which bunch would react first. This seems unlikely, though: Combat 18 would have had to have found someone to read them to them which would have slowed down their riposte.

If it was some sort of gamble, those who got the tickets with Christian Voice on have won. Even they, though, seemed to spot they were being played:

Stephen Green, of Christian Voice, said he believed Mr Jones had deliberately "whipped up" feelings about the book.

"We got this stuff on e-mail from Patrick Jones and another e-mail from someone else telling us about his book signing," he said.

"His e-mails contained some of his prose and there's absolutely no doubt in my mind that he wanted to cause a frenzy."

It's perhaps not surprising that Christian Voice - an organisation whose understanding of the last couple of thousand years of culture is that it's some sort unspoken threat to their families - can't tell the difference between 'prose' and 'poetry in pretty much the same way they can't tell the difference between 'a different opinion' and 'an insult to their beliefs'.

However, even though they spotted that Jones was just trying to whip up some controversy to help stretch the promotional budget for his book, they just couldn't help themselves:

[A] campaign by activists Christian Voice [...] called the book "obscene and blasphemous".

It called on the chain to remove copies from stores, which Waterstone's refused to do.

However, Waterstones did cancel the planned launch event for the poems. Jones was delighted. Sorry, did I say delighted? No, no. Outraged:

He insisted he did not want to create any protests, but rather to spark a debate about the issues in his poems, which include religion and domestic violence against men.

"I sent a few poems to many different organisations on 2 November and I said 'Please find a few poems. I would appreciate your feedback'," he said.

"I was hoping that maybe they would come out and have a debate. That's within my rights to do that.

"Even if they had come out to protest, that doesn't mean Waterstone's should give up [on the launch]. That's freedom of expression.

"My book didn't set out to be provocative at all. I had support from people when I went to a book reading in Cwmaman last night. I'm really proud of my book."

You'll note that Jones, for a poet, is slightly loose with his language. Waterstones are not removing the right to freedom of expression from the perpetually-wounded groups; all it is choosing to do is not provide a focus for a firestorm which Jones has provoked.

The really strange this is: Jones claims all he was trying to do was provoke a debate - not, in itself, a bad thing. And yet at first, he denied that he'd sent the emails out. Maybe he'd forgotten about this debate he was desperate to get going.

First Night: Fifty year-old woman relies on her spectacles

Saturday night saw Madonna kick off her Suck Me Hard tour in the Millennium Centre at Cardiff. So, was it worth kicking a bunch of kids' charity football tournament out for?

The reviews are in.

The South Wales Echo found, perhaps unsurprisingly, that people prepared to blow the cash for the tickets were delighted, and thrilled:

Die-hard fans said they enjoyed watching her prowl around in her stylish outfits and vowed to continue to buy Madonna’s records.

Well, yes - that would be what would mark out a die-hard fan from a fair-weather one, presumably.

Sarah Pearson, 27, of Aberystwyth, said: “It was fantastic. I danced the whole way through it. I paid £250 to get into the golden circle without having to queue, but it was well worth it.”

God, yes... a couple of hundred quid is so worth it to avoid having to stand up for a little while. In a queue.

But some people were worried they didn't get value for money:

Susan Harvey, 49, of Whitchurch, Cardiff, said: “I expected her to say thank you to us, considering we came along for the opening night. Her singing was good, but there was no interaction.

“She didn’t do any of the traditional stuff that everyone loves her for. For £85 a ticket, I was really disappointed.”

Since the show considered a fair amount of showing off, and a bit of celeb-mate name-dropping, the Echo concludes that this section of the audience is upset that there was no ho-hum soft-porny bits.

But it's not Madonna's fault if it was a bit flat. It's us. We've let her down:

Una Magill, 30, from Belfast, said: “It just wasn’t as good as her last tour. I think the audience was a bit quiet. There was no drive from the crowd.”

Bad audience. How dare you not make Madonna's eighty-five quid show a success.

While she might have decided to dispense with diamond-encrusted dildoes, Madge did attempt to whip up a bit of a lather with some sixth form politics. Of course, the right wing media have bounced all over it, because it was frankly lame. Right Pundits were the first:

Well, during the concert she used an interlude to knock people over the head with not-so-subtle images to demonize McCain and sanctify Obama. Surely it wasn’t intended to be subliminal, but it was about a subtle as a train wreck.

