Bunnymen against Kenickie

I yield to nobody in my admiration for Ian McCulloch - god alive, I even bought the Electrafixion album - but if he comes round here having a pop at Lauren Laverne, there's going to be trouble:

Do you like the Culture Show? "It's about time they had us on it. The Bunnymen are culture. Can they not see it? But where the fuck does that Lauren Laverne get off? Where does she get off presenting a programme about 'culture' when she was in that fucking abysmal band Kenickie! And there is another Northern imbecile too ... can't remember her name but she's starting to resemble a pterodactyl."

Oh, Ian, oh, Ian, oh Ian.

Mac is also a bit annoyed about Melvyn Bragg, too:

"Don't give a damn. I hate that Melvyn Bragg! What a divvy. He's just one of those Northern imbeciles, isn't he? Did you see that South Bank Show about Morrissey? It was just rubbish. And when he referred to the Velvet Underground as the Velvets. Fuck off, they're called the Velvet Underground not the Velvets, how dare he! And besides, they never had the Bunnymen on the South Bank Show."

Yes, you should never refer to a band by a popularly-used nickname rather than the full title you'd find on the record sleeve. You'd never get one of, erm, The Bunnymen making such a mistake.

Ronson hooks up with Mac The Mouth

Mark Ronson's grim determination to work with everyone, ever, takes him to Liverpool tomorrow, where - as part of the Rod Da Bank curated Bandstand event at the old L2 building - he'll hook up with Ian McCulloch.

McCulloch has trotted out some words for the press release:

“I am really looking forward to performing with Mark Ronson - I love the way he works, and he seems a cool dude. It's a pity, with a name like that, we're not doing a cover of ‘Light My Fire’.”

We spent twenty seconds going "eh?" before the enormity of the pun dawned on us. Like the lighter company. Ouch.

Ian McCulloch undersells

Ian Mac is busily writing his autobiography. Well, we say "writing"; he's signing a deal and talking it up, anyway:

"When I had all my initial interviews with publishers Faber + Faber, Transworld and Penguin, I told them this is going to be the best book ever, better than the Bible and not as high-falootin' and with less apostrophes. "(But) by the last meeting, they were still asking me what it was all about. I said I didn't know yet."

We know rock stars are somewhat prone to excess, but how far gone would you have to be to not know what the story of your life is going to be about?

What are you trying to say?

We're sure the Daily Record's Razz column doesn't actually mean what it seems to be implying here... does it?:

KASABIAN had extra security at the venue and the band stayed in their dressing room before playing.

Organisers even took their name off the door to confuse over-enthusiastic groupies.

But frontman Tom Meighan was spotted chatting to Echo and the Bunnymen's Ian McCulloch.

That "but" seems to suggest that Mac was an over-enthusiastic groupie, doesn't it?

We love the idea that Kasabian fans are so easily confused not having a big sign saying "Kasabian in here" is enough to throw them off the scent, mind.

What the pop papers say: Part one

"I think she did a pretty good job. She researched it well" admits Louis Walsh, talking about Kathy Foley's book on his life. So, does this mean that the story lifted from it for the current Private Eye - that, during a bout of pout from the Westlife boys, he screamed "I'll show you your fucking fans", marching them out to a carpark and showing them the boot of his partner's car, full of copies of their CDs - is true, and that Westlife's bemusing run of number ones has been helped by Louis' enthusiastic purchase of their stuff?...

Moby pops up in Q's Cash For Questions segment - asked who the most unlikely people to try and licence one of his tracks are, he says "apparently the pro-fox hunting lobby tried... I don't think they would have been so keen to do that if they'd known I was an animal rights activist and a vegan." Really? Only that car manufacturer didn't mind that you were meant to be a serious environmentalist, did they? There's claims on Groupie Central that the little bald fella is "sexually transmitted disease on legs", which Moby reckons is down to a friend he'd fallen out with - "I still haven't figured out why he was so angry." Maybe you gave him the clap? Best of all, though, Moby - a man who posted a notice on his website denying he was in any way a pervert because he'd been talking on TV about porn the night before - preambled that when Badly Drawn Boy had been interviewed by Q "Damon Gough took himself so seriously, I was stunned..."

