COINCIDENCE MAKES ME HER BITCH: I had been going to visit vain, selfish & lazy since it was recommended by , but then discovering that we score highly when people are searching for "Mariah Carey's tits", I idly clicked to see what other sources of information are offered for this request, and discovered a link to V,S&L there, too. So, if Mariah's overexposed bossom tells me to check it out too, I do it. What else could I do? And - hey - it's pretty good, too.

COURT NEWS: Yoko Ono brings legal action against former assistant she accuses, amongst other things, of dressing up in Lennon's clothes. We'd imagine Noel and Liam are watching the door nervously right now, then.

WIGWAM BAM: A Liverpool concert pumping out noise that might make people feel sick? No, it's not the Farm getting back together*, but a 'silent' gig at the Metropolitan Cathedral, where they'll be playing some of the music so low down the scale as to be felt, rather than heard. There was a thing on this on Today a little bit ago, and they were saying that there's some feeling amongst scientists that this sub-noise might be what causes people to "feel" the presence of ghosts, which is interesting. And we're sure we read somewhere a few years ago that "they" (presumably the American military-Industrial complex) were trying to develop a crowd control weapon on the same basis - apparently Iraq would be able to make one of these within six months if they got access to Barry White through a third party.
"We don't want people vomiting" announces the concert organiser. So, at least nicer than a Slipknot gig, then.

YOU'VE GOT FOETUS ON YOUR PR CIRCUIT: Who knows what the truth of the Williams-Appleton baby saga is? (I can hear you murmuring 'who cares', you, at the back.) The fact that the story and various flavours of claim and counter claim shimmer and disappear from view smacks of a journalistic world treading very carefully round the law. Apparently, Williams is upset by Nicole Appleton telling all about her getting rid of the foetus they'd fertilised together. Or, depending on who else you believe, he sent her wishes and told her she was being brave. Whatever, it makes your head go varoom - we've seen before rockstars fannying about using babies for publicity, but this has got to be an all-time low: we're with Christopher Reeve on the use of stem cells in research; but abortions for PR? Can we just not?

SHOEGAZING: Shakira is proud to be the new face (and, presumably, tits -albeit small and humble - and ass) of Reebok. "We're meant to be together" simpers Shakira. We wonder if she stopped for a moment before signing her mutli-million dollar deal to wonder why Indonesian labour activist Dita Sari refused to take part in Reebok's Winter Olympics PR glitz. There may be a clue in that Dita was offered only USD50,000 to lend her name to the brand.

NOW, THIS SEEMS A BIT MORE LIKE IT: Yahoo are reporting that Warners and Rio have linked up to make "one thousand album's worth" of stuff available as a buck-a-shot downloads. A la carte, via Rio partners like MTV.com rather than in a confusing, bundled deal through a separate site - this could actually be the first major download scheme that is designed to work rather than being built to fail. We'll wait to see the system in full, though - Yahoo's promise of acts including "Green Day, Enya and Sugar Ray" is hardly giving us the honey-pot-happys right now, and "starting at 99 cents" is slightly ominous - ninety nine cents still seeming a little on the high side (these are old tracks, this is meant to be fighting "free" downloads, three tracks for £1-99 is standard price in the UK) - and it may not be available in the New Home of the Internet, Europe. But there are always glitches.

FAIR SHARES: It's not as new as the New York Times seems to think (Dodgy did the same thing a year or two) but another band, Grey Eye Glances, have got the cash to release a record by passing the hat round and selling shares. It's an interesting approach to producing music - rather than getting bankrolled by a label, you draw down the cash from fans and 'angels'. It's a system that's worked pretty well for theatre and indie movies; it's kind of curious that it doesn't happen more often in music.

