WHAT THE POP PAPERS SAY: The catchy rhythm makes this a first class track
Attempting to switch gears from Madonna appearing on Will and Grace to Chrissie Hynde on BBC Four's Pop and Politics, Sam Wollaston hit on what he thought would be a easy jump - suggesting that it'd be impossible to imagine Hynde ever doing something as fluffy as a cameo in a sitcom. Erm... surely the Guardian TV critic should know that Hynde was probably the first star of any profile to do a self-send-up guesting on Friends?

Comparing the cover art on Joni Mitchell's new album, advertised on the inside front of the October Word, and the drawings of Madonna done by "fans" featured in the same edition, it's hard to decide who has been least well served by the pencil-weilders.

Amongst those being canvassed for the Word of Mouth celeb recommendations are Alison Moyet - who looks so incredibly delicious in her little picture we're planning spending what's left of the year living between her wheelie bin and her shed in the hope of getting adopted - and Jonathan Coe. Moyet chooses Elizabeth, but sniffs that it's not very historically accurate; Coe comes across like a man trying depserately to not drop names.

We're not sure what possessed the editors of the usually doughy and doughty journal to run two pages of pap shots of celebrities on holiday - we'd like to think that maybe its a cultural exchange and readers of this week's OK are puzzling over three thousand words on the legacy of The Incredible String Band, but somehow we doubt it.

There's a jolly interview with Nick Cave - who worries that questions that imply he keeps making music because he doesn't have anything else in his life might lead the q&a to become a little depressing. His most recent collaborator Marianne Faithfull is interviewed as well, which falls in to the trap of banging on too much about old times instead of today: who wants to read the Daily Herald when there's a much more interesting story breaking in The Independent?

Fantasy Live Aid tries to imagine what a 20th anniversary remix would look like - Jamie Cullum in the Bryan Ferry slot; The Darkness where Judas Priest were, or The Datsuns if we're unlucky.

Nancy Sinatra tells of the perils of meeting with the man currently President: she went to the Oval Office with a veteran's group (I think she means old soldiers rather than what remains of Fleetwood Mac); next thing she knows, she's getting hate mail from her gay fans who think she's crossed over the side of darkness: "If they don't understand I'm a screaming liberal, fuck 'em. I can't write back to everybody."

David Hepworth gives the DaVinci Code a well-deserved kicking - not because he's got a thing against pot boilers, but because it's a 50 watt hotplate that couldn't smoke a kipper, much less boil a pot.

Stuart Maconie turns in the sort of appreciation of Yes that he used to do for Blur back when Select was being published; if only Damon had half the charm of Rick Wakeman.

David Crosby - currently charging about on a mock Presidential campaign - stops to consider drugs: Pot is fine, but the other stuff? Terrible. Graham Nash - his running mate - agrees; it's not like the old days, now it's all blood and uzis behind it all. Over at the real Presidential campaign, Word looks at the involvement of pop stars. It's mixed feelings time: obviously, anything that gets people out to vote has to be a good thing, but is a democracy which needs posters of Christina Aguilera with her mouth sewn together to guarantee participation one that's worth saving?

You'll know we think that Apple make lovely things. But having said that: six pages of iPod add-ons? It's too much. It's only a fucking tranny radio.

It's Esquire's Music issue. And which musical figure has been invited to grace the cover? Erm, Juliette Lewis. Now, it's fair enough that otherwise it might have been Duran Duran, and Simon leBon doesn't look quite as good in skimpy pink panties, but we're not yet convinced that Lewis can really count as a music icon in quite the same way. We know her version of Rid Of Me was okay in Strange Days, we know that she's serious about it, but judging by her involvement in the new Prodigy album, it's all a lot of enthusiasm and good intentions. And a pair of skimpy pink panties.

We're also far from convinced by the piece suggesting that the issuing of bonds by artists (David Bowie) was a smart move on the part of the Dame. The details would probably need someone far smarter than us to spell out, but the purchasers had to make a 7.9 per cent return on their thirty million investment every year, which appears to have left David forced to indulge in some rather undignified actions to ensure the cash continued to flow - the hawking of his past images in the interests of selling bottled waters for Nestle, for example.

