IT'S FRIDAY, TAKE OFF YOUR SHOES: We're still pretty excited that Ladytron are playing a homecoming gig at Electrovoodoo next month (well, partial homecoming), but if that wasn't enough, the Emperor Norton Records has got Quicktime versions of the whole of Light and Magic, the new album and reubens' dj reconstruction of the work. Light and, of course, magic.

OF COURSE, THIS WOULD PLEASE THE RIAA: A diverting tale of a musician attmepting to sell his own music only to be told by Ebay he can't, because he's violating his own copyright doing so provides another example of how the RIAA and Hollywood Studio axis of "me, all" is crushing the life out of the creative sectors beyond their snaky little grasps. Of course, although the guy involved feels like Ebay is picking on him, it's not, really. You can't really expect that a company like Ebay with its millions of listings and tiny staff are going to be able to process each advert by hand, and, rather than be kicked again and again by the RIAA, they've erred on the side of caution and set up a script which sees the words "CD-R", panics, and then delists the item automatically. The serious issue that's pointed up is that - just as the boot of copyright trampling down on filesharing doesn't just stop illegal and morally grey downloads, but chokes off everyone's rights to use the system for anything, because EBay live in craven fear of Hilary Rosen, they're turning away people who have a legitimate use for their network.
Of course, the RIAA could approach now and talk to ebay about a way round this to allow legitimate independent labels to auction their own music if they want to. But we bet they don't. Because, almost by accident, the big labels have found another way of frustrating acts who don't want to sign up with them.

HERE'S AN IDEA: In the latest Rajar audience figures, Mark and Lard have added three quarters of a million listeners, while their breakfast show colleague Sara Cox continues to bump along the bottom. Clearly, the answer would be to give Mark and Lard the breakfast show... oh, hang on.
What's especially amusing is that clearly Radio One don't have a clue why one of the few DJs to actually like music and act like its a privilige to be on the air is the only one whose audience is growing - "maybe its because students were tuning in during school holidays" muttered a spokesperson, thereby ignoring the facts that students don't have school holidays and, besides, since when did students having lectures timetabled stop them being at home listening to the radio? That the explanation "An upsurge in the number of alt-rock ads in the chart has probably helped tempt back a lot of Radcliffe's natural constituency" hasn't occured to them is interesting.

HERE'S AN IDEA: In the latest Rajar audience figures, Mark and Lard have added three quarters of a million listeners, while their breakfast show colleague Sara Cox continues to bump along the bottom. Clearly, the answer would be to give Mark and Lard the breakfast show... oh, hang on.
What's especially amusing is that clearly Radio One don't have a clue why one of the few DJs to actually like music and act like its a privilige to be on the air is the only one whose audience is growing - "maybe its because students were tuning in during school holidays" muttered a spokesperson, thereby ignoring the facts that students don't have school holidays and, besides, since when did students having lectures timetabled stop them being at home listening to the radio? That the explanation "An upsurge in the number of alt-rock ads in the chart has probably helped tempt back a lot of Radcliffe's natural constituency" hasn't occured to them is interesting.

PEACHES PINCHED: Moldy Peaches go into stasis, but tell RollingStone its not forever.

WE LIKE THE CHARTS PEOPLE: We've often wondered what the people who compile the Official UK Charts must be like - do they sit in a small room with a large abacus, a TV blaring The Box - for fun - and posters of Abs on the wall? Do they smile everytime they write "Gareth Gates" in copperplate handwriting on the rundown form? Is the thud of mail reporting a surge in popularity for Atomic Kitten's album enough to make them need to wee with delight? It seems perhaps not. The links page from the Official Official UK Charts Official website suggests that - rather - the staff must feel their jobs to be akin to being Adolf Hitler's butler. The band whose sites qualify for links from the OUKC site are Gomez, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Everything But The Girl, Haven and Mel C. Not a Nelly amongst them. Curious, eh?