COSTINGS: The BPI have welcomed the report from the Office of Fair Trading - a dossier, if you will - that says, you know, CDs aren't really all that more expensive in the UK than they are in Europe. The BPI furnish the BBC with figures that 'prove' CDs have become cheaper - the average price now being £10.65 as against £11.22, which is something to be mildly pleased about - although why the record companies would claim credit for a situation largely brought about by the Permanent 3 for 2 offers in the highstreet and downward pressure on prices from Internet retailers we're not sure; still, at this rate, in a couple of years the false price leap engineered by the labels when CDs came in may finally be corrected.
But anyway - although the differentials have shrunk between Britain and Europe, that's not really the main point, is it? Prices between Europe and America are still grossly out of whack. Take, for just one example, that there Pink album. In germany, amazon.de offers it at EUR14.99, while in the UK amazon.co.uk asks slightly less, GBP9-99. However, customers in America can buy the thing for USD13-49, the equivalent of GBP8-66 or EUR13.74. So, yes, good that the disparity in the EU has started to be addressed, but if all it means is everyone this side of Greenland is being overcharged by the same amount, you'll forgive me for not applauding, won't you?

MORE CHILD PRODIGY NEWS: The BBC is reporting that James Brown is being sued for royalties by his daughters - apparently unconcerned that one of them was only three at the time when one of the songs was written. Well, I spose if Atomic Kitten think they're capable of writing a tune, why not a three year old girl?

POP PHILOSOPHY: Loved this from tiny mixtapes: When the Second Single Fails - managing to hook together Thomas Dolby and that irritating woman who did the video with the piano floating about. Hurrah.

... but she doesn't like to talk about it

A GREATER RUSH: So, Brett Anderson reckons the new Suede album is the first that he's created without a body full of drugs, and it pretty much shows, as well. The new single Positivity does sound different to old Suede - cleaner, fresher, purer - in fact, it sounded like the sun shining for the first time on an old Suede song. In the same way that Pulp's We Love Life was a discovery of nature, it's clear that Suede's A New Morning is going to be their stop and look around album; their discovery that daytime isn't something that comes between the nights, but the part that joins it all up.

STRANGE SEARCH TERMS: A warm welcome to whoever discovered us with a Google on "Gay sex videos No Sighing fee."

TRIBUTE TO NOTHING: Phil Jupitus, in his contribution to the Hats off to the late Kirsty MacColl fest, chooses to play A New England and Days. So, that's showing her full range as a songwriter, then.
UPDATE: Then back announced with the observation that at the concert last night "one of the things that really emerged was her talent as a songwriter."

HURRAH!: We thought that whoever was behind the large and unpleasant Atomic Kitten poster flyposted a few yards from the-cruelly ousted Andy McCluskey's studios was pushing it; nemesis has struck in the form of Pink, who regular No Rock readers will know has been officially our favourite pure-pop-star for quite a while now. She's knocked the Kittens off number one in the UK with Just Like A Pill, a song which as-yet unborn smiley girls will undoubtably remake in a clueless fashion in 2017. But for now: Viva Pink.

[NOT] A MUSICAL TOUR OF THE KINGDOM: It was really when i found myself wondering if Timmy Mallett's novelty cover of Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini would be enough to observe that he told the [Brighton] Argus about hitting Thatcher on the head with his Mallet, and how, since he'd been on Top of the Pops as well it was too many dreams come true for one man, that we realised our plan to take the musical pulse of the nation, as reflected through random local papers purchased as we toured about, was going to come to nothing.
It had started well enough - The Manchester Evening News slobbering over Oasis' return to Manchester; they gave over two pages of a Saturday edition to Noel being rude to Gary Neville (signing the footballers guitar with the sort of wit Oscar Wilde would have collaborated with Hale and Pace for) and local residents living in fear of the Old Trafford gig; then the Brighton And Hove Leader offered up the news that the Normstock ghost had been "laid to rest" by the peaceful passing of a film event on Brighton Beach (because, yes, an old movie on a windy night in september is almost an exact re-creation of a heavily promoted dance night at the height of the summer, isn't it?). But then The West Sussex Gazette sniffily even refused to mention that the "pop band" who'd been making crop circles was the Levellers, although towards the end of the same edition they did manage to get quite excited by the prospect of a Joe Jackson gig. And the further we went from the bigger towns, the more poor the coverage of music - local or national - became.
Which strikes us as a shame - if papers like the Banbury Guardian and the Cotswold Journal can find room for in-depth reports on bridge matches and small fires in local sheds, can't they make a little bit of space to write about people making music in their areas? One of the fears of local papers is that they face an ever-dwindling readership, and yet while there are clearly things happening in their patch - I mean, Oxfordshire, for crying out loud - they don't bother to give space to one thing that might encourage a younger audience to start to turn to their pages. When music does pop up in these papers, its either in the form of am dram productions of Me and My Girl, or else a small-as-you-please concert listings (band name, one-word description - "punk"), or, if you're really lucky, a small preview of an dinsoaur act passing quite close-by (Liverpool's Merseymart is especially guilty of this, usually filling up its quota of 200 words or so with something about a band about to play Manchester.)
We can't believe that the whole of the Cotswolds is now mined-out and no new exciting bands are living there, and that if people will happily file reports of minor football fixtures they can't find a couple of people who'd be happy to file music reviews. Maybe it's asking a bit much for papers which claim to exist to reflect civic pride to seek out young people doing something for themselves, something to be proud of, with the same fervour that they bring to unmasking teenaged vandals.

