ONE TRUE VOICE: It's been a while since Garbage updated their online diary section, but there's a new slew of reports from the new album sessions on their site today. it includes Shirley Manson talking about her recent operation - she has nodes or something taken off her vocal chords, which, for a singer is a bit of a scary thing to face. Luckily, it seems to have worked out quite well and so she doesn't sound like she's Patty and Selma's fourth long-lost sister. Which is nice.

HLP IM BN MGGD: Such is the way society is, police are calling on V festival goers to text crime reports to them. Detective Constable Marie Hyden said "Most festivalgoers don't want their weekend interrupted by having to report things to the police and having statements taken", and we can see her point but if someone sees someone's head being stove in with a half brick, is the good officer Hyden standing up in court saying "If I might consult my Nokia, your honour? At 13.13 I received a message saying 'COPS - BLK BN RBBD @ CMP XIT :-('" really going to form the basis of a succesful prosecution? And isn't the suppsoed inconvenience of making a statement part of the ways that you can be fairly certain that the reports aren't mallicious? If you can cause trouble with a text, wouldn't that be a tempting way to settle scores?

DOING OUR BIT: Whatever you might think about Jordan, with her blonde hair and equally sized, though ridiculous breasts, you'd have to say that she's both fair and balanced.

YOU FIND A LOST BOOK, IT'S PART OF BOOKCROSSING. YOU FIND LOST CDS, AND IT'S TIME TO PLAY PETITE-FREUD: Jogger finds CDs. Blogger psychoanalyses the owner from tracklistings alone. The discovery of music on the street is a wonderful thing, and you can't help but try and flesh out the background details. The CD-find is a lot more common, and easier to work with, than the previous discarded music formats were - vinyl would shatter on contact with the ground, sometimes making a complete label impossible to find, so you'd be trying to work out what the record you'd found in pieces, scattered along the street, would actually be - "It's clearly on RKO, so it's got to be Grease, right?"; tapes would be unwound, mysteriously hanging from telegraph wires or blowing along the street - if you found the casing, it might have been a self-made compilation all along and the chances of making sense of the biro'ed mnemonics would be slim - "it says 'HM/album' - Happy Mondays? Heavy metal?"; you couldn't wind the tape back in and find out. But with CDs, although they're not as indestructable as either we led to believe or Spandau Ballet's Gold, then you've got a chance. Even with a mix CD, you'd be able to pop it into your hi-fi and find out what had been lost, or discarded, or forgotten. (In your hi-fi, mind. Pop it in your computer and chances are you'd have got a malicious copy-protected beast).

Actually, you know, this is something that would be an interesting project - you have bookcrossing, so why not random CD swapping? It'd be like file sharing, without the need for spyware on your machine. Make a mix CD, pop it down on a cafe table, or on a bus; maybe tuck it behind the ear of a statue in the park. Write "Try this CD" on it in pen. You might introduce people to something new. You might find some other CD on the way home that gives you something new. You'd certainly piss off the RIAA and the BPI by doing it, although would copyright law be able to touch you for making a copy of your own, properly-purchased music and then leaving it behind somewhere?

It occurs to us that a while back there was someone - a fanzine editor? maybe a monk? - who undertook a task that seemed madness itself, albeit the sort of madness that is powerful and sexy, which smokes your fags and leads you into bad behaviour. They invited people to send them a mix tape and a stamped addressed envelope. They then mixed up the tapes, and stuck them into random envelopes, and posted them back. It seemed a wonderful idea, and we never found out how well it worked, but if it could be attempted in the days of xerox and dubbing double deck tape machines, in the web-and-CD-R age it should be a breeze. Anyone want to volunteer to be dead letter box?

[Original link nicked from bloggy mountain breakdown]

IF YOU DON'T WANT THE END OF SEASON 3 OF THE OSBOURNES TO BE SPOILED FOR YOU, LOOK AWAY NOW*: People seem a little confused by the ending of The Osbournes on MTV America this week. Apparently right at the end, the camera pulled back to reveal cuecards and remarks were made about "going home" and "not having to use the F word anymore."

'Does this mean it was all scripted all along?' comes the wail. Erm... well, first of: of course it bloody was all faked. What do you think? That people live like that? But also, no, of course not: while - like every bloody other 'reality' show there was selection, suggestion, reconstruction and construction, the end is one of those things called "jokes" that used to be popular back in the 70's. You'd have to be a bit thick to assume there weren't times the reality was helped along; you'd have to be as dense as a fruitcake on a lead slate to believe that any show which had meticulously scripted would then decide to throw that away and 'fess up with another series still to make.

MTV's response? "Was the whole thing a fake? Isn't this supposed to be reality television? Once again, 'The Osbournes' leaves us with something to talk about."

Yes, the 'something' being how thinly the ideas are being stretched now, how lacking nous the remaining handful of viewers must be, and how utterly vile the whole concept remains.

* - on the other hand, if knowing how this ruptured-bull-elephant of a show ends would cause you upset or distress, you're clearly beyond saving.

ALWAYS THE LAST TO KNOW: Mutya has stated that Sugababes aren't splitting up.

"I should know whether we're splitting up or not. That's like a load of rubbish, to tell you the truth" she told Radio One.

Well, yes. You'd have to be some sort of fool not to realise the band you're a member of was splitting up, wouldn't you? I mean, imagine if you were in a band on a tour of Japan, and one member got up saying they were going for a toilet and never came back and you didn't have the first idea that the band was over? That'd make you seem so detached from reality it'd be impossible, wouldn't it? So, if Mutya says that the band hasn't split up, then Heidi isn't ringing round agencies in London and starts her role in panto next Christmas solo careers without distinction followed. [Editor's note - sorry, the autocorrect seemed to kick in there.]

I ENJOY BEING A SLAG: Oh, but bless Christina Aguilera, as she's not very bright, is she? In an interview with a German magazine, Aguilera says "Call me a slag, if being a slag means being a strong woman. I'll gladly be that." No, love, it doesn't mean being a strong woman, it means being a slag. Now, you might want to argue that it's unfair, you might want to attack the assumption that a woman who chooses to dress sexually has to be a slag, but choosing to say the word means something it clearly doesn't isn't a response. 'Hey, you're shit' 'If being shit means that I am wonderful and loved by millions, I'll gladly be that.' 'No, it means people think you're shit.'

Christina continued : "What is so wrong with a 22-year-old woman showing her sexuality? I'm not making myself into an object." Clearly she hasn't seen what her new fans are making of her, then. And, as we've said before, if it's her sexuality, how come she looks less bunny girl than bunny wabbit? She doesn't look desperate for sex, she looks desperate to please, like a country being forced into an arms race it can't afford. (Compare the evolution of Britney if you don't agree).

""Madonna is a tough businesswoman and Marilyn Monroe had all sorts of insults thrown at her, but she simply carried on - just like Madonna. I have to be as strong as both of them put together" says Christina. Yes, Marilyn Monroe simply carried on and took all the insults on the chin. If she'd not been strong, she might have ended up a sad, nervous wreck-casualty who ended up taking her own life at a stupidly young age due to the pressures put on her by the studios. And Madonna is not a tough businesswoman. She's a shit businesswoman who, when left to her own devices, makes calamitous decisions like the American Pie video and 'Swept Away' and most of the signings to Maverick. The other essential difference, Christina, is that Marilyn simply was sexy, she never needed to defend what she was doing by trying to claim flashing her tits was some form of empowerment - the iconic image of her is of her being stood on an air vent, holding her skirt down. The iconic image of you is probably the maxim photoshoot where you look like you've spent the last three nights begging for bong, with your hands over your tits. One is sexy, without being sexual, relying on the aura of the subject to allow the mind to wander - nothing is shown, it's all suggested. The other is sexual, without being sexy. Showing your sexuality, and selling your sexuality are two separate things; indeed, flashing your tits is still another.

STING GIVEN LARGE SUMS MORE CASH: Now, we would normally be pissed off at Sting getting a big stack of cash for doing nothing - in this case muttering some inanities about overpriced speakers, but what we figure is that every dollar Gordon makes from doing adverts is a dollar he doesn't need to release a record to make. Indeed, we might even start sending him a few quid every month to stop him making any records ever again. It's cash well spent.

Interestingly, the FT decided to run a quote about the speakers from Mr. Sting: "Sting said: "Listening to music on SLS speakers at home is like listening to the actual live recording sessions." Which may or may not be true - we're not quite clear how the speakers could manage to separate a song up into separate instrumental tracks, which it then would play in order, constantly stopping and booming in voice-over "Nah, Mark, can you do that again, yer effects pedal is squealing, mate" before starting again, yelling 'Fuck this, the first one was perfect' and then stomping off to the pub. But even if it is true, why would we take Mr. Sting's word for it in the middle of an article telling us how well he's being rewarded for going round saying how great the things are?

OH MY GOD, THEY'VE KILKENNY'ED: According to reliable sources* Moorcheeba had a row and broke up on stage last night in Kilkenny.

* - OK, we read it on popbitch, so not entirely reliable. But we just wanted to do the headline.

THE MAN COMES ROUND: Luther Vandross has come out of the coma, which is good news. Obviously. They don't know how he is yet, mind.

REDEMPTION DONG DING-DONG: Something of a palaver down in Jamaica over a statue named for, and quoting from, Redemption Song, on account of the size of the penis hovering a couple of inches above the quote from Bob Marley's song. It turns out Kingston could quite easily be twinned with Tunbridge Wells, judging by the letters of complaint that have been flooding into the local papers tut-tutting over the statue and the amount of nudity involved. Interestingly, it seems all the outrage is centred on the male figure's male member, and nobody seems to mind too much about the odd-shaped and magically gravity defying enormous breasts. We're guessing that before the day is out an enterprising spammer will have filched the photo to illustrate just what an enormous penis you can get using their pills...

ROCKS - WELL, NOT ACTUALLY ROCKS - OUR BOX: Ennio Morricone and Johnny Cash are both getting the box-set treatment. Ennio - the most mis-spelled man in music (Moricone? Morriconne? Morrycone? Moriconi? Morriconi, Morryconnie... sorry, we were getting carried away, like that time Noel Edmond's Lucky Numbers encouraged people to send in ways of spelling scissors wrongly...) - Ennio's box is called io, and features four discs, including Film Music. This is a kind of greatest hits package that's also going to be released as a stand alone, with stuff from movies like Lolita and Once Upon A Time In The West. The other CDs comprise Piano, Chamber and Symphony music.

Cash, meanwhile, gets a five-disc collection of stuff from his work with Rick Rubin. This material is meant to have been "lost" (we're reading 'judged to be too uncommercial to get a proper release and lost in the label's write-off for the year'). Some of the stuff sounds priceless, though: Johnny Cash and Joe Strummer doing Redemption Song and Fiona Apple duetting with him on Father And Son. The set is titled Unearthed.

IN SOMEONE ELSE'S HOUSE: We're neither phased nor upset that The Cure are on the point of another flurry of re-releasings, but what does concern us a little is that Robert Smith and the boys are working with Ross Robinson, who has had a hand in the terrors that are Korn and Limp Bizkit. Okay, it's not on a par with the Liz Phair/Avril Lavigne Freaky Friday thing, but even so... it's like they don't care that the introduction of Nu-Metal has almost killed off the native Glum Goth which provided The Cure with much of their natural support. Nowadays, if you walk round the bits of grim, northern industrial cities where you once would see large hordes - and hordes would be the word - of unpopular-at-school kids dressed in black, the words "Sisters of Mercy" diligently biroed onto an "army surplus" bag*, their habit has been taken over by people with skateboards they can't actually ride and tshirts with teddy bears** and the legend "She's got issues" on them. The Cure working with Robinson is akin to Prince Charles doing a commercial for Monsanto.

* - I've never quite worked out quite why those bags turned up in Army Surplus places - what sort of army would have ordered any small, cloth bags which fall apart as soon as an A4 ringbinder with 'The Crow' logo doodled on it is slipped inside?

** - Yes, I know what it's meant to be, but it looks like our friend Sara's old, well-loved teddy bear to us.

JUMPING TO THE WRONG CONCLUSION: While the Great Reporter is right with its facts, that British music isn't the global thang it once was, we can't agree with its conclusion that "The government should be investing more into the development of British music. Ploughing money into youth centres where youngsters can DJ or listen to the latest sounds should be mandatory for Tony Blair and company."

Yes, government can do a lot to support development of music, but creating state-sponsored Listening Dromes is so not the way to go about things. So, do we have any better suggestions?

Well, yes. One of the things that should be done is to help people who want to provide an infrastructure in which the musically talented can work. There have been half-hearted attempts at this, in the creation of well-meaning 'arts-council-with-beats' style organisations, but the real problem is that if you want to be a record company, or a nightclub, or a promotions agency, there won't be anyone at your local Business Link or Development Agency who will be able to help you, and the only advice you'll get from businessmen is to try the arts places. Getting some people with media and entertainment experience into the business advice end of the services for start-up companies would do more, at a stroke, than sticking some decks and a microphone in a community centre in Stoke Newington. The weakness of the British Music Industry is in the Industry, it's not in the Music.

NME CREEPS UP: The new ABC figures are hugely curates-egg-esque for the NME. It's sales have grown since this time last year - but only just. It's now selling 72,443 copies an issue, compared with 72,057 in the same period last year - an extra 386 copies or a half a percent increase. Last time round, they were breathing a sigh of relief that they'd managed to halt the decline by posting a two percent rise. And, of course, three months ago they were able to claim 73,338 copies, so while the year-on-year is quite good, period-on-period sales will have nerves jangling. We're not sure how they'd spin this one. Actually, we do: IPC say In the music market, the NME's revival continues. NME's weekly sales in the first half were 72,443, up 0.5% year-on-year. And the best is yet to come: autumn will see the launch of a brand new redesign with much stronger use of photography and the introduction of key new features to maintain the momentum achieved by repositioning the iconic brand early last year.

We'd heard there was a redesign in the offing - the phrase we've heard is 'a bit like a watered down Select' - and we tip our hat to the IPC press people for describing the last relaunch as a "repositioning", otherwise the advertising buyers might wonder why such a strong product seems to getr redesigned quite so often. We really can't wait to see the new new new new musical express. We're already deciding where to put the Avril posters up.

IPC also describe Uncut as "the real success of the Men's magazine market" - which might surprise you ladies who read the Mojo-Lite title. It has done well, though, going above the 100,000 mark. Maybe they should merge the NME into it?

If you want some fun, you could do worse than read the wanky profiles of the magazines - sorry, brands - on the IPC website. For example, Uncut:
"Uncut is a provocative read which challenges existing critical attitude and preconceptions about the major figures in music and movies. Uncut brings its readership the most balanced and insightful reviews of new and classic music and movies through the free CD, thus exposing its readers to music they would not otherwise hear about. Uncut's readers indulge their music passion through the magazine and are made to feel young and fashionable by Uncut.

Is that the case? We've more or less stopped buying Uncut because it made us feel old and kind of dirty. And we love that authoratative "music they would not otherwise hear about" - oh, yeah? "Music from bands they'd otherwise avoid like the plague", perhaps.

Then there's the nme:

NME is the most authoritative weekly music magazine aimed at 15-24 music fans. NME readers use the magazine as a social ammunition because of its mix of news, features and opinionated reviews which set the agenda for young Britain. NME makes its readers feel fashionable because keeping them up to date with what everyone is talking about in music each week, it tells them about new and exciting things that are around the corner. NME is on top of all that's hot in music, making the monthlies looking outdated and slow and as a result is constantly quoted elsewhere.

So it's aimed at fifteen to twenty four music fans, then? That's handy, it can afford to lose seventy-two thousand more then. It's interesting to hear that the readers use it as "social ammunition" - what does that even mean? That last week kids were walking down the street sneering because they knew more about Keith Richards? And the 'constantly quoted elsewhere' bit puzzles as well... in the last couple of weeks, the pace seems to have been set more by the Evening Standard and the music websites than the nme. Curious.

THANK YOUR LUCKY STARS: Together at last - Dean Friedman and the writers of the Bastard Son of Dean Friedman as both him and Half Man Half Biscuit pitch up in Edinburgh at the same time. Besides the absolute joy of the meet-up, there's an interesting snippet at the end when Friedman points out that, having his song McDonalds Girl banned by the BBC meant he was without a recording contract for 18 years. Maybe there could be a follow-up article with him meeting the Fast Food Rockers?

OR YOU COULD JUST DETACH YOURSELF FROM ANY SENSES - DECENCY, HUMOUR, SELF-RESPECT: A webpage that will allow you - yes, you - to be like Chris Moyles. Why anyone would want to turn themselves into a bore with no talent beyond self-promotion and a career that's dribbling away faster than your nan on E is, of course, a mystery.

MICROSOFT LAUNCH LESS-GOOD VERSION OF SOMETHING APPLE INVENTED: Okay, we know that everytime Bill Gates stands up in front of a Powerpointy presentation that's what happens, but this time Microsoft are using Europe as a test bed for their 'answer' to ITunes.

Of course, it's nothing like as good. And that's not just simple anti-Microsoft prejudice - we'd not be so cruel, not on a day when their entire operation is being bombarded by a worm which is exploiting their slapdash approach to websecurity to attack the company. We're wondering what the meeting where they tried to convince the Big Labels of the quality of their Digital Rights Management system was like - did anyone from the record industry ask the vital question "You write browser software which is so full of holes you wind up having more patches than a quilting Pirate giving up smoking while on HRT - why, exactly, would we trust you with copyright security?"

MSN Music Club - and you wonder why they've given it a name that sounds like something fifth-graders would go to after school - is an answer to iTunes in the same way "about fifteen" is an answer to "what is four times four."

iTunes has a simple pricing structure - you want a song, you click on buy now, you check out, it costs you ninety-nine cents.

MSN Music Club, on the other hand, works on a credits system. You buy a stack of credits in advance. Each tune costs a certain number of credits - which means you can't quite keep track of how much in real cash you're spending. And rather than one-price-for-all, there's a confusing sliding scale of prices. You can stream music for a single credit (like paying for the radio, in other words), or temporary download for "about" ten credits (you can play the track as long you remain a member of the service, or for a year from download day, but not store it on any other machine), or a permanent download. Permanent downloads cost 99p (i.e. more than iTunes by about half as much again). Or some shit songs, which cost 79p. Or 'Gold' songs - which, confusingly, don't use Gold in the sense anywhere else in the music industry does, to mean successful, old tracks but instead to mean advance-of-release titles - for more. But these figures are only approximate, as you don't get a fixed number of credits for your money, but instead it varies according to the level of cash you're prepared to commit to the service. And then again, you can also become a subscriber, which will allow you to stream and make temporary downloads, but you'll still have to buy your permanent downloads, at a different price level again. And there are two separate levels of subscription rates.

So, let's imagine you want to purchase a specific track to burn to CD. With iTunes, you click on 'buy' and that's it. With MSN Glee Club, you're first going to have to decide exactly what level of commitment you're making. In fact, let's see what MSN itself says you do in this situation:

"If you see one track you really want the best option is to buy 150 credits for £1.49, then once you download it it's yours to keep forever. The good thing is that if it only costs 100 credits you still have 50 credits left to either stream 50 tracks or get up to 5 temporary downloads.

In other words, you'll get your track but you'll also have paid for services you don't want as well - which isn't actually buying a single track at all, is it? We can see why it’s a "good thing" for Microsoft, but not from the consumer's point of view - it's like a shop insisting you have to buy gift vouchers in denominations of GBP1, so that when you buy a 78p bottle of milk you have to top up with twelve sugar mice whether you want them or not.

Also, of course, the download format Microsoft have chosen is WMA, which is pretty rubbish and ties you to their ugly-assed player (it doesn't even work right: in some versions of the player, warns the site, the track will be listed twice, so click on the lower one; like a builder saying 'the door does work, you just have to lift it up as you open it').

The soft claims its library is on a par with iTunes, but only appears to have stuff from major labels rather than the wide indie deals that makes Apple a more delightful place to browse.

Finally, only an American company could announce "the first pan-European download service" when it's not available in Spain. Or Poland. Or Portugal. Italy, Russia, Malta. The Czech Republic. Slovakia. Greece. Turkey, Lithuania, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, Austria. Vatican City, Andorra, Iceland. Estonia or Latvia, either. Oh, or Ukraine, Finland and Belguim. We're not sure about Belarus, but we're guessing they can't play, either.

WHERE DO THESE GUYS GET THEIR CRAZY NAMES?: Surely a New York band wouldn't be called TV on the radio because they were inspired by Tommy Vance's Friday Rock Show (and Top 40) catchphrase, would they?

WHO DRESSED THE DOGS UP?: DMX is launching a range of clothing aimed at dogs. No, no, you keep your 'haven't FCUK already done that?' jines to yourselves, thank you.

ALTERED STATES: Not being in America, we've not really given much attention to the Rave Act, which has been signed into American Law by George Bush, having been snuck into the back of the Amber Bill. The Rave Act is part of the "War on drugs", while the Amber Bill was designed to set up the framework allowing for alerts to be flashed round the region when a kid was suspected of being abducted, so the connection is, um, clear. The cynical snapping together of something unpleasant and ill-conceived onto totally different legislation that no politician would want to be seen voting against is the sort of move that fans of Michael Howard and Kenneth Baker will recognise, of course.

The Rave provisions are designed to make club owners responsible for anyone taking drugs on their premises and has been worded so that if you have a barbecue, and one of your guests has a little toke on a spliff, you could be sent to prison for twenty years. In the original wording, the sale of bottled water could have been used as 'evidence' of drug use taking place at an event, although the wording was altered to remove this ridiculous element, at least. The implications for club operators in the US are obvious - this isn't about targetting people selling drugs, using drugs or even turning a blind eye to drug use. You've got a venue, someone takes drugs in that venue's toilets, you're looking at hard time. It's a war not on drugs, but popular culture generally. Wanna close down your rival's nightclub? Pay someone to take a pill on the dancefloor. Scatter a couple of needles on the floor. It's as simple as that (i.e. as simple as George Bush).

Some Americans are fighting back and we wish them luck.

'CAN YOU MAKE PORN COME ON MY TV PLEASE?': Man (Craig David) looks at porn on hotel TV room shocker. Whatever next, eh? It'll be David Gray admitting that he's sometimes taken drinks from the mini-bar, and Chris Martin telling us "sometimes, I use the little bottle of all-over bodywash - and I do put it all over my body, too." Or Pete Doherty fessing up to using the phone to call up four or five various hookers and rent boys and snorting coke off their arses while making them pleasure each other with tongues and the corby trouser press?

Craig David claims he gets 100 sexual propositions a year - we're guessing here, he's including the times a message flashes up saying "THIS IS AN ADULT PAY CHANNEL. DO YOU WISH TO CONTINUE?" - and everytime he casts a girl in his videos, he's got the idea at the back of his head that she might end up being his wife. We suggest that anyone approached to appear in a future promo with him should check the small print of their contracts very closely indeed.

A STREETCAR NAMED... LOVE?: Its a little too Sunset Beach for words, but it turns out that Courtney Love is Marlon Barndo's grandchild, something she found out by, erm, reading her mother's autobiography. Now, there's a family with communication problems - I wonder what else was in there? "Chapter Fifteen: Courtney, we're out of milk and eggs, could you stop by the store?"

We're not sure we can spot a family resemblance:


But it might explain Courtney's love of men who mumble, we guess.

Actually, we were just stacking up for a cheap gag of Courtney looking shaggable and Marlon looking, well, craggy, there, but... look at the mouths...

MARTIN 'BEATS BULLIES': There's a splendid piece in today's Metro (sadly, not currently available online) in which Chris Martin out of Da Coldplayaz talks about being "bullied" at school. Except, of course, rather than really being bullied, it turns out from time to time he'd be given nicknames that suggested - horror of horrors - he might be gay. Now, we know that bullying isn't anything to be taken lightly, but that is hardly being bullied, is it? Teasing, surely? Anyway, what did Chris do? "I had a problem with [the teasing]. But then I realised when I was about 16 that it didn't matter. Then it stopped." Aha! Chris defeated them with the Power of Positive Thinking. Um, that, and reaching 16, the point where the sort of fuckwad who thinks gentle homophobic insults are in any way amusing will leave the school anyway?

In the same interview - taped and transcribed from Virgin's breakfast show, just like it was Doctor Kelly not exactly saying it was Alastair Campbell; only the department he was totally responsible for - Martin throws up the possibility that there might not be another Coldplay album ever: "I'm not sure if we'll come back... I feel like everyone hates us." We're sure he's just teasing us with this delicious possibility - like Robbie Williams emptying a can of petrol over his head and looking for a light - but, if it helps: Yes, Chris. We hate you. (The band, not you as people. We should be clear about that. As people, we have no feelings either way).

SO, AT LONG LAST...: We get ben's results:

Well here r his G.C.S.E's - 7 a's and 3 b's. that's all I kno so far. If u don't mind me askin who r u???!!

Not bad, although for a private school boy, that wouldn't really reflect very much good in terms of return on investment. And we don't know what the subjects were - it could be RE for all we know, and as we know, you get a B in that for simply turning up. But 'Is Ben thick' is something we need to give more time to investigating, I suspect. If Andrew Gilligan's got any spare time, we could do with a hand.

TURN OUT THE LIGHT. BUT LEAVE THE NIGHTLIGHT ON: So, Nelly Furtado is having a baby. This means she has done some sex with a man, or maybe used a sqeezy bottle and some spare sperm. Someone tell the 3AM girls.

NOT THAT THEY'RE BULLIES OR ANYTHING: Clear Channel are attempting to force a much smaller, rival company out of business. Another Planet, started by former Clear Channel employee Greg Perloff, booked a Springsteen gig into San Francisco's Pacific Bell Park. Clear have decided that the only way such a thing could have happened would have been if Perloff had "stolen trade secrets" while working for them. Now, there may be something to this, there might not (although to give Clear Channel a hint, if you want to stop people slipping out with their contact books, give them an environment to work in they won't want to leave). What really stinks though is the attempt Clear Channel made to get Another Planet's share of the Bruce proceeds frozen by the courts while the legal issues were being debated. In other words, not only was it bringing a spurious and terribly bitter legal action against a small competitor on what seem like vaguely pouty grounds, but it wanted to add to the financial strain on that competitor by fucking its cash flow even further. Yeah, Another Planet might turn out to be in the wrong. But even if it is, Clear's clear attempts to railroad another company out of business through legal jiggery-pokery is very Robert Maxwell, and hopefully will be remembered when the anti-trust case against them is being considered.
[Props - if that's the phrase - to rocktober]

AVRIL STILL TOPS SOME CHARTS, THEN: An interesting breakdown of the RIAA Subpoenas by Slyck News shows the main artists who the RIAA are setting out to protect, according to the number of times their tracks appear in the legal papers. Number one on the list is Avril Lavigne; also frequently cited are U2, Ludacris, Norah Jones and Michele Branch - the investment protection aspect is obvious. More interesting are the artists whose names appear only once - including The Thompson Twins and Leo Sayer. We notice also quite a lot of mis-spellings, too (Michlle Branch, the Popbitchy Marvin Gayc and The Eurythmies. If the RIAA can't be arsed to check the spelling of the people they claim to be protecting, shouldn't their paperwork be sent back to the law room?

OVERHAUL: You've probably already discovered, explored, dated, shagged and cleaned up after the whole new-look FreakyTrigger conspiracy, but in case you haven't, it's worth going to have a root around the new thrills and the new look. NYLPM is still there, but there are new sections for food, visual stuff and... pretty much everything.

YOU COULD HAVE KNOCKED ME DOWN WITH A MADE-UP CREDIT: Kelly Clarkson surprised to discover she's co-written a track with Christina Aguilera. We're sure Aguilera will be equally surprised to discover she's written a song with Clarkson, too. Kelly found out by reading the credits on her own record. Aguilera will, we suspect, find out if her accountants point out the line on the 'income' page later in the year.