"I never touched her bottom" claims ex-radio host

Over two years ago, a breakfast show host on Denver's KYGO was accused of touching Taylor Swift's bottom, and was dumped from his job.

Now, just twenty seven short months later, David Mueller - known professionally as Jackson before the incident, and 'that guy fired for touching Swift's arse' afterwards - has filed a lawsuit.

The crux of his case is that it was a case of mistaken identity:

According to the suit, Mueller posed with Swift and his girlfriend, Shannon Melcher.

After some small talk, "Swift suddenly announced it was picture time" and "quickly put her right arm" around Melcher. Mueller jumped into the photo "at the last second."

Swift cordially thanked the couple and they left, the suit said.

After the photograph, Mueller, in the suit, said he met a co-worker who "excitedly told him about his experience meeting Ms. Swift earlier that night."

The co-worker "described and demonstrated how he had put his arms around her, hands on her bottom," according to the filing.

The lawsuit also makes reference to his lifetime ban from Taylor Swift concerts, but it's unclear from reports if he is seeking to have this overturned.

Robert Forster: Streaming Now

The new Robert Forster album, Songs To Play, is streaming over on The Guardian website right now.

This week just gone

One year ago - popular from September 2014:

1. Apple gave everyone a free U2 album nobody wanted
2. Paloma Faith misses the point of naked photos
3. U2 tell people who didn't want their album they were wrong
4. Bono inventing a new music format
5. RIP: Robert Young
6. Robin Thicke says he was too out of it to take responsibility for Blurred Lines
7. Tatu have shifted their position on gay rights a bit
8. RIP: Peter Gutteridge
9. New Pornographers on David Letterman
10. Neil McCormick, who knows Bono, explains why U2's unwanted spam was alright

These were the interesting new releases:


Suede - Dog Man Star Live

Download Dog Man Star



Giant Sand - Heartbreak Pass

Download Heartbreak Pass



Troy Sivan - Wild

Download Wild



Ane Brun - When I'm Free

Download Wild



Lou Barlow - Brace The Wave

Download Brace The Wave



Steve Earle - Terraplane

Download Terraplane



Helena Hauff - Discreet Desires

Download Discreet Desires

David Cassidy won't be coming back

Sad times for David Cassidy fans, as he's never, ever going to come back to the UK because... well, he he didn't make very much money last time:

Asked by [This Morning] if he would be touring the UK soon, Cassidy, 65, replied: “Probably not. The problem is there is a 20 per cent foreign entertainer’s tax, and with everything else that it costs to go there – no, I don’t think so.
“I’d love to, but I ended up making $630 (£408) last time I went there, so it didn’t make a lot of sense.”

It's true, there is a tax on foreign entertainers, but it only kicks in if you make more than the UK personal tax allowance. If Cassidy ended up with less than five hundred quid, it seems that was less because of the tax regime and more... well, that he didn't make enough money in the first place.

Cassidy also bristled when asked about being bankrupt:

Speaking from the five-bedroom Fort Lauderdale house via video link, Cassidy became irritated when asked about reports that he has filed for bankruptcy.

“Are you trying to rubbish me?” he demanded in response to Holmes’s questions.

“When you declare bankruptcy in this country, it's something you do in order to reorganise what you have, your assets, so I'm not going to discuss that.”

The house sale “has nothing to do with declaring bankruptcy, that was a totally separate issue. I’m doing it because I’m in the middle of a divorce,” he said.

When Langsford attempted to steer the chat into less choppy waters by asking if Cassidy was glad to have the support of his fans during a difficult period, he snapped: “Don’t interrupt me,” before telling her nine times to “wait” when she tried to speak.

What a shame that he won't be coming back to Britain. What a loss.

This isn't made up

Yes, it's true. With "the blessing" of her family, they're going to tour a hologram of Whitney Houston.

Obviously the equipment to create the vision of Whitney Houston performing is very delicate; experts say that even a little crack could destroy the illusion.

Wales versus the humanitarian crisis

Want to help the growing numbers of refugees, and - at the same time - grab some rare Welsh music?

Good news; you really can do both - lob a tenner in the hat, pick up (or rather download) the Welsh Rock For Refugees album, and do some good.

It's for download on Bandcamp, and it's a remarkable collection of Welsh musicians - Mike Peters via Charlotte Church to the Joy Formidable. If you can't find a couple of favourites on the collection, you SHOULD BUY IT ANYWAY OR JUST GIVE A TENNER. Because it's a good cause.

