Well, fancy that

Guess who's not going to turn up at Glastonbury? Or, indeed, anywhere else much.

Okay, Amy Winehouse was a good guess, but it's not right (at least, not yet) - this time, it's Pete Doherty who has pulled out. And cancelled the Babyshambles tour, and possibly even fired his tour manager.

But we bet Gordon Smart still believes in his story about a Barat-Doherty reunion during the weekend.

Hang about - who's running London?

Boris Johnson isn't: He's in Glastonbury, hanging out with very dubious company indeed.

Glastonbury blog round-up: Heading down

This year, it seems, is to be the year when on-site unofficial coverage of Glastonbury is going to become familiar - for the last couple of festivals, there have been a couple of blogs attempting to report from the mud, but this year it's looking like that there's going to be a constant stream of coverage.

DJSemtex blogged before leaving:

Im on my way to Glastonbury, for some reason I’m not looking forward to it.

It could be the mud, it could be the fact that I wont be doing my radio show tonight, it could be the fact that its gonna take 8 hours to get there.

He's also planning to Twitter, although according to that he's been watching the Hulk for a week.
Fat Butcher's off there, too, although sounding a bit more positive, although less keen to do everything live:

Wellies, water, wipes… check. Train leaves at lunchtime and I’m weighed down with mixers and cables and fifty pence taped to my hand in case I get lost and need to ring my parents.

My first major festival sets of the year, working with Bassline Circus and Pointless Productions, will be updating with photos on my return.

Those who are staying at home seem content with their choice. The Crazy is Catching reckons it'd have been better for a year off; Tizyertiz reckons it should be "put out to pasture" altogether, and isn't sure about Jay-Z - and is able to call on experience of the last Glasto/hip-hop pyramid experiment to support their working:

Personally, I quite like hip-hop (although I'd have to say that I think most modern day hip-hop artists, such as Mr.Z, are pretty awful) but Glastonbury is not the place for it. I once stood in a field and saw Eminem and a number of other hip-hoppers do their thing but , for me, it just didn't work (especially when the majority of the crowd thought it would be fun to lob bottles filled with 'The Lord-Knows-What' at all and sundry).

That - liquid on stage - can ruin an act, as KANYE WEST YELLED AT US JUST THE OTHER DAY.

[Part of Glastonbury 2008]

Glastonbury web round-up: Third agers and PR

It's not enough that Glastonbury has embraced commercialism whole-heartedly, as every other company in the world jostles for a piece of Glasto-related coverage.

A bank rushes out a press release to somehow link Glastonbury with pension planning:

Emma Walkley, current account manager at [a bank that should have remained a building society] said: "Those attending Glastonbury this year will find themselves being entertained by the golden oldies, with Leonard Cohen, Neil Diamond and even Shakin' Stevens making an appearance.

"Not only are the over 50s taking over the line-ups at festivals but they are also making up a large proportion of the crowds - which just goes to show more and more over 50s have ambitions to enjoy exciting challenges and experiences well into later life."

Of course, using Leonard Cohen as an example of planning shrewdly for your retirement is taking you onto dodgy ground.

Anyway, will you have any money left over to invest in pensions if you listen to an insurance company, which warns you to make sure you get insurance:

Managing director for Direct & Partnerships at [an insurance company], Mike Quinton, said: "One in four British adults said they were planning on attending a festival this summer and it would be all too easy to get swept up in the summer spirit and forget to take even the simplest of precautions with their belongings.

"Our research shows that many music lovers are taking unnecessary risks by storing expensive goods in tents, carrying pricey items on them and failing to consider protecting themselves from theft. We urge all festival goers this summer to plan ahead, only take what they need to as well as checking their cover before they go."

It might be a bit late sending out the press release when people are already half-sleeping in their tents.

[Part of Glastonbury 2008]

Glastonbury paper round: Some people think she's just a pair of tits

"Some people think she's just a pair of tits", you know. Yes, Gordon Smart surpasses himself by running a photo of Dolly Parton that looks like something you would have seen in a swingers' magazine.

He pushes his point home home in the story:

GLASTONBURY chiefs have been promising us a BIG surprise guest on Sunday.

But I didn’t realise they meant the size of her boobs.

Do you see? She has breasts! Ha ha ha! Breasts!

Smart also runs the exciting news of Libertines reunion:

Libertines set to reunite at Glastonbury

Really?

Oh, no. It's a guess:

A source said: “Carl and Pete are writing together and are keen to test the songs. Carl’s acoustic show on Sunday would be ideal.”

A guess which, over in the Daily Star, is being strongly ruled out by Carl Barat:

“I’d like to check out Pete’s set if it doesn’t clash with mine but at the same time I don’t feel well enough to deal with all the attention that might get me – if the fans spotted me they’d probably want us to get up on stage.”

The Mail spots Amy Winehouse shopping for alcohol and Euro 2008 stickers:

perhaps a gift for the many young fans who regularly wait outside the singer's north London home

(Why would you give your fans pictures of footballers? Why would that be your first guess?)

The paper is sure she'll be at Glastonbury, having got it from the horse's mouth:

Meanwhile, Michael Eavis has given the clearest hint yet that Winehouse will be well enough to perform at this year’s Glastonbury festival.

The festival’s 72-year-old founder revealed last night that he was looking forward to seeing Miss Winehouse’s scheduled performance on Saturday more than any other.

An offer of a helicopter to fly her in and out of Glastonbury to assure her the minimum of stress has also been put in place.

Of course, given that Eavis had been confidently predicting a sell-out and a dry festival, you might want to take that with a giant salt lick.

Lucy Bannerman in The Times warns that rain might be the least of fans' problems this year:

[T]he element to fear this year may not be water, but wind.

Those who have pitched tents on the site at 900-acre Worthy Farm, Pilton, Somerset, will have to steel themselves for strong southwesterly winds, which are predicted throughout the festival. Light showers are also expected today and tomorrow, but campers should escape the torrential downpours that have blighted previous years. Temperatures will hang around the 19C (66F) to 20C mark.

The Somerset County Gazette counters that, actually, you should fear water, too:

[A]t the time of writing, the heavens have opened and festival-goers have been told to prepare for the mires of deep puddles and sticky mud.

What of the bands, though? The regional presses go for local heroes. The Daily Record ignores the Jay-Z hoo-hah and the will she won't she Wineshe, and reveals who the star of the event will be:

Derek Meins

Who he?

Scots Indie Singer Plans To Take Glastonbury By Storm

Oddly, the Glasgow paper chooses to focus on a down-page act on the Greenpeace stage rather than, say, bigger Scottish names. But then maybe that's understandable - would you really want to claim the Fratellis as your own?

Preparing for their slot, the Fratellis moan to the Guardian about their image:

[T]hey're reviled by many for the very reasons others love them. And that greatly annoys Lawler, who, as the middle-class son of two teachers, probably has more in common with the Fratellis' critics than with the people who buy their records.

"You can't pick your fans, can you?" he asks, having settled himself at an outdoor table overlooking the canal that runs behind the Paradiso. "But we're grateful to have fans. And I think when people describe us as a band to get drunk to, or a party band, it shows you how out of fashion rock'n'roll is. We get described as a pub band, but that's what rock'n'roll is. Twist and Shout was three chords and 'C'mon, c'mon, c'mon' - it was nonsensical. But that was why it was effective."

The Evening Gazette has two Teesside acts to cheer for:

THE CHAPMAN FAMILY (right) got their invite via In New Music We Trust, a promotion on BBC radio stations aiming to promote new, original music.
[...]
DIRTY WEEKEND submitted their demo tape in a competition and beat thousands of other hopefuls to bag themselves a spot.

Eben the Chorley Citizen has found a local angle:

They [The Grow Things] have also been booked to play the BBC's Introducing stage at this year's Glastonbury - the same stage graced by the Ting Tings shortly before they shot to fame.

Mind you, if the United Press International is to be believed, there's going to be more bands than fans there:

About 35,000 people are expected to attend the Glastonbury festival, which began Thursday.

Bloody hell - 100,000 unsold tickets? No wonder Eavis was loooking worried...

Glastonbury blog round-up: Jews and lesbians

Mark from the Wichita Recordings blog is travelling down with a "random posse" and hoping that the site makes its magic happen:

My first Glastonbury was in ‘85 and I’ve been to the vast vast majority ever since (skipped the first couple of years after they let the police on site) and even now whatever cynicism I feel in looking at the line ups quickly dosappears when you get on site.

And if magic doesn't work for you, there's always faith. More faith than ever before, explains TotallyJewish:

A Jewish tent will host a Friday night get-together as part of an “informal but Shomer Shabbat programme”, while there will also be activities on Sunday. Those performing inside the tent – which will be located next to the Hari Krishna tent and near the Glade stage - will include the anarchic GhettoPlotz collective, Clive Selwyn and comedian Katie Burnett.

And if you're not interested in magic, and not bothered by faith, there's always sex. Dirty Converse is covering the festival from the lesbian's point-of-view:

Question: What do you get if you put a woman with a chainsaw in the Field of Avalon? Shapely tree stumps and a lot of men. And fucking hundreds of lesbians!

“Charlie Dimmock’s got nothing on her,” was one of the more polite comments I overheard while watching my first display of chainsaw tree sculpting. Picture a well built woman in jeans brandishing a fucking huge motorised saw, carving up tree stumps like they are pieces of cheese.

Bolsoversion isn't going. And was happy with the choice. Until they realised what they'd done:

Alas, the nation’s media decided my resolve would be short lived. Every outlet was insistent on making me feel like a big Glastonbury loser. Radio One bombarded me with Glasto propaganda, The Guardian told me how amazing the festival would be, The Independent sang the praises of the Kings of Leon and Jimmy Cliff and BBC News showed endless clips of happy campers.

On the up side, I will be sleeping the next four nights in a warm bed, not a hard tent floor, but this doesn’t reduce my jealousy.

All I am now hoping for is a little bit of rain. Not too much (I don’t want to wish the misery of Sunday 2007 on my friends and family) but maybe just a bit.

[Part of Glastonbury 2008]

Glastonbury Web round-up: Wellies and webcams

This is the scene from Glastonbury now - or at 10.17 this evening, anyway - as captured by the BBC webcam. They've made a widget so you can poke it wherever you like, too.

The BBC are predicting that it's going to rain heavily tomorrow; Weather.co.uk suggest rain tonight, tomorrow and on Saturday. But Gigwise found someone prepared to buck the gloomy predictions:

Michael Eavis sold a pair of wellies this evening for one hundred pounds as he told festival goers there is no need for them, we have sunshine all weekend.

His daughter, talking to the NME, was slightly less positive about the prospects, but still upbeat:

[Emily] added that the site is looking good, and based on her knowledge of the air – Eavis grew up on the farm – while she is not expecting a totally dry weekend she's confident conditions will be much better than in previous years.

"It's beautiful down here today, It's boiling hot," Eavis explained. "I'm expecting a bit of a shower at some point over the weekend but we think it will be pretty fine all weekend from knowing what it's like here."

Sponsors Q have actually put on some music:

Q's Queen's Head was rammed full this evening as Glastonbury's musical treats kicked off. As the first main stage to swing into operation at this year's event, there was a huge crowd baying for tunes with the tent packed to capacity and more than a thousand more people at the fringes trying to catch the early acts.

Glasvegas and Santogold (pictured) were among those to benefit from the huge interest in the Queen's Head and the "up for it" crowd happily tolerated the latter's slightly late appearance after getting stuck in traffic on the way to the Somerset site.

Here's a simple rule of thumb: if you're going to use a creaking with-it phrase like up for it, daddio, don't draw attention to it by putting it in quotes.

Back to Michael Eavis, finally: the first video from this year's events to hit YouTube is this, shot at the official opening:


[Part of Glastonbury 2008]

Ting Tings do it for Gore

Current TV take a break from the usual gap-year-meets-Damien-Day fare to make room for this:

The Ting Tings talking about things.

Are we not Happy Meals?

This is New Wave Nigel, one of the characters you could collect at American branches of McDonalds as an American Idol themed toy with the Happy Meals.

Why, yes, there is a passing resemblance to Devo, what with the hat and all. And, since you mention it, Devo have noticed, too. And they're not Happy:

McDonald's & American Idol Go Low
By Co-Opting DEVO's Energy Dome

We recently discovered that DEVO has once again unwittingly intersected with mainstream pop culture.

McDonald's fast food restaurants are offering a series of American Idol TV show themed toys in their children's Happy Meals. One of the toys is named "New Wave Nigel", who sports an orange jumpsuit, punk shades, and an unmistakable DEVO Energy Dome. Flipping a switch plays a DEVO-esque song (which sounds a bit like a mutated version of DEVO's Doctor Detroit.

Was DEVO ever contacted by McDonald's, American Idol, or anyone else involved in making and distributing this toy wearing their trademark headgear?
Of course not. Pioneers who got scalped....again.

It's disgusting, this sort of commercial exploitation of a band who set their face against commerce. Except when they did the 2003 advert for Swiffer.

We're given to understand they had been negotiating to create an "Are we not Bells? We are Taco - T-A-C-O" campaign for a rival chain.

Coldplaigarism

After the claims that Coldplay might have borrowed one of the songs on their new album, former Macca PR bloke turned Coldplay spokesperson Murray Chalmers issued a strident denial:

"We totally refute their claims, and there are two facts that make it easy to disprove them," said the band's spokesman Murray Chalmers. "First, on the night in October when the band say Chris Martin was watching them, he was actually working at the Air Studio in London, and we can prove that. Second, even if he had been at the gig, "Viva la Vida" was written and demoed seven months before the night in question, so it couldn't possibly have been copied."

It's a terrible thing to be accused of, plaigarism, isn't it... oh, hang on, though, what's this The Times has noticed in an interview for Borders?:

But Martin hasn't done himself any favours with this promotional interview for the album in which he admits that Coldplay are "the world's worst—but most enthusiastic—plagiarists as a band".

It's curious to delight in your own musical 'borrowing' only to throw a massive strop when someone else accuses you of the same thing; perhaps it's just the band can't bear to be thought of stealing off people like Creaky Boards.

Glastonbury 2008: It's not a surprise if you tell people

Perhaps the decision to pre-announce Franz Ferdinand's 'surprise' appearance at Glastonbury tomorrow night is intended to try and shift some of those last few thousand tickets. But you can't help wondering if a surprise is slightly diminished by, erm, not being a surprise at all.

Glastonbury 2008: The uberpost

As inevitable now as the pictures of mud-covered teenagers, this is our annual post which gathers together the weekend posts marking Glastonbury.

You can read all the posts by checking the glastonbury 2008 tag.

Tuesday 24th
3,000 openings: charities pay price of Glasto overstock

Wednesday 25th
Guardian download freebie album

Thursday 26th
Glastonbury aflame
Franz Ferdinand: Surprise! Oh, not any more
Online: Webcams, weather and wellies
Blogs: Jews, lesbians and not going

Friday 27th
Paper round: Dolly's breasts, local heroes and missing 100,000
Online: PR jostles for coverage
Blogs: Memories of Eminem and promise of Tweets
Boris and Billy: together at last
No show Doherty
Blog round-up: Staying, and staying together
On TV: Does Zane Lowe have a plan B? Or a plan A-and-a-half?
Web round-up: For the love of pies

Saturday 28th
Paper round: Martha's wellies, and 2009's headliner revealed
Web round-up: Eavis fibs, Shaky disappoints
Flickr dip: Cook and crime
Blogs: A present for Beth Ditto
On TV: Crowded House, Neon Neon, Duffy
On TV: Amy staggers and Will Young appears
Blog round-up: The hitherto-unseen fire risk

Sunday 29th
Flickr dip: Duffy, positions for watching and complaints
Paper round: Winehouse lashes out, get lashed
Winehouse video
Web round-up: Jay-Z fights himself

Monday 30th
Morning-after round-up: Jay-Z and James Blunt

This year's festival video

Lest we forget
Glastonbury 2007
Glastonbury 2005
Glastonbury 2004

BPI eye P2P OK

Britain could be about to follow South Korea and offer a proper, licensed peer-to-peer network, as a result of government banging together heads of record companies and ISPs:

The co-operation follows the intervention of "Brown's Fist", the former advisor and Parliamentary Under-Secretary at BERR (the Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform) Baroness Shriti Vadera. Vadera is understood to have threatened both the ISP and music businesses with reform and policy intervention, threats which encouraged both parties to open negotiations.

Interesting - if the Andrew Orlowski's report is correct, then it seems the reason why the BPI have been reluctant to push for legislation bringing in three strikes is fear of what the balance would be in return, then.

There are wrinkles still to be sorted out - not least the question of how much this is going to cost. Would we be expected to pay, say, eMusic subscription rates for a service where the consumer is providing the infrastructure for distribution - in other words, why should a subscriber pay as much for delivery when they drive to the depot to collect the product, and then drop off packages for other people?

More to the point, seriously, could the music industry cope with not being able to paint p2p as an evil, thief-riddled technology and play its part in promoting the idea that all that stuff they warned you about - viruses, secret porn, people stealing your files, cooties - isn't a problem all of a sudden?

[Thanks to Duncan G]

The Times legal pages: finger closer to the pulse than The Sun

While Gordon Smart was struggling to make something out of 'couple do different jobs; go to different places' this morning, he could have actually asked his colleagues on the Times' law desk if they had something a bit meatier.

They did: Frances Gibb and Adam Sherwin were reporting that Fiona Shackleton has been set up to represent Madonna if and when something decree-related happens. Shackleton, of course, took one for the Macca team when Heather Mills poured water over during the McCartney divorce sideshow, we think to indicate how terrible it was being portrayed as bit unpredictable by the media. It's not known if Guy Ritchie has an arsenal of water pistols, but chances are.

Glastonbury 2008: Countryside-type thing happens in countryside

Fire! FIRE! Run for your lives... Glastonbury's aflame.

Oh, hang on... it's not: there's just a small fire in a scrap metal yard a mile from the site. It might mean the traffic has a bit of trouble, but then it's a festival in the country. The traffic is always bad.

GCap fiddles comeptition; gets burned

GCap must have their own entrance to Ofcom, they're carpeted there so often. After a run of misudgements and accidents - the Easter Bunny saying "motherfucker" at breakfast, that sort of thing - they've now been hit with a massive fine for cheating their audiences.

The Secret Sound contest was deliberately fudged so that contestants with the wrong answer were put on the air, so that the competition could carry on rolling along, with listeners spending their cash on the premium-rate entry line. The competition ran across the One network - which shows one of the advantages of networking 'local' programming: it allows you to rip off people right across the country with one central con, instead of having to arrange thirty smaller cons in each licence area.

Seriously, though, you wonder if networking isn't partly to blame: if the team putting together the competition lived and worked amongst their audience, they might be less keen to agree to a scheme to cheat them. Either because they'd have a stronger sense of community and responsibility, or because they know the people they anger drink in the same pubs, send their kids to the same schools and shop in the same branches of Tesco as they use. It's easy to see people as saps to be shaken hard for cash when they're not your neighbours.

GCap didn't help themselves by not being entirely helpful when their duplicity was revealed:

Ofcom added that GCap's efforts to remedy the breaches of its licence obligations were also "entirely inadequate".

"GCap was neither as full or as frank as it should have been either with Ofcom or its listeners," it concluded.

Ofcom said GCap had made matters worse by its behaviour after the incident had come to light.

The regulator said the company's internal investigation "did not appear… to have been either thorough or extensive", with no formal written report produced and GCap's board given only a "verbal report" of what had happened.

The piddling refund offered - two pounds, regardless of how much the company had taken from your pockets - also didn't go down well with the regulator.

The upshot? GCap has been fined £1.1 million quid.

There is a footnote, though: This represents twenty-five times the money GCap made from the competiton. ITV had made about fifty million from premium rate competitions during the time it wasn't playing fair - oddly, their fine wasn't one and a quarter billion.

Gordon in the morning: Separate lives

Rav Singh has been banging away at the "Madonna marriage crisis" for a couple of weeks now, but clearly Gordon has been waiting until there was some, erm, facts to run with.

Or there was space amongst pictures of ladies in bikinis.

His big revelation? That Madonna and Guy are sleeping in separate rooms.

Yes, yes, they said that ages ago. But Gordon has 'discovered' they're doing it on trips away, too. He's so excited, as well as his photobyline:

Gordon Smart's Bizarre

He's given himself another byline as well:

By GORDON SMART
Bizarre Editor

So, what did Gordon Smart's Bizarre by Gordon Smart, editor of Bizarre by Gordon Smart have to share?

But while they were there Guy, 39, spent his time working on a new commercial with Hollywood star George Clooney.

And Madonna, 49, visited fashion designers to arrange costumes for her forthcoming tour.

So, erm, couple with different jobs do different things during the day, then.

But if that's a worry, there's also the recession to worry about:

MADONNA’S countryside retreat has lost £455,409 in value since January — making her the A-list celeb hardest hit by Britain’s housing slump.

Still, it's still worth over ten million, and - as far as we know - she's still managing to keep oiks like you and me orf her land - so it's not all bad news for her as she feels the credit crunching in the way we'd imagine her lower back must have been for years.

Auf wiedersehen, Pet

Be Your Own Pet have quit the Warped tour:

We regret to inform our fans that we will not be participating in this year's Warped Tour. We have been going non-stop for the past 6 months and didn't realize how much the intense schedule would take out of us. Something had to give and sadly its this tour.

Much, much too busy, then.

Their non-appearance has nothing, of course, to do with their previous observation about the Warped tour and the fools from whom it will be removing ticket cash:

I just associate it with a certain look and a certain style and the kind of kids at school that I thought were-- this is really bad, I'm sure-- the kind of kids that were dumbasses wearing Rancid t-shirts who thought they knew what punk rock was and threw things at people in the cafeteria.

So it's like, okay, now we're going to be performing for these people. Our label is under the impression that we're going to play one date and then automatically sell 100,000 more records. All those bands have this very specific look and sound and style. It's like the new hair metal or something. There are like 10 different rules about how you write a song and what everything sounds like and looks like.

Apparently, there's an extra rule about not slagging off the dumbasses in their Rancid t-shirts.

Cancer Bats: "Up for" as in "eligble for"?

The Cancer Bats - no, you haven't missed anything - proudly tell their fans via their MySpace that they're in with a sniff of a major award:

CANCER BATS are up for 3 awards at this year's Kerrang! Awards.

- Best Live Band
- Best Album ('Hail Destroyer')
– Best International Band

This is a huge deal and we need you, the fans to vote vote vote!
Head over to: www.kerrangawards.com and vote for Bats as much as you can!!!

The curious fan who follows this instruction - and the link - might be surprised to discover that the shortlist for the awards isn't out for another month. So, yes, you could say they're up for the awards, but only in the same way that Coldplay and Emmy The Great are - because there's nothing to stop anyone writing any name they like into the form at this stage.

Britain turns Green

The Reverend Al Green is on his way to the UK. Not quite yet, to be clear, but he'll be heading here come October:

Tuesday 28th October - Birmingham NIA Arena
Thursday 30th October - Glasgow Clyde Auditorium
Monday 3rd November - Manchester Evening News Arena
Wednesday 5th November - London Royal Albert Hall
Thursday 6th November - London Hammersmith Apollo

Kanye blogs. Then BLOGS SOME MORE!!!!!!!!

Kanye's Boonaroon experience wasn't a happy one. Now, he's extending the pain by posting a blog entry about it:

I am sick of negative people who just sit around trying 2 plot my downfall... Why???? I understand if people don't like me because I like me or if people think tight clothes look gay or people say I run my mouth to much, But this Bonnaroo thing is the worst insult I've ever had in my life. This is the most offended I've ever been... this is the maddest I ever will be. I'm typing so fucking hard I might break my fucking Mac book Air!!!!!!!! Call me any name you want.... arrogant, conceited, narcissistic, racist, metro, fag whatever you can think of.... BUT NEVER SAY I DIDN'T GIVE MY ALL! NEVER SAY I DIDN'T GIVE MY ALL! THIS SHOWS NO MATTER HOW HARD YOU TRY TO BE GOOD AT SOMETHING THERE WILL BE PEOPLE THERE TO LIE ABOUT YOU AND BRING YOU DOWN! LIKE WAYNE SAYS PLEASE DON'T SHOOT ME DOWN CAUSE I'M FLYING! I'M FUCKING HURT BY THIS ONE. ALL I CARE ABOUT ARE THE FANS. JUST SAY THIS OUT LOUD IN A ROOM FULL OF PEOPLE, "KANYE DOESN'T CARE ABOUT GIVING A GOOD PERFORMANCE." CAN ANYONE HONESTLY SAY THAT ????????? HAS ANYONE EVEN TAKEN THE TIME TO AT LEAST DO THE MATH??? BONNAROO SHOULD HAVE RELEASED A STATEMENT IN MY DEFENSE BUT SINCE THEY HAVEN'T LET'S BREAK DOWN THE WALLS ON THIS TRUMAN SHOW AND LET YOU KNOW WHAT REALLY OCCURRED!!! FOR OVER A MONTH WE WENT BACK AND FORTH ON WETHER OR NOT WE COULD EVEN FIT MY STAGE AT THE FESTIVAL. ONE DAY THEY WOULD SAY YES... WE'D SEND THEM OUR SPECS THEN THEY THEY'D SAY OK... THEN THEY WOULD SEND SPECS BACK THAT DIDN'T FIT THE STAGE. WE WERE OBVIOUSLY DEALING WITH FUCKING IDIOTS WHO DIDN'T REALLY HAVE THE CAPACITY TO REALLY PUT ON THIS SHOW PROPERLY. THEY TRIED 2 GIVE ME A TIME SLOT WERE IT WAS STILL LIGHT OUTSIDE ... I HAVE A FUCKING LIGHT SHOW DUMB ASS, IT'S NOT CALLED GLOW IN THE DARK FOR NO REASON SQUID BRAINS! MY PEOPLE WORKED OUT A COMPROMISED STAGE PLOT AND A 3AM TIME SLOT AND I AGREED. FAST FOWARD TO THE DAY OF THE SHOW. MY PRODUCTION MANAGER TRIED TO LOAD IN FOR 24 HOURS BEFORE I WENT ON STAGE BUT THE FESTIVAL WOULDN'T ALLOW US TO DO ANYTHING UNTILL PEARL JAM LEFT THE STAGE. PEARL JAM ENDED ONE HOUR
LATE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AT THAT POINT WE'RE RACING AGAINST THE SUN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AT 4:20AM DON COMES BACK 2 THE BUS AND TELLS ME, " IT WOULD TAKE 45 MORE MINUTES TO PUT ALL YOUR PYRO IN!" I SAY I HAVE TO GET OUT THERE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE . I HIT THE STAGE AND PEOPLE HAD BEEN THROWING SHIT ON THE STAGE AND HAD ACTUALLY HIT THE JANE SCREEN WITH, I GUESS BOTTLES OR SOMETHING AND HAD BROKEN MY FUCKING SCREEN. REMEMBER WHEN YOU WERE A SHORTY AND WATER WOULD HIT THE TV?????? WHEN I GOT 2 "THROUGH THE WIRE" I STEPPED ON THE FRONT PART OF MY STAGE AND THERE WAS SO MUCH LIQUID ON THE STAGE I COULDN'T MOVE WITHOUT SLIPPING. I HAD TO ADJUST MY WHOLE PERFORMANCE STYLE BECAUSE OF IT. A FEW MORE SONGS IN AND THE SONG WAS ON IT'S WAY UP.. I CUT A FEW SONGS FROM THE SET BECAUSE I WANTED PEOPLE 2 EXPERIENCE STRONGER WHILE THERE WAS STILL SOME DARKNESS TO PERFORM IT IN. I'VE STRUGGLED WITH STRONGER FROM IT'S CONCEPTION. REMEMBER LAST SUMMER WHEN I CANCELED SOME TV APPEARANCES. IT WAS BECAUSE I DIDN'T WANT TO PERFORM STRONGER IN THE DAYTIME. ANYONE WHO CAME TO THE GLOW TOUR CAN UNDERSTAND WHY I WANTED PEOPLE TO SEE IT PROPERLY. IT BROKE MY HEART THAT I COULDN'T GIVE THESE FANS STRONGER IN IT'S GREATEST FORM... BY THE TIME I GOT TO STRONGER IT WAS DAYTIME AND IT BROKE MY HEART. I'M SORRY TO EVERYONE THAT I DIDN'T HAVE THE ABILITY 2 GIVE THE PERFORMANCE I WANTED TO. I'M SORRY... SOMETIMES I GO 2, 3 DAYS W/O SLEEP WORKING ON MY PERFORMANCE... I HAVE TO ICE MY KNEES AFTER EVERY SHOW AND THEY HURT WHEN I WALK THROUGH THE AIRPORT... HAVING AN EXPENSIVE STAGE CUTS MY PAYDAY IN HALF... CALL ME WHAT YOU WANT BUT NEVER SAY I DIDN'T GIVE MY ALL!!!

In other words: Pearl Jam over-ran, please don't think I was holding back but I was afraid of slipping and looking silly, and fuck it, I think I've got my Mac Air Caps Lock stuck on.

