ELVIS' JEWELS... GONE: In a flash raid, thieves broke into the Elvis-A-Rama museum and stole nearly 80 per cent of the Presley-related jewellery on display. Curious... the jewellery is distinctive, so it would be impossible to sell it without the buyer being aware where it came from; that suggests it would have been stolen to order by a collector. But what self-respecting collector would have the cash to afford such a crime, and yet would have such shit taste as to want to pay loads for a bunch of Elvis tack? We have no idea.

Instead, we just feel compelled to run this picture again:

OFF THE HOOK... IN FLORIDA AT LEAST: The prosecution in the Florida child porn case against R Kelly has dropped the charges, following the judge's ruling that the pictures that formed the basis of its case were obtained illegally. As we pointed out last week, this is a bit of a pyrrhic victory for Kelly, who maintained his innocence of the charges; rather than being cleared in open court, he's now not facing charges on a technicality which is always going to leave a bit of a bad smell hanging over him. Perhaps the Chicago case, which is still steaming ahead, will give him a chance to clear his name forever. Perhaps.

VOICES FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE: So, Kylie believes that Michael Hutchence talks to her from beyond the grave - we wonder what that conversation would be like? "Could you tighten the lid on my coffin a little more?"

Kylie also believes she's had more than one life, but she's not very advanced in the number of reincarnations she's had - which is almost certainly true, we reckon her career has flatlined about three times already and yet she's still around, although it's starting to look like her entertainment soul might have passed through its last incarnation.

DIGIMUSIC ROUND-UP: We know that it can't help trying, but Microsoft's bid to outgun the iPod seems doomed from the start, if only because Microsoft isn't a brand name that people really want to be linked with. It's the brand that drives your computer at work, it's the brand on Excel spreadsheets - it's never going to have the groove or cachet of Apple.

In other news, Sony picked up a huge gun and blew its own foot off at the knee by announcing that its music download service is going to use a Sony-only format linked in with its new generation of digi-walkmen. Do these people do even rudimentary research?

NOTHING CHILLS THE BLOOD LIKE: ...the words "actor turned singer." Minnie Driver, don't make us hate you.

POP IDOL DISCOVERS MUSIC BUSINESS BUTT-MEAN, EXPECTED TO MOVE ON TO 'RAIN WET, LOVE HURTS' IN LATER LESSONS: Normally, we'd muster a little bit of sympathy for a musician who had their dreams tramped all over by the music industry, and who discovered that all the money she thought she was earning was actually going to be sucked straight back by her record label. But when, like Tiffani Wood, they're just winners of Pop Idol show - she was part of Bardot, the first Australian winners, we find it tricky to even pretend our eyes are moist.

GLAAD HANDING 50 CENT: Following on his stupid comments, The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation have invited 50 Cent to their annual awards, hoping that he'll find out he has more in common with gay men than he might have thought. It's a touching idea - that spending an evening discussing work-out regimes and expensive underwear might turn 50 from a homophobe into a born-again tolerationist, but we can't see it working. GLAAD actually welcomed his statement that he doesn't like having gay people around him as being a first step for him in overcoming the desire to judge and overcoming prejudice, which seems an extraordinarily generous reading of his words in the Playboy interview - if acknowledging that you don't like gays is cool, will GLAAD be inviting those fuckwits who stand outside buildings with God Hates Fags banners to present some prizes too?

We hope 50 Cent turns up, though. He might, you know. There's going to be lesbians there, and as we know: Lesbians are cool.

IT'S FINE ALL OF THE TIME: Women with beards! Strap-ons! Collaborating with Iggy Pop! Who knows what Peaches will get up to on her three-date mini tour this April?

Dates are: 15th April - Edinburgh Liquid Rooms; 16th - Manchester Academy 2; 18th - London Astoria.

If you're going down the front, we suggest clean undies.

