Marilyn Manson, Rob Zombie stay up too late, have tantrums

It must be galling to discover your star has faded so far that you can only fill tour venues by teaming up with other bands, so it's perhaps not surprising that Marilyn Manson is on a foul mood on his trek around the US opening for Rob Zombie.

On Friday, it all boiled over. AllMichigan reports:

"I'm going to kick his ass," said Manson, near the end of a set that lasted about 80 minutes.

Manson made the threat after he told the crowd he wished he could've been able to perform more songs.

I've never been a big fan of Zombie's, but "cutting short the number of songs Marilyn Manson playes" sounds like something from a Nobel Prize citation.

Zombie, of course, laughed it off.

No, no, he didn't:

"Some tours just don't go (expletive) together," yelled Zombie, after he told the crowd Manson didn't even attempt to "kick his ass" during intermission.

Zombie also said he was tired of Manson's "rock star (expletive)" and said something about hoping Manson enjoyed the show because it could be his last.

Apparently there was some sort of show-down after the gig; probably once they had their cocoa and went to bed everything calmed down a bit.

And the promoters? They must be delighted - far easier to sell a pantomime than two fading goths.

The Prez des res

Want to live in Elvis' house? Not the one where he died, but his Beverley Hills pad. It's just come on the market at $12.5million.

For that, you do get a home with five bathrooms - handy if a music legend has died on one, I guess - and a lot of land.

But can the agents resist the temptation to sneak an Elvis pun into the listings?

A private master suite features a large master bath and expansive closet space – plenty of room for shoes. Perhaps some blue suede ones?

No.

AEG up for sale

AEG - the Anschutz Entertainment business, not the fridge manufacturer - is up for sale.

It's a huge business, with more sports teams under its control than the three shadiest betting syndicates put together, and a slew of venues and promotion interests.

In the UK, AEG is probably most famous for working Michael Jackson to death during the preparations for the comeback that he'd never come back from, but also cascades coins out of owning the MEN Arena and taking care of the day-to-day running of the Millennium Dome.

There's no end of super-rich types interested in buying the company and, thus, becoming major-if-shadowy types in the music and sports businesses. Reuters runs its eye over some of the people kicking the tyres:

The list of potential AEG buyers includes investment firm Guggenheim Partners LLC and private equity firms such as Thomas H. Lee Partners LP, Bain Capital LLC and Colony Capital LLC.

Biotech billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong, Los Angeles's richest person with more than $7 billion, has also said he would bid on AEG to use its sports and concert assets to promote a healthy lifestyle to LA citizens.

Given that most of AEG's assets aren't in LA, presumably Soon-Shiong is thinking that he'd do something attractive in the Target Center in Minneapolis and encourage LA residents to cycle out there to watch?

Seriously, Patrick? Using sports franchises to promote healthy lifestyles? A business which encourages people to sit down watching for long periods of time, consuming hot dogs and nachos while drinking beer from your own hats?

And yes, Bain Capital is on the list, holding out the tantalising prospect that every time you go to see a gig at the O2, you'll be helping Mitt Romney get a little richer.

Bookmarks: Jarvis Cocker

Jarvis reviews the Hunter Davis collection of John Lennon's letters for Guardian Review. In the course of it, he explains why Britpop trying to be The Beatles was a bad idea, and worries about the way everything any Beatle touches becomes an artefact:

To be fair to Davies, he does admit in his introduction that he has "rather expanded the definition of the word 'letter'". This still does not quite prepare the reader for gems such as "Degs, No Fucking George, Yer Cunt, Jack" (letter 238: Memo to Derek) or "Fred, Lights in kitchen (bulbs), Honey Candy, Kitchen Air Con is 'On Heat' (Something Wrong), Cabbage, Grape-oil (ask where), Onions, Peas (NB the Korean Shop Shells Them!), Sesame Oil, Tomatoes, Berries, Yoghurt, Hamburger Meat (for the cat!)" (letter 255: Domestic list for Fred). The Post-It Notes of John Lennon, anyone? I like mundane reality – you could say it's my specialist subject – but there's no getting away from the fact that the second of those two examples is a shopping list. Are we really so bereft of new ideas that we now wish to study the equivalent of someone's Ocado profile?