Must we fling this filth at our non-black metaller kids?

Poor old Emil Koverot. The guitarist with black metal band Bloodsrit had been offered a teaching job at his local school in Västervik, Sweden, only to find that he got sacked before he started as the school suddenly decided that his musical career might be incompatible with the whole shaping-young-minds-thing.

Koverot has done what any self-respecting metaller would do: He's resorted to sacrifice and slaughter to avenge the dishonour. Or, rather, he might, if his appeal to the local ombudsman fails.

He sees himself as the latest in a long line of musicians kept down by The Man:

“It’s the same old stereotypes,” he said.

“It’s the same way people reacted to the Beatles in the 1960s.”

Although, to be fair, most people rushed out and bought Beatles records in large numbers and - as far as we know - the suitability of Ringo taking a role as a classroom helper in Knotty Ash never came up, so we can't be sure.

Also, it's not quite the same thing anyway, is it? The Beatles had songs about love and hand-holding, whereas a typical Bloodsrit lyric runs more like this:

I drag the worthless priest ashore
He screams endlessly in naked fear
I am an eternal veil of evil torture
And I take pleasure in his agony

He is being crucified upon a cross
And boiling blood is poured upon him
His face explodes in bursting heat
As I whip his soul a thousand times

Apart from anything, could you have a person teaching who thinks there's any way you can be crucified other than on a cross?

How Noel Gallagher got his groove back

We were thinking the other day that most of the first wave of fans of Dadrock are probably actual Dads now. But still, the Dadrock keeps coming, as Oasis unveil plans for a new album. And they're going dance:

Speaking about the album, Noel Gallagher said: "I wanted to write music that had a groove."

It's called Dig Out Your Old Parka, They're Back Again. Or maybe Dig Out Your Soul. And Noel... let's try and pay attention... he's excited... really...

"I wanted a sound that was more hypnotic; more driving. Songs that would draw you in, in a different way. Songs that you would maybe have to connect to - to feel."

Of their new single Gallagher said: "If 'The Shock Of The Lightning' sounds instant and compelling to you, it's because it was written dead fast. And recorded dead fast.

Eh? In order to feel the songs you have to have a connection with them? Isn't that true of any piece of art, ever? And why... recorded fast... compelling? How? What? Need... no... silence...

Free and lovely

To celebrate their involvement in Glastonbury, the Guardian's music site are making available a free album's worth of downloads, including the mighty Operator Please and Neon Neon. And CSS.

There is some White Denim on there, too, but these things happen even in the best-regulated households.

(Satire)

Thom C drops us an email to alert us to Guido Fawkes' blog suddenly embedding music videos (don't worry, we're not going to retaliate by suddenly throwing adverts for Total Sport Film Politics all over the place.

Guido is championing Billy Ruffian, who have written a song in support of David Davis and his 42 day stunt. Sort-of.

Let's not quibble that they seem to have confused John Stuart Mill with Hayley Mills, and instead ponder why the song - sung from Davis' point of view:

Canada can detain for just one day,
And it's two days for Germany and the USA,
Russia has five, Italy has four,
So why do we require 38 more?"

"There's no argument for it, mine's the argument against,
I want the voters to come down off the fence,
I've gambled my job and my political future,
Mr. Brown debate with me on any day that suits you."

Trouble is, of course, that Davis has happily supported - and, indeed, continues to support - 28 days, which is equally random and - a quick tap of the calculator suggests - 24 more than Italy.

The other question, of course, is the awkward question of what effect this has on the people of Haltemprice and Howden. With Davis only campaigning on one issue, either they're going to have to vote for a man with no manifesto commitment to indicate how he might represent their wishes in Parliament on other questions of the day, or else will have to withdraw from anything other than votes on 42 Days. Either way, the constituency is being denied proper representation - is effectively disenfranchising a large swathe of the North-East really the act of a defender of individual liberty?

The comment on Guido's blog includes an entry from Billy Ruffian:

Just to clarify, I wouldn't exactly say we're Davis supporters - we're made up of two wussy liberals and an anarchist.

They steal a Tony Hancock gag:

What about Magna Carta? Did she die in vain?

That's from the Half Hour, Twelve Angry Men, where Hancock exploits the legal system in order to boost his own personal finances by extending the jury deliberations. We'd like to think using the appeal from a man who was interested in justice, but only up until it started to cost him, was intentional. But we're guessing not.

Gordon in the morning: Crossover

Never mind the Who / Torchwood / Sarah Jane Adventures triple crossover this weekend. This morning, it's Gordon In The Morning meets Gennaro Castaldo Watch.

Yes, Gordon's attempt to try and argue that Coldplay are cool was struggling:

IT’S become fashionable for so-called music fans to dislike COLDPLAY.

But that means there are 500,000 uncool people in the UK alone who have rushed out to buy the band’s latest album Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends in the last fortnight.

And I am not ashamed to be included in the figures.

Really, Gordon? You went out and bought it? In a shop? But didn't you tell us that you'd been sent a free copy to review before it came out?