DULL MAN BUYS DULL ALBUM: This story - Chris Martin makes midnight trip to buy David Gray albums - is just a Geoffrey Howe away from being the most dull thing to ever appear on the internet. We've often wondered what the point of David Gray is, and we're no nearer an answer.
What does puzzle us, though, is why HMV decided that Chris Martin deserved to be given his copies of the album for nothing? "He's probably the richest person here - let's not charge him for the albums, then; sod the people who've queued for hours in the pissing rain..."
Anyway, good marks to Chris Martin for giving the cash to the HMV staff to have a drink anyway. It's a reasonable thing to do, vicar.

MAYBE IT'S SOMETHING ABOUT GLASTONBURY: Hot on the heels of the usual annual licence problems down in South Mendip, and Manchester having to pull a stage show based on Glasto, now plans by the family Eavis to bring a charity event to the London Astoria looks like going implants-up as the Astoria has lost its licence. Now, we're no big fans of Mean Fiddler (as regular readers will know) but to close a venue down because there was a shooting incident outside the venue a year ago seems to be especially unfair and ill-considered.
Of course, last year Westminster City Council closed down Home over some sort of "Young people take drugs there" panic; and while the Council claims that its objections to the Astoria's licence is about ensuring the safety of people going to the venue, you have to wonder. Earlier this year, the leader of Westminster, Simon Milton, said "I recognise that it is ludicrous to ignore the fact that drug taking does occur but to implicitly encourage it by providing adequate supplies of drinking water needs careful consideration. " - or, in other words, the illegality of drugs means that a simple, effective safety measure should be denied them. But then nobody would be surprised at a Council which sold its graveyards for fifteen pence being mealy mouthed...

IT'S LIKE THE ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME TURNED INTO A COMMUNITY CENTRE: Well, we were wondering a while ago what had happened to the plans to revive the woefull National Pop Museum, and now we've found out. It's going to be turned into a Polytechnic Common Room. Fifteen million quids worth of lottery cash gone to create a subsidised bar and a pinball machine.
We're still not sure how the people behind the Pop Museum managed to get it so wrong, so quickly, so badly. We never liked the idea of putting it in Sheffield - "Def Leppard and Pulp came from here" always seemed like flaky logic to us, and as anyone who's ever tried to hitch to a gig there knows that its the most difficult city in the country to reach. Plus, Sheffield's last attempts to burn through an obscene amount of public cash in the shortest time available - the Student Games back in the 90's - had been such a dub that we were surprised they were being given a second go. But, as the mighty National Film, Photography and Television Museum in Bradford shows, provincial museums which have a clear subject and sharp ideas can thrive, even in places which Londoners might have trouble pointing to on a map. The conclusion can only be that the people in charge of the Sheffield collection didn't have a clue what they were doing. We do wonder, idly, where the people behind the project are now, although we expect the answer is "advising other cities on how to use regeneration funds" rather than "attempting to atone by doing community service."
And if you need proof that pop can work in a gallery context, we offer the wonderful Remix collection at Liverpool Tate earlier this year, and the British Library's celebration of fifty years of number ones.

WHAT A DIFFERENCE A DAY MAKES: Yesterday, we reported Christina as saying she won't do naked magazine shots because "there isn't a moral or visual reason for it."
Today, the new Rolling Stone is available online.
Can anyone explain the moral or visual reasoning behind this?

STILL, AT LEAST THEY DIDN'T HAVE ROBIN BANKS LET HIMSELF IN: The Charlotte Observer offers a cautionary tale of what can happen when you let a computer pick your music for you - WRFX-FM's syndicated John Boy and Billy show came out of the breaking news that the sniper had killed again into Another One Bites The Dust - thats except for affiliates, of course, who have a different set of songs dropped into the flow by a computer.
The executive producer of the show - Randy Brazell - regrets that it happened, but points out that the decision to play the song at that point had been taken "weeks ago."
What this shows, of course, is how letting computers do all the work is creating radio that doesn't have any connection with its audience, its market, or even its own programming. Now, of course, there's room for humans to execute human errors - such as in the Billy Connolly tale of a young Scot who attempted to play a tribute to the just-died Bing Crosby, forgetting the first line of Cheek to Cheek is "heaven, I'm in heaven" - but there's less room than when the show has been pre-programmed by a Windows PC weeks and weeks in advance. "When it played, I didn't even catch it" explains Brazell - and who can blame him, as simultaneously, the show was also playing Toby Keith and JJ Jackson. Obviously under such circumstances, you can't blame the show for not knowing it had dropped an enormous clanger - they've clearly got no interest in what they're playing, and couldn't care less about the quality; why would they be bothered about apropriateness as well?
There's nothing wrong in principle with syndication, nor with hard-disk playout. But shows that aren't even aware what music they're playing? Doesn't that smack of total contempt for the listener?

A CASE OF THE JITTERS: We liked the Milwaulke Journal-Sentinel's interview with Neko Case, even if the "alt-country singer can't sit still" headline sounded like a complaint rather than praise. But it's nice to read an article that explores how she avoided making a Giant Sand record rather than relies on the topless anecdote.

POP PRESS EXPANDS: Apparently the first ever A5 music magazine (obviously, fanzines don't count. Nor does Barfly. Or Bring It On) X-Ray is welcomed to the shelves by MediaGuardian. The answer to 'what do you get if you cross SleazeNation with X-FM almost certainly wouldn't be the magazine, but they are the two teams behind it. We'll put it in pop papers if there's ever a copy sighted in the North West.

ANSWERING OUR OWN QUESTION: Hang about, here's something worse than Tom Jones. Holly Vallance moaning about constantly seeing semi-naked pictures of herself, but then saying she won't stop doing it as "that's what got all the attention in the first place." If you get sick of seeing pictures of your perky breasts, lady, how do you think we feel? They're money in the bank to you, while all we get from them is a slightly dirty feeling - and not in a good way, either.
Later the same interview, the woman who's just admitted that her entire career is based on flashing, then defends miming rather than singing because "singing and dancing at the same time is too strenuous." Try taking some clothes off - that might make it easier...

NOT OFFICE SAFE. OR INDEED, ANY WAY SAFE: Can there be anything more unedifying than Tom Jones upbraiding women who throw unworn knickers at him on stage?
Am i the only one feeling a mite queasy?

I'M NOT SURE THIS HELPS: Spizzazzz offers an explanation for why nelly wears a band-aid on his face - apparently its "for his little brother who is in prison." I'm not sure the logic behind this unravels that easily in my mind - is he suggesting that those incarcerated in the US Prison service aren't allowed the luxury of sticking plasters, and so he is wearing an Elastoplast so that his brother might feel some sort of fraternal empathy working on some sort of postule? Is he suggesting that having a slightly itcy oblong of gum on his face means that he's suffering side by side with his brother? Is this like tying a knot in a hanky as an aide-memoire? "Yo, Nelly, where's your little bro?" "Hmm... can't remember... has he gone to the shops? Has he popped off for a fishing holiday? [Rubs face in thought] Oh, now I remember, he's in prison..."

MAYBE NOT THE BIGGEST AFTER ALL: Q's last set of circulation figures looked a bit scary for the music paper leader, but they're going to get worse. Turns out publishers EMAP made an "error" and had included a large number of giveaway copies in their ABC figures. It seems Q and Smash Hits could see their figures marked down to a large degree, while other titles in the EMAP stable will see smaller drops - if this will affect Kerrang's supremacy in the weekly market over NME isn't yet clear.
Meanwhile, CD:UK, the magazine tied in with the pisspoor Chart Show replacement of the same name, is to be folded in to TV Hits as interest in the title has slipped away as swiftly as Ant and Dec.

