Steve Miller less than impressed with the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

Steve Miller has been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. He's not entirely thrilled by it all:

Asked to expand on his criticisms of the organization, which was founded by industry heavyweights like Jann S. Wenner of Rolling Stone and has its museum in Cleveland, Mr. Miller said, “The whole process is unpleasant,” suggesting that it be “changed from the top to the bottom.”

“They need to respect the artists they say they’re honoring, which they don’t,” the singer continued, making references to issues like licensing agreements between the show and its honorees. (Friday’s ceremony will be broadcast by HBO on April 30.)

Mr. Miller, 72, then turned to the ceremony itself. “When they told me I was inducted they said, ‘You have two tickets — one for your wife and one for yourself. Want another one? It’s $10,000. Sorry, that’s the way it goes,’ ” he said, adding, “What about my band? What about their wives?”

When a publicist for the Rock Hall tried to interrupt him, Mr. Miller persisted. “No, we’re not going to wrap this up — I’m going to wrap you up,” he said. “You go sit down over there and learn something.”

The Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame organisation tried to put a brave face on it by pretending that being condemned by the people they seek to celebrate is somehow very on brand:

“Rock ’n’ roll can ignite many opinions,” the hall responded in a statement. “It’s what makes it so great. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was honored to induct Steve Miller tonight and congratulates him.”

Not so honoured they didn't try to shake him down for asking for three tickets.

What's lovely is the way they try to suggest that Miller is angry at rock and roll - "yeah, people get so animated about rock and roll" - rather than the museum they've built around it.

Countryobit: Merle Haggard

Merle Haggard has died at the age of 79. There are, of course, any number of obituaries online already.

Perhaps the best story about Haggard is that his musical career had its inspiration in one of Johnny Cash's prisons gigs. It's a great story because it shows what treating prisoners like people can do, but it's also great because that whole 'here is a man playing guitar, I can do that too' storyline in effect makes Haggard a punk hero as well as a country one.

I first came across Merle Haggard thanks to the NME - younger readers might need to be told there used to be a music magazine with that name. Back in 1988, the paper produced an album of Vietnam related pop, rock and soul called Feels Like I'm Fixin To Die. It's pretty good, and on it was this:

He came to regard the song as a bit of an albatross:

Sometimes I wish I hadn’t written Okie. Not that I’m ashamed of it. I’m not sure but what bothers me most is the people that identify with it. There is the extremity out there. I don’t know. It made people forget that I might be a much more musical artist than they give me credit for. I was indelibly stamped with this political image—this political, musical spokesman, or whatever.

And although it's a great song, based on the lyrics I might have not bothered digging much further into Haggard's back catalogue when I was 18. But this song made me give him a second look:

There's a moon across the border in the Louisiana sky
I smell the Pontchartrain,
I hear Silver Wings
Then, away Merle Haggard flies

If Nanci Griffith was giving him a verse in a song, equal billing with Loretta Lynn - well, he had to be worth a second look, right?

This week just gone

The most-read March stories:

1. Avalanche closes, and how Record Store Day played a part
2. Daily Star misreports Viola Beach crash
3. Cameron gets Rita Ora briefings
4. Radio X listeners really love Rita Ora
5. Fan "humiliated" by Madonna refuses to be humiliated
6. RIP: George Martin
7. RIP: Keith Emerson
8. Paul Van Dyk falls off the stage
9. Cornwall: home of rock
10. Somebody wrote on Bryan Adam's guitar

These were last week's interesting releases:


The Joy Formidable - Hitch

Download Hitch



Kiran Leonard - Grapefruit

Download Grapefruit



K Michelle - More Issues Than Vogue

Download More Issues Than Vogue



Johnny Moped - It's A Real Cool Baby

Download It's A Real Cool Baby



Bob Mould - Patch The Sky

Download Patch The Sky

Beatlesobit: Fred Arnold

Really, this is just a plug for an article over at The Arkansas Times, recording the death of Fred Arnold. The story starts as an everyday tragedy - homeless man becomes the 467th person to die in a car accident in the state in 2015 - but becomes much more:

[His friend Walter Durst] said that Arnold, who often went by the nickname Billy, had once owned a set of iconic record stores in Charleston, S.C., where he had also been a radio show host and an active promoter of punk bands in the 1980s. He said he'd visited London, Cuba and Russia (that his politics "bordered on Communist") and had also briefly lived in Colorado, as he preferred a colder climate. He said that Arnold had suffered a number of strokes in recent years, exacerbating many of his other problems. The letter, though, grew stranger as it went on. Durst claimed, for instance, that Arnold had known all the members of The Beatles, and had been particularly good friends with John Lennon and Yoko Ono. That after Lennon's death, Arnold and Ono had continued to correspond and had remained close friends. "It was one of the hardest things I have ever done," he wrote, "when I had to write to Yoko to tell her of Fred's death."

The tide wasn't as strong as Jay-Z was told

Oh, poor Jay-Z. He's currently threatening to sue the people who sold him Tidal, as it turns out that he might not have been buying quite what he expected:

"It became clear after taking control of TIDAL and conducting our own audit that the total number of subscribers was actually well below the 540,000 reported to us by the prior owners," Tidal said in a statement sent to Variety. "As a result, we have now served legal notice to parties involved in the sale."

Norwegian press reports relayed by Music Business Worldwide estimate that Tidal wants about $15 million back; the company declined to comment on these specifics.

There may be, at the heart of this, an attempt to make the weak figures they've managed so far (about three million subscribers) seem a little better if it's coming from a lower starting point.

Just a little better, though.

Bieberwatch (or, rather, Bieberlisten)

As promoted by Popbitch, there's a handy new site which keeps track of whether Capital FM is playing Justin Bieber:

Mariah Carey marks a new point

Today, we put down our small-dog-in-a-handbag and call on our hat attendant to raise our bejewelled hat to Mariah Carey, who has managed to reach a point where she's so overpriced and showy even Harrods think she's a bit much.

Chris Brown hasn't reminded us for a while how charming he is

Who knew it was possible to make a young woman's attempted suicide worse? Chris Brown has managed it, though:

Since Kehlani made the post, Chris Brown had his say on the matter after after saying that Kyrie Irving of the Cleveland Cavaliers basketball team was one of the ‘few good guys left’. He went on to condemn Kehlani in an extremely strong tweet which claimed that she was ‘doing shit for sympathy’.

Coming from a man literally as he was doing shit for attention, that's quite a claim.

I think we all decided long ago that Brown was the human embodiment of the noise made by a spoon caught in a waste disposal unit; his latest low need detain us no further than to ensure that anyone who continues to support him is also avoided.

Shirley Manson's starting point facing closure

After decades of neglect by the council, and (possibly made-up) figures of a million quids' worth of repairs, Inch Community Centre in Edinburgh is threatened with closure.

It's the place where a young Shirley Manson first learned to play.

And surprise, surprise - the building is being flogged off to a private developer.

What do they know of Brit-pop, who only Britpop know?

Radio X - the radio station that used to be known as XFM - has polled its listeners to find the best song ever.

We wish they hadn't:

"Wonderwall" is the best British song of all time; at least, so say the listeners of Radio X.

More than 50,000 votes were cast for the music station's inaugural Best of British poll (via RadioToday); which saw Oasis utterly dominate the results, occupying all four of the top positions. "Don't Look Back in Anger" came in at number two, "Champagne Supernova" at three, and "Live Forever" at four.

Normally, this sort of thing pukes up a list of Beatles titles so I suppose there's some sort of progress that we've moved on to people pretending to be the Beatles.

Here's the full chart:

1. "Wonderwall", Oasis
2. "Don’t Look Back In Anger", Oasis
3. "Champagne Supernova", Oasis
4. "Live Forever", Oasis
5. "I Am The Resurrection", The Stone Roses
6. "I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor", Arctic Monkeys
7. "Heroes", David Bowie
8. "Life On Mars?", David Bowie
9. "Bittersweet Symphony", The Verve
10. "Gimme Shelter", The Rolling Stones
11. "One Day Like This", Elbow
12. "Bohemian Rhapsody", Queen
13. "Hey Jude", The Beatles
14. "Common People", Pulp
15. "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out", The Smiths
16. "Slide Away", Oasis
17. "Fool’s Gold", The Stone Roses
18. "How Soon Is Now", The Smiths
19. "A Day In The Life", The Beatles
20. "Love Will Tear Us Apart", Joy Division

Hang on; don't sob yet. There's worse to come:

The poll also revealed how its presenters voted; DJ Chris Moyles plumping for Coldplay's "Viva La Vida", while Vernon Kay backed The Sex Pistols' "Anarchy in the UK"

Vernon Kay. Anarchy In The UK. Obviously, this does make sense - The Sex Pistols and Vernon Kay are both about as threatening to the status quo as each other. But you know that Vernon and his agent probably had a ten minute conversation before deciding to go with such an edgy option.

