Gordon in the morning: The sycophantic slags all say 'I knew him first, and I knew him well'

Gordon Smart clutches the sides of his chair in shock as America turns its back on the rotten faux-Jacko album:

AN album of unreleased tracks by the King Of Pop would be expected to shift a huge number but MICHAEL JACKSON's new disc is struggling.

Michael has failed to make the Top Five in the US - the first time that's ever happened to one of the late star's albums.

Is it that unexpected, though? Jackson hadn't bothered to release a proper record since 2001, and while that still shifted, it was clear that interest in records that actually had Jackson on was dwindling; why would you expect people to be spending cash on a record that had dubious parentage?

Sony will be very disappointed. They signed a £128million deal with the Jackson family in March, giving them rights to his unfinished material.

Oddly, this sort of stupid decision is never mentioned when the BPI wails about how hard it is to turn a few quid in the music industry.

It's good news, though - perhaps now the songs that were never going to see the light of day can be left where they are.

Unlicensed filesharing unbothered by music industry efforts

The BPI have issued one of their panicked reports claiming that the roof is falling in:

Illegal downloading in the UK is growing, with around 7.7 million people choosing not to legitimately buy their music online, according to new figures.

A report suggests that more than 1.2bn tracks were illegally downloaded last year, costing the retail industry £1bn.

That's the BBC version of the report, straightfacedly accepting that a file downloaded without pay equals a lost sale.

It's worth thinking about this with last year's PRS report into how well and fast the UK music industry is growing as a background, and that it's an industry worth over £3bn. Does anyone really believe that without unlicensed filesharing, there'd be an extra billion quid in the industry?

Of course not.

While it's likely that the availability of free alternatives has meant some marginal customers have taken their money elsewhere, there's two things we've learned over the last decade and a half. The music industry can't stop the marginal cost of tracks dropping to near zero, and all their efforts so to do have probably cost the labels more than they would have lost if they'd just accepted their business had changed and dealt with it.

Instead, here we are, on the cusp of 2011 - nearly a decade since the Pyrrhic victory that closed down Napster - and we're still getting the BPI trying to find a way to return us to 1994:

"It is a parasite that threatens to deprive a generation of talented young people of their chance to make a career in music, and is holding back investment in the burgeoning digital entertainment sector," [BPI's Geoff] Taylor said.

So, Geoff, is the sector being ravaged by "three quarters" of all music being "stolen", or is it "burgeoning"? It can't be both.

Earlier this year the BPI reported that music sales in the UK had grown for the first time in six years.

It said that legal downloads had boosted sales, rising by more than 50% to earn £154 million, compared with £101.5 million in 2008.

And it looks like "burgeoning" is what it is.

More to the point, after fifteen years of consistent reports from BPI saying pretty much the same thing, shouldn't we by now be looking at a music scene completely empty of new bands, new songs, new thrills?

Taylor ends with a plea for more legislation. The BPI always think that what is needed is more unenforceable legislation. The trouble is, with the bunch of turnips sitting in Westminster at the moment, they might get their wish. More time, money and effort trying to buck the marketplace. It'll still fail, though.

Google wanted Spotify

Remember what Google did for YouTube? Now, imagine if it did that for Spotify. And it nearly did, says Business Insider, until internal strife meant the idea was dropped.

The Goog was also interested in buying the really-more-or-less-defunct Rhapsody service, too.

Instead, they're going to concentrate on their music locker service, which sounds a lot less exciting.

Embed and breakfast man: Joanna Newsom

From last night's Letterman - Joanna Newsom doing On A Good Day:



[Buy: Have One On Me]
[via The Audio Perv]

Gordon in the morning: Stars in their eyes

As you'll know, Simon Cowell is dragging the X Factor format to the US (or doing American Idol under a slightly different name so he can keep even more of the cash).

But who to have on the panel?

Gordon thinks he knows:

Simon wants a huge name

Well, yes. He doesn't want to go on American TV with the equivalent of Kylie's sister, a woman out of a hair advert and the bloke who seems to have grasped that it's pantomime but not that he's the dame.

So, who is he after?

He has already tapped up ROLLING STONES lord MICK JAGGER

Gordon then abandons any further mention of this approach, to focus on this bit:

...and is now after NOEL GALLAGHER.

Noel Gallagher is hardly "a huge name" in America, though, is he? One fairly large selling album in 1997 doesn't really make him well known beyond a few smartly-dressed young-ish people in the big cities. The sort of people who know his name will also steer clear of The X Factor.

If Cowell is chasing Gallagher, it's going to be on the same basis that he inflicted Piers Morgan on the Americans - nobody knows or cares who he is, but he has a funny face, a funny accent and can create comedy insults. Sure, they might be related to wit in the same way a clawhammer is related to fretsaw, but many Americans find it difficult to tell Are You Being Served from George Bernard Shaw.

Gennaro Castaldo Watch: Cardle'll go far

The Belfast Telegraph wants answers:

So what does the future hold for the Essex painter [That Cardle bloke who won the X Factor]? Will he be hung out to dry like McElderry, Brookstein and 2007 winner Leon Jackson, or will it be a smooth finish like Leona Lewis and Alexandra Burke?

They could refer to this handy venn diagram to find out the answer to that question:

Instead, they turned to HMV's head of steadying the sinking ship, Gennaro Castaldo:

HMV’s Gennaro Castaldo doesn’t believe Cardle, who previously sang with indie rock band Seven Summers, will go the same way as Ward.

“With his distinctive voice and down-to-earth blokeiness, the key to his success is that he appeals to fans of all ages and backgrounds,” Gennaro said.

“Most importantly, he’s not seen as some kind of saccharine, manufactured pop star, but a credible performer who’s likely to go down just as well on a festival stage as he is on a television variety show.

“With good guidance and the right material, recording a Biffy Clyro track for the Christmas number one is an inspired choice, for example, Matt has every chance of becoming a really huge and established star, particularly as there’s a gap in the market for a successful male solo artist.”

The most interesting aspect is the way that Castaldo suggests that Cadle has recorded "the Christmas number one", but there's much else to muse on here. Isn't part of the reason there's a "gap" for a "successful male solo artist" because Brookstein, Elderberry and Jackson flopped like drunks wearing sandals running through a polished hallway of banana skins?

And the idea that the "unmanufactured" Cardle just needs "good guidance" is just bemusing - his strength lays in his not being part of the pop machine, so he just needs the machine to point him in the right direction?

Look, I know at the moment Castaldo's employers are so desperate to flog something - anything - they'd try and talk up the chances of a Su Pollard best-of, but clearly Cardle has the same X Factor as all the other solo male artists who have won the singing contest. That's X, where X = rapidly diminishing charm and a fast journey back to the late shift at Frisco Burger.

Gordon in the morning: Tinchy Stryder advertises mobile phone shop's range of tablet computers

It might look like it's an article in which a man says he might record a record on a iPad, but really, it's an advert for a store which sells iPads. No wonder The Sun isn't behind a paywall; they should be paying us to read their advertorials.

eMusic try to recast themselves "irreverent" outsiders

How better to mark a massive skewing of your catalogue towards the major labels than launching a counter-intuitive campaign stressing how non-mainstream you are.

Sure, there's nothing in itself wrong with The Roadshow, which films some bands playing live.

It's just the way they're talking about it, as Hypebot records:

Today [eMusic] launched a major branding and ad campaign designed to differentiate itself from iTunes by (take a deep breath...) "delivering irreverent and engaging experiences that capture the essence of music discovery".

Developed by flavor of the moment creative agency Sarkissian Mason and hot media firm TargetcastTCM, the campaign uses "humor, passion and knowledge" to appeal to "serious music fans".

Filming Best Coast doing a gig isn't especially irreverent, nor humorous. And it's not really a "discovery", as surely all right-thinking people already are a little bit in love with Best Coast?

It's a solid-enough campaign. 'We've got some artists who are well-liked but still early enough in their career to appreciate a few quid from our marketing budget, and we hope people will like to come and look at them'. Why pretend that this is somehow cocking a snook at convention?