Speedy Ortiz versus the creepers

Speedy Ortiz are out on tour at the moment, and they're looking out for their fans:

You'd hope that bands didn't have to have helplines to stop their fans being groped. But until that moment comes, this is a step in the right direction.

You may Ke$h the groom

Ke$ha, it turns out, is an ordained minster and has already carried out two weddings:

The pop star officiated the wedding of her hairstylist, Vittorio Masecchia, and his husband, Felipe Noqueira – the second time she's done so for a friend.

Now, surely this is a potentially much more lucrative sideline than merely playing rich people's weddings. How much could you make, Elton John, if you married them?

Suede: Filmstars

Four-fifths of me is very excited about this:

One-fifth of me is thinking 'Broadchurch: The Concept Album".

Ed Sheeran makes money like he's a house in Kensington

Ed Sheeran. He makes money. Lots of it:

Ed Sheeran earns a staggering £15,000 a DAY, according to new figures filed at Companies House.

The flame-haired singer, who is listed as a director of Ed Sheeran Limited, made an eye-watering £5,679,456 in pre-tax profits last year - which works out as £15,560 a day. Now THAT is pretty impressive.

Business experts say that the last time something so inoffensive but ultimately pointless had such a huge earning potential compared to talent, it was when that puppy off the Andrex packets made it big.

Man loses hair as he gets older - front pages held; presses stopped

Somebody called Glenn Hadley has somehow squeezed an entire article out of a photo of Stevie Wonder where it looks like he might now have no hair.

But there's a twist in the story (if you can call it a story) as:

Even though Stevie Wonder appears bald from certain angles, he still has his locks in a ponytail towards the back of his head.

So in short, the article on The Inquisitr is:

Is Stevie Wonder bald?
Yes, if you don't look at his ponytail

Coming tomorrow:

Is there any point to The Inquisitr?
No, if you don't look at the mess of ads sold round its non-stories

Helping out Daddy Chester

Back in the 80s, Daddy Chester was doing alright - working with Adamski, building a DJ career. But things don't always run smoothly, and he's now struggling a bit. He's caught in that place where in order to access the services that can help you get back on track, you need an address; but you don't have an address because you need to get back on track to get one.

Some of his friends are trying to help out with a GoFundMe campaign.

This week just gone

The most-used devices by NoRock readers, based on visits this year:

1. iPad
2. iPhone
3. Blackberry Playbook
4. Nexus 7
5. Kindle Fire HD
6. Windows RT Tablet
7. Nexus 9
8. Galaxy Tab
9. Hudl2
10. Firefox for Android Tablet

This week's interesting new releases:


Yo La Tengo - Stuff Like That There

Download Stuff Like That There



Foals - What Went Down

Download What Went Down



Beach House - Depression Cherry

Download Depression Cherry



Georg Holm and Orri Páll Dýrason - Circe

Download Circe

Bruce Dickinson one of those old guys who thinks being disconnected is charming

Don't you hate those people who take some sort of pride in their distance from the modern world? Like hugely-specific unabombers who draw the line at technological developments after an arbitrary point. Amongst their number is Bruce Dickinson:

"I understand that in this day and age everybody has to have a big social media presence, and you have to look after your social media, and blah blah blah — okay, that's great," he said. "We've got a great team and they just look after the social media. I just completely ignore it. It's as if I live in another world, devoid of Twitter, devoid of Facebook, devoid of all the bullshit that gets talked about by all of these people. I just live in my own little head world. That's what makes the records. So I have no idea what's going on on Twitter, and I couldn't care less."

Asked if there is anything in particular about social media that bothers him, he said: "No, because I don't let myself get bothered. I pay no attention to it. I don't even know how to access Twitter. I mean, my mobile phone is a Nokia that I can't even take a picture on. It's held together with tape. That is my mobile phone, and people look at it with horror. People say, 'Well, why don't you have an iPhone?' Because it gets polluted by shit."

Ooh, you've got a Nokia, have you, Bruce? What are you, some kind of teenager with your trendy mobile walkabout everywhere phone? What's wrong with a traditional landline? Obviously not one with a dial, with all that 'having to look numbers up in a phonebook' shit, you just want to blow in a tube and get a telephonist to look after the connections, right?

It's worth remembering that when he's not being Grandpa Simpson or in Iron Maiden, Dickinson flies planes and runs an airline. With a taped-up Nokia which presumably connects through GPRS. He's a pilot.

