A HIPPY HAPPY BIRTHDAY PAPPY: Congratulations to the team behind Liverpool's Bandwagon nights, who celebrate their first anniversary this week with a double-headed twin party thingy. Managing to survive without funding from the Arts Council, ESF, EMF or the lottery, the club has managed to almost single handedly revive and retail the concept of Liverpool as a place with a musical future rather than one large albatross in the past in a way that should shame some other local venues as they sit on their centrally-funded asses wondering where it all went wrong. If Liverpool deserves to be European City of Culture in 2008 - and, you know, I'm far from convinced we do - it should be about the sort of stuff the 'wagon are doing, not as the handsomely retainered Sir Bob Scott believes; basing the bid on the fact that The Beatles Came From Here, You Know. Sadly, ironically, humourously, Liverpool City magazine is running a competition this issue which asks "Which Liverpool band has had more number ones than anyone else?" - obviously went to press before Elvis stole the Beatle's crown, then. Which has taken us off the point we were making somewhat. But, yes, with Bandwagon (and Jump Ship Rat), Liverpool actually has some promise of managing to have some sort of culture left by 2008. That's got to be worth celebrating.

ANYWAY, MUSIC: Let's stop being pink for a moment (but not stop being Pink , of course) and remember music, the fluffy bouncy happy stuff that made us start this thing in the first place. Remember because, of course, Fosca have got a new single out on Shinkansen; it's called 'secret crush on the third trombone' and is up the standard you'd expect of the soon-come album Diary of an antibody. Clearly, Dickon and his gang have given up all hope of dislodging the Dead Icons/Fake Icons from the top of the charts as the single boasts 30 b-sides (26 more than are allowed under chart rules), thereby denying us the opportunity to see them on Top of the Pops.
More Fosca news. All Fosca news.

MORE ON CLEAR: For those of you wondering exactly what the implication of Clear Channel taking over, say EMAP or Capital would actually be, you might like to consider how the Americans are responding to their mopping up of as many stations in each major market as they can. The estimable Future of Music coalition has carried out research into audience's desires there - including the consolidation of ownership, which gets less than one in ten support. [For a journalistic overview of the results, try the Chicago Tribune's report].

CABLE SHOW: Stuart Cable is being given a chat show. A member of the dullest band. The DRUMMER from the dullest band. Michael Parkinson mayn't be very impressed with the current crop of chat show hosts, but what will he make of Stereophonics drummer trying to grab his chair from underneath him?
See, we're not making this up, the BBC has it too - as much thought going into the programme title as went into our headline, then

CLEAR INTENT: So, it's been confirmed then that Clear Channel (currently battering down US radio until it all sounds identical in every market) do want to take advantage of the proposed changes to Media Ownership rules to take control of a British radio group when they can. Clear, who combine juggling of many or most of the stations in a market with owenrship of gig venues and promotions in order to dictate a music scene in the way an IPC sub-editor could only dream of, say they don't intend to get involved in hostile takeovers. EMAP, Capital and GWR might be less than placated by that claim.
MediaGuardian reports - only its debt mountains can protect us now

INDIEHORSE: It's a cartoon. It takes the piss out of indiebands. It elevates weak puns and mild gags to the status of Gods, and then drums the Gods' heads against the uncarpeted floor. The White Stripes one is especially good. It is indiehorse

RADIO TIMES: The new Urban (that'd be what used to be called black) music station 1Xtra is going to launch on August 14th. Playing R&B and hiphop and - oh, you get the score, don't you? - it'll draw on big brother Radio One's talents and be available in pretty much the sort of place you can find 6Music.

TV TIMES: Perhaps the oddest new music TV station of all time has taken to the air in the form of Vibe TV - it may be just test broadcasts at this stage, but for the whole of this week its rotating the same four programmes about newcomer Alisse(?) over, and over, and over again. Since music TV is quite able to run tests with pop videos, we're assuming this might be the biggest act of vanity since that bloke booked the Royal Albert Hall for himself to play in.
Meanwhile, hats off to MTV Dance, which has found a smart new way to stop viewers flicking during commercials - Pong. Press red as soon as the ads start, and you can play Pong superimposed over the messages until the end of the break, whereupon the game pauses until the next natural. Now, if only they could find a way of keeping us from switching over during the godawful videos...

WHO GOES (ON) THERE: Last Friday, he was the irreplacable, best bassist ever in the world. The surviving members of the Who were shocked and stunned by his death. However, Entwistle's cold now, so Daltrey and Townsend have managed to pull themselves together long enough to flick through the phone book, and find someone under 'Bassists', so the show is going on. Erm, as a tribute, of course. It's what he would have wanted, naturally. Besides, Roger's already got someone coming in to feed the fish, so... you know...
BBC News reports - I mean, at the end of the day, he was only percussion...

GLASTOVER: Well, that's Glastonbury over for another year, then, and time to pick over the bones. Six Music had a good time - despite Liz Kershaw actually asking Black Rebel Motorcycle Club if they actually had motorbikes (the follow up was "are you rebels, then?") the coverage from the fledgling station brightened up Sunday nicely. BBC TV seemed to be less comfortable; at times you wondered if they'd run out of tape during Faithless' set and were having to fill desperately until we'd be grateful for another chance to look at Sister Bliss' ripped shirt back. Adam and Joe, it has to be said, were a nightmare. Their style was summed up with a long, rambling and pointless Rolf Harris interview which churned on for about fifteen minutes, before stopping half-way through a sentence, cutting back to A&J who then entered into a long, rambling and pointless piece about how long, rambling and pointless the original interview had been. The sketches they attempted (why?) fell flat; attempting to bridge too-long pauses between the actual entertainment proved beyond them. This wasn't entirely their fault - with sixteen stages of music, surely there must have been more material available than one or two tracks every half hour? - but lets hope for next year they try and get people more relaxed at filling acres of live television.
Meanwhile, what of the fence? It seems to have done its job - only one person actually making it across the million pound barrier - but there's something curious about the way the crime figures are being spun as being well down. Certainly, fewer crimes were reported (516 as opposed to 1,322 in 2000) but the number of arrests didn't fall anything like as sharply - 167 this weekend, 207 the weekend before. It's hard to work out the exact math, with the numbers of people inside the Pilton Wall in 2000 a matter of conjecture, but it's not entirely clear that the festival had a smaller criminal element this year than in its last staging. And, of course, a hit and run murder is unwelcome in any context.
But the good news is that the festival survives - whether this is better news for the Mean Fiddler than it is for Glastonbury goers is debatable, of course. (The reports of 2002 being "mellower" viewed from inside have to be set against the violent muggings amongst the people outside.) Michael Eavis seems pleased with the way everything went - this morning BBC News reports him as saying he was so delighted that he was considering the possibility of increasing capacity to 120,000 next year.
He admitted: "After 2000, I didn't think I would ever get a licence again." .
Hmmm. Curious, that, since in 2000 the same BBC reported the same Michael Eavis hailing the 2000 festival "as the best Glastonbury he had known since launching it in 1970. "The feedback from the public has been absolutely amazing this year but I can't take the credit for it - I think the sun takes most of the credit."

OTHER MUSIC BLOGS ARE AVAILABLE: Johnny Walker's blog is pretty fine - we suspect it's not the coke and hooker endorsing BBC presenter but another one - though we think it's a little unfair to have a pop at John Lydon; it's like kicking the confused old man who lives next door and keeps talking about how he won the (punk) war single handed. Nice reports on Pete Murphy. Click here or use our new blogrolling links on the side.

U-G-L-Y, YOU AINT GOT NO ALIBI: In the light of that bloke out of Nickelback winning Ugliest man in rock, Newsround are offering the chance to vote on who you think the ugliest person in rock is. At the moment, Marilyn Manson is winning (he'll try and claim he's pleased, being the god of headfuck and everything, but you just know he's crying inside.
Cast your vote - anyone who votes for Pink gets forced to snog with Fred Durst

AN EXTRA STRIPE: Steve 'Not the one off Corrie' McDonald has added basslines to White Blood Cells, to add some extra support to the White Stripe's music. It's expected he might send a bra to Meg as well.
Dotmusic reports - was this really the result of wounded bassists pride?
Download, read, whatever - Is it just us or are Redd Kross a lot more use in pieces?

BACKSLAPPAGE: Glastonbury are proudly announcing that their fence has kept people out of the site. Well, since you spent a million quid on it, that's shouldn't be very surprising, should it? Besides, even if the fence hadn't held, since it would result in the festival being closed down, they'd be hugely unlikely to issue a press release, would they? Meanwhile, BBC News has this logic twisting segment: Fans were looking forward to a strongly rumoured surprise performance from singing star Dido, who is expected to appear with her brother's band, Faithless, on the main Pyramid Stage on Friday.

WHO GOES THERE?: As is probably being covered elsewhere on the web in far more detail, John Entwistle of The Who has been found dead, the result of an apparent heart attack. He was fifty-three. We shall leave a short gap before we do any "Hope I die before the bill for room service comes" jokes.
John Entwistle's official site - sadly, so many Britpop chancers nicked the Who's stylings, this winds up looking like a 'tribute' site. Or The Lomax homepage
Who's better, who's better, Who's dead? - MSNBC reports sad news that it's down to Pete and Daltrey now
BBC photo history - are they sure that bottom one is actually what they say it is?

IT'S NOT JUST ROCK THAT'S BEING STRANGLED: Interesting piece on LudwigVanWeb about Classical Music, and how the way it's presented to young people is choking the life out of it. There's some interesting parallels with rock music, and conclusions could be drawn about why it might be wrong to have centrally-funded courses training musicians to play, rather than to support themselves while they play.
Young musicians are note-factories, says LudwigVanWeb - at least they don't have to have nice bums as well...

R KELLY UPDATE: He's pleaded not guilty to 21 charges relating to his alleged appearance on video shagging a child - mercifully, he did no talking himself, leaving his lawyers to enter his plea; even more mercifully, they opted not to sing his 'leave me alone' song. He remains free on bail, and outside the court there were a mixture of fans and outraged people. As you'd expect.

TWO WAY CHUNDERING: So, at long last XRRF goes democratic, offering the opportunity for you, the person who was probably just searching for pictures of R Kelly shagging, to comment on Our Great Stories. Hurrah, eh?

ANOTHER BUNCH OF BSC RULINGS: Robbie Williams getting told off for showing his bum on SM:TV, Neil Fox dammed fro calling Simon Cowell a "retard" on one of ITV2's seemingly endless PopIdol specials, and George Michael gets it in the butt for his video with all the bondage and so on. Three of the least edgy characters in music treated like they're somehow really bad.

AVANTI ZAPSMART: We'd previously been involved in Zapsmart as part of the Ink website, but since that seems to have gone to sleep now, we're bringing the list into the XRRF family. Basically, Zapsmart is a place for music fans to share pre-alerts about music shows on TV, radio and on the web. It's small, but it's reliable, and is almost insanely delighted with any and all contributions. Click on the - hey - graphic to subscribe

WHAT THE POP PAPERS SAY: CHOSEN WITH GEORGE BUSH'S BLESSING EDITION
scenes from the decline of a magazine, number 377: The Face, once ahead of the field, this month gives The Osbournes the front page. A cultural phenom so mainstream that even the Queen has heard about it and assimilated it. Next month it'll be Fischerspooner, we betcha...

talking of the Queen, Private Eye waspishly points out the similarity between the parent group of nearly all the artists at the Jubilee Jamboree and the label due to cash-in and release the album of the gig. It's EMI, of course, in case you hadn't guessed...

the nme comes in a bag - to stop the Fly, um, Bring It On falling out, but also as a handy item for Glasto go-ers - you can sit on it, or fill it with milk. At last, then, a use for Bring It On, which already feels 'How soon can we junk this idea' thin. Hundred Reasons lead the live league table, whatever that means. Especially since Fischerspooner are new in at 2...

the nme proper has Chris from Coldplay on the cover. Luckily, it says, because I wouldn't recognise the fucker otherwise. Still, it's nice to see a move away from complete Festival Pullout blockage in the nme - over previous years it's been 89 pages of coverage, even when they lost the sponsorship...

