Joss Stone campaign hymnal

Almost nobody outside of the British press seems to be taking the Stone/Obama story seriously - and even then, the "doing the campaign theme song for" has been nervously marked down to "writing a song for".

Well, we say "almost nobody". Some right-wing bloggers are treating it like it's real.

CrushLiberalism is angry:

Obama hires young white woman singer to do his campaign song

Presumably a black presidential candidate should restrict himself to wizened, black, male singers. Some sort of blues, perhaps.

The American Pundit is angry:

Obama’s Young, White Female Songwriter

Not only is she white, but she's also not black. Thank heavens there are sharp eyed bloggers who spot these details.

But it's not just that she's white - she's not even a native American. Well, not not a Native American... oh, you know what they mean:

could Obama not find an American singer? I’ve got nothing against our British friends, but he’s exporting his theme song development while complaining about the exporting of other jobs? Not the greatest photo op there.

Yes. Writing a theme song - that's a good thirty-five quid Obama has outsourced there. Would have outsourced there.

Hilariously, the Pundit even notices that it should treat a Gordon Smart story with caution:

I was surprised to learn that Stone is a “huge star in the USA”, but maybe that’s just me.

... however, having spotted one major flaw in the story, they still take the rest of it completely at face value.

Surely by now someone should be saying that Ronson/Winehouse have been approached instead?

Chanting at the charts

This morning's Telegraph website is offering a free mp3 from the Cistercian Monks of Stift Heiligenkreuz.

They share a label with Amy Winehouse, and the paper's Peter Culshaw asked Father Carl to have a listen to her record:

"For 10 minutes I liked it, but when I read the lyrics I thought it was sad. I would like to invite her here - I feel sympathetic to people like her. She could stay a week or two and discuss the big questions of life - faith might be an answer for her."

They do make their own wine, so it's not impossible.

Gordon in the morning: Peaches gets her man, or a man

Peaches Geldof's quick ceremony in Las Vegas - she popped into a wedding chapel and came out, officially and legally, as a pisspoor parody of Britney Spears - gets a full three-byline coverage from The Sun, leaving Gordon with nothing to do but supply an opinion piece.

But, really, what is there to say?

GETTING married at the ripe old age of 19 strikes me as yet another cry for attention from Peaches.

Does it? And yet, if so, why are you giving her the attention?

More interestingly is the way that Smart thinks it's the age rather than the nature of the marriage which is the demand to be looked at. Quite a few people get married at 19 and have long and successful marriages, surely, Gordon?

Nor would I like to be in her new hubby’s shoes, not least because he is now married to an immature teenager.

Not least. Mind you, it's probably no less terrible than being in Chester French.

Still, we've seen Little House On The Prairie, and we know how this one goes - the dad makes the judge un-marry them at gun point, doesn't he?

Meanwhile, Gordon claims that Madonna is about to lets call it "adopt" another Malawian, who nobody at all is pretending to be an orphan this time round, at least. Smart, though, runs a photo of the child - Mercy. Perhaps he believes that the PCC rules on invading the privacy of children don't apply if they're not British.

MySpace friend requests repeatedly deleted

Trouble over at MySpace, as it gears up for another relaunch attempting to turn it from music promo tool to cash-generating music retail site: The Deal reports that it's having trouble tempting someone to take the CEO chair at MySpace Music (we're given to understand the large ejector button next to the chair itself might be the problem.)

Making things worse, the technical team pulling together the site is - again, according to The Deal - starting to smell a little burny as it rushes to meet a September deadline for launch; they're not keen on the idea of a CEO turning up right now, full of ideas, demanding changes and generally earning their living by making the tech team's life even more miserable.

I've not seen an official denial from MySpace that any such strains are appearing, but I guess we can imagine exactly the sort of statement doing the denying and take that as read, yes?

From a mush in Shepherd's Bush

In some sort of survey, Shepherd's Bush has been named the centre of British Rock And Roll on the grounds that if you count up all the rock stars who born there, and divide them by all the people including rock stars who came from there, the number is higher than anywhere else.

But it turns out you have to treat Shepherd's Bush as a place in its own right, as London fares quite badly:

However, despite producing the highest number of rock stars overall (89), London as a whole does not top the list for the UK's capital city of rock 'n' roll.

