THE NEW DUMBING DOWN: Loretta Lynn and James Brown recieve honours in the US from George W's ole pop. The NME headline? "White Stripe's Pal Honoured By US President". They also explain that when James Brown was asked how he felt and he said "I feel good", it was a reference to his hit "I Feel Good."

"BUT MR. WILLIAMS, WE DON'T OWN A WOODEN PLANE": First signs of Robbie Williams developing a Hughes Complex to go with his huge ego, as he insists on toilet seat covers on his Australian tour to avoid "germs." We're sending him a whole bunch of face masks for Christmas, and a card with the words of Reggie Perrin - "I think Howard Hughes was rather too trusting using toilet paper to walk on..."

MR. SHADY... YOU CAN TAKE THIS AS A WARNING: So, the Secret Service have spent a couple of days thinking about it and have produced a statement about the Eminem lyric about "rather seeing the president dead":

"The Secret Service has no current plans to open an investigation into this matter [but we are] concerned about communications that can be interpreted in a manner perhaps not intended by the artist, and the potential peripheral impact that such lyrics can have on other individuals. The Secret Service takes every potential threat against the President seriously. We don't have the luxury to do otherwise."

Oh, for God's sake. No wonder there were people in Washington who believed in the weapons of mass destruction - if the authorities there believe that a bloody lyric in an Eminem song is something that has to be taken "seriously" as a "potential threat" against the crayoning kid in the White House, how can we expect them to sift any intelligence reports with any degree of sophistication?

HEY HEY HOMOPHOBIA: Why did Bounty Killer cancel his London date? Was it - as the venue say - because he "missed his flight from Jamaica?" Or was it because he knew that Detective Chief Inspector Clive Driscoll of New Scotland Yard’s hate crime unit, the Diversity Directorate, was planning to have a chat with him over his virulently homophobic lyrics? We might never know the truth, but we like to believe that Mr. Killer will find himself being known as the chap who shot his mouth off about how gays should be executed, but was too much of a wuss to go to a place where he might have had to cross a picket line of homosexuals.

If you're pissed off that Mr. Killer's inability to get on that plane has robbed you of a chance to protest, however, there is something you can still do to register your disgust at his stinking lyrics. Return your Bounty Killer records, or demand they be taken off the shelves. And before you chuckle "But I don't have any Bounty Killer records", you might want to check you haven't bought that No Doubt singles collection. Because, unbelievably, Gwen Steffani and the boys chose to work with Bounty Killer on 'Hey Baby.' Their reasons for helping out a man who calls for the slaughter of homosexuals we can't begin to guess. You might want to ask if you want to buy music that will be helping engorge his bank account.

AND THIS IS NEWS?: We're not entirely sure why any journalist thinks 'Ozzy was wiped out on pills during The Osbournes' is a news story - what next? 'Kelly an untalented hanger on?' 'Sharon's talk show not very good'?

Of course, the genuine news is that Ozzy has had major surgery after a quad-bike accident at their actual Buckinghamshire home. Sheesh, the lengths people will go to in order to avoid having to do a promotional tour with their daughter. When it's Kelly. Apart from the pain and serious injuries, Ozzy is probably going to be embarrassed at being caught out playing with a child's toy.

It is good news for Bert McCracken, though - apparently he was going to get all beaty-up on him for dumping Kelly. Kelly thought it was odd that Ozzy should be so violent about this, but we're guessing he was pissed off that Bert hadn't whisked you off out of the house, Kelly.

AND ANOTHER ONE...: In not so much a "Me too" bid as a "You as well?" Earthlink announce they're to do secure downloads, ninety nine cents a time. They're claiming 350,000 songs, but really we're starting to raise a quizzical eyebrow at these large library numbers being quoted...

ANOTHER REASON TO FLY FROM MANCHESTER: Pinched from The Guardian's Northerner:

With Christmas a-coming, passengers at Manchester airport have struck
a blow for frazzled shoppers everywhere by banning Slade's 70s classic Merry Xmas Everybody from belting out on the tannoy.

When, in an operation called Project Noel, airport staff surveyed more than a thousand passengers about how the festive season at the airport could be improved, they found that most thought not having Noddy Holder yelling "It's Chriiiistmas!" in the checkout queue would be a good start.

Instead of Slade, travellers would like to hear a little light carol singing as they set off for foreign climes. "We are constantly striving to improve the surroundings for our passengers and unfortunately, we simply could not ignore their concerns over the Slade song," said an airport spokesman.

CHINESE ROCK STARS UNABLE TO PULL A HAMILTON: In Britain last week, the oily Hamilton couple scored a rare victory over the legal system when they escaped a fine for speeding because they claimed they "couldn't remember" which one was driving at the time. Yes, Neil Hamilton used to have the cheek to make legislation to control all our lives and yet the pair are now so beyond the pale they're happy to jerk themselves at the court system rather than admit their mistake and pay up. Let's hope justice catches up with them in the way it has with Hong Kong pop start Nicholas Tse, who's just had his appeal rejected - he'd been convicted of conspiring to pervert the court of justice by getting someone else to stand in for him following a car crash. Tse is going to have to do 240 hours community service to make ammends.

RAPOBIT: Soulja Slim, former No Limit rap artist, was shot outside his mother's house in Gentilly, New Orleans at the end of last month. As well as solo work for No Limit and his own Cut Throat Committy label, he guested on albums by Snoop Dogg, C-Murder, Master P and the Dirty South Boys. His funeral - last saturday - was originally planned as a private memorial but was changed to a public celebration of his life following a change of heart by his family.

IGNORE IT, IT'S JUST A MIXER: Having successfully overseen the transformation of football from a muddy, rough sport and obsession into a prime-positioned marketing tool, Coke really is planning on doing the same to music. With the bubbles from the Top 40 sponsorship deal still bursting in the soft flesh of our noses, Coke is trumpeting its soon-to-launch download site - it's promising a quarter of a million tracks (although it won't say which or by whom, which makes us smell an attempt to try and buy some leverage in negotiations) and it hasn't said what format they'll be in. But the bottle cap has been thrown into the ring.

Curiously, the need to own a credit or debit card means they'll automatically be excluding an enormous segment of the online, music-loving audience, the under-18s.

Coke claim that people have been telling them that they find downloading music "confusing" - thank god it wasn't any simpler, eh, BPI, else everyone would be at it? - and they've been told that people want simple, legal downloads from a "brand they trust." But they've decided to have a crack at it nevertheless.

YOU'RE INVESTIGATING?: We're sure they're not; they surely wouldn't; only a bunch of half wits with nothing better to do would... oh, they are: the Feds are investigating if Eminem should be prosecuted for the line "(Fuck) money, I don't rap for dead presidents. I'd rather see the president dead" in a rap which has popped up online somewhere.

To save the FBI some time and money, we can demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt that he doesn't mean this bit:

"I'd rather see the president dead"

Because he sure as hell is lying his cash-drenched ass off when he says this bit:

"Fuck money, I don't rap for dead presidents."

You'd be more likely to see Eminem doing a freebie down the Marsh Lane Community Centre than you would him taking a pot-shot at Bush. And that ain't ever gonna happen.

SO, THAT'S WHAT A GRAMMY IS WORTH, THEN: USD15,500, according to the price raised at auction for Peabo's Grammy. Someone who bought one of his gold records is going to give it back to him, we guess the rest of the stuff will turn up in Hard Rock Cafes around the planet over the coming weeks. Oddly, the IRS won't say how much the sale raised, despite it being a public auction and them being there to serve the public and all. And someone could have just sat there with a calcualtor.