WHAT THE POP PAPERS SAY: The return of the Sheilds edition
The last time Kevin Shields did an interview, Kurt Cobain was still alive. He finally resurfaced on Friday in the Guardian review, laughing off his assumed mental illness - "The only advantage to being considered insane is, Shields says, that "people don't get as angry with you when you piss them off" - and claiming the reason why he left it so long between records was, well, "I lost it. I lost what I had and I thought, you know what? I'm not going to put a crap record out." See, Fifty Cent, that's quality control. Scrapping a few songs and re-recording them isn't anything to release a press statement about. You find yourself wondering how Island could have fucked it up so badly - it's not as if they didn't know that getting albums from My Bloody Valentine was like trying to get successful missions to Mars to send back pictures - and if it's true, as Shields claims, that they suggested he draw the dole while working on music for them, shouldn't they be investigated for attempting to force an employee to make a false claim?

You'll recall when Word launched it was sniffy about magazines which come with cover mount CDs. This month, the issue comes with a free magazine of photos, which looks almost identical to one we can remember getting with Q over a decade ago - even the subject matter, old pictures of old rockers - is pretty similar. We wish they'd taken a sniffy attitude to this tatty sort of add-on and gave us a record to play instead.

Still, the writing is spot on: there's the full text of Stephen Fry's speech at the Radio 2 Folk awards; Tears For Fears reflect on the 80s, Roland conceeding "The 90s did them much better... Britpop bands like Blur were better at making videos, they were better businessmen, and they had better haircuts."

Anastacia likes both Coldplay albums; Francis Wheen rates Andras Schiff and Mena Suvari rates the Black Eye Peas.

Stuart Maconie recalls his days at the NME - it's extracted from the soon coming Cider With Roadies, and it's very funny; we reckon that a film about the NME would be a much better use of everybody's time than the Almost Famous Rolling Stone wank-off.

It's not just Kevin Shields who's returned, another Great British Pop Eccentric [(c) everyone, ever] is wandering about again in the form of Andy Partridge. He's pissed off that he wrote songs for Sophie ellis-Bextor only to find out she'd already decided what songs she was doing on the album anyway. It seems like her manager was using her as, well, almost a stalking horse.

The main guts of this month's Word is 110 songs, nominated by 111 people - one song they believe everyone should hear. Alex kapranos picks Achoo by Sparks, Michael Faber picks Kissing The Pink's Greenham; British Sea Power's Eamon plumps for Oops (Oh My) by Tweet. Surprisingly, Simply Thrilled Honey is chosen by Will McDonald, former henchman of Chris Evans. John Peel casts his vote for Wonderwall. No, of course he picks Teenage Kicks - "I know, I know, nothing if not predictable." Both Matthew Bannister and Kate Rusby want Little Star by Stina Nordenstam. And yet, what does Julie Burchill choose? What does she believe is the one song that sums up music? No Good Advice by Girls Aloud.

A really young looking Julian Casablancas is on the front of the NME - I don't know what he's been eating, but he looks about twelve; that's followed up with a cracking big picture, of Benny from Benny and Joon turning up to plead guilty to punching the crap out of Jason Von Bondie. Jack White gave the nme a bemusing statement: "I regret allowing myself to be provoked to the point of getting into a fist fight, but I was raised to believe that honour and integrity mean something. And those principles are worth defending." There he goes again, describing it as a "fist fight", although, of course, Jason appears to have only used his face in the battle. As one of the parts of his anger management course, Jack's going to have to keep a logbook of his feelings. Got to be an album in that, surely?

Bubba Sparxxx squares up to Peter Robinson, but is soon bested, as PR talks him into looking up Stuart Cable for a jam session.

Thirteen Senses want to shoot Fred Durst in the penis, they tell Radar. By accident, they've created the exact opposite of 'hitting a barn door.'

Yikes... NERD have glowing eyes, like in that horror flick... the video for Total Eclipse of the Heart. Chad describes The Darkness as "Queen... but with respect."

Blanche have things to say, once you tunnel past the "they know Jack White" wrappings; they muse on how "death has become a taboo but in the Victorian ages talking about pain was embraced." But the point, surely, is that in the Victorian era death was constantly at everyone's elbow, either as they were about to fall into a spinning jenny's workings, or on the field of some colonial battle - if death has been distanced from our minds, then surely that's because it's been distanced from our lives? Sadly, no room is found to explore this.

