Secrets, secrets

Rod Stewart and Penny Lancaster are, apparently, planning to get married - it's all a big secret. In fact, says Victoria Newton:

are such a closely guarded secret, even family members don’t know where the ceremony will be.

Newton, of course, has no truck with surprises:

I can put them all out of their misery — it is going to be on an Italian island in mid-June and the smart money is on Capri.

Of course, people will note that she's semi-guessing, and we know Newton's track record with intuition.

We've got a million things for you to listen to...

Back, briefly, when we were foolishly given a radio show by a station which came to regret their decision sometime around the second Bivouac track, and only let us carry on because they were going to go off the air after a month, we used Dalek Beach Party's The Sound of Music as our theme tune. (And, you know, we would again, were anyone to make the same mistake.) We've not heard the track for ages, because our vinyl is still in a box and our promised new turntable hasn't arrived, and we never really expected to find the obscure anti-racist album it came from online.

That was before the essential Indie Mp3 blog alerted us to Bubbyworld's Waah page, offering downloads of everything Waaah and Bring On Bull records made. From that Screaming Custard/Dead Famous People flexi up to the Sound of Music. Enjoy.

How labels care for their artists: Thursday

Thursday - recent providers of support to the My Chemical Romance tour - have just split from Island Records. Talking to In It For The Money magazine, Geoff from the band explained why:

They weren’t the same label that we signed to. Everybody that signed us moved to Warner Brothers, and there was just like six months during War All The Time when we just didn’t have anybody working there. Then they brought in the new staff and it took us a long time to get used to them. I actually like all the new people, but they were much more focused on bands like Fall Out Boy, The Killers... more of like a real pop thing and so bands like us and Thrice they just kind of were like you know, didn’t know what to do. So right away when our record came out and we saw that like we weren’t gonna be a priority anymore, we were just kind of like ‘well let us go’ you know ‘just let us go’, cos we have so many labels that like us and would like to put out a record, just let us go and we’ll go and put out another record somewhere. And they were all like ‘no waaaaaaaay, we love you guys, and you sell a lot of records for us’ and stuff and you know we just kept meeting with them and eventually they were just like well if you really don’t want to be here, you don’t have to be here. So we just got all the paper work drawn up...

Noel Gallagher puts the light out

Noel covers The Smiths. That's "covers" as in "mother I can feel the soil falling over my head". There Is A Light which has just gone out.

Let's go round again: Ringo's house

It's probably lucky I'm just a bloke doing a music website and not, say, someone with a serious council tax problem, as it seems Liverpool City Council has tremendous trouble with its outgoing email.

Still, after mentioning here that we were still waiting for a response from Flo Clucas about the mystery of Ringo's house, we had a response within a few hours:

The essence of the response was:
Both responses are correct. A new home has been found for the house, NML is delighted to have the prosepect of utilising it as indeedd they wrote to me some 15 months ago.
However we are currently in a legal process as far as a CPO is concerned and until that process is complete, no decision is made.
Best wishes
Flo
PS I have not had the Housing Portfolio for more than a year, so will not be in a position to respond to questions related to Housing.

So, that does sort of square the circle: when I was told back in January 2006 that "this has been done", it was "done" in the sense of "it hasn't been done yet". This is our response:

Flo,

Thanks for your reply - we really don't seem to have much luck with our email communication, do we? When I wrote to you in 2006, I seem to remember it was only the third time I contacted you that your response to me made it through the system.

Anyway, cheers for your clarification - I'm still not sure "this has been done" in 2006 and "no decision has been made" in 2007 can simultaneously be accurate, but I suspect that might just be me over-reading too much into the earlier phrase.

My apologies for tugging on your coat-tails with a housing matter - I'd assumed since you had been quoted in the Daily Mirror and the Liverpool Echo on the matter of Ringo's house at the start of this year it was still in your remit. Who should I now address my enquiries towards on this issue? I'm still very interested to get a response to the question about the cost of this project, and who will be funding it.

Thanks again for the reply,

Simon

As ever, we'll let you know when we get a response.

Apparently, heroin screws you up: Why weren't we warned?

The Sunday People shows why it's doing so very very well in the modern world by reproducing online a story from the paper. It's about a photo it's got of Pete Doherty showing the way his drug habit has ruined his looks. Trouble is, the paper doesn't bother to scan the photo onto the website, so it's kind of like reading a transcript of a radio programme. Try and picture this in your mind's eye:

A HORRIFIC new close-up of crack head Pete Doherty proves how years of drug abuse have taken their toll.

His teeth are now little more than ROTTEN pegs and his nose is ravaged by unsightly SORES.

It's the teeth that seems to bother the paper the most - they even called in an expert:

A Harley Street cosmetic dentist yesterday explained how hard drugs including heroin ruined Pete's teeth.

Dr Anthony Zybutz said: "One of the biggest problems with heroin addicts is not looking after themselves. Their focus is on the drug rather than looking after their teeth."

There's one for the next government campaign: "Taking heroin may make you forget to floss." The risk of dying in a pool of your own shit is one thing; but imagine a drug which leaves you sometimes skipping the second brushing of the day. Doesn't bear thinking about, does it?

And the X-Factor winner is...

So, after that glittering list of judges waved around to replace Louis Walsh, who will it really be? Chris Moyles? David Gest? Mel B?

Erm... no, it's Sinitta. Apparently, and somewhat ickily, her former boyfriend Cowell has been preparing her to take the reins:

"I do feel bad because Louis is a close friend, but he is not on the show any more and that's not my fault.

"I'm the rightful new judge because I've been groomed for the job."

And, presumably, the Reynolds Girls were too busy.

Small distubance at McCartney home; nobody injured

According to this morning's News of the World, there was a minor security scare at Paul McCartney's Sussex house this week when a person suffering from a mental illness attempted to drive his car into the grounds.

Well, we say "a person suffering from mental illness" - the NOTW reckons it was a "RAGING madman" or, on more sober reflection, a "middle-aged Beatle nut." McCartney wasn't apparently in any danger - he wasn't at the house at the time, and security staff and police stopped the man getting in. Indeed, with the cops charging through country lanes chasing the guy, it sounds like Paul McCartney was actually in less danger than the rest of us.

The intruder has been detained under the mental health act.

Apparently, there's been an increase in the number of people turning up at the house looking odd recently - not, we're sure, in any way attached to the number of times the papers talk about the house. Helpfully, today's NOTW publishes a handy aerial shot of the house to illustrate its tale of "attempted assassination", alongside the handy nugget that you can get to the house by cutting through the trees. It's almost as if they're hoping for a state funeral.

Marie Osmond back on the market

We're pretty certain this one isn't an April Fool hoax, too: Marie Osmond is divorcing her husband Brian Blosil. The pair are so positive and upbeat about each other that it's a miracle they're bothering divorcing at all:

In a statement released by Osmond's publicist, the couple said: "Though our marriage is ending, we continue to have a very amicable relationship.

"Our marriage has always been a faithful one and neither of us is assigning fault for the divorce."

The couple married in 1986. It was Marie's second marriage, and you just know that somewhere an aunt is sniffing and saying "I knew it wouldn't last."

Nursery Klass

Of course, the day being what it is, it might not be true, but the statement announcing Myleene Klass' pregnancy seems to be genuine:

"Graham and I are ecstatically happy. We've always wanted a family of our own.

"I am truly delighted and know Graham will make a fantastic father."

Klass is currently co-presenting that half-assed attempt to merge a quiz and the X-Factor on BBC One on Saturdays, sat next to an increasingly uncomfortable-looking William G Stewart.

Glasto sells out

The ticket sale for Glastonbury hasn't run as smoothly since the days when people used to turn up and buy their tickets the day before - the lot sold out in two hours without any meltdown of the equipment. Of course, having thinned out the market to just the 400,000 registrants did help a great deal. (Presumably, the credit cards were checked as the tickets were sold, rather than being put to one side to check later as Reading Festival claimed happened with theirs.)

And has the heavy-handed security hoops frustrated the Glastonbury Ebay ticket sell-off? Almost, but not quite. You can still buy a ticket for Glasto on Ebay right now, but...

... we're not sure it's entirely genuine. After all - where are the sponsor's logos?

This week just gone: Vote Saxon

Seven days on No Rock and Roll Fun...

The ten most read articles this week:

1. Sarah Harding in her pants is sexy; Angelica Bell in her bra is wrong, says the Mail
2. Heather Mills nude in the present
3. Macca dates Guiness heir
4. Heather Mills nude in the past
5. Gay McFly naked performance
6. R Kelly's sex video to be shown in court
7. Is KT Tunstall a lesbian? Is she interesting?
8. Lily Allen changes on trains
9. Kerry Katona denies appearing in sex tape
10. Video of Britney Spears fooling with strippers?

More interestingly this week, REM announced they'd try their new stuff out in Bono's manor; Puff Daddy flew into a panic because a bloke asked him for a kiss; the Pet Shop Boys cheated death by being asleep; the Sony Radio award shortlist was announced and Brett Anderson released his solo debut.

You can read the whole week on one page or skim the week before in a single post.

Five years ago, arty types were invited to design a Belle & Sebastian cover; calling Bono as a character witness helped Peter Buck of REM get off his air rage charge; copy protection madness led to Celine Dion CDs breaking computers; Megadeath and Deacon Blue split; the great Jennifer Lopez sex video case was dropped following a confidential settlement; Earworm records called it a day and Branson sold half of V2 to a bank. Probably the wrong half.

You don't have to buy these, but you could:


Gorgeous box o'Gedge: Wedding Present Peel Sessions


Brett Anderson goes solo; finally gets to write about love and poison


We've not heard this Hilary Duff album ourselves, but if it's half as interesting at the Guardian suggests ("the best cuts here hold their own against Kylie, though the more apt comparison is Rachel Stevens' fantastic but underperforming solo album") it's worth a listen


We make this the fourth Stiff Little Fingers collection, but none the worse for that


Aptly named Crazy Mixed-Up Kid captures Joe Brown's work at Pye straddling music hall covers and the birth of rock and roll


June Tabor's Apples rewards the investment on the first track, The Dancing, which grew out of a project developing folk songs from the memories of care home residents


A "sexual history" of Michael Jackson - not, we're sure, a work full of half-formed guesses and idle speculation


Brian Eno revisits his 1995 diary. "June 23rd - decided to write my diary as if I was re-editing it ten years hence. Had some toast. Recorded sound of lift doors."


Peter Falk spins anecdotage out into an autobiography


Just in time for Captain jack's return to the motherseries - the last bits of Torchwood hit DVD

String Cheese Incidents: Cops swoop on fans

Midway between "heavy-handedness" and "shooting fish in a barrel", police targetted two Vail dates on String Cheese Incident's farewell tour, swooping up about ten drug arrests each time.

The band have chosen to distance themselves from the fans on this one:

“The String Cheese Incident does not and never has condoned any kind of illegal behavior,” said Carrie Lombardi with Madison House Publicity in Boulder. The company handles publicity for String Cheese Incident.

“The band is not responsible for fans’ behavior,” she said. “They’ve been together for 15 years without much incident, and these things are the irresponsible behavior of the few that the media always pays attention to.”

So, that's fifteen year without "much incident" - she doesn't say if there's ever been much String Cheese. It would have been nice for the band to have said something that sounded a little less like a disappointed headmaster, especially since the media has generated a response like this, from the Daily Sentinel:

String Cheese Incident was formed in 1993 in Boulder. Described as a jam band, String Cheese Incident has been compared to the Grateful Dead, because both bands toured much of the time with fans who followed them. Drug use by fans during Grateful Dead concerts has been documented.