"This is your captain speaking. Not though the intercom, which is just showy, I'm shouting through a rolled-up in flight magazine. Just so you know,I don't have time for all these bullshit dials and screens in the cockpit. I'm just using a barometer and a map in the back of an encyclopedia. Now, please pay attention to the talk about safety features on this plane, and be assured we haven't been polluted by shit like safety masks or whatnot. I don't even know how to use the switch for the landing gear, by the way."

Temple cast out: Eddy Temple Morris quits XFM

As XFM continues its dwindling days while Capital preps Radio X, station stalwart Eddy Temple Morris has quit and taken his Remix show elsewhere.

His farewell comes via Facebook:

For reasons that are personal, and shall remain private, I've made a very hard decision to resign from the radio station I love.

The Remix has been on Xfm for over 15 years and while I look for a new and more appropriate spiritual home for the show, Soho Radio - the excellent London based internet radio station - have very kindly offered to host the show in the meantime.

You might want to read between the lines:

Right now I'd say to all the doom and gloom brigade that new music and the way it's consumed is at such an interesting and exciting place now. It's a time for positivity and forward thinking, not fear and regret. The landscape is changing so fast. I can see a new level playing field emerging, where record labels aren't beholden to FM radio any more.

The last Remix show on Xfm, show number 797, will be a pre-recorded Best Remixes of The Millennium special broadcast tonight, September 4th. Show 798 will be broadcast live on Soho Radio next week in exactly the same slot. Friday 10pm till midnight on www.sohoradiolondon.com

TwoToneObit: Rico Rodriguez

Rico Rodriguez, who worked with The Specials and led Rico And The Rudies, has died.

Born in Cuba in 1934, raised in Jamaica and settling in Britain, Rodriguez had developed his style working with Oswald 'Count Ossie' Williams, taking part in jam sessions as part of the Mystic Revelation of Rastafari in the 1950s, and living with the musicians in the hills. He would later cite this as his formative experience:

"They're more developed, mentally and musically, than the average musician. When you play with them you can really explore. Most of what I know I learned from playing with them."

In the 1960s, Rico relocated to London and continued to play. There, he came to the attention of Chris Blackwell, landing a contract with Island in 1976. This allowed him his first trip back to Jamaica since leaving for Britain, and the resulting recordings sessions - released as Man From Wareika - set a template for the ska revival which combined the reggae-in-exile developments from the UK with the more traditional take from the Caribbean.

Having helped kick-start a ska comeback, it was appropriate that he would be in demand from the second revival wave acts - most notably joining The Specials on A Message To You, Rudy. He earned a namecheck in Reasons To Be Cheerful Part III; toured with The Police and seemed to be at last on the edge of a breakthrough.

Oddly, though, despite his success, Island lost interest and - besides a half-hearted attempt at recording a live cover of Guns Of Navarone with The Sprcials - the label first withdrew support, and then dropped him. He signed with Two Tone for the That Man Is Forward album, but, tiring of the music industry, in the early 80s, he retired back to the Wareika Hills.

His return to Europe, and European music, was down to the Swizz Heart Beat Band, who - unwilling to accept that such a brilliant musician was no longer working - sought him out, and persuaded him to pick up his career.

He was kept busy - between 1996 and 2012 he was a regular with Jools Holland's Rhythm And Blues Orchestra; he made his own records; and worked with second and third wave ska acts. He was made an MBE in 2007; in 2012, his contribution to Jamaican culture was recognised by a Silver Musgrave Medal.

Rico Rodriguez died on September 4th, in London. He was 80.

Emily Ratajkowski's blurred lines

Emily Ratajkowski, who was one of the models roped in to Robin Thicke's Blurred Lines project, has been doing a bit of an "I don't see what the fuss about" interview.

She was talking while promoting the Zac Effron film We Are Your Friends at the time, so it's almost as if she's drawn to career-limiting moments.

On Blurred Lines, she called it the "bane of her existence":

"Now, it’s the bane of my existence. When anyone comes up to me about 'Blurred Lines', I'm like, are we seriously talking about a video from three years ago?"

Which is ironic, because whenever anyone spots him at his current job at the Chick-fil-a, Robin Thicke hopes someone will ask him about Blurred Lines.

Ratajkowski also spoken about the amount of nudity in the clip, saying, "It's weird to me that the reaction to a woman’s naked body is so controversial in our culture."