[Buy: The John Lennon letters]

This week just gone

The most-read stories from October 2012 so far:

1. Glastonbury ticket sales: still a fall-over nightmare
2. The New Statesman worries that NME is looking tired
3. Oprah rejoices at Brown, Rihanna reunion
4. Coachella pledge to dump hot dogs to snare The Smiths
5. Insurance scuppers flying Cheryl Cole
6. Life after Kenickie
7. Cheryl Cole subtly reminds us she knows the royals, like
8. Chery Lloyd dreams of collaborations
9. Would Simon Fuller buying EMI rump be such a bad thing?
10. Primark to flog CDs; that noise is HMV sobbing



These might have interested you:


Beth Orton - Sugaring Season

Download Sugaring Season



Tim Burgess - Oh No I Love You

Download Oh No I Love You



Bob Mould - Silver Age

Download Silver Age



Tift Merritt - Traveling Alone

Download Traveling Alone



Errors - New Relics

Download New Relics



Love And Money - The Devil's Debt

Download The Devil's Debt



AR Kane - The Complete Singles

Gordon in the morning: Hungover air

Given the stink coming off one of their past names, there's something almost wholesome about the idea of a Radio One dj tumbling out a club three hours before the breakfast show.

Thanks for that, Cheryl Cole

You know what?

Kate Middleton's adored by Prince William: Even a pop star's biography says so

Thanks for that, Examiner, for who would believe that anyone - even people who had a massive wedding on TV - cared about each other at all were it not confirmed by Cheryl Cole?

William spent some time conversing with Cheryl after she performed at the Queen’s Buckingham Palace Diamond Jubilee reception. According to Cheryl's new book, "Cheryl: My Story," William couldn’t help but gush about his wife, Kate Middleton, after she had done something that had to do with the pop star.

Ah, I see the problem here. This wasn't Cheryl confirming that William and Kate get on, it was Cole desperately namedropping.

Channel 4 plan 2013 answer to The Roxy

Channel 4 have suddenly noticed that T4's main raison d'etre - doing short introductions to reruns of Friends - has vanished now that Friends is on Comedy Central, and are axing the weekend morning show.

The money it saves from this new approach of "letting the bloody Hollyoaks omnibus take care of itself" is going to be poured into - oh, of course - a Friday night music show. Because Channel 4 has a spiffing recent record of agenda-setting music shows on which to build, like that one that did the album charts, and... the other ones. You know the ones.

Maybe they should try calling up The Chart Show people.

Gordon in the morning: Canning One Direction

When even Gordon Smart is pointing at your work and calling it "cringeworthy", you must have really stunk the place up.

So it is with the One Direction Pepsi advert. Let's look at the advert, shall we?

There are so many questions here.

If all these people are so bloody successful, how come they're incapable of coming up with the idea of getting a Pepsi from somewhere else? "We can summon crowds of cheering people from thin air, but are incapable of looking for our PR - who, to be fair, is probably hiding in the corner - and asking them to sort out a can of soft drink."

There's only one of Man From The Sports. But there are more than one of One Direction - I suspect there might be as many as four or five, although they're so bland and indistinguishable it's hard to tell if there's lots of them or just a few moving about a bit. Are One Direction really planning on sharing a can of Pepsi between them?

The pay-off is crazy. Everyone knows you don't give the other boyband members the bribes to become a member of a boyband, right? It's usually the managers who you'd be offering the sticky, sickly treat to.

But mostly: what were Pepsi thinking? Is there anything more off-putting than putting a bunch of people into a room and getting them to bore on about how astonishingly brilliant they are? (And doesn't it make a nonsense of the very idea of having celebrities in your advert if they have to explain who they are?)

Nice to see the Pepsi tradition of 'awkward men dancing badly in the final frame' is upheld, thought.

Cher Lloyd has a dream

ContactMusic reports:

Cher Lloyd wants to duet with Nicki Minaj because she admires her ''guts''.

And we're using "guts" in the old-fashioned sense meaning of "actual fan base", aren't we?

'I've always said from day one that the person I'd love to collaborate with would be Nicki Minaj. Just for the pure reason that I think she has so much guts and does what she wants and obviously says what she wants, and I love her.''

It's not clear what Cher thinks she'd be bringing to this collaboration, although I understand her Nandos card is one stamp away from a free half-chicken, so it's not like she'd be turning up empty-handed.

Getty offer to turn Soundcloud into pounds. At a price.

You know how, if you're happy to not be fussy about what happens to them, you can ask Getty to take care of commercial licencing for your photos on Flickr?

They're about to start offering a similar service on Soundcloud.

The upside is that, if your music is there, and someone wants to use it on a film or in a podcast, Getty will make the process very smooth.

The downside is that, because Getty are interested in scale and flogging rights with an industrial approach, there's not much room for artists to control what happens to their music. You sign up for Getty to be not just your middleman, but your manager, too. The ratecard is fixed, the artist hands over any power to object if, say, an anti-abortion podcast wants to use a song from an abortion supporting singer.

Although Getty have a cookie-cutter approach, they're charging quite heavily for it, as Hypebot explain:

If the music is licensed, the artist receives just 35% of the upfront licensee fee plus 50% of Getty Images' share, as publisher, of any backend performance royalties.

It might be frictionless, but given Getty merely wait until someone asks to use the music and pushes a bit of paperwork around, it's hard to see why they're helping themselves to such a large slice of the cash.

Gordon in the morning: Dog rough

This has been muttered about before, but - presumably because dogs are easier to cope with than people - Simon Cowell is working on a dog talent show.

ITV - presumably on the same basis that they signed up for a second series of Red Or Black - are apparently clearing space in the schedule for a dancing dog show.

Simon Cowell has vanished beyond the Simian Wimbledon horizon.

Mick Hucknall hailed for his contribution to radio

Congratulations to Mick Hucknall from the Frantic Elevators, who is picking up a prize:

Simply Red frontman Mick Hucknall is to receive this year’s PPL Lifetime Achievement Award at The Radio Festival in Manchester.
[...]
Previous winners of the PPL Lifetime Achievement Award, which honours, recognises and celebrates those whose work and dedication has left an indelible mark on the music radio industry, include Sir Paul McCartney, Trevor Horn, Paul Weller, Gary Barlow and last year’s winner Ronnie Wood.

Wood was an interesting though controversial winner - his radio work has got a lot of praise, but he hadn't been working in the medium very long.

So, what is Mick Hucknall's contribution to music radio?

Um...

Has he actually presented or produced any radio programming? Radio Festival, what work has Mick done for music radio?

Clive Dickens, Chairman of the Radio Festival, said: “We are thrilled that Mick is being presented with the PPL Lifetime Achievement Award. He is a true legend of British music and has achieved monumental acclaim. He has had amazing success and has remained at the top of his profession and rarely off the radio for a remarkable 25 years.”

That makes it sound like his "indelible mark" consists of having had his records played by other people on the radio.

Isn't that a rather passive sort of "lifetime achievement"?

Gordon in the morning: X Factor in danger of becoming a 'pantomime'

All is not happy over at The X Factor, within the tolerances of the word "is":

FUMING Gary Barlow has threatened to quit X Factor if a similar shambles to Sunday’s deadlock drama ever happens again.

The Take That singer, 41, summoned host Dermot O’Leary and show chiefs to an emergency meeting to discuss his ultimatum last night.

The head judge is said to want to “put a stop to tricks” and end “pantomime” on the show.

Demanding an end to pantomime on the X Factor is akin to requesting they drop the cakes from The Great British Bake-Off.

Indeed, the presence of Dermot at this latter-day Yalta Conference points towards this being as much part of the great pantomime as anything - why would you want the conduit there? Isn't this a job for the producers?

