Amon Duul II Weekend: Between The Eyes

From Germany's answer to Top Of The Pops, Beat Club, this is a 1970 performance:



[Part of Amon Dull II weekend]

Winehouse under a legal cloud again

Given her non-appearance in Paris last night, Amy Winehouse might have some extra legal bother to deal with again:

A statement on the Rock En Seine website said Winehouse's appearance had to be scrapped at the "last minute".

The statement added: "We are very sorry about this situation and share the disappointment of the festival-goers."

Winehouse is said to be recovering at home. Her spokesman declined to comment on the threat of legal action.

He had previously said: "Amy Winehouse was regrettably unable to perform at the Rock En Seine show in Paris due to illness.

"She was taken ill at her house and wasn't able to travel to France for the concert."

Presumably, if you're so ill you can't travel, you'd know more than two hours in advance - I know the Eurostar is brilliant, but even so, you wouldn't be thinking "well, I'm due on stage in Paris at eight o'clock, so I'll need to be heading off just after PM finished", would you?

This buggers the chances of REO Speedwagon being allowed into town

If you read this report of gig-related turmoil in the Patriot News, you might think it was Slipknot or Marilyn Manson who'd come to town:

Police said eight of the arrests were for underage drinking, and five were for disorderly conduct. Police said one person was charged with trespassing.

Township police were assisted by the state police Bureau of Liquor Control Enforcement and the Dauphin County sheriff's office.

But no: It was Journey who caused this crime.

How high must the drinking age be there if Journey fans are too young to drink?

MTV European fakes

There's been a warning that fake tickets with prices in the thousands are circulating for the MTV Europe awards. You can tell tickets being offered are fake, because genuine ones (a) aren't yet available and (b) aren't worth three figures, much less four.

Amon Duul II Weekend: Phallus Dei

An extract from a live performance of the Phallus Dei album:



[Part of the Amon Duul II weekend]

Like-o Candy

Mary Chain songs, lovingly recreated: The Jesus And Mary Chain Covers Project.

Gordon in the morning: Locked lips

It doesn't really matter who it's about, all you need to know is a grown man wrote this in a newspaper this morning:

The pair couldn’t keep their hands off each other and locked lips in full view of fellow frolickers in the bar.

Meanwhile, Gordon laps up Victoria Beckham's trip to Manchester:

They supped £8,000 of vintage bubbly Perrier Jouet Belle Epoque Blanc de Blancs at posh Japanese venue Ithaca in the city.

With dinner included, the final bill was an eye-watering £10,000.

I bet hubby DAVID was relieved to know her perfume producers Coty were footing the bill.

Let's just leave aside that if Beckham needed to raise ten grand, he'd probably need to, ooh, play thirteen seconds of football or do one twenty-millionth of a photoshoot, and just allow our jaws to drop at Smart's 1950s attitude. Mrs. Beckham is out promoting what we shall - this once - call with a straight face "her business"; Gordon assumes that the hubby will be underwriting it all. Let's just hope Victoria was back home in time to cook David's tea, eh, Gordon?

Embed and breakfast man: Amon Duul II

Something slightly Proggy and a lot Teutonic this weekend - that'll teach you for complaining about Britpop. Inspired by Rob Hughes' replaying of a 1973 Peel Session this week on 6Music, we're dipping into the back catalogue of Amon Duul II. Without Amon Duul II, it's probable there wouldn't have been Krautrock as we know it.

Founded in 1969 out of a schism in a commune-based improv band, Amon Duul II were the more successful of the two factions. They achieved chart success in the UK - along with the Peel Session - but a move to Atlantic Records irked the purists and marked a change in the music; striving for accessibility, and sales, resulted in an erosion of early support without much in the way of new fans to replace them. Oh, yeah, and punk. Punk definitely didn't help them. They called it a day in 1981, although the surviving members reunited to perform at drummer Peter Leopold's funeral in 2006.

Let's start near the very beginning - this is an untitled jam from 1969:



More about the band
Official site - aptly for a prog band, the site is completely over-engineered and slow to navigate
Wikpedia entry
Amon Duul II on Last.FM

Buy
Phallus Dei - debut album, and yes, it translates as God's cock.
Vive Le Trance
DVD of Phallus Dei live - not the greatest quality, but essential for aficionados

More video action across the weekend
Phallus Dei
Between The Eyes live on Beat Club
Surrounded By Stars live in 1975

Well, she was conceived after Cerys did her News Of The World bra and panties shoot, so...

