Glastonbury 2009: View from the sofa - Bruce Springsteen

So, as is so often the case, you shouldn't believe anything you read on the internet: BBC 2 has got Bruce.

It's not clear, though, if the steam rising from the man who likes to be called The Boss a little too much is a snazzy, showman's special effect, or if it is just the sweat of hard work leaving his shoulders. Or perhaps his pants are on fire.

We must await the results in the morning.

But, oh, I don't think I've ever heard such an anaemic Born To Run.

Glastonbury 2009: View from the sofa - Saturday night

The simplicity of Esser vocals don't really stand up to not being able to hear the music properly, like being perpetually in the position of a busy room falling quiet just as you say "... and so I had to hit him with the shovel", but, oh, you could eat Esser with a spoon. Of course, it was all shoved away in a corner of Press Red, but it makes it all feel a bit more special.

Florence And The Machine used to be hidden away, too, but look at this, this year - a 6Music pick, no less. Pity the set sounded a bit ropey and overwhelmed, and only really came alive with a Candi Staton cover at the end.

It's turned out to be impossible to avoid both Reggie Yates and Kasabian, so I finally wound up having to watch Reggie get Cerys Matthews in to keep him company in the hovering sky-studio. Matthews put her shoes on the table, which can cause bad luck, but I guess she figured that being interviewed by Reggie is probably one of those situations from which there is no down. Matthews, somewhat oddly, appeared to be wearing exactly the same blazer-and-no-trousers outfit that Edith Bowman was wearing on Friday evening. One presenter at a time is frugal, BBC, but making them share clothes is just going too far. Will Mark Radcliffe be waiting for Zane Lowe to finish with the trousers before he can go on to BBC2?

If, by the way, Mark Radcliffe seemed genuinely bemused by the idea of going on to do a programme without any Neil Young in, tonight he's going to be totally Jack Wooleyed, as it appears the BBC won't be able to show any of Bruce Springsteen's headline set at all.

Perez Hilton: The scarabous finger writes, and having writ, rushes to press delete

The Zelda Lily: Feminism In A Bra blog has got an interesting post showing how far Perez Hilton lacks the courage of his convictions:

The Michael coverage as of yesterday stated that the popular notion around the back-biting, venomous website was that Jackson had staged his heart attack and subsequent death as a off-putting ploy to avoid his up and coming tour this Fall beginning in London. Lavandeira’s original and oh-so-eloquently-worded post stated:

We knew something like this would happen!!

Michael Jackson was taken by ambulance from his Holmby Hills home to a nearby Los Angeles hospital on Thursday afternoon!!

Supposedly, the singer went into cardiac arrest and the paramedics had to administer CPR!!!

His mother is even on the way to visit him!!!

We are dubious!!

Jacko pulled a similar stunt when he was getting ready for his big HBO special in ‘95 when he “collapsed” at rehearsal!

He was dragging his heels on that just like his upcoming 50 date London residency at the 02 Arena, of which he already postponed the first few dates!!!

Either he’s lying or making himself sick, but we’re curious to see if he’s able to go on!!!

Get your money back, ticket holders!!!!

Having called it so wrongly, so quickly, you might have managed to salvage a bit of respect for Hilton had he kept the original post up and subsequently gone "well, I was wrong..."

Instead, he set about cutting down his post to this:

Michael Jackson was taken by ambulance from his Holmby Hills home to a nearby Los Angeles hospital on Thursday afternoon!!

The singer went into cardiac arrest and the paramedics had to administer CPR!!!

His mother is even on the way to visit him!!!

If you're going to trade on your 'saying the unsayable' schtick, you should surely at least leave the unsayable said when you've said it, right?

Glastonbury 2009: In other Glastonbury news...

This is Fake DIY's crack Glastonbury squad disappear from Tweetdom, although Jemima Kiss was saying it was hard to get a data connection there this year.

That'll be all the iPhones. Thank god the 3GS hadn't had much time to propogate.

NME is reporting that Jamie Cullum did a 'tribute' to Jackson as part of his set:

Midway through his performance, the crooner climbed up on top of his grand piano to lead his band through a jazzy version of 'Thriller'.

Clearly reacting to the news of Jackson's death quickly, Cullum relied on a printed out lyric sheet before breaking the song down with some human beatboxing towards the end.

In unrelated news, staff at an exclusive LA funeral home reported that one of their corpses has asked to be hurried to his grave as "he had one fuck of a lot of spinning in it to get done."

Cullum had turned up earlier in a guest capacity with Spinal Tap - along with Jarvis Cocker, presumably canceling each other out.

Bruce Springsteen filled time before headlining tonight by helping out fellow New Jerseyites The Gaslight Anthem on the John Peel stage. It's a nice gesture, but the entire world is hoping they don't feel the need to return the favour.

Glastonbury 2009: View from the sofa - Crosby, Stills & Nash

I'm sure none of them are annoyed that they're on BBC 4 during the evening when Neil got BBC 2 after dark. It's probably just a coincidence that they're doing a Rolling Stones track where Young did a Beatles one.

Although I'm not sure this IS Crosby Stills And Nash. That raincoat with the short arms pushed up, NHS specs and half-assed shave job - isn't this Crosby, Duckworth and Nash?

Bookmarks: Some stuff to read on the internet - Michael Jackson

Amongst the acres of coverage of Jacko, there are some things worth reading - The New York Times dealbook on his dealings with Private Equity companies, for example:

A lot of Mr. Jackson’s monetary dealings have been conducted in private. But several of the pivotal moments have been described in media reports over the years.

Driving many of the deals was Mr. Jackson’s increasingly unmanageable debt load — something that private equity firms can probably relate to these days.

A 2006 article in The New York Times said the principal drains on Mr. Jackson’s finances may have been “monumentally unwise investments that apparently produced equally colossal losses” — and, later, the payments to service his debt.

A financial adviser to Mr. Jackson described how he might have frittered away $50 million on things like amusement-park ideas and “bizarre, global kinds of computerized Marvel comic-book characters bigger than life.”

Michael Jackson: Favourite son

As you might have heard, Michael Jackson died earlier this week. And it's not just celebrities rushing to make sure the camera catches them pulling their best sad faces, oh no. Towns and cities are jostling to try and turn a man's death into a major tourist attraction.

Gary, Indiana wants the body:

The mayor of Michael Jackson's childhood hometown says he'd like to see the pop singer buried in Gary, Ind.

Mayor Rudy Clay tells The Associated Press that short of a burial, he hopes Jackson's body can at least lie in repose at City Hall.

Rudolph says he'll push for that but hasn't broached the possibility with Jackson's family.

That's a nice gesture, then? Taking the man back to the place where the child was born, completing the circle of life and honouring... hang about, can you smell hot dogs? And the sound of someone hammering together souvenir stands?

The 73-year-old mayor says he also hopes the community of about 96,000 along Lake Michigan becomes a mecca for Jackson fans, similar to the way Elvis Presley fans flock to Graceland in Memphis, Tenn.

- at least, that's what we think he said; it was kind of hard to hear above the sound of the machine churning out 'Jackson's birthplace' t-shirts.

But you know what? If you really want to show your emotions by spending some money in a place Jackson was connected with, why not go to Orlando?

Yes, Orlando. Orlando, Florida. Of course it makes sense, just ask the Orlando media:

The pop star spent a lot of time at Disney. He was seen at the Magic Kingdom with child actor Mccauley Culkin.

Orlando Sentinel Music Critic Jim Abbott worked as a boat pilot at the theme park in those years. "He was kind of like this weird eccentric uncle who would come into town unexpectedly at different points."

Yes, it's well known that Disney World welcomes weird, older, single men who see themselves as Uncle figures, eccentrically holidaying alone with young boys to whom they are not related. I believe they usually have a couple of such guys printed on the front of the brochure each year.

Other towns are worried that they might lost their status as home to the most famous dead black pop star. Augusta has swung into action to try and shore up its position:

Makeshift Jackson memorial outside James Brown Arena

Hey, no, it's not quite so random - after all, Jackson was at the arena for one of his last public appearances, except for the times he appeared in public in the following three years.

Bob, celebrated

This is something of a rare delight: House Of Teeth, an online repository for all things Bob.

It starts with, but goes much further than, the video for Convenience:

Glastonbury 2009: Unlikely press releases of our time

Never mind the Jackson tributes, this year's Glastonbury is about the inward investment. According to Into Somerset:

One of the big hits at this weekend’s Glastonbury Festival will not only be its headlining acts – but Somerset itself.

Inward investment organisation Into Somerset says that every year, many of the 180,000 festival-goers have such a great time at Glastonbury that they look to move to Somerset permanently.

Interim CEO Rupert Cox says, “The festival is the catalyst for many of Somerset’s creative businesses. Musicians, artists, actors, designers and many more creatives enjoy Glastonbury so much, that they move here to start their own businesses and capture that unique creative spirit every day of the year.

“I have no doubt that many of the crowd cheering The Boss will, in future, be bosses of their own creative businesses in Somerset.”

Yes. They're right. Indeed, I was so impressed the last time I went to Glastonbury with how well people selling dubious-looking cider in old chemical bottles did, I moved to Somerset and invested heavily in apples and plastic containers. Three bloody months I sat in a lay-by, and I didn't have a single sale. And that was in the run-up to Christmas.

BPI admit to mistakes. Ten years ago.

Geoff Taylor, chief executive of the BPI, writes for BBC News Online to mark the 10th anniversary of Napster. It turns out, you know, the music industry screwed it up:

Napster understood the internet's potential for decentralised music distribution, and offered it to consumers in a way that was simple to understand and use.

Many critics have argued that the music industry could have avoided some of the problems it faces today if we had embraced Napster rather than fighting it.

That's probably true, and I, for one, regret that we weren't faster in figuring out how to create a sustainable model for music on the internet.

Why ever did you not, though?

But this view also overlooks the formidable hurdles we faced in 1999.

To make music fully and legally available on the internet meant clearing the rights in millions of tracks for a huge number of countries, agreeing how the revenue should be shared, implementing workable DRM (which everyone considered fundamental at the time), developing technology to track all the downloads for royalty purposes, as well as creating a quality user experience people would pay for.

Shawn Fanning and his P2P followers didn't worry about any of those things, and weren't prepared to pay fair royalties or to partner in a business model that could sustain investment in new music.

This is a bit of a rewriting of history. The idea that in 1999, the major labels were sitting in offices, struggling with how to surmount licensing problems and create a workable model is like one of those US war movies which shows the American army swinging into action in 1939. The first response of the coming of Napster was to just try and make it stop, to go away, to protect CD sales; reluctantly, as the companies burned through piles of cash and only succeeded in making illicit internet services more user-friendly and less-traceable, was to try and create a model which ceded none of the control, and kept prices and profits untouched.

Further on - having churned out much the same "boo-hoo" we've been hearing for ten years of a "if you don't pay thirteen quid for a CD, however will we be able to create the next Saturdays or Pixie Lott" type - there's this bit:

A case in point is the recent blog by The Guardian's Charles Arthur saying "Why does the music industry persist in saying that every download is a lost sale?"

The answer is, quite simply, that we don't - our figures are based on a detailed analysis of actual spending behaviour in different age groups.

Is this an actual line of the day decided at the top table of UK Music?

Because this is what Sharkey said in his Guardian piece:

He points out that these numbers don't stack up - that you can't equate every illegal download with a "lost sale"- and asks why the music industry keeps putting them forward.

Writing as chief executive of UK Music, the umbrella body representing the commercial music industry, the simple answer is: we didn't.

Except, as I said earlier in the week, the music industry has said in court, under oath, that an unlicensed download is equivalent to a lost sale.

You know what, though: it's probably not surprising that the BPI and UK Music try to get away with rewriting history and telling little fibs. Since they've spent the last decade or so not quite grasping what's going on online, it's not surprising they can sit around, dreaming up new ways of presenting what's happened in the past, and completely forgetting that anyone with access to Google and archive.org could see through it in a second.

Returning Hole: "First I've heard" says Auf Der Maur

There's been some - not very much, but a little - excitement over the news that Courtney Love's new disappointing album will be released as a disappointing Hole album rather than a disappointing solo one.

Why, it's even going to have Melissa Auf Der Maur on it. What more proof could you need of how Hole-y this Hole album will be?

Oh... hang on a moment, though:

"We have not been in touch too much," Auf der Maur recently told Explore magazine. "We've been in touch this year after 10 years of no contact, I will say that." Though Love remains her "soul sister", Auf der Maur said her contributions to Love's new album are due to the involvement of producer Michael Beinhorn, who also worked on the final Hole record.

"Michael Beinhorn and I had an incredible working relationship on Celebrity Skin," Auf der Maur said. "And he called me and asked me if I would sing on [Courtney's] new solo record – which is what I understood it was. And I said 'Yes' because I enjoy working with him and ... well, she and I have a history of making music together. And I'm happy to visit her again in the future."

But rights to the band name aside, Auf der Maur believes this isn't a Hole project. "I think you can't take a Hole reunion that lightly. It's gonna take a little more organising than just 'I'll come and sing some backups and then we got Hole.'"

Unfortunately, that's probably not going to stop Courtney slapping the name on the record, is it?

Just for fun, you might like to imagine the rambling Courtney MySpace post you'd get if Auf Der Maur had done the same thing in reverse.

Michael Jackson: Remember him?

Readers of yesterday's Guardian Films & Music supplement might have been a little confused. While every TV and radio channel was blaring out opinion-honks stressing that Michael Jackson was the greatest musician ever, and how his loss was stealing us of a brilliant, still-vibrant talent, the newspaper had asked dozens of people who the greatest working musician was, and - despite Jacko having been alive and working when the question was posed - nobody thought to mention him.

It's almost as if Jackson could only be the greatest living artist by, erm, dying.

Glastonbury 2009: The Specials

Dammers-less, perhaps, and more jowly, but here's one to go with those free chlamydia tests they're doing at Glastonbury this year:



[Part of Glastonbury 2009 video]

Glastonbury 2009: Neil Young

The ten-minute cut off on Youube videos appears to have resulted in no complete version of Young's Rocking In The Free World making it online yet, so instead: Neil Young does The Beatles:



[Part of Glastonbury 2009 video]

UPDATE:

Glastonbury 2009: Bloc Party

They're not as good as they used to be, you know. Still, Bloc Party managed to pull this out the bag last night:



[Part of Glastonbury 2009 videos]

UPDATE:

Glastonbury 2009: Little Boots

I think Little Boots was the winner of the first day of Glastonbury, at least when viewed through a TV screen. Some bits of her performance have turned up on the Tube - although not Meddle, yet, which might only have aired through the red button - so let's all have a look, shall we?



[Buy Hands or download Hands - somehow for the same price, for some reason]

More video from this year's festival across the next couple of days
The Specials - Too Much Too Young
Neil Young - A Day In The Life
Bloc Party - Two More Years

[UPDATE: This year, the policing of copyright claims on YouTube seems to be taking place in real time, so most of the videos are vanishing before long]

It's not me, it's eulogy: Robert Webb

Amongst all the celebrities and gossip fodder trying to use statements about Jackson to help their own profiles, some people did manage to offer tributes that were actual tributes. Robert Webb was one who actually celebrated Jackson's achievements:

There's a generation or two of young men that know that there's nothing effete about dancing. That's down to him and it's not nothing.

Gordon in the morning: Coping with grief?

