Gordon in the morning: Gordon meets The View

Gordon Smart meets The View

The View: what larks

It takes a special brand of stupid to decide to push duvets down toilets for a "laugh"; it's interesting when tiresome boors like The View do this sort of thing they never do it in their own homes. The sooner they're back cleaning up after other people instead of making minimum wage employees lives a misery with their larks, the better the universe will be balanced.

... assuming Pete can get a visa

Further stages on Babyshamble's decline: they're due to take part in a US package tour. With Dizee Rascal.

And The View.

What the pop papers say: Mini-NME

We make this the fourth, or is it fifth, redesign of Conor McNicholas' reign as NME editor - he introduces the new look issue with a letter signed "The Editor", and there are two notable things from the off: the first is that it's even smaller, as the paper continues to shrink like Doctor Who on the wrong end of a laser screwdriver. It can now hide, comfortably, behind Rolling Stone.

The other noteworthy point is that it's not as disastrous as early reports had made it sound - rather than a further evisceration of content, this relaunch is more about rationalising the content. It looks quite bitty, but then the content has been bitty for a while; now, at least, it's organised like a professional buffet instead of a fumbled picnic basket.

It'll be interesting to see what it's like when it doesn't have the T in the Park, Oxegen and Live Earth coverage to give its front half some shape - there's clearly a firming up of the attempt to make photography one of the reasons for people to buy the paper (although a cover splash for "free aerial photo of T in the Park" pushes it a bit - that's a picture on an ordinary page, then, is it?) and the weekend festivals have offered a lot of stuff to fill those slots; quite how successful that'll be during the soggy-arse end of November remains to be seen.

If it's good news for photographers, it's not quite so good news for the writers - the longest article is the Kate Nash piece, there's a half-article on Bonde De Role, but that's as deep as it gets. Karen O is interviewed by readers via NME's MySpace - where you can go to put questions for The Cribs next week. As if apparently aware that sending traffic to a rival publisher's website is probably not the smartest move, you're then instructed to "keep checking NME.com to see if your question has been picked". The O interview is trailed as being "her weirdest ever", but it's not especially weird, the odd question about 'what sort of beard would you have' aside: it's all 'how would you like to die' and 'do you believe in god'? Its as weird as the Sunday Correspondent Questionnaire and nowhere near as left-field as the Smash Hits' regular quizzings.

Conor pledges "more album reviews" in his intro, which is managed by giving fifty words to a dozen records - we can figure out why Stephanie Dosen's album A Lily For The Spectre is worth eight marks, but not only a few handfull of words. The reviews are now shorter than the little puffs they used to give when they had a round-up of the best albums from the previous month.

If they needed more space to allow longer album reviews, they could free up a whole page by dropping the "reader's photos" page as quickly as they introduced it - the old "this is me with the drummer from Cud" bar has now been dropped still further, and we're treated to a full cover of someone who has had Mani write on their shoe, and some bloke in a shop "dressed as a glam rocker" (he isn't.) It's like that pointless "pleased to meet you" column which the Guardian does on Saturdays and nobody reads, only out of focus.

The other big problem with this iteration of the NME is that it doesn't have a clue what it is anymore. There's Kate and Karen, but also New Order and Morrissey bits; there's a full page marking The Verve's reunion, which is written with the apparent assumption that people might have heard of Ashcroft, but know little of him (we should point out that the 'full page' is mainly a photograph). So the new target reader seems to be someone who'd be worried about Mozzer retiring and how faithful the Joy Division movie is, but who doesn't know about the Mad Richard years. Someone who'd buy a magazine because there's The View on the cover, but not minding there's only a brief review about them inside. A person who won't count the advertising pages ratio - about 40%, as it turns out.

The revamp has gone a long way to properly organizing the magazine the NME has become, but the big worry has to be that it now doesn't look like a publication that anyone would have come up with if they'd been starting from scatch.

Falkirk free of the View

If we were The View, we'd not make it public that we weren't going to play Falkirk ever again because the crowd was unruly. It might just give other towns ideas.

Broadsheet round-up:

Alexis Petridis was down the front (or, at least, perched comfortably in the VIP area) for the Arcade Fire and the Guardian:

Variety of end-of-days scenarios suggested in lyrics seem oddly more pertinent when you're listening to them up to your knees in slurry, stood next to a disconcerting man in a jester's hat, sniffing amyl nitrate. In addition, certain lyrics take on a curiously prophetic bent given inclement conditions: "Come out of the rain!" exhorts Butler at one juncture. "You can do it!" Minor mid-set lull blown away by cataclysmic finale, involving mass singalong to Wake Up.

It seems that the BBC had focused quite heavily on the mid-set lull, then.

Eugene Hutz of Gogol Bordello seized the Guardian blog to ruminate on festivals which have lost their soul:

As for festivals we haven't enjoyed playing: there was some horrible thing... I don't need to say which one, but I don't enjoy playing where all I see is fucking Miller Lite commercials in my face and tons of fucking cops.

