That, Carl, is showbiz

Carl Barat wants Mark Ronson to do some work for him, but is having trouble getting his attention:

"I wanna do a track with him for this film about northern soul music," the Dirty Pretty Things star told BBC 6 Music. "[But] I can't get hold of him. Maybe he is ignoring me, I don’t know."

Good plumbers and flavour of the month superstar producers. You'll never get them to return your calls.

Still, there are other people who will turn up for anything:

Barat also revealed that he is making a dub reggae record with Jon McClure from Reverend And The Makers.

If it's not any good, they're going to abandon it. Although Barat hasn't provided any data on where the bar is being set.

Jon McClure threatened by right-wingers

Oh, if only Jon McClure had followed Boris Johnson's example and forgotten the anti-racism message and concentrated on the "community" aspects instead; he didn't, and in return for his troubles of organising a Love Music, Hate Racism event in Rotherham has been getting death threats:

“These fascists are saying that they’re going to fuck us up, but they’re not going to change anything. Why should we let these thugs stop us?” Jon told Socialist Worker.

“The BNP claims to be democratic – but this shows that their behaviour is fundamentally at odds with democracy. It shows them up as a bunch of thugs.

The LMHR event is down for September 6th; tickets are available now.

Reverend and the music industry remakers

How huge would you say Reverend and The Makers are? Big enough for their poster to hover in the background of some scenes of Corrie; had the Melody Maker still been going, they'd have been in with a shout of a Christmas double issue cover shoot (some sort of pun on Reverend/Nativity, we'd guess). But they're hardly a global-straddling brand, like Prince or Radiohead. They're not even as big as Bush when Bush turned their back on traditional labels.

Which makes the band's decision to release an album for free, without bothering to get their label involved, or to charge for it, all the more interesting. Big labels are getting used to established acts telling them the balance of power has changed; now smaller labels are getting the same treatment from smaller bands. And, naturally, they're not happy.

Mark Jones, boss of R&TM's label, Wall Of Sound, is upset:

: “There’s a validity in that [releasing the songs acoustically, free, before doing a full album], but maybe he should have discussed it first, have a plan!

“I’ve come so far with this [working with McClure] that I feel like it’s been taken away from me. I’m passionate about his music.

“An artist like Jon McClure needs the right platform to deliver what he needs to do to the public and I think we ddi that really well. He’s got to be one of the most important artists in the country, but I feel hugely let down. I had no idea he wanted to do this.”

It's perhaps bad form on McClure's part to not have talked it through first, but it's probable that Jones is being overly pessimistic. As soon as McClure played those songs as works-in-progress live, they'd have been bootlegged and digitally packaged and passed amongst the interested in an instant - this is just a smarter way of making your fans feel valued (and, importantly, trusted) while keeping some degree of control. It's unlikely to have an impact on sales of the finished product, and certainly not a negative effect.

Still, there is much else for Jones to feel worried about. Clearly, the days of seven or eight album contracts are vanishing, and the terms of the deal between label and band are shifting: effectively, if a label believes that they're making an investment in a band's career rather than simply putting up the cash for an album, they're going to be in for a bit of a shock.