WHAT THE POP PAPERS SAY: Transatlantic Edition
Slightly later than usual, but we're sick, so sorry. And there's a lot, too:

tipping a hat of thanks to kellie, we’re able to flick through the current Punk Planet (Kellie sent it to us ages ago, it’s just that this is the first time since then we’ve been ill on a Wednesday and so are able to peruse properly). The frankly bemusing Vagrant Records debate/battle rages on on the letters pages - it seems to have become the Schleswig-Holstein question of the Punk World, only with slightly fewer people understanding the finer points. More entertainingly, Al Burjan reports on sharing a flight with Gwen Steffani and Gavin Rossdale - “Although their presence on the flight does not itself lessen the statistical probablitiy of a hijacking, it makes the possibility of a hijacking that much more exciting and entertaining-seeming.” There’s a twentieth anniversary appreciation of Cometbus (and, without wanting to slide into our usual bemoaning of the UK music writing scene, can you imagine a British zine staying round for a two decade party? In the 80’s, the answer would be “No, as the good writers get snapped up by the pop papers sooner or later”; now, it’s just a sad shake of the head. Sarah Dougher - ex-Lookers, solo artist and now - authour of a book on gays and lesbians in music, to make “artistic gay life accesible to young people. More music writers need to know about gay history in rock. It’s really important, especially in the punk movement.” (We guess this might be a cross-Atlantic cultural difference; is it possible to not be aware of the bi, gay and lesbian input into British pop?) As if to illustrate the point, Limpwrist’s Andrew Martini is asked a few pages on “How did a gay hardcore band come about as a concept”, as if being gay was the gimmick, and the expected answer should be “we were a band for six years, then we thought - gay! So, we buggered each other, and...” Jeff Guntzel delivers a twelve page report from Jenin - of course, you wouldn’t get that in the NME, but then you wouldn’t get it in the NME’s labelmates at Time, either. DeeDee Ramone is remembered with affection: “He said ‘I only play root notes, no runs, no scales, and I play them in a very violent style.’ Asked if he played any other instruments, he said ‘I have a keyboard, which i play in a very violent style.’”...

at the glossier end of the us market, Pink is on the cover of Maxim Blender, wearing what appears to be a Toto-Coello binliner cast off. Why is it in the UK Maxim spins off crappy health and fashion magazines, and the US edition spins off a music title? Could it be that the US readership of Maxim are actually mainly straight? Of course, Blender knows what its doing - with a former Q bloke at the helm and Felix Dennis’ money, it’s basically a Q with some the chin stroking replaced by women without much on - so Coldplay, and the new sassed-up Mandy Moore, then. It’s a mix that does sort of work. It reports that Bob Nastanovich, one time member of Pavement, now fills his days as an owner of thoroughbred racehorses; meanwhile, as one of NSync tries to become an astronaut - and that shows how far you have to go to top a colleague who’s shagged Britney - six NASA astronauts are attempting to travel in the opposite direction and have formed a band, MaxQ; Scott Strap, of god-rockers Creed, is asked if he’d let his son buy the Eminem Show: “No, absolutely not. Nothing against Eminem on a personal level, or the way he expresses himself, but i wouldn’t want my son listening to him.” Right, so you don’t actually have a problem with his material, but you still wouldn’t let your son have his album. Now, we’re not experts on parenting ourselves, but if our kids brought records we thought were unhealthy, we’d sit down and ask them why they wanted it, and explain why we’d rather they didn’t listen to it rather than issuing a blanket ban. But then, maybe we’d have kids that grow up with minds of their own, and that can be tricky, can’t it? Jennifer Love-hewitt says “I don’t drink, i don’t smoke. I’m an awful rock star” - she forgot to mention that she doesn’t make decent music and doesn’t do it except as a sideline , although those are more pressing reasons; “If you like the Strokes and the White Stripes, you’re probably working for the NME” (oh, alright, it really says you’ll also like Blondie and The Fall, which we wouldn’t think would neccesairily be a given); there’s the 25 Most Dastardly Rock Villains - amusingly putting the Wright Brothers at 24, for their part in the downfall of the likes of John denver, aaliyah, Buddy holly and so on, although it points out Orville Wright invented an automatic record changer. Number One villain is Mark Chapman, although they offer in his defense that he’d just finished reading The Catcher In The Rye, which, though true, isn’t as strong as “spared us the Beatles 25th Anniversary Reunion Tour.” The very thought that every Clear Channel Exec wanks with those words on a big poster in their mind’s eye is worth it...

and a big Pink piece, too. “The following morning some unexpected good news arrives - Lenny Kravitz has lost his voice”, starts one paragraph. That really is our idea of good news. Clearly, Pink thinks Kravitz is a bit rubbish; of their tour, she says “Its more of a double headliner - I’m too big to open for anyone these days.” She reveals her youthful obsession with Jon Bon Jovi - which explains why she used to hate herself in High School, or perhaps how. And, of course, there’s the gay question: “I did kiss a girl once. I was 13 years old. It was nice, but she left me for my brother... Anyway, I like Carey’s thing too much, so that pretty much rules out the whole lesbian thing, doesn’t it?” Perhaps, but how about the half-lesbian thing?

