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LAS VEGAS BOUND: We're a little surprised that Britney is very keen to perform in Las Vegas: if we remember correctly, she's already done a big, attention-grabbing turn in that place. But it turns out this time she's talking about playing music. In a reversal of her previous claim that parenthood would mean the total cessation of musical activities, she's now decided to just scale back instead:
"I think Celine Dion, the way she does it, with her show in Vegas, is the way to go. Everybody comes to her.
"When I have kids, I'm so there. That's what I'm doing."
It's quite sweet she thinks people go to Vegas just to see Celine Dion, rather than just stumbling in blind drunk after losing their kid's college funds on the craps table. But we're not saying there's no role for Britney in Vegas - we'd have a flutter on a table using this set of cards:
We presume she'd sat down and done some calculations as to how their finances would be affected if they went from relying on two paycheques to working with what Kevin can bring in (and that assumes that Mr Greengold at Frisco Burger still needs the extra help after spring break).
Monday, March 07, 2005
FRED AND THE FEDS: Now we're getting confused - didn't Fred Durst say the other day that his tiny-penis-show video had been taken from a computer he'd put in for fixing? And yet, oddly, now he's claiming - in a lawsuit - that he was hacked, by the same people who hacked Paris Hilton's mobile device. Durst's lawyer, Edwin McPherson, claims in the lawsuit that the FBI are investigating the Hilton and Durst cases as "connected events" - well, they are, as in they're both minor celebs who have got their bits out on camera and then act surprised when the video comes to the top of a google search engine. Durst is trying to have the sites carrying the video closed down, and their computers taken off them.
The amusing aspects of this, of course, is that Durst claims that there will be "irreparable damagge" if anyone sees this video. But since he never intended the video to be made public, his claims of breach of copyright - while accurate - don't mean he's suffered any financial loss; it's hard to see how his dickwad jockboy image could be anything other than enhanced by the clear evidence that, contrary to appearances, he isn't a paranoid virgin; so the only thing we can assume he means is that he's afraid people will be laughing at his pee-pee.
There's also some confusing stuff in the legal document - it says page 5, line 1 that Durst "set up the camera angle and position" but also that he "held the camera throughout" - which seems to be a bit cotradictory; unless Durst has an arm like those cameras which absorb the movement of your body. Also, spookily, on page 5, line 15, the lawsuit states that Durst was contacted by a porn website "on or about December of 2005" - nine months from now. "Fred... I am the ghost of Christmas Porn Future..."
What we can't believe, though, is that any self-respecting porn website would have been trying to cut a deal with Fred in the first place...
CAB ROW: Last week - on little more than a visit a clinic - the world decided Pink was pregnant. Now, though, she's apparently single. Again.
She had a row with her boyfriend, human sketch pad Carey Hart:
... and now it's all over. Apparently. Mind you, they've split up before, and got back together. They had to; he had her PIN number tattooed on his left testicle.
WETTING THE HEAD: Washing away the taint of Korn - and we're sure he'll be handing all the money the band made for him over to charity, too - Brian Head Welch has had a baptism in the Jordan river. It's washed away all his anger, apparently:
"You know when you get angry and it builds up? I felt like hurting someone before, now I feel like hugging people," he said.
[His pastor Ron] Vietti said Welch — who has "Jesus" tattooed across his knuckles and "Matthew 11:28," tattooed prominently across his neck — is already attracting a new group of young people to the message of Christianity.
"In recent weeks people have committed their lives to God because they're so inspired by his story," Vietti said.
Nice touch having the righteous tattoos, dude. But to be honest, I felt a bit more secure when you were angry. A hug even from a reborn member of Korn makes me feel queasy.
THEY APPEAR TO BE TAKING THIS SERIOUSLY: Have we missed something? Is the current round of recruitment for a head of the World Bank part of a Comic Relief celeb special, in the style of Celebrity Fame Academy? Only Jon Snow, the US Treasury Secretary, seems to be taking Bono's candidacy seriously. Mind you, looking at some of the other mates-and-rich in the running, Bono might be the least worst option after all. Carly Fiorina, dumped head of Hewlett-Packard and the person ultimately responsible for that just rubbish "back to the shed" corporate pissabout a couple of years back, when the company wasted millions on vanity advertising rather than actually selling stuff to people, is apparently seriously being considered, too. We'd love to see that: "we're going to rebrand the developing world - DO, with the 'o' representing the world, and D for developing, yes, but also dynamic, different, diverse and don't-make-a-fuss-if-you-pay-em-in-dirt."
