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OUT OF DANGER; OUT OF HOSPITAL
Good news for, well, mainly Ian McNabb: Neil Young is out of hospital after his aneurysm and, according to his agent, everyone's expecting him to make a full recovery.
Wednesday, April 06, 2005
Tuesday, April 05, 2005
SHOULD HAVE STAYED IN THE CLOSET A WHILE LONGER
He's only half-joking, of course, is Rufus Wainwright when he says he should have hidden his homosexuality to sell records:
"I've always been a habitual truth-monger. I'm unable to lie.
"And I do think that if perhaps I had started off my career with more of a Machiavellian, strategic sort of plan to hide my homosexuality, I think in retrospect it could have been crafted quite magnificently.
"Because I was a very handsome young person."
Rufus, sweetness... how would you have set about hiding your homosexuality? Watching Queer Eye For The Straight Guy on rewind? Honey, you're way to cock-cock to have kept it in...
Besides, if you'd really wanted to have sold loads of records, you'd have recorded songs rejected by Usher, wouldn't you?
THE LOW COMEDY WRITES ITSELF
It's such a hostage to fortune, we won't even bother to say the obvious response to the news that Mariah Carey has compared herself to her dog. Let's instead give her some credit, and examine exactly what she meant:
"He's a kid and so am I. He gets frightened of crowds of people. He gets delusional. I may believe in Santa, but I'm not delusional."
Leaving aside the question of how anyone can be in their early 40s and believe in Santa (did she mean Jesus?) we want to know what makes her think her dog is delusional? Actually, more to the point, what makes her think that she isn't? Unless - and it's just possible - that all those babbling postings to her website were actually done by the dog?
CHERYL TWEEDY: SHE'S NOT WITH THE LORD, BUT SHE HAS HER STANDARDS
An interesting piece circulating from the newspaper gossip columns at the moment drifts across our desk:
The Daily Star reports that Girls Aloud star Cheryl Tweedy was invited to a party for Michelle Heaton's boyfriend Andy Scott Lee, but wouldn't mingle with the Liberty X star unless a group of people she called "riff raff" were removed. "Michelle kept asking Cheryl to join them but she kept refusing," a source said. "After a while she let it slip that she didn't want to leave the VIP area because she didn't like some of the people in Michelle's group. Michelle was surprised as she thought that Cheryl was a down-to-earth Geordie lass like herself and was quite shocked by her new airs and graces."
Yes, Cheryl... probably best to stick to the VIP area; those riff-raff might include the sort of people who have criminal records for unprovoked assaults, mighn't they? You wouldn't want to be hanging out with people like that...
WELL, THE POPE NEVER STOPPED PLAYING WHEN FRED DIED...
Queen have upset the people of Rome by pressing ahead with a gig round the corner from where the Pope was lying in state. The group don't quite suggest it's what the Pope would have wanted, but the implication is there:
"After consultation with local authorities, promoter Barley Arts decided the concert should go ahead. Band opened concert with a minute of silence."
Interestingly, Guido Bertolaso - the chap in charge of getting the Pope properly buried - took a moment off from ringing the Co-Op to ask for an extra car now that Prince Charles is coming - to reveal that he's actually a fan of Queen. But he still thinks they made a bad choice:
"I think that in this moment of pain and prayer, a concert should not be held in our capital - with all due respect to what others believe."
But Guido, if you're a Queen fan you'll know that this cash-in tour is little more than a desecration of the memory of Freddie Mercury. Why on earth would you expect them to worry about any other memories into the bargain?
ADAMS DOES THE DOUBLE
Back before Rufus and Conor were the boys who made the boys wish they were boys who did boys, it was Ryan Adams whose eyes made everyone ponder life a singer-songwriter's bitch. Now, he's trying to win back our love and filthy, filthy letters with the release of double album Cold Roses on May 3rd - preorders being taken.
The track list in, well, full:
Disc: 1
1. Magnolia Mountain
2. Sweet Illusions
3. Meadowlake Street
4. When Will You Come Back Home?
5. Beautiful Sorta
6. Now That You're Gone
7. Cherry Lane
8. Mockingbirdsing
9. How Do You Keep Love Alive
Disc: 2
1. Easy Plateau
2. Let It Ride
3. Rosebud
4. Cold Roses
5. If I Am A Stranger
6. Dance All Night
7. Blossom
8. Life Is Beautiful
9. Friends
TIPPING OUT HAT TO A GREATER MIND THAN OURS
Good work to the subs on the South Wales Echo who, faced with a fairly dull story about Mick from the Clash wandering down to the station to pick up Pete Doherty's supermodel girlfriend came up with the mahic headline Strolling Jones gathers Kate Moss
HANG ABOUT... THIS IS ANOTHER ONE, ISN'T IT?
The claim by Jesus Salas, a one-time house manager, that the Avrilo family's mother was at no point "held at Neverland Ranch against her will" kind of got lost during the excitement at the testimony of Jason Francia. Francia is a 24 year-old who claims that Jackson touched him, too. He was the son of a Jackson maid:
Questioned by Ron Zonen, for the prosecution, about times he had felt "uncomfortable" with Jackson, Mr Francia related an incident when he was aged about seven at Jackson's apartment.
"I was sitting on his lap. I was watching TV and he was facing the TV as well, my back was to his chest.
"He started tickling me - which was cool, I tickled him back. Then somehow we got on to the floor, and then I'm tickling and he's tickling. He moved down to my little private region, around my crotch area. Eventually it stopped."
He said that at the time he thought it was ''weird but not super weird because it was tickling".
He related a second incident where he was watching cartoons at the Hollywood apartment while lying on a sleeping bag on the floor. Jackson lay down next to him and began "spooning him", he said.
"He was tickling me from behind. I was laughing, trying to tickle him back." Then the singer moved his hand down to touch the boy's genitals through his clothes.
Asked how long the contact lasted, Mr Francia said: "About two cartoons' worth."
Francia claims that the family reached an out-of-court settlement with Jackson - one that, unusually for this sort of deal, seems to have held quite well. Until now.
The case continues.
KING TOLD TO PAY HIS SHARE OF COSTS
We're not entirely happy about it, but we find ourselves having a smidgen of sympathy for Jonathan King again. He'd attempted to have the costs order against him for the two collapsed trials struck out; a judge has ordered him to pay up.
There had been plans for two additional trials on charges relating to his having sex with young friends, but after the prosecutions fell apart King's "not guilty" pleas were accepted. Even so, he was instructed to pay GBP14,000 of the Crown's costs. Judge David Paget rejected King's request for the money back:
"It seems to me that, as I recollect the whole of this case and the whole of the indictment, that his conduct did bring suspicion on himself," he said.
The judge added the original 14,000 pounds in costs awarded against King in 2001 were "a fraction of the costs" incurred by the Crown in bringing him to justice.
So, despite being officially cleared on the charges, King has effectively been fined 14,000 for the crime of having suspicious conduct. It all sounds rather like the Judge has decided that King was guilty and decided to punish him anyway.
The wider point, of course, is that GBP14,000 is a "fraction" of what the CPS spent on these extra prosecutions, which implies that the tax payer must have wasted hundreds of thousands of pounds pursuing these extra cases. With King convicted of what could have stood as a sample charge, was that really a wise use of our money?
DREAM A LITTLE DREAM
So, officially, then, the Glastonbury ticket sales went like a dream, although it seems fairly clear that the disaster of 2004 meant the wobbles the system experienced this year didn't seem quite so bad. But there are still reports that the system couldn't cope. Aloud seem really pleased that their system didn't actually fall over, although there are numerous reports of people finding the online forms were solid but malfunctioning; a lot of people who bought tickets had to use backdoor URLS; the confirmation emails took over twelve hours to appear. The biggest problem, reading through the BBC News responses, is that the tickets sold out more or less instantly, but the system didn't reflect this:
A success? From reading the other emails it seems most tickets were sold in the first hour, confirming my suspicions that most of us were wasting our time. Despite being logged on from 9am and with my mobile and landline on constant redial, I got nowhere. Neither did anyone else I know. The only way I knew they'd all been sold was when Radio 1 announced it.
You also wonder how many people who tried last year decided not to bother this year, taking some of the pressure out of the system.
Let's hope Michael Eavis decides to swap to some sort of lottery system for 2007. If Clear Channel will let him.
Monday, April 04, 2005
HOW MUCH RECORD COMPANIES LOOK OUT FOR THEIR ARTISTS
Interesting lawsuit just been filed in New Haven, where agent James L Walker claims Sony-BMG duped gospel acts into firing him. Walker - who seeks recompense in the millions - claims Sony-BMG's gospel subsidiary Verity got tired of his skills in negotiating good deals for his acts, and so simply strong-armed singers into signing up with max Siegel instead. Siegel, besides being a music agent, is also president of Verity. So, at the very least, there's some sort of conflict of interest right there.
"When someone tells you, 'You're not going to be able to do any music anymore,' it leaves a bad taste in your mouth," said David Frazier, a gospel songwriter who has written music for a number of hit records. "I changed legal counsel just so I could continue to make music."
Sony-BMG says it hasn't seen the lawsuit yet, and so is unable to comment.
CASHING UP
With the end of the Financial Year, The Sunday Business Post in Ireland got a chance to see what the local pop stars were worth. For example, Daniel O'Donnell's DOD promotions company made a profit of EUR1.06 at the end of 2003. Nice for him.
Doing less well was Curtain Call, one of three Cranberries legitimate business front operations - in 2003, they made a loss of EUR637,000, something like a 1.2million Euro drop.
Oddly, the Corrs also saw a massive drop in their profitability: profits down by 90% on 2002 to a tiny EUR39,800; Coppice, their trading vessel, wound up with just EUR18,600 in the bank. There's an interesting billing of another company, Coppice International Management, of EUR213,400 for admin. These, of course, are the sort of artists who the record labels are trying to protect from having their earnings hit by piracy. Otherwise they might not have so much to play with in their book-keeping exercises.
IT MIGHT NOT BE FROWNED UPON IN DEVON...
Having fled her native Devon for a life of making Gap commercials in California, Joss Stone could be about to run into a problem: there's quite a push from the meddling conservatives who run the US to have her boyfriend, Beau 'son of Lamont' Dozier charged with statutory rape, on the grounds that while Joss is barely, but still, legal in Tiverton, at 17 years old, she's still below the age of consent in California. The mutterings are also causing a fit of the vapours in the Gap offices, who are now thinking about dropping her from the forthcoming campaigns. Sure, with Sarah Jessica Parker you had to spend a fortune on the post-production touch-ups, but at least nobody was ever going to confuse her with Lolita.
LET'S GUESS: HE RECOMMENDED DRINKING SOME EXPENSIVE WATER?
We don't know how much of the latest brittle-tattle is true, but if all of it is, she and Kevin are about to become single parents. Unless the, uh, kabbalah rabbi she's hired can save the marriage before the spawn of Federline is born. Oh, yeah, she's pregnant. Too. Probably.
DON'T MISS MISS
They work like little bees, do Miss Black America - they're about to stick out a new album called Terminal, from May 30th on their website and June 6th; there's a single, Dot Dot Dot at the start of May and a tour which makes more stops than Mr. Pullen on a day trip to Niagra Falls:
APRIL 9th Cambridge Corn Exchange
18th London Islington Bar Academy - supporting Antihero and Locus Of Control
22nd Cambridge Man On The Moon - with Antihero, Ten Year Prospect and The Khe Sanh Approach
23rd Ipswich Manor Ballroom - all-dayer with the Dawn Parade, The Fashion, The Khe Sanh Approach and more
27th Hull Ringside
28th Middlesbrough Arena
29th Sheffield Grapes
MAY
5th Bournemouth Rubber Soul @ Destiny
6th Leicester Attik
7th Totnes Dartmouth Inn
8th Exeter Cavern
9th Cardiff Clwb Ilfor Bach
10th Birmingham Bar Academy
14th Dartmouth Festival - headline
20th Manchester Retro Bar
27th Nottingham Junktion 7
Blimey.
HE'S THE MAN WITH THE MUSICAL FAN
Oh, surely it can't really be true that Mariah Carey employs a bloke to carry a fan for her? How can she be that hot? It's not like she wears clothes or anything.
WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?
No, really... what the hell is the cover of X and Y, the Coldplay album, meant to be?
