Soulobit: Bobby Womack

The link to the New York Times story about the death of Bobby Womack didn't work, so I was hoping it was just an internet rumour.

But it turned out my wifi had just seized up, and Bobby Womack is, indeed, dead.

As great a songwriter as he was a performer, he wasn't always the best strategist:

His friend Sam Cooke persuaded him to let the Rolling Stones record It's All Over Now.

"He said, 'One day you'll be part of history, this group is gonna be huge,'" Womack told BBC Newsnight in 2012.

"I said, 'Why don't they get their own songs?'"

He spent a long time not making music, too, because of the drugs; it was Damon Albarn who brought him back to the mainstream when he persuaded him to take part in the Gorillaz project.

Bobby Womack was 70; he'd been diagnosed with cancer and Alzheimer's Disease as well as the after effects of years of drug abuse but no cause of death has been made public.

Glastonbury 2014: Meanwhile...

That Glastonbury is a moment that brings everyone together thing in full. pic.twitter.com/G7sOHTkfTv

— Jon Bounds (@bounder) June 28, 2014

Downloadable: Kill Rock Stars

Twenty-one tracks of delights from across the Kill Rock Stars roster: You don't even have to pay, but you could chip in a bit, yeah?

Included is Free Kitten, Emily's Sassy Lime, Bratmobile and... well, 18 other great bands.

Glastonbury 2014: View from the sofa

"We're not going to go on about it" reassure Mark Radcliffe and Jo Whiley, leading off the late night live chunk of Glastonbury coverage on BBC Two.

But they do, of course.

And then when they hand over to Lauren Laverne in another part of the field, she can't help but talk about it, too.

And why wouldn't they? This year, clearly, isn't the Glastonbury of Metallica; it's the Glastonbury where the lights went out.

Trouble is, although Lauren had rather a good anecdote - about being chided for asking the bear-slaughterers if they'd bought the heavy metal thunder with them - the stuff that was most interesting about the power outage wasn't touched on.

(Incidentally, it wouldn't be Metallica's heavy metal thunder; Dolly Parton has brought a rainbow with her, and we all know what you have to endure to get one of those working.)

Normally, the BBC's Glastonbury coverage is padded with films of people who've paid silly money for tickets doing really dull things - giving us a taste of the "festival experience". This year, when it'd actually be really interesting to know what it was like to be in a city of tens of thousands of people when the electricity stopped being in the wires and was just in the sky - nothing.

Apart from Mark Radcliffe saying something about communal singing in a tattoo tent, there was no answer to the question 'what was it like on the site?'

Instead, the crisis was reduced to a short snatch of footage of Rudimental walking off the stage.

The big disappointment this year is the red button coverage - clearly all the love has been poured into the website. Three channels of music, more or less lobbed on screen; with whatever happens to be on TV given (it appears) a free pass.

So, at one point, you could have watched Elbow on BBC Three, or something else on BBC Two. If those options didn't delight you, you could press red to get three more bands - except one was Elbow and one was BBC Two.

What's the point of pushing the stream that's already on TV through the red button service?

And doing it so badly - for a good ten minutes, the "BBC Two" Glastonbury feed was so locked in to simulcasting BBC Two that it pushed out a great chunk of Newsnight. (If Jean-Claude Juncker was actually being inducted in the cabaret tent, my apologies to the red button team.)

I suppose it's fair to say that it's more surprising that there's a red button at all - with SmartTVs and Chromecasts and whatnot, it's easier than ever to get the rather good bbc.co.uk experience onto your TV.

(Slight grumble here - the Glastonbury content from iPlayer doesn't show up on the iPhone version of iPlayer, which makes it harder to enjoy on a TV. I know this is a bit like complaining that the handle on the cup the ambrosia comes in is a little fiddly to hold, but... worth mentioning.)

So, what of the bands themselves?

Arcade Fire, it's clear, have edged ever closer to vanishing over the Bono Horizon.

I know, I know...

... how can I possibly think that?

You know when the fireworks (literal fireworks) are at the start, not the end, of the set, that you're watching a band who are overdoing the spectacle.

Men made out of mirrors; the bobbleheads; two-faced skeletons (one of whom, distractingly, had a brand name of a morphsuit maker on his ass); a stage full of around thirty people at one; racoon make-up; pyrotechnics... it's just so fucking tiring to watch, and it's dressing up music that doesn't really need all this extra packing. You've written songs that are packed full of strong, striking images - why are you hiding them in the worst circus ever?

Elsewhere, Blondie were a little ragged around the edges - doing the high bit from Rapture would be difficult under normal circumstances, but Harry just-about nailed it on a stage, early in the day, outdoors. And the cover of (You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party) was a delight - especially watching the ripple of 'oh! this is what this is!' run through the crowd at different speeds.

