Gordon in the morning: It's just like the 1960s, except the 2010s jarring note

Gordon's story about Paul McCartney's invovlement in the next series of Mad Men is a little confused.

First, he's writing music:

Paul McCartney writes for hit telly series

But then, he's not actually writing, just licensing tracks:

The show's producers felt his new album mainly of American classics, Kisses On The Bottom, would be perfect for the show and moved swiftly to sign a deal.

But even that makes no sense - why would a series that pays attention to period detail the way Sun photographers pay attention to the cast of The Only Way Is Essex want Macca's new stuff? If you're trying to give a feel of the 1960s, how does McCartney's frankly-not-very-good collection of karaoke-filtered mostly 1930s stuff fit in?

Trent Reznor helps out on a Facebook movie. No, it says so here.

Trent, man, I thought you were tight with the Twitter team? What are you doing writing songs for a Facebook movie?

It turns out the Facebook year zero film had a script that Reznor couldn't turn down:

"When I actually read the script and realised what he was up to, I said goodbye to that free time I had planned."

Facebook has that effect on people. As you'll know if you've ever spent time waiting for somebody to finish feeding their virtual farm animals before you can take them to dinner.

The illustrated Hello: Charlie Brown

The son of a dentist, who never grew up. Charlie Brown's life of quiet melancholy could only have got darker once Schulz realised the real money was in tiresome depictions of a dog pretending a kennel was an aeroplane.

It can't have helped that his name was used on this - one of the most irritating songs in the world. Before Simon Cowell was invented, anyway:



Oh, The Coasters, how could you?

Perhaps Charlie Brown's more lasting musical legacy is the soundtracks to the US TV specials - ones where Brown got proper billing in the title, too, rather than coming bemusingly under the name of a popular type of legume.

Created by the Vince Guaraldi Trio, I think it's arguable that the continued affection for Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown; He's Your Dog, Charlie Brown; It's Tax Day, Charlie Brown and the others is down the soundtrack.

This is perhaps the most famous of the Charlie Brown tracks, Skating:



Vince Guaraldi had served in the Korean war - literally, serving, as he was a cook. He was a figure well-liked amongst jazz fans, but lucked out when DJs took a liking to the b-side of his bossa nova single Samba de Orpheus. This was the track on the other side:



Cast Your Fate To The Wind would secure Guaraldi's first Grammy. It was also this track which led to the approach to compose for the Charlie Brown specials, and would secure fifty years and onwards popularity for his music.

His heart, though, remained with jazz:



Guaraldi died in 1976. Playing Butterfield's Nightclub in Menlo Park, between sets he suffered a heart attack. Later Charlie Brown movies would be scored in his style, but none of the later ones quite had the same verve.

[Part of the illustrated Hello]

Grohl takes on Wolverine

The Foo Fighters are launching a legal attack on Marvel: apparently Dave and the boys are unhappy that Marvel slapped some Foos music on the trail for the Wolverine and The X-Men cartoon series. It's not clear what recompense the band are seeking, but our legal expert suggests that Dave could force Wolverine to hand over some haircare tips as compensation.

Six weeks to live, but at least I'm not with Tony

As a nation came to terms with, yes, that was all the Sopranos was leading up to, they found their solace in the music. And just as those Britons who, ten years ago, felt like they really knew Diana, wound up walking home with Elton John's worst record of the last twenty years, Americans have been burying their loss in Journey:

The use of Journey's single "Don't Stop Believin' " in the June 10 finale of "The Sopranos" -- followed by oodles of media attention for the band and the show -- yields big returns on the charts this week. The 1981 track re-enters Hot Digital Songs at No. 21 with 41,000 paid downloads. It's up 371% in sales compared with the previous week. Concurrently, Journey's "Greatest Hits" album sold nearly 11,000 units this week -- a 111% gain -- pushing the set 17-2 with Greatest Gainer honors on the Top Pop Catalog albums chart.

The hope that soundtrack appearances can break a new band is going to take a bit of a hit; the pushers who are trying to persuade Grey's House to drop a sensitive unknown singer-songwriter onto an episode are now going to have to compete with the majors hoping to hook less-risky catalogue tunes into the same place.

Spot-on soundtrack

Well done to whoever picks Coronation Street's background music. Last night, Paul locked Leanne in his boot and rang Liam. While Liam took the call, the radio in the factory was playing Dido's Thank You. A song not unconnected with tales of angry men locking women in trunks.

