WHAT WITH ONE THING AND ANOTHER, IT'S A TUG OF PEACE: Paul McCartney has been thinking about Iraq, and, about a year and a half after the Rest of the Entire World, he's decided it's a "new Vietnam". In an interview with Spanish media:

"He added that the ideals of the allied nations to restore democracy in Iraq and find weapons of mass destruction were "good arguments." But, he said, the WMD had clearly not been found and the conflict continues to worsen.

Except, of course, there was never any mention of "restoring democracy" at the time, and the arguments about the need to find those lorries stacked full of botulism and anthrax and to ensure that Saddam wasn't harbouring enormous levels of cooties weren't good ones - they were clearly pisspoor arguments that children of three could see through. Even Richard Perle on this morning's Today has more or less given up trying to pretend that there was any real WMD basis to the war, employing some odd "ah, but if he'd had the weapons we were saying he'd had, it could have been real nasty" double speak. Incidently, Perle was also hilarious on the attempts to reverse engineer the 'freeing the Iraqi people' justification for war - he started to go on about how nobody had a problem with the Allies taking on Hitler to save the Jews, until John Humphrys pointed out that, erm, the Second World War was triggered by the invasion of Poland and the end of the holocaust was a happy by-product; then when asked if we really did go to war to help the Iraqi people, when will we be going into Sudan, Perle sucked his teeth and explained that, you know, America's losing its appetite for wars of liberation, what with all the flack they're getting for this one in Iraq...

But back to McCartney - does he really believe that WMD has been "not found"? Rather than "wasn't there in the first place?"

THE POOR OLD SOD: As if it's not bad enough being forced to float about space and time in a wonky old police box, it's been confirmed the new Doctor Who is to be saddled with Billie Piper as assitant. The only positive thing we can think of is that maybe it's a joke casting inspired by Bonnie Langford's run as second in command of the TARDIS, although we don't think it is.

Still, the Evanses will be glad of the extra cash - they might now withdraw themselves from sale:

ROCK'S SICK LIST: Bad news from the Soul Asylum camp, whose bassist Karl Mueller has been taken to hospital with cancer of the throat. Karl had breathing difficulties earlier this month which doctors diagnosed as being due to a tumour. He's responding to treatment.

AIR SUPPLY SUPPLY BREATH: Mercury 4, a kind of Australian Take That where all the members have something of the Gary Barlow about them, have re-recorded Air Supply's All Out of Love. For some reason, the plan was merely to dump this on the Asian market, but it turned out "so well" (their perspective only) that not only did they decide to release it at home, but they invited Air Supply's Russell Hitchcock and Graham Russell to help out on the vocals. Which, of course, they did - wouldn't you? Let's hope this doesn't become a trend, though - the last thing we want to see is, say, Huey Lewis turning up when VS cover the Power of Love, or Debbie Harry being asked to lend support to Christina Millian when she decided to have a pop at Heart of Glass.

JEWEL LOSES LUSTRE: Being cynical types, we'd have thought that the title of "Worst Jewel Gig" ever would have been a tricky one to award, but by the sounds of it, her second show at the Hampton Beach Ballroom Casino last Saturday might be a shoo-in.



The first show of the evening was "rocking." The second? According to the Portsmouth Herald:

People were literally walking out of the show," she said. "As soon as she came out, she began to insult us. We thought she was joking at first because it was kind of weird."
Witnesses said Jewel went on a tirade of insults from poking fun at fat people to others with no teeth. At one point, she asked the audience to yell requests and then told them to "shut the hell up."
"I saw her live in Boston and it was the greatest show I’ve ever been to," Dion said. "I don’t know if she was having a nervous breakdown or what. She told everyone to stop looking at her teeth and look at her breasts."
Jewel was on stage for about an hour and played only four to five songs. Halfway through the show, Dion said Jewel began to talk about Zoloft and Paxil for about 10 minutes.
"I don’t know what that was all about," said Nicole Dion, who came from Canada to see the show. "I don’t know if she was on it or what. Maybe she didn’t take it."
Dion said Jewel stopped in the middle of her trademark song, "Who will save your soul," because everyone was singing along. "She said, ‘I would have never guessed you all know the words.’ I don’t know if she was kidding or what."
Nicole Dion said the entire experience made her no longer want to be a Jewel fan.
Hampton Beach Casino Ballroom officials said they have not received negative feedback about the show, but radio station 107.1 WERZ that sponsored the concert did.
WERZ Operations Manager Michael O’Donnell said he heard comments about Jewel’s strange behavior during her second performance.
"I got a lot of negative feedback from people who attended the second show," O’Donnell said. "They were upset with some of the comments they heard her make.
"She said she saw a better audience at a barroom brawl and that all drinkers and smokers were sinners."
Dion said she doesn’t blame the Casino, but believes something should be done to make it up to them. She said not only was the show bad, but people were not allowed to buy drinks or smoke a cigarette in the smoking room.
Kristen MacKinnon, a manager at the Casino, said it was Jewel’s request that smoking not be allowed at the show. Alcohol was served, but not in the main stage area because Jewel requested no waitresses in the main ballroom while she was on stage.
Dion said Jewel came out for an encore, but instead of singing one of her hit songs, she yodeled for a minute and then left the stage.

Jewel's manager's response was, apparently, "she sometimes does a lot of tongue-in-cheek hunour during her shows."

IF THESE WORDS WERE ANY MORE HOLLOW, YOU COULD HOUSE BEES IN THEM: Cary Sherman, the head of the RIAA, talking about the latest slew of lawsuits against music fans:

"We will continue to go the extra mile and seek to resolve these cases in a fair and reasonable manner."

By sending out demands for thousands of dollars per tune, and then saying "but if you agree to settle, we'll only roll you for a few hundred, mate." Very reasonable. Curiously, Reuters report that people have already been sued - but as far as we know, not a single case has actually reached a courtroom yet. It's funny that the RIAA insist that these lawsuits are about educating the public - the very Cesearesque stance of 'to encourage the others' - and yet they actually seem really, really reluctant to have the exposure that a proper legal case would bring. But, surely, if the people they are suing really are defrauding artists out of tens of thousands of dollars, and the RIAA is confident of its case, what would be the logic in bending over backwards to try and keep it out of court? Unless, you know, they're fibbing a little and don't really have any confidence in their actions at all?

COULD HELPING SAVE LIVES BE THE KILLER AP FOR LEGAL DOWNLOADING?: - in other words, Oxfam is following War Child in planning a charity-branded download site. The managing director of BMG publishing, Paul Curran, is delighted that Oxfam is doing these good works:

"It has been a privilege to have been involved in helping to broaden the reach of the campaign harnessing the power of music to spread this simple message.
In doing so Oxfam are in the unique position of also assisting the music industry in these challenging times to show the music fan that legitimate downloads with the added value of exclusive content can be found online and in so doing also raise money in support of the charity."

You know what? I bet he actually would consider pushing the record company's interests to be more important than the helping the starving stuff that Oxfam does.

MATHUMATICS: Of course, we've had quite a bit of fun demanding to know how EMI can wail about piracy wrecking their business when they'd most recently declared a whopping third of a billion quid profit. Now, of course, the new set of figures has shown how badly piracy is biting - they've got a headline loss of GBP52.8m. See? The music industry really means it when they say they're in crisis.

Except, of course, the "loss" includes GBP138.3m of "exceptional charges" - i.e., the costs of people they're laying off, closure of the CD pressing business, and so on. Because, actually, if you only look at selling stuff, EMI did really well - GBP163.3million in profit on an underlying measure; and since Robbie Williams (the one cash cow in the stable) hadn't done very much last year, that's not bad by anyone's measure.

You do wonder if they haven't taken such pains to try and play their profitable year of healthy trading as a loss because, you know, people might lose sympathy with a company doing well moaning that its market has been eaten away by illegal activity? That its easier for a loss-making company to drag its own customers through court rather than one in rude health?

