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COCKER KOKO
They're calling it a "solo tour date", although we're not sure a single date constitutes a tour.
Anyway, all freshly announced: Jarvis Cocker, playing the KoKo in Camden, November 15th.
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
SPANKS FOR THE MEMORY
Carly Simon has stage fright, which is a terrible thing indeed.
To overcome it, she finds spanking helps. Being spanked.
And who does she get to do it?
The horn section.
TAKE THAT WON'T TAKE THAT, NOT AT THESE PRICES
Having spent some time doing calculations, Take That have discovered that shipping their special effects and stuff to Europe for the ongoing reunion tour might turn the whole affair into a loss-making one.
So they're going to leave them at home. Although they could hire and van and get a couple of East 17 to drive it for them, as they've not got much to do any more and might welcome the few extra quid.
Lulu has also said she's not going to go with them; she says it's too much like hard work but apparently she was being constantly sexually harrassed by the giant Robbie Williams hologram.
OF COURSE SHE BLOODY HAS
Can anyone truly say they're surprised that Peaches Geldof has now joined a band?
No, thought not.
She's taken over as singer in Cosmetique, described by the Sun as new Hoxton-based electro-popsters. Yes, one of those.
Let's hope they don't get into any legal troubles with the US beauty company whose name they have taken.
Okay... let's hope they do, and it ties them up in legal wrangles until they lose interest in music and decide to spend the trust fund on something else next month.
MICHAEL JACKSON MADE ME FAT. AND THIN. AND FAT AGAIN.
There's hardly much family solidarity at play in the Jackson household these days - Janet Jackson is blaming Michael for her weight issues.
She says that constant taunts from him - he called her Fat Butt and things like that (clearly, Quincy Jones wasn't around to write him any decent insults) - led to insecurities about her weight, and with it, the Oprah style yo-yoing.
“I was always made to feel I was a fat kid by Michael.
“He’d call me brutal names . . . it really affected me, even as an adult.”
Generously, Janet has forgiven her brother because, well, he's got his own issues. Plus, if he tries it now, she can always shoot back much worse names at him.
... AND THIS IS MICK JAGGER READING IT
There's nothing wrong with having a bit of help remembering things, and certainly nothing to be ashamed of. But we do wonder if Mick Jagger might have been a bit better off writing the words on his hands instead of using an autocue.
Because if a bloke is singing songs while the words roll up a screen, that's not a concert, that's karaoke, surely?
Mind you, it's not just the songwords he has there. Apparently, the screen also carries his "patter".
More like Reagan every day.
In other Stones-related news, the threat of legal action against Keith Richards after he smoked on stage has been dropped as, erm, Hampden Park is outdoors.
OASIS ARE THE BEST THING, EVER EVER EVER
We're not sure which "music fans" Q magazine asked to come up with its list of the top 100 singles ever, but we suspect they might be self-hating. Live Forever? Admittedly, it's the best Oasis single, but the best single ever?
And a poll which reckons Oasis have written the first and second best songs in recorded history?
At least it's not Bohemian Rhapsody. That's at number six.
The 100 in full:
1 Live Forever – Oasis
2 Wonderwall – Oasis
3 Smells Like Teen Spirit – Nirvana
4 A Day In The Life – The Beatles
5 One – U2
6 Bohemian Rhapsody – Queen
7 Love Will Tear Us Apart – Joy Division
8 Stairway To Heaven – Led Zeppelin
9 Bitter Sweet Symphony – The Verve
10 Paranoid Android – Radiohead
11 Angels – Robbie Williams
12 Like A Rolling Stone – Bob Dylan
13 There Is A light That Never Goes Out – The Smiths
14 London Calling – The Clash
15 Hallelujah – Jeff Buckley
16 Billie Jean – Michael Jackson
17 With Or Without You – U2
18 God Save The Queen – Sex Pistols
19 Comfortably Numb – Pink Floyd
20 Don’t Look Back in Anger – Oasis
21 Good Vibrations – The Beach Boys
22 Sweet Child O’ Mine – Guns n’ Roses
23 Hey Jude – The Beatles
24 Kiss – Prince
25 Imagine – John Lennon
26 Wish You Were Here – Pink Floyd
27 Like A Prayer – Madonna
28 Everybody Hurts – REM
29 Hey Ya – Outkast
30 Creep – Radiohead
31 Strawberry Fields Forever – The Beatles
32 I Wanna Be Adored – The Stone Roses
33 Karma Police – Radiohead
34 Walk This Way – Run DMC featuring Aerosmith
35 Champagne Supernova – Oasis
36 God Only Knows – The Beach Boys
37 I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor – Arctic Monkeys
38 Waterloo Sunset – The Kinks
39 Hurt – Johnny Cash
40 Unfinished Sympathy – Massive Attack
41 All Along The Watchtower – Jimi Hendrix Experience
42 Street Spirit (Fade Away) – Radiohead
43 Where The Streets Have No Name – U2
44 Common People – Pulp
45 Life On Mars – David Bowie
46 Anarchy In The UK – The Sex Pistols
47 Mr Brightside – The Killers
48 What’s Going On – Marvin Gaye
49 Teenage Kicks – The Undertones
50 Take Your Mama – Scissor Sisters
51 Fight For Your Right To Party - Beastie Boys
52 Yesterday - The Beatles
53 Suspicious Minds - Elvis Presley
54 Fake Plastic Trees - Radiohead
55 Can’t Get You Out Of My Head - Kylie Minogue
56 How Soon Is Now - The Smiths
57 In My Life - The Beatles
58 Losing My Religion - REM
59 Stan - Eminem
60 Drugs Don’t Work - The Verve
61 Wuthering Heights - Kate Bush
62 Gimme Shelter - The Rolling Stones
63 My Generation - The Who
64 Yellow - Coldplay
65 Monkey Wrench - Foo Fighters
66 I Can’t Get No Satisfacton - The Rolling Stones
67 Fools Gold - The Stone Roses
68 Heroes - David Bowie
69 Blue Monday - New Order
70 Hotel California - Eagles
71 Song 2 - Blur
72 Winner Takes It All - ABBA
73 Shine On You Crazy Diamond - Pink Floyd
74 Kashmir - Led Zepplin
75 Tomorrow Never Knows - The Beatles
76 Babylon - David Gray
77 Californication - Red Hot Chilli Peppers
78 Heart Shaped Box - Nirvana
79 Everybody’s Changing - Keane
80 A Town Called Malice - The Jam
81 The Scientist - Coldplay
82 Superstition - Stevie Wonder
83 Personal Jesus - Depeche Mode
84 7 Nation Army - The White Stripes
85 Voodoo Child - Jimi Hendrix
86 Born To Run - Bruce Springsteen
87 Golden Touch - Razorlight
88 Motor Cycle Emptiness - Manic Street Preachers
89 Sittin On The Dock Of The Bay - Otis Redding
90 There She Goes - The Las
91 No Woman, No Cry - Bob Marley
92 Crazy - Gnarls Barkley
93 I Am The Resurrection - The Stone Roses
94 Rocket Man - Elton John
95 Debaser - Pixies
96 Fairy Tale Of New York - The Pogues
97 Last Nite - The Strokes
98 Going Underground - The Jam
99 Killing In The Name - Rage Against The Machine
100 Paranoid - Black Sabbath
There are some surprises - Killing In The Name might be a low entry, but if you'd had to guess, we bet you wouldn't have expected that; nor would you have got money on Razorlight being in there at all. And would you have thought it would be Motorcycle Emptiness which represented the Manics? Or Monkey Wrench for the Foo Fighters?
The other thing that the list screams is bloke - Madonna is the first woman to appear, at 27 (and with Like A Prayer, of all things); then the next female input is Candida Doyle's keyboards on Common People at 44; Ana Matronic's Take Your Mama bits at 50; Kylie pops up at 55 and Kate Bush at 61. Obviously, Kim Deal was on Debaser (95) and Gillian Morris is at 69. You could stretch a point and include Dido's work on Stan (59) and, of course, the vocals on Winner Takes It All (best Abba? Really?) are female. Oh, and Meg White's drumming makes the grade at 84. But even so: of the 100 best songs ever, apparently only four have lead female vocals. If anything tells you that this list is more about songs that get honked over pub jukeboxes than actual best songs, it's that fact alone.
THE LATE MIKE BALDWIN HAS A POP AT DOHERTY
Karl Lagerfeld, the trouser-making man, has issued a critique of Pete Doherty. Or, at least, made some words in that general direction:
"Gone. His music, the look, is over now. There's nothing to think about it. It is too late."
Now, we know that Pete has his problems, but that's not even a coherent collection of random words.
Still, at least he used words. Talking about Jessica Simpson, he came up with noises:
"Ecch, I'm not that impressed."
He had more to say, but he had to go off as Janice and Hayley were having an argument about how straight to sew gussets.
Monday, August 28, 2006
EMINEM - THAT WAS WORTH THROWING IN MUSIC FOR
Since Eminem gave up music or whatever it was he was meant to be doing at the end of the last tour, time has clearly been sitting heavily on his hands.
He's now taken to designing shoes.
Trainers, of course:
"If you told me 10 years ago that I'd be designing this whole series of Air Maxs, I never would have believed it," Eminem said in a press release. "It's one of the hottest lines that Nike ever produced, so I'm honored to make my own contribution. My only problem was figuring out how to make the shoes different from stuff they've already done. Nike always has the dopest color combos."
Good lord, he even sounds like it's the creation of great art, when really it ammounts to little more than saying "make that bit blue, and we'll put a signature on the back"; the shoes will be auctioned for charity.
The other problem Eminem might have had would have been trying to justify working with Nike when he movie Sweat is just round the corner, looking at Nike's still-patchy record on employment in the developing world. But presumably that sort of thing you can put to the back of your mind by the more challenging question of "laces or velcro?"
U L B N X T C
Good news for fans of XTC - or "all right-thinking people", as they could be termed. Andy Partridge has pulled together a nine-disc rarity collection.
Nine discs.
"Working on this stuff took many years," Partridge tells Billboard.com. "I just kept writing -- who knows what's going to fall out? It was recorded in spare bedrooms, the kitchen, the attic and of course my now infamous garden shed. Pop songs, radio jingles, film and TV music, or just plain old goofing about."
Many of the bits were intended to become full XTC tracks which simply didn't make the grade, or were voted out in America's Next Top Model fashion. It's clear that a lot of stuff which wouldn't rise up alongside XTC's standard catalogue is probably sixteen thousand times better than a lot of things which bob up to the upper-reaches of the charts; the problem will be finding the time to sift through all the stuff.
It's called The Fuzzy Warbles Collectors Album, which reminds us of the sort of decision he sometimes makes and why, perhaps, there aren't statues of XTC raised across the nation.
DROWNED IN SOUND - ROBBED AT READING
The lovely people at Drowned In Sound were affected by the virtually-not-there crime at the Reading Festival: Their photographer Ben Jones had his camera stuff nicked. The haul comprised of a Nikon D2H camera body, 70-200mm Nikkor lens and a 17-55mm Nikkor lens all in a sand coloured Billingham bag, and rewards are being offered for safe return.
THEY SAY THE DEVIL HAS ALL THE BEST TUNES
And, you'd have thought, the Lord looks after his own.
But reading the trail of misfortunes which befell Evanessence as they tried to make another album of gothish Christian rock, you'd have to wonder if the God they worship is in charge of the universe, why he seemed so keen for them not to bother:
Bassist William Boyd quit in mid-July, singer Amy Lee's ex-boyfriend entered rehab, and guitarist Terry Balsamo suffered a stroke.
Boyd quit because he could not face another lengthy tour; he was replaced by Tim McCord, former guitarist with Rendition Smile.
And the record doesn't hit the stores until October. If you live near a large warehouse, you might want to check they're not storing copies there. Just in case there's a smiting being lined up.
MADONNA MOSCOW DATE MOVES
The day and location of Madonna's planned Moscow debut has been shifted. The day-larded-with-significance of the fifth anniversary of the September 11th 2001 attacks has now been dropped in favour of the 12th; and the gig has been picked up from the planned University location and taken instead to the Luzhinki Stadium:
"Luzhniki is more convenient from the point of view of security — we are sure that this is very good news for all Madonna fans in Russia," Anton Atrashkin, the press secretary for the Russian leg of Madonna's Confessions tour told the Associated Press. The new date would mean there was "no connotation or parallel with this tragic date in world history," he said.
And, of course, doesn't clash with the sporting event being held in the stadium on the 11th.
There have been protests against the Madonna tour coming to Moscow at all - 12 members of the Russian Orthodox Church were fined last week after a demonstration against plans for her self-agrandising giant crucifix stage entry.
VENUEWATCH: A location for Wigan
We have a soft spot for Wigan - we got married there, apart from anything else - and we can't think of any good reason why the town should find itself without a decent-sized venue.
Okay, we can - there's probably the assumption that the area is already served by Salford, Manchester and Liverpool venues, but that isn't good enough.
The council had been planning to build a new concert hall, but the costs were starting to rise - so they decided not to bother. Presumably the cash is being better spent on paperclips or something.
The Wigan Evening Post is leading a campaign to make the council think again, signing up Ken Dodd, Johnny Vegas and Dave Spikey to add their support. It's possible that they may even find some Wiganites to stand alongside the Scouser, St Helensite and Boltonian. But that's kind of the point - without a performing arts location in the town, the supply of famous Wigan musicians and entertainers might wane somewhat. Let's hope Starsailor join in the campaign before its too late.
BPI WANT MARKET BOSSES PUNISHED
The police are a little stretched right now - what with having to do all this poking about in terrorist hunting; investigating other forces when they accidently shoot the wrong people during terrorist hunts, coming up with plausible reasons why they should be allowed to drive at 160 miles an hour for the fun of it, or simply developing an evasive air when someone asks "how come nobody seemed bothered about the bloke who got stabbed in the street that time, then?"
Clearly, what they should be doing, instead of trying to cope with crime and disorder, is protecting private companies' incomes. That, at least, is what the BPI is calling for, as they issue a press release suggesting that rather than try and stop people being raped and murder, the police should be concentrating on pirate CDs being sold at carboot sales:
The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) says intellectual property crime should be "higher on the police's agenda".
Of course - never mind that people might want to see police doing something about the crime and vandalism which makes their lives a misery, how can we sleep soundly at night if we don't know someone's doing something to take hookey copies of Robbie Williams albums off the street?
A survey suggests CD piracy cost the industry £165m in lost revenue in 2005 - nearly 10% of total sales.
Car boot sales and markets accounted for over a third of pirated CDs, while a quarter were bought from friends, the survey found.
The survey found that 37 million pirated CDs were sold in the UK in 2005, the value of which was more than the combined legal sales of the leading 13 albums in the UK.
It is the first time the industry has estimated the projected losses caused by pirated CDs.
Of course - and, we apologise if you read a lot of No Rock and are familiar already with the reason why this argument is at best specious - this works on the assumption that someone who buys a copy of a Beyonce album off a bloke at work for two quid would otherwise have bought it for a tenner in the shop, an assumption that just isn't true. It's a little like suggesting that every time McDonalds sells a burger for 99p, it costs Pizza Express £10 on the basis that, had his tummy not been filled by the burger, the customer would have gone and had to buy a pizza instead to fill the hole.
And, frankly, the costs of trying to stamp out piracy at thousands of stalls and workplaces in hundreds of towns to save multinational corporations a few hundred thousand quid each hardly seem worth it. Why should so much of our money be spent to try and protect Sony-BMG?
Amongst the BPI's ideas is that people who run markets where pirated CDs are sold should be punished. It's not entirely obvious what their rationale for this is - after all, they haven't been calling for the heads of record labels in the US who colluded to keep smaller labels' music off the air to be made to stand down. The BPI seems to have a crooked view of what responsibility means.
This renewed interest in physical piracy, though, could be a sign that the BPI has realised it's losing the download battle quite badly, and is trying to find a role that justifies the fee it takes from its members year after year. The download battles tend pile up bad publicity, bungles, and no noticeable change in the amount of filesharing. At least physical piracy offers the prospect of some morale-boosting footage of seized CDs being destroyed.
BARBARA LEG BREAKS HER BACK
Oh... hang on, that should be Barbara Bach breaks her leg. Husband Ringo Starr been by her side in hospital since her 60th birthday horseriding treat went a bit wrong.
Hang about... wasn't almost a year ago exactly that Madonna's 40th birthday horseriding treat went a bit wrong?
There's a message here, we think, but we're not prepared to spend a bank holiday trying to work out what that might be.
CREAMRISES: A Creamfields round-up
Yeah, we kind of wish we hadn't promised to do anything about Creamfields, as there wasn't very much appearing early on in the weekend. There has, however, been a blog and paper scampering to catch up.
The Manchester Evening News puts a figure of £3.5million on the event - that's how much cash it's believed this year's Creamfields brought into the area, much of it going to Warrington. Which is kind of ironic, since it was held over the border in Halton, and Warrington Council tried to stop the dance festival taking place. Perhaps they'll write a cheque to Runcorn. There seemed to be little of the predicted doom, as well:
Cheshire police said 16 people were arrested at this weekend's event.
A spokesman said 21 crime incidents had been reported during the festival but none were serious.
There were also traffic problems around M56 junction 10 as thousands travelled from all over the country.
The headline act was The Prodigy, who had the option of giving the day out a publicity boost by announcing they were going to bow to the inevitable and call it quits. Instead, they yelled they would carry on forever, and so only the diligent Gigwise seemed to care:
Maxim told The Mirror: “There’s no bullshit any more, we’ve got over that.
“We’re like a big family now. We’ve put it all behind us and there’s no splitting us up.”
You'll note they're like a big family. Not a big, happy family.
Luke saw the Prodigy. And possibly the face of God:
saw many acts that I've always wanted to see, including THE PRODIGY!!!!!!! who were incredible, also as I was told by someone from a goup of people that georgia and I became attached to "You are fucking privileged to be seeing this DJ" it was of course TI-ES-TO!!!
Anyway right now I'd just like to say I had the most amazing time and that I fell in love. I say that but it was a rave and I was off my head!Unfortunately, we both knew that we wold only be holding hands until the festival was over and that we would both go back to leading our own lives, but still have the memories of an amazing festival.
There's got to be a Hollywood movie in there somewhere, surely?
It doesn't sound like the event was a sell-out, as Chrissy was able to buy tickets outside:
Got to the place daresbury and we got searched for deoderants and cans and stuff but becky lost her ticket so we had to buy another one like. In we went now not many poeple there so far but it was like 4ish jus a few hundred poeple id say.
Although after the packing-in of audience at Reading, a bit of space to move seems quite alluring.
Maybe the line-up accounted for all the space: Ambidexterious Wanker wasn't impressed:
then saw PRODIGY - twas good but not amazing live main stage is quite whack actually only good act seen there in scissor sisters 2 yeasr ago! and errm chemical brothers girls go see david guetta - have i got some wrist to slit?
Naomi j sums up what seems to be the prevailing attitude amongst the blogs that went to Creamfields:
i went to creamfields last night i tripped it to creamfields. it was so cold. and all the soundsystems were horrible. but i still had fun and saw the usual suspects and ate crappy festival food and drink free booze. i even managed to fall asleep on stage for a few seconds. SKILLS!
Nearly everyone reports that the music, djs and soundsystems were wanting, but they had a great time anyway because they were medicated in one way or another. If we were Cream, next year we'd not bother wasting the money on hiring entertainment, and just turn the thing into a corporate-counterculture picinic. Think of the margins, James, think of the margins.
OH, TIS READING: A final round-up
So, it's all over now, apart from the panicky looks on the faces of the people responsible for keeping the trains clean.
Eddie Vedder and Pearl Jam rolled down the doors on Reading, with something even approaching jokes in the set. Even NME was shocked:
"There's a lot of flags from a lot of different countries," Vedder observed of the crowd, before playing 'Dissident'. "Being from American I guess we should say 'we come in peace!'."
Stephen Colbert is said to be "unfazed" by the newcomer to the satire circuit.
The rest of the world - like the Irish Examiner were more interested in the sobbing:
Shedding a tear, Vedder told the crowd: "A band doesn't come to England enough for a turnout like this. This is the first time we've played Reading in 15 years. You guys have been camping here for three days and we've been staying in a hotel."
God, yes, thinking about reclining in bed flicking through the porn channels while everyone else is queueing to poo in a hole really makes you sob, doesn't it? Let's hope nobody told him the tickets for the event had sold out ages before their presence was announced; and by the end of the event, Plinky Ploop could fill out the area in front of the main stage.
In the same report as their Pearl Jam coverage, the NME suggests the reason why BBC Three may have felt the need to edit down Placebo's troubles:
Leaving the stage for ten minutes - during which time female members of the audience flashed their breasts for the big screens' cameras - the band were eventually able to return and complete their set.
Explaining what happened afterwards, frontman Brian Moloko told the BBC : "My guitar broke and I missed all the breasts!"
You're not going to find us making jokes about how there were giant tits up on screen, but then their instruments broke and they went off for a bit. Not us.
Showing the sort of difference of opinions that used to be commonplace in the NME but seem less so these days, the Reading blog offered two takes on the My Chemical Romance battering.
First, Conor McNicholas himself blogged:
In between songs you can almost hear a pin drop. They're simply dying out there. "We might be outsiders here today," he quickly adlibs, "but we represent every single outsider out there." Only the empassioned faithful in the moshpit agree. They plough on. Gerard rages against the Daily Mail and its claims that MCR are a "cult" that "promote self-harm" but it's too late, the only hard being done is to MCR's collective ego. The band with the biggest crowd at the NME Signing Tent today are in a face-off with Reading Festival. And still the bottles keep coming.
About an hour later, an unbylined piece takes a different view:
My Chemical Romance just came offstage having played the most defiant set of their career. Led by Gerrard Way - who marched on the set waving a Union Jack the band were showered with bottles, golf balls - even, tangerines. But for a band who pride themselves on being outsiders, despite being one of the biggest bands in America, it was the perfect spur for a career defining set.
Probably the finest moment came when Way lead the crowd in a chant of "Fuck The Daily Mail" in response to a recent article in that hate-mongering rag about how emo encourages self-harm, suicide and probably how it was the root the cause of the recent Israel-Lebanon conflict. Don't bet against MCR coming back to a similar reception next year - as headliners.
I can't believe I just wrote the words "Conor McNicholas himself", like he's the pope.
ContactMusic thinks Reading brought the reunion of Carl Barat and Pete Doherty a step closer, as B-Unique, who are plotting some Ferry Aid of a charity single, did negotiations round the back:
An insider says, "B-Unique are determined to sign Pete and want Carl on board too. They met up with Carl at the Reading Festival (in England) to move things forward. "It will all be confirmed in the coming weeks."
Pete, of course, can be persuaded to do anything with the promise of a roll of untraceable fivers.
For many, the presence of Peaches Geldof at Reading spoiled everything. My Name Is Trouble wasn't happy:
The reason im writing this is because i seen Peaches fucking Geldof in the paper with her "indie rock" boyfriend, the both of them looking like fucking twats at the reading festival. i dont like her dad as it is, but the fact that she has this sorta princess lifestyle off the back of his questionable success annoys me. And surprise surprise she's wandering about in a leather jacket, leggings (girls, please dont!), lily allen style tacky jewellery and some poncey scarf tied round her neck. Also, her boyfriend looked more feminie than she did. They just try too hard. Anyway sir bob phoned her and ordered her to come home from the festival early! hahahahahahahahahaha
To be honest, we don't see a problem with a girl having a boyfriend who's more girly than they are. But we do see the problem with Peaches G. Bob Geldof pops up in the Daily Mail, defending his daugter:
"She is a 17-year-old girl. She is allowed to go to no more parties really than other kids go to. She goes to a rock festival. She does a DJ thing on the odd occasion for 80 quid a night. I mean, give her a break."
She does the odd dj thing for eighty quid a night. Oh, and gets commissioned by her father's TV company to churn out supposedly insightful programming about what the young people think.
Some of the best newspaper coverage of Reading is on the business pages: The Guardian exploring the big sell-out:
[Carling] also gets top billing on one of the biggest festivals: gone are the days of the Reading festival, it is now the "Carling Weekend: Reading and Leeds". The festival took place this weekend with Franz Ferdinand, the Arctic Monkeys and Kaiser Chiefs among the headline acts.
There is no doubt about the returns companies can expect. During the 1990s, the heart of Carling's sponsorship strategy lay in football, helping it increase beer sales from 2m barrels a year to 3m. After 2000 it switched its focus to music and now sells 5.7m barrels a year. That's 52 pints a second.
There may be a question forming about how having beer companies sponsor music festivals aimed at teenagers sits with a nation supposedly trying to calm heavy drinking. It's interesting, of course, that Carling couldn't run a TV commercial with Eddie Vedder promoting their product, but he can pop up doing half an hour at the "Carling Weekend."
Not, of course, that Carling would want you to think the festival is adrift on a sea of beer. Wayner's blog shows it was really a sober affair:
Was drinkin my beer a little bit quickly, and theer was a bit of a queue for the old wristbands so i drank more then i expected by the time i had met up with everyone at the campsite. We drinked about for a bit then stumbled to the arena for festivities.[...] In the arena i got a bit excited when i saw a small little window open at the left hand carling bar, i decided to sprint to it but after about 20 meter's my handstring fucked about and i pulled it or summit, it well hurt to walk about for a bit. Me and Paddy decided to get two drinks everytime we went to tha bar, and soon the Towers of London were on stage. [...] DRUNK.... The next few hours were a bit of a blur...think i had a lot of alcohol saw The Subways and saw The Mystery Jets with Liam....so i've been told.
And so on. Taking the concept of a Carling Weekend a little too literally, perhaps.
What about the security, and the tickets, and the unbreakable rule of the wristband? It seems if you were prepared to put up with a spot of nasty unhelpfulness, you could get a second chance. ~*Didi*~ she was soft and i was hard did:
the worst bit was losing my wristband and panicking that i wasnt going to be able to get into the arena to see the bands. plus the security bloke who i had to cajole into giving me another one was an absolute TWAT. he was so rude but never mind after tears, phonecalls and filling in of forms i was able to get a replacement.
If you want a pithy summary of the weekend, you're best of turning to Flossy Ann:
Reading Festival =
..
Flogging Molly, Kaisers, Real Big Fish, Less Than Jake.
That leaves us feeling a bit overwritten.
THE VIEW FROM BBC THREE
Of course, any Placebo is better than no Placebo, and who wouldn't love the reworking of the stuff from the recent album? Set free from the trickery of studio wizardry, Placebo at Reading threw a lot more weight onto Brian's vocals - doubly so, as it seems they were having all kinds of trouble. Frustratingly, the TV coverage seemed to want to keep things tidy and so made every effort to keep the scampering guitar tech out of shot, the way Parliamentary coverage refuses to focus on the noises of off protest and confusion, so it was hard to tell what was actually going on.
Earlier, Brian Molko had popped up alongside Edith and praised the "magnificent Slayer, the quintessential death metal band", who he'd gone to see before they played their set. In a similar aside, Paul Smith had spoken about meeting with Eddie Vedder - Vedder, apparently, couldn't believe that he'd spent the time prior to taking the stage with Maximo Park watching Pearl Jam. We can't, either, to be honest, although probably for different reasons. That anecdote does probably tell you everything you need to know about Vedder and his approach to music, though - so bloody serious, faced with a field full of dozens of bands, it doesn't occur to him to go and see any of them.
People who know about these things assure me Pearl Jam were everything you could hope for from them; certainly, they were exactly as I'd feared.
Larrikin Love invited their mother (well, one of their mothers; unless she was Hutterite I doubt she could have given birth to all of them) to play spoons; oddly, she seemed less out of place onstage in the tent than Mark E Smith did with The Fall earlier. The audience seemed to be united in general bemusement (besides the front two rows, of course) and, frankly, Smith seems to have gone well past the point of wanting to win the curious over to The Fall's cause.
The posh girl who was doing the video diary ended up enjoying herself, as it turned out.
Sunday, August 27, 2006
READING YOUR RIGHTS: A quick trip round Berkshire
The most important thing about the Panic! At The Disco Reading injury, of course, was not the aim of the person identified - on solid evidence - by Stereogum as being a Bloc Party fan. No, it was the gay undertones identified - on equally strong evidence - by Slash! At The Disco:
So, I'm sure you all know about Brendon getting knocked out at the Reading and Leeds Festival this weekend. But have you seen this? It was taken right afterwards. Is that Ryan's hand on his shoulder? Why yes, yes it is.
You'll have to imagine the photo, or follow the SATD link above. We might seem to have no standards, but I'll be buggered if No Rock is going to become fuel for the masturbatory fantasies of Panic At The Disco fans. It's Conor Oberst in his pants being whipped by Evan Dando using a crop made from his own hair, or it's nothing, do you hear?
More violence this evening at Reading, with NME describing the barrage of missiles targetted at My Chemical Romance as "shelling" so unrelenting was it. Of course, Brendan Urie's knocked out, stood up, played on performance had set a precedent that forced any band targetted this weekend to keep going whatever happened, so My Chemical Romance could do little except whine:
[Gerard Way] then introduced a track saying, "This song is called thanks for all the bottles, thanks for all the piss, thanks for all the golf balls, thanks for all the apples and thanks for all the sticky shit."
He then attempted to suggest that his bunch of middle class kids were, in some way, taking the rap on behalf of "the outsiders":
"We might be outsiders today, but we represent every outsider out there".
You're on Warner Records, man. You're not outsiders. I suspect you couldn't even find outside if you had a map and some flunkies to do the door opening.
Jack White found another way to cope, as ContactMusic noted:
The excitement spiralled out of control when festival-goers started throwing cups of beer onto the stage, soaking the band and forcing security to frantically dry off the stage to prevent any slip-ups. But White had no qualms about turning the tables on his fans. An eyewitness says, "Suddenly the crowd at the front went crazy and the band got soaked. Security had to come on and mop the floor down. But White got his own back at the end of the set when he picked up a bottle of water and sprayed the front row."
We love the idea of security turning up with the bucket and mop - "can I do you now, sir?"
David Sinclair, reviewing the festival for the Sunday Times, echoed Conor McNicholas' disappointment with the lack of rapport brought by the Arctic Monkeys - and it seems Alex noticed it, although didn't blame himself:
It takes a certain sort of act to harness this volatile combination of mob psychosis and surly enthusiasm successfully. Arctic Monkeys, for all their band du jour credentials, didn’t quite pull it off. With his increasingly bushy hairdo and sardonic sneer, their singer Alex Turner is beginning to look like a real rock star. But he sounded more like a Northern stand-up comedian as he rattled off his quickfire, narrative lyrics. The group’s spiky, new wave songs delighted the steaming scrum at the front, but lacked the weight needed to punch through to the back under these conditions. “You seem a bit lethargic,” Turner complained to the crowd.
This Is Fake Diy drop by their blog to report that Tapes N Tapes are going down well, while Soundgenerator have got some pictures from the last couple of nights up.
We've been busily debating here the reasons for Brian Molko's number one crop - hiding hair loss? Some sort of infection? Better for the hot weather? A hell of a lot of chewing gum got caught in there and needed to be cut out? A passing blogger, Twisted Freak notes that it makes him look "weird" but offers no suggestion as to what may have led to the hair-cutting.
All this not being at festivals wondering about male pattern baldness makes you wonder if life is going on elsewhere. At least we're not alone. Bluecinders has a Proustian moment, thanks to the Orange network:
My sister sent me a text from Reading Festival with no kisses on the end. I remember when I was young and skinny and trendy and went to festivals and didn't have time to send my family kisses on the end of texts. It lasted about the three months when I started sixth form college and went out with trendy Harry.
LEEDS UNITED: Another round-up of coverage
It's raining in Leeds. Tipping down, says the NME blog - which will probably be good news for the Love not riots organisers - as the cop said at the end of, erm, Cops, rain is the best policeman there is. It's like nature's water cannon.
They've also got the final confirmation that, yes, Alan McGee has finally lost his grip:
McGee, currently managing Dirty Pretty Things, had some surprising revelations to tell us. The three best gigs he ever saw were The Clash in '77, Oasis in '95 and The Libertines in '04.
Until last week, that is, when he saw The Rolling Stones... The energy emanating off Sir Mick was apparently amazing, while Keith's guitar playing was real 'dirty'.
As Smash Hits observed many, many years ago, you know you've crossed the generation gap when you start talking about how today's bands are fine, but Mick and Keith just blow them off the stage for their "energy". Still, let's hope he tries to sign them to Poptones.
NME proper has coverage of the reuniting of Andy Nicholson and the restofthe Arctic Monkeys backstage at Leeds:
Drummer Matt Helders chatted with his fellow founding member plus a group of friends in the backstage bar as Arctic Monkeys took in the atmosphere ahead of their main stage appearence this evening.
It can't be confirmed that Helders was saying "yeah, but before you were kicked out, did Alex start to look at you funny and always make you go for the Ginsters pasties?" with a worried look.
It's also thanks to the NME that we know that Carl Barat kept his arm in the sling during his set this aftenoon - understandable, after the gruesome twangs of pain yesterday.
The Sunday People gossip column VIP was down in Reading, but still was able to delight us with the news that Goldie Lookin' Chain got stuck in Leeds instead of transfering to the other site: they'd drunk way, way too much. In a way, it's incredible that anyone still wants to underwrite their drinks bills.
Gaz Crawler was in Leeds with but one aim, to see Pearl Jam. He supplies a kind of negative setlist:
However, I knew much before that no matter what they did, I would always be dissapointed as they have so many good songs they would not play ones I really love. They didn't play 'I am mine' or 'Rear view mirror' which are fan favourites and two of my favourites, so was quite surprised and dissapointed when they didn't. Other songs I hoped they would have played were 'Nothing as it seems', 'Light years', 'In my tree', 'Save you' and 'Immortality.
If you stare at this, and then look away at a blank white wall, the songs they actually did play will appear, reversed out.
Gaz ends with chill words:
If you're a twat and want slag off or argue Pearl jam with me, then heed my words. I KNOW MORE ABOUT PEARL JAM THAN YOU, YOU WILL LOSE.
Ah, but how much do you know about the Sha-La-La flexi disc series, Gaz, eh? Eh? Eh?
You can't argue with facts. Steven's Blog knows the facts:
Body Count I first listened to in 1993 when someone lent me a tape. The singer is Ice T, who most people will of seen in a few films. He was one of the first rappers to turn into an actor.
There surely aren't any people alive who haven't seen Ice T in a few films.
And who knew that seeing a chubby bloke say two words could make someone as happy as it made Stina:
We managed to get back to the main stage just as Chris Moyles came on. And introduced PETER bloody KAY!!!!!!! HAAA!! I was spazzing (hahahaha) and fumbled around with my camera pmsl and just caught a bad pic of the screen before he went again haha. He introduced Kaiser Chiefs and was like "KAISER... CHIIIIEFS?!" hahahaha which was SO funny lol.
But do you see... like he didn't know that that was really the name of the band. Although someone who works in the top flight of the UK entertainment industry and who has got free passes to Leeds in return for a spot of introducing not knowing the name of the Kaiser Chiefs is unlikely, isn't it? First rule of comedy, Spike, you must have veracity.
The odd mix of audience at Leeds has drawn comment before, and xjeennehx got to see how strange it was close up:
Next up were The Subways. By now we pushed ourselves further forward but behind this family, a Mum and Dad who decided to come along and bring there 10 year old sons, who looked like they weren't into it at all. I heard one of the kids turn round and say to his mate or bro or whatever, when The Subways were playing, ''this is crap'' =O! I wanted to yell FUCK OFF into his little infant ears. Seriously, there was no point in them being there. So Kaff came up with the idea that if we were really loud, we could drive them away haha. So when they did Rock & Roll Queen, we were going for gold hahaha. Then Billy started shouting '' SUP LEEDS YOU SEXY FUUUUUUCKS!'' to the bemusement and horror of the mother infront of us. Plus, the kids were giggling because he said the word 'Fuck'.
Clearly, the Clear Channel people still need to fine-tune the event to capture more of that family audience. Perhaps next year they should get The Fimbles and The Hoobs to headline.