Gordon in the morning: The shine is going off JLS

You know you're being overexposed when even Gordon's slavish coverage starts to get waspish. JLS might want to think about taking some time off:

Speaking at yet another Nintendo Wii Mario Kart promotion in central London, Aston said: [...]
The amount of promotion the lads have done for Wii, they've got to have shares...

Even the photo caption is yawning and saying 'you again?':

Yet another promo ... JLS

It might only be twelve months after everybody else, but finally The Sun is catching the general disenchantment with the slim talent-to-appearances ratio.

Bye, Lyrebirds

Brighton's Lyrebirds have split. Or, more precisely:

We're sorry to say that we have decided not to carry on as a band anymore....

It's possible they might be carrying on as a crime-fighting gang, or a team running a cakeshop.

Megadeath visit the graveyard

This is so awful, it's compelling. Megadeath's David Ellefson "pays tribute" to Bon Scott by wandering round his grave like it's MTV Cribs, before losing interest and yakking on about Crocodile Dundee's hat instead.



Some by-the-numbers Australian cliches? That's what Bon would have wanted, right?

This week just gone

The ten most popular stories so far this month:

1. Johnny Marr bars Dave Cameron from liking The Smiths
2. Jack White creates scarce releases, puts them on eBay, blames fans for his profiteering
3. The charts are all posh now
4. Heather Mills claims iTunes work as her own
5. Shaun Ryder threatens to have critic murdered and raped
6. Hucknall apologises for not being able to keep it in his pants
7. Watch: Jolt videos
8. Grammys 2011 shortlist
9. Mute goes indie again
10. Gordon Smart wins 'best journalist' poll

These were the scanty new releases worth looking at:


Joy Division singles 7" vinyl box set


Sufjan Stevens - All Delighted People

Download All Delighted People



Deadmau5 - 4x4=12

Download 4x4=12



Adam & Joe - Song Wars Volume II

Download Song Wars Volume II



Shugo Tokumaru - Port Entropy

HMV: Let's hope Gennaro's got his CV in good order

Terrible results from HMV this week: they've managed to turn last year's first half £25m loss into £41.3m, and have taken to weakly warning that the snow might make things worse:

Shares in HMV plunged by more than a quarter this morning after it reported disappointing sales figures and warned that the icy weather was keeping customers away from its shops.

Yes, the snow is the problem. People apparently even in the height of summer are avoiding HMV just in case there's lingering ice outside the shop, it looks like.

The throwing of the store into attracting gamers has proved to be a disaster, joining the industry just as games sales slipped first 30% and the 12% year-on-year. Obviously, the effects of being the last standing record shop have worn off. And the glitzy ideas of opening cinemas and promoting music and spoiling the name of venues is looking expensive - the chain is now clunking around under debts of over £150m.

Christmas trading - providing there's no ice, or rain, or wind - should just about pull them into profit for the year. To be fair to Simon Fox, there are many years of slow decline left in his business.

Gordon in the morning: Charles meets the Dubz

If it wasn't for the joshing reference to the protesters who nearly spared Charles and Camillia the horror of the Royal Variety Show, you'd have bet Gordon had written his Charles-meets-N-Dubz piece weeks ago:

N-DUBZ have got the royal seal of approval from PRINCE CHARLES.

The Camden scamps were given a thorough talking to by the Prince at the Royal Variety Performance.

Naturally, Charles knew all about them (i.e. had been briefed about them seconds before):

He said: "What are you guys doing here. Are you hip-hopping about?" Dappy replied: "No sir, we make great music for the masses."

Charles then replied: "So I've heard."

Given that Gordon and N-Dubz are seizing on this as evidence of Charles being aware of their work, surely an opening gambit of "what are you guys doing here?" is a bit weak. Hadn't he just seen them doing their thing?

Still, it made Dappy happy:

Afterwards Dappy was still beaming because Charles knew all about the band.

He said: "It just shows how far N-Dubz have come that even the Prince knows all about our music. We are honoured."