Hurrah! At long last, the 'ME has revived its pisstake of bands with crap names - how those long cold nights waiting for Britpop to come and rescue young men's hairstyles were brightened by the crushing of Mung Bean Jesus and Who Moved The Ground? In 2004, the bands who chose to call themselves Mumcuss and Help She Can't Swim get held up to public ridicule. It's time the cudgels were taken up again against crap band names, and we'd like to help wield a cudgel, if we may.

reviews
live
graham coxon - stoke sugramill - "he even manages to riverdance like a camden pixie"
hundred reasons - nottingham rock city - "proudly uncool, unfashionable"
keane - ulu - "all about melody, romance and massaging ears"

albums
nerd - fly or die - "they really, REALLY do rock", 8
fragile state - voices from the dust bowl - "chill-out, unreconstructed", 6
blanche - if we can't trust the doctors - four mentions of Jack White in one review, 8
lou reed - animal serenade - "Reed has mistaken his rock and roll for hight art", 4

singles
sotw - love is all - make out, fall out, make up - "scruffy, ragtag, indie as fuck"
nickelback - feeling way too damn good - "so Nickelback and Andrew WK are a joke and the Darkness aren't?"

Jason Stollsteimer loves Otis Redding. Can we get a "Man, that's Otis?" Thank you.

And finally, someone writes a letter that tries to explain why Franz Ferdinand signing to a record label makes it "like September 11th never happened." Obviously, they fail. These people walk the street.

[The Kevin Sheilds interview is online at The Guardian website]

50 CENT SCRAPS ALBUM: He says it's just not good enough, but we hope someone told the homophobic tosser it sounded like it had used a sample of a gay man somewhere on it. Let's hope he keeps throwing his albums away.

PJ RETURNS TO SITE OF CATSUIT TRIUMPH: It's been confirmed PJ Harvey are going to be playing Glastonbury. Good news if you're planning on going, better if you're planning on using BBC Broadband to watch it.

Pinkcatsuit - some form of PJ Harvey online email community affair

ARE THINGS REALLY THAT BAD IN AMERICA?: While we don't totally disagree with Something Awful's assessment of the music scene, we can't really throw our weight behind it, either. There's no imaginable world in which things are so bad Oasis' mid-period is going to sound any good. Yes, if Oasis were brand new now, they would sound like the best new band, the brightest hope - precisely because they wouldn't yet have made grinding eye-goober like Roll With It or Standing on the Shoulder of Giants. They would, however, still be scheduled to become an awful, painful disappointment by the end of the year, though, because it would have been programmed into their DNA.

The other disturbing aspect of the piece is that the description of what's really needed comes out for them as sounding like it's Huey Lewis, whereas we thought they were going to be pushing The Darkness.

NOW, HERE'S THE STORY BELOW, THIS TIME WITH PARANOIA SWITCHED UP: Could it just be coincidence that the man suing Kazaa claiming they stole his code for their p2p system is currently an employee of Microsoft, a company currently betting its not inconsiderable farm on its Digital Rights Management system, a piece of technology rendered almost pointless while peer to peer networks happily churn material without a thought of rights ownership through the web all day?

STRAIGHTFORWARD VERSION: A Romanian-born gentleman is suing Kazaa claiming ownership of the original code used by thefilesharing system. He's seeking USD25 million compo.

MEL C: ALL THAT STANDS BETWEEN US AND A SPICE GIRLS REUNION: Of course, if you're really paranoid, the reports that Mel C has turned down ten million pounds to reunite the Spices (a band whose Greatest Hits album is currently being fattened up, like turkeys [note to self: maybe 'duck' or 'capon' would have been kinder] for the Christmas market) would have you sitting there wondering how long it will be before we have the 'Mel C slaughtered by insane lone fan; copies of EMI annual report found near body' headlines. Mel says that "no amount of money is more important than my integrity", which makes you wonder if she wound up on that reality game show last year to make some sort of statement - we've typed the words 'melanie c wrestling gail porter' to try and work out what that statement would have been, but our spellchecker keeps suggesting we want the word 'naked' at the end of the sentence.

We're wondering if all the Spices were offered the same cash figure to sing with the band again, or if Victoria and Geri were offered double on the understanding they didn't sing.