SHAKE YOUR MONEY MAKER: Could the Boy George lamenting how rubbish, novelty-obsessed and money-grubbing the music industry is these days be in any way related to the person who's allowed them to market this all singing Chameleon telephone?

IT'S BACK: In what we think might be the first instance of a show turning into an entire channel, The Chart Show - that Saturday morning indulgence cruelly axed to make way for the jabberings of Ant and Dec and the Cat Deeley woman - has returned. In the form of an entire channel. It's pretty much a round-the-clock version of what you might remember, only with the Indie chart on more often than once every three weeks. Video Vault, fairly rubbish screen facts, "Still to come" and New Releases. Plus, it's doing Jazz charts and other stuff like that, which makes it probably the most (possibly the only) eclectic music station on the air. Channel 458 for Sky Digital viewers.
Who might get even more choice soon - plans for a Pay Per View service from BSkyB got shelved a couple of weeks back (uber-man Trevor Dann lamenting that the labels wouldn't give him decent enough music early enough to make it worth his while), but today's MediaGuardian is reporting that Sky is now planning three own-brand music stations to come soon - Tony Ball of BSB citing how quickly EMAP's stations have built a following at the expense of MTV to "prove" the gap in the market. Which is as maybe, but the EMAP stations went clearly for areas that MTV hadn't attempted to exploit; it's still too early to say, but it looks as if the more or less on the run creation of "me too" products (MTV Dance and Base against Kiss; MTV2's rebirth as Kerrang-ish) has won share back without much effort for the lords of Camden Lock. Sky might have to come up with something pretty special if it's not to be left as a shabby rival.

SWITCHED ON: Watching the ill-advised Busted video for What I Go To School For again, we're struck by the similarity between one of the dirty schoolboys and a young Paul Whitehouse. Enduring image, innit, stalkers for jailbait? Meanwhile, further watching of Round, Round has thrown up a reason why they may have chosen to edit in so much from the Guru - because Heidi ex-Atomic Kitten can't lyp-synch to save her life. Thank god the Sugababes write - ahem - so much of their own material, because clearly she can't mime someone else's words in any way effectively.

DOG-GONE: Sometimes, designers make you feel ashamed for the whole concept of trying to make things look nice. Apparently, some bright spark has decided that HMV stores are "too confusing" visually (that would account for the hordes of customers laying with their feet in the air, mouths frothing, then) and has overhauled the look of the places, in the process axing Nipper. Yup, after nearly a century of peering into the gramophone, the little dog has been thrown away. Of course, in the long run this doesn't really matter very much - after all, it's just a logo - but it still serves as a pretty good depiction of the problem with most British design - a contempt for the past, and a refusal to accept that some things have stood the test of time and as such might demand a little more respectful treatment from a teenager who can barely recall a time before Illustrator 9 was released.

