MIDEM 2009: If you can remember the internet, you hadn't logged on

Donovan has told MIDEM that the internet is the new 1960s. He has attempted to explain what he might mean:

"The dream of the '60s, of me and John Lennon and the others, was: How do we speak to everybody on the planet at the same time?

"The first answer was via satellite, but that didn't connect to everyone. Then John would say, 'How about telepathy?'

"Then we forgot about it until now we realize that the Internet fulfills that dream of communicating with everyone. I'm not afraid of the Internet because it's that the dream we had. The Internet is the new '60s as far as I'm concerned."

The use of internet rather than telepathy makes it easier, but the RIAA have already employed a lobbyist to encourage Congress to shape laws covering intellectual property rights in case people start thinking the new Kid Rock single at each other.

Yogiobit: Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

The death has been announced of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, whose time spent with the Beatles was intended to turn the world onto the benefits of his Transcendental Meditation spirituality money-spinner but wound up inspiring Lennon's Sexy Sadie and one of the stock Beatles-comedy-sketches. Most recently, the Beatles-at-feet-of-Yogi comedy staple was used by the Walk Hard.

To his followers, he was visionary. He did cheer up one of the Thatcher-era general elections by fielding candidates in enough seats to get the only Party Election Broadcasts to feature potential MPs hovering above the floor. Admittedly, closer inspection of 'yogic flying' suggested it owed more to Derbyshire's method of 'swimming' by hopping across the pool floor and hoping nobody noticed. His detractors, however, merely counted his money and wondered who was having the last laugh.

His work will continue, in part through the plans of Donovan and David Lynch to build a TM university in Scotland which will somehow defeat Scotland's enemies.

Get a degree in Mellow Yellowing

It's one thing for Donovan to decide to launch an "international meditation university". But quite another to decide to call it The Invincible Donovan University, which places the idea firmly on the ridicule-agenda.

Invincible Donovan seems to be aware this might leave him open to being scoffed at by small children in the street:

"I know it sounds like an airy-fairy hippie dream to go on about '60s peace and love. But the world is ready for this now, it is clear this is the time."

So... the world is now ready for the 1960s. Which means that we'll be just about in a position to accept the Clash by sometime in the early 2020s.

Invincible Donovan is basing his idea on the teachings of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi:

"The Maharishi told me during that 1968 visit that I should build a university in Edinburgh. I went to my room and drew a beautiful dome-shaped place of learning," he said Friday.

"I didn't know what to do because I couldn't do this on my own. But then I met David Lynch, who told me about the positive effects of TM in education. Although it's taken me 35 years, I will do what the Maharishi told me to do."

Oh, yes. David Lynch. For some reason, Lynch doesn't get above-the-line billing for the university, but he does stress how it's going to be good news for the Scottish Parliament:

"For a country the size of Scotland it would take only 250 students meditating to protect Scotland from its enemies and to bring peace, to stop violence and drug abuse," Lynch said. "That is just a byproduct of the students meditating together."

It's unclear if English border towns, like Berwick, will also benefit from the overspill of meditation, or if they're going to have to wait for Martin Scorsese and Tom Jones to open an operation south of Hadrian's Wall.