What’s funny about Blender is how like Q it is - the new band segment is called “New To Blender”; familiar names like April Long, Ben Mitchell and even Alexis Petredis pepper its pages; the review columns even look like Q Review. The “Who does [x] think she is’ column (in this instance, Marianne Faithfull) might lack the “who the hell” punch, but since they allow her to announce that her favourite cussing is “fucking cunt”, we don’t imagine that its a knee-bow to the Bible Belt readership) and the spine has a cryptic message competition. Indeed, if the cover had a picture of Bono or him out of Coldplay on, it would be Q...

back in Britain, and newcomer Snug has already got a spot of publicity off its revelation that Jarvis is going to move to France. This is a concept mag - although not a high concept: “Just as the Big Breakfast was a TV show broadcast from a house, Snug is a magazine from a pub” explains editor Nick Bradshaw - apparently happy to evoke a series axed due to a major lack of interest and to imply that most journalists don’t spend all their time in a pub anyway. Snug might have more problems, too - if the concept of a Snug has to be explained to the readership in the first issue, it might not have been the wisest choice of name (it’s a pity that other stalwart of northern pubs, the Select, has already been a magazine which has gone down with all hands.) More disturbingly, we found snug tucked between Investors Chronicle and Your Money on the Current Affairs rack, which can’t surely be the place to strike up a casual relationship with a reader...

So, the lad’s mag grows up, then. But not too much - There’s a picture of Denise Van Outen in her pants; there’s one of those articles that are clearly more fun to research than to read (in this case, some sort of Making Boats Out of Beer Cans thing); a photospread that struggles to not homoeroticise amateur boxing in any way; there’s four pages on Lisa Rogers in which she says “FHM is basically a jazz mag for teenagers without the guts to reach the top shelf” while leaning forward so we can see down her blouse...

So, what does Jarvis Cocker have to say besides “I’m off to France”? Actually, he’s charming on the subject of his wedding; and not being able to get the band to move through and start playing. They wanted coffee first, apparently...

On, then, to the nme, which has Queens of the Stone Age - neither interesting or attractive - on the front page...

news: how desperate is this - oasis’ hopes for america ever giving a fuck about them is now resting entirely on Stop Crying Your Heart Out appearing in a scene in Birds of Prey. “Any music used is set to become a cult hit” predicts the nme, missing the point that Oasis need more than cult status right now. “Radiohead benefitted from inclusion in Smallville.” Um... hadn’t the band already become favourites with Rolling Stone, Creem, the International Olympic Committee, the world and everyone in America first? And if being featured on a cult series is the key to mass market success, why the hell aren’t K’s Choice bigger than Shania? More importantly, bad cess to the nme news team for describing Batgirl as being “confined to a wheelchair”

other news: even more desperate than Oasis’ bids to get saved by Batgirl, the diminishing marginal returns on legs that are Fischerspooner are hoping that turning themselves into Glen Ponders to Kylie’s Alan Partridge is going to make someone care about them, too; Charlatans to split? possibly, possibly not; there’s coverage of the death of a fan at a Nelly gig; apparently the new Nirvana video is “genius” - although it looks like a clips show to us; oddly, the nme prints the West Yorkshire Police appeal for ‘have you seen these people’ with their faces blurred out; there’s a possibility that Norman Cook may yet do a third party on Brighton Beach if the fire and theft can be sorted out; Missy Elliot claims her weight loss is due to medical advice; Escapology is out on the internet; we think the nme are telling us so we can avoid it like a computer virus. And, yawn, yawn, Robbie Williams apparently recorded some of the tracks in the nude - unleashing his cock in more ways than one, then; Audioslave have sold their name to a “supergroup” consisting of Rage Against the Machine and Soundgarden types - hmmm, interesting that: the hugely anti-capitalist RATM falling back on sending lawyers with chequebooks to discover the Liverpool Audioslave’s price...

Roots Manuva chooses ten tracks which he could, you know, burn onto a CD, providing its for his own personal use - Barry White, Nate Dogg, Mobb Depp...

In the quotes column: “Some things can just knock you out, and a girl is one of them” says Chris Martin. Hotgwen, we knew you were a wuss, man, but you get beaten up by girls?

on bands: dj/rupture (um, a dj. with a rupture.) and kill city - primals supporting return of Lisa Moorish...

either craig nicholls talks more than the rest of the band, or the nme has decided that, really, we’re not that bothered about the rest of the Vines. The nme is, of course, right. Asked about his first girlfriend, Craig replies “That’s really hard.” What, was it dark?...

the lamest of all desperate journo questions - “where did you get your crazy name?” - is stretched out for an entire page; even asking The Streets and the Foo Fighters where their names come from. Next week: Where Do Stars Buy Their Plectrums?...

Cave In might be supporting the Foos, but they don’t let it go to their heads: “We still change our own guitar strings before every show.” Hey, keep those feet on the ground, lads - new strings *every* show? What are you, rockerfellas?

Queens of the Stone Age come across as rather likeable, amusing young men - they just look like twits and play turgid music, that’s all...

“I think the music we make means more to people like me than someone like Coldplay ever could” reckons Gary from The Bandits - well, yes, but since you’re in the band, you’d expect that, wouldn’t you?...

review time: lps:
nirvana - nirvana - “not closure, but nor should it be”, 9
lupine howl - bar at the end of the world - “one eye on self-destruct”, 8
holly valance - footprints - “lack of ideas and duff ballads”, 6
puressence - planet helpless - “more reminiscent of vegan rockers James than Manchester heavyweights”, 4
manic street preachers - forever delayed - “like remaking A Clockwork Orange without the the ultra-violence” - 0 (“for becomings your enemies”)
add n to (x) - loud like nature - “a real throbbing ehadache”, 5

sotw - pearl jam - i am mine - “oddly refreshing”
others - moby - in this world - “just another punk who sold out”
madonna - die another day - “no tune, only the distant echo of a once-great career tumbling into the abyss”

live - liars - las vegas - “something subversive slithers”
supergrass - nottingham rock city - “the cartoon supergroup are back”
death in vegas - glasgow qmu - “you wonder how Fearless could let his group become so one-dimensional”
british sea power - liverpool uni - “the sheer beauty is inescapable”

in angst (oh, alright, nmemail) someone points out that pete from the Libertines looks like lousie from sleeper. Except, we’d image, with a smaller cock...

and finally, next week it’s the 50 coolest people in music. if Bono is in it, we’re taking Kings Reach Tower like Chechen rebels...

BJORK BJORK: We're not sure if its self-aggrandising to the nth degree, or a serious attempt to be comprehensive, but Bjork is set to release a six CD boxset stretching back to a time long, long ago - before John Leslie appeared on Blue Peter, before The Sugarcubes even. The PR puff uses phrases like "experiments in rhythm" and "wrote when she was a fifteen year old girl", so we're imaginging that it'll be one for the most serious fans.