In fact, the study found that Coventry, Newcastle and Cardiff all fared better than the capital when rock star birthplaces were calculated by proportion to population.

Manchester - home to the likes of Oasis' Gallagher brothers, The Smiths' Morrissey and Johnny Marr plus Happy Mondays' Sean Ryder - topped that list, having produced one rocker to every 17,850 of the population.

Liverpool will be slowly grinding its corporate teeth, because their favoured method of measurement - diving the number ones earned by the city's children by the total population - usually puts them at the top of the list. And, to be fair, at least number one singles is a measure that has some scientific rigour to it, rather than a vague list of "rock stars".

Some scientific rigour, although not very much. Of course, this whole survey exists only to promote something or other, and so the rigour probably isn't all that important.

They want it Allman - or at least $13m

The Allman Brothers have launched a legal action against their record label, UMG for $13million.

They claim that UMG has diddled them out of their fair share of digital royalties. Even so, thirteen million seems to be an enormous sum of cash - where on earth would someone have got the idea for demanding ridiculous amounts in return for small sums of potential lost earnings due to downloading, eh?

[Thanks to Michael M]

Wogan berates the BBC. Again.

In the tent/pissing metaphor, Terry Wogan is one of those guys who you might consider better off having inside the tent pissing out, rather than being outside pissing in, only to discover that he's actually still pissing in from inside.

Now that Michael Parkinson has retired, Wogan has the field of 'grumpy old sod undermining everyone he works with' to himself, and marks his 70th birthday by moaning about the BBC which gives him a job in the BBC's Radio Times magazine. Standards, it seems, are slipping:

"When I sent my first tape to the head of gramophone programmes at the BBC, I had made the fatal mistake of forgetting to rewind it to the start," he said.

"Yet that gentleman took the time to wind it all the way back, and once he'd listened to it, things went from there," Wogan added.

"I can tell you, if I was a young chap coming over from Ireland today, they probably wouldn't even listen to my tape, let alone rewind it.

"Somehow, that old-fashioned thoroughness and commitment have disappeared. I suppose no one has the time for it anymore."

So: the most important tape he ever sent off in his career, and he 'forgot' to rewind it - and yet Wogan complains nobody else has any old-fashioned thoroughness.

You have to enjoy his implication, though, that if the bloke hadn't taken the time to wind the tape back, there'd have been forever a deep hole at the heart of BBC schedules, rather than someone else equally able having got their chance instead.

He also takes the chance to bang on about Eurovision:

Wogan said he did not want to front Eurovision any more following the increase in political voting which saw Russia win in Serbia this year after gaining the votes of former Soviet states.

"I was considering giving up before Belgrade and now I have to say I'm very doubtful about ever wanting to do Eurovision again," he added. "I've had so much fun, but I think it's time for someone else to take over."

Yes, Terry. You're absolutely right here. Let's hope you're not expecting to see petitions and demands in parliament for you to keep the job.

Darkness at 3AM: Half-baked

Given that Madonna's brother has been rotating wildly around the edges of celeburbia, slagging off his sister's marriage, her adoptions and her general control-freakery, it's interesting that the 3AM Girls focus in on a slightly more mundane claim:

Christopher Ciccone has told Heat that Madge is a disaster in the kitchen, adding: "The only thing she can make is rice crispie cakes."

And a claim, at that, they read in the magazine that all their readers would read anyway.

So, the only logical reason for running the story would be because they've got a killer punchline, right?

It all sounds a bit flakey to us...

Eh?

Bookmarks: Some stuff to read on the internet

Two lists [via Largehearted Boy].

First, New York details why I Kissed A Girl isn't the song of the summer:

5. Actually, everyone seems to hate it. "I Kissed a Girl" hasn't gotten a decent rap remix, but it sure has been parodied and ironically covered. Among the more notable were Max Vernon's version that left all pronouns intact, "I Kissed a Squirrel," and another parody with fart jokes. The Song of the Summer should be the coolest kid in class, not the awkward one that everyone picks on.

Then, the Guardian lists the ten best uniforms in music. Or nine best, and this:

8 Bay City Rollers
Three-quarter length jump suits (see below) with signature tartan trim, sir? Pop-perfect mix of Scotland's '74 World Cup squad and Kubrick's Droogs.

