Something to not bother listening to: Satellite Party

Over on their MySpace page, you can currently stream all of Satellite Party's debut album. We imagine Perry Farrell is very relaxed about making this available online as, frankly, it's not really worth audiocapturing. We think Done Waiting pretty much hits it on the nail:

I understand the creative urge to keep producing new product, but like Harrison Ford's film career, I feel like each project Perry does tarnishes his earlier work which was nothing short of amazing.

Global Looza

Lollapalooza, the regular chance for young Americans to see some bands which are teetering on the edge of retirement, is going to go worldwide, says Perry Farrell:

"I'm going to look to take it global."

Blimey. But don't start to dream of making a fortune scalping LollapaEarth tickets on eBay just yet. He's talking about some time before, erm, 2017:

"I want to put together an event around the world in the next 10 years that will refashion, redress, and transform. It's something I'm looking into now, and if it happens, it will happen quick. That's my ambition."

We're not quite sure how something can take ten years and be quick, unless it's a Brian Eno project of some sort, but we're sure he's got it all planned. We're also not sure how an event which had to abandon traveling around the US is suddenly going to be shifting from nation to nation. But we're sure he's got that planned, too.

Last call for New Order

It's not been so much announced as dropped into conversation by mistake, but Peter Hook has more or less admitted New Order have finally called it quits:

Peter Hook told Xfm that the band have broken up.

He said: "I spoke to Perry, and he asked me to play bass, as he'd heard about New Order splitting up. Well yeah, me and Bernard (Sumner) aren't working together."

On the split, he added: "Bernard went off for a break with Electronic, but that was different. But it's like the boy who cried wolf this time."

What's most interesting about this is that "New Order aren't working together" - a statement on a par for news value with 'Timothy Whites isn't on British High Streets' or 'Thatcher hasn't issued a statement about the local election results' - is still about sixty thousand times more fascinating than anything about Perry Farrell's Satellite Party super-ish group.

Perry Farrell: Downloading bad, Segway will 'shake up way we travel'

Okay, Perry Farrell hasn't actually just come out praising the Segway, but his sudden moaning about illegal downloading does seem to have come from the past:

"If you don't care what happens to music, keep downloading. Look at music and look at the polar caps - they're melting at the same rate.

"If you hear garbage music on your radio station, you have only yourself to blame. If you don't support the arts, that's what you're going to get. You're going to get American Idol. It's fine if you want to hear that, but I don't.

"So I'm trying to do something about it. We'll go out there and raise hell.
Raise hell in a good way, I mean. We'll party."

So, in no way completely overstating the case in any way by comparing the very possible destruction of all life on the planet with the possible lowered profitability a handful of multinational corporations, then.

We'd suggest that "garbage on the radio" has less to do with downloading than the consolidation of the radio industry into the hands of a few, computer-playlist and focus-group led groups, a process which is almost older than the internet.

It's also arguable that online music - of both the regulated and unregulated sort - is precisely the sort of thing that someone who "doesn't want to hear" American Idol should be embracing.

Rather than raising hell, though, we'd love to hear Farrell square the circle of his environment and explain why, if he believes people paying for music is a great thing, guaranteed to free the world from the clutches of American Idol style artists, the greatest-selling artists of the early 21st Century are so often those selected from American Idol and its sister competitions? Indeed, that to purge the music world of the Idol types, it would probably make more sense to stop pumping money into the infrastructure that supports the quick fix of the Reubens and Kellys and Gareths and Wills, rather than pouring more money into their coffers.

Is everybody in? The rise in sea levels is about to begin

Naturally, only a complete curmudgeon would object to any attempt to persuade us to cut our use of greenhouse gases, so the launch of Global Cool is probably a good thing - and, hey, if takes Josh Hartnett flying in from Hollywood on a jet to persuade people to remember to switch off their bedside light before falling asleep, who are we to argue with their priorities?

Indeed, by our calculations, the extra carbon dioxide emitted during the glittering launch for the campaign could be offset simply by all of us in the UK switching off our kettles for the next seven weeks - and that's got to be worth it, right?

What does puzzle us, though, is that the campaign is being built around a poem - written by Jim Morrison and set to music by Perry Farrell. If I were looking for someone to be at the centre of a campaign asking people to avoid excess and waste, and take care of themselves and all they hold dear for the future, a dead junkie wouldn't have been my first choice.

KT Tunstall is also going to be at the London launch - and, certainly, by not playing her music at all, we've helped to save enormously on our emission levels. Perhaps we should encourage KT to help by stopping releasing records altogether? Imagine... just not putting out three albums, with the attendant manufacture, and promotional tours, and trips down to Woolworths - how much otherwise wasted carbon dioxide could be left untouched by such a small sacrifice?