"My mum taught me to never apologise for my sexuality. My dad never made me feel embarrassed. I also don’t think I’ve ever had an awareness of my own body as being super-sexual. It was always just my body."

Obviously, yes, being naked isn't a bad thing and being ashamed of your body is terrible. But Emily's being a bit disingenuous here - it's hard to see how she could have been so surprised that the level of nudity was a problem when they had her film a completely separate version with her clothes on.

More importantly, it's the context of the nudity and the way that the women had no clothes on, and the men did. And the way the men interacted with the women. It's such a blatant piece of sexist crap that it could almost have been designed as a starting point for GCSE essays on the male gaze. So clunky and easy to grasp are the problems with Blurred Lines video that it could have been made by Fisher Price as My First Sexist Problems.

It's not that there was a problem with your body, Emily. It's the way it was used. And that's why you're probably going to find people asking you about it for years to come.

Hannah Montana to South Mendips: Check

Now, it's possible that Miley Cyrus is going to play next year's Glastonbury.

On the other hand, this rumour coming a couple of days after the announcement of when the tickets will go on sale makes me wonder if it's not a cunning scheme:

- I'd love to go to Glastonbury next year.
- Yeah, but we can never get tickets. The demand is way too high.
- If only there was some way we could kill demand before people are thinking about booking.
- You mean we need some sort of wrecking ball?
- Yes! Yes, that's exactly what we need.

The VMAs happened, and we'd be better off if we try and pretend it didn't

The VMAs - the bit on the calendar when everyone remembers MTV still broadcast - happened yesterday, in a series of events in which pop music finally broke.

Miley Cyrus was on hosting duties, and couldn't decide what to wear. So in the end she wore everything:

Every single one of Miley's VMA stage looks. Which one is your favorite? #VMA #MileyVMAs pic.twitter.com/ThvbZxU3mT

— Miley Cyrus Fashion (@StylishCyrus) August 31, 2015

Seven outfits. Seven outfits, and not one of them worked. The one with the giant Smarties on, clearly, was sold to her by a designer trying to keep a straight face while insisting that he had GaGa on the other line putting in a bid for it. But that was just the worst of a very, very bad bunch.

Somewhere this morning Billy Ray Cyrus is saying "when I said there's no way you're going on stage dressed like that", I wasn't being an overprotective father; I was talking on behalf of Vogue."

It's not just Miley's dresses which had most of America thinking it was time for an intervention, though. She's now got dreads.

Of course, there's no reason why Miley Cyrus can't have dreads - even ones that are so obviously fake that they look like they've recently been used to stop trawlers drifting off to sea - but it came across as a somewhat insensitive thing to do after her recent dis on Nicki:

Miley Cyrus berated Nicki for speaking out on issues that affect black women in the music industry,& is also wearing dreads rn. The audacity

— hot ebony mom (@egbaprincess) August 31, 2015

It shows something of a deaf ear, or poor advice, to spend a chunk of the week telling a black woman she doesn't know how to campaign on behalf of under-represented black women, only to turn up with a head full of shoddy cultural appropriation. It's fair to say it didn't go down well.

And that wasn't the end of the racial insensitivity for the night:

MTV: racism is bad! MTV: allows miley cyrus onstage in dreads, allows rebel wilson to dress up as a cop introducing the hip hop category

— spock kirk (@mrtrohman) August 31, 2015

In case you're not sure that having someone introduce the hip hop awards dressed as a cop making jokes about "injustice" is that much of a dick move, even the Daily Mail noticed.

Kanye was also there. He made reference to that time he was on before and gatecrashed Taylor Swift picking up an award:

He spoke of the aftermath of interrupting Swift lo those many years ago. He bit the hand that was feeding him by saying, "You know how many times MTV ran that footage again, 'cause it got them more ratings?"

It must have been galling that when you tried to make a gallant gesture in order to put the focus firmly on yourself, only for the awards show you're at to make hay from it, eh.

West also used the occasion to announce his plans for the next decade:

"And yes, as you probably could have guessed by this moment, I have decided, in 2020, to run for president."

Cyrus's reaction to this - which came after a break, which means not only did she have time to think of a response, but other people could have, too, was:

“Trump, you had my vote. But now? Kanye West for president!”

Even in jest, to tell Donald Trump you were going to vote for him is deadly. Perhaps there was some metajoke being made about how, if you're going to vote for some guy off a reality TV show, it doesn't matter which one you go for, but somehow, I doubt it.