Gordon in the morning: Stone me

Gordon Smart - and, to be fair, The Times both claim that Joss Stone has been asked to record the theme song for Barack Obama's campaign - although, curiously, the story doesn't appear in any American media.

The Times, at least, manages to keep fairly sober in its report, but Gordon gets a bit over-excited:

Democrat candidate Mr Obama approached her personally because he was impressed by her appeal to both black and white voters in America.

Really? He approached her personally, did he?

Joss is a household name in the US, where she spends up to nine months a year.

A household name? Really, Gordon? Do we need to go through the difference between "a household name" and "slightly well known" again?

It might sound ludicrous, but as Gordon points out, Stone has done endorsements before:

Earlier this year Cadbury chose her to front new adverts for Flake chocolate bars.

And what a great job she did with those toe-curling adverts, huh.

What really makes Stone an unlikely choice is the way that Obama gets constantly beaten-up on the un-American/ un-Patriotic excuse. If he orders a salad with French dressing, the right-wing blogs report it as a slight to Lady Liberty. Is he really going to lead out his campaign under a track which draws the "he can't even find an American to sing a song for him" jibes?

Meanwhile, Smart is still trying to construct a Lily Allen - Katy Perry battle from the thinnest of material:

But Lily has now postponed new album Stuck On The Naughty Step until next year in what is shaping up to be the best chart battle straddling the pond for years.

Although if Allen has rescheduled her album release, then it's not much of a battle, is it? I never read Hotspur much when I was a kid, but the few times I did, I remember the story where the German soldiers turned up for the battle six months after the British troops had gone home were always heartwarming from a humanitarian point of view, but somewhat lacking as a battle narrative.

Anyway, today's attempt to try and stoke a fire is the surprise that:

I can tell you Katy’s boyfriend TRAVIS McCOY, from emo band GYM CLASS HEROES, had a thing for Lily before he met the US pop sensation.

Oh yes?

When asked last year if he had any celeb crushes, he confessed: “Lily Allen. I met her before very briefly. She’s cute. Yeah. . . I’d like to see her again.”

The key words here, of course, is "last year" - before he was dating Katy, in other words. Not that stops Gordon extrapolating:

Oh dear.

Oh dear?

That’s the kind of historical comment that is perfect ammunition for a girlfriend.

That rather presupposes that she would be looking for ammunition.

I feel for Travis the next time he doesn’t pick up a wet towel after having a shower.

The old “I bet you wouldn’t do that if you were with Lily” trump card will be reeled out again and again.

Yes. Assuming, of course, Perry spends her days Googling to find throwaway comments to goad her boyfriend with. I can't escape the feeling that this might tell us nothing about life in the Perry-McCoy household, and more about someone else's day-to-day life.

I bet you wouldn't leave wet towels all over the floor if you were with Liam...

Managerobit: David Lander

David Lander, who managed Kittie (and, indeed, was father to Morgan and Mercedes from the band) suffered a fatal heart attack last week.

Morgan has issued a statement:

"We wanted to extend our appreciation for all of the support and kind words we have received in the days since my father's passing . He was an amazing man who lived and breathed KITTIE, and he will be missed by many. [KITTIE's August 20 show at the Key club in Hollywood, California] is the last one he booked, so it is very important to us. We all owe it to him to make it a good one, regardless of how hard it is going to be. Please come out, pay your respects and help support us!"

Lander was reportedly in his early fifties; consensus amongst music and metal industry message boards is that, while his decisions might not have been ones everyone would agree with, his commitment to his daughters' band was unquestionable.

SNFU all over again

Canadian we-mean-it punks SNFU are reactivating after three years with a tour of their homeland. We say SNFU - it's not quite a classic line-up, as they now consist of Mr. Chi Pig, Ken "Goonie" Flemming, Just Denis and Chad Mareels, which makes it more of a Dog Eat Dogma reunion than an SNFU one.

Bookmarks: Some stuff to read on the internet

Drowned In Sound have had a first listen to the new TV On The Radio album, Dear Science:

High, jangly guitars, bouncy bass and a relentless snare-heavy beat whisk you swiftly from stillness into a heady, sinister danse macabre. There are dark allusions to “the ploughshare and the sword” and an invitation, or maybe a demand, to “come pay witness to the whore of Babylon”. Horns, marimbas, cowbells and all manner of jungly squawks and clatters fill the air like mosquitoes, only to be cleared away by a kick-ass cymbal clash straight out of Kool & the Gang.

Morrissey explains the delay

People who care about such things might have noted last week that the new album from Morrissey has slipped back to 2009. The reason is a delay in deciding who'll be releasing it in the US:

At the wish of Universal Music, Years of refusal has been put back to a February 2nd release. There is also, at this stage, still no US label for the album since Morrissey withdrew from Decca US after their poor promotion for the Greatest hits release. There are no further live dates planned for the remainder of 2008.

The decision on which Universal imprint is going to release the record in the US is taking a hell of a long time, doesn't it?

Mozzer also took the chance to moan a little bit about a new Smiths compilation:

It is understood that Warner Music in London are releasing a Smiths Greatest Hits album in the final quarter of 2008. This release is without Morrissey's approval or involvement.

To be fair, it's not entirely clear what effect Morrissey thinks the lack of his involvement is going to have on a cheap Christmas cash-in. Nobody who would boycott the record because he disapproves is likely to need yet another singles collection anyway.

Being praised by Gordon Smart has gone to Liam's head

Knowing that Gordon Smart is thinking about how well his jeans fits has obviously turned Liam Gallagher's head more than a little:

“I don't hate them. I don't wish they had accidents. I think their fans are boring and ugly and they don't look like they're having a good time,” he added.

Liam, of course, is the very model of an engaged and engaging modern sort:

"I play The Beatles, The (Rolling) Stones, The Kinks, Neil Young, the (Sex) Pistols. Maybe a bit of The (Stone) Roses. Don't like modern bands. Topman music, innit?"

So, pretty much everything released in the last 20 years is totally without value or interest to Liam. Everything. Someone in Oasis is damning everything as sounding like the sort of music played in the sort of shop where Oasis fans buy their clothes.

U2 destruction: Not far enough?

We got slightly thrilled to discover that a judge had ordered the destruction of U2's back catalogue, but then it turned out to only be one person's collection, not all of their records in existence.

Belfast Telegraph journalists spoil Snow Patrol's surprises

It's a harsh world. As if knifings, territorial wars, Piers Morgan and disease aren't bad enough, Snow Patrol are now having the name of their new album revealed against their wills. Lost In The Showbiz publishes a letter from their PR team - or, rather, a statement from Gary:

"Hello everyone
Well, in this world of instant coffee, news, messaging and everything else
is was bound to happen. In an interview with the Belfast Telegraph we let slip the working title of the album then said not to print it until we had finalised it with each other (and put it on this very site). Those words were not heeded and they printed it anyway.

We’re sorry you didn’t hear it from us first but the album is indeed called 'a hundred million suns’. We will endeavour to make you guys the first to hear about everything else. It’s becoming increasingly hard but we’ll do our best.

Lots of apologetic love to you all. Gary.x"

Oh, my. How heartbreaking to think that the news of what the new Snow Patrol album will be called should slip out, rather than being subject to a proper announcement. We're given to understand that the band had planned to reveal the title in a remake of that time Thatcher flogged off BP and they had the abseilers uncover a massive board with the share price on. Clearly, Gary wanted to be able to see the slightly underwhelmed reaction when the world - as a whole - gathered to discover the name of the follow-up to whatever the last one was called.

And all because, erm, they told a journalist. Who probably wrote it down in a book. You just can't trust 'em, can you?

Pete Burns: The homecoming:

Pete Burns is going to Liverpool - the first time since 1992 - at the request of Julian Cope. He's going to play a night celebrating Erics, but he stresses that he wouldn't normally do this sort of thing:

“It seems I’m part of the Liverpool scene after all these years. It was a shame that wasn’t the case when I was there.” Pete pauses for a second, and reflects a little sadly. “I suppose things are always different in hindsight.

“It’s difficult for me to feel anything about it. It’s all so long ago.

“I don’t sit glued to the internet looking back at the old days. That’s not my thing.

“I’m looking forward to doing the gig. I’m probably either going to do a dance set or an acoustic set. Three or four songs.”

Why choose now to come back?

“Julian asked me to do it,” he shrugs. “I’ve always liked him. Out of them all, he treated me well. He always thought about things. He had something going on underneath the surface. I think that’s why we were friends.

“I haven’t spoken to him in a long time, so I’m looking forward to seeing him.”