The president no longer loves the kids

Alan McGee is "winding down" Poptones because nobody was interested ("because he no longer believes in record labels"), he's told The Independent. (Actually, he told the Independent back on May 11th, but nobody noticed until it was picked up by an Italian radio station today.) Bands nowadays, he's spotted, don't really need labels:

The story of how I met The Sessions is simple and, not surprisingly, it was online, through MySpace, after the front man, Taz Allie, messaged me. They caught my attention the first time I saw them and I couldn't believe that they weren't doing more, in terms of playing live and promoting themselves.

I started to put them on more and more at my London clubs, Death Disco, The Queen is Dead and Now We're Off To Rehab. It was through my clubs that I became mates with them and now I DJ with Taz, too. That's when the labels came knocking, offering them all these record deals.

It wasn't long before I told them that they could do all these supposedly great things being offered to them themselves. When Taz worked out what he could do with a bank loan, I offered to advise him. I'm not their manager but once I got talking to Taz, he was so genuine and sincere I offered to help as a friend.

You have to respect them for taking out a loan and putting their balls on the line. They deserve every bit of good press they get. They're all ordinary guys - the drummer is a window cleaner - and I like them because their expectation of the music business is zero. They have been on the go for three or four years, but I think that because they aren't an obvious band they fell on deaf ears for a while and no one seemed to care. Since they have started playing at my clubs they're becoming increasingly popular.

In terms of what's happened with their single, "What Is This Feeling?", I offered to try to get it into a couple of films in order to pay for it, as synchs are a good way to make money. They then took out the loan, made the video for a grand and went about pressing 500 singles, and it's barely costing them anything. Following that, Cherrystones came in to remix the track as a favour and the end result is world class.

The Sessions' version is great, being influenced by The Charlatans, Primal Scream, Happy Mondays (and they remind me of Curtis Mayfield doing Sweet Exorcist in 1974), but how Cherrystones have reworked it with Taz's song writing is amazing. The media are going to be all over it. So with no major, and some balls, The Sessions are going to show everyone how it's done.

We know it's currently the done thing to suggest that getting on film or TV soundtracks is the perfect solution for new bands to flog a few tracks, make a few quid, add a few fans, but is McGee really suggesting that the Grey's Anatomy soundtrack is going to take up all the slack from the Big Four? As it becomes more and more obvious how helpful it can be to get a song playing in the background as actors stare at each other across studio-set operating theatres, won't there be more and more people trying to get in on the act, forcing down prices and creating a market where a whole new slew of music industry intermediaries are going to pop up. It's a fair bet that the production teams on films might be less keen to do deals when they're getting thousands of CDs sent to them; and if there are 500 bands trying to soundtrack the prom for Veronica Mars, why would the TV company want to pay anything?

Indeed, if I ran a top-rated TV show, and kept reading in the paper how the music slots on my show are letting bands build an audience and secure sales, I might start to wonder if, perhaps, I should be auctioning off the slots instead of paying to fill them - especially if I'm already taking dropsy to determine what car the hero drives, or which brand of cola my talent is seen slurping on-screen.

Indeed, if I were NBC, and owned by a company which also owns Universal records, I might wonder how long it will be before my bosses are asking why the music that Abbie has crises to on ER comes from any label other than Universal's fine roster of musicians.

The soundtrack slot, Alan, is not the way ahead. It's a small bubble, and one which will burst incredibly soon.

Spiderman III soundtrack: half super Spidey sense; half Peter Parker

Thank god for digital downloads and the unbundling of the album, which will make it easy to pick out the decent tracks being produced for the Spiderman III soundtrack (Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Flaming Lips) and leave the hackneyed and overblown (The Killers, Jet, Snow Bloody Patrol).

The album in full:
Snow Patrol - 'Signal Fire'
The Killers - 'Move Away'
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - 'Sealings'
Wolfmother - 'Pleased to Meet You'
The Walkmen - 'Red River'
Black Mountain - 'Stay Free'
The Flaming Lips - 'Spiderman vs. Muhammad Ali'
Simon Dawes - 'Scared of Myself'
Chubby Checker - 'The Twist'
Rogue Wave - 'Sight Lines'
Coconut Records - 'Summer Day'
Jet - 'Falling Star'
Sounds Under Radio - 'Portrait of a Summer Thief'
Wasted Youth Orchestra - 'A Letter to St. Jude'
The Oohlas - 'Small Parts'

Chubby Checker's version of The Twist? Heaven help us all.