NEW SITE REVIEW: And, welcome to a new step-up, as we filch one of Alex's bsn reviews for the first time... Sleater-Kinney:
Becky is absolutely right; disgust is an easier emotion to convey than love, thrill, astonishment. I'll try my best.
The Sleater-Kinney show changed from the El Rey (due, according to Weeza, to a collapsed ceiling) to the Highlands club at the new Hollywood & Highlands complex. It‚s a LuxoPosh mall-type complex on the border of West Hollywood, hemmed by the Walk of Starall fiberglass and art deco balconies and -obnoxiously trendy Japanese restaurants and boutiques that you need an appointment to shop in. There are apartments built over the stores; the whole places was built in mind of bringing back mixed use ˆ residential zones on top of commercial ones because this city is spreading like a syphilis culture and we‚re running out of space. The place is very baroque and irritating - giant statues and friezes of Ganesh, Shiva, Osiris and Isis and Horus overlooking the main intersection, because you know we are oh-so high-minded and cosmopolitan yes we are (listen, architects, city planners, brainless trend-mongers who design these things: diversity *happens*. You can't manufacture it. A multicultural society grows up by itself, if you let it; building pretentious homages to the local gods along the walls of an antiseptic upper-class mega-mall is like razing the rainforest and filling it in with plastic ficus. We are one of the most ethnically diverse cities in the world - wonderful things could happen here if you‚d quit trying to give our metropolis the cultural equivalent of breast implants). The club is on the fourth floor, which is
unusual - I've been to above-ground discos, but never a live club; you'd think the weight of the stage, the merch table, the bar, the equipment, and a moshing-pogoing-pounding crowd would be a hazard, especially in a place as seismically capricious as this. Indeed, during the show I could feel the floor bouncing and flexing underneath us. But obviously it didn't crash through and kill me ‚cos - check it out.
The Quails went on with a Rice-a-Roni joke (they hail from my hometown and Becky's currenttown) and two guys began an awkward and short-lived chant about the San Francisco treat. Los Quails are a perky indie power pop grrrl-lite trio featuring two girls and a guy; they all sing, including the drummer (singing while drumming is a feat that never fails to delight me) and their female singer-guitarist has a vibrato not unlike Corin Tucker's, only peppier and not as deep or rich. The Quails‚ tunes are energetic and fleshy and cute; they were talkative and should have been able to establish a better rapport with the crowd, but most of us, for some reason, weren't having it. I danced around the outskirts of the audience, trying to get something going, but only a few people followed suit. I defer to The Gossip's excellent analysis of situations such as this:"No thanks to the squares who don't dance - Yr boring!" The Quails were bouncy and engaging and get a big thumbs-up from me.
Next up was Shannon Wright. A singer-guitarist-pianist from Florida, she's got a voice like Fiona Apple in a torture chamber and a stage presence like Linda Blair in a mental ward. She whispers and screams and moans and flails and spins and belts and crashes and pounds and stomps and thrashes; her music is melodic, dark, raw ˆ she reminds me of a punk-rock Portishead, with strong shades of Tori Amos. Moody, angry, desperate, surreal. She threw herself around the stage, wailed like a police siren, and at some point left her mic in favor of leaning into the audience and screaming directly at us with her jaw jutting out and her eyes squeezed shut. She held strained and broken notes impossibly long, fading out like a dying wind-up doll. Her set ended abruptly when she sang her last lyric and stomped offstage, knocking over her microphone with the neck of her guitar in a final, styptic clang. Much of the audience seemed put off by her, particulatly the men. She made my heart beat faster and my body shake.
You know how a good show can be a blur, so I won't give a play-by play; SleaterhyphenKinney arrived and rocked our socks the fuck off. Corin's voice was gold; bold, heartbreaking, half-polished and half-raw, wrapping fingers around my heart and slipping them between my legs. You wonder how she doesn't deflate like a ruptured balloon at the end of every song; she seems to throw every atom inside her into each note. Her voice has a sharp delicious bite onstage that isn‚t as apparent on their albums. Carrie has brought back her slo-mo kung fu, and was all over the stage she had a much more active presence here than at the last show I saw. They played for about an hour and a half, including the encore; the crowd twitched and flailed and danced and jumped and screamed and sang. Their encore included a cover of Promiseland by Bruce Springsteen in which Janet played harmonica. Afterwards, she said she saw a guy in the audience who sang along with every word. The floor felt like it was going to break under us; it bent in time with the pit. It was like standing on a trampoline while everyone around you is jumping; I was literally thrown an inch into the air every time it crested. Step Aside has supplanted Dance Song ‚97 as their bouncy set-ender,and brought us to a boil before the lights went up. The show was astonishing. I get retrospective butterflies thinking every time a piece of it accidentally replays in my head. My body still aches.
I'm more in love than ever.
So that's that.