Cerys Matthews is being credited - in part - for a resurgence in more traditional names for children in Wales. This is apparently a trend away from 'celebrity' names, although quite how naming your kid off the woman on I'm A Celebrity fits with that isn't explained.

Napster tries to block shareholders from board

The long, slow, public death of Napster enters a new wave of spasms, as "dissident shareholders" attempt to get voted onto the company's board in the face of stiff opposition from the current board. Why, say the current stewards of Napster, they don't even know about the business:

Their SEC filings describe work experiences—musician, nursing home executive, ice cream franchisee, middle management banking executive and other positions—that are irrelevant to a company like Napster competing in the highly sophisticated digital music industry.

If I was catty, I might point to Napster's flailing swoosh on the downward spiral and ask how all the current board's glitzy experience is actually helping them in the highly sophisticated digital music industry.

But it's worse than that, wail the board: the would-be members haven't even been on a board before:

The dissident group has provided no evidence showing that any of its members have ever served on the board of a public company, meaning they would require on-the-job training.

Goodness - can you imagine? Never mind that they might have some good ideas, or plans about how to salvage the mess - you'd have to teach them how to sit at a big table, and who knows if any of them have even seen a flipchart before? You know, the important Napster Board will be trying to do important business things, and these guys will be sitting there needing to have the hands-free telephone explained to them.

If 'never having been on a board before' disqualifies you from being on a board, what are we going to do when all the current board members of companies die off?

While we appreciate that the dissidents are music enthusiasts and subscribe to Napster’s service, such interests hardly qualify any of them to serve on your Board.

Yes: the Napster board think that being enthusiastic about the company and the business it is in doesn't really qualify you for having anything to add to the way the company is run. That's a tacit admission that anyone who really understands the highly sophisticated digital music industry has long since abandoned Napster as a bad deal - so any current customers clearly must be a bit klutzy. But, hey, the board have put it in a nice way.

The real beef, of course, is that the dissidents want Napster sold, and Napster sold quick; the current board know it has got to be sold, but want a more cautious approach - in other words, one which doesn't involve their arses being kicked out of the door.

The soundtrack album which feature the noises of joysticks being waggled

The history of computer games turned into movies is not, it has to be said, a glorious one. Bob Hoskins as a Super Mario Brother, anyone? That one with Kylie in? Admittedly, when Lunar JetMan was filmed as 2001 A Space Oddity [note to self - check on Wikipedia before posting this] it was a success, but generally, it's a genre which seems to exist solely to ensure that the 99p DVD box on my local newsagent's counter is always well-stocked.

Still, at least you can understand how a movie might be made from a computer game with a plot. What's less clear is how you'd adapt a game that's not story driven, and turn it into a movie. That, it seems, is the challenge Brett Ratner is setting himself, as he plans - yes, really - to turn Guitar Hero into a movie:

“I love ‘Guitar Hero’ and I think it’s a part of pop culture. I would love to do a ‘Guitar Hero’ movie, if Activision would ever let me. I’m trying to convince them, but why would you have a movie screw up such a huge franchise? Not that I would make a bad movie. So that would be cool, to do a ‘Guitar Hero’ movie. ”

But, listen, he's telling us the plot:

“It could be about a kid from a small town who dreams of being a rock star and he wins the ‘Guitar Hero’ competition. One of these dreams-[come-true] kind of concepts.”

You can see why this story would need to be about Guitar Hero - because otherwise it would be every TV movie ever made about teenagers competing in competitions, and how would you persuade a video game franchise to fund that, eh?

When you're putting an organ to your mouth, think of Bob Dylan

We're not quite sure what's taken him so long to get round to the obvious cash-making tie-in (perhaps he was just waiting for the very last of his credibility to vanish) but finally, you can buy a Bob Dylan harmonica. They're being made by the same company who did the Steve Tyler harmonicas last year, apparently - if you see someone sitting in a bar muttering "Dylan, Tyler... there must be someone else who uses harmonicas and loves money", that'd be an executive from Hohner.