With Nick Parker and Steve Kennedy taking care of knitting fact from base speculation and stuff they read on the internet, and Rhodori Phillips doing Demerol 101 ("FIND out more about the dangerous cocktail of drugs being linked to Michael Jackson dying"), what's left for Gordon?

Oh, he's making himself busy:

Make him No1 tomorrow

I’M urging all Jacko fans to get on t’internet, or go to a record shop and buy his Off The Wall album.

It would be a fitting tribute for the King of Pop to top the charts tomorrow and I am calling for Bizarre readers’ help.

Given that the media has been reporting that Jackson records have been flying off the shelves for the last 24 hours, this is surely one of the most brazen attempts to take responsibility for something that was happening anyway since Laser 558 ran its "wear something blue to show your support us" campaign. Blue, like jeans, you mean?

Chart insiders tell me he is in with a great shout of a stunning chart double this weekend – and it’s our job to ensure he has as many songs as possible in the top ten singles and album charts.

Why, exactly, is it "our job"? Is buying stuff meant to somehow be a tribute?

Retailer HMV also revealed that fans had been flooding their High Street stores to stock up on CDs.

A spokesman said: “We estimate there has been a twenty-fold increase in demand for his recordings.”

A spokesman? A spokesman? Are you failing to give Gennaro his full credit, young Gordon?

Glastonbury 2009: View from the sofa - BBC 2

Ah, the senior service on BBC 2 gets a full complement of presenters - Radcliffe and Laverne sharing main duties, but throwing to Zane Lowe down in front of The Ting Tings, and Jo Whiley off in the studio.

Jo presents an acoustic performance from Paolo Nutini as if it's some sort of treat, although she does use the phrase "it's the same thing, year after year" so perhaps she was trying to be knowing.

They're currently showing a short film explaining who Neil Young is, rather than showing Neil Young playing live. Is there anyone alive who doesn't know who Young is, who is going to go "oh, if this chap David Crosby says he's worth hearing, maybe I will listen to him?"

Oh. Having spent five minutes of their time talking about Neil Young, Radcliffe is now promising they'll show him "in the next show". After - I kid you not - a Newsnight Michael Jackson special.

Glastonbury 2009: View from the sofa - Ting Tings & Friendly Fires

Edith has now put on a jacket, with a yachting feel to it. It's like she's lost her bags and has had to rely on borrowing stuff from a bunch of Eton schoolboys.

Shouldn't there have been two people presenting this package of programmes? Isn't that an immutable law of Glastonbury coverage? Was Zane Lowe supposed to turn up but was too wrecked by the thought of Michael Jackson's death to go on? Or is this the new, frugal BBC in action - now 50% fewer presenters?

The Ting Tings come on BBC Three, wearing the sort of sunglasses that the makers of Skins give to their cast thinking it makes them look edgy. It seems to be pretty much the same set we were watching last year, so it's off to the red button extra stuff.

Friendly Fires are there, doing a set whose quality cannot quite disguise that Ed is wearing the sort of shirt that Stuart Adamson gave a bad name to.

Glastonbury 2009: View from the sofa - Lady GaGa

If only Corrie had written the Jack and Connie story the way the touching scenes tonight went, instead of as some clumsy explanation for why Connie might have sex with Kevin in the face of all logic, perhaps Weatherfield wouldn't feel like its in such a tailspin right now.

Sorry, that's not BBC Three, is it? Flicking on to the BBC TV coverage for the first time, it's Lady GaGa, with her famous firework bra.

Except on TV, it looks less like she's got pyrotechnic tits, and more like she's strapped a couple of Camping Gaz stoves to her chest. And like camp stoves, although you get the odd spark from them, there's nothing that's going to really get your soup bubbling.

For Poker Face, she removes her apparatus and strips down to flesh-coloured underwear. It might just be me, but knickers the colour of sticking plaster always seem more like support hose than lingerie. Michael Eavis has stopped banging on about trying to bring teenagers back to Worthy Farm, but this sort of adolescent fantasy seems to be perfect for that.