Burns is amused at having been recast as a favourite son:

“I’ve always felt on the margins. I’ve never been part of anything. I’m not particularly social. I don’t seek people out.

“So it makes me laugh that all these years on I’m being included in this rewritten history of Liverpool. I wasn’t included at the time.

“I was told the other day that I’m in this play about Eric’s. I don’t know what that’s about.

“My ex-wife Lynne and I were the social outcasts of the city. We were ostracised by everyone. We didn’t fit in. Well, it was us and (Frankie Goes to Hollywood keyboard player) Paul Rutherford. The three of us stuck together because no-one else would speak to us.”

One of the amusing things about the Capital Of Culture year is the way the official history has started to absorb the city's counter-culture, blithely unaware that the Erics and Planet X scenes were a reaction to, not a product of, the city they called home. It's true that Burns wouldn't have been Pete Burns without something to react against, but stimulating creativity through rejection is hardly a trait to celebrate.

NME surprised to find Joe Lean album online

With an air of bewildered surprise, NME.com reports that the cancelled Joe Lean And The Jing Jang Jong album has "found its way" onto file-sharing sites.

Commenters on our post about the cancellation had pointed out that it was in the wild before the record company had decided it wasn't good enough.

Rock: the iTunes hold-out

It's not so long ago - yesterday, in fact - that selling well "on downloads alone" was considered noteworthy. Today, though, it's commentworthy that Kid Rock's All Summer Long single (a summer anthem which makes Una Paloma Blanca seem like a considered work of genius) has managed to sell without being available on iTunes.

Kid has his reasons:

Rock points out a particularly ironic twist to his logic in holding out from iTunes. "It's funny, I have a shitload of stock in Apple — I think it's one of the greatest companies in America," he says. "But it's just not very American to me when Apple tells you how they want to sell your product and tell you what it's worth."

Bless his little confused head - does Mr. Rock really think that he has control over the pricing and displays in WalMart? Or Target? If musicians could tell stores how much to charge for records, CDs would cost about thirty quid by now, wouldn't they?

I'm also not sure if Rock has really grasped the idea that retailers are normally the people who set prices - does he think when King Soopers knocks thirty cents off a box of Coke that that is, somehow, "unAmerican"? "Buy one, get one free - what are you - some sort of Communist?"

Still, let's just bask for a moment in the man and his own self-build hypocrisy: he's decided that Apple's business practices are contrary to the demands of his patriotism, and yet is quite happy to take the dividends this apparent flag-burning activity can deliver. Except when it's his bottom line. A flexible, profit-maximising patriotism, then.

[Thanks to Michael M for the link]

Rolling Stone: Smaller than before

The large, floppy Rolling Stone is to be no more: From mid-October, it's swapping from its classic format into something a bit more normal magazine sized.

It's basically given in to the rules of economics: it's easier for advertisers if they don't have to resize their ads for one magazine; it'll fit on the racks alongside other magazines; and, of course, smaller pages are easier and cheaper to make and distribute.

The new Rolling Stone is going to be glued, which means that the title will have a spine. Something it's lacked for a good couple of decades now.

They're hoping it will increase sales:

Gary Armstrong, chief marketing officer for Wenner Media, pointed to Vanity Fair, which has lower overall circulation than Rolling Stone, but nearly three times the single-copy sales. With a standard format, he said, it should be possible to raise newsstand sales significantly.

“The consumer we want to reach watches ‘Lost’ on a big TV screen, on a computer screen and on an iPhone,” he said. “They’re agnostic on format.”

Yes. A smaller magazine is like watching Lost on an iPhone in, erm, some way.

The assumption, of course, is that people don't buy RS on an impulse because they don't find it with the others when they're looking for magazines. The risk, though, has to be that its sales are currently higher because it tends to get racked on its own, away from its competitors, and thus stands out.

Gordon in the morning: So scared she hid for a full quarter

Gordon Smart outdoes himself this morning, claiming that Lily Allen has run away from a head-to-head:

A TRANSATLANTIC chart battle has kicked off between LILY ALLEN and KATY PERRY.

Yank newcomer Katy’s first UK-released album, One Of The Boys, is out next month.

And it’s put the wind up Lily so badly that she has shelved her own album launch.