Hmm. "Are you hip-hopping about" and "that's a nice suit" hardly suggests Charles is ready to go on Mastermind with N-Dubz as a specialist subject.

Gary Barlow managed to wave a double-edged sword as he introduced N-Dubz on stage:

GARY BARLOW introduced the trio on to the stage, saying: "These guys are the only urban UK act to sell any albums."

Might come as a surprise to Tinchy and Dizzee, that, Gary.

Universal boss stuffs Cameron's pockets

From Private Eye:

NOW the Tories are in power they are receiving generous donations from some intriguing sources. According to the Electoral Commission, these include a whopping £80,000 in July from record label Universal Music, whose boss Lucian Grainge was a teenage fan of the Sex Pistols and Clash.

These days he prefers to hobnob with David Cameron instead. Grainge served on the Tories’ “Creative Industries” taskforce, which looked at weakening the BBC. He is unlikely to have consulted the artistes who bring in much of Universal’s cash – including Amy Winehouse, Elvis Costello, Annie Lennox and Tinchy Stryder – about their big Tory donation.

Why would Universal be raining cash down on government? Surely not part of the plans for the long-expected bid for EMI, is it?

Ne-Yo considers all possibilities except album not being any good to explain sales

Why would the disappointing Ne-Yo album be struggling to find a market?

Any ideas, Ne-Yo?

He told CW50detroit.com's Gossip Girls section: "I was a little disturbed by my first week numbers, but a lot of things went into that first week number.

"The album getting leaked a month in advance definitely had something to do with it."

You know, you could be on to something there, Ne-Yo - obviously, once people had heard how rotten the record is, they'd be less likely to buy it.

Mr. Yo had previously suggested on Twitter that filesharers have their hands cut off:

"ALL HACKERS DIE SLOW!! It's stealing plain and simple! There's places where they cut people's hands off for less! Y'all SUCK!!!!!"

You'll notice that 'sticking a copy of NeYo's album on the torrents' is a larger crime than, you know, ordinary theft.

Ne-Yo - his name is short for Ne-Yo-Gi-OH - attempted to explain his calls for sharia law to be applied to filesharers:

"I just feel like people don't have patience anymore. Where's the class and integrity that came with music back in the day?"

By "class and integrity" he's talking about the days when the record companies colluded illegally to rip consumers off with artificially high prices while simultaneously ripping off the artists with horrible contracts.

"You listen to it before it's supposed to be listened to and then you don't like it but you didn't even give it a chance to get done.

"That's like eating a meal before its finished cooking; of course you're not gonna like it!"

Ah yes - and which of us can truly say we don't dismember relatives who take a spoonful of soup from the pot while it's still on the stove. I know I do, and I don't consider that to be a hysterical overreaction on any level at all.

Delicious: Roberts and Metronomy

You've got to be that whatever emerges from Metronomy working with Nicola Roberts, it's going to be a whole hat-full more interesting than Will I Am churning out something with Cheryl Cole.

Gordon in the morning: First with the news

Everyone knows Debbie Harry's "I was picked up by Ted Bundy" story, right? Harry was telling people about it back in the 1980s, and it's right up there with 'Marianne Faithfull and half a Mars bar' and 'heart attack after eating a ham sandwich' stock half-true myths that circulate around pop music.

Amazingly, Gordon Smart is repeating it today as if it was news.

What makes it even worse is that - whoever was in the car that Harry got into - it wasn't Ted Bundy. I know Smart's habit of running stories that aren't true is well known, but surely this is the first time he's ever run a story that's been debunked by Snopes.com - Bundy never went to New York, where Harry's incident happened; the car Bundy drove was nothing like the car Harry described and Bundy hadn't started his spree at the time Harry was meant to be the first victim.

Doubtless Gordon will be clearing space tomorrow for an exclusive: 'Charles Manson auditioned for the Monkees'.

(To be fair to Gordon, The Telegraph also trots out hoary-old-anecdote-as-breaking-news.)

Gordon in the morning: It's only awkward if you want it to be

Justin Beiber is thinking that he's chosen the worst Santa's grotto ever.