Nice - people say this band sound like a band whose fans used drugs, ergo, the targeting of their fans is a sane response. Rather than allowing their publicist to aid this sort of media froth, shouldn't the band offer something more of a stand?

What the RIAA have done for the world

The RIAA's heavy-handed legal activities - sending letters demanding large sums of cash under the threat of being taken to court, and having to pay much more - has been pulling in a nice pile of cash for the record labels. It almost looks so easy, it could be a scam.

Indeed, it is a scam - but at least the RIAA do have some sort of moral point they're trying to make, however wrong it may be, and however nastily they're going about it.

In their wake, however, there are now scammers using the same method purely to make some ill-gotten gains. P2P users get a legal-looking letter claiming they've downloaded an illegal copy of some game, an offer to settle out-of-court and a load of bumpf which seems to suggest they might have unwittingly done something wrong. People pay up.

After all, people who've never downloaded music pay up to the RIAA as it's the line of least resistance.

Well done, RIAA: You've created a whole new type of crime.

Fall Out Boy: Thanks for the money

It was spotted first by Dictionary Girl, a blogger on the Suicide Girls network (no, we really do only read it for the articles): Fall Out Boy's video for Thanks For The Memories is little more than a sold-out, soulless advertising hoarding. At least the opening caption has the good grace to mention the sponsorship tie-up with TAG (a can of spray with which young American boy virgins attempt to attract females, kind of akin to Lynx), but the repeated shots of Nokia brand mobile phones - that's Nokia - are either paid, undeclared endorsements, or else a startling coincidence. The pointless scene which makes much of a Ford Tahoe also reeks of being funded by a marketing department.

We live in a capitalist society, and advertising is everywhere. But when your video is made according to rules laid down by men in suits, and you're too busy pocketing the cash to even acknowledge that you've been bought, that makes you worse than Fay Weldon. At least she admitted how cheaply her art could be bought.

Eyes and ears

Talking of Conor Oberst, the young man with most eyelike eyes in the music industry is currently streaming his new album, Cassadaga, from the Saddle Creek records website. There's also a couple of free MP3 downloads, and if you get the right keystroke combination, video of a naked Conor Oberst, lashed to a waterwheel, being pawed at by a gang of scrawny androgynous young peoples.

We may have just dreamed one of those parts.

Wuss watch

From one set of awards to another... Cracked have totted up some sort of voting system to name the nine greatest wusses in rock today. In full:

Billy Corgan and James Iha
Chris Cornell
Moby
Belle And Sebastian
Voxtrot
Conor Oberst
Sufjan Stevens
Brandon Flowers
Panic! At The Disco

We're not sure that including Belle & Sebastian is fair, really - they've always been sensitive and haven't ever pretended to be "raaaaaawwwk", whereas nailing Corgan and Flowers for thinking that not shaving for a couple of days is on a par with fighting, bare-knuckle, in the car park round the back of The Goat And Compass is a bit nearer the mark. But what sort of list is this, without a My Chemical Romance in sight?

We are the world

We really wish Radio 3 would come up with a better name for their world music awards than the World Music Awards, but they haven't. And probably won't. This year's winners have been announced:

Africa: Mahmoud Ahmed
Asia/Pacific: Debashish Bhattacharya
Americas: Gogol Bordello
Europe: Camille
Mid East & North America: Ghada Shbeir
Newcomer: K'Naan
Cross-cultural: Medioni & Rodriguez
Club Global Award: Gotan Project
Album of the Year: Ali Farka Toure - Savane

It's quite an honour to be the best album out of all the albums on the planet.

We can't help but wonder if Fonseca is feeling a little bit robbed at having missed out on the Americas prize to the Bordellos.

Stones cool on global warming

The Rolling Stones have denied they're going to be top of the bill at Al Gore's London global warming gig, as they'd have to cancel their Rome date to be there.

And The Stones never cancel tour dates. Unless, you know, one of them falls out a tree, or something. Or goes into rehab. Or if it makes fiscal sense to relocate an entire leg of the tour into a different tax year. Or if everyone will be at home watching one of those history-sized gigs like Live Aid on their telly that night.

Hang on... we might have a winner...

Stipe plans to park tanks on Bono's lawn

Okay, we know Sir Bono of Bono is 73% Dutch these days, but even so, it's curious that REM have picked Dublin Olympia ("in the shadow of the U2 tower, like everything else in Dublin") for a residency honing down material for the next album. They'll play every night between June 30th and July 5th, except for the 2nd.

Expanding fringe

T on The Park's Edinburgh festival spin-off T On The Fringe has announced that Johnny Borrell and the Razorlights will join the Foo Fighters and Kaiser Chiefs topping off nights in the capital this August.

Taking the Mika

They say revenge is a dish best served cold - but then they also say that you shouldn't take your vest off before the end of May and that would just make you stink. Mika, though, is up for a spot of revenge, having once been knocked back by Simon Cowell:

"I had a meeting with Simon a few years back. He said my songs weren't very good and I wasn't a songwriter.

"Then I spotted a gold disc for the Teletubbies single to the left of him and thought, 'This is possibly not the man for me'."

Some might say the bright, empty Teletubbies song isn't a million miles from Grace Kelly - and if we remember correctly, wasn't the official response to the huge "Is Tinky-Winky gay" story a refusal to even countenance talking about the Teletubbies' sexuality?

Diddy flees from wannabe Daddy

We always knew that Sean Combs was all puff and no balls. Does any man in 2007 really get so thrown by having a bloke hit on him that he runs away squealing?

Diddy lasted just ten minutes at London's Maddox club, before his shiny, shiny things and stylish clothes attracted another guy's eye:

One guest reveals: "This guy was quite drunk and he'd already made passes at one of the barmen. But when Diddy walked in, the guy made it his mission to try and get in there with him."

"The guy just went in for the kill, grabbing a vodka bottle off Diddy's table and lunging towards him. He looked like he was puckering up as he tried to grind against him - and Diddy wasn't amused. He couldn't flee the club fast enough."

It's not clear why Diddy flew away in such a panic - was it because he was enjoying it a little too much? Is he afraid you can catch gayness? Or was it simply that he was annoyed that he was considered second choice after his admirer had got a knock back from the hired help?

Still, at least the guy who tried it on has the excuse that he was very, very drunk indeed.

Ringo's house

Talk of the Beatles does remind me: I'd been hoping to hear from Flo Clucas, the Liverpool City Councillor who told us that Ringo Starr's old house had found a new home in 2006, and told the Liverpool Echo that the idea "remained a suggestion" in 2007. It seems a small enough anomaly, and I'd have thought there must be a simple explanation. I tried emailing Flo towards the back-end of February; no response. You'll recall our earlier correspondence took some time because she'd been to America and they'd moved the servers at Liverpool City Council, so after a month I prompted her again. Still nothing. We've tried for a third time this morning; let's hope she finds time to deal with this before the May elections.

Lennon: and the value of nothing

Despite his burbling on about imagining no possessions, John Lennon was quite fond of things. However, he wasn't afraid of helping other people imagine lives without things - for example, when he went round Hugh Hefner's house, he happily stubbed out a fag on a Matisse.

Hefner was forgiving:

“He was separated briefly from his wife YOKO ONO and was in a very bad mood.

“He was drinking a great deal. He misbehaved a little bit and a couple of my friends took exception to it.

“He put a cigarette out on a Matisse and one of my friends was going to kick his butt. But he’d been drinking.

“He was under tremendous pressure. And Lennon was one of my heroes.”

The lack of respect from one supposed artist towards another's work is interesting. It's not just Jesus who Lennon thought he was bigger than.

Hot shot boys: Tennant and Lowe cheat death, a bit

As if the story about the flaming meteor shards nearly hitting a plane wasn't enough to spark a whole revival of the Airport movie franchise, the sizzling space rock nearly took out official national pop heroes.