BAMBOO TWO: Becky does Interpol:
I got to the Interpol show late, missing the first band. I opened the club door to a wave of heat and the smell of people pressed tightly together. I passed a woman trying to talk her way in and got my stamp. Say what you will about online fees (lord knows I have) but they do guarantee entry into sold out shows. The second band was just starting up as I worked my way forward and staked out my spot. I took a look around and man, it's like I was drowning in the sheer coolness of these people. Black frame glasses? Check. Ironic T-shirts? Check. Dyed black hair? Check. These were the scenesters, here to check out the latest buzz. The people who frequent Popscene and the illegal smoking bars. You know the people I mean.
Anyway. The second band was fairly similar in sound to Interpol, but without that thing. That thing ˆ be it the look, the hooks, the words ˆ that makes a band truly distinctive. It didn't help that the sound was kind of muddy. I couldn't make out a word the singer said and the music was distorted. Bad equipment? I don't know. It's rare that Bottom of the Hill has any technical difficulties, so maybe so. I can't tell you their name because I couldn't understand when they announced it. But it might have started with an E.
Sweaty Scratching Guy next to me was singing along with them and knew all the words so I considered asking him what their name was, but then he scratched his armpit. Not one of those I'm just adjusting my T-shirt, might as well take care of this itch real quick‚ scratches. No, we‚re talking under the sleeve, fingernails and all. So sorry. I didn‚t get their name. I was too busy being grossed out.
After they finished up a bunch of people went to the bar, so I moved up a little more and found myself next to Bob 'Bitch Tits' Paulson. Only with a mullet. And a beer belly. Nice guy, though. Seemed really into the band. Oh yeah, the band... The singer, Paul, looks barely old enough to have his braces off yet he opens his mouth and this incredible world weary, intense, Ian Curtis voice comes out. (Is saying "intense, Ian Curtis" redundant?) His right hand blurred as he closed his eyes and sang. I took my cue from him and closed my eyes too. I let the bass resonate right behind my breastbone and had to put my hand over my heart to keep it inside. Intense isn't the word. I forgot all the cool kids around me and got lost.
*This* is why I go to shows. None of the boys up onstage in their button down shirts and ties said much
more than "Thanks" or "Can I get more guitar in the monitor?" But they didn't need to. They only played a little over an hour, encore included, but I didn't feel cheated.
And I didn't even notice the parking ticket on my windshield until I got home.

THE BAMBOO REVIEW: While we've been off looking at collections of lace bobbins, bsn people have been keeping up their end in the going to music stakes. First (or, last, if you read from the top) is Becky Bamboo at the Wilco movies:
so yesterday was the last day they were showing "I am trying to break your heart" the documentary about Wilco and the making of YHF. I ran over after babysitting and barely made it.
most of the movie concerns the recording process..and, oh, the irony. every time jay bennett said something about the closeness of the band and their collaboration.. every line from their manager about how the album is a classic, the label's gonna love it, it's gonna take them to the next level... it was almost too much. cos, of course, wilco delivers the album and is subsequently dropped. jay is asked to leave the band. there is this uncomfortable scene where they are rehearsing 'jesus, etc' and after a take with both jay and jeff on guitars, jeff tells him that he thinks the two guitar attack is "obsolete" and the next take has jay on piano. ouch.
but then comes, not my feature film debut (that would be honeymoon in vegas), but my second appearance as an extra. I'm in the audience shots of the fillmore show at the end of the movie. every time they'd cut to the audience, I'd spot Yuen (who was standing right in front of me) and then I'd try to find me, but before I could it would cut away. but I know I'm there, right behind her. I'm gonna have to wait till I get the dvd and can use the pause button though.
I loved the shots of jeff with his family - the sequence where he's sitting on the tour bus with one of his sons and the son taps out a drum pattern on his legs and asks his dad to guess which song it is is the most adorable thing I've ever seen. once he guesses it right, it segues into the song being performed. great editing there. I also *loved* that they showed whole songs being performed. I almost clapped after each one.