Unlike the clearly PR-briefed Tories lined up to claim a love of Pulp and Dido at last week's Tory conference, when Boris Johnson says he loves The Clash's Sandinista, you know he almost certainly does, even though he clearly tuned out the lyrics. More oddly, he reveals that Joe Strummer became a penpal in his later years. Everyone loves Boris, yes, but the frontman of the Clash trading bonmots with the man who would later hold the arts brief for the philistines of the right? Bloody odd.

Esquire takes out a shoe, reconsiders, selects a hobnail boot and takes aim at Q's 1010 songs you must own special issue by providing a list of 1010 songs you can safely delete off your iPod to free up valuable space. Included are "any Blur song where an actor (or a mayor) provides guest vocals" and "anything played on Parkie's TV chatshow".

An attempt is given at allowing Clear Channel a fair hearing - James Craven, the International Communications Director of the UK branch of the organisation points out that at the moment, Clear has no radio interests in the UK at all, having sold its minority stakes it held in JazzFM and Switch Digital; but that's like Dennis Nielsen trying to convince us he's changed because he's not got any human flesh in his freezer right now. But Craven's keen to put the record straight, because he's worried about the perception of Clear Channel. Perception? The company which has an increasing monopoly in many radio markets in the US, which has been accused of refusing to play artists on its radio stations who book tours through competitors to its promotions business, whose founder crows "we're not in the business of providing news and information [or] well researched music; we're simply selling our customers' products", who bought up stations across the Mexican border and pointed them back to San Diego to get round the ownership rules and whose tiny news operation means each station can call on just one third of a reporter should a story break - 110 bureaux struggling to support over 1000 stations? That one? Yeah, it might stink a little. But Craven wants to point out that it wasn't a Clear station which destroyed Dixie Chicks CDs in the wake of Natalie Maine's comments about Bush. Not that he's worried for himself, of course - it's the little guys he's worried about: "Clear Channel has thousands of employees in the UK. It seems wrong that they have to read so many distorted stories. The guys that cleanthe bus shelters - they get up in the middle of the night. They go out and clean bus shelters because the roads are quieter then, and they pick up their Sun newspaper, or they pick up The Mirror and they sit down and they read about Dixie Chicks CD burning ceremonies, and they think 'Oh my God, do I really work for a company like that?'" Actually, James, chuck, guys who are dragging their bodies from bed before the sun rises to scrub the sick and smashed glass out of a Bus Shelter on the side of the B3022 probably aren't doing it out of any sense of corporate loyalty, and probably would neither know nor care if Clear Channel was found to be exporting nuclear children to Iraq to be fed to an angry dragon. People in shit jobs with bad companies probably have quite enough bile against their employers all of their own.

Can you spot the flaw in Simon Cowell's argument here? "I judge everything on what I like, funnily enough, rather than try to guess what the public want [...] All my biggest deals happened because I picked up on things I read about in the Sun."

So, as you may have guessed, the NME came late again this week - although on this occasion we think it might have been rejected by our letterbox for a couple of days because, for some reason, it's been guest editied by the Goldie Lookin' Chain. The whole guest editor thing has been done to death anyway, but at least when Blur were invited to have a go there seemed to be a sense that they might have a few ideas to share. Asking GLC to fill the pages is risky, because they clearly ran out of ideas two-thirds of the way through their first song. Still, we're sure it seemed like a great idea at the time. Right up there with those other great ideas which end in a shame-faced visit to the proctologist.

Of course, it's also back to university week this week, so there's a student guide which comes sponsored by, um, Top Man. When we went up to university, as it was still called in those days, the NME cover had Bananarama on it, which prompted letters to Angst the following week suggesting the paper had lost its mind, its sense, and possibly its bladder control. Clearly, though, it knew exactly what it was doing - yer first night in a strange bed in a boxy halls of residence room, the 'rama would provide a sort of comfort a bunch of one-gag Welshmen couldn't hope to reach. The main irritating bit of the student guide is an interview with Kat Fletcher, NUS President, who says that university "can be one of the best experiences of your life" - although since she's only known school and university, and school is rubbish, she's not calling on very much experience to make this call, is she? All the guides to the various student cities suggest you should avoid the same sort of place: anywhere where locals go of an evening.

Back to the remnants of the NME still under proper editorial control, and Hot Hot Heat claim they're just like Nirvana - presumably they mean their singer stinks like he's been dead a decade and there's no prospect of them ever making a decent record ever again; Tom Vek is the radar act and the Concretes are interviewed: Victoria Bergsman reveals she owns 23 wigs, one for every mood.

Lost amongst the dayglo tracksuits and hokey jokey tokey shorts lurks an interview with REM: Michael Stipe reveals that his stance on Iraq isn't just another Hollywood hackage: he's got a relative in the armed forces who's about to be sent out to try and stem the bleeding while Bush decides what to do. He speaks about how he knows that celebs slagging off Bush isn't actually going to work in the Kerry campaign's favour: "but my great fear for a second term might be, internationally, falling on our faces." This plays second fiddle to some polaroids of passers-by with 2Hats from Goldie Lookin' Chain saying if they like their trainers or not.

reviews
live
the music - cambridge corn exchange - "they could be called the dog's bollocks and nobody would think them bigheaded"

albums
the dears - no cities left - "could become the truly special band they promise to", 8
gisli - how about that - "so now, it'll be stale tomorrow", 5
le tigre - this island - "never sounds like Newsnight", 7

singles
sotw - scissor sisters - mary - "I'm not crying... I have something in my eye"
help she can't swim - beano v bunty - "Happy Shopper Pulp"

and finally... today's Daily Star came with a free CD with Suede and the Disposable Heroes of Hiphopricy. Some poor sod had to write a brief introduction for each track to go in the paper. So Animal Nitrate is "this much loved British rock band at their best"; Television, Drug of the Nation was "a big hit for the multi-cultural hip hop duo." After some sucking of the Desmond pencil, The La's There She Goes gets "sing along to this all time popular classic", but best sleeve note of all time - maybe ever - is reserved for Elastica's Connection: "The catchy rhythm makes this a first class track."

ROCKOBIT: Bruce Palmer, Buffalo Springfield bassist, died following a heart attack on Monday.

Palmer was born in 1946 in Liverpool, Nova Scotia and got an early taste of musical acclaim in a number of teenage bands before a spell in Jack London and the Sparrows; although the Sparrows managed a couple of hits in Canada, these came after Palmer's departure. In a straight swap, Palmer joined the Mynah Birds while the Sparrows took on Nick St. Nicholas from the Birds. St. Nicholas would eventually go on to join Steppenwolf, while it was in the Myanh Birds that Palmer would meet his long-term collaborator Neil Young. Following fellow Bird Rick James' imprisonment for quitting the US navy without permission, the pair headed south and hooked up with Stephen Stills, Dewey Martin and Richie Furay to create Buffalo Springfield.

The difficulties caused by Palmer's Canadian citizenship and membership of an American band were among one of the causes of Buffalo Springfield's split after just two years and two albums. While the others went to be CSNY, Palmer made a solo stab at fame - although, as a bassist, he needed to bring in help with vocals, so 1971's The Cycle Is Complete saw him draft back the now released Rick James. Not a glittering success, it was to be the only collection which went out under his own name.

In 1983 Palmer was working again with Neil Young, appearing on the Trans set, and he picked up again with Dewey Martin for a Pete Best Beatles style Buffalo Springfield: BS Revisted. A 1986 proper reunion of the band fell apart when Neil Young "forgot" rehearsals.

IF A LAWSUIT IS MEANT TO SHAKE PEOPLE, SHOULDN'T SOMEONE NOTICE?: We're not sure the coverage of the BPI lawsuits was quite as light as The Inquirer suggested, but they have diagnosed another problem with the RIAA/BPI approach: each extra round of lawsuits they bring forward gets less and less attention. Since the whole point of the legal action is meant to send a message to the file-sharing community - the numbers getting the letters are such a slim slice of the total numbers sharing their musical discoveries with each other, it can't be viewed as a serious, direct attempt to deal with the "problem" - if there's no coverage of the lawyers going in, what's the point? Even at the greedy rates the RIAA are charging their targets for each track, they must be losing cash on the whole deal - if the world isn't paying attention, then it's hard to see what the RIAA are getting in return for their efforts.

YES, IT PROBABLY WOULD BE VILE: George Michael has said that - although he loves him like a brother - he can't think of anything more vile than having sex with Andrew Ridgeley. Which would be part of the thing about loving him like a brother, as, for most people in most societies, having sex with your brother does tend to be a bit of an icky concept. You only have to look at Georgia in Brookside, who did have sex with her brother, Nat - and it was pretty vile, like watching a beautiful horse being ridden by a sweaty clown in burberry. Of course, if you stop and think about it, the thought of anyone having sex with Andrew Ridgeley is pretty off-putting, and we apologise for even mentioning it at lunchtime.

TOMMY GOES TO SCHOOL: Obviously, not on a par with Rebecca Loos wanking a pig or the lovely Debbie McGee washing off a big horse's cock for The Farm, but American TV's new take on reality TV is cooking up a spin of controversey: mainly because quite a lot of people involved with Nebraska University are pissed off that it's the venue that has been chosen for Tommy Lee going to school. It does make the debate over the reduced levels of intellect required for entry to UK unis seem dwarfed.

GENIE IN A BOTTLE: The use of the term "breakdown" is a loose one in pop music - some musicians do have genuine breakdowns, horrible, life-crushing mental collapses where they murder their mothers, retire to live in sandpits, or elect not to join The Power Station. Other times, the words "I had a breakdown" or "a kind of breakdown" means that the singer sat around their house watching Friends re-runs, feeling a bit sorry for themselves and possibly opening one too many bottles of a cheeky little red from the Rothschilds cellar. We'll leave you to decide exactly which sort of breakdown it is that Christina had after being compared to Britney Spears. Luckily, she found a way to stop the comparisons:

"It was kind of a breakthrough for me. I was shedding a skin, this image that the label tried to put upon me where I felt I was suffocating after a while. Stripped was very true to the person I was.

"It was a time when I felt, how can I break out of this shell?'"

Yes, stop the comparisons with Britney by not wearing many clothes and singing pop songs that struggle to be raunchy. That'll work.

WHY HAVING SOME CHARITY WORK TO FALL BACK ON CAN BE A HANDY THING: It's mainly the good works he does for his community that saved Beanie Sigel froma longer prison sentence - he got sent down for a year for gun possession crimes, but without those hours spent helping others, he could have had a three year sentence. In his plea for a softer sentence, Beanie pointed at his children and said that he wanted them to be able to say "That's my dad, Dwight Grant. Not Beanie Sigel." Obviously, Dwight is his real name, he wasn't hoping they were going to be adopted by someone called Mr. Grant.

His attempts to recast himself as a positive role model was scoffed at by the prosecution who suggested that all the songs about raping the pregnant girlfriends of your enemies and pouring acid on their children isn't going to cut it down in citizenship class.

Maybe the judge decided to cut Sigel some slack: he's got other charges hanging over him following a Philadelphia shooting and another punching incident.

NO RELATION: But we just thought we'd give a quick mention to Syntax of Things post titled No Rock 'n' Roll Fun, which is about Lester Bangs.

ROBBIE WILLIAMS ANNOUNCES MORE NEW IDEAS THAT NEVER COME TO ANYTHING THAN BLUNKETT: The latest plan to drop off the Robbie Williams auto-gob is Robbie - The Musical - we're not sure if he'll be doing this before or after his series on the supernatural for Living TV, but the back-of-a-beer-can plan seems to be to tell the story of Robbie's life using his songs. We really hope for the finale he's working on a song called 'Shagged To Death By A Randy Boar In An Unfortunate Woodland Incident'.

A FRIDAY AFTERNOON BELLY LAUGH: Avril Lavigne has, apparently, dyed her hair blonde in order to get a part playing Courtney Love in a soon-to-be-made film. No, it gets better: Avril thinks she's just right for the part of Love:

"Courtney is really nice and a great mom. It would be an honor to play her. I've been looking for a feisty role that suits my personality, and I think this is the one."

Obviously, this delusion can't be blamed on poor research alone - no amount of mistyping into google would make someone think they were feisty when clearly they're not - but she thinks Courtney is a great mom? How would that be - because she's taught Frances Bean how to call for an ambulance when she ODs? If she's such a great parent, how come Frances was placed in the care of Kurt's mum?

IT'S ALL COMING BACK TO ME NOW: Red Hot Chili Pepper Anthony Keidis is writing his lifestory to be some sort of book or other, and is surprised at just how much he remembers. He thinks that with his enormous drug ingestion he'd have a memory that was full of holes, but no, it's all coming back to him: chopping down the cherry tree and confessing to his Dad; being taken in by the Cunninghams and getting the room above their garage; a spell as a mobster in New Jersey...

THREE LETTERS FOR YOU, GUYS: The music industry - you know, those guys - are now threatening to "take on" Microsoft and Apple. It's a little bit like watching the Isle of Man declare war on the United States and the European Union at the same time. Their battle cry is a simple one: they want a common industry standard for downloads. Erm... guys? Have you heard of MP3?

ARE YOU WITH ESTELLE AND PETE?: As the BPI wonders if maybe it shouldn't have some sort of uniform, the NME launches another survey of downloaders attitudes. It neglects to ask the question 'How does this action make the BPI seem', but that's probably because they have to watch some of the more extreme language in the paper.

BUT FOR THE INTERVENTION OF MARK CHAPMAN: It would have been John Lennon's 64th birthday tomorrow. To mark the occassion, Yoko Ono is holding an exhibition of Lennon's artwork in a New York gallery.

Ono says she's doing it because she doesn't "think most people know John's artwork" - which might have just seemed like a widow's sweet attempt to throw light on another aspect of her husband's character, were it not for the obvious fib in her sentence - surely there's not a person alive who hasn't already seen Lennon's 'someone doodling on a pad while waiting for directory enquiries' "art" - it's even the logo of Liverpool airport. We suspect the real purpose of the exhibits is a way of promoting these:



The Lennon toys and baby range, a cash-in on Lennon's art so cynical it would make Max Clifford blush. Top of the range is a tiny blue elephant which plays - oh yes, it does - Imagine. Yours for seventeen quid. "Imagine no possessions", of course.

YOU'RE DOING WHAT?: Never mind the whole stuff about Westlife trying to break some sort of record for playing somewhere currently held by Steps - what makes our eyes burn is the news that the next Westlife album is going to be Rat Pack covers called Let Us Be Frank. It's like the sea scouts trying to be Hell's Angels.

NOW IT'S ALL LEGAL: Britney Spears has completed the formal part of her marriage ceremony, filing the paperwork which officially makes her married to Joe Schmoe ("Mrs. Federline"). It's unclear when the pants and bra she was wearing as did the signing will become available on Ebay.

APPARENTLY, AIRPORTS ARE QUITE HOT ON SECURITY RIGHT NOW: How could Incubus' singer Brandon Boyd be expected to know he'd get into trouble for taking a knife in his carry-on? It's not like there's been anything on the news about planes or hijackings or anything.

ROCK SICKLIST: Singer and sitcom aspirant Melissa Etheridge has cancelled her tour after getting a diagnosis of breast cancer. In an upbeat statement, Etheridge praised the quality of treatment she's been receiving and looked forward to a swift and full recovery.

U2 DENY TOUR PLANS: A website which was offering tickets to U2's dates next year has pulled the offer following an official approach from the band's representatives suggesting that the dates they had were purely speculative.

Winningly, U2's live booker John Giddings, claims that not only have no venues been booked, but they're looking at "every venue in the world" as a possible for hosting the event. Great news, of course, for Northampton Roadmenders and the Deptford Abyss.

SUBTLE ATTEMPT TO DIG DIRT: You have to take your trucker's cap off to this question apparently asking if in the same way Anrdew Murray comes from Dunblane, if there's a professional footballer from Hungerford. Nobody much biting, though.

PETE BLEAT: It's not just Estelle 'I think I need a bit of a sit down' Morris and furiously masturbating BPI executives who are delighted at the news that download lawsuits are coming to the UK. The grand old man of British Pop, Pete Waterman, is very pleased, too:

Consumer groups have suggested the high price of CDs and the amount of time it took record labels to get to grips with internet piracy have forced music fans to turn to illegal file-sharing sites.

But Waterman, speaking at a press conference to mark the launch of legal action against 28 major online pirates in the UK, argued music prices had fallen in recent years.

"I've seen CD prices drop from £14 to £8. I'm certainly not getting paid £14 for a CD any more," said Waterman.

Presumably the reason you're not getting full price for your CDs any more, Pete, is that you've not made anything anyone's liable to want to buy since about 1981.

He said artists such as the Blur drummer, Dave Rowntree, were only able to claim file sharing did not harm CD sales because they already had millions in the bank.

"It's preposterous. How do they know that? The BPI isn't speaking on behalf of all the industry," Rowntree said earlier this year.

Waterman hit back: "Blur who? They're still going are they? EMI owns Blur's rights. I think you might find it different if you got all four of them in a room and asked if they wanted money taken out of their bank accounts.

"If Franz Ferdinand and Blur want to give their music away for nothing, that's between them and their record company. This is not the NHS. This is music, you buy it."

Here again, of course, there's the pushing of this idea that downloading costs artists and labels money; which makes the actions of the BPI seem slightly more reasonable than the truth: downloading is something people do on top of their usual music purchasing, not instead of; it's something which promotes music sales, not deflates them. The act of downloading (in most cases) doesn't take money from anyone, and this claim needs to be challenged every time someone makes it.

FRANZ: FRIEZING IN THE PARK: Bringing music and what-Brian-Sewell-might-or-might-not-call-art together is nothing new for Franz Ferdinand, which is why it's perhaps a bit of a shame that the organisers of Regent's park Freize arts fair have only got them to curate the music. The Franzie's bit takes place on October 18th and features The Kills and the Kaiser Chiefs.

MONEY FOR BOTH JAM, AND OLD ROPE: We've had sat on our pad the words 'Orlowski City' for over a week now, as The Register's Andrew Orlowski made a speech at In The City suggesting that Record Companies should be as happy as pigs in clover right now. A lot of what of he said made good sense - the labels should be thinking about how they're going to combine their massive libraries with new technology and make a fortune. But he's got some stuff wrong, too, we think.

He thinks iTunes/Napster is bound to fail in the medium to long term, for various reasons. First of all, it "unpicks the bundle." Orlowski belives that there's a serious threat to the industry in freeing listeners from having to buy a collection of songs, CD-style; his theory is that the economics of recorded music will be smashed back to the 1950s if you give consumers the power to only take the tracks they want.

But this is based on the fallacy that there's something organic about the length of CDs or LPs. Of course there isn't, though - the LP is as long as it could be without the sound degrading too much; the length of the CD is an even more arbitrary choice, related to some measure or other of a classical music piece. Sure, if you say to people they no loner to buy every track from an album in one go, you might end up selling far fewer copies of the one where they let the drummer record one of his songs. That could be bad.

However, it doesn't have to mean economic meltdown. While the average album contains, shall we say, four tracks which will tempt people to buy them as singles, and probably two tracks you couldn't give away, there's usually going to be some middling tracks, too. Now, in the past, bundled as an album, you would find it hard to flog the whole lot to loads of people on the basis of the middling tracks - they'd be happy with the singles. In the new world, freed from the need to take the whole lot for a tenner, you could find yourself selling a lot more of the middling tracks as a download. After all, that version of the Joker from the new Fatboy Slim album isn't going to persuade anyone wavering to buy the whole album, but it's worth 75p of anyone's money.

In addition, freeing the world from the concept of the ten track bundle means that artists can actually stick dozens and dozens of tracks online. Yes, they might not sell as many sets of tracks as if they stuck out an album, but because they no longer have to shape what they're making available to a seventy-four minute limit, they might well wind up selling a lot more individual tracks to fans than they would have as limited bundles.

Orlowski makes some interesting suggestions about where the future is lying technologically - the iPod will be replaced by phones, and even if the record industry tries to block the technology here and in the States, the Chinese are waiting in the wings. More importantly, he points out that if Bill Gates ever does manage to build a version of Windows which secures intellectual property rights (and it's a slim hope; he can't even build a browser which doesn't spew your privacy out the back of your PC) all he'll have done is create a product which makes Linux look more attractive than ever. And Orlowski is dead right - Gates could buy up all the music industry tomorrow, with the cash he keeps under the clock on mantle. If the RIAA really think he's going to make a product which protects their market at the cost of his own, they're even more doofed out than we thought.

We diverge from Orlowski, however, when he recommends that the Record Industry lobby for some sort of tax - on broadband, or phone bills, or anything. He suggests it could be as "little" at 28p a week. But whether its 28pence or thirty pounds, this is a ridiculous proposal that must sound like Santa has arrived down at the BPI. Why on earth should taxation be raised for the benefit of private companies simply because they've screwed up their own industry by playing a mishanded strategy? And why on earth should all broadband users start to help inflate EMI's shareholder value? Making mobile phones more expensive because Universal failed to seize the moment when it was told where the future lay?

Of course, some people might see this as analagous to something as harmless as the licence fee - where you pay some cash towards the BBC regardless of if you watch any BBC programmes or not, simply because you have a TV. There is a crucial distinction, though: the BBC is not a private company, and the cash raised from the licence fee is clearly meant to be used for the public good - not to pay shareholders, not to invest in populist pap for the mass market. You might argue about how well the BBC lives up to the duties its licence fee gives it, but the principle is clear enough. Under the Orlowski model, though, taxation would be raised, and passed to the labels, and they could do what the hell they chose with it - your grandad, who only uses his broadband connection to listen to a small jazz station, would find his tax dollar going towards creating mass-market bilge.

So, if the music industry wants to be funded through public taxation, fair enough: but then it must become a public resource. If the BPI wishes to have access to a slice of my phone bill, great - provided it's going to be using the cash for the public good. The concept of tax being raised on behalf of private companies is clearly wrong - so the only answer would be to nationalise the music industry. I don't think it's what they'd want, but it's clearly the only acceptable solution. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I start to like the idea. The logic of the argument is that you can get rid of piracy and the whining of the record executives at a stroke.

But since that's not likely to happen, we come back to the ridiculous idea of fleecing the public to prop up companies who've screwed up. The big O thinks there might be other objections, and tries to head them off:

PUBLIC: No job is guaranteed. Why should I give the pigopolists a job for life? - A: Record companies simply own the recording rights: they've paid for them, after all. So buy the recording rights from the record companies. That market is open for business.

If this sounds vaguely familiar, it's probably the echo of Hugh Laurie in the sketch where he's trying to raise a loan from the bank to sell smack to kids because "Europe is open for business." Let's not even bother getting into the at best dubious terms of trade which allow the record companies to claim ownership of music long after they've made back their initial investment, and then some profit, and then more. Under the Orlowski plan, record labels will be pulling in cash simply for doing nothing - and if that won't distort a market, I don't know what will.

- PUBLIC: I never listen to music. Why should I pay for it? - A: I don't have a car or children, but I pay for your schools and roads. Knowing roads and schools are there is an incentive to join you. It's a public good, so you might want to start enjoying music now.

Well, yes, music is a public good. But while it's not quite fair to compare music with schools, you've done it. If a supply of music is vital to the public infrastructure - and yes, it is - then why should that supply be left to private companies? (We were going to say nobody would be stupid enough to pass tax funding to private, profit-driven companies to provide schools, and then we remembered Jarvis and the Public Finance Initiative, which might disprove the point, but underlines what we were trying to say).

There's a lot more in his speech, and its well worth a flick through. His problem is that he can picture a different technological world, but still has the same corporate structure at its heart. Coming up with proposals that support the current big companies in the music industry does nobody any favours - not music fans, not musicians, and, ultimately, by shoring up companies who failed to adapt when warned nearly a decade ahead of the risk to the bottom line and choking off the chance of new forms of music company to rise up, not even the people whose pension funds are invested in the business of shifting units.

PROBABLY SOME SORT OF JOKE ABOUT OLD TITS HERE, THEN: This barely counts as being in any way connected with music, as it's about Jack Osbourne and Kimberly "Daughter of Rod" Stewart; apparently she gave him her old implants which he now has hanging on his wall. It's probably lucky he wasn't dating Kylie Minogue, then, as he'd be able to use excess skin as wall-hangings. Probably.

Not, of course, that Jack and Kim were an item, she insists: "That's the most untrue thing that I've ever heard in my life." Must have been watching VH1 when Powell was briefing the UN about Saddam's weapons, then. It does make you wonder what body parts she gives to her lovers, doesn't it?

CHRISTINA AD CHOPPED: After a stream of complaints from real nurses, an advert for shoes featuring Christina Aguilera as a sexy nurse has been dropped. Meanwhile, Christina has been suggesting all women should vote as, erm, it'll stop domestic violence. (How does that work? Drunken husband, about to throw punch, stays his hand and sobs "how can I punch a registered Republican?"). But Christina feels she's got to make things up because "It's embarrassing and shameful to know I haven't been part of voicing my opinion as a female and as a women." As a female and as a woman, eh?

KIDS? THEY'RE TARGETS, SAYS BPI: A journalist asked the BPI, presumably mistaking them for gentlemen, if they'd follow their Daddies in the RIAA in taking legal action against preteens. Of course, snarled the BPI, while they wouldn't go out of their way to throw kiddies into prison: "It is not our intention to target children but [we will] if they are breaking the law on a very large scale."

Still, it's not just the BPI making themselves look evil: Estelle Morris is adding the government's weight to the legal campaign. Estelle - who of course resigned as education secretary because she was out of her depth - seems not to be quite able to touch the bottom of the downloading debate, either:

"Piracy is theft - pure and simple. Whether it's Jamelia or a jobbing musician, the artist suffers. We owe it to them to make sure they get a fair return for their creativity, flair and inspiration. The government supports the principle of proportionate legal action against the worst offending uploaders. I hope it will stop the habitual offender who uploads to make a quick buck out of other people's talent."

Righto, so if it's meant to be about the artists, how come it's not the artist's representatives who are bringing the actions? The BPI are the voice of the labels, surely? And what's all this about "making a quick buck"? Is Estelle so poorly briefed she thinks that people charge for eDonkey downloads? Perhaps it's just as well she's giving it up at the end of this Parliament.

WHEN LOVERS SQUABBLE: The bloke who she rips to pieces in her "auto"biography has paid Victoria Beckham back for her tattling. Leaving aside the question of who proposed what to who and where, his real bomb is his claim that Posh called him up to gloat just before she married David:

He recalls, "The girl I was seeing at the time had just left me and Victoria rang me up and said, 'You're quite sad, really. You're on your own, you haven't really got a life. Look at me. I've got Mercedes, BMWs and a big house. You've got nothing.'"

If only he'd had the wit to respond "I've got more chance of having a number one than you do, honey."

BOYS IN FILMS: There's nothing very surprising about the news that Simon LeBon is a bit of a tranny.



I mean... it's hardly going to make anyone hold the front page, is it? It's up there with "Martin Kemp enjoys wearing kilts."

BUT WASN'T IT ALL ABOUT THE STARVING IN AFRICA?: Not that he's still bitter about it, or anything, but Midge Ure still feels the need, twenty years on, to point out that he got pushed down the bill at Live Aid. What we do like about this story, though, is that they used the excuse "Adam Ant is having technical difficulties", a phrase which we intend to bring out anytime anything fucks up, ever. Late for a deadline? Sorry, Adam Ant was having technical difficulties. Accidently deleted someone else's vital files? Adam Ant, guv. Taken the country to war on the back of defective intelligence? I wish we could have known the truth upon which to base our decision, but I remind the honorable gentleman that at that time Adam Ant was having technical difficulties..."

THE BEATLES BOYS: Despite what we would have thought would have been the obvious warning of how poor their one-shot collaboration on Wilson's album earlier this year turned out, Paul McCartney and Brian Wilson are going to come together and make a whole album together. It's just a Rick Wakeman short of being a full Travelling Willburries, isn't it?