Obviously, it's a nice change from the usual "the art teacher is away today, so please just draw something sensitive" approach they use, but what is it? Any ideas? Anyway, they've announced the final tracklisting as well, and we're sure we can all imagine what these will sound like:
* ‘Square One’
* ’What If’
* ’White Shadows’
* ’Fix You’
* ’Talk’
* ’X&Y’
* ’Speed Of Sound’
* ’A Message’
* ’Low’
* ’The Hardest Part’
* ’Swallowed In The Sea’
* ’Twisted Logic’
We'd love to think the opening track is a homage to Joe Brown's early eighties game show Square One, but we suspect it'll be another 'oh, my poor heart is broken' type dirge.
DEFINE 'BEST' FOR US, CAN YOU?
Gwen Steffani - who to us looks like she's doing her best to cope on a holiday where her suitcase has been lost and only the souvenier shops are still open - has been named Harpers & Queen best dressed woman of the year.
They had three billion others to choose from, but for some reason they went with Gwen. Maybe mixing houndstooth and baseball caps does work, after all.
REMEMBER ME?
She'll be hoping you do, but two years is a long time to be away.
Yes, Shakira is about to return. With a double album. But she's being cautious: she's going to release it back home in Colombia before she tries the rest of the world.
No word yet on the Reebok sponsorship.
JAPANESE COURTS LET RIAA TELL THEM WHAT TO DO
The Tokyo high court has rejected an appeal against its earlier findings against the company which ran Filerouge, which has given local RIAA client RIAJ a great big stiffy. They say they:
will continuously take drastic measures against .. illegal use of music on the Internet that corrupts the ‘cycle of music creation’ and leads to decline of the music culture."
Now, we're sure anybody from Celine Dion upwards might be able to put together an argument that music in 2005 is much more vibrant and a much healthier culture than it was back in, say, 2000, before file sharing really caught on, but these things are about copyright law, not truth.
MMO have been ordered to pay getting on for 37 million yen to RIAJ members. We're still waiting to hear how much of that will actually find its way into the music culture, and how much will go on shareholders and brass doorknobs for the boardroom.
HIT ME BABY ONE MORE TIME
While some 80s stars are attempting to sustain a little career glitter through reprising their old acts on ITV at teatime, Boy George is doing pretty much the same thing in gossip pages, only without the dignity. This time, it's George Michael again:
"People saw me as the benchmark queer while George was passing himself off as a straight stud. In fact, he was loitering in public loos like some pre-war homosexual.
"It's one thing to keep quiet. It's another to pretend you're someone you're not."
Interesting that George - supposedly so sensitive about avoiding stereotyping and gay-aware - seems to be so dismissive of gay men who enjoy cottaging. It seems that after all his bollocks about people being not gay enough, there are also people who are too gay. Or is he just trying to pretend that George Michael is the only man in the last sixty years to have random outdoor sex?
A QUICK LOOK AT THIS MORNING'S FRONT PAGES
Most of the papers are tied up with the heads of the Catholic and England churches this morning, but the Daily Star has at least got hold of some sort of dressing-up story which allows it to run that headline we've all been expecting for some time:
A LIFELONG DREAM
Wasn't the Sun part of the screeching chorus telling Kate Moss to get the hell away from Pete Doherty a few weeks ago? It seems to have forgotten that, and now is delighted that Kate is going to be singing on the Babyshambles album:
KATE MOSS has fulfilled her dream of being a rock star. She will feature as guest vocalist on the new album by BABYSHAMBLES after hanging out with boyfriend PETE DOHERTY at the Twin Peaks studio in the Brecon Beacons while his band cuts the CD.
We're not quite sure why having a hit a credited vocalist with Primal Scream didn't fulfill the dream.
Sunday, April 03, 2005
CONFUSED MESSAGES
While, obviously, during the period of official mourning it'd be a little tactless to criticise the Pope too harshly (we've got a whole future to pick over his record), is anyone else a little surprised at quite how powerful Bono has been in his praise for the man?:
U2 lead singer Bono has paid tribute to Pope John Paul II, calling him the "best frontman the Roman Catholic Church ever had". Bono described the late pontiff - who died on Saturday - as "a great show man, a great communicator of ideas".
Hmm. Is this the same Bono, who has campaigned so strongly for the world to do something about the Aids crisis? Or is this a different Pope he's talking about, one who didn't take a theologically strict line on contraception that in 1988 he said that it wasn't acceptable to use condoms, even to stop the spread of Aids, forcing the US Catholic Church to withdraw its support for them? In 1993, he told a rally of 30,000 young people in Kampala that the only way to put an end to the "tragic plague" was "the sexual restraint if chastity."
We wouldn't have expected Bono to be very tart with the man still warm, but even so... it seems a curious lack of understanding to be praising the life of the man who spent so long communicating such a dangerous idea. Or does Bono not actually think that having someone in such a key spirtitual role spending so much effort condemning something as simple as a condom, something that had such potential to save so many lives, as sinfull had any bearing on the numbers of people who need help and treatment today?
THE SNIPING CONTINUES
We're starting to get lost about who has snarked at who - was it The Bravery snorting about Kaiser Chiefs or the other way round? Anyway, Serge Pizzorno of Kasabian has weighed in to indierocks' own version of the rap wars by complaining that Franz Ferdinand are not... uh, "real":
"Franz Ferdinand, Keane, all that lot, I just don't believe them. They are not my people, they are not real, and they'll get found out soon enough. The Beatles were real, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, us. Why? It's in our blood. What's in Keane's blood? Fucking tap water I'll bet."
We're a little puzzled by this - it seems that because Franz Ferdinand are artschool types they don't count; but The Beatles, with Mr. Artschool himself Lennon at the helm, are somehow real. Hmm.
16TH BEST SELLING ARTIST IN THE UK? ARE YOU SURE?
You can, of course, prove anything with facts, but our head really can't even begin to take in the facts about Shakin' Stevens:
Because Shaky, to this day, is the 16th-highest-selling artist in the UK. Ever. Full stop.
He's the most successful British singles chart performer achieving 30 Top 30 hits, a record which is still unsurpassed, and has more number ones than any other Welsh artist.
And, according to the Guinness Book of British Hit Singles, he shares with the Beatles and Elton John the distinction of being the most successful UK chart performer of a decade, in his case the '80s.
He also discovered the cure for smallpox and was the first man to ever pull off cold fusion.
ANANOVA: REPORTING THE NEWS SINCE THE DAWN OF THE INTERNET
Apologies to Simon T, who brought this to our attention when it happened; we've been trying to get access to our screengrab for this. Can you spot the rather large mistake Ananova made when they reported Natasha Bedingfield's bemusing victories at the Capital FM awards?
CLEAR PREPARES TO TAKE GLASTO STAKE
While we're looking at Glastonbury, there's been some slightly ominous moves behind the scenes that could lead to ultra-Bushite Clear Channel having a major role in the organisation of the festival in future years. Clear Channel is taking a huge stake in Mean Fiddler, which is wholly responsible for the Reading Festival, a slew of London venues and, of course, does the security and logistics parts of the Glastonbury Festival. It's expected Clear Channel will mount a bid for full control of the MF group if its bid to buy out Vince Power's share of the company is successful.
The company who put up this billboard, without being asked:
... having any sort of stake in a festival which used to support CND? And still supports Greenpeace? Some confliction there, surely?
MAYBE NOT QUITE SO SMOOTH...
The always useful Glastoblog has a hint why they're keeping the phonelines open: aloud.com struggled but not as badly last year, but the BT network was still overloaded by demand. Better than 2004, it seems, but far from perfect.
And then there's this on Ebay, which makes it look like those keen to get tickets have had to resort to using secret URLs:
hey we got ours :)
We want to see you there too.......
try this link..
https://www.wayahead-secure.co.uk/g2005/orderform.asp?
showcode=200000&pricetype=7&pricetype2=9&pricetype3=10&filler1=glastonbury
I just crushed the monkey and it burnt my snozzle....
the only payment I am asking for this link is an email PLease....... I wanna hear......
Questions from other buyers
Q: hi can u help. ive submitted my order for 2 tickets, but have had a screen saying 'this page cannot be displayed' come up next rather than any conformation....more answered on: Apr-03-05
A: Too many is better than too few. Keep ordering. You can cancel if you need to :))) Don't worry, be happy :)
GLASTONBURY SMOOTH?
It looks like Glastonbury sold its tickets out smoothly, at least on first glance. According to Aloud.com there are just a few tickets still available on the phones - 0870 165 2005.
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