Last week's Observer Music Magazine? You'll not hear us saying a word against it, mate - always did say it was a magazine of taste and discernment (page 41, cough) but the most interesting thing about the magazine's best of music online is the mention that Popjustice might be about to re-re-reinvent itself as a TV programme. Following the magazines, podcasts and books, it's going to end up spinning off another website off the other end at this rate. I, for one, welcome our Popjustice overlords.
And, confirming 2006 as the year slash went mainstream, site #25 is fandomination.net. "Mostly it reaches a filthy climax."
Morrissey/Douglas Coupland might sound like a very specialist end of the slash market, but actually it was the OMM's main feature. Just as the NME is keen to focus on the youthful side of Morrissey's rock genius (the recent interview was more interested in the 'statesman' rather than the 'elder'), the OMM slips him into the literary genius cubicle. Hence the interview with Coupland, who at least gets that we all make the Morrissey we need, but fails to really turn in much of an interview. You wonder if Coupland is the right guy to head off to interview Morrissey, anyway - it would have been just as much a waste of time of sending Will Self, but they might have got something more than an extended album review off the expenses claim.
Karen O stares out of the cover of the NME - we're no longer sure we can believe in her hair, it's gone beyond bowl to take on an almost spherical shape that suggests there is a hollow running around between hair and forehead. Perhaps there is; perhaps, like Pogo Patterson's sling, she uses it to store sandwiches and putty. Let us never forget, either, that there are two other members of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs - the bloke who looks like Louis Theroux's IT support guy, and the really pretty one who looks like Rufus Wainwright's idea of himself. A lot of people I know don't get Karen O, suggesting that she dresses like she's being helped out by the Red Cross, but this weeks NME cover crystalises her appeal: she's not the most gorgeous of the band, but she's the most compelling. And we British love to be compelled. It's the educational system.
In interview, Karen reveals that the last tour knackered her, what with the band having "put out major, like a putting out machine, at least 100 per cent." But she'll regret the joke that the band don't fight but "go home and pummel our cats instead." That sort of gag almost did for The Primitives.
Inside, there's a woman wearing shades, silver gloves and a tiny, shiny bikini playing an electric guitar. That, of course, would be the first sign of a new Peaches album on the horizon.
Thom Yorke's "Blair made me ill" interview was picked up by most of the media and strewn around in the ongoing bid for someone to find something that'll dent RoboBlair. Even in full, the interview doesn't explain why someone felt that opening a debate on nuclear power was the grounds for cancelling plans for a meeting, but Blair aproving the dropping actual nuclear material onto the people of Iraq hadn't scuppered the hook-up.
The devil being in the detail, the feature on plans by Courtney Love to liquidate the only assets she has, by flogging off the Nirvana songbook, or some of what she owns is full of fascinating demons. "The entire reason to take on this partner is to build the catalogue much like the Elvis catalogue was rebuilt." Look, Courtney, we know you're short of cash and need to rustle some up quickly, and this is a better idea for you than double shifts at the International House of Pancakes. But let's not pretend that it's going to be good for the music. You might want to call it "catalogue", but what you're doing is turning the songs into product. And part of the reason why Nirvana have managed to feel special, even after all these years, is precisely because the songs haven't been flogged to appear on movie soundtracks and Mothers' Day compilations.
Mike Jones - who used to be in Latin Quarter, but is now with Liverpool University - reckons the buy-in could cost as much as a hundred million dollars.
Blimey, who's got that sort of money?
Elevation Partners. "I would really like to do something down the line with Bono's company" trills Courtney.
Imagine, eh? Bono making the strategic decisions about what films could have Silver on their soundtrack. Don't you feel your precious memories are in safe hands?
Radar gets all excited about the Klaxons, who are shaping up to be the first big second-generation rave band.
reviews
live
errors - glasgow nice n'sleazy - "a little too leftfield to garer mainstream love"
bloc party - nottingham rescue rooms - "we'll take Bloc Party over any other British band any night of the week"
albums
be your own pet - be your own pet - "a band with little time for the fourth chord or any of those boring thing boring, boring boys in bands talk about", 8
prince - 3121 - "a millionaire who has spent too much time in his studio alone", 4
secret machines - ten silver drops - "yes, they do prog, but vitally, they do so much more", 7
tracks
totw - the automatic - raoul - "there's a moral in its booty-shaking disco-punk broth"
hard-fi - better do better - "anthemic arms-aloft high points"
pipettes - your kisses are wasted on me - "proper hooks and handclaps"
and, finally, a little something from the world of copyrights. In the last Private Eye, the magazine illustrated a story about a musical cat with a spoof "Depussy" logo based on Edition Peters' Debussy sheetmusic. This week, they carry a letter from Nicholas Riddle (rhymes, of course, with "fiddle") requesting a thousand pounds to "licence" the original. The terrible thing is the grasping note is tricked out as a chummy old rib-nudger: "there is always a danger of an apparent lapse of sense of humour... it is a fact that if one fails to defend one's trademark... while very much enjoying its modified appearance..." With the music business in the hands of so many people desperate to turn a quick buck, how can anyone wonder at the state it is in?
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It's not, actually, her first gigs in two years - she played a small gig in Wales around Christmas time - but why quibble when Cerys Matthews is about to microtour the UK?