JOHN PULLED OUT: The reasons haven't been confirmed, but some sort of illness led Elton John to cancel two US gigs this weekend. We don't know what it was - might be nodules of the vocal chords, maybe it was just the wrong sort of orchids. Who can say?
Meanwhile, Kenny Chesney did his ankle in on a staircase and axed his own opening weekend:
"I know the fans in Green Bay, Fargo and St Paul are gonna be disappointed," Chesney said in a statement on his website. "But they're not half as disappointed as I am about not being there."
Fargo and St Paul were not available for comment, but Green Bay said it was bearing up, and would probably "have some beers, go bowling" instead. "Actually, it was Ashwaubenon who was really keen to go see him; we were only doing it as a favour..."
IT WASN'T ME: In what smells a little bit like that contempt of court thing, Phil Spector has taken the chance of a BBC documentary to protest his innocence again. He throws himself onto our understanding:
Mr Spector says Lana Clarkson's death was "a tragedy but it could have happened in anybody's house", believing she shot herself.
And that's the truth - we've been caught in the housebuying loop all week, and one of the first questions all the books (and Kirstie Allsopp) tell you to ask vendors is: "What are the chances of a b-movie actress choosing this house to kill herself?" You'd be surprised the number of times you have to step over a large pile of free newspapers, tax demands and the woman who played Third Rollerskater in The Green Gremlin III behind the front door.
Still, it's suicide, insists Spector:
"It's not for me to explain why she took her life. It's only for me to explain that I had nothing to do with it and I didn't," said Mr Spector.
"This prosecution is bogus. I mean it has to be because of who I am."
We read that with the wrong stress at first, and thought he was claiming that the bogosity of the prosecution was down to him being the wall of Sound bloke, but then we realised he was suggesting he was only being prosecuted because he was famous. Which does suggest a wonderful image of a cop hurling the Ronnie Spector book across the police rec room and yelling "We gotta get this bozo..." But actually, Phil, we imagine the prosecution has less to do with who you are, more to do with the woman with her face blown off they found in your hallway. Alright, and maybe a little to do with the Starsailor album.
A QUICK LOOK AT THIS MORNING'S FRONT PAGES: Javine doesn't quite seem to have grasped the whole Eurovision thing. She's gotten it all wrong:
No, no, Javine: we're sending you to Ukraine to come thirteenth so we can spend two months muttering darkly about block voting and dubious judges. If you win, what will we do for our fun?
The Star, mind, knows what swung it for Javine:
We can only hope that Edith Bowman doesn't adopt Javine's poll-winning strategy for her Celeb Fame Academy appearance.
Meanwhile, there's trouble at Sony, reports the FT:
In what the company desperately hopes we'll believe is nothing more than an attempt to do even better, but smells a little bit of panic, Howard Stringer is being put in charge of the whole company. In other words, in the long-running battle between Sony's electronics division and its entertainment division, the entertainment guys are coming out top. Sony only got into films and music to have some stuff to offer when it invented new formats: now the tail has not just wagged the dog, it has swallowed it.
Sunday, March 06, 2005
EUROVISION HEAT: IN PICTURES: Fools! How could you have taken against Gina G? Stupidly, she came in last...
... but at least we didn't send this to Kiev: 
Although there's something about Jordan's performance that reminds us of that delicacy, the chicken kiev, although we're not sure why. After all, a chicken kiev is some dubious old meat, steamed off the bone, which threatens to shoot a hot jet of greasy, buttery juice into your eye if you don't approach it with care...
Javine seems to have taken an all-out approach to the challenge of Jordan's pneumatic emptiness...
... and victory was hers. Here she is picking up her lifesize Terry Wogan statuette:
Be your own Eurovision expert with this:
It's an official history, but - oddly - seems to be very focused on the UK acts on the cover, there. We wonder if there's separate editions featuring local acts all over the continent? With an Irish one featuring thousands of Johnny Logans, one after the other?
RADIOBIT: RADIOBIT: The death has been announced of Tommy Vance, long-serving voice of Rock for Radio One and the man who sold a million compilation CDs.
Born in Oxford in 1943 (his mother called him Richard Hope-Weston), as a teenager Vance ran away to sea, discovering the sound of American radio while on a journey and hawking himself round stations looking for a slot. His original radio name was Rick West, but the change to Tommy vance came as a result of being in the right place at the right time: KOL Seattle had invested heavily in promoting a new presenter called Tommy Vance; when the real Vance didn't show up to take up his contract, KOL needed a replacement, and offered it to West providing he'd change his name to match the billing.