[You might also enjoy: The extensive coverage we did of Tyler's mouth organ last year]

Lohan update

Since Lindsay posted her last, Micheal, her father, has been back on to his blab-outlet of choice, X17, with this classy riposte:

My father just, literally, died in my arms. I notified all my kids and my lawyer notified Dina's attorney. Let's see if she has the decency and respect to bring my kids to the wake and funeral. THIS will show her true colors!

Now, kids, that's respect - you actually wait until your parent has expired before issuing the challenge to your ex-wife and kids. Nobody warms to a guy who starts turning the funeral into a celeb-slapfest before the corpse is cold.

It's unclear if Lohan also left the hospital room before sending out his challenges to Dina, although since his Blackberry couldn't do any harm once the medical equipment was no longer required, we shouldn't think badly of him if he didn't.

Lohan behold

Time, once again, to turn our attention to the happy world of the Lohans, where Lindsay Lohan's dating of Samantha Ronson has now brought the Kaiser Chiefs just one degree of separation shy of getting a spot on E! Entertainment Television.

Lohan's father, though - who seems to be offering TV networks a chance to pay for him to slag off his daughter - is incensed that Samantha Ronson is making herself famous by kissing his daughter. Though, to be fair, even if that is her motivation, surely that still puts her one moral notch above a man who makes himself famous by verbally bitch-slapping his daughter.

Still, Lindsay can take this no more - and let's be generous and not assume that the "this" isn't "the spotlight being on someone else for a moment" in this case, and lambasts her father's decision to air what remains of the family's dirty laundry in public:

If you have something to say to me, say it to my face -- that's what I have believed my whole life. Don't be a coward and say it to others first, let alone all the media in the world.

The effect of this high-minded appeal to talk face-to-face and not, via advertising-supported proxies, over each other's heads to the court of public opinion is only slightly diminished by being published on Lohan's MySpace blog.

Cradle To small glass office for several hours

Cradle To Grave have pulled their US tour, or rather, had their US tour pulled, after The Department Of Homeland Security weighed them and found them wanting.

The band have released a press release - although this isn't the first time they've been turned back, having been blocked at immigration in the past because "their name might incite violence" and had visa applications knocked down for a lack of artistic merit.

[Singer Greg] Cavanagh commented: "Contrary to popular belief, the US doesn't welcome all foreign musicians with open arms," he chuckled sarcastically. "We regret to say this, but the tour is over before it even started. Thanks to everyone that worked so hard to bring us down there for the shows we had booked. We'll hopefully have better luck next time and be able to play for all you crazy West Coast metalheads."

We're not sure who might hold this supposedly popular belief that the US welcomes foreign artists with open arms, but you've got to love a metal band which uses the phrase "he chuckled sarcastically" in its press releases. Can you even chuckle sarcastically? What would a hollow chuckle actually sound like?

The band claim that the border patrol failed to listen to them - something, to be fair, that the DHS staff have in common with most music lovers.

Where was Joss?

Talking of Barack, though: he's named his vice-presidential running mate. He's accepted the nomination. He's given Hillary a chance to do something other than run through the figures for the Clinton 2012 campaign.

And yet no sign yet of that campaign song Gordon Smart insisted Joss Stone was writing for him.

Psst, Barack - Bono isn't actually an official part of US iconography

And more from the inbox: Barry S emails to point out that Barack took to the stage at Invesco Field last night to the strains of City Of Blinding Lights. Presumably a signal that - while he embraces Hope and Change, he doesn't intend to dismantle the US state's carefully constructed reliance on Bono to provide high office with a carapace of presumed cool.

Also, we'd have used Coors Field if it had been us. They've got fountains.

"Watch out for the cycle path? I thought you said beware of the psychopath"

Another email from James P:

You may remember a story a few months back about a Meat
Loaf impersonator getting threats from Meat Loaf himself, over his tourbus's similarity to Meat Loaf's own.

It gets worse for the poor chap.

He's currently in a legal battle with a working men's club where he was due to play. He refused to go onstage after his tribute bus got stuck up a cycle track where staff had directed him. According to the article, "Club staff also demolished a fence and took down a bollard in a bid to get him to the venue, but to no avail". It's not clear whether that's referring to the bus or the Meat Loaf.

Anyhow, he's now taking the club to court for his £800 fee. Unfortunately they in return have successfully counter-sued for £1950 in lost ticket sales. This is on top of the £1000 he was forced to spend on respraying the tourbus to keep Meatloaf happy.

Is there an unluckier tribute artist out there (besides the Gary Glitter acts, obviously)? I don't know of any. Surely this is PR gold for the real Meatloaf though, who can now claim that he's put some sort of demonic curse on the bus? I reckon a simple statement to the press saying "Meatloaf wishes him the best of luck with the next MOT, as it'd be terrible if it failed..." would do wonders for his image.

James ends up suggesting they never had this trouble with Vengabus, although to be fair, the Venga Boys never got the lucrative Thirsk and Sowerby Institute gig.

Perhaps the most jaw-dropping aspect of this is that the club stood to make about a thousand quid on the deal in the first place - no wonder they were ripping up bollards and pulling down fences to try and get the fake Meat Loaf (Quorn Loaf?) into the building.

It turns out there had been a simple solution all along:

Kevin Andrew, secretary of the Thirsk and Sowerby Institute, said: "A lot of people were very disappointed. We had to tell people on the door it was not going ahead.

"He could have parked on a doctor's car park and we would have helped him with his equipment, but he sped off and didn't give us a chance to offer him alternative access.

"He was bang out of order."

Come on, Mr. Andrew - you can't really complain if you hire a Meat Loaf tribute who leaves like a Bat of Hell, can you?

That's about ten pence a bleep

An email arrives from James P:

This may be interesting, or I may be the last person in the world to have found it... I just clicked the banner on xrrf for the new Little Jackie single (which I rather like). Perhaps unsurprisingly, it took me to a page where I could buy it:

http://www.7digital.com/artists/little-jackie/the-world-should-revolve-around-me-digital/

According to this page, I can download the nice clean edited version for 99p. However, the 'explicit version' is on special offer for just 50p. It's a foul-mouthed bargain! Is this a common occurance? Can I save money on my downloading if I develop a liking for smutty-yet-chirpy pop songs?

How much longer must we keep flinging this cut-price filth at our kids, etc.

Of course, this does make economic sense - anyone can say "arsebiscuits" or "stickyflaps", but it takes a skilled artisan time and effort to carefully remove the sweary bits from the songs. You're paying for that talent, you see.

Darkness at 3AM: Chippy off the old block

What the 3AM Girls don't explain is why, if Natt Weller hates being Paul's son so much, he turned up to pick up his Dad's awards at awards promoting something called Zooqoo.com.

Moaning, moaning, all the way:

"I might as well turn into Calum Best now - get fat, sleep with loads of girls and end up in rehab."

Well, getting yourself into the 3AM column for doing little more than dancing to some PR agency's tune is the first step into turning into Calum Best.

Gordon in the morning: Something fishy

Most people - especially if they were Oasis fans - would do their best to suppress a story which has one of their heroes having a painting of Spongebob Squarepants done for his living room:

The OASIS frontman has commissioned an artist to paint him a massive portrait of the cartoon sponge — in the style of ANDY WARHOL.

Not Gordon, though, who somehow spins 500 words out of it. That's not counting a grim top ten of fish-themed Oasis songs (Sushi's Electric Eel, that kind of thing.)

Included what sounds like a suspiciously cod (it's catching, sorry) quote from Liam:

“SpongeBob is a fucking mental, full-of-beans, enthusiastic sponge that lives at the bottom of the sea in Bikini Bottom. He’s mad for it.

“He’s got a mate called Squidward, who plays the clarinet and is grumpy like our kid NOEL. I’m having a huge painting done at the minute, a proper Andy Warhol-style portrait of SpongeBob.

“He’ll be facing Elvis and Hendrix in the living room.”

Now, I'm not Alan Turing, but to me this sounds like something you might get out of an automated Liam Gallagher quote generator. Maybe Liam just rings up and says "big painting of a child's toy, could you chuck in a few mad for its and a joshing reference to my brother Noel? Thank you."

Lydon spreads himself thinly

The next time John Lydon starts on one of his oh-so-interesting rants about how he's the true spirit of punk and how he never got involved in marketing campaigns and it was all trees round here and so on, he'll be doing so from the perspective of a man who is doing an advert. An advert for Country Life butter.

Once people thought he might topple the Queen herself. Now, he's only capable of unseating these guys:

But it's all for charity

"Is everything she does imbued with low-grade innuendo" asks Michael M, pointing us in the direction of Katy Perry as she has her breasts moulded for charity.

That's as in 'a cast made of', rather than left half-cooked out of the fridge in hot weather. Naturally, the process has been videoed. (There's YouTube if you really want to see Perry getting her tits covered in a sticky white substance. The moulds will be sold to raise funds for a good cause.

Nobody would object to Perry deciding to help out a charity, even with some low-grade teen porn, but given that the charity she's 'helping' is a breast cancer one, is this really the best way to do so? Selling pert little tits made of plaster in aid of women who've lost a breast to cancer seems dangerously close to having a sponsored hop to raise funds for people who've had legs amputated.

... and you might be better off watching at home

Given what happened at the Radiohead Hollywood Bowl gig, the safest place to be watching the band tonight might be online. According to reports in LA Weekly, security guards working for the Bowl attacked Sean Carlson and Phil Hoelting, F-Yeah Fest founders. The pair filmed the strong-arming of a bloke being thrown out of the Bowl:

The guards, employees of CSC Security, the company contracted by the Bowl to provide protection, were being overly rough with him, alleges Carlson. “They're strangling him – brutally. He's gasping for air.” Reich turned his camera directly on the action as the CSC guards continued to restrain the man.

“The guy was screaming,” remembers Reich, “and trying to tell them that he would leave peacefully if they let him go.”

“The guard walked up to [Reich] and said, 'What the fuck do you think you're filming?' and grabbed at the camera,” says one eyewitness who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation. According to the witness, Carlson walked over to intervene, whereupon the security guard pushed Carlson to the ground, sending the flyers scattering across the pavement. Reich filmed this, as well. The eyewitness and his wife, not wanting to get involved, continued toward their car, but notified the L.A. police officers -- “at least six or seven of them,” he says -- stationed at the Bowl entry that there was trouble up above. He says that they did nothing.

As the pair left, one of the guards, it's claimed, suddenly realised that the video was the sort of thing that winds up on YouTube making people look bad, and a chase through traffic ensued as they tried to get the camera.

This is where it gets even worse - as the LA cops sat by and watched:

As Reich headed south on Highland, he spied one of the many police officers who patrol the Bowl. “I cut across and headed that way, thinking, 'He will prevent these guys from taking my tape.'” The guards caught up to him and allegedly tackled him in front of the officer. Another guard restrained Carlson, who was trying to help Reich secure the tape. Reich spotted bystander Dawes, and threw it to him. “I knew that then at least we'd be able to get the tape later,” reasoned Reich. “I figured, there's no way that the security guards are just going to assault this random dude in front of a cop.”

He was wrong. Remembers Dawes: “It landed within five feet of me. I leaned down to pick it up and I got tackled by two of the dudes. They threw me into that ivy-covered wall and I was trying to get them off me. At one point there were three guards on me. I threw the tape to Sean, and that's when it got really ugly.” Dawes alleges that one of the security guards threw Carlson into an electrical box. “He hurled him into it, then threw him onto the ground -- at this point there are two or three officers there. [The security guards] smashed his head into the pavement as they're trying to cuff him, the cops aren't doing anything. I'm yelling, 'Officer, this is your jurisdiction -- this isn't Hollywood Bowl property anymore. Don't let them do this.'” Dawes recalls that the officers replied that they “give event staff leeway.”

That's pretty bad - for the police to cheerfully admit they let a private security firm make the rules on public property seems to be the dereliction of about six types of duty; to allow them to actually assault people on the street really ought to be sacking offence.

After some more violence, according to the pair's tale, Carlson was handcuffed - again by private security - and marched back onto Hollywood Bowl property (that would seem to be kidnapping to us).

The lax attitude of cops towards the private security may partly be explained by the officially-sanctioned moonlighting of LA cops as on-site security.