Chvrches supporting Rape Crisis fundraising

Lauren Mayberry is supporting a fundraising campaign by Rape Crisis in Glasgow. It's worth your support - not because of the endorsement, but because of this:

Isobel Kerr, Rape Crisis Glasgow manager, said: “Over the past few years the number of women seeking help has gone up. For example, last year we processed about 5,500 calls through the centre and all these calls were support and advocacy related. This was an increase of 25 per cent on the year before. However, for the year that we are in at the moment, which doesn’t finish until the end of March, we have had 10,500 calls so we’ve had a 100 per cent increase on the previous year already.

“Our figures for this year are going to be just under 800 survivors who need medium- to long-term support – that’s individuals and that means that they have access to someone face-to-face and they can use the drop in and our group work programme.

“We support survivors but we also support their families and because we work with very young women, some as young as 13, it is not unusual for us to be supporting a young woman and her mum and dad.

“In order to meet the demand at the moment we need to raise another £50,000 because our waiting lists are getting longer.

“We have around 50 women sitting waiting to see a worker and they are probably going to wait a couple of months at least. It is just unacceptable and not fair.”

Here's how you can donate.

Ticket fraud is growing

Hey, guess what? As buying tickets for big events becomes ever more a process of sitting staring at the messages servers make when they're overloaded, ticket-related cons are on the rise. Whoeverwouldhavethought, eh?

People in their twenties are most likely to be affected by buying tickets that don't exist:

Chris Greany, Police National Coordinator for Economic Crime, added: “The fact that people in their twenties are most likely to fall victim to ticket fraud is concerning as this is the age-group who are known to be most ‘cyber-savvy’. If this group is falling victim it suggests that the fraudulent tickets sellers are very convincing and have the ability to exploit just about every type of internet user.”

It's perhaps a sign of the struggle we're up against that the man in charge of fighting ticket fraud seems surprised that the demographic most likely to be going to gigs is most likely to be hit by ticket fraud; although it seems in part that he's bought the 'digital native' bollocks which implies that somehow being able to use a touchscreen means you have magic powers allowing you to avoid negative experiences online.

Where is JB from JLS now?

You have to love Jonathan Benjamin Gill out of JLS. He's a huge traditionalist, it turns out, as - like so many pop stars of the 60s and 70s - he's bought a farm. He now pops up in the Daily Telegraph talking about deer farming:

He ‘definitely didn’t want to do music’ after JLS. When I ask why, he falls back on Zen media babble: ‘I value relationships probably more than anything else.’ He is married to the dancer Chloe Tangney. They have a one-year-old son called Ace. Instead he chose farming. His first pig was a rescue animal from the RSPCA called Ginger. (I didn’t know people abused pigs, but apparently they do.) Ginger is ‘cheeky… If she was a musician she would be the biggest diva ever.’ Now he has six breeding sows and two boars, one of which is ‘quite docile’, and some chickens. He sold 160 turkeys at Christmas; they were, he says, ‘brilliant’, with the kind of enthusiasm you do not expect to end with a decapitation.

Who would ever have imagined that being in JLS would make mucking out dozens upon dozens of turkeys seem like an attractive career choice?

It's a shit business, say Queensryche

Oh, you think you have it tough, in your job with no security and such a weak pension scheme you're still going to have to turn up to punch the clock when you're actually dead? Try being a rock star, mate. Listen to poor old Todd La Torre out of Queensryche complaining about his treadmill:

The glory days where you could take an entire year off and write and record, and you could earn a good, substantial living off of publishing, those days are gone. And so, you can still earn decent money… not like that. You're not selling millions of albums. Nobody's going gold unless you're a pop star. And so we have to try to find the writing and recording in between when we're touring. And, unfortunately, it becomes this cycle of… I think we'll probably do a record every two years, because by the time you try to promote and tour on it, there just isn't that ample time to take a year off and write and record. So it's kind of a two-year cycle, I think, for us, and for a lot of bands.