During an interlude images of fire and brimstone, destruction and … gasp …. global warming, were flashed on a screen. Those images were followed by images of Adolph Hitler, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe and … you guessed it …. John McCain.

Later, the same screen was used to project images of peace, love, doves and rainbows. There were images of Beatle John Lennon, Al Gore, Mahatma Gandhi and … you guessed it … Barack Obama.

It's almost as if Madge is a Republican. Does she really think this sort of thing is a help to the liberal movement? It gives the right an open goal to kick for, and makes anyone on the centre-left look like they have no sense of perspective.

Of course, she wanted a reaction. And a reaction she has got. Tucker Bounds, McCain's press spokesvoice, pops up in the New York Daily News:

In a statement, Tucker Bounds, McCain's spokesman, slammed Madonna and labeled Obama as a kindred celebrity.

"The comparisons are outrageous, unacceptable and crudely divisive all at the same time," he said. "It clearly shows that when it comes to supporting Barack Obama, his fellow worldwide celebrities refuse to consider any smear or attack off-limits."

And he does have a point.

Back with the performance, and Bloomberg's Mark Beech was taken:

And forget about an encore. When Madonna was finished, bright lights came on saying ``Game Over.'' She meant it.

It's that queenly attitude, and arrogance, that help explain why she is the world's most successful female artist with 200 million record sales and counting. Madonna kept her talent bubbling through the two-hour gig.

Does arrogance really make her popular? Really?

Unlike the South Wales Echo, for whom the diehard fans were the ones delighted, Bloomberg reckons the die hards were the disgruntled:

Many Madonna fans left the Millennium Stadium in ecstasy. Her tours are all different, with new songs and fresh ideas. Only a few diehard fans were muttering about the sacrilege of reworking old tracks. (Heck, they are Madonna's creations: she can do what she likes with them. And she's known for sacrilege.)

For Showbiz Spy, Guy Rithcie "explains" Britney's cameo:

MADONNA's husband GUY RITCHIE has explained how BRITNEY SPEARS came to make a cameo appearance in his wife's new stage show - it was based on a real-life incident.
[...]
the concert included a special video appearance from Spears, who is seen dancing in an elevator.

And Ritchie admits that Spears' role in the show was created after Madonna saw a video of a similar incident.

He says, "Britney in the lift is based on real footage the missus saw of someone stuck in a lift for 48 hours. The dancing is inspired by what happened inside."

Well, that Madonna had basically copied an idea from the viral that was attached to that New Yorker article about the bloke trapped in a lift is hardly news - BoyCulture spotted it straight away - but that doesn't actually explain what Britney was doing in the video, does it?

The FT's Ludovic Hunter-Tilney was less-than-impressed:

The sense of incoherence reached deep into the production. High-tech visuals brought absent collaborators such as Kanye West and Justin Timberlake to life on a succession of screens, yet the technological wizardry failed to gel with the live action. "Devil Wouldn't Recognise You", a tired ballad from Hard Candy , found Madonna in gloomy gothic robes performing within a circular structure on which vast images of raindrops were projected. The devil of the song's title would have struggled to recognise her amid the murk.

Dance routines were subdued, and too many songs found Madonna indulging her recent but rudimentary enthusiasm for playing electric guitar, which had the unhappy effect of leaving her static as she concentrated on some elementary chord change. "Borderline", from her debut album in 1983, was transformed into kindergarten stadium rock. "Ray of Light" sparkled, but the lack of movement as Madonna plucked away leached the song of vigour.

The FT's final verdict?

The show's calculated nature was revealed by her unwillingness to go off script: her first cry to the crowd consisted of the unpromising request, "Are you with me Cardiff? Have you had enough?" towards the end of the show.

Helen Pidd, who went for The Guardian, offers four stars but warns Maddy to drop the guitar hero stance:

At first, it's a good gag seeing the first lady of pop inexpertly brandishing an axe. Her Grade One chords work a treat on a grungey version of Borderline. But as the set wears on, and she plays her way through some of her greatest pop songs - even Ray of Light - you long for Mark E Smith to come on and unplug her amp.

In The Observer, Amelia Hill met some more annoyed fans:

Lynne, wearing her best silky cowboy shirt and pink, flashing angel wings, is outraged. 'It's bollocks, that's what it is,' she said. 'One and a half hours late and she still hasn't bothered to come on stage? It's disrespectful. I've driven down two hours from Birmingham. This just isn't right.'

Madonna might do well to remember that - however in charge she likes to feel - at the end of the night, her tours are underwritten by the people picking up the tickets. Hill reports that by nine o'clock, the auditorium was starting to ripple with boos.

And DandyWalker was getting annoyed:

We waited, and waited and waited. Where the hell was that bitch???!!!!

The crowd started to get tetchy, 3 hours had passed of just starring at an empty stage. No support act to ease the wait, nothing. Just other peoples body odour and, and baring in mind the audience was mostly men who would hold hands, over powering aftershave.

Eventually, she puts in an appearance:

Suddenly it was as though the last three hours was merely a limbo stage. It's almost like she wanted to completely numb our senses to make sure we paid full attention. The lights went down and came up and revealed upon her throne there she was. The crowd were immediately won over, she had us where she wanted us.

Of course! It wasn't a fantastically rude failure to appear ontime, or try and keep the crowd entertained while waiting. It was all part of the show. Being bored to tears was part of the experience - how clever Madonna is.

So the audience forgave her. Being a Madonna fan, you learn to forgive. Lose yourself in the details, forgive, believe. Like MadonnaTribe:

There is a main set of screens at the main stage - which move and change shape and layout and are presented in the shape of a cube at the beginning of the show - and a double layer of semi-transparent cylinder-shaped screens above the satellite stage.

Then, there's a whole lot of smaller platforms, stage and ramps, and even conveyor belts, which disappear completely in the stage layout but pop out when the time is right. The catwalks is shaped as a ramp at the very beginning, then is transformed into a flat runway with steps coming down from the main stage, and then again in a conveyour belt. There's a platform moving from left to right (and the other way round), smaller platforms coming out around the satellite stage, this stage itself rises up, lowers down, and generally speaking there's a diffuse use of props and other smaller elements that Madonna had not used possibly since Drowned World Tour.

The stage goes up, and then lowers down. At least Madonna isn't setting out to disprove that what goes up must come down, then. Maybe that's for the next tour?

Madonnalicious, meanwhile, denies that the booing even happened in the first place. Sort-of:

The crowd booing because she was late on - NOT TRUE. The crowd did boo and then cheer and then boo but this was down to a rather disappointing, half hearted attempt at a mexican wave by the crowd. They booed when the crowd just didn't bother participating! Not because M was late on stage.

So the audience was booing itself, then. If this level of re-education keeps up, she won't even need to bother showing up for the next tour. Just get someone - perhaps in crotchless panties and stripper boots - to go on stage after five hours and tell them that Madonna has said they've had a great time. The audience will happily fall into line.

[You might also like: First Night of the 2006 tour]

Madonna kicks out the kids

Cardiff's Millennium Stadium was funded with a large slew of public cash, raised from the National Lottery, and so is a public resource rather than a private concern. One of the ways the place has paid a small sliver of the debt it owes to the nation has been by hosting a charity football event for the Neighbourhood Watch Sports Trust for the last few years - an event organised to give disadvantaged kids the chance to play a premier sporting venue.

Not this year, though. Although they'd been told the event would happen as normal, and the charity had spent three thousand pounds organising the event, suddenly, they were told "no".

The reason? Madonna is playing the stadium on the 23rd August and has decided she needs to annex it for three weeks beforehand.

Millennium Stadium manager Gerry Toms said: “When we set the dates, which we do quite early, we do say that if a commercial event comes in then we may have to push you out, so to speak. They agree to that when they sign up.

“In fairness to this group they have been here for several years, but this year we are contracted to Madonna, and explained ‘we are awfully sorry, we cannot do it’.

“I said, ‘What do you expect us to do? To tell Madonna not to bring the show in because you’ve got a sports day?’.”