Let's not let EMI run away with the idea that it's doing badly - in fact, let's all take this opportunity to drink a toast to their profits, and a successful British company. Prosit!

BECAUSE WE WANT WOOOOO! BECAUSE WE WANT WOOOOOOOH!: Interestingly, the production team making the new Billie Piper movie, Spirit Trap, are going to extraordinary lengths to try and make the movie authentic. Because it's set in student digs, they're calling on genuine undergraduates to advise on details like how often they do the washing up, how tidy a real student flat would be, and so on. They're going to all that trouble, and yet they've cast Billie in the lead role - who's going to even notice the type of fridge in the kitchen if they're trying to believe that Billie got in to university?

STUNTS ABANDONED: Damn, if we'd have known that Robbie Williams and Alanis Morrisette's duet at Cannes would be canned, we'd have thought about going. It seems Robbie made his excuses and left the festival before murdering Cole Porter. The grusesome twosome had been planning to sing together on a platform floating at sea, which obviously would have been such a temptation for anyone with a sharp knife to cut them free and send them off into the Med - wonder who would have eaten who? But now we'll never know, for Robbie stropped off back home for "personal and business reasons." By which we suppose some of those movie moguls he'd been desperate to sign him up for stardom had said "not to be personal, but I wouldn't hire you to clean up my dog's business."

KEEP IT IN THE FAMILY: Kelly Osbourne is out of rehab, and has already worked the "my drug hell" schtick up into another part of her increasingly over-elaborate plans to try and be famous for something more than having spent some time in the womb of the most annoying woman anywhere near showbusiness. Tonight, she's going to be unpicking the good work the triple Corrie Todd's out spectacular will do for the ITV ratings by popping up on Tonight being interviewed by her brother Jack. Jesus, we know Martin Bashir's just quit, but are things so grim down at Granada they're having to get Jack Osbourne in to do the interviews for their flagship current affairs programme? Even The Sharon Osbourne Show never stooped quite that low.

Anyway, here's what to expect: Kelly reveals that she had "tried" alcohol at the age of 12 - we'd had a taste of wine when we were six, so it's a miracle that we didn't wind up slumped in a drainage ditch somewhere*- and that it wasn't just painkillers she was hooked on. Trouble is, when we hear her say that, we don't think "Kelly was jacking up to escape the boredom of her reality", more "Kelly is jacking up her story to escape the reality that her life is quite boring. Ozzy also pops up, saying "We were in denial - you always want to think it's somebody else's kids, not your own" - although Ozzy was so far gone when they made the programmes he probably did think they were somebody else's kids. Jesus, he probably thought he was a giant Jaffa Cake, so how the hell could they have been his kids?



* - no, really, it is

FRED DURST'S THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: Less a thought, more a plea for help from Fred:

"i was wondering if you could post a comment and help me think of a cool girls name for a puppy."

How about Fred? Heheheheheh.

Amongst the names suggested by the hordes of Bikzitians are Boochie, Binky, Trixie, Babble, Bizzy or Buzzie. All of which No Rock would pay good money to see Fred walking through the streets calling out loud. "Binky! Binky!"

SHE WOULD BE, THEN, THE DANCING QUEEN: We're really excited about the news that the Queen doesn't just own Abba records, but sometimes "moves" to them, according to a palace insider - we're not sure if she does a jig or just sits and rocks in her chair.



The best thing about the story is the speculation that the Queen might try to get the free tickets Charles has scored for Mamma Mia off him - because that's likely, isn't it? The richest woman in the UK trying to pinch a couple of back row seats for a West End musical off her son - "and I'd really appreciate it, mother, if you must take my Woodbines, at least buy a packet yourself once in a while." Besides which, it's the Queen. I think she could probably ring the box office and negotiate a small discount for herself if she really wanted to go - "one does hate to pull rank, but are you aware one does all the prosecutions in this realm, young lady? One thought that might make a difference. Leave the tickets on the door, one will be the woman in the large crown and ermine."

BYE DO: Dido is pissing off to America because, apparently, it's going to help her write songs. Her reason for decamping isn't because she's scared that David Blunkett is actually planning to collect retinas, not just pictures of them, or because like everyone else she's sick of hearing her music floating through the wireless, but, apparently, "sometimes you have to be lonely to write, it really helps."

She's going to achieve this loneliness not - as you or I might - by going for a caravaning holiday in Scotland or taking a cottage in Devon, but by buying a giant mansion in Beverley Hills. You can see it, can't you? Cast away from the hustle and bustle of modern civilisation in the middle of LA, Dido will find the peace she needs to rhyme "break my heart" with "fall apart." Let's not all rush to assume that she's moving because she dreams of breaking the American market - that would just be cold and calculating.



She's leaving because she loves us.

NOW, THAT'S JUST PUTTING IDEAS INTO HIS HEAD: Michael Jackson is a bit miffed that his level of bail has been set at three million bucks when, really, charges of playing with a sleeping boy's peepee and so on should really only command a bail fee of about half a million. We're not sure why Jacko's so pissed off at this - surely it would only be an issue if he decided to flee anyway? Although that's what the local DA suggests he might be planning, saying that Jacko might consider the life of a wealthy absconder preferable to seeing out his days down in the county jail; the DA argues that a rich guy should have a steep bail surety. The prosecution's motion observes:

"Mr. Jackson is known and adored — 'adored' is not too strong a word — in many of the countries of Europe, the Near East and Africa... Several of those countries do not have extradition treaties with the United States. ... he may well conclude that life as a wealthy absconder in one of these countries is preferable to what might amount to a life term in a California prison." Added to which, his dwindling American fortune would stretch a lot further in some other countries - although we're not sure there's very many places that would really welcome Jacko with open arms and a "Help yourself to our kids" banner. Although we'd kind of like to see him trying to move into Paulsgrove.

WAIT FOR THE CURE LEADS TO HOSPITALISATION: Almost fifty people wound up being taken to hospital, with a couple of hundred more needing medical treatment, after an all-day festival at Washington's RFK stadium. The all-dayer featured The Cure, The Offspring, Papa Roach and the Violent Femmes and took place in ridiculous heat, which wasn't entirely helped by the over-the-top moshpit. Emergency services say amongst those carted off to the ER were several with broken bones and one guy with "chest pains". For our part, we're just trying not to picture the mosh pit during Papa Roach: temperatures in the hundreds, all those nu-metal fans with their shirts off... it would have been like a catering tub of Virgin Sweat Soup.

CLIMBDOWN DISGUISED AS TERRORISM?: We obviously can't be certain that there wasn't a terrorist threat to Madonna which lead her to pull out of her Israel gigs, but since they never mentioned any such threat when they actually pulled the gig; and the humorous claim that "she thought she was being targeted because of her Jewish Kabbalah religion" - as if there are terrorists who read Heat magazine, fretting about what celeb trendy religion is in this month - makes us think this is all a bit stunty. The Sun also claims Madonna was going to play a memorial gig on September 11th in Tel Aviv, which is something we can't find any mention of elsewhere, curiously.

CLIFF PICKPOCKETS B&S: Cliff Richard clearly is short of a few bob - but rather than paying the milkman by charging Tony Blair next time he stays at Cliff's' mulit-million pound hideaway in the Carribean, he's decided to mug an indie band. Having decided that 'Wrapped up in books' by Belle and Sebastian sounds a little bit like In The Country, he's persuaded B&S to give him one-fifth of everything the track makes. Is anyone else picturing Cliff saying "I'd like to let it go, but this is business, boys." [via rememberthe80s]

POSSIBLY THE COOLEST VENUE IN THE WORLD: It's extraordinary that a venue as absolutely stunning as Red Rocks in Colorado is in any way threatened at all (mind you, you've got to remember that America is thinking of getting private companies to take over its national parks, so you never know), but there's an album being released to raise funds for the place. Carved In Stone 2 is, as the "2" suggests, a second bunch of live recordings from Red Rocks, and it features U2, REM and Coldplay. But it is in a good cause.

WE COULD BE HEROES? JUST FOR ONE DAY: Following on from this week's pop papers, we got this from Elvis Presley (not, we suspect, his given name):

Not that I'm not in love with the NME continuing to sign off big features with an actual signature from Conor, I feel then need to point out that the Heroes idea was nicked from Filter Magazine, which featured The Strokes and Lou Reed.
The same article in fact. The Ordinary Boys are shit and Weller would pose with Ian Huntley if he was a fan, pandered to his ego and got him within two pages of an NME cover. So, Morrisey meet Franz Ferdinand, a decent feature yes, but worth making a special out of? Also glad to see the paper's getting it's Strokes quota in without reverting to the old Time/Warner/IPC connections.

Actually, I kind of wish they'd done it like the old radio Five Chain Reaction series, so after Mozzer did the Franz, the Frannies would have then chosen the next interviewee, and done them, and so on and so on until such time as someone chose Weller and hell froze over.

WE'VE HAD LOTS OF LETTERS: A quick dip into the No Rock Postbag:

First, John H.: Are you aware that the Telstar link on the MisTeeq/Beckham story brings up an auto play pop up of her last single. I mean are you, in fact actively promoting it? Shurly... (and other such 'Private Eye' isms)

Yes, actually John, you've rumbled us - the unique way No Rock is funded is through a long-term sleeper scheme designed to build credibility for Victoria... After all, is she not fragrant?

WHATEVER YOU SAY, CHRSTINA: Christina Aguilera has been fuming at rumours that her tour wasn't cancelled because of a throat infection, but more because of piles of unsold tickets stinking the box offices up. In an interview, she said "They are saying I could not sell out the venues but they were all sold out. I'm suffering from a bad throat." She then remebered the throat and made her voice sound all croaky for the rest of the interview.

So, where does the truth fall? The Associated Press reports when the tour was pulled didn't mention it as being a sell-out - you would have thought they might have; the furiously over-comprehensive ChristinaZone hadn't picked up any news of dates selling out. But surely Christina wouldn't, you know, lie...?

KNIGHT COUGHS UP: Death Row Records have been ordered to pay USD162,00 to Dwayne H. Baudy. Baudy had gone to the Con Am Studios in 2001 for a meeting when he was set upon by Suge Knight and his bodyguards. Baudy still walks with a stick as a result of the unprovoked attack.

In other bodyguard related legal news, an LA judge has ordered Britney Spear's staker drop the pert pointy pop princess from his lawsuit against her bodyguards. The stalker, Masahiko Shizawa was a little bit miffed that the bodyguards had pulled a gun on him simply because he was hanging around outside Spear's house, and had sent her love letters and pictures and creepy faxes and mails. The poor little lamb. The judge is going to allow the case against one of the bodyguards to proceed.

SEE? THE DRUGS... THEY DON'T, YOU KNOW... WORK: MSNBC fills a quiet few hours in the backroom by knocking up a piece on addiction in rock music. You see, them rock stars ain't like you and me; oh, no, they have extra pressures. You think it's easy having to decide exactly which colour smartie you want picked out of the bowl night in, night out? You imagine that just because you can pretty much choose what empty sex you want to have that dfoesn't mean you know what it's like to be alone? Listen, pal, if you got fifty thousand for an evening's work, you'd be desperate to cram Vicodin down your neck at every opportunity. The article kicks off saying that in rock, it's almost expected that you'll have an addiction. It ends up saying that while addictions used to be cool, nowaday's it's the done thing to look after yourself and keep yourself healthy. We lost track of where the 180 degree turn took place, we were too busy warming up a spoonful of heroin smack.

WE ARE ALL BUT PLAYTHINGS OF THE GODS: It's understandable that MisTeeq are more than a little pissed off at Posh Spice, since it's the rubbishness of Victoria Beckham's solo career that has lead to the collapse of the label they shared, Telstar, and left MisTeeq unlikely to get the royalties they've earned on the recent sales, which are likely to be gobbled up by the cost of receivership. But blaming it all on Victoria is a bit rich - isn't the real problem that people at Telstar bet everyone's futures on the belief that Victoria was going to sell shedloads of records? If your daddy blows the family fortune hunting a heffalump, you don't blame the heffalump for not existing, do you?

HOW SMART ARE YOU?: Last night was BBC One's now seemingly annual IQ quiz (didn't Lorraine Heggasy describe this as the sort of thing you could only once?) - and let's not even get started on how thrown together it seemed this year (look, it seemed to me to be a picture of a bottle of water - and you fill a GLASS with WATER, so it should be that you fill a SHOPPING TROLLEY with SHOPPING, okay?) or how culturally specific it was (questions about Mel Smith?) or even mention that they went to all the trouble of digging out Robin Nedwell's instantly forgotten idiot-thinks-he's-got-a-huge-IQ sitcom The Climber and then showed about three seconds from it, but let's just ask the big question: What the hell was Natalie Appleton doing on a programme designed to take the temperature of British intelligence?

It was clear just how far out of her depth she was when Anne Robinson turned to her, following some banter with redhead team about how they were all natural, not dyed, red, and asked: "What about you Natalie - are you an authentic blonde?"

Natalie didn't understand the question.

VAST HIT LONDONN: The VAST tour, which is mainly concentrating on the States, has got a gig pencilled in for London, England. They'll (he'll?) be at the Camden underworld on June 11th. Luckily, that's before the football starts, so, you know, no difficult choices between seeing a brilliant band live or the Faroe Isles playing Latvia or something.



The US dates remaining are: Tonight - La Crosse WI - Warehouse Nightclub; 05/25 - Toledo OH - Headliners; 05/26 - Flint MI - Machine Shop; 05/27 - Milwaukee WI - Rave Ballroom; 05/28 - Cleveland OH - Agora; 05/29 - Detroit MI - I-Rock; 06/02 - Buffalo NY - The Continental; 06/04 - Boston MA - Axis; 06/07 - New Haven CT - Toads.

EURO2004: THERE IS NO BLOODY ESCAPE: If you're hoping to use gig-going as a handy way of tryin to avoid the European Football Championship, don't count on it. Clearly, music is planning on signing up to the 'nothing moves without a reference to the championship' law for the month. Even David Bowie, who should be so far above this sort of thing, taking the trouble to stick a massive screen in the venue for his Prague concert so that footie heads don't have to choose between Czech Republic versus Germany and seeing David Fucking Bowie. This is a bit of stupid pandering - first of all, shouldn't Bowie say "Look, pal, this is your chance to see the guy who sang Space Oddity, Ashes to Ashes and Absolute Beginners live and in the flesh - if yuo think watching a match on the telly is more important, sell your ticket on to someone else"? Secondly, what if the Czechs play badly? He's going to be coming on going "Prague! Are you ready to rock?" and the audience will be sobbing like babies. For God's sake man, tell them to video the bloody football and watch it later if it's so important...

GARY CHERONE IS THE TROTSKY OF THE VAN HALEN REVOLUTION: Van Halen are desperately loading up Photoshop to remove all traces of Gary Cherone from their history. Cherone, of course, took up vocals for the band when they decided their business was still unfinished towards the end of 90s - he survived for two years before the Halens had one of those awkward conversations where nobody looks at anyone else. Now, though, the band are pushing the former Extreme singer out of their history, leaving all the material from the Cherone-fronted Van Halen III off their latest 'best-of' collection.



Bet Extreme wishes it would be quite so easy for them.

WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS NOW IS LOVE: That's the opinion of Wynonna Judd; indeed, she says so in the title of her 2003 album:



And what's the best way to ensure there's love delivered in the world? Why, playing a gig at the Pentagon, of course, to show your "appreciation" for the miitary, and their acts of spreading love round the world. Why, it's only last week the Pentagon's troops couldn't hold themselves back from popping into a wedding in Iraq, the sloppy old romantics leaving the newlyweds out of the forty-odd people they killed.