Vance got his big break the 1960s with KHJ, then the top-rated station in LA; he moved back to Europe to take up a slot on the quasi-legal Radio Luxembourg, but as he didn't like life in the Duchy, he decided to try dodging the Department of Trade and Industry working with full-on pirate station Radio Caroline. After six months on Caroline, he swapped to rival Radio London, where he would present their last programme before going legit. He was an early presenter on Radio One, but then swapped again to be part of Capital Radio's line-up when commercial music radio made its first appearance on British soil.
He made the Friday Rock Show his own for what seemed like years and years, trying hard to avoid cliche but with an ear attuned for a neat catchphrase - "This is TV on the radio" being his, long before the band picked it up. Although often thought of as being just a rock monster, Vance was given Radio One's plum job of presenting the Sunday evening Top 40; he took over the slot from Tony Blackburn and threw just as much weight behind the St Winifred's School Choir going up one place to number three as he would behind an exclusive session from Whitesnake. To Vance, everything was IMPORTANT and to be STRESSED; and if something was really important, it just deserved A LITTLE MORE STRESS. If Vance was a typewriter, his italics would lean a little further than everyone else's; it was the knack of being able to sell any information that saw him signing up to provide voice-over information for everything from the expected (Monsters of Rock CDs) to the less likely (Meaty Chunks of Dogfood).
After he left Radio One - it seemed, more or less, that he just got shuffled out the schedule rather than actually fired - he found a new home first on Virgin, and then later at VH1. He moved behind a desk to be the boss at digital service Total Rock; he also made a foray back into mainstream TV as part of the Hell's Kitchen reality show.
Tommy Vance died at four am this morning, following a stroke. He was 63.
LOHAN: GETTING EVAN WITH DAD: Lindsay Lohan has been talking about her dear ole' sloppy pappy in a hearty-chinwag with W magazine.
She's not entirely thrilled with pops trying to carve a slice of her earnings - as any 18 year old would feel:
"He didn't do anything for my career except go out and not come home at night. So I don't think he deserves anything. He doesn't even deserve my respect."
To be fair to Michael Lohan, judging by the accident-zone which takes him as its epicentre, probably going out and staying out was the best thing he could do for his kid, but the extra time in the sports bar and down Hooters is almost certainly compensation enough.
So you'd think Lindsay would be cool on his idea for a reality show, in which the family would disintegrate on ABC, right? Wrong:
"As sick as it sounds, a reality show might help, actually," Lindsay Lohan told the magazine. "At least then people could get the truth."
Of course it's a sick idea... but it might just be a great career move, eh, Linds?
RECORD EXECUTIVES FREAKED BY HOUSE SALES: Odd happenings down in the Australian Record Industry (a wholly owned subsidiary of the RIAA) battle against Kazaa: They've just frozen Kazaa's parent company assets. The conspiracists ("realists") see this as a petulant strop-slap from the major labels following an announcement last week that Kazaa would be giving a slice of its ad revenues to indie labels; the head of ARIA's Music Industry Piracy Investigations (that'd be a hell of a mime on What's My Line) says that it's more about... um, what, Michael Speck:
“What freaked us out is finding out they’d sold their homes,” Speck said. Sharman CEO Nikki Hemming recently sold her house to Sharman’s accountant for a profit, only 12 months after she bought it, Speck added.
Clearly, the ARIA are convinced that this sudden bout of house-selling is evidence of there being no goods going on; but isn't is possible that the CEO of a company being slowly ground down by its competitor's ongoing legal actions might find it suddenly urgent to sell their houses and release some capital for food and drink and heating? Are Austrlian labels really so alarmed by the concept of someone selling a house?
WE ARE ALL THE WINNERS: It's a victory, a bloody victory, for Britain: AnyoneButJordan won the Song For Europe Contest. AnyoneButJordan beat Jordan into second place. AnyoneButJordan's song, Touch My Fire, will represent the UK in Ukraine.
The success on the phone vote will come as great news for AnyoneButJordan, who previously just lost out on Popstars under her previous name, PleaseGodNotTweedy.
Seriously, congratulations to Javine, and thank you everyone who voted and spared us from being the freakshow of Europe.
And the good news is: there's already a great sign that we could be triumphant this year. It's written in the biscuits:
They're made by Javine, and they're called javin-UK-ai. It's a sign.
Hang about, we've just heard about the LatvianWinsEurovision 05 brand of custard creams...