Sidenote: After last year's fuss about whether jokes about the Rolling Stones being old were okay, it's worth mentioning that Debbie Harry is 69 on Tuesday. But people don't obsess over it because jokes about Blondie being old were never a thing.

Also because she'd kick your butt.

Chvrches were great; and Drenge are still on course to become Mudhoney by the end of next year.

Big Day Off

There's no question about what the big festival story was yesterday - no, not the lights going out in Glastonbury; it was Lollapalooza owner C3 Presents buying out Australia's Big Day Out festival, and promptly shutting it down for 2015.

This year's festival apparently lost AUD15million, which is why BDO's AJ Maddah was happy to sell his stake to C3 for a single dollar.

The plan, apparently, is to take 2015 off to "restructure" the event (presumably by trying to plug the massive hole down which the money flows) and return in 2016.

Actually, they don't say 2016 specifically, C3 just say "in future years".

Concert evacuated after Lil' Boosie fails to think things through

You know what? If you're playing a town where there was recently a high-profile shooting incident at a gig, you might want to think twice before using gunfire sound effects.

Lil Boosie didn't think twice, and ended up causing a problem. 9News:

The artist Lil' Boosie was performing at the National Western Complex Thursday as part of his Touchdown to Cause Hell Tour.

Denver police say during his first song, people heard gunshots. The sounds forced the large crowd to quickly clear the venue.

It turns out, the gunshots were only sound effects that were part of Lil' Boosie's performance.

It's possible, I guess, that the audience were just looking for an excuse to leave the venue as quickly as possibly.

Lady GaGa: The famous monster

Perez Hilton still banging on about how Lady GaGa started to be mean to him:

Hilton went on to say that he believed Gaga was "just using him" during their friendship.

"I think it was fame that just poisoned her. She had an album Fame Monster, her second album, and she became consumed by that which she was fascinated about. You know, fame can be a very deadly drug and it has damaged her personally.

"I think she has unfortunately become a victim of this character she created. Instead of being an artist she became this freak and this cartoon character and so unrelateable to people," he said.

Perez Hilton, of course, is a man who in no way would let a bit of fame for writing "OMG" in Microsoft Paint on photos of Nicole Richie go to his head for about a decade. Just so we're clear.

Metallica will apparently end at some point

The good news is that Kirk Hammett thinks that Metallica can only go on so long.

The bad news?

The 51-year-old guitarist hopes the band can work out a plan which means they can play for the next 20 years but he's not very hopeful.

He said: ''I personally think we have another 10. Maybe that's one album, maybe that's two albums, I don't know.''

There's a potential break point in 2024, but there's a danger they'll still be dragging themselves round, slaughtering wildlife and moaning about technology until 2034. That means they'll be hanging around for as long as Switzerland's nuclear power stations. Scientists say it's too close to call which institution will create the most toxic crap in that time.

What has led the band to realise that tempus fugit?

Watching the Stones, apparently:

Kirk said: ''I saw the Stones last year in San Francisco and I thought they played fucking great, and for a bunch of guys who are 70-plus, it was a pretty amazing feat.

Hang about, Kirk - although there's an element of backhandness to that 'brilliant for old guys', you might want to really hammer it home:

''I don't know if we can do what we do when we're in our 70s, because playing one of our songs is equal to playing eight Stones songs in terms of physical energy and intensity.'

Yeah, they're brilliant for old guys playing songs that are only 12.5% of a Metallica song. That's nailed it.

One out of Friends is engaged to one out of Snow Patrol

Even if it was Matthew Perry, it'd still be a dull story. It's Courtney Cox and Johnny McDaid.

Friends continues to be repeated every fourteen seconds on Comedy Central, and Snow Patrol songs seem to be persistent as well.

T in the Park seeks new park

Turns out that going to T in The Park has been a bit more dangerous than you might have thought. There's an oil pipeline running under the current site, and that's been worrying people to the point where, from next year, the festival is going to a new venue.

Apparently this venue is being kept a top secret; it's likely this will be the second most popular focus of speculation at this year's festival. After "do you think our tent is right on top of the oil pipeline?"

Glastonbury 2014: Lily Allen's plus ones are better than yours

Now, that's a nice gesture: Lily Allen's given her free Glastonbury tickets to kids from her village instead of what she apparently describes as "my showbiz mates":

"I get a certain allocation, and because I am on the Pyramid main stage you get more. My husband has been in charge of ticket allocation. I have quite a lot of blaggy friends who hit me up for stuff all the time and never really appreciate it. I have all the calls, `Can we have some tickets?" Allen said.

"He has given them all to our villagers. There`s, like, 25 kids from Canham who have never been to Glastonbury and who are going to have such a shock, and all my showbiz mates are like, `Er?`" she added."