THEY ACTUALLY HAVE A BRANCH AT GATWICK, YOU KNOW: Pierre, you might want to look away now because we've got a fresh box of evidence of Justin Timberlake's not coolness delivered. Firstly, shopping in Harrods is not something anyone of any poise does anyway - it's the Madame Tussaurds of retailing; the green and gold bag somewhere between a Kiss Me Quick hat and a cheap model of the Eiffel Tower on the scale of slightly shameful tourist tat; more importantly, there is a four letter word that starts with 'c' and describes someone who insists that a shop be kept open until three in the morning for them, and it ain't cool, honeypie. Those people actually have their own homes and families they'd rather be with instead of being forced to work late so some behatted chap can squander the cash they really should be squirreling away for their retirement. I'm sure they chuckled as you and your hangers-on trumpeted around the store, and around, and around, as the tubes stopped running and the buses dropped to night-bus frequency. You could have shopped online, Justin, but maybe that wouldn't have let you live out your Princess Diana fantasies.

IT'S THE REAL THING: So the Coke Top 40 row rumbles on, although we're bemused as to why media Guardian is making so much fuss about the BBC knowing in advance of the annoucement that the deal was being made - it doesn't mean they were lying when they said they "were not a party to" the deal - which would have meant they were involved in the negotiations. For clarity, No Rock is not a party to the decision to extend Zimbabwe's suspension from the Commonwealth, but we are aware of it. And, as we said last week, we can understand the Commercial Radio sector being upset by the apparent backdoor commercial, but to demand an inquiry now is just opportunist - if they have a problem with the same principle being applied to the Coca Cola Chart as to the Barclaycard Premiership, why didn't they raise this at the time the chart first took a sponsor rather than the new deal was struck? Unless it's a specific objection to the nature of the company, in which case we look forward to Capital et al clearing their schedules of ads for Coke, Pepsi and - of course - McDonalds.

BRRING BRRRING? NO, BLLLING BLLLLING: Another way for the mobiles to screw cash out of its willing dupes ("Another innovation in the mobile phone industry"): T-Mobile customers can now choose what they hear while they're waiting for someone to answer their phone. It's already made GBP59 million in fifteen months in South Korea, and doubtless it'll shovel cash into the pockets of British phone operators in exactly the same way.

CLIFF FACE: Sir Cliff explains why he lent Blair his holiday home in Barbados:

All I know is that a human friend of mine looked as though he needed a rest. I said 'please, if you can find the time to go, I won't be there, but feel free to use the place.' I may not offer that again, but I was happy that I did because he did benefit from it physically.

Of course, the physical benefit is since he returned, he's been hospitalised with a dodgy heart and - according to Paul Routledge, writing in the New Statesman, senior Labour politicians have been murmuring that he's wearing man-nappies. Such are the health benefits to be accrued from staying at Cliff Richard's place. If only you could bottle it, eh?

I'M MANDY - WHY ME?: As if the daughter of Chris DeBurgh winning Miss World wasn't suggestion enough that the recent solar flares appear to have destroyed the critical facilties of the world, Westlife go and win Record of the Year with their cover version of Mandy. Let's not even risk the cerebal bruising that the level of banging heads onto desks that allowing a straight cover version to even compete in the competition, but instead recognise that not only is Mandy by Westlife not the record of the year, it's not even the definitive version of the song. (The karaoke version sung by Angel is [mp3], if you're wondering)

BUJU BOO-BOO: We wouldn't normally be hoping that someone caught with a bit of weed would be sent down, but when it's charming homophobe Buju Banton whose thirty marijuana plants get discovered by police, we find ourselves imagining him trying to explain his belief that homosexuality is wrong and that gay men should be shot up on D-Wing. He's in front of the magistrates today.

POP STARS IN REDUCED CIRCUMSTANCES: You have to wonder what sort of "work commitments" would have lead Hannah Spearritt to cancel a charity date at the Vauxhall Holiday Park in Yarmouth. After all, if your diary is so empty you're accepting engagements at a caravan park, presumably the sort of thing that would keep you away would be the chance of an extra shift at Burger King, or maybe your mate Frank needing someone to make sure nobody pinches his cap while he's doing Streets of London at the entrance to Baker Street Tube.

Perhaps the saddest thing about the story is the Eastern Daily Press worrying about the disappointed fans - some of whom were coming from "as far away as Essex."