Apparently, at the weekend, someone who could sing a bit got sent home leaving someone else who couldn't really sing that well but was a show-off. Like kicking out Mark Owen to make room for Robbie Williams, if you will.

So, what is the upshot of all this foot-stamping and toy-tossing?

The Sun can reveal he will return this weekend — on the condition that his demands are met.

Altogether now: Oh no, they didn't...

Neil Horan attacked by angry beast

Oh, there is nothing that is not wonderful about how the Wandsworth Guardian has covered Neil Horan's ordeal at the sharp end of a squirrel. There is even a wonderful bit of photoshoppery.

[via @scaryduck]

Gordon in the morning: Zach off

Pete Samson files from America, with news of a surprising intervention in UK politics:

HOLLYWOOD funnyman Zach Galifianakis has launched a campaign from the US: “Make Boris Johnson Prime Minister.”

Obviously, there's little surprise in Murodch hacks doing their master's bidding by running a story that bolsters his beloved pet toff and adds a bit of showbiz glitz to the anointed one. But Galifianakis actively running a campaign to pull off the difficult trick of getting a safe Tory MP to resign their seat, Boris into parliament, and replacing David Cameron? He must be deeply convinced in the Boris agenda to sign up to that - how much time has he spent studying British politics?

The actor was wowed by the Mayor of London after watching him on David Letterman’s late-night chat show before the Olympics.

That seems a fairly slight base upon which to start a campaign. You... you are sure he's running a campaign, aren't you, Pete?

[F]or the Hangover star there is one bright light shining in the dark world of politics – and that’s Boris and his dazzling blond barnet.

Zach said it would be “amazing” if Boris was made PM. He told The Sun: “He would change the face of what a national leader could be. He’s charming, very funny – and has that weird hair.”

So the "campaign" consists of muttering something about how funny it would be if we landed ourselves with a Prime Minister with unruly hair.

You wouldn't be slightly overselling the story, there, Pete, would you?

Fuller swoops for EMI offcuts

There's a clutching of handkerchiefs to mouths at the news that Simon Fuller might buy the bits of EMI regulators are making Universal sell as the price of merger.

Fuller! Imagine! He did the S Clubs and game show pop stars! The very idea.

And, yes, the idea of an already rich and poweful man becoming a bit more rich and powerful is hard to celebrate.

But there's actually an upside, which does make the idea of Fuller rummaging in the EMI bins something we should welcome.

First of all, he's apparently thinking of buying all the bits - Mute, Parlophone, the 50% of Now Thats What I Call Music - the whole lot, rather than taking a couple of bits.

It'd actually be enough, surely, to count as a fairly considerable label in its own right; and still based firmly in the UK. Wasn't the loss of that something we were meant to mourn when EMI was sold off?

Also, whatever Simon Fuller's other faults, he is a pop music man. Isn't it better for Parlophone to be owned by the bloke who put together S Club 7 than Guy Hands and his Motorway Service Station business? Or, indeed, than Universal, a tiny part of a conglomerate that might have spun off its water business but still doesn't seem to moved on from pushing sewage about?

It would be lovely to think Parlophone could be turned into a worker's co-op, or Mute become a John Lewis style concern, but that's unlikely to happen. Also, can you imagine the meetings when Chris Martin started to pipe up?

So, the whole thing in the hands of a man who understands how to sell music? Could be worse.

And at least it's not Cowell.

Warners man takes chunk of Deezer

Len Blavatnik, who bought Warners a while back, has invested about 80 million quid in Deezer, the music streaming site.

Is Blavatnik a shrewd investor? Besides the way he lobbed cash into Warners, which doesn't really suggest a man able to set aside sentiment from a long-term outlook.

Well, he put cash into Top-Up TV.

Yes you do, Top-Up TV. They had that advert with the gnomes in it a few years back. They base their business on the idea that when people buy a Freeview box to avoid having to subscribe to TV services, what they really mean is they desperately want to be able to subscribe to TV services. That Top-Up TV.