In happier news, Nicki and Taylor made up their beef. But Nicki wasn't done with Miley:

Minaj thanked her pastor while taking the award for Anaconda, then turned to Cyrus, who was on a nearby stage. “And now back to this bitch that had a lot to say about me the other day in the press – Miley, what’s good?” said Minaj.

Miley was forced to go off script for a moment. Like a pro, she blamed the press:

Cyrus responded to the confrontation, with a brief comment about interview responses being twisted from their intended message. “We’re all in the industry, we all do interviews, and we all know how they manipulate shit,” Cyrus said, before continuing with her script for the night.

Or maybe she didn't, as obviously that was on The Guardian website and you know how the press manipulate shit.

You do wonder, though, why she didn't contact Minaj directly and explain what she really meant when the interview came out, don't you?

In case you've forgotten, there were awards being given out as well, and here's the closest thing to winners in full:

Best Rock Video: Fall Out Boy, "Uma Thurman"

Best Pop Video: Taylor Swift, "Blank Space"

Best Male Video: Mark Ronson featuring Bruno Mars, "Uptown Funk"

Best Hip-Hop Video: Nicki Minaj, "Anaconda"

Best Female Video: Taylor Swift, "Blank Space"

Best Video With a Social Message: Big Sean featuring Kanye West & John Legend, "One Man Can Change the World"

Song of the Summer: 5 Seconds of Summer, "She's Kinda Hot"

Best Collaboration: Taylor Swift ft. Kendrick Lamar, "Bad Blood"

Best Direction: Kendrick Lamar, "Alright" (Colin Tilley & the Little Homies)

Best Choreography: OK Go, "I Won’t Let You Down" (OK Go, air:man and Mori Harano)

Best Cinematography: Flying Lotus feat. Kendrick Lamar, "Never Catch Me" (Larkin Sieple)

Best Art Direction: Snoop Dogg, "So Many Pros" (François Rousselet, Jason Fijal)

Best Editing: Beyoncé, "7/11" (Beyoncé, Ed Burke, Jonathan Wing)

Best Visual Effects: Skrillex and Diplo feat. Justin Bieber, "Where Are U Now" (Brewer, Gloria FX, and Max Chyzhevskyy)

Artist to Watch: Fetty Wap

Video of the Year: Taylor Swift featuring Kendrick Lamar, "Bad Blood"

X Factor not quite the ratings juggernaut it once was

Last night, the X Factor returned, with all the pomp that ITV could muster.

Although, to be fair to ITV, when you're marketing something that now features Nick Grimshaw and Olly Murs as part of the mix, you're going to be struggling a bit to begin with.

Even so, a drop of 20% of viewers compared with last year's launch isn't great.

ITV are muttering about how maybe everyone was out because it was Bank Holiday (or maybe the thought that it's still August and this is going to drag on until Christmas put everyone off?).

And it still managed over seven million, which is considered good for the nearly identical Britain's Got Talent.

And it's not like ITV's got an idea to replace it with - Celebrity Sheepdogs or whatever that thing was isn't going to be anchoring a Saturday night any time soon.

So, on it will limp. Maybe they'll bring Steve Brookstein back as a twist.

Google is just taking the piss here, isn't it?

This week just gone

1. That last ever NME
2. RIP: Cilla Black
3. Left out of Compton
4. Tom Jones dropped from The Voice
5. Backing up your CD collection is now illegal, again
6. Bookmarks: Andy Medhurst on Cilla Black
7. One Direction split, slowly
8. XFM to become Moyles, Kay's playground
9. The Nostalgia industry has just reached Jessica Simpson
10. NOFX try to pay hipster to go away

These were interesting:


Wilco - Star Wars

Download Star Wars



Natalie Imbruglia - Male

Download Male



The Three Johns - Volume

The €20 love note

You might have come across the story of the love note scrawled on a €20 note:

Leech went on to explain that they eventually broke up and Megan met someone else. "After I saw the €20 note on a FB post, I called her," he said. "She told me she had written it on a note she used to pay into one of my gigs about 6 months ago. I didn't know she was there. She told me she thought I'd get the cash directly but I obviously didn't. She took it that I didn't want to talk.

"So, now we're in touch again but the situation is quite different.”

Perhaps the most touching aspect of this story is that Megan somehow thinks an artist at a gig is going to see any of the money from his gig by the time he comes off stage.