GOD HATES POD: You strut your guts out in a bid to be devout, and where does it get you? Not only have POD been eclipsed as the most popular Christian band by Evanesence, but it turns out Christian stores are refusing enmasse to stock their stuff. Not because of the music (or so it's claimed), the main stumbling point is the cover art. Apparently, it's occult. Honestly. This from a business founded on the back of a chap being hammered to a big wooden cross.

BUT YOU STILL CATCH MY EYE: Fonda, of whom we couldn't be - aha ha ha - fonder - have got into the holiday mood by offering a download of their take on Last Christmas from their website. Merry whatname.

IT'S A MYSTERY: Toyah's image was already pretty tarnished by her Nimbyish Daily Mail style campaign against having refugees near her house, and now she's gone and made it worse. Last night's Little Friends on Channel 4 (which is basically Chris Morris style interviews done by children) saw the former Punkette chatting away to a kid believing she was there as a participant for a programme about Christianity. The child asks her something along the lines of "Since heaven is so great, if you're having a bad day would it be a good idea to kill yourself?" and Toyah, without missing a beat or dropping the slightly patronising, sing-song voice she'd been talking down to the interviewer with all the way through, simpers "Oh, no, because if you commit suicide you go to hell anyway." Cheers, Toyah.
Toyah is appearing in Snow White at the Canterbury Marlow Theatre.

CASH TO PEER TO PEER: The Distributed Computing Industry Association (which is, basically, Kazaa and a couple of smaller peer to peer operators) have come up with a nifty idea - why don't they collect a flat fee off file sharers and use it to compensate record labels for uncleared file sharing? You can see why they'd want to - imagine the turnover, never mind it allowing a truce with the RIAA - but the imposition of what amounts to a TV Licence style cover charge (which works for broadcasting within a defined state boundary, but would be a nightmare to adminstrate with an international medium) starts to make their previous arguments - about how lots of the file sharing on their networks is of stuff that people have a right to, and how they can't be responsible for what's being swapped within their network - look like fibs at the very least, as they now seem to be going "We'd take a payment from everyone and we'd be able to make sure the money went to the artists whose tracks are being swapped, even though this time last year we were saying 'well, how can we know what's being swapped?'"

Meanwhile, The Recording Industry Association of America said peer-to-peer networks must prevent users from trading copyrighted works and stop making pornography available to minors if they want to be taken seriously, echoing a letter sent by several U.S. senators last month. "Until the larger industry accepts the recommendations recently outlined by six respected U.S. senators, there will continue to be questions about how seriously they want to become legitimate," RIAA spokeswoman Amy Weiss said.

Erm... this would be the trade association representing labels who in the UK have signed up for the Playlouder ISP which would be using those file-sharing networks, would it? Why is it they're riddled with child porn and illegitimate if they're being used in the US, but fine and dandy in the UK?

BEWARE THE CROWDS: As a New South Wales mall cancels an appearance by Australian Pop Idol winner Guy Sebastian (which just sounds like a name Velvet Goldmine would have used if it had been based on a book by E M Forster), he plans to fly to England for the frightening World Idol finals and - according to his spokesperson - "to open British bank accounts, which is difficult at the best of times." Eh? Difficult at the best of times? Maybe if you have trouble answering questions like "name" and "address", and perhaps having your postcode in a different format might make it trickier, but it's hardly like trying to apply for Indefinite Leave To Remain. And we're curious as to why he's trying to open up accounts in the plural - is he expecting to be earning a lot of money here soon? If so, we hope he's got a job lined up at a London pub, as we can't see his wafer slim talent turning into a massive payday for him.

He says that he's excited by his role in World Idol, as it'll give him the chance to show the world that Australians aren't all crocodile wrestling ockers. Guy, sweetness, we've met Jason Donovan and Rolf Harris. We know that to be the case.

FRANKLY, I'M NOT HP: What's more rammed than the Woolworths video department at Christmas (as well-meaning grandparents try to understand the difference between between the DVD, DVD special edition, VHS and soundtrack CD formats?) Why, the download market, of course, and now comes news that HP are planning to launch a music download service. They're keeping tight-lipped about what it's actually going to involve, because - they say - they're tweaking the design to set it apart from the rest of the market. Hmm. Okay, then.