Yes, The Pet Shop Boys were on the plane. How did they cope with such a terrifying ordeal? Neil reveals all:

“We were blissfully unaware of it. We didn’t know anything had happened until the next morning when the waitress at breakfast said, ‘Are you glad to be alive?’

“Then we realised with horror what had happened. Our friends and families started calling us in a panic to find out if we were OK.”

Hats off to the graphics department at the Sun for managing to produce a fairly accurate illustration of the crisis:

Michael Jackson as healthy as ever

We've know you'll have been worried, but relax: Although Michael Jackson and some of his entourage had a spot of illness while they were in Europe, none of them had to go to hospital.

His spokesperson, the ever-open Raymone Bain, reassured us all:

"He was a little under the weather when he returned from Europe," said Ms Bain.

"He probably had a bad cold or the flu. But he was never hospitalised."

What would be the point? They never let him sleep in those Ronald McDonald houses any more, do they?

Stock markets - which hadn't reacted to news of Jackon's illness at all - remain unaffected by the possibility of Jacko having a head cold, although a broker from one of the main banks did say "it must be awful him having a cold - he must have to check the hanky really closely every time he blows his nose. Just to make sure, like."

Victim support: Kate Nash signs

The world, of course, splits into two camps of hugely unequal proportions when it comes to Kate Nash; we're on the love side, and, yes, we know that's quite a lonely place to be.

However, it seems Fiction are on this side, too, as Drowned In Sound are reporting that the anti-Allen has signed a deal with Universal sub-label Fiction Records. She's expected to spend the advance on cake and thrift shop dresses.

Sony BMG dumps the demo tape

Sony BMG have taken a bold leap into the future, telling any bands who want to get locked in to one of its contracts that, in future, it's digital or nothing from now. If you want someone in Sony's group of companies to hear your music, you now have to upload demos to one of an array of websites like RCAdemos.co.uk. It's because blogging is the future:

Blogging is clearly one of the major trends in music, media and entertainment," said Sony-BMG's UK and Ireland Music Entertainment Chairman and Chief Executive Ged Doherty.

"100,000 new blogs go online each day at the moment, and the blogosphere is doubling every 230 days so it makes complete sense for the major labels to use the process in a creative way to encourage, discover and communicate with new artists," he said.

They've discovered blogs! And use the word "blogosphere"! (Despite nobody having said that with a straight face since about 1975.)

Seriously, it's an interesting idea, but we're a little bit bemused by the execution - we imagine that Reuters is getting a bit over-excited saying this is the only way to get demos to Sony labels, but since it's clearly meant to be the main way, the number of hoops you have to leap through are puzzling. You have to sign up to create a blog via SixApart's Vox service, agreeing to a bunch of terms and conditions in the process. This, to offer to work with a label.

This is sort of akin to the A&R department previously having forced people to open a small market stall before they could pass a cassette over. Since bands are the raw material of record labels, you'd have thought they would be looking to reduce the hoops, rather than increase the number of them to jump through.

Travolta abandons the planet

John Travolta is worried about global warming. He does at least acknowledge that his five jets and private airport might make him an unlikely ecologist, but... he needs them:

"Everyone can do their bit. But I don't know if it's not too late already. We have to think about alternative methods of fuels.

I'm probably not the best candidate to ask about global warming because I fly jets.

I use them as a business tool though, as others do. I think it's part of this industry - otherwise I couldn't be here doing this and I wouldn't be here now."

We're not sure about movie stars - we're including Travolta on No Rock by virtue of his late 70s hits, not his acting - but if owning a fleet of planes and building an airport on your land was essential to being in the film industry, wouldn't there be a lot more planes in the air? Is the need for your own air force now so crucial the cry to difficult actors has become "you'll never eat a personalised in-flight meal 40,000 feet above this town again?"

Still, Travolta has got a proposal that will allow all the actors to have a flock of jets and the human race continue:

"I'm wondering if we need to think of other planets and dome cities."

Good thought, John - let's get the people of the South Pacific off to live on Jupiter before they drown, shall we? Let's take one of your special super space planess.