In a great meeting of minds, Justin has had some hang-time with Gordon. It's as delicious as you'd expect, as Gordon struggles like an every-second-Sunday parent trying to find some sort of common ground. As they work their way through golf and darts, it's surely only going to be a matter of time before Gordon suggests they go for a quick burger before he drops Justin off at Mummy's new friend's house for seven o'clock.

There is a great moment, though: Wonderfully - and almost accidentally - Bieber does manage to bitch-slap Cowell's irregulars:

"I think I maybe would have entered The X Factor if I hadn't been discovered."

It's a nice thing to do if you're not really famous, right?

Mute pulls itself from EMI wreckage

Like Molly's baby, Mute has been dragged from the carnage of the EMI tram-crash and has slapped out a press release about a new, all-in-business.

Strictly speaking, of course, Molly's baby hasn't slapped out a press release, so don't treat that as part of the extended metaphor, okay?

Following the recent announcement that Mute has reached an agreement with EMI Music which sees the company, led by Daniel Miller, return to being independent, Mute now announces details of the new structure which sees the record label, publishing company and a new artist/producer management company brought together under the Mute name.

Says Daniel Miller; “I am excited about this new phase in our development. The things we value most - our relationships with artists and our desire to embrace new ideas and ways of working – can now be fully realised in a structure I have been aiming towards for some time. This is the ideal time and perfect opportunity to bring three key elements together under the Mute name”.

Some artists aren't escaping, and will remain inside EMI. These musical Ashleys will still have their last rites taken care of by Daniel Miller, who is going to freelance for EMI.

Which is wonderful - not only has he got his label back, but his work at Mute is going to be subsidised by EMI. Terra Firma are brilliant at music, aren't they?

Downloadable: J Mascis

It's a free acoustic track, trapped in a web-leaping widget:

Gordon in the morning: How are the app sales going, Gordon?

It's not clear how sales of the Bizarre app - it's a monthly subscription - are going, but the competition to win some sort of meeting with JLS suggests a desperate bid to drive take-up.

Still, lovely to see a bit of salesmanship from Gordon:

The Bizarre application is FREE for the first 30 days of subscription and £1.19 per month after that.

It is available for iPhone and Android handsets, which are sold in all good mobile phone retailers across the UK.

Does he really think people are going to be going "blimey, that sounds so good I might go and buy a three hundred quid phone just to get that app... if only I knew where I could find such a thing..."?

Social mobility shocker: Charts light on oiks

Interestingly, the Daily Mail seems genuinely upset that the charts are being 'dominated' by public school kids:

In 1990 the charts were full of bands espousing working class angst and northern soul.

But some twenty years on it seems that it is British public schools that are delivering the pop stars of the moment.

A new survey into the heritage of modern musical acts has found that 60 per cent of acts in the charts today - attended public school - compared to just one per cent two decades ago.

It suggests the main reason for this is the cutting of public funding for music lessons - steady on, Mail, you're starting to sound like you're pre-May Liberal Democrats or something.

There is the another possibility, though, that it's just become more respectable for posh kids to be in bands now.

Also, back in 1990, the charts felt a lot older - Maria McKee, Madonna, Cliff, Paula Abdul, the B-52s, Elton John. Could it be that bands aren't actually getting any posher, but they're having hits younger, and so the kids who in 1990 would scuff about for a couple of years, go 'sod this, I'm going to call Uncle Barney and get a job at the merchant bank' are actually being successful before their trust fund manager threatens to cut them off?

Beatles on iTunes: It was Mills' work

You might have thought that dozens of lawyers were busy working behind the scenes to make the Beatles-Apple agreement which brought the mop-topped back catalogue to the iTunes store.

You'd be wrong.

It was all Heather Mills' doing:

‘iTunes? I organised it all with Steve Jobs [the Apple boss],’ asserts Heather between signing copies of one of her vegan ­cookbooks at a crowded Animal Aid Christmas fair at Kensington Town Hall yesterday.

‘But there’s no way I am going back to court for more money. It was all settled at the time and that’s it.’