Saturday, March 05, 2005
THE GAP BETWEEN HEADLINE AND STORY: So Britney Spears to quit pop for motherhood screams the headline, although, actually, what she said was she won't be pop star and a mother, which is slightly different - 'person considers putting career on hold at some point in the future' isn't quite as eye-catching, of course.
GOOD GOD, THEY MUST NEED CORSETS: It's nothing but yucks all the way down when you know Avril Lavigne - just look at her wacky April Fool's Day pranks:
"I always get everybody good on April Fools'," the singer told MTV Europe. "Last April I called up my mum and told her I was pregnant." She also called her manager and told him she had been in a terrible accident and was in the emergency room with a broken nose and black eyes.
Yeah, they must have been killing themselves. Lucky her manager realised she was joking before he blurted "that's okay, we've got you booked in to have your tits done in a couple of weeks, we can get 'em to give you Jennifer Aniston's nose at the same time."
A QUICK LOOK AT THIS MORNING'S FRONT PAGES: And both the papers owned by bonkers hyper-rich people have chosen to lead on the BPI downloading story:
- of course, it's so hugely unlikely that the Telegraph has any readers. Sorry, I might have missed the end off that sentence - it's so hugely unlikely that the Telegraph has any readers who download music themselves, they've gone for the "parents" angle; but we're a little puzzled by that headline: the BPI story refused to link any person to any of the money they've got out of them, and didn't even state that there were definitely parents paying off on behalf of their kids. And yet the Telegraph seems convinced that the largest payoffs were for children's misdemeanours. Curious.
No doubt if the Daily Star has been secretly briefed, of course: it's just made something up:
UNADULTERATED PILL: In a desperate bid to try and claw back the success she has never quite managed again ("to celebrate ten years since the original release") Alanis Morissette is reworking Jagged Little Pill as an acoustic album.
It's not, of course, the first radical reworking of the album, as five years ago, this happened:
Yes, it's a string quartet version of Jagged Little Pill. And whereas the new Alanis one keeps her and throws away the instrumentation, we'd suggest you're better off with the one that keeps the music and ditches Alanis.
ECLECTICOBIT: The death has been announced of Pam Bricker, jazz-to-electronica vocalist. Probably best known at our end of the garden for the work she did with Thievery Corporation, Pam had been a familiar face on the Washington music scene for nearly thirty years.
Born in Richmond, Va, she had a musical upbringing - her father, although a scientist by calling was a part-time trombonist; her mother was to remarry, this time to a full-time trombone player. In a childhood scarred by her mother's manic depression, and as a self-described loner, music was a comfort and a solace - and later an inspiration: "The sort of perverse sexuality of that tune [Randy Newman's You Can leave Your hat On], for me as an 18-year-old, that was the cat's meow," she would say later. Overwhelmed wityh a desire to make music for herself, she attended singing classes and played a circuit of coffee houses and hotel lounges across the East Coast, before settling in Washington in 1981 with Gareth Branwyn, who would become her husband. A chance meeting in an oats and roast cafe lead to collaborations with Mary Chapin Carpenter: "We got together a few times to sort of jam and pick and grin, and then she became the world's most famous folk and country crossover artist," said Pam.
Her big break came when she hooked up with swing vocalists Mad Romance. There, she formed a partnership with Rick Harris, producing a number of albums together after the group splintered in 1987.
She also found time to teach jazz at George Washington University (yes, they apparently have a jazz department); her work with Thievery Corporation included a track on this year's Grammy Award winning Garden State soundtrack, Lebanese Blonde.
She was often at odds with the moronic nature of the music industry - at 25, she was told by an executive she was "a little bit too old" to start a recording career; the result was a nervous breakdown and a withdrawal. Happily, she fought her way back and proved him wrong.
During the 90s, she started to move beyond jazz: "I felt an urge to break out of such a straight-laced jazz frame of mind and repertoire. I said: 'Jazz, like crime, doesn't pay. You have to mix it up and modernize it.' "
In the end, though, depression caught up with her again and reports suggest she committed suicide on February 22nd. She is survived by her estranged husband; her father Peter; and her son Blake Maloof.
Friday, March 04, 2005
THESE VIDEOS'LL KEEP THE JURORS QUIET: There's been another day of films for the jurors to watch in the Jackson trial, this time with the prosecution showing the video it claims Jacko forced the accuser and his family into making. Apparently we're all calling him Gavin Arvizo now, like we've known him all our lives. Before, his sister finished giving evidence, saying that jackson was always kissing her brother, and that she saw him sharing wine with Gavin and some other boys.