Deezer, this far, has been ticking along - mostly trying for growth outside the US where it's too difficult and/or expensive to do much. Presumably the new money will be an attempt to break that market.

There's something almost a little sweet about Deezer's Wikiepdia entry, particularly this line:

Some artists are not available on Deezer due to licensing restrictions by the record labels: Francis Cabrel and The Beatles are examples.

Nothing says 'not really trying in North America' like the lack of Francis Cabrel tracs being a major point of note, does it?

Deezer's fundamental flaw is that it requires you to be logged in to Facebook to use it. It's bad enough that Facebook insists you be logged in to use it, but at least you can see why Facebook might tie themselves so closely to their single log-in. What future would Deezer have when Facebook hits its Decline of Empire point?

Kenickie: life after Kenickie

Marie Nixon (DuSantiago) has moved into politics. Sort-of. She's become the new CEO of Sunderland uni student union.

Randbobit: RB Greaves

Ronald Bertram Aloysius "R. B." Greaves III has died.

Greaves lived in both the UK and the US, having a career in both places - this side of the Atlantic as Sonny Childes; in America as RB Greaves. His biggest hit was Take A Letter, Maria, an only slightly disturbing tale of a man getting his secretary to take down a note to his wife about her infidelity.

Greaves was 68; he had been ill with prostate cancer.

Oprah rejoices at Rihanna-Brown reunion

Oprah has long pushed a "men who hit you can change" line on domestic violence, so it's not surprising that she's thrilled at the news that Rihanna and Chris Brown are reuniting. Still, it leaves a bad taste in the mouth:

"I'm not surprised," Winfrey said of Rihanna's decision to work on her relationship with Brown, who released a personal video yesterday in which he reveals he still loves his ex. "You know what I loved about that interview is that she came with a big, wide open heart. She was in the space of forgiveness. And that she learned a lesson, that she was repeating with Chris Brown exactly what she needed to learn from her father."

Really, Oprah? It was Rihanna who needed to "learn a lesson", was it? Isn't "teaching their partners a lesson" what people say they're doing when they batter them?

Everyone has their own choices to make, but to suggest that it was Rihanna who had the lessons to learn sends a stinking rotten message.

Glastonbury 2013: they've got it down, right?

They've been doing Glastonbury online ticket sales for years. They've had a year off, so 24 months to prepare. So this year they stand a good chance of ticket sales not being a fiasco, right?

Wrong.

It's not just the computers causing problems, but The Independent points out an extra zinger waiting to shake people down:

We're hearing some complaints that callers may be charged just for reaching the engaged tone, and with many hitting redial repeatedly, be careful, this could be expensive. The note on Glastonbury's small print reads:

Please note some network providers will charge for an engaged tone

Paying to hear Glastonbury not answer its phones. Charming.

What the pop papers say: Staggers launches attack on the NME front

I've been banging on about how the NME has got locked into a dependency on the sort of heritage act that it was supposed to have blown away back in 1977 for a while now. I doubt it bothers them much.

They might want to be a bit more concerned about a similar complaint from the New Statesman. Because if anyone is going to write from a sympathetic position, understanding the difficulties in shepherding a long-in-the-tooth magazine through hostile times, it's the New Statesman.

Writing on the paper's Cultural Capital blog, Rob Hastings asks why NME readers find themselves cast as Cole Sears, so often seeing dead people:

Personally, I can’t complain. After drunkenly bopping away to Franz Ferdinand and The Libertines during most of my drunken uni nights out – back when I would buy the NME week-in, week-out and blu-tacked the front covers to my bedroom door – the subsequent decline in the bubble of excitement around indie rock in favour of electro and hip-hop has left me cold, making me explore older artists’ back catalogues more often than discovering new bands. Save for Arcade Fire or the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the surest way for the NME to secure me as a reader these days would admittedly involve sticking Bob Dylan or Neil Young on the front.