How absolutely generous of her. Of course, it's possible she's not making any claims because even she doesn't believe the crap she's spouting.

Gordon in the morning: Wedding dj

Gordon's mysterious obsession with trying to recast Prince Harry as some sort of dancehall star continues today, with Mark Ronson 'revealing' that Harry knows something about djing:

MARK RONSON said: "He came to one of my gigs recently and he's totally clued up about my genre of music. He was requesting all these songs and he was dancing and getting into the spirit."

Okay, so Mark Ronson's "genre of music" is mid-market crowd-pleasing pop, but it's good enough for Gordon to extrapolate.

He asked for a song, did he? And he danced, did he?

Why, then:

PRINCE HARRY could probably do a decent job of DJing at his brother's wedding next year.

Yes. Yes. Assuming he can get out of helping Princess Anne putting the cold buffet out, that is.

Sky Music is falling

Sky Music, BSkyB's attempt to spin its massive user base into a subscription-based music service is being junked as, erm, nobody was interested:

A Sky spokesman said: "We've taken the difficult decision to close Sky Songs. Although we are extremely proud of the service we built and the experience it offers, we just didn't see the consumer demand we'd hoped for.

"As Sky Songs demonstrates, we're a business that takes risks and innovates, but at the same time, we're pragmatic and act decisively when a new venture isn't working out."

The deal was one of those awkward ones where you could stream as much as you wanted, and download and own a miserly-and-randomly-chosen five tracks a month. It's not entirely clear what the Sky spokesperson believes was "innovative" about that.

Even a price cut from an eye-watering £7.99 to £4.99 couldn't shift subscriptions and the obvious move - give it away as a sweetener with Sky Broadband - seems to have been dropped.

Although customers are going to be refunded this evening, the site is still taking sign-ups at the moment. I suppose there's so few they don't really expect anyone to create an account between now and 6pm.

Gordon in the morning: I'm aware this is actually the evening

Posh Spice has, we're told, gone to the dark side:

VICTORIA BECKHAM has road-tested many trends over the years, but her latest airport outfit will have Star Wars fans fearing she's turned to the dark side.

Wearing a high-collared black cape, the former SPICE GIRL was just a helmet and light sabre shy of replicating Darth Vader's menacing appearance in the classic sci-fi trilogy.

Now, call me picky, but I can't help feeling that if you hired a Darth Vader outfit and got one without a helmet or a light saber, you'd be a bit justified in feeling you'd been short-changed.

Dick Turpin wore a black cape, too, but it's unlikely that if found himself at the same works Christmas do as Vader he'd feel obliged to go home and change to avoid an embarrassing clash.

Glasgow: Weather axes gigs

Thin night in Glasgow tonight: Billy Bragg and Emarosa have cancelled their dates.

Good news, though - there are tickets on the door for Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - but there'll be no Duke Spirit.

The exquisite old-world charm of Shaun Ryder

Ah, sweet old Shaun Ryder, eh? Accused of having ripped-off musicians during his career, his response is to threaten to have the complainant raped and murdered.

Apparently Shaun was proud that his violent anger isn't sexist and applied to men and women. He truly is the Leslie Philips of revenge rape, isn't he?

This week just gone

What brings people to No Rock from Twitter? Between September and November, these were the biggest bounce points:

1. The front page
2. Is it wrong to complain about the Glastonbury ticket sales?
3. Reactions to the annual Glasto ticket sales shambles
4. George Michael is virtually indistinguishable from Myra Hindley
5. The Breeders weekend
6. Jedward spend hard-earned (well, earned) money on tat
7. Chris Moyles complains about minor clerical error for half an hour
8. Spotify hire George Lamb
9. Resonance FM axes Max Tundra
10. Bono botches his miner tribute

The interesting releases this week:


Simian Mobile Disco - Delicacies

Download Delicacies



Various - Kitsune Maison Volume 10

Download Kitsune Maison



Jenny And Johnny - I'm Having Fun Now

Download I'm Having Fun Now



Lambchop - Boxset

Download Nixon