The lights are going out all over the VMAs. We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.

MTV are still doing the VMAs, which is in itself a weird thing - MTV's target demographic must be puzzled that every so often the 'I Live In An Area Where Republicans Defunded Sex Ed Lessons' marathons are put on hold to celebrate pop videos. I suppose it's no odder than those times ITV suddenly decide to show the Evening Standard Theatre Awards, though.

Anyway, they're doing it again, only this time it's turned into war. Presumably in a bid to get picked up by History Channel next year.

Entertainment Tonight have taped the words 'Press' on their windcheaters, and are reporting from the frontline:

In July, Minaj went on a Twitter rant about how "Anaconda" was snubbed for a Video of the Year nomination at the 2015 MTV Video Music Awards, as well as her and Beyonce's song "Feeling Myself."

"If your video celebrates women with very slim bodies, you will be nominated for vid of the year," she tweeted. "If I was a different 'kind' of artist, 'Anaconda' would be nominated for best choreo and vid of the year as well."

She also accused the VMAs of body shaming, posting that "black women influence pop culture so much but are rarely rewarded for it."

There's a lot to unpick there - MTV might point to the number of prizes Beyonce picked up last year, including the Michael Jackson lifetime achievement style award; detractors would nod and suggest that you have to be Beyonce to fight your way into events like that while Miley Cyrus just has to shed some clothes and kiss a powertool or two and gets escorted to the top table.

Miley Cyrus. Talking of whom, she's this year's MTV VMA host, and she's fired back:

Cyrus, who is hosting Sunday's VMAs, tells the New York Times that Minaj went about this all wrong.

"If you want to make it about race, there’s a way you could do that. But don’t make it just about yourself," the 22-year-old singer said. "Say: 'This is the reason why I think it’s important to be nominated. There’s girls everywhere with this body type.'"

Cyrus claims that Minaj lost focus of the issue at hand. "You made it about you. Not to sound like a b**ch, but that’s like, 'Eh, I didn’t get my VMA.'"

I don't think that's entirely fair, but you have to at least admit Cyrus has positioned herself well from a political perspective - in effect, she's totally agreed with Minaj that the people giving her large sums of cash to present an awards show have excluded women from a certain background, but also spun out from it a personal attack which will keep all the prepublicity flowing without risking her job at the podium.

I think that's either cold-hearted capitalism, or consummate professionalism.

X axed: XFM to shed last vestiges of what it was

A grim additional email from Popbitch this morning, which builds on yesterday's story that XFM was about to be rebranded Capital Rocks.

It's not going to be called Capital Rocks - presumably because it's not a fucking paving company operating out of Bexleyheath - but it is going to have a new name:

Starting on 21st September, it's going to be Radio X.

There are already a bunch of Radio Xes, of course, most notably in Grand Theft Auto.

But as Popbitch continues, the change of name isn't as bad as it could have been:

One of the ideas floated (but thankfully dropped) was to give the station a "no females" policy, with "Man Size Music" suggested as the new slogan.

Yes, the brains that run Capital did really think that adopting the much-maligned strategy used by Nestle to turn the Yorkie bar from a relatively unpleasant hunk of inedible chocolate into a flashpoint in the gender wars was the way to rebrand its alt rock station.

Mind you, when you read this bit...:

With Chris Moyles at breakfast, followed by Vernon Kay. Jonny Vaughn gets the nod for drivetime. And Ricky "The Voice" Wilson is in for a weekend show.

... you do have to ask yourself how far the "no females" policy was actually abandoned. It doesn't sound like that page of the flipchart was ripped up, does it?

One Direction split

The news, of course, has rumbled through the day: One Direction have announced they're going to sort-of split, or at least go on hiatus, to allow the individual members to experiment with a solo career and find out how it feels to get a number 29 chart hit for a few months.

Someone's making a nice quid or two out of it, though:

Unscrupulous sellers are cashing in on the shock announcement from the group, which includes Wolverhampton-born Liam Payne and Harry Styles, from Redditch.

The Barclaycard Arena is already a complete sell out for Saturday October 10 and the following two nights have just a few tickets left, 1D fans will have to scramble to be among the Birmingham crowds.

Ticket prices are more than three times the price of the original face value tickets, with users of the popular ticket selling site StubHub.com selling tickets for prices of up to £1,298.

People prepared to pay over a grand to see them must be some sort of mega-fan, although not so mega that they were that arsed about getting tickets when they only cost fifty quid.

Nicki Minaj: The age we live in now

Madame Tussauds in Las Vegas has had to issue a statement asking visitors to not take photos of themselves fucking Nicki Minaj's waxwork from behind:

Statement regarding Nicki Minaj’s Madame Tussauds wax figure pic.twitter.com/tnnyZL0BNX

— Madame Tussauds LV (@TussaudsVegas) August 18, 2015

It's an "interactive immersive experience" too far. It's curious that the venue is worried about disrespecting the waxwork, though, rather than disrespecting the person depicted in the waxwork.

Kathleen Hanna is relaxed about pop star feminism

When Taylor Swift, or similar, talks about feminism, it might not be your mother's feminism, or your elder sister's. But is that a problem?

Kathleen Hanna isn't sure that it is:

I remember back in the Nineties being like, “We’re being commodified,” so I understand people being like, “We don’t want feminism to become this fashion that has nothing behind it.” But I’m not really worried about that. When somebody that’s a huge megastar that has so many young fans, like Taylor Swift or Miley Cyrus or Beyoncé, comes out and says, “I’m a feminist,” I mean, that’s the sound of hundreds of thousands of girls typing the word into the Internet.

In other words: Taylor Swift Feminism is a gateway. And any entry point is to be welcomed.

Pop stars in not exactly reduced circumstances

There's an odd little piece in the spitewrapper that is the Mail On Sunday this morning - it's a glorified puff piece for some sort of timesharey/homeswapping deal. But what's fascinating is that the frontman for the operation is Marcus Vere.

Marcus Vere.

"Eighties pop star Marcus Vere".

We'll save you the Googling - he was in Living In A Box. Which does at least allow the Mail a sort-of joke:

He found fame with a song about ‘living in a cardboard box’, but musician Marcus Vere can now live in a variety of what he describes as ‘grandiose and luxuriant boxes’ all around the world.

Oddly, this isn't the first time Vere has popped up to enthuse over the project. Last year he was trilling about it in the Telegraph:

One member is music producer Marcus Vere, a former member of the 1980s band Living in a Box, whose 17th century thatched cottage in the Cotswolds is almost entirely booked up this summer. In return, he and his family have enjoyed free accommodation all over the world.

“We save thousands this way. As a family of five, you’re looking at nearly £5,000 even for economy tickets to fly to the US these days, so we’re happy to take any benefits we can from having a house in the Cotswolds to subside our holiday accommodation costs. This summer, we’re staying at the Trump Hotel & Tower on Central Park.”

He also popped up in the London Evening Standard enthusing over the service:

London musician and X Factor songwriter Marcus Vere, the keyboard player in Eighties band Living in a Box, owns a striking five-bedroom holiday home in the Cotswolds with his wife Laetitia, where they enjoy time with their children JJ, Giselle and Nina, aged 13, 11 and nine.

Now, it's possible that Vere just loves the service so much he can't stop talking about it. Because if he was promoting the service in return for some sort of consideration, they'd mention that in the articles, right?

Buckcherry sex toys empire set to expand

Did you know that Buckcherry market their own range of sex toys? I'm assuming their dildos, if they're anything like their music, will be a bit disappointing - you can see what they're trying to do, but it's not very satisfying and nowhere near hard enough.

Still, their popular with their fans, according to the band's Josh Todd:

The band has its own line of sex toys, Crazy Bitch Toys. Are the products hot sellers?

Yes! We have a dildo, condoms and are working on adding a vibrator and butt-plug. People like us to sign them, usually. I hope they use them. We have some things in the works though it’s too soon to talk about them.

I'm not sure I'd use the phrase "we have some things in the works" when talking about sex toy development.

The idea that Buckcherry are busily trying to design a butt-plug is somehow cheering. Or at least more cheering than the thought they might be writing more songs.

This week just gone

On this day in No Rock history:

2014: Apparently doing the ice bucket challenge led to Lily Allen selling gig tickets
2013: Fran Healy was upset by Beyonce's backstage demands
2012: Zayn Malik quit Twitter
2011: EMI lost its court case against mp3locker
2010: Someone was selling a toilet that John Lennon might once have pooped in
2005: Turkmenistan bans recorded music




These were the interesting releases this week:


Sweet Baboo - The Boombox Ballads

Download Boombox Ballads



Grace Potter - Midnight

Download Midnight