And, just a quickie - we hate to be fair to the music industry, but it's not really true to say (as David Teather does in this article) that " the music industry itself has focused on closing down the internet as a means of distribution" - not for the last nine months or so, at the very least. Admittedly, they still want to crush anyone not giving them large chunks of cash to them, and it took them five or six years to accept that downloading would continue regardless of what they wanted, but the labels have, at long last, come to terms with the internet being some sort of distributive means.

THE SIMPLE LIFE: Reading the reviews of Democrazy, we're struck suddenly by the similarity between Damon Albarn and Paris Hilton. Reports from those who've sat through the demo-noodling album state that at the end, Damon does a little piece along the lines of "that's Democrazy for you, all over, goodnight folks." Which - just as the final scenes of at least one of the Paris Hilton sex video clips does with its "smile for the camera," makes the claims that Paris had no idea these things were being taped seem a little hard to swallow - implies that rather than being some rough sketches that Damon decided to make available, Democrazy was, in fact, conceived as a project for release all along. With that name. And if that's the case, then it makes the whole scheme something different to that which we were lead to believe - because if the plan was to record a lo-fi album to be put on sale under a truly dreadful punning moniker, then rather than showing us the genesis of a musical project (which is what Damon loftily claimed), what we've got is the culmination of a plot to convert the lowliest of base metals - a half-drunk late night spot of musical masturbation - into limited edition gold. And, in turn, the spinnage that we're not getting a proper album but this daylight-onto-magic exploration of the process must have come with the sober realisation that even as a lo-fi album, it doesn't meet the expected quality standards.

NEWS FROM THE STORES: We're a little bit puzzled by this offering from Marks & Spencer:



It's clearly a tshirt aimed at the young girlies market with a singer and labelled "Dynamite Girl." Now, it could just be a coincidence, but if it isn't - surely it's not Marks & Sparks trying to hook itself up to last year's Ms Dynamite upward spiral, is it? No, it must just be a total and utter coincidence. Because certainly this:



... isn't an attempt to drag the 80's Smiths-worshipping artschool band into the bedwear department.

Meanwhile: Could this have been where those Quality Street green triangles realised that sweets can go solo?:

HOW THE MUSIC INDUSTRY WORKS: There's an interesting piece from Associated Press about the implications of that 50 per cent share of Murder Inc owned by Vivendi through Island Def Jam. Funnily enough, Island Def Jam's Lyor Cohen seems really reluctant to chat about it. Even more strangely, during the trial where the connections became public knowledge, Cohen claimed he "couldn't remember" if he sat with Irv Gotti on the board of Murder Inc. Despite this apparently awful failing memory, and the trial judge described Cohen as "morally reprehensible," and the expectation of a money-laundering case washing up against Murder (now "The") Inc's front door, Doug Morris, Universal's head of music says that the verdict "should in no way detract from the incredible accomplishments of Lyor at Island Def Jam." It seems a curious way for a public company to be doing business. Even more curious that Universal, as a member of both the RIAA and BPI, are happy to endorse their industries campaigns against music pirates on the grounds that those fake CD sales are little more than fronts for money laundering, while apparently being in business with a label being investigated for the exact same crime in the US. Of course, no case has yet to be brought, but we hope the confidence Universal has in the link with the Inc isn't about to leave it exposed to charges of, you know, that hypocrisy stuff.

WOULD A 'BEEN BETTER IF SHE'D STUCK ON THE PILL' OBSERVATION BE TOO STRONG?: We know that nobody would be interested in the incident if it hadn't been Loretta Lynn's son who got pissed and killed his friend by driving drunk - except those directly involved - but since it's coming up to the time of year when people seem to swap rational judgement for pissed-up luck, it's probably salutary to reflect on the case before heading out for the office party.

COMING FEBRUARY/MARCH NEXT YEAR: Yo La Tengo and Gorky's Zygotic Mynci. The proverbial bad hands at scrabble - together at last.