I'm not quite sure I'm buying the 'my showbiz mates' phrase, but "blaggy friends" sounds genuine enought.

Charts: Surely they've streaming already?

An announcement from the South Bank...
Just before we get to the announcement from the South Bank, what's with the Official Chart Company and the BPI having some of the most expensive office space in London, right down opposite Parliament? Given everything the BPI does is funded by its members, which means ultimately it is money that otherwise would have gone to musicians or songwriters, shouldn't it look to taking cheaper rooms? I suppose they'd argue that being in the old GLC buildings is great for access to the people who make law, but is that true? Do they communicate by semaphore from across the Thames? Or just nip out and hang around outside the Tesco Express hoping to bump into Michael Fabricant? Because they could do that with an office in Uxbridge and an Oyster Card.
The Official Chart Company has announced that streaming will be added to the toxic brew ("mix") which makes up the charts:

Official Charts Company boss Martin Talbot told BBC News that the changes are "about future-proofing the charts".

"So far this year we've seen nine tracks which have been streamed more than one million times in a week," Talbot explained. "Last year there were only two tracks that had reached that kind of level."

Bastille's 'Pompeii' is the most-streamed track of all time in the UK so far with 26.6 million steams to date but only made number two in the singles chart based on sales alone.

Bastille were given the announcement to make:

On one hand, this makes sense, and it's surprising that it hasn't happened before - like, eighteen months ago, probably.

On the other... this is a bit problematic. The Billboard charts always included radio play alongside sales, on the basis that that was a measure of popularity. The UK charts never did, for the two strong reasons.

One, that just because something is being listened to on the radio doesn't mean it's being enjoyed (look how long DLT broadcasted for).

Two, that radio play is a lot more nebulous than sales. How do you weight a play on Little Rissington FM against someone paying 79p to buy a track? Can you be sure all those plays for that local band on Froome Sound are because the band is popular, and not because the station manager's daughter is the bassist?

So, sesnsibly, the charts focused on a slightly more trustworthy measure of popularity - a financial transaction.

Obviously, this was, and is, still open to gaming - managers filling the trunks of their cars with godawful CDs by their terrible bands, purchased to give them a boost; slipping singles into different sleeves. But it was a least bad situation.

The problems with radio play are multiplied by streaming. How many 'listens' indicate an enthusiasm that equals someone willing to shovel over some money over to own that track?

Maybe the falling price of a single has made this argument less compelling, but even so - does 'I keep hearing about this Kasabian all over the place, I wonder she's like, I'll go to Spotify and play her song OH MY GOD THIS IS AWFUL are they all this bad? I'll try another OH MY GOD THIS IS WORSE' really have the same weight as someone who thinks 'I love Lana Del Ray, I've already bought the CD single but simply can't wait for it to be delivered so I'll get the download too'?

And if you accept that a single Spotify play can't equal a purchase, you suddenly find yourself having to create an exchange rate. And once you do that, your chart becomes opinion-based, not fact-based.

There is such an exchange rate:

To reflect the difference in weight between streaming and purchasing, 100 streams will count as equivalent to 1 single (download or physical single) in the chart compilation process.

Oddly, the amount of cash earned by a musician for their track being streamed on Spotify isn't 1% of the amount they get, so you have to wonder about the 'science' behind this particular ratio.

And that's before you ask the question about how you can be certain there are ears listening to the stream, rather than just a handy-dandy little script or two deployed across a number of computers?

Songwriterobit: Gerry Goffin

Gerry Goffin has died.

What a songbook.

Although not always an uncontroversial songbook.

Talking about He Hit Me And It Felt Like A Kiss to NPR in 2011, Carole King said that the Gerry Goffin had heard a friend use the phrase; a survivor of domestic violence herself (although not during her marriage to Goffin), King told NPR she wishes they'd never written the song.

That a reputation as a great songwriting team could survive writing the line "a chugga chugga motion like a railway train now".

Gerry Goffin's private life wasn't always easy - his mental health was disrupted by incidents bookended by bad trips and electroconvulsive shock therapy; his marriage to King was less resilient than their songwriting partnership. Oddly, this was all considered perfect material for a Broadway musical.

Gerry Goffin died June 19th; he was 75.

Shooting after Nas at Red Rocks

There was a grim end to last night's Nas, Schoolboy Q and Flying Lotus at Red Rocks: There was a triple shooting which - depending on which tweets you believe - saw the open air venue somewhere between lockdown, or everyone being searched as they left.

The Denver Post reports there's no indication of what happened to either shooters or shootees.

What the pop papers say: Glasto clear way for Ted Nugent in 2015

As part of the preview to the Glastonbury festival (or rather its preview of its preview), this week's NME asks a ginger question about how James Hetfield, the bear-slaