Gordon in the morning: That's enough Ed

There's a really strange bit leading off Bizarre this morning, built around a letter Nick Mason has written defending the Ed Sheeran Floyd cover at the Olympic Closing Ceremony.

Gordon thinks this is one in the eye for Floyd fans who were unimpressed:

So-called Floyd fans had even turned on Ed’s teenage fans, who thought he was playing a new song at the event.

But all the abuse looks ridiculous now that the man himself has given Ed a pat on the back for his efforts on the prog-rockers’ hit Wish You Were Here. The drummer, who performed the song with Ed, Mike Rutherford from Genesis and Richard Jones of The Feeling, has sent the Suffolk star a life-affirming letter.

Read more: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/bizarre/4493570/Pink-Floyds-Nick-Mason-defends-Ed-Sheeran-after-fans-confuse-his-cover-of-Wish-You-Were-Here-as-a-new-song-from-singer.html#ixzz23t9dCb3x

In Gordon's mind, then, there are Pink Floyd fans who thought that Mason playing the song onstage, with Sheeran, wasn't any sign that he was happy for it to happen, but will accept it now there's a signed document.

Smart also has a bemusing reference to Mother Teresa:

IF Mother Teresa had been on Twitter, some halfwit would give her a hard time about having crap sandals.

So he appears to be comparing 'doing a cover song badly' with 'working tirelessly in the slums of Calcutta with the poor'; and, to be honest, I think most people would have been too busy asking the nun why she forced people to convert to Catholicism before helping them rather than worrying about sandals.

Perhaps most befuddling of all, though, is this:

Let's not even bother with the misspelling of "no" - so many people from Wapping are spending so much time with police and solicitors these days it's a miracle there's anyone left around to do any publishing at all - and just try and work out what the headline is supposed to mean. Isn't the point of the story that Mason hopes Sheeran fans will investigate the Floyd back catalogue, which would surely mean that we do need education? Or is ed-ucation meant to be taking a lesson from Ed? The pun would work, but would be meaningless.

It's all rather strange. But I bet Mother Theresa would be able to make sense of it all.

Musicians reject UK Music support for internet removal

Musicians who have, perhaps, made a decent record more recently than Feargal Sharkey have been suggesting that UK Music's delighted gurglings at the Mandelson proposals might nor represent the views of everyone involved in music in the UK.

A band of top-drawer musicians have issued an 'oi, noooo':

Artists from bands including Radiohead, Pink Floyd and Blur told The Times that plans announced by Lord Mandelson, the Business Secretary, to suspend the internet accounts of those who engage in file-sharing will criminalise a whole generation of their fans.

This is putting the Featured Artists Coalition in direct opposition to UK Music and, at the very least, undermines any claim of Sharkey's gang to be speaking as one voice for everyone involved in music.

The Times talks to a FAC gang:

Nick Mason, Ed O'Brien, Dave Rowntree and Billy Bragg, the singer, are lining up against Government's stance on file sharing

The presence of Dave Rowntree - a junior Labour politician who had been trying to get adopted by a Westminster constituency not so long ago - is especially interesting.

The really nice thing is that the representatives from the FAC aren't all pushing the same line - Ed O'Brien is relaxed about filesharing and sees it as a sampling opportunity; Rowntree hopes that people can be tempted to legitimate services. The point of agreement is that removing people's access to the web isn't the way ahead.

Naturally, the BPI isn't having any of it:

Geoff Taylor, chief executive of the British Phonographic Industry, said: “We could hardly have more legal download services than we already do, and they have not eliminated piracy. It is the peer-to-peer downloading that is holding back investment in more services."

Hang on a moment, Geoff - you're saying there couldn't be any more services offered but also nobody is investing in more services because of filesharing? So is it that the market is saturated (there couldn't be any more) or that filesharing is killing it (peer-to-peer holding back investment)? And if peer-to-peer filesharing is holding back investment, then how do we have a world in which the music industry could hardly offer any more services? Why didn't the filesharing hold back that investment?

But Taylor isn't really offering any sort of considered approach: he just wants to see plugs pulled:

“What Government is proposing in the temporary suspension of accounts as a last resort is a set of measures that are proportional and balanced.”

Removing people's ability to participate in modern life, to be able to register to vote, to have access to news and information, to be able to consult medical advice, to bank and apply for work is totally a proportional response to downloading a copy of Aqua's Barbie Girl without asking the permission of the head of Universal.

[Thanks to @blockbusterbuzz]

Bill Wyman doesn't hold with all these computer games

Somewhat ironically, considering he was talking at a charity Beatles event piggybacking on the hoopla around Beatles Game, Bill Wyman has been grumbling about Rock Band style games:

[He claimed] they will lead to fewer young people taking up real instruments.

"It encourages kids not to learn, that's the trouble. It makes less and less people dedicated to really get down and learn an instrument".

"I think it's a pity," he said, speaking at Abbey Road studios while recording a charity Beatles song for Children in Need.

Yeah, young teenagers shouldn't be playing computer games; they should be enjoying their time dating elderly rock stars, eh Bill?

Nick Mason - who was hanging about - nodded:

"It irritates me having watched my kids do it. If they spend as much time practising the guitar as learning how to press the buttons, they'd be damn good by now".

Naturally, the makers of Rock Band style games deny they're a bad influence:

But Alex Rigopulos, co-founder of Harmonix Music Systems, which created the Rock Band series, refuted the musicians' claims.

"We're constantly hearing from fans who were inspired by Rock Band to start studying a real instrument," he said.

It's true. After a couple of months using the guitar-style button keypad, many young people progress to the three-button joystick or the fully-programmable trackpad.