PETE DOHERTY: CLASS WARRIOR
Pete Doherty? He's so street, it's a wonder he's not been paved over. He's going to lead us into rebellion of all sorts:
“I’ve got a fierce passion for politics but I can’t stand the smarmy, hypocritical upper-middle-class dictator nation that prevails and has always prevailed in this country.
“I’m up for petrol bombers, mate, and fighting in the streets.”
Pete made these comments from luxury private hospital The Priory. Pete's family are British Army through and through. At the age of 16, the British Council paid for him to go and do poetry in Russia; last year he shared a stage with Elton John at Live8. He hangs out with the likes of Kate Moss and Sadie Frost and much of his free time seems to be spent scoring or doing drugs - and you don't have to be too smart to know that cocaine production is pretty much directed at supportiny a dictator elite, albeit overseas. The casual observer might notice that when he's not living the life of the elite, he's too far gone to be tipping it over. Indeed, in most well-run revolutions of the people, Doherty's self-obsessed louche lifestyle would place him near the top of any list being drawn up to order when people might be given a blindfold and last cigarette.
It's telling he only objects to the upper middle classes.
POWER GETS A BIT ON THE SIDE
Unconnected with this year's Reading-Leeds festivals, Vince Power might still be feeling a little happy as he watches Clear Channel tug even harder than he did at the udders of the cash-cow: he's been given an honorary CBE. Right out the blue:
Mr Power, who is Irish, received a letter from Buckingham Palace last Friday confirming that he was in line for the honour. His award is not part of the twice-yearly honours lists - the Queen's Birthday Honours and the New Year Honours. Honorary awards, given to non-Britons, are often announced separately from those on these two lists.
Fancy that, eh?
READING WHILE OUR MOUTHS MOVE: Another round-up
The presence of Peaches Geldof at Reading tells you pretty much all you might feel the need to know about Reading these days - it's as if Lorraine Chase went there during the 1980s, isn't it? The Sunday Mirror suggests that she'd arranged the gig merely to be well-placed to catch the eye of her current love-target.
Danny Tourette.
Yes, from Towers of London.
A source said: "Peaches was following Donny around like a lost puppy. His girlfriend, who works at Capital FM, was with him but that didn't put her off."
"Donny doesn't want to know," said one pal.
Good lord, fancy setting your sights so low and still being knocked back.
NME report Jack White's bid to crowd-please during a set of covers:
"I love coming to Reading - British festivals are always the best."
We bet he can tell Ukranians that Kiev is the best festival in their local language, too.
The official NME coverage of the Arctic Monkeys made more allowances than Conor McN's late-night TV appearance:
Overwhelmed by the size of the occasion, frontman Alex Turner stopped second song 'Still Take You Home' midway through and observed "There's lots of people, lets see them", as the lights were turned-up.
Yes, because turning up the lights will turn a sea of faces into... erm... a sea of faces with lights on them. And generally, you can see facesin the audience from a stage anyway, can't you? It's a thing that always haunts us when we're stood looking a bit bored in a concert crowd. This smacks of a stunt to try and stop people leaving after the lights came on.
The blogs aren't cool on the Monkeys, but they seem to have passed to a point where they've become something that people are learning to live with, rather than a passion. Andrew managed a "much Bettter than I thought they were." Mind you, he was thrilled about getting a glowstick, too. Some Random Guy From Worthing has a similar "oh, they're alright" take: The Arctic Monkeys are impressing me more and more, I wasn’t a big fan of theirs at first.
John Thomas is more direct:
i might be shitter, but arctic monkeys are still absolutely awful.
John was watching on TV, and his overall review might make it reassuring he was indoors:
in fact, the whole programme was quite unenjoyable, with the unexpected exceptions of the cribs and the streets, and i am suddenly possessed with an intense desire to punch a fat grebo...
We hear police have taken Clint Mansell into protective custody, just in case.
It's Conor and Edith who exercise The Last Drink Of The Evening:
It's been a long day but I've just spent two hours watching the Reading Festival coverage on the telly. Edith Bowman says The Guillemots are "the Britsh Arcade Fire" and a guy from the NME who hasn't started shaving refers to the Arctic Monkeys as "The Monkeys".
Edith, looking earnest and frowning with emotion as you talk about a band does not convince anyone over the age of 3 that they're any good. The Arcade Fire wrote "Rebellion", The Guillemots are fronted by a fop haired tit.
NME man, there is only one Monkees. Check your fucking spelling.
Sour Kitty points out one of the recurring problems with any festival coverage, ever:
if they could just stop interviewing the "crowd" if i wanted to listen to a bunch of snotty posh kids i would actually pay to go there for real *eyeroll* oh but mummy doesnt like rock and roll, which makes this soooo cool darling!
K-FEDS AND COPS
Good news for Kevin Iwoulddoanythingforaline, as Stereogum reports he's to be the ridiculous part of this season's CSI embracing of the musical sublime and ridiculous.
The sublime is a product-placement appearance by John Mayer as himself - we imagine he'll just be noodling in the background and won't be turning out to be the killer.
Federline, meanwhile, is going to play a teenage hoodlum who hassles the investigating team. He seems thrilled that he's already being typecast as a tiresome idiot getting under everyone's feet, and who are we to rain on his parade?
HEATHER MILLS NAKED - AGAIN
You've got to hand it to Heather Mills: if the press are calling you on having done nude pictures in the past, how better to react than taking all your clothes off again? At Paul McCartney's house. While he's not there. And then offering the pictures to PETA for a calendar?
Everyone involved was sworn to secrecy, although clearly not using a bible or anything like that.
Last night a source said: "Heather wasn't remotely embarrassed. It's a photographer she has worked with for years and, remember, she has posed naked before."
Yes... yes, we do seem to remember hearing something about that.
We're looking forward to see how Victoria Newton manages to weave this into her batty theory that Mills is trying to ape Diana Spencer's every move - perhaps she'll suggest that doing a nude calendar is virtually the same thing than going on Panorama ("for didn't Princess Diana strip herself naked on that show, too?").
COPS AND RAVERS: IT'S LIKE AN 80S REVIVAL
Something you might not have heard about for a while: a mass battle between police and ravers as the cops wade in to break up an illegal rave.
They do seem to have included some astonishingly stupid ravers amongst their numbers, as some of the crowd at Great Chesterford tried to cross the M11 on foot. Presumably saying "wow, it's like the lights are coming straight at you" as they did so.
The Essex rave was broken up by forces from Essex, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and Hertfordshire - which seems like an awful lot of police to stop people from dancing.
Meanwhile, in Dudbridge, Gloucestershire, more police injuries (oddly, none of the reports mention if any of the ravers were injured) as a rave was disrupted on the Avocet Business Park; Farmers in Pembrokeshire have been put onto alert in case someone might attempt to play repetitive beats near their cowsheds and the citizens of Kent are being encouraged to report sightings on vans entering woods or people "moving sound systems about" - presumably to give us something to do on the bank holiday weekend when there's fewer benefit-claiming workers about to dob in.
Supt Joanna Young said: "It is very difficult for us to safely close a party involving hundreds of people in the pitch dark.
"To successfully deal with illegal raves we need to stop them becoming established using powers under the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act."
She said people should look out for large numbers of cars and people on foot descending on a specific location.
People turning up in cars and on foot in the countryside? Just what is going on at those National Trust parklands, eh?
The interesting thing here, of course, is that as the likes of Ibizia and Creamfields start to turn more and more to rock, dance music is heading back underground.
KEITH RICHARDS: OUTLAW
We can barely contain ourselves: Keith Richards has had a fag onstage at Hampden Park.
Yes, puffing smoke in the face of Scotland's ban on public smoking.
One time it was pushing at the edges of drug law - breaking butterflies on wheels and so on - now, it's more like "who would waft gently at a lacewing?"
THE VIEW FROM BBC THREE
Colin is in Leeds, Edith is in Reading: was that something in the divorce settlement when they split from the afternoon show? Edith, it has to be said, is blossoming without having to cope with fighting for space against Murray's perpetual back-of-the-class twitter.
Colin is in Leeds, Edith is in Reading. There's a question here, of course, if the audience might not have been better served by getting one of the events, instead of both - sure, if the BBC had poured all its resources into Reading and left Leeds unwatched, we might have missed something extraordinary that happens up north, but it might have been better to have one site covered in detail instead of what feels like a slightly stretched attempt to do both.
The press red service shows signs of this strain - whereas with T in the Park a couple of years back, we'd get a constant feed from one of the stages, here we get two extra screens which seem to rotate the same three or four sets over and over. You might get Dirty Pretty Things on screen one, with a "Next: Dirty Pretty Things" slapped on screen two. It's better than nothing, but it's nowhere near as good as the service you get for Wimbledon - and that's only bloody tennis.
Still, somehow, this corporate policy of looking the other way does at least mean we're spared the "hilarious" antics of Colin Murray and Peter Kay introducing the Kaiser Chiefs in Leeds. Sadly, we're not spared Murray's detailing of the whole story. Apparently, my straining sides remind me, Kay came on and said "Kaiser Chiefs". The man who brought us "garlic bread" hasn't, clearly, lost it yet.
Colin also told Edith the full details of the Mani disappearance - he'd been arrested for smashing up a bar when he'd been refused service, and only just made it to the show in time. "That's brilliant" trilled Edith, although we're not sure if she was impressed by the thuggish behaviour, the arrest, or the cutting-it-fine appearance.
We're not sure the Primals would have missed him much - although his antics did give Gillespie the chance to dedicate Jailbird to him. They played their new stuff, which meant they were more or less obliged to choose stuff that fitted with it from their back catalogue, so we got the Rolling Stones tribute Primal Scream rather than the sonic terrorists most of the world prefers. Country Girl, Bobby? What are you thinking of?
Matt Bellamy is wearing a tight, white tshirt, which leaves him only a box of fags tucked under the arm shy of being a 1970s rent boy. Muse's slow creep towards creating a genre of digital progrock is almost complete; it's astonishing that they've managed to take the Kerrang readers along with them. They'll be pushing it if they try to back-project any wizard's hats, though.
A quick note to the BBC: if you show any more Fratellis, we're revoking our licence fee and sending the money to Charles Allen, do you hear? Conor McNicholas (his correct name restored to the on-screen captions last night) seems impressed with them; apart from their not being Gogol Bordello we can't see much to recommend them.
Conor was more interesting on the Arctic Monkeys: he clearly didn't want to come out and say "the bubble's burst with that one, then", in case it hasn't, but in between a lot of "they're very specials" he did pretty much trash their Reading set. Citing a lack of communication between Alex Turner and the crowd, the NME editor defined their appearance as having "no euphoria thing."
The Streets sounded dreadful - judging by the crowd, that must have been something to do with the televisation rather than an actual representation. Not sounding dreadful, though - indeed, quite the opposite - were Dirty Pretty Things. Not only have they delivered the best set from the televised offering so far, but there was something almost Terry Butcher like in the way Carl Barat kept performing through the pain. A pretty boy wincing and making a glorious sound. That's what you come for.
music carl barat dirty pretty things peter kays kaiser chiefs arctic monkeys primal scream the fratellis muse matt bellamy the streetsreading 2006 leeds 2006
THIS WEEK JUST GONE...
The week viewed from No Rock and Roll Fun, where we've finally got the Digg This button to work:
The ten most-accessed individual items this week were:
1. Heather Mills and her porno past
2. Nikki Big Brother was paid £500 for sex with Pete Doherty, but without a deposit made
3. More Heather Mills porn pictures flappage
4. KT Tunstall - could she be a lesbian?
5. Gary Numan plans to tour old album
6. From out of nowhere, the Christmas pop papers
7. Tara Palmer Tompkinson turns to music; music tries to turn away
8. McFly naked
9. Triffids mp3 downloads for free
10. Britney Spears naked - from the waist up
The whole week crammed onto one page
The week before in a single post
The main event of the week has been Reading and Leeds
And, for once, there were some decent new releases about:
Cerys Matthews' second solo launch not quite as low-key as the first
At long last Union of Knives' solo debut
Thea Gilmore's Harpo's Ghost, standing out in a crowded market
Forty-four lost Art of Noise tracks from under Paul Morley's bed
Viva Voce return
Tortoise's Lazarus Taxion: three CDs of lovely rare stuff and a DVD
New book tracking Brian Wilson's wobble and steadying
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