More case to come.
HOW THE RECORD COMPANY ENSURES ITS ARTISTS GET THEIR DUES: Badly, judging by the number of singers who feel ill will towards their paymasters. Cher and the descendents of Sonny Bono are suing Warners claiming breach of contract. The lawsuit claims that when Warner took over Atlantic, it breached the contracts Sonny and Cher had signed with the smaller label. They're looking to scoop back a quarter of a million bucks.
Of course, not paying royalties is akin to, you know, stealing music off the internet or something.
THEY REALLY DO THINK THEY'RE THE POLICE, DON'T THEY?: Who's that knocking at the door? It's our chums at the BPI, giggling and spraying themselves with champagne as they celebrate pocketing cash from filesharers:
UK record companies’ trade association the BPI (British Phonographic Industry) today announced that 23 UK internet users have agreed to pay thousands of pounds in compensation for distributing music illegally via peer-to-peer networks on the internet.
The BPI said it will also bring 31 new cases against filesharers from across the UK as it steps up its campaign against illegal filesharing. And in a broadening of the campaign the new actions will span eight different filesharing networks. Further cases will follow.
Ooh, don't you love their firm slap of their black leather gloves. They know where you live, they do.
BPI Chairman Peter Jamieson said, “Unauthorised filesharing is against the law. It effectively steals the livelihood of musicians and the record companies who invest in them. We will not hesitate to protect the rights of our members and the artists they represent.”
Do we need to go through the basics of this again? Unauthorised filesharing of some copyright material is against the law, not all unauthorised filesharing, all the time. It would only "effectively" steal the livelihood of a musician if the files shared result in a lost sale; it's equally possible it could generate sales and, thus, actively increase the livelihood of a musician. Record companies, contrary to Mr. Jamieson's assertion, do not actually have livelihoods - but then saying "it harms corporate profitability" doesn't have quite the same ring to it. Record companies do not "represent" artists; that is what agents do - record companies employ artists. But other than that, of course, we're in total agreement with what he says.
BPI General Counsel Geoff Taylor said, “We are determined to find people who illegally distribute music, whichever peer-to-peer network they use, and to make them compensate the artists and labels they are stealing from.
Oddly, there doesn't seem to be anything at all on the rather lengthy news release about how the money from the people they've caught will be passed on to the artists. Shouldn't, say, the Musicians Union be involved in distributing this bounty?
“These settlements show we can and we will enforce the law. No one should be in any doubt that we will continue to do so.”
Actually, you're not there to enforce the law. What you appear to have done is merely used the law. The BPI is not a law enforcement agency; it is not part of the criminal justice system. You're a trade body.
The 23 settlements announced today arise out of the 26 cases announced by the BPI in October 2004. Three cases are still in negotiation and legal action may follow.
The settlements include internet users from all over the UK – 17 men and six women. The average settlement is more than £2,000 – more than a month’s salary for the average UK worker. Two illegal filesharers are paying more than £4,000 each to settle their cases.
Let's not complain that the BPI sound gloatingly delighted at depriving people of two months' average income. Nor, come to that, eight hundred hours worth of work on the minimum wage. It's wrong, of course, to deprive artists of their livelihoods. But a bloody laugh when the BPI do it some other poor sod, isn't it?
BPI General Counsel Geoff Taylor explained, “We have no desire to drag people through the courts. So we have attempted to reach fair settlements where we can.
... but failing that, we just use our massive financial firepower to crush people into accepting any settlement at all. There is a hell of a reluctance to take these issues before court, where a judge might decide on slightly less enormous settelments, or, indeed, take a long, hard look at the actual issues underlying the claims of 'filesharing is theft.' You betcha they don't want to go through the courts. It's a little curious that the BPI is trying one minute to sound like a bunch of hardcases - "that's over a month's bloody earnings, that is"; the next like reasonable guys - "nobody wants to go to court..."
“We hope people will now begin to get the message that the best way to avoid the risk of legal action and paying substantial compensation is to stop illegal filesharing and to buy music online, safely and legally, instead.”
Interesting - actually, of course, the best way to avoid the risk of this is merely to not file share. Buying music legally has nothing to do with avoiding legal actions. It's like saying 'Don't go to court - don't shoplift; buy our products instead.'
The BPI announced that it will be going to the High Court today seeking orders for the disclosure of the identities of a further 31 illegal filesharers on a range of peer-to-peer networks, including KaZaA, eDonkey, Grokster, Soulseek, DirectConnect, Limewire, Bearshare and Imesh.