news: if you have five spliff's worth of blow at the V festivals you'll be labeled a drug dealer and will probably wind up banged up. And with a criminal record. That's the voice of realism, then; there's a final warning to Glasto fence jumpers to not do it. The strange thing here is that, to try and discourage people sneaking in, they're not going to show the World Cup on the big screen. Discuss, with illustrations if needed, why people who buy tickets are going to be less interested in football than those who don't; The Hives have had a hit in America (erm, number 77 with a bullet); Thom Yorke is pushing for fair trade. Bravely, he concedes that he doesn't expect to see a change in government policy as a result of his campaign - so, still more humble than Bono, then, who expects Blair to dance a little dance singing "I'm a little piggy" for him every day; John Peel said the only reason he accepted an OBE was because otherwise he'd turn into the sort of bloke who stood around telling everyone that "I was offered one - turned it down, of course." Which we mention, because Pandit G from ADF has been going on about how he turned down his MBE; the Leeds Festival organisers will be delighted that the paper has chosen to report its appeal against its licence being turned down by ragging out its coverage of 'Terrifying Climax To Leeds Festival'...

on bands: the rapture - NY funk disco (looks like Men in stephen malkmus masks and bouffant hair); jolly music (italian house thing using sonya echobelly on vocals) and tenacious d (jack black semi-novelty side dish)..

okay, so there is a *little* Glasto overkill: Misteeq are taking a packed lunch with them; billy childish proudly says nothing's changed with his music over the last thirty years; michael eavis does the ten track thingy (REM, elvis costello, and the stone roses); there's pictures from the archives; coldplay say "we have no desire to be quite good, we want to be great" but chris concedes "we felt like a bunch of students who'd struck it lucky" (next week - "I was a mancunian chancer" shocker from Noel)...

lps: oasis - heathen chemistry ("what did anyone expect, Fischerspooner?", 8) - nb: the nme has been promoting the album on nme.com all week, and andy bell has got a beard that is frankly, shocking; muse - hullabaloo soundtrack - please notice the spelling; not hulabaloo soundtrack, or hullaballoo soundtrack; or hullaballoo soundtrack or... you get the point ("they're entertainers, no less. they're certainly no more", 6); fonda 500 - No1 Hi-Fi Hair ("a neat little treat", 7); nelly - nellyville ("a persecution complex can be put to good use", 7)...

sotw is idlewild - american english ("makes K2 look like a pimple on a midge's cock" - presumably not Midge Ure's?; also considered are Prodigy's baby's got a temper ("does this mean leroy was actually the talented one?"); and Sheryl Crow's steve McQueen ("she's beaten the rush to be the new Ryan Adams")...

live: primal scream in shepherd's bush ("even the models were cheering") and garbage in barcelona ("Shirley returns to perform Queer a cappella)...

from the ads: 'young rock band seeks boy singer... must have a good voice; influences greenday and blink 182' - erm, so why the voice, then?

JOINING THE DOUBTS: Tschaw. You write about getting married, and the excitement of registering your gift lists, and then you gush a little over the joys of having a baby on tour with you, and the next thing, everyone assumes you've been knocked up. Gwen Steffani should be more careful what she writes in her online journal, because you know how people leap to conclusions. Hmmm, can't wait to see "my girl Shirley manson", eh? Does Gavin from Bush mind her having a lesbian lover?

MOANING MOBY: Moby has come up with a handy new theory to explain why furrow-browded pop stars are selling fewer records than their glittery rivals. It's the Pearl Jam Effect. Moby reckons that bands whose fans are more techno-savvy than others will suffer, as their smart fans will be able to download the music from the internet, while dumb music fans have no choice but to drag their knuckles across the floor to their local HMV and buy their music there. This, he explains, is why Weezer sell less than Pink. This ignores two vital problems - first, it asks us to believe that Weezer fans are more techno-smart than Pink fans (the sort of people who can text message from their biros while accessing Pay Per View porn through child filters); second, it ignores the fact that Pink records are bouncy and fun and well made, and are almost guaranteed to sell in huge quantities. It's not clear if Moby is implying the Pearl Jam fans are smart or not.
Moby Muses at Launch - hmm, could this theory be connected to Poor Album Sales by the vegan ad-jingle composer?