SEE WHAT THAT KITTEN COVER HAS REDUCED DEBS TO?: As if the news that they're trying to pump another hour out of the long-laughter-dried well that is Ab Fab, they've managed to cajole Debbie Harry in for a spot of guilt-by-association. Can the Iggy Pop guest slot on Vicar of Dibley be that far off now?
Actually, probably not, since Robbie Williams is cropping up in what sounds like the best [nb: in case you can't tell, I'm being sarcastic] Anglo-american police sitcom since that one about the bloke from Scotland Yard who was sent to work with an American force - Something of the Yard, was it? Pausing a while only to wonder why a british star has to fly from LA to Hertfordshire to appear in an American show, can we also draw your attention to the "bidding for a part in the new Star Wars movie" bit in the report. We're not totally against the idea, but only if he appears as Jar Jar's bitch.

CONTENTS NOT INCLUDED: "Stars" to auction bras for charity, reports ananova. Of course, it's all in a good cause, and will allow stalkers a day or two off from hanging round Kylie's local dry cleaners hoping to get lucky, but it's just a pity Meg White couldn't get involved.

COMMERCIAL BREAK: The Sunday Times rightly described Elvis Costello as one of this nation's greatest artists, and delighted their readership by giving away a free CD of the great man. But why, then, did the advert celebrating this event choose to soundtrack itself with the snoozesome sounds of the Stereophonics rather than a spot of Elvis C? Like trying to drum up attendance at the Louvre by giving out postcards with Jordan on them, surely?
Talking of ads... we know its not the first commercial he's done, but are we the only people surprised at seeing Jarvis hanging from a lamp-post in the new BT Broadband advert? (We should point out Jarvis Cocker isn't replicating Benito Mussolini's last act, but actually dangling from the standard.) Since he's notoriously careful about where he puts his feet, we're wondering if he signed up to promote the wonders of big-pipe downloads as a way of waggling his arse at the major labels - Pulp now without a deal, and the good people at former home Vivendi-Universal known to be less than keen on the delights of unfettered high-speed access?

BACK IN SUEDE?: So, even as 6Music reports that John Squire has said he'd quite like a reunion of the Stone Roses "before he dies" (not that unsurprising, what with the boys all getting together to choose tracks on yet-another 'best of' the Roses - how many times has that bloody album been trotted out in a slightly different form now?), nme.com is reporting (i.e. "has read in the Daily Record") that Bernard Butler is more than happy to bury the hatchet with Brett Anderson. Blimey, it's going to be Oasis and Blur touring together by Christmas at this rate.
Actually, that sounds depressingly plausible, doesn't it?

RUMOUR IS AROUND THE WORLD BEFORE TRUTH HAS GOT ITS BOOTS ON: It's always hard enough to separate fact and fiction online, but its even harder when you've not been near the web for over a week. So, someone asks me if its true that Damon has approached Justine Frischmann to replace Graham Coxon in Blur, and I can only sit open jawed and muse vapidly. Damon trying to turn Blur into the All Star JJ72? It could be true, but... who knows? Or, indeed, by now, cares?

STRANGELY QUIET: Oddly, the large press coverage given to Fatboy Slim's Brighton Beach party failed to be repeated for the inquest into the death of the 26 year old who died - accidentally, according to the coroner. Lots of alcohol, lots of drugs - not because of lots of people, as the original reports suggested.
UPDATE: So we were catching up with Minor Fall, Major Lift and discovered that the whole debacle will come out on DVD - nice piece of reporting by Billboard, who manage to get Norm's label name wrong (although Fatboy on Slant rather than Skint appeals to us) and suggests that Normstock II (or was it Fatstock?) was responsible for the near-collapse of Brighton's public transport system. Um, no, that would be twenty years of privatisation policies, actually...

YOU GET BACK, YOU UNPACK, AND YOU'RE FEELING GOOD: then someone goes and posts the reason why Suede and Oasis never release albums at the same time, and you need a whole new holiday.