But perhaps that sums up the sadness of the situation. The magazine’s frequent decision to promote features on “heritage” acts from the past rather than interviews with exciting new groups such as Mercury Prize contenders Alt-J or Django Django must be commercially driven – either because the current crop of up-and-coming acts just aren’t deemed good enough, or because people listening to the hottest acts don’t care what the NME has to say anymore, leaving the magazine groping for older readers to sustain itself.

In the comments section, Alex Lyall thinks he has a gotcha:

Hilarious because NME's new cover has Palma Violets on it. A band much younger than Cobain, Curtis or Lennon

This does miss the point a bit; Hastings doesn't say that they only do heritage covers.

But boy, they do do a lot of them. I think you have to go back to April/May to find a two week period where the cover was given over two weeks running to artists who hadn't already made enough to buy an island (Tyler The Creator followed by Friendly Fires) and probably back to 2008's Fucked Up-Glasvegas-Crystal Castles page ones for a three week run of new music covers.

And next week is a tenth anniversary of Up The Bracket special, so it's not as if the Palma Violets cover really is the start of a new era of looking forward.

What makes it worse, though, is that the Palma Violets cover is part of a New Music special. A special! It's like the New Statesman doing a left-leaning political narrative special.

And the coverlines don't exactly suggest the paper has much faith in new music interesting its readers:

NEW MUSIC SPECIAL 25 BRILLANT BANDS YOU HAVE TO HEAR
PICKED BY LILY ALLEN, THE CRIBS, MANICS, BATS FOR LASHES AND TONS MORE

Don't worry, people - the new noises have been filtered through the same acts we're always going on about.

Are you still nervous?

STILL GOT IT
How DAMON, WELLER, BJORK & THOM embraced the future

What? Still feel that despite offering 'new' music from a bunch of acts with 113 years of experience between them, we might be getting too edgy?

Don't panic, dear reader:

OASIS: THE REUNION
Bonehead spills the beans

An interview with Bonehead about Oasis. Could anything be less relevant to a new music special?

To be fair, the Damon/Weller/Bjork/Thom piece is well meant, but misfires. Barry Nicolson starts out with a thesis that older musicians don't have to get stuck into just playing the hits. That's true, but an article that gathers up artists who share little beyond being a bit older might not want to use a pull quote which asserts:

Age is no more relevant than gender or sexuality

Ah, and if we could only say so confidently that gender isn't relevant.

But with Rolling Stone just about to publish a "special" about Women Who Rock, I'm not sure we can.

Gordon in the morning: Silent Psy

There's a couple of odd moments in Gordon's bit on Psy this morning:

Psy — who hit No1 in the UK after his Gangnam Style video spread like a virus online — said: “The agency heard my raps and were picturing a 6ft tall, sharp-looking, trendy guy.

“But the CEO opened our meeting with the statement, ‘What are we going to do with this?’ Staff said, ‘How about we make him wear a cool mask?’

“Everyone was coming up with solutions to my ‘looks’ problem. They said, ‘How about a bit of plastic surgery here and there?’

“The CEO’s response to that was, ‘Just a bit?’

“In the end they reached no conclusions and just walked out of the room.”

The SPICE GIRLS would never have seen the light of day if that was the case over here.

What does that last line mean, exactly? It's not clear what the "case" is which Smart is referring to - executives not making a decision? Executives forcing pop stars to have plastic surgery? Is he suggesting the Spice Girls were only a success because they had their faces fixed? It sounds like a throwaway line that, perhaps, should have remained thrown away.

He’s a strange fruit this Psy boy, even by Korean standards.

Yes, Gordon did use the words "strange fruit" in a vaguely racist aren't-foreigners-funny sentence.

Psy tells a tale - to someone else, obviously, Gordon's just copied it down - about how a drugs arrest meant he was unable to carry his grandfather's coffin. Clearly, this is upsetting and something important to the man:

He revealed: “The person who got hurt the most was my grandfather. He passed away only three days later.

“I got arrested while he was suffering from late-stage cancer. I was not there at the funeral to lift his coffin. I will regret this for the rest of my life.”

That's heartbreaking, isn't it? How does Gordon deal with this?

Never mind Gangnam Style — he popped his clogs Grandad style.

Really, Gordon? Your reaction to a man sharing his regret at missing his grandfather's funeral is to snicker?

Primark to make HMV's life more miserable

A couple of weeks ago, I was in BHS - it's a handy cut-through to shops you might use - and noticed they've gone big for CD sales. Not just the sort they've done for a while, cheapo compilations, but actual chart CDs and to such an extent that you could probably expect to get what you were looking for, if you weren't too fussy and not after catalogue.

Now, Primark is getting in on the CD retailing business. Again, it's going to be better for you if you want Lady GaGa rather than Cate LeBon, but it's a surprising spasm of life from a declining product.

It's also a bit of bad news for HMV, who hadn't exactly been doing well as the only CD retailer on the high street. Now, the clothes shops are going to cherry-pick off customers who want the top-selling albums; the few people who don't shop online are already buying from supermarkets. Now the market will be further split by those adding an Ellie Goulding album to a quick couple of bras and some socks.

Why are Primark doing it, though?

Primark, which has 242 stores across the UK, decided to trial entering the music market as "fashion and music have always been synonymous", a spokesperson told BBC News.

"Primark has a strong relationship with licensed product and the CDs are a natural complement to Primark's merchandise," they added.

No, neither of those explanations seem that convincing.

The idea of music and fashion being synonymous is passable, but it does rather assume that fashion and Primark are synonymous, doesn't it?

Gordon in the morning: Ellie for leather

One-handed typing from Gordon this morning, as he gets excited about the Ellie Goulding comeback:

ANYONE who still thinks of ELLIE GOULDING as the “girl-next-door” type needs only to look at these boots for a reality check.

Racy ... Ellie Goulding poses for album cover Halcyon

Clean-cut singer ditches her wholesome image as she strips down for the sleeve of her latest album Halcyon.

It's true that Ellie does appear to have decided and/or been persuaded that her career needs an FHMication, which is disappointing, but... let's take a look at that album cover which is getting Gordon all excited, shall we?

Er... yeah, that's racy.

Linda McCartney used as Morrissey honeytrap

Or at least, sort of. Coachella was so desperate to score a Smiths reunion, they offered Morrissey an all-vegetarian festival to try and seal the deal.

And it wasn't only the meat that they were prepared to throw overboard:

"Fascinatingly they made it clear that they would 'not require' the Smiths' bass player or drummer," said Morrissey about his estranged bandmembers, "which I thought certainly said something."

Of course, all of this is "according to Morrissey" - and let's not forget the judgement of Judge Weeks that when dealing with those other band members Morrissey was "devious, truculent and unreliable."

I'm not entirely sure an entirely meat-free Coachella would even be feasible, would it? Would there be hot-dog pat-downs at the entry to the polo field campsites? What if another headliner insisted on putting bacon on their rider?

Gordon in the morning: Cheryl Cole and the risk register

Cheryl Cole is pulling together her first solo tour, and according to Gordon Smart, has hit a snag:

A source said: “Cheryl wants to put on a real Cirque du Soleil-style show and blow away her audience.

“She’s exchanged ideas with choregraphers and is keen to push herself to the limit."

One might wonder that if she really wants to push herself to the limit, she'd not be talking to vocal coaches rather than dance teachers. Anyway, circus tricks. Why is that a problem?

“Trouble is, that comes at a cost. The more dangerous the stunts, the more she will need to pay in insurance."

The figure Gordon quotes, and is in no way pulled out his ass, is two million pounds of underwriting. This money, once handed over, will mean Cole will be free to enter the arena on a zipwire - you know, like Anne Widdecombe on Strictly.

What is surprising, though, is that Gordon makes a joke about that time Cheryl Cole beat the crap out of the toilet attendant:

The GIRLS ALOUD star wants to fly through the air on zipwires and also perform some fight scenes.

That will bring back memories of that evening in a certain Guildford nightclub.

Given the usual pro-Cole line toed meekly by the paper, that's a bit like hearing Ed Balls say "actually, you know what, George Osborne really knows what he's doing."