KERRY BUSTED: Poor Kerry McFadden - although Lenin and Saddam eventually had their statues pulled down, at least they managed to get them built in the first place. Not so Kerry ex-Kitten, who has had her proposed statue in hometown of Warrington rejected - on the grounds that hardly anyone knows who she is. Her mother is - well, the word aghast can't begin to describe it:

"There are a lot of old fuddy duddies in this town. But on the other hand there are thousands of kids in the town who idolise Kerry and don't have a clue who George Formby is. Everyone knows where Kerry is from and she's proud to be an ambassador for Warrington."

Except, of course, that while a few people know who she is at the moment, it's unlikely she'll have the same degree of brand recognition as George Formby - Warrington's most famous son - has managed decades after his death. On the other hand, George never did photo shoots like this [NOS].

TOWER TOTTERS, DOESN'T FALL DOWN: The now-just-American music store chain Tower has emerged from bankruptcy - just. After an almost record-breaking period of time in Chapter 11, the company's parent MTS Inc has reached a deal with its creditors - but at a cost. 85 per cent of the equity is being handed to the creditors, who in turn will write off USD80 million in debt. The biggest creditor - and, presumably, now the largest stockholder, is Boston bank Corporate Trust Services, who'd put up the cash for the ill-judged 1998 expansion programme.

We're far from convinced the creditors have any real interest in running a music store - we're guessing that while Tower think they've saved a music business, the new owners think they've got their hands on some prime real estate.

THERE'S BATS IN THE BELFREY/ THE WINDOWS ARE JAMMED/ THE TOILETS AIN'T HEALTHY/ HE DON'T GIVE A DAMN: Fourteen top forty singles, and a number one album. That's the legacy of Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine. That, and people chanting "you fat bastard" as if it was the wittiest idea in the world. Now, the history of one of the most ridiculously beshorted bands in music history has been written down, and someone's published it. Goodnight, JimBob: On the road with carter the unstoppable sex machine, written by JimBob hi'self and published by Cherry Red. We hope This Morning will invite him on to promote it, reuniting him with Philip Schofield.

WE MIGHT HAVE A WINNER: Jon Meyer, from the rather wonderful Pirate Radio Hall of Fame, writes with a suggestion about the horroscope album Acme were looking for, and it sounds like they're probably on the money:

Having seen your comment about how Acme Music Blog is searching for information about a zodiac album, I have sent them the following suggestion:
 
Is the album called "Signs Of The Zodiac" by Mort Garson? It is on Allmusic.com.

I have never heard it but an album answering that description was played by John Peel on his last ever Perfumed Garden programme on the offshore station Radio London on 14th August 1967. I have also seen it referred to as being by Cosmic Sounds (or even Cosmic Hounds in Mojo but that might just be a mis-print).

You think Mojo's bad now? Wait till they merge Just 17 into it...

FUNKOBIT: The death of Edmund Sylvers, lead singer with 70s funk-soul act The Sylvers has been announced. He died on March 11th after a ten month struggle against lung cancer at the age of 47. The family act he fronted were compared at the time with the Jacksons, but despite hits in the US like Boogie Fever and Wish That I Could Talk To You, the band failed to turn their early success into something more lasting. In 1980, Edmund attempted to launch a solo career with the album Have You Heard but the follow-up Take Me Over was never released by his label Arista. He's survived by both parents, eight of his brothers and sisters and eleven children.

COURT IN COURT: Anyone who spent their childhood avoiding school by watching Crown Court will know there are certain things that go down really badly with judges - turning up later, talking out of turn; that sort of thing. I don't recall ever seeing an episode where the accused sacked their brief on the spot, and then rehired them, but then Courtney Love never turned up in Fulchester Crown Court. She did all these things and more - turned up two hours late, blathered on about presecriptions and, yes, Courtney even sacked her attorney mid-case and then rehired them.



Let's hope she doesn't need to throw herself on the mercy of the court.

FIGHT THE POWER: The line-up for the long-awaited progressive radio network in the states has been announced, and one of the co-hosts of the morning show is to be Chuck D. He'll handle the timechecks. Because he knows what time it is. (Janeane Garofalo is hosting the John Peel slot).