Still, Gordon feels his love of the band has been justified because of the sales:

They have claimed the ultra-rare honour of scoring a No1 in the single and album charts on both sides of the Atlantic — putting them alongside musical greats including THE BEATLES in terms of transatlantic success.

Gordon doesn't mention the Beatles did it back when it wasn't quite so easy; not the way Coldplay released their records during this bit-of-a-lull period for record sales to boost the chance of this sort of thing happening. (The sales of the album were huge, but the double chart-topper probably wouldn't have happened if they'd tried it in, say, December.)

And Gordon does allow that it's not automatically a guarantee of never-ending cool:

The last British act to achieve the double double was ROD STEWART back in 1971.

Younger readers might be unaware that Rod Stewart is actually the father of Rod Stewart's Daughter.

Gordon tries another tack: they're modern:

Coldplay have embraced the challenges facing the music industry and harnessed the power of the internet.

= their tunes are available for download. Like the Top Gear album and the Thunderbugs back catalogue.

Struggling to demonstrate why 'selling like baked beans or bus tickets' is the same thing as being great, Gordon calls in Gennaro:

HMV’s Gennaro Castaldo said: "The interest we have seen in Viva La Vida has been truly phenomenal — both online, where we’ve taken the most amount of pre-orders for an album ever, and also across all our stores, for which we placed one of the largest orders in our company’s history.

"So while many more of us are downloading, this clearly shows that the music-loving public still love their CDs."

"The most amount of pre-orders"? Clearly, parachuting into Gordon's column has damaged Castaldo's power of control over the English language.

Still flailing, Gordon manages to describe Coldplay's sales as if he's talking about bird flu:

Coldplay are now No1 in 14 countries around the world, including Australia, Japan, Korea, Germany and Israel.

In record company speak, they have conquered all the vital territories — Japan, America and Europe.

It spreads so easily these days because of air travel, you see.

If that’s uncool, then I’m happy to be part of Chris Martin’s geeky gang.

Not just proud, but - by getting a lead story out of 'popular, mid-market band sell lots of records to middle markets' - you've become their cheerleader. If ever Murdoch tires of you, EMI's press department will always have a home for you.

"and that will be a $750million booking fee, please"

Ticketmaster has been spun off - or, perhaps, thrown out of - its parent company. It'll go independent in 2009, carrying three quarters of a billion dollars in debt.

It's not, perhaps, the best time to be trying to set up a debt-laden company that doesn't really do anything much beyond act as a middleman. Apparently they've got lots of ideas about how they can pay off the debt and thrive - we suspect the business plan includes the words "bigger booking fees".

Someone still love you, Boris Johnson

It's not just the slightly-optimistic anonymous commenter who is applauding Boris Johnson's decision to drop the anti-racism from the anti-racist Rise festival; some of his political opponents do too.

Indeed, the BNP are claiming the idea for their own, reports the Guardian diary:

The decision to strip the anti-racist theme from Rise, London's anti-racist festival, has won plaudits from the BNP. Indeed, their man says the whole thing was his idea.

Of course, as the commenter rightly pointed out, there's no reason to infer from the redirecting of Rise that Boris is racist. And just because you're getting applause from the BNP doesn't automatically make you a right-wing stooge. It does all look a bit petty and clumsy, though. You know, kind of like that 2003 Taki article that appeared in The Spectator when he was editor.

Donovan still slapped about The Face

We don't think Jason Donovan should have sued the Face all those years ago, but even so, it's probably unfair on him that, fifteen years on, the case is reported as having been about being called gay. Today's G2, for example, notes:

Beckham's ease with his image represents a major shift in attitudes from 15 years ago, when Jason Donovan sued the Face for libel over a gay rumour. He won the case and an award of £200,000, but emerged appearing catastrophically homophobic. Having alienated a large section of his fanbase, his career never truly recovered.

He should have shrugged and moved on, but his case against the magazine was not that it called him gay; it was that it called him a liar. That he was supposedly lying about his sexuality wasn't really the point, and certainly it's unfair to suggest that he came off as homophobic during the case.

It should also be remembered that he cut a deal with The Face which allowed it to keep it publishing - he was seeking an apology rather than vengeance.

The irony, of course, is that the brief mention of his name in an article about outing would, by now, have been forgotten; the legal action just ensures that nobody can write an article about the closet without throwing in a reference.

Lavigne fans rig YouTube stats

How, you might wonder, are the slender ranks of those who still believe in Avril Lavigne managing to show their enthusiasm for her so much that her Girlfriend video has become the most-watched option on YouTube?

By rigging it: there's a page which happily refreshes the video page every fifteen seconds, with instructions to Avrilophiles to:

keep this page open while you browse the internet, study for exams, or even sleep. For extra viewing power, open up two or more browser windows at this page!

Of course, as it resets every fifteen seconds, the bonus is that you can build Avril's page views without the video ever reaching the song's introduction. Even her biggest fans, it seems, would rather not have to listen to the awful tune.