Half a million quid buys you Alicia Keys

We hear from timemtomtime of Russian oligarchs and potentates of all stripes paying large sums of money to get singers to do a special gig; to the list we can now add, erm, Manchester City Council who MTV somehow managed to persuade to underwrite an Alicia Keys gig. Manchester Confidential has the story:

For one gig in Manchester Cathedral, the ‘City Council contributed £425,000’. 

Why would they do that?

Sara Tomkins, Assistant Chief Executive (Communications Customer and ICT) at Manchester City Council, said: "This event will showcase Manchester around the world. As well as showing the concert itself, MTV are also broadcasting a programme about Manchester's musical heritage and music scene. Taking part in such world-class events strengthens Manchester's position on the world stage as a premier destination for music, entertainment and culture, boosts the local economy and increases the global profile of Manchester as an exciting destination for young adults to visit, work, study and live.   

"Manchester's ability to attract such events is testament to the ambition of the city and we hope to realise further activities in partnership with MTV in the coming years. The show has generated massive coverage across national and international media, including the Washington Post, with an expected media value in excess of £6.6m.”

Let's work backwards, shall we?

The Washington Post website (not the paper) did carry a story about the event, albeit one it just took directly from the AP? Here it is, all four short paragraphs of it.
It does mention Manchester, albeit only twice: once in the byline and once in the name of the MTV programme.

You can't put a price on that sort of coverage.

Really, you can't. It's too slight to measure; it'd come in at the sort of money you get if one of your songs is played on Spotify.

It'd be a struggle to build that sort of coverage up into a package worth £6.6million. You'd be struggling to justify spending the half million for that.

But obviously, there's more. MTV making a show about "Manchester's musical heritage". A thirty minute clip show of Smiths, Joy Division and Oasis. You might wonder if you have such a rich musical heritage, why you need to bribe a music channel to make a programme about it.

But that's where we get to the big problem. I think Manchester might have paid for this gig thinking MTV is synonymous with musical cool. That having a live gig on MTV is a bit like playing football at Wembley, or golf at The Belfrey. It's the centre of the music universe, right?

Not really.

MTV audiences have been declining for years, and even the grand feather in its cap, the VMAs, saw almost a six million drop in audience between 2011 and 2012.

But even when people do find their way to MTV, they're not watching music - remember, a short while ago they officially dropped "music" from their brand to reflect that the channel is now about pregnant teenagers, Snooki, and spoiled children being spoiled further on their sixteenth birthdays.

You know the cartoon in the Guardian Guide this weekend where people turn up at a house converted from a pub asking if they could have a drink there for old time's sake? That's exactly the same as creating music programming for MTV.

Manchester paid for the gig from a ring-fenced cultural budget, so it's not quite turning social work positions into an unwatchable TV show, but you wonder if a city which has had to close the homework clubs at the libraries it hasn't shut couldn't think of a better use for the money.

And even if it did have to burn the cash on getting an event which got a brief mention on the AP newswires, why this gig for this network? The suspicion is that Manchester have bought a very expensive lemon.

[thanks to Morag]

This week just gone

The most-read stories during September:

1. Gordon Smart busily promotes the Tulisa sex tape
2. Tatu? Gay? Why would you think that?
3. AC/DC remain resolutely off iTunes
4. The last Mark and Lard show ever
5. Nirvana baby turns up again - how has he changed since his last 'what is like now' appearance a few weeks ago?
6. Video: My Bloody Valentine cover Hal David
7. Nick Carter investigated over sexual battery claims
8. Wendy James is back, back, back
9. Usher buys watch with his own face on it
10. Paris Hilton slags off gays, suddenly realises might not be wise career move

These were the interesting new things this week:


Efterklang - Piramida

Download Piramida



Neil Halstead - Palindrome Hunches

Download Palindrome Hunches



Lucy Rose - Like I Used To

Download Like I Used To



Frightened Rabbit - State Hospital

Download State Hospital



Dragonette - Body Parts

Download Body Parts