Over, then, to Edith Bowman stood, forlornly, in some glass box hovering in the sky. Edith observes that GaGa's guitarist looked like Jack White and her bassist looked like Kurt Cobain. This is, it seems, "weird" for some reason. Not as weird as Bowman's outfit, which I've been trying to place and can only describe as the sort of thing a British romcom would have the female lead wear for a 'morning after' scene - Hugh Grant's baggy rugby shirt and the boots from the night before.

Rhode Island fire: Co-owner released

According to a local TV channel, Michael Derderian, one of the co-owners of the nightclub where 100 people died in a fire following a Great White show, has been released early from prison.

He was originally expected to be freed in the autumn, but has secured an early release through good behaviour.

[Rhode Island nightclub fire - full coverage]

Glastonbury 1999: Blondie

More pickings from the festival a decade ago, and even a reactivated Blondie is still Blondie:



[Part of Glastonbury 1999]

Glastonbury 2009: Eavis denies own interview

Just before the music news and the proper news collided heavily yesterday evening, 6Music News at 8.30 had a report where Michael Eavis described reports that he was going to retire after 2011 as "rubbish."

Yeah, total rubbish. Where did anyone get such a crazy idea in the first place?

Oh, that's right - it was when Michael Eavis said he was going in 2011 in an interview with The Guardian, who sponsor the festival. Why would anyone trust such a flaky source?

It's not eulogy, it's me: Al Fayed

You have to take your hats off to Jackson - for a man so bloody strange, with Gellar and Al Fayed as occasional chums, he did manage to find a way sometimes to not be the creepiest guy in the room.

Naturally, having played a key role in turning the death of Diana and his son into a freak show, Al Fayed has turned up now to try and out-tack the already tacky responses to the Jackson death:

He said Jackson once asked to have his own statue at the Harrods store in Knightsbridge, central London, which was "one of his favourite places".

"I'm distraught, can't believe that this could happen, it's a total shock. He was such a great character – a legend," said Mr Fayed.

"The news was such a shock, I didn't sleep last night. Some media were saying he was still alive but on the other side they were saying he was dead.

"When I showed him around the store, he liked my statue.

"He said 'can I have one alongside you?' I said 'I don't mind', so now I'm going to have a Michael Jackson memorial here."

Ah yes. A store mannequin. The most appropriate memorial, presumably.

It's not eulogy, it's me: Chris Brown

Presumably hoping he can set the time spent drafting the press release against his court-mandated hours of community service, Chris Brown has been sharing why this is really all about him:

"Michael Jackson is the reason why I do music and why I am an entertainer. I am devastated by this great loss, and I will continue to be humbled and inspired by his legacy.

So Michael is the reason why Brown does music. Presumably the idea for beating the crap out the people you're supposed to cherish came from Michael's dad.

Bob Geldof invites advertisers of unneccessary shit to salve consciences with tiny logo

Bob Geldof and - tonight playing the role of someone who you'd hope would know better - Kofi Annan have flown to Cannes in a bid to try and stop stop climate change by, erm, putting a small logo on their adverts:

In fact, Annan and Geldof want this to be more than a campaign. They want a climate justice movement to be born amid the acres of polished marble and €15 vodka and tonics of the French Riviera and launched an appeal to ad agencies and their clients to place Tck Tck Tck logos on their advertisements. Consumers can then upload their own individual "Tcks" to the campaign website, representing the seconds counting down to Copenhagen and the immediacy of the issue at hand.

I suppose if this was tuts rather than tcks, it might be appropriate - a vague, disapproving but detached noise.

Any similarity between this and Bob's colleague-cum-competitor-for-sainthood Bono's Red campaign, which also somehow tried to make the purchasing of luxury goods seem like a positive act, is entire.

Kofi tries to explain why this is actually going to make a difference and isn't just some tatty greenwash:

"I can't imagine a company that would put a Tck Tck Tck on its ad campaign or website, and continue to operate without [being greener]. Its own staff, its own workers will be reminded what are we doing here."

That's funny. You'd have thought that a half-decade of running an organisation where the least contentious ideas turn into the focus of pointless posturing and sabre-truth tiger-rattling rows would have made Kofi a bit more cynical, or perhaps realistic. But given how oil companies are quite happy to pump cash both into persuading Congress to let them drill in areas of beauty and running ads stressing how green they are, I don't think I can share Annan's hopes.

Gennaro Castaldo Watch: Jackson's death - A golden opportunity to shift catalogue

The death of Michael Jackson is a thing that has happened somehow connected with music. And you know who knows about things somehow connected with music? Gennaro Castaldo, that's who.

He tries not to sound too chipper that at least something is shifting CDs by the bucketload:

Gennaro Castaldo, head of media relations for the HMV music store chain, said at the entrance of HMV's Oxford Street shop that he believes the gruelling concert tour could be linked to Jackson's death.

He told Canwest News Service that Jackson, who has in years past visited the Oxford Street store with his entourage during off-hours to browse, probably felt overwhelming pressure to pull off a successful comeback.

Castaldo said Jackson CDs and DVD's were flying off shelves in all 270 of the company's United Kingdom outlets, and disappearing from online inventories, throughout the morning. He said younger Londoners who anticipated seeing Jackson are "particularly sad they won't get that chance to see Michael perform."

Ah, yes. How are those young people bearing up? Luckily, Canwest can answer that, too:

Outside a group of teenage girls, who had been interviewed earlier about Jackson's death, squealed with delight when informed their comments had already been broadcast on the morning news. "We're on the tely!" One gleefully shouted to her friends.

But you know what really puzzles the reporter:

But there wasn't even remotely the kind of reaction felt here after the death of Princess Diana.

That could be because the Dianarama-mawkfest was, in itself, inexplicable, and Michael Jackson was a man who was well-known without being well-liked, do you think?

It's not eulogy, it's me: Madonna, Macca and Dammers

When the famous talk of the recently dead, it's normally not about the corpse, but all about them. Madonna's claims this morning that she "can't stop crying" is designed to say nothing about Jackson's life, or his death, and everything about how empathetic Madonna would like us to think that she is.

So, too, is Paul McCartney's statement about Sir Paul, really:

"It's so sad and shocking. I feel privileged to have hung out and worked with Michael. He was a massively talented boy man with a gentle soul. His music will be remembered forever and my memories of our time together will be happy ones.

"I send my deepest sympathy to his mother and the whole family and to his countless fans all around the world"

I worked with him, he was so talented and everything, so naturally I worked with him.

Not sure about the "boy man" bit. Given Jackson's predilections, that sounds a little unfortunate.

Jerry Dammers response is a lot less attention-seeking:

"The thing that sometimes seems to get overlooked about Michael Jackson is what an absolutely phenomenal singer he was. He had one of the greatest gospel shouts of the 20th century, quite possibly the last of it’s kind. The outros of some of his songs especially, such as “Gotta be starting something”, were ecstatic, and, or, full of pain, like the one about the environment, which Jarvis Cocker attacked him for. I like Jarvis, but I personally didn’t really understand the reason for that."

He was a great singer. For a while, anyway. Dammers' focus on the music does him well, until he starts to get on to Earth Song - a song so meaningful, apparently, that he can't even remember the name of it. And Jerry never really understood why Cocker took the piss out of a Brits performance which cast Jackson as a mesiah-figure surrounded by adoring children of all nations? Really? You never understood that, Jerry?

Glastonbury 1999: Merz

Last night, we whizzed back twenty years to enjoy some moments from Glastonbury 1989. Now, depending on how you look at it, we're either going to come forward ten years, or go back ten. To 1999, to pick out some of the highlights of that year to run alongside this year's stuff.

Judging by how YouTube is crammed with Kula Shaker and The Corrs, clearly it was already going downhill by then. But there are some gems - first up, this is Merz:

More across the weekend
Blondie - Heart Of Glass
Manic Street Preachers - My Little Empire