Craig Nicholls believes England can win the Ashes. Thats okay, Craig, there's some English cricketers who believe that The Vines will have a number one single...

Q has some exclusive pages from Kurt Cobain's journals. Is there anywhere that doesn't? Even Country Life has got a spread (two pages of him doodling a woman with a perm while on the telephone, a letter to the milkman asking for "three strawberry yoghurts and a pint of gold top" - never sent, we can only speculate why and a fourteen page review of a Mudhoney album)...

David Quantick and Lemmy team up to investigate how rock and roll Busted are. This is a little bit like sending Benjamin Franklin and Ernie Wise to examine the intellectual rigour of Piers Morgan's Daily Mirror, but those are the days we're living in. Busted offer their credentials - they've thrown a TV out a window. Frankly, these days that's not rock and roll at all - it's somewhat music hall. Back in the 60's, TVs represented hugely expensive items and the pinacle of technological achievement, and destroying one was quite a statement to make. In 2002, it's the equivalent of Led Zep having screwed up a copy of Titbits, or perhaps having pencilled moustaches on the pictures in the West Sussex Gazette...

It takes two thirds of a page to explain how the Q reviews "work", you know, which suggests the readership who they hadn't made up ("overstated") can't be the sharpest, although extra points for comparing Robbie William's Escapology to George Michael's Listen Without Prejudice - Volume 1. So, duff with pretentions; the album that people buy and shudder 'he's had his chance', then...

It's the end of the year, and so the first Best Albums of 2002 has appeared. Amongst q's choices are Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Idlewild, Electric Soft Parade and Pete Yorn...

Plus, it's poll time. Ian McCulloch pops up to claim a Long Time Dead Award - "I'd love to meet myself" - and Dave Gahan collects something similar for Depeche Mode, offering "we really need people like Casey Spooner in the music business" - proof, if it be needed, that heroin really does fuck you up beyond repair. Best act are Radiohead ('act' is always a funny term, suggesting they've gone head to head with Lenny Henry and Archie's Educated Chickens) and Best Album is, predictably, A Rush of Blood To The Head. Coldplay's Chris Martin talks porn - "I don't like pornography. It's not a moral objection but I don't... it's the blokes. I don't like the idea of watching men having sex." Chris Martin shies away from the paranoid bedwetting virgin tag, but he's a grown man who's never heard of Lesbian Spank Inferno...

Pink wins a prize for best video. For Get The Party Started. Which is giving the right person the wrong award, and then giving it for the wrong song anyway. "I'm glad I'm your favourite queer" she says, by video link "- we can't think what else Q stands for." I now don't feel so bad I never worked out it was a pun on Cue, which they didn't want to use in case people thought it was a snooker magazine...

PInk is also on the front of The Face. And all over the insides. Now, this is, of course, good, because it means there's lots of Pink. But it's also a bit of a pity - The Face should have been the herald of New Pink, running the "it's not just another R&B singer" stuff at least last spring, rather than clattering to catch up in the winter. Wanna know why we love her? Because when she first signed, she burned through her advance, and you know what she did? She got a job in a petrol station. LA Reid's son saw her, told his dad, and his dad went down and bawled at her. She said "Pay me what I get in my pay cheque, or I'm not quitting." Do you *really* need us to prove any more why Alecia Moore isn't just another J-Lo? Can you imagine Samantha Mumba, say, throwing a strop over not being allowed to work in a BP Select?.

Sheryl Garret's piece on Pink is good, but fundamentally flawed - she misses the vital difference between yer Pinks and your Gareths, your Dannis, your -insert name of hundred other pop stars here- "Pink always knew she'd be famous" she starts, but that's not quite right. As Garret says, when she was at school, she'd tell teachers she'd get them concert tickets and so on. Pink didn't want to be famous, she wanted to be a rock star. She didn't want to be on magazine covers, she wanted to be on Rolling Stone. She didn't want to be famous at any price - she wanted to be famous for singing...

Pink's in the nme, too. Or rather, she should be. We don't know, as the free covermount CD seems to have fucked up the distribution and it wasn't in the shop when we went this morning - kind of shooting yourself in the foot if you want to put on readers, isn't it? So, we'll pick this up when the paper arrives...