It's lovely that he assumes that the inability to Queensryche to make enough money to only tour every so often is because of shifts in the music industry, and not because Queensryche might no longer be quite the premium product. He's a bit like a shopkeeper trying to flog week-old milk blaming the state of the dairy industry in the UK for the need to mark down the price.

Mariah Carey stays solid. Just from a distance.

Mariah Carey was supposed to play Brussels last night. Faced with the opportunity to carry on as normal, she, erm, chose not to:

I love my fans in Brussels and at this time I am being advised to cancel my show for the safety of my fans, my band, crew and everyone involved with the tour. I hope to see you soon and send my prayers and eternal love, laughter and light to my Lambs.

Oddly, nobody seemed to be advising Jess Glynne or Johnny Hallyday to cancel. I wonder where the advice came from.

This week just gone

Five years ago - what people put in their faces:

1. Billy Corgan tried a joke; people fact check joke
2. Tatu don't understand why people think they're gay
3. Armenian-British band Vox say they're not homophobic
4. RIP: Loletta Holloway
5. Phil Collins quits the drumming
6. Jon Bon Jovi says Steve Jobs killed music
7. Daily Mail prints pictures of 15 year old who looks older, while worrying about Rihanna and pornification
8. Maroon 5 to project fans into their studio
9. Ashley Judd once sent a necklace to KD Lang
10. Bob Dylan lets the Chinese government OK his set list

Last week's interesting releases:


The Magnetic Fields - Prospect Of Skelmersdale

Download Prospect Of Skelmersdale



Meilyr Jones - 2013

Download 2013



Bitchin Bajas and "Bonnie" "Pr'in'ce" "Billy" - Epic Jammers And Fortunate Little Ditties

Download Epic Jammers...



Primal Scream - Chaosmosis

Download Chaosmosis



James - Girl At The End Of The World

Download Girl At The End Of The World



Underworld - Barbara, Barbara, We Face A Shining Future

Download Barbara, Barbara...

This week just gone

Most-read March 2015 stories:

1. NME slaps a Noel cover on again
2. Conor McNicholas: where is he now?
3. The music industry's mental health gap
4. Thicke ripped off Marvin Gaye
5. UK choses this year's heroic Eurovision failures
6. The Inkwell cares not for 6Music
7. Reading Festival - boy's playground
8. The petition to stop Kanye from going to the West Country
9. Garbage celebrate 20 years of Queer
10. Toyota's crowdsourced band as awful as their safety records

This Last week's interesting releases:


Emmy The Great - Swimming Pool

Download Swimming Pool



Tanita Tikaram - Closer To The People

Download Closer To The People



Alessia Cara - Know-It-All

Download Know-It-All



Lucius - Good Grief

Download Good Grief



Blancmange - Commuter 23

Download Commuter 23



The Wedding Present - Live 1993

Did Madonna "humiliate" a fan? Erm...

The Madonna tour of Australia isn't going well - she's been turning up late and - as a sympathetic post on Boy Culture admits - hasn't been entirely helping to calm thing down:

Madonna hasn't exactly discouraged the narrative. There's no good reason even an elaborate tour such as hers can't get it together to avoid hours-long delays, and she should just apologize rather than making light of it (“It’s you people that get here early that’s the problem. Just come late and I won’t have to come early.”). Once the media circulated stories that she was tipsy, she didn't really need to drink from a flask, even if only a moron would miss the theatricality of what she was doing. Only Madonna could give a totally free show in which she sings many songs she'd never before sung live and have the resulting press focus on her drinking a single Cosmo.

But one of the outrages turns out to not be quite what it seemed at first. A girl was invited onstage and, during the course of her time in the spotlight, a tit popped out. Or, as the narrative has it:

WTF! Madonna humiliates her fan…exposes her breast on stage

The 57-year-old pop star while performing on her tour invited a young female fan on stage and exposed her breast in the glare of the large crowd. You can see the poor girl’s shock.

That site - news7ng - was so concerned at the poor girl's humiliation it, erm, published photos.