SHIVER, IT'S TIMBERS: Justin Timberlake tells all about his music to BBC News. It is, of course, sadly hilarious. Asked about tabloids reporting his love life, he spurtles< font color=purple>"It's real hard having your private life written about and speculated on by total strangers but as I've grown up I've learnt to not let it bother me and to concentrate on my music. People will write and believe what they like but as long as they appreciate me musically, that's all that counts." Mmmm. Is this the same Justin Timberlake who recently traded Britney Oral Sex tales for plays of his dreadful single?
And what advice for young people, Timbers - what should they do? "I think it's important to follow your dreams and obviously most importantly to believe in yourself. " Right. Shagging the most famous female star of her generation is a big one, too, though, isn't it? If Timberlake is hoping the BBC are going to be a staging post in his route away from the shadow of Ms Spears, he's going to have a cow when he reads the piece - there's three photos; two of him and Britney; the other is of Chris Martin. And the standfirst starts "Justin Timberlake - the man formerly known as Britney Spear's boyfriend..." It must be a cold life - when most people sit at home wishing they could be lapping at Britney's Spears inner thigh, it's a pipe dream. When Justin does it, it's a rememberance of things past. And everywhere he goes, no matter how much he wants to talk about his new song - ((Just a guy, chilling out, hanging with his friends, I wanted to keep it real and focus on the dancing and club vibe.) - he still gets played as 'Britney's ex makes a record; description makes it sound like a Budweiser ad' as the result. Apparently, he's fronting up some anti-drink driving campaign, and he falls into the usual sleb trap there, too: "I really hope it makes a difference. I feel that if we can change one person's views or save at least one life then it will have been a success." really? You're putting in all this time , other people are pouring money into the campaign, and your only target is "changing one person's views?" If that's really all you wanted to do, why not take the cash, go down the nearest city centre, and say to the first guy about to climb into a car on a pub carpark "We'll buy your car off you; you get a taxi instead." Surely, if you're bringing in a person with a high profile (you have, after all, seen Britney's innards) and buying up media space, the very lowest aim should be to change hundreds of people's attitudes - otherwise why bother with a mass media campaign at all?

MAKES THE ROBSON GREEN COMEBACK SEEM LIKE A NEW ALBUM FROM RIDE: Sainsburys and Friends Reunited are trying to engineer a return by the St Winifreds School Choir. The St Winfireds, of course, did the Christmas Number One There's No-one Quite Like Grandma, which sold purely on emotional blackmail alone (If yer granny didn't get given one for Christmas, it would have been the equivalent of sending her a small, gift-wrapped box saying 'My heart is dead towards you, old lady') and provided the mysterious backing on Brian and Michael's Matchstalk Men and Matchstalk Cats and Dogs in 1978. For some reason, this song - which took perhaps the greatest exponent of British visual folk art and reduced him to a comedy northerner who didn't paint properly - had the gangly toothed kids repeating "alley-alley-o" in the background, suggesting that the song had probably been written originally about Turner, and as such made some sense to refer to 'the big ship sailed on the...' Why do Sainsburys want to reopen these old wounds? I almost feel like ripping up my Nectar card in protest.

ERASE AND REWIND: The dream of an expensive, clunky new-ish technology that would make us buy all our collection over again is - seemingly - at an end, with Dataplay's local paper the Rocky Mountain News reporting the RIAA-favoured It Does What We Let You format-manufacturers have filed for (security-protected) bankruptcy. Meanwhile, Phil Spector has been told he doesn't need to pay any royalties at all to the Ronettes by a New York Court. Yes, Phil, you have no legal obligation at all. But presumably you wouldn't want to be forever remembered as a tight bastard, would you?

AIN'T NOBODY: And while Janis Ian (see below) frets over the delivery methods, it's fallen to Chaka Khan to lament the quality of content. Talking at a press conference in Malaysia, Chaka Chaka Chaka Khan suggested that the modern music industry is so much soup, so little meat: "Sometimes I wonder what business this is I'm in today - is it a circus, a fashion show or what? It's like anybody who has a look can be a singer or entertainer now. The talent is almost not necessary anymore. I think a lot of people are out there making videos, singing and making a lot of money based on nothing but a cute shape and a pretty face."
Christina Aguilera was, presumably, unavailable to claim her right of reply.

JANIS IAN WRITES FOR YOU: Almost by accident, it seems, Janis Ian has become the Naomi Klein of the music-download community. Yesterday, she even got to contribute a piece to USA Today, attacking the music industry's "falsehood" that they're fighting the battle against file-sharing on the artist's behalf. Familiar enough to anyone who follows these things, but nice to see the attack against the RIAA moving beyond the web into traditional media.