Stuck On The Naughty Step – the follow-up to Lil’s hit 2006 debut Alright, Still – had been expected out this month but will now be held back until next year.

Really? Who, exactly, had been expecting the album this month? The lead single isn't even planned until September. And if the worry is Katy Perry's album, is it really such a behemoth that it will cast a shadow over not only the last two weeks in August - backwards, apparently - but also over the last three months of the year?

Gordon also has a look at the cover of the new Oasis single. It's not, sadly, Liam in a pair of tight jeans, but Smart puts a brave face on it:

Oasis artwork is simply electric

Apocalypse new ... Oasis' single sleeve artwork

It's not any good, of course; it looks like some sort of horrible collage done by a child with access to only one magazine to raid for pictures. It's hard to say for sure, though, because despite trumpeting about it being "a world exclusive", Smart manages to run the picture with the top and bottom sliced off. Perhaps the Gallaghers had given another website a world exclusive first not-like-looking-through-a-letterbox look.

Isaac Hayes: dead at 65

CNN is reporting that police have discovered Isaac Hayes unconscious "next to a still-running treadmill". He was taken to hospital, but pronounced dead at 2pm.

Hayes was born into a sharecropping family in rural Tennessee. Raised by his grandparents after being orphaned, a move to Memphis at first showed Hayes the possibilities of life, but turned sour when his grandfather died. Poverty forced Hayes to seek work; he wound up as a short order chef. He tried to drop out of school, only to be more-or-less ordered back by the teachers who saw talent in the young man. It was also a teacher who persuaded Hayes to enter a talent contest, his first public performance since puberty had shattered his voice and his confidence. Victory was his; but it was the interest of the girls that the victory brought which persuaded him his future might not be in the kitchens.

When he graduated High School, Isaac had the choice of several scholarships to colleges keen to develop his vocal talents, but instead threw his lot in with a local record label. That label was Stax. Hayes debut was on Frog Stomp, which he co-wrote for Floyd Newman. He played keyboards and soon picked up regular work playing session keyboards for the label's artists and collaborating with David Porter on songwriting and producing.

It was the murder of Martin Luther King on the streets of Memphis which really drove Hayes, though, as he once explained:

"I could not create properly. I was so bitter and so angry. I thought, What can I do? Well, I can't do a thing about it so let me become successful and powerful enough where I can have a voice to make a difference. So I went back to work and started writing again."

It was to be the start of his golden period as a recording artist - from his double-a-side crossover number one, Walk On By/By The Time I Get To Memphis, through a run of twenty albums which hit the top 20. Perhaps the peak of this period was the truly iconic theme from Shaft, one of those rare pieces of musical score which guarantees their host movie a far greater position in the pantheon than it would have had without it.

By 1974, Hayes had fallen out with Stax and Enterprise, the subsidiary for whom he had been doing his solo work, and trying his hand acting - he had a recurring role in the Rockford Files. A deal with HBS records kept him in the charts, but he never quite thrived in the post Saturday Night Fever disco era in the way he had in the early 70s. By 1981, Hayes decided he needed a rest and took a break.

It was the siren call of The A-Team that tempted him back to the public eye, and with it a string of not-very-good movies followed - Paul Hogan's remake of Flipper perhaps being the lowest of a number of low points. His role as Chef in South Park, though, did manage to score him a number one in the UK, albeit with a song about salty balls.

Hayes stropped off South Park when the series - having lampooned every actual religion - dared to have a joke at Scientology's expense. Hayes - one of the members of the cult - decided this was stepping over the line and quit the programme.

Away from grumbling about misrepresentations of his cult, Hayes was generous, working to promote literacy, fighting inner-city crack problems before the mainstream media even realised there was crack, and doing a lot of aid work in Ghana. He continued to record, too, with critical acclaim if not outstanding commercial success.

But this, this will always be remembered as the track which best showed his genius:

I topped the charts

Katy Perry's I Kissed A Girl is number one on downloads alone; furthermore, most of those downloads were due to op-ed writers trying to work out if the song is homophobic or merely tiresome.

The clash of metals

This, then, would be two bald men fighting over a comb, were it not for one of the men being Bret Michaels: A spat has broken out between Posion and Def Leppard over which band is realer or something.

Joe Elliott started it by suggesting that Def Leppard had more "substance" to their music, and that Poison just coasted by on their image.