"DID YOU HURT YOURSELF WHEN YOU BUMPED NAOMI FROM THE BRITS PRESENTATION?": Jamelia's complaining that she never gets any attention from men, which she puts down to her being so famous that she scares people off. Because, of course, that's what being famous does: it makes you unapproachable. Unless you're Vanessa Mae, of course, for whom even a combination of fame and court orders cannot protect from her stalker.

A GAP BETWEEN MONEY AND SENSE THAT CAN NEVER BE BREACHED: Vicoria Beckham and her husband Dennis are to build their own ruin. If they really wanted something faked up but which looks run-down and broken-up cluttering up their gardens, why didn't they just buy some patio furniture and invite Geri round?

WE COULD SEND LETTERS: Or, on the other hand, we could just a post a thing here: ACME Music Blog is trying to find the name of a "proggy" album where each track was named after a sign of the Zodiac. We know of only two such albums, neither of which were very proggy at all - Harvey Sid Fisher (who also wrote an album about golf, if memory serves) had an album called something like Astrology Songs, which Peel played through on a serial basis during his stint on Saturday teatimes; and Russell Grant, who also produced an album of tracks, each one inspired by a different sign of the zodiac.

(SLIGHTLY) BELATED BIRTHDAY WISHES: Happy Birthday to Sly Stone, who turned sixty yesterday.

NME-MTV-XFM: In a belated bid to rise to the challenge of EMAP stretching its brands from newstand to radio to TV, Viacom, IPC and Capital are creating a cross-media sales platform. Called RSVP, for Real Sound, Vision and Print, it's planned to offer advertisers packages across Capital's radio stations (including X-FM and Century), Viacom's TV output (MTV, VH1) and IPC's Ignite titles (NME, Loaded, Nuts and so on). While primarily pointing at the sales end of the businesses, it's likely the alliance will see the businesses moving their brands closer together - more so than already, where, for example, there's already a lot of crossover between MTV2 and NME. The problem may come in fields where the businesses are already heavily involved with a different partner - XFM's XRay magazine deal has recently expired, but XFM still provides a lot of support to The Amp, including a chart which is a direct competition to MTV2's NME chart. All this sort of thing is so much easier for EMAP to deal with, as it owns everything and can just force itself through its own chain of command. We're not expecting to see XFM rebrand as NME radio anytime soon, then.

V: PLENTY FOR MUMS AND DADS: The consolation prize festival, V2004 has announced its line-up, which is astonishingly hit-and-miss, offering the Strokes and the Pixies alongside Jamie Callum and - oh, lord help anyone who'd sleep in a tent for this - Dido. Dido seems to have one of those magic ego-petting contracts, whereby she's told she's headlining, despite the fact that after she's finished, Muse will go on and, um, headline. It's going to be tricky for Muse: how does one tell when Dido has finished? Will there be a team of experts waiting by the stage, with experience in discerning the difference between 'barely there' and 'nothing at all'?

Other bands hoping to tempt people to Staffordshire and Chelmsford on 21st and 22nd of August include Massive Attack, Kings of Leon, Primal Scream and Pink.

UM... REALLY?: We tend to automatically distrust anything we read or hear from Fox News - did you see their squalid little commentator daring to call the Spanish people "appeasers of terrorists" for exercising a democratic choice to choose the government they felt most safe with last night? - and so we're not surprised at the flaky report on the Beatle's plans to sue Apple over iTunes. Their supposed showbiz insider Roger Friedman even concludes "Meantime, the Beatles' songs are just about the only ones not carried on the iTunes service. Now you know why." Um... because the Beatles never rush forward to embrace new technology, Roger, surely, and nothing to do with lawsuit - in fact, you can't get The Beatles from MyCokeMusic, either. Or is Yoko planning an action against them, too?

CHUBBY CHUFFED OFF: Ah, the plight of the one-man protest; like that bloke who used to stand outside the Daily Mirror building complaining about cigarettes, or that twat who dressed up like spiderman and fucked up everyone's journeys by sitting on a crane. Joining the list of the lone pissed-off is Chubby Checker, who staged a one-man vigil outside the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductions. He's not hacked off that he's not been inducted himself - he says a photo would be nice, but other than that, he's not arsed - but he's fed up that he doesn't get to hear ("the sound of money clattering into his account when") The Twist and his news material played often enough on the radio.