Although impressive developments in legal download services saw an estimated 9 million download sales in the UK in 2004, there are still millions of individuals in the UK who persist in trading files illegally.
Those swine! Those persistent, persistent swine.
Said Taylor, “If illegal filesharers think that they can avoid getting caught by staying away from the most popular networks like KaZaA, they’re wrong. We are going to continue bringing cases against people who distribute music illegally, whichever filesharing network they use, for as long as it’s necessary. Legitimate music services can only prosper if we continue to fight the theft of music on the internet.”
Really? There's no way, then, that legitimate music services can do rather nicely alongside shady filesharing? Then what is iTunes selling three hundred million songs?
The BPI’s action against illegal filesharing in the UK is part of a global campaign by the record companies who invest in new music, seeking to turn the tide on internet piracy.
Research shows that illegal activity on the once most-popular filesharing network Fast Track – on which KaZaA runs – has plummeted, with the number of users in January 2005 down 45% from its peak in April 2003.
While some more determined illegal filesharers are migrating to other networks, the combination of superior legal services and the threat of legal action means that despite increasing broadband penetration, authorised services are growing at a faster rate than illegal services.
Or perhaps they're all swapping Torrents now?
With thousands of cases launched against the users of other illegal networks, illegal uploaders are learning that there is no place to hide; the number of eDonkey servers is down by 61%, BitTorrent servers and users are down 66% while the Direct Connect network has also seen a decline in the number of servers.
There's some interesting and totally meaningless statistics - down what from where since when? How come bittorrent servers and users have magically declined at exactly the same rate?
Then there's some frequently asked questions - odd that the press release announcing all this had FAQs; who had been asking these questions frequently prior to the announcement?
If these uploaders were trading thousands of files £2,000 doesn’t seem very much.
For anyone on average earnings £2,000 is a lot of money – around a month’s salary. The amounts we settled for varied according to the number of files that were illegally uploaded and the specific circumstances of the case, but this action is about deterrence rather than compensation; the aim was to settle these cases where possible rather than sue people.
Ah, bless... rather than asking how the BPI can justify demanding 800 hours worth of wages from people - in fact, one of those caught was a student, so has been hit with an even more crippling bill - they think people might be outraged that the BPI isn't leeching enough cash without having had to demonstrate a single penny in loss revenue. Marvellous. And if the idea is "deterrence rather than compensation", what's all that in the press release about "mak[ing] them compensate the artists and labels they are stealing from" - is this about deterrence or is this about compensation? Does the BPI actually know why it's doing this; or is it just they got a call from the RIAA asking them to join in?
Were there any parents/children among those who settled?
Given that people have settled with us and undertaken to the High Court not to do it again, we don’t see any advantage in dragging them through the press. However some of the account holders were parents and – looking at the files they were distributing - it’s highly likely that they settled on behalf of their children. The alternative would have been to put their children through the ordeal of a possible court case. Most parents would not want to put their children in that position.
It’s true to say that some parents have been genuinely shocked to discover what their children have been up to.
This is just bemusing - why would saying 'yes, three of the downloaders were probably children' be "dragging them through the press"? And if the idea is deterrence, surely issuing a press release saying 'BPI takes cash off parents - kids had shared music' be a much better detterent than not? We can't help but be a little sickened by a trade body that seems to be well aware that the minor transgression has been done by a child happily piling in and demanding cash from the parents under threat of "dragging the children through the courts." Firstly, how exactly would the BPI go about suing someone under 18 anyway? Even if it did want to make itself look so unpopular? Secondly, since the parents have done no wrong, what exactly are they being punished for?
Still, there's a few more quid going towards Sony's bottom line. We shall all sleep more soundly in our beds tonight. Except the parents who've had to flog them to keep their kids out the courts.
CONFUSING 'SHARING' WITH 'SELLING': The conversion of Napster into a music industry stooge has been completed. Just as the name is now stuck onto a big label approved sales house, so too has Shawn Fanning become a drudge of the majors. He's getting them to sign up for his Snocap system, which is an attempt to make peer-to-peer a world that EMI et al can live with. In effect, it's ruining what makes p2p great by introducing a bloody great till at the end of every exchange, but it's the attempt to swindle the meaning of language in the interests of the labels which really hurts. This is supposedly about "sharing" music, but really it's about disguising selling as sharing. The idea is, of course, that Snocap allows the music industry to keep tabs on exactly what you're 'swapping', the better to present you with a bill at the end of it.