We've heard Pour Some Sugar On Me and seen pictures of Poison. Neither the substance of one nor the style of the other would detain people writing cultural histories of mankind for very long, we'd suggest, but Michaels wasn't taking such a slight on the chin. Pausing only to wash his hair, he embarked on an interview with a radio programme, and talked at some length. Some great length. The first he heard of the scurrilous claims were at a backstage press conference at Sweden Rocks:

All of a sudden, one guy goes, 'We have a video of Joe Elliott last night saying that MÖTLEY CRÜE and POISON and all these bands have no talent, they can't play.' Now, let me just put this on the record: I'm a DEF LEPPARD fan. Not 'kind of a fan' — like, I own the CDs; I own the albums. We used to do the song 'Wasted', if that gives you any indication. I used to play 'On Through The Night' with like… The song 'Wasted' was one of our favorite songs…. I'm a DEF LEPPARD fan. Old-school, new-school — it doesn't matter. Gone to see their shows, liked the guys. Joe Elliott, I don't really know, but he seems like a decent guy, whatever. I get in there and the guy says it to me. I say, 'You're lying. I don't think Joe would say that.' He's like, 'No, I've got it on video.' Which they had on video — him [Joe] stating this.

Goodness. First Kate Moss, then Max Moseley, now Joe Elliott. Is nobody safe from the secret videoing?

Bret started out by trying to be conciliatory, but then he changed his mind (and, yes, he is giving a stream-of-consciousness interview about a press conference he once gave, like a footballer talking through a goal):

And then it hits me that, listen, I've been nothing but cool. And I go, 'Well, this is coming from a guy who lip-synched on 'Dancing With The Stars'.' I go, 'This guy lip-synched…' Mutt Lange writes their… you know, does their albums… I'm not dissing them, I'm just saying…

Remember, snorting 'they mime on mainstream dancing programmes and someone else writes their songs' is not, in any way, to be considered a 'dissing'.

In other words, I was like, 'Look, give me and Joe a guitar each and a pen and a piece of paper, stick us in a room for an hour [and see who'll come out] with a couple of songs. But I don't wanna fight Joe.

I suspect that they'd probably both come out with a couple of songs, as everything these bands have done for the last decade or so has the taint of having been knocked up in thirty minutes as some sort of dare.

Bret, though, isn't dissing anybody. Oh no:

Isn't he secure enough in his success or where he's at… If someone said, 'Hey, what do you think about MÖTLEY?' Even though we've had words — MÖTLEY and us, or supposedly, whatever — I'm like, 'Hey, I like MÖTLEY's music. I'm a fan. They have good rock songs.' I just feel uncomfortable in my skin.'"

I love that he can't quite remember if he has had a falling-out with the Crue or not, or if people just said he has, or, indeed, "whatever".

The radio programme asked a direct question: did Rikki Rocket challenge Joe Elliott to a fight? Bret gave an equally direct response:

"That I didn't see. What I thought was going on was that they were like… What the joke was from a lot of fans was, like, 'Don't trip over a water backstage at a DEF LEPPARD concert, you might unplug the stereo.' And I said, 'With our band, we don't ever use…' There's nothing. That's what blows everyone's minds. You go to a lot of 'concerts,' and you can trip over anything we've got, we play everything. In other words, the keyboard player… We have one guy extra to sing some of the parts, but that's it. There's no… You can put us in a club… Like we did it in New York. We went and played for, I believe it was WPLJ, and they stuck us in this club and played, and it was one of the best nights we'd had, 'cause you can put us there or in the stadium or an arena, and it's gonna sound the same; there's no fear. And that's what some of the joke… I think Rikki's challenge was the same as mine. If this is gonna become a songwriting duel, Rikki goes, 'Do you bring Mutt Lange, or do you bring the band?'"

- Did he say he'd fight him?
- We might have had someone sing some extra vocals live once
That's that cleared up, then.

I imagine this falling-out will continue for the next ten years, by which time it will be a full three decades since anyone outside the bands gave a toss about what either thought.

Duffy: Don't call me Dusty

Duffy finds comparisons odious:

She says, ‘It makes me mad that people keep comparing me to Amy Winehouse and Dusty Springfield. It’s just labelling me as something else, without any respect for the struggle, the determination, focus or artistic vision I have. It’s like, "Whoa, what’s that about? Why would I want to be someone else?" Because I really don’t. I just want to be me. It’s kind of strange and disheartening to be constantly told who I look like, or who I sound like.’