The write-up makes it sound like Madge ripped the girl's top off, although what happened sounds like an accident. And was the fan humiliated?

Actually, no. The "girl" turns out to be a person with a name and everything, and Josephine Georgiou wasn't going to be shamed to fit a story:

Georgiou defended Madonna, insisting the whole thing was an accident. She said to The Project, "I was wearing a leather corset with nipple rings on it, she was holding on to the ring. As she was talking, she was moving, it was tugged a bit, but I didn't mind and then one was too much."

Though many were making a big deal about the situation, Georgiou was not one bit embarrassed. She told the Courier Mail, "Only I get to decide if I’m humiliated or not — why would people assume I am humiliated by my own breast, nipple, or body? I didn’t realize my boob was such a big deal — it was nothing to me.”

We live in a post-genre world, maybe

Peter Robinson's bit in yesterday's Guardian suggesting we live in a world where genres are meaningless was in interesting read:

Last summer, a survey by “millennial insight agency” Ypulse surveyed 1,000 young adults. When asked about their favourite artists, many respondents couldn’t answer, not through ambivalence but because, it was concluded, “this generation is interested in so many music genres and artists”.

It found that while millennials are passionate about music (76% within the 13- to 17-year-old bracket said they wouldn’t be able to last a week without it), 79% of 13- to 32-year-olds said their tastes didn’t fall into one specific music genre. Just 11% said that they only listened to one genre of music. “It seems,” Ypulse noted when it published its findings, “that millennials are a genre-less generation”.

Maybe.

And you can see what he's getting at - people are less hung up on a pop/indie/urban distinction around what they're listening to. And, in part, that's down to the ease of discovery and consumption:

Samuel Potts, Columbia Records’ head of radio, puts YouTube at the heart of this. “Millennials or ‘digital natives’ are the first generation to literally have the entirety of the world’s music at their fingertips,” he reasons. “This influences the creators but also young fans in terms of taste. Online culture is inherently global, so genres that were distinct and contained to geographical locations are now cross-pollinated throughout the world. As a result, you get artists like 19-year-old Raury, who’s championed by the likes of Kanye and André 3000, and cites everyone from Bon Iver to Phil Collins as an influence.”

You can actually see the point where this starts to unravel - the idea that we're "cross-pollinating across the world" by bringing together Phil Collins and Kanye West. They literally mark the extremes of the entire global history of music.

What the article is really about is the less eyecatching suggestion that the mainstream has got a bit wider and a bit less regimented:

Even on The X Factor, acts were increasingly praised for their authenticity and their credibility; in auditions, songs by the likes of Kings Of Leon replaced Westlife’s Flying Without Wings.

This does require you to have believed that The Kings Of Leon were that much more credible than Westlife to begin with. And, sure, you might hear Sex On Fire on the X Factor, but that's about as far as it goes.
Perhaps if someone does Mauritia Mayer as their blind audition on The Voice, or Simbinbino gets covered by The 1975, maybe then we'll talk.

Because if we really were in this post-genre world, the news about Adele headlining Glastonbury wouldn't have had such a violently negative reaction.

The Avalanche falls: How Record Store Day closed a shop

Edinburgh record store Avalanche is closing up - and, ironically, it's partly the success of Record Store Day that is to blame.

In a blog on the shop's site, the grim story of how the revival of vinyl sales has turned out to bite the ass of the very stores which kept going through the lean times:

Then there is another dilemma. We go on social media and say this will without doubt be one of our albums of the year and many of our followers will simply go to FOPP or HMV and buy it because they are nearer. But there is more.

When the Frightened Rabbit album was announced I immediately received enquiries as to whether there would be an Avalanche or indies special. We had sold 110 out of 500 of the last limited vinyl. At the time HMV/FOPP were in administration and only stocking important titles on CD. Vinyl was not considered an important enough format for any artist even when they were playing an in-store as Frightened Rabbit were. I was fairly sure but not certain that this time there was no special format something that was recently confirmed. Meanwhile fans were encouraged to buy from the band’s Warners website with the vinyl a bargain £12.99 for a signed copy. Again as I suspected this is actually less than the cost to a shop who would expect to sell it for £16.99. Want a signed CD ? That will be Amazon or the band website at a price this time just above cost.

And where vinyl was once an audiophile treat, it has become so commonplace again that the sense of special event doesn't make sense; nor is vinyl any more bringing footfall:

Never mind the week before has some great releases. Explosions In The Sky with a limited vinyl except that their UK label put it on sale ages ago at again a price below cost. The Last Shadow Puppets also have a limited vinyl but you can be sure their label will email the entire LSP/Arctic Monkeys fan base to sell directly and if previous emails are anything to go by not even mention it will be available in shops. That leaves us with a limited indies only Mogwai vinyl which shops are at least given a fair chance to sell.

Depressing as all this might be for a shop like myself it is nothing compared to the Record Store Day list for this year. Given the fantastic rosters many record companies and labels have what shops have been offered is a huge disappointment but not a great surprise given vinyl reissues were once an unusual occurrence whereas they now appear every week. Collectors will still buy the artists they collect but it is no wonder so many shops are asking what people are looking for as it is impossible to guess what these once a year customers will buy.

And in news that isn't unrelated at all:

Sainsbury’s has announced it’s going to be selling vinyl albums from Monday March 21.

The supermarket will sell LPs for the first time since the 1980s following the success of Adele’s 25 which sold over 300,000 in the retailer’s stores.

We hear a lot about how vinyl is back. Not entirely convinced its back to such an extent that the market can sustain supermarkets muscling in.

Cameron gets briefing on Rita Ora to make him look in touch

What's worse than a politician who shoehorns in references to pop culture to try and "connect" with the "electorate"?

A politician whose advisors give him those references to drop in. David Laws says David Cameron was prepped to know who the cool pop stars with "the kids" (or, at least, ITV executives) were:

DAVID Cameron got a top-secret briefing on Rita Ora to make sure he could show off his common touch.

The PM was filled in on the pop star’s chart success so he could show off his knowledge in interviews.

Aides namechecked Rita just as she hit No.1 with I Will Never Let You Down.

I think The Sun is probably overselling this as a "top secret briefing" - it's unlikely he was taken to a COBRA committee to be shown ten seconds of the Never Let You Down video.

I hope they're still doing this. I really like the idea of someone tasked with having to sit down Dave at Friday teatime for the latest charts.

Losing your virginity at 59

Your gig virginity, that is - this is a clip from this week's You And Yours:

This week just gone

So far this year… the most-read 2016 stories:

1. Liveblog: Brits 2016
2. James Blunt tries to be queer positive
3. Beyonce confuses the right wing
4. RIP: Vi Subversa
5. Time buys MySpace
6. RIP: Mark B
7. RIP: David Bowie
8. Louise Mensch moves The Las to Manchester
9. Kesha reminds us what a terrible place the music industry is
10. NME awards 2016

Last week's interesting releases:


Nada Surf - You Know Who You Are

Download You Know Who You Are



Poliça - United Crushers

Download United Crushers



Låpsley - Long Way Home

Download Long Way Home



Lorettta Lynn - Full Circle

Download Full Circle



Violent Femmes - We Can Do Anything

Download We Can Do Anything



M Ward - More Rain

Download More Rain



Andy Bell - Torsten The Beautiful Libertine

Download Torsten

The Daily Star deliberately misreports the Viola Beach crash

Friday morning, and an unequivocal front page from the Daily Star about the accident which killed the band Viola Beach:

It was, says the Star, deliberate. All over the front page.

Except... on the Star's website today, a very different story:

Swedish police now say they did not brake because they did not spot the barrier.

Crash footage has shown the car move to the left hand lane to overtake stationary traffic, before braking, then accelerating through a barrier.

Inspector Lars Berglund told the Mirror: "Maybe he had not discovered the barriers in front of those cars standing still.

"I have not suggested that [the driver] was doing this in order to kill himself or the band.

"I said he was making a move from the right lane to the left lane and that was not accidental."

In other words, the Swedish police said that the driver hadn't accidentally swerved, and the Daily Star chose to dress this up to make it sound like he'd chosen to drive off the bridge.

What a scummy thing to do.

The Star's website describes this new story in this way:

COPS have revealed why they believe tragic indie band Viola Beach's driver did not stop – clarifying reports the crash was deliberately caused.

Now, it's true that the policeman involved did use the word "deliberate", but if you're going to splash this on the front page, you might want to double-check your story. Especially since The Guardian's print edition - reporting on exactly the same press conference - managed to record the more lurid claim - "with some intent" - but still reported the story under a heading "Police blame 'inattention' for accident that killed Viola Beach members". Which is a fairer representation of what seems to have been said.

And does the Daily Star splash the correction over the front page this morning?

It does not.

Progobit: Keith Emerson

Keith Emerson, the one who wasn't Lake or Palmer, has died.

Oddly, Mark Ronson was also out the blocks to pay tribute (this time with a Tweeted performance).

That link with the death George Martin, though, is appropriate - although Emerson went further, and brought jazz and classical sounds into the heart of their music, rather than spraying it on as an influence.

Not all the world was ready - if you think Punk was a movement which fell apart, how much worse to be part of a scene known as "progressive" and yet having created a sound which now feels very much part of the past?

Here's Emerson as part of his pre-ELP outfit, The Nice, covering Leonard Bernstein:


Early reports say that Keith died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Producerobit: George Martin

There's been a great deal written about George Martin over the last couple of days - I can't recall an occasion previously when a record producer's death has led the BBC News, for example.

If you're looking for a good place to start, or frankly are only prepared to read one thing about Martin, I'd suggest the Guardian's collection of other producers talking about his work, although it's a pity they start with Mark Ronson's bit:

I was in a studio last night with a bass in my hand, thinking, ‘What would George do?’

Were you really, Mark? Really?

It might make me a bad person that when I heard the news, my mind went straight not to The White Album or Love Me Do, but... well, to this:

To be fair, Big Train did capture something quite essential about Martin there - yes, he was brilliant musically, but like many musicians that didn't make him any less of a bore when he talked about it.

On a side note, how many Game Of Thrones fans do you think had a horrible two minutes on Wednesday morning?

Who wrote on Bryan Adam's guitar?

Bryan Adams is cross, because when he picked up his guitar after arriving in Egypt, it has been defaced:

Airport customs graffiti on my 1957 Martin D-18 from Egypt. Back to the luthier... #bryanadamsgetup

A photo posted by @bryanadams on Mar 10, 2016 at 2:59pm PST

Customs say it wasn't them:

A customs official said instruments were marked with serial numbers, although usually with stickers. Regarding the ink, he suggested: “Maybe it wasn’t us?”

It was also unlikely to be music lovers, who would have smashed the guitar to pieces.

We've had lots of letters

An email pings into our inbox with this unlikely claim

Let's just leave aside the question of how something can be a resurgence if it's new, and ask... Cornwall?

The "popular music" section of Wikipedia's List of Cornish musicians stretches to include Tori Amos's holiday home in Bude, a claim for the lead singer of Paper Lace (albeit with citation needed) and, splendidly, Kevin Downing, "drummer for 1990s indie band The Family Cat".

Now, there's a load of interesting things going on in Cornwall - Hollie Rogers and Rose Kimberley, for example - but there's a bit of work to be done before it becomes "the new home of rock n roll".

Twittergem: Zayn Malik

He's right, you know:

Zayn Malik's album track list looks like the 'Who's Online' section of MSN Messenger in 2003. pic.twitter.com/5jxjZ7tH0S

— Rhys James (@rhysjamesy) March 7, 2016

This week just gone

Mother's day special: Most popular mother searches:

1. "I'm a bitch, I'm a mother" lyrics
2. Bloody Motherfucking arsehole lyrics
3. Mothers day compilation CD
4. I love my mother I love my father smog
5. dmx mother dies
6. mothercare by akon
7. "alan mcgee" "mothercare"
8. this+one+goes+out+to+queens+of+the+trust+fund,+you+slept+on+my+floor,+now+i'm+sleepin'+through+your+motherfucking+records
9. robbie williams mother's house
10. usher fired mother

These were last week's interesting releases:


Christine And The Queens - Chaleur Humaine

Download Chaleur Humaine



School Of Seven Bells - SVIIB

Download SVIIB



Yuck - Stranger Things

Download Stranger Things



Santigold - 99 Cents

Download 99 Cents



Pinkshinyultrablast - Grandfeathered



Lily And Madeleine - Keep It Together

Download Keep It Together