Fanning has more than a look of Ashley from Corrie here, doesn't he?
"The internet will become a much richer resource for music fans everywhere," said Shawn Fanning, commenting on the deal.
He added: "This is an important step toward the growth of a digital marketplace where consumers can discover, share and purchase music from massively deep, almost infinite catalogues."
Record labels view the technology as a way to turn peer-to-peer networks into profitable distribution tools.
The current model of online music distribution is expensive - relying on large, costly servers, requiring huge amounts of bandwidth to serve potentially millions of people.
Utilising peer to peer networks would be an inexpensive system of distributing music to customers.
So... hang about a minute: this is meant to be making the music experience better and richer for us, the consumers - and yet all it really does is allow the music industry to use the peer to peer systems they've been pursuing like harpies for the last five years to sell their music while we pay for both the music and the bandwidth? I don't quite see what we're getting out of this - unless, maybe, without needing to maintain "expensive" servers and shell out for telephony, and no longer requiring intermediaries like iTunes to take a cut, the cost of songs per track comes down to something like ten cents a pop. And that doesn't seem likely.
TIMBERLAKE INSISTS ON DRUGS, SEX IN RETURN FOR WORK: Justin Timberlake - and it seems so long since we've had to type that name; where have you been, boy? - is to play Elton John in a movie of Elton's life. But he insisted on there being scenes of animal-mad fucking, mountain-bashing drug snorting and stupendously bad hat-buying being added in before taking the role:
"Knowing what a wild existence Sir Elton has led I thought 'Wow, you're offering me that role?' but when I read the script all the wild stuff had been left out."
"I told the studio that it would have to be warts-and-all so that's what it's going to be. I can't wait to get started."
What sort of film would Elton's life story have been if they'd left out the drugs and sex? The only things we can think that would have been in that original script would have been:
Act One: Elton meets Kiki Dee
Act Two: Crisis at Watford - the shirt sponsorship deal falls through
Act Three: Diana's funeral
But why would Justin be so keen for there to be lots of gay sex and coke in the script itself? Presumably so the excuse "I was merely researching a part" doesn't ring hollow, is it?
THERE IS NO BABY: Jennifer Lopez has denied the pregnancy stories - and we'd be surprised if there was a kid in there:
She told the Today programme (American, this wasn't John Humphrys) that "I think I've been pregnant about 17 times." On the other hand, she could have been confusing "pregnant" with "married".
FRED DURST'S THOUGHTS FOR THE DAY: It's been a while since we went to catch-up with what Fred is thinking, and we were surprised to discover that his previous post on the limp bizkit blog had mysteriously "disappeared" - thank god we were able to salvage it for history. We'd better do a quick scrape of his current postings in case those, too, are lost to eternity. After all, we wouldn't want to miss this one:
Monday, February 28, 2005
only you know
two people were walking alone in the woods together....
they knew the air wasn't as clean as usual..
the sun barely found its way in the further they went....
they arrive...
one person turns to the next and asks if they are dying...
silence interupts for a brief moment before a willing response is muttered..
"____ __________ __ ______ ___ _______ _ ____________!!"
since neither of them have spoken since should we assume they are doing fine?
why would we ever think anything else?
music is art
art is expression
expression is needful
Posted by: fred / 7:34 PM
There would have been more, but Mom called him down to dinner at that point.
Then there's this:
Tuesday, March 01, 2005
question #1
if there was a rallying of the limp believers would you participate under any circumstances and by all means necessary?
Posted by: fred / 10:59 AM
f course, there's comments on the blog full of people going "wooo - yeah, Fred..." - although not everyone's got the hang of "all means necessary":
You betcha....as long as I don't have to break the law...but that is negotiable too.
But most? It's all "how high?":
First rule of project bizkit is you do not ask questions!!! Fuck yeah!,I'm already there Fred!!! Limp Bizkit forever!!!! All yall haters eat a bowl of dicks!!!!
# posted by KrylonBomb96 : 11:46 AM
"I would for you!", I've been limping with the Bizkit since the start, now 2 babies, a minivan and a mortgage later, I'm still with you baby. You are my touchstone. I get in my husband's car by myself, open the sunroof, pop in the bizkit and I feel like a woman again; alive and full of emotion and sexual energy. Thank you for that.
-Victoria
# posted by Vic : 1:28 PM
If it was in my area, definately. Otherwise, I'm BROKE and can hardly afford to travel a hundred some odd miles for a demonstration, no matter how much I believe in the cause.