The slightly sneering way Toms says "sports day" is discouraging; and that he clearly feels that a commercial gig by Madonna is so obviously more important than a charity, community event suggests that Toms might not be the best custodian for a stadium which wouldn't exist if it hadn't been for the generosity of the public purse in the first place.

That the Trust was only told twenty-two days before their match is also a little surprising, and crushing: at least with some warning, they might have been able to find a venue which was a little less obsessed with fawning over twilight celebrities.

REM head indoors

Blame it, if you like, on the rift that runs through the city, but REM have been forced to relocate their Cardiff gig from the Millennium Stadium:

Bob Gold, the band's European manager, told the BBC sales had not met expectations and it was decided it was better for the band and the audience to move into "a smaller, more intimate venue".

That 'more intimate' venue is Cardiff International Arena, so it's not like you're going to be at risk from Stipe knocking your pint over if he gets a bit jumpy.

Gennaro Castaldo watch: Football crazy

After all the excitement of having opinions on Grand Theft Auto and violence and kids with guns and, ooh, everything, it's down to earth with a bump for HMV voice-holder Gennaro Castaldo, who's reduced to trying to find something interesting to say about the Cardiff City FA Cup single. He doesn't quite rise to the occasion:

Gennaro Castaldo, spokesman for HMV, said if the same number of people who turned up for FA Cup semi-final bought the single, it would guarantee it a number one spot.

“It’s going to be very interesting when the hard copy sales take effect from Monday,” he said.

“Pre-sales orders have been in the thousands and there’s a very good chance of it making the top five.”

"Hard copy sales"? Is that what they're calling physical sales these days? Has Gennaro decided that "physical sales" might be too meaningless a term for the average man in the street and so has decided to go with the even more meaningless "hard copy sales" instead of, say, "CDs"?

And, while Gennaro is correct, that if all 82752 who turned up for the semi final bought a copy it would cakewalk to number one, did anyone mention to him that football matches generally have attendees who support either of the teams playing? Unless frustrated Barnsley fans intend to buy the record to smash it to smithereens, or maybe melt the hard copy sale to make something a little softer, the chances of selling one to everyone who went to Wembley seems somewhat unlikely.

Venuewatch: The Point goes to court

One of the UK's premier circuit venues, The Point in Cardiff, is having to go to court to fight a 'keep the noise down' notice that had been issued after neighbours complained.

Of course, when the Point opened, there were no neighbours, but now part of Cardiff's share of the oversupply of posh flats have appeared round the corner. You have to wonder why the venue is being forced to bow to the will of people who moved into flats by a nightclub and then realised it could be noisy. It's precisely the urban equivalent of those idiots who move to the country and complain about the tractors.

Robbie Williams is not that different from a giant space manatee slowly being cut up for food

At long last, America has finally found a use for Robbie Williams.

Unfortunately, it's just as a way of locating Torchwood in relation to the rest of the world for readers of Entertainment Weekly:

And apparently in the U.K., it is inherently amusing to locate Torchwood HQ and the time-space rift that sets loose so many alien subplots in the bleak-looking town of Cardiff, Wales; I gather this is comparable to, say, locating Lost in a Paramus, N.J., park. As with P.G. Wodehouse novels and Robbie Williams songs, you have to be either British or adolescent to commit to this stuff; for the rest of us, it's a head-scratching lark.

Except, of course, for Williams songs you have to be both British and adolescent.

[Thanks to Gibbo for the link]

... but can we at least pretend we're surprised when it happens?

The seemingly inevitable Led Zep tour is starting to take on an unstoppable inevitability, with the Millennium Stadium coyly trying to catch Harvey Goldsmith's eye:

"Initially Harvey said they were only going to do a one-off gig, but now they are considering a tour," [Roger] Lewis explained.

"We [the Millennium Stadium] are the only stadium in Britain with a retractable roof and we can guarantee a perfect event for 70,000 people. There's nowhere else in the country that can do that."

That does, of course, assume that your sole definition of a "perfect event" is one where you don't get rained on. And not, say, "not being crammed in with 69,999 other people having to watch pinpricks in the distance" as your key criterion.