The official cop response to the allegations:

Captain Girmala says that the Hollywood Bowl hires off-duty LAPD officers for crowd and traffic control issues. She says those officers are “supposed to help during the immediacy of an incident, and are directed to contact on-duty officers if it is determined to be necessary.” She adds that CSC security officers assigned to the Bowl are not permitted to carry actions outside of Hollywood Bowl property. “They're basically to stay within the venue itself, and if anything rises to the level of serious incident, they are to contact the police.” She says that the off-duty officers have radios that are in sync with CSC security.

Girmala says that she's waiting for a more thorough report on the incident, and will comment further once she's apprised of the situation.

The 'security should call the police if there's a serious incident' rule is a brilliant one. Unless, of course, it's security which is perpetrating the incident.

Radiohead tonight

GreenPlastic Radiohead says that Colin out of Radiohead has told them that the band are going to be webcasting their gig from Santa Barbara Bowl tonight via Dead Air Space. Live and free.

Everyone else will be online in the morning to tell them how they've "failed" in some way by doing this.

I'm not going to teach anyone how to dance for you again

The Black Kids might not bother with another record, because it's too much like hard work, complains Reggie Youngblood:

"I don't know if there's going to be a second record. If anything, [performing] has hindered my songwriting because I'm used to writing on my own pace, at my leisure, or while I'm supposed to be working a proper job. I don't really have time to sit down. When I'm not performing, I'm usually really tired and just want to sleep."

So it's that, then, and not the way that everyone was being simply beastly to the band five minutes after they arrived.

DiFranco enForumed

There's just a single date on the Ani DiFranco 'tour' of the UK: she's playing the forum on October 29th at the Kentish Town Forum. Support is coming from Hamell On Trial and Anais Mitchell - both of whom are on DiFranco's Righteous Babe label. Which probably puts the stress on them a little.

Deus ex Manchester - and Dublin and London

News spots in our inbox about three Deus dates in the UK & Ireland this October:

Monday 13 October – DUBLIN – Tripod
Tuesday 14 October – MANCHESTER – Academy3
Wednesday 15 October – LONDON – KOKO

Cuba cracks down on punks

There is a place where punk still threatens the status quo, then: Cuban authorities have arrested Gorki Aguila, singer with Porno Para Ricardo:

Gorki Aguila is 39 years of age & has been visited by his father according to Elizardo Sánchez of the Cuban council for Human Rights and National Reconciliation (CCDHRN) a group which has in turn argued that there is no legal basis for the charges and reiterated their hope that popular support will see those charges dropped. Accordingly an open letter from a cross section of 150 Cuban artists and musicians has been published and a petition has begun on line. The group CCDHRN are already pressurising for the release of an estimated 300 political prisoners.

The Associated Press reports that he's facing trial for "social dangerousness" - behaviour contrary to "Communist morality".

Curiously, the Manic Street Preachers - who, at least once, were quite punky and attempted an aural and lyrical assault on social norms - were welcomed with open arms by the current regime not so long ago. Perhaps Nicky Wire might like to have a word with Havana...

Johnny Vaughan's Next Top Model

We're given to understand the press release for this story came with the words "we give it six months" written in invisible ink all over it: Lisa Snowdon is to co-present Capital's breakfast show.

We say co-present; that would imply some sort of interaction and chemistry between Johnny Vaughan and her.

Vaughan has put together some sort of statement:

"I'm delighted to have Lisa as my new co-host. Her enthusiasm for her new role is self-evident and she's a natural behind the mic. Lisa is a great addition to the Capital breakfast show."

Which, Global GCap executives agree, is saying all the right things. Even if there's nothing there to make the casual listener think "wow - that sounds like a double act I can't miss..."

Snowdon:

"I couldn't think of a better way to start the day than with Mr Vaughan and the breakfast gang. He keeps me on my toes and has me in stitches for the whole four hours.

"I have grown up with Capital and having the opportunity to work with Johnny on London's most iconic breakfast show is a dream come true for me."

Is Johnny Vaughan's the "most iconic" breakfast show? Even if you allow for there being degrees of iconism, if you say 'breakfast show presenters in London' isn't Tarrant still the first one that springs to mind? And Baker, even though he's in the afternoons now, is still more iconic than Vaughan, surely?

And is 'listen to Johnny make me laugh for four hours' as compelling an offer to an audience as Snowdon seems to think?