MORE ACCURATE THAN REPORTED: The apparently dim-headed stage play based on Glastonbury (someone on one of the review shows at the weekend said it was apparently written by someone whose experience of the Festival extended to watching a few hours of it on BBC Choice) has suddenly got given a burst of extra veracity. The local council's banned them from putting it on.

CAN YOU NOT TAKE A HINT?: Frankly, Napster is starting to become the Rolling Stones of the dotcom world, and doesn't know when its best to just take a bow and leave the stage. Billboard is reporting that "the troubled music swapping service" ([c] every journalist, ever) has got a USD200,000 loan approved which will allow it to limp on for a few more weeks before someone else buys up the assets of the company - which must surely by now consist solely of three Penitum II computers and a file marked "Grumpy letters from Lars." Look, we loved Napster, every little bit of it, and it was fun. But now we're at the stage where it's like having to admit you need to put your parents in a home. Accept it - napster's place is on the Wayback machine, not in the future.

JUSTIFFICATIONS: Missing the point that the main problem with her new video is that its bland rather than sexy, Christina Aguilera has told Yam (German magazine) that her video is "indecent, not pornographic" and that she's "not interested in moralists." Although, oddly for someone who's not interested in moralists, she says she won't do naked magazine shots because "there isn't a moral or visual reason for it." Actually, Christina, there is a visual reason for it, it's so people can see your body. She continues "At the end of the day I am a musician, an artist and not a model", which also seems to be curious - which of the two Christinas - the musician or the artist - is sititng on the chair giving the blow job to the water bottle in the Dirrty clip?

IS THE WORD THAT YOU HEARD: Okay, who held the monkey's paw and wished for a third part of Grease? because it looks like its going to happen now, according to Undercover. Olivia Newton John and John Travolta are both pencilled in, providing the script is up to at least the high standards of Grease 2, and it seems ONJ is quite excited by the prospect. The only thing that we're not able to work out is Undercover say the film is "set in the present, 25 years after from the original." But 25 years ago when the film came out, it was set in the 50's. So, either the film has to be set forty odd years after the original, or else in the 1980's. And, frankly, the thought of having it set in the era of big hair and red braces and just is too much humanity to contemplate...

THE WORLD MARKET - CONSIDERED: As ever, the gap between what the record companies tell you as they smash down your firewall and poke about in your hard drive for illegal mp3s, and what they tell each other as they sit in "Mercedes with heated seats which make you feel you've wet yourself" (as today's FT put it) can be a wide and scary place. Take, for example, the IFPI Recording Industry In Numbers. Obviously not the whole thing, that would be too much knowledge in the hands of a mere consumer, but even the abstracts make interesting reading. Something not mentioned much in the fretting of how poorly the multinationals are doing is the growth of local acts - in France, in 2001, 17 out of the top 20 selling acts were French, and in America, ninety-three out of every hundred records sold were by an American. Across our little blue planet, 67.5% of music bought was locally made - up from 64% in 1997. Maybe the age of the international act is drawing to an end? This seems to be backed up by the figures which show the Top 10 music markets are now buying 84% of all recorded music.
Further backing up the seemingly obvious that DVD has eaten into CD sales at least as much as downloading has, the music video market is described as "soaring" - fifty per cent of these sales on DVD.
While Britain may be falling behind on selling records overseas, there's no let-up in our rate of buying them - in 2001, records bought per head in the UK was the highest anywhere on the planet - four discs for every man, woman and child. Next came Americans. Now, to someone who can't understand the concept of going into a record shop to buy a record (rather than some records), four may seem a bit on the mimsy side. But bearing in mind that my Dad hasn't bought a record since I persuaded him that Isn't Anything by My Bloody Valentine was all I wanted for Christmas, that doesn't sound quite so bad, really...

HERE, MY DEAR: An interesting thread over on the RollingStone message boards debates the best Break Up albums of all time, ever. Some of the choices border on the peverse - Linkin Park? Isn't emotional trauma bad enough? It reminds us of the time that we got dumped, moped home, and stuck on the Smiths, only to realise that she wasn't worth that much upset and so downgraded to The Wedding Present.