Duffy may well object to being compared to Dusty Springfield. I suspect that Springfield might actually have more cause to feel outraged.

Who lives in a house like this?

Somebody at the People really should read the Daily Express more often, if only to keep up with house prices. The paper gets a bit excited at the news Sarah Harding has bought a house:

Girls Aloud star SARAH HARDING and boyfriend TOM CRANE have splashed out more than £1million on a country mansion.

Except, it's in Princes Risborough, which - being in south Buckinghamshire - suggests that if you're only spending a million, you're going to be buying a large-ish town house rather than a country mansion. In fact, a million will get you just four bedrooms - a nice house, but hardly a mansion.

Mind you, the People just seems to be typing in stuff it's read on Wikipedia, blithely repeating that:

Princes Risborough, Bucks - the setting for TV's Midsomer Murders and Inspector Morse.

Morse might have filmed there, but we're pretty certain it might have been set somewhere else, you know...

Madonna kicks out the kids

Cardiff's Millennium Stadium was funded with a large slew of public cash, raised from the National Lottery, and so is a public resource rather than a private concern. One of the ways the place has paid a small sliver of the debt it owes to the nation has been by hosting a charity football event for the Neighbourhood Watch Sports Trust for the last few years - an event organised to give disadvantaged kids the chance to play a premier sporting venue.

Not this year, though. Although they'd been told the event would happen as normal, and the charity had spent three thousand pounds organising the event, suddenly, they were told "no".

The reason? Madonna is playing the stadium on the 23rd August and has decided she needs to annex it for three weeks beforehand.

Millennium Stadium manager Gerry Toms said: “When we set the dates, which we do quite early, we do say that if a commercial event comes in then we may have to push you out, so to speak. They agree to that when they sign up.

“In fairness to this group they have been here for several years, but this year we are contracted to Madonna, and explained ‘we are awfully sorry, we cannot do it’.

“I said, ‘What do you expect us to do? To tell Madonna not to bring the show in because you’ve got a sports day?’.”

The slightly sneering way Toms says "sports day" is discouraging; and that he clearly feels that a commercial gig by Madonna is so obviously more important than a charity, community event suggests that Toms might not be the best custodian for a stadium which wouldn't exist if it hadn't been for the generosity of the public purse in the first place.

That the Trust was only told twenty-two days before their match is also a little surprising, and crushing: at least with some warning, they might have been able to find a venue which was a little less obsessed with fawning over twilight celebrities.

First they came for Zoe... now they've come for Rav

Last week, the Sunday Mirror redesign buried Showbiz Zoe deep into the site; this week, it's Rav who finds himself not-very-subtly downplayed in the new News of the World layout.

Mind you, as he's punting a story claiming that Paul McCartney has asked Stella how she'd feel if he took Nancy Shevell as "the third Mrs. Macca". He used those exact words, too.

Worse, though: At the foot of the article Rav drops this:

Visit my pal Perez Hilton's great website. But be warned: It's outrageous!

Rav's "pal" Perez Hilton, huh? That'd be like the way Alistair Darling is chums with George Bush, would it? Still, better to push a knackered old American gossip site than, say, suggest people read Gordon's column, eh?

This week just gone

The ten most-popular John Lydon searches so far this year:

1. "guitar hero" John Lydon
2. John Lydon
3. xrrf Lydon
4. John Lydon Green Day
5. Chris Cowey Lydon
6. Gruff Rhys Lydon
7. John Lydon Mojo XFM
8. "John Lydon" attempted murder
9. "John Lydon" wife
10. John Lydon talks about Lonnie Donnegan

These were the interesting new releases:

Conor Oberst - Conor Oberst
Robyn Hitchcock - Luminous Groove
The Cool Kids - The Bake Sale
Thompson Twins - Here's To Future Days From when the past was still the future
Ron Sexsmith - Exit Strategy Of The Soul
Sparks - Sparks Part of a major slew of Sparks reissues
Alec Empire / Atari Teenage Riot - 16 Years of Video
Crown Court Perfect for recreating that 'being off school in a pre-multichannel era' feeling - complete with Michael 'Kennnn-daaaaal' Sheard