I don't know whether Glastonbury is a travellers' festival still: that's not what I heard but I'm going to find out for myself after this. I heard that it's a land of rape and murder. Some experts, some reliable sources told me. But of course Glastonbury still has the ability to do change people's minds and alter their consciousness. You've just got to get the right bands and the right people will come, and they'll have the right reaction - liberation, catharsis, grabbing the tits of somebody else's girlfriend. You know - the usual!

The Telegraph has attempted to out-grump the Mail by sending Christopher Howse along to Worthy Farm. He's the "only festival goer with a tie", which means he can expect pete Doherty to seek him out to borrow it later on, then. Christoper hasn't fallen for the "traveller's festival" story any more than Eugene has:

Among the 30,000 cars in the car parks, there are plenty of Audis, Volvos and BMWs. Ten thousand, almost all young, came greenly by train and then chugged the last miles on dirty old buses.

"We're doing a dance degree at Greenwich," says my 20-year-old neighbour, pointing to her fair-haired friend. But now they're spending the weekend working in a vegan cafe, hoping to slip out to see Bjork. Bjork has been here before, she just can't remember.

If for some Glastonbury is joining the social season with Ascot and Henley, its style is still young and grungy. At Henley gentlemen must still wear ties. Here I spent 24 hours without seeing anyone else with one on. Ascot cocktail dresses and feather hats can look vulgar. Here the middle class come in muddy disguise.

Over in the The Times, Pete Paphides looks at what the bill tells us about the modern world:

Winehouse aside, it was a bill that rammed home the point that we are living in a postOasis age, where supersized indie bands trumpet the everyman values that allow their fans to live vicariously through them. Dundee’s bafflingly popular practitioners of indie dirges, The View, seemed to suit the worsening conditions. If only their fans’ chant – “The View are on fire!” – were true.

Rock sick list: View falls over foot

Kyle Falconer, out The View, has been hospitalised while on tour in Japan. He's managed to let a blister on his foot go septic, poisoning his blood and forcing him to take a drip-and-rest break.

They say she's going to awards, baby, she says Mo, Jo, Jo

The nominations for the Mojo Awards - careful: not the Mobo Awards - and it's probably fair to say they're quite a mixed bag. Sorry, did we say "awards"? We mean, of course, the Mojo Honours shortlist.

Amy Winehouse has got three nominations, the Arctic Monkeys have two (so far, this could be the Brits, or the NME awards, at a pinch) while The Gossip, the View, Bob Dylan and Midlake shuffle about further down the list. Apparently, as the BBC have only got highlights and Mojo's own site chooses to say how exciting the launch at HMV was without offering a full shortlist.

The BBC does have a quote, though:

Editor-in-chief Phil Alexander said of Amy Winehouse: "Now the sky is the limit for her. There is nothing that can stop her apart from herself."

We're sure that's just out of context and Alexander isn't really suggesting the only thing that has been holding back Amy Winehouse's career is the lack of an appearance in a chin-rock monthly magazine's awards listings.

View blocked again

Kyle Falconer's drug conviction looks set to sink any hopes The View might have had of cracking America; the band have been forced to pull a rescheduled US tour after America decided it had quite enough cokeheads of its own and didn't need to import any more.

Of course, it could just be diplomatic tit-for-tat moves after we banned Snoop. Should we ready the gunships, Ms Beckett?

You'd never have guessed: The View are cut from Oasis' cloth

We're always puzzled when bands cite Oasis as an inspiration. Unless they mean "it turns out you can make a stack of cash with very little creative effort, one idea and a nifty PR machine", of course, which might explain why The View believe they owe it all to Noel:

Peter Reilly said it was "special, really special, because we look up to Oasis so much, who are probably the reason we are in a band, so it's an absolute privilege".

Since they appeared on stage with ole monobrow on Monday, it's unlikely Reilly means that they formed a band because of Oasis in a bid to offer some alternative; any alternative whatsoever.

Why The View aren't in America

As some of our commenters were commenting at the time, the View had to pull their US tour at a moment's notice thanks to the evil drucks.

It's been confirmed that Kyle Falconer from the band was arrested last August allegedly in possession of cocaine; this arrest had to be declared on his visa application: hence, no SXSW for The View.

Don't worry; we're sure there's dozen of other bands who sound just like them to fill the gap.

Vista crashes

The View have axed their American tour, due to "unforeseen visa issues and immigration trouble" - which we're taking as one them decided to see what does happen if you tick the "Yes, I am a fleeing Nazi war criminal" box on the back of the Visa waiver form. NME.com says there's no news yet on if they'll reschedule the dates.

The View bloody Albarn's nose

There's nothing wrong with The Good, The Bad and The Queen - after all, we like Blur b-sides as much as the next man - but we doubt that anyone needs an album of their stuff. Even so, this week's album chart, which has seen TGTB&TQ beaten to number one by Travelodge vandals The View, still comes as something of a shock.

The View, of course, are thrilled:

"I can't believe it's gone to Number One, that's absolutely amazing. Its the best feeling in the world because I never expected it to go in that high not even after the single did so well last week."

We bet Damon Albarn wasn't expecting it, either.