HE'S NOT YOUR BOYFRIEND IF HE PAYS YOU, TYLER: While it's fair to say that the V festivals are great big advertising hoardings, with emphasis on the whore, is Glastonbury in any position to point out this shortcoming? With hundreds of stalls and loads of sponsors, when will they grow up and admit that they're just as corporate as anyone else? Even the Body Shop, which also gives cash to charity, is honest enough to acknowledge that it's part of the capitalist system. It'd be easier to take Glasto's purity a bit more seriously if it stopped trying to pretend that it has nothing to do with the beastly marketplace.
Glasto slags V for being over-sponsored - that would be the same Glastonbury brought to you in association with Kodak,
PlayLouder.com, Apple, and Orange amongst others, would it?

WHITE STRIPS?: Of course, they're teasing us - this would just be a 'How deep is your love' thing - but The White Stripes (boy/girl/man/wife) are threatening to split because they're "too successful". Which, if your idea of success is a couple of NME singles of the week and a few emails about how you should really wear a bra, is clearly true. However, they're too good to lose, so I suggest we should look the other way until they change their minds.
Dotmusic reports - though how reliable information sourced to muchnews.com is, is debatable...

THIS OLE HOUSE MUSIC: It might just be part of the mythology, but the vaguely quease-inducing School Disco group claims it was born when a DJ was sacked for playing Shakin' Stevens This Ole House. [The BBC say so, it must be at least more true than that thing they ran about the diamond company and Bin Laden]. This seems curious to us, since there's no amount of nostalgic distance that can make that record anything other than an untouchable. The prospect of spending an evening with a group of people dressed as school kids (let's try and get through this without a Jonathon King gag, shall we?) could work, with right people and, of course, the right uniform - but wearing a tie and being forced to kow-tow to Shaky? Why do these people think we embraced the 90s in the first place?

I COLLECT, I REJECT: As if the shit that ordinary people try to sell on ebay isn't bad enough Cooper Owen are the latest auction house to set aside credibility for a spot of Hard Rock Cafe style glitz, and have assembled a collection of bits of old tat to tempt passers by that includes a tape of Lennon and Ono rambling on about nothing (which sounds like the cassette release of Double Fantasy to us) and a Rolling Stones poster with "facsimile" signatures. I wonder if they'd be interested in giving us a price for a copy of Nowhere, where Fat Tony has forged Mark Gardner's signature on it?

OTHER MUSIC BLOGS ARE AVAILABLE: Like, um, PopGossip, which I hope against hope is a spoof, but fear might be straight faced. It ends with a little "secret" message to Jonathon King, saying how the music industry is missing him. Not as much as the boys from F-wing are; they don't get a turn again until next Friday...

I WANT MY PPV MTV: Former Whistle Test honcho Trevor Dann is poised, poised like a leopard, to unleash a pay per view music video network on Sky Digital. At first, the thought of dipping into your pocket and handing over three quid seems like an outrage - what, we're going to pay to see your commercials? - but the mooted price seems quite fair when what you get (unlimited access to the video for a week; plus the now-essential 'extras') is compared with the EMAP station's deal - whereby you spend a quid a time dialling in a request to Box, Q or Kerrang, say, and might get to see your video, if you're lucky.
Possible fear of retaliation from EMAP and MTV may hamper the new service's attempts to get videos exclusively in advance, and it should be remembered that Dann once before promised to change the face of television and music with his Landscape Channel, which offered wall-to-wall flying geese and new age music. Channel Four sometimes ran it in place of a test card. It no longer exists.

BOWIE AND BING BOUNCED: Up until now David Bowie - who was very good on Conan the other night, we thought; sportingly singing nursery rhymes in a David Bowie style and generally reminding us that he isn't a bank, Banc or wanker - has shared with Bing Crosby the widest age gap between charting collaborators, being 43 years apart. Now, that's a distinction he's lost, as that god awful Williams-Van Outen duet has not only made the charts, but features a pair 45 years, five months and twenty four days adrift. Let's just be thankfull Anna Nicole Smith never made it to a recording studio, shall we?