# posted by Meghan : 5:03 PM
The slightly scary thing about this is people are actually behaving like they're being rallied - "well, Fred, I might have to sort out a babysitter and a plane ticket..." - and you can almost hear the thought "Do we all get guns? Or knives, at least?" If ever you needed confirmation that the 'fuck you I won't do what you tell me' squad are actually more meek and following than a bunch if especially nervous lambs in the dark, there would be your evidence.
For the record: he's rallied about 230 souls so far - big enough to cause a disruptive queue at the automatic ticket machines in a medium-sized station; not quite of a size to seize power.
REALITY-FICTION INTERFACE 'BADLY TORN; MAY NEED VELCRO FASTENERS: It's a kind of tribute: the Georgia House has invited Jamie Foxx to celebrate his oscar for pretending to be Ray Charles by re-enacting Charles' visit to their Atlanta chamber in 1979. Which... yes, it's very nice, and very flattering, but slightly puzzling: the visit of the real Ray Charles was a key, important event; isn't it slightly diminished by inviting a let's pretend Ray Charles to recreate it?
SOME OTHERS, EMBRACE; PASS ME BY: The big Leeds Millennium square dates for Embrace have now got a full complement of supports. (Hang about - Leeds has a Millennium Square? Since when? Did they rename something five years ago?) The bands taking the stage include The Ordinary Boys, The Subways, Hard-Fi and Anechoic on May 28th; Thirteen Senses, Longview, The Engineers and Infrasound on the 29th. You won't get tickets now, mind.
EDITORS STRIKE OUT ON TOUR: Editors - the band who used to be Snowfield and with that member who looks like Kevin Eldon and Brett Anderson had a baby - are releasing a new single and going out on a tour. The single is called Munich and you can slip it in your Mac Mini from April 18th. The tour - unless there are any modifications - runs like this:
1st Bournemouth, Villa
3rd Oxford, Zodiac
Then, they join the Moving Units tour:
5th Birmingham, Club HQ
6th Cardiff, Barfly
7th Nottingham, Stealth Club
8th Glasgow, Nice & Sleazy’s
9th Stoke, Underground
11th Manchester, Bierkeller
12th Leeds, Joseph’s Well
13th London, The Garage
14th Cambridge, Academy at APU Students Union
And it's back to just Editors:
15th Liverpool, University
16th Hull, Silhouettes
18th Inverness, Market Bar
19th Aberdeen, Kef
20th Dundee, Reading Rooms
21st York, Fibbers
22nd Newcastle, Northumbria University
23rd Middlesbrough, Empire
See? Like Kevin Eldon/Brett Anderson. Are we wrong?
JAMELIA: FLOODED WITH LOVE: Jamelia has decided it's time to move in with her boyfriend Darren Byfield - seen here not actually being levitated - after a domestic crisis.
She was living quite happily elsewhere with her mum, but came home one day to find the house flooded. She seems to have taken this as a sign that href="http://www.ananova.com/entertainment/story/sm_1305633.html?menu=">it was time to move in with Gillingham player Darren. There's a "source" on hand:
"Things have been getting pretty serious between them and it just seemed like the natural thing for Jamelia to move in with Darren.
"It took an emergency for her to realise she wanted to take her relationship with Darren a step further and live with him under the same roof."
The flood remains a bit of a mystery; rumours that someone had tried to flush a football boot down the toilet are unconfirmed.
HUQ OFF: We were doing our best to remain aloof from Fame Academy does Comic Relief, but last night we did catch Konnie Huq doing Kids in America. [You can make up your own Michael Jackson joke, can't you? You don't need us to spoonfeed you].
She wasn't very good, but we couldn't believe the po-faced judges, who were banging on about it like she was a desperate wannabe. Hello, David Grant, maybe Konnie isn't that arsed because she's got a dayjob? Have you thought of that? Kim Wilde was also called upon, and glorious Kim offered a tentative "I think she did my song about as well as I could present Kids in America" - somewhat generous, actually, as Kim's quite a good presenter.
There was also Colin Murray, turning up to "support" Edith Bowman - he'd brought her a sexy neglige. I'm telling you, they have a Charlie-Shelley Corrie thing going on there. He'll be waving around the Edith Bowman topless photos and suggesting she diets for Children In Need - you'll see.
Upshot was, of course, Konnie got voted off. Gina Yashere - who has a singing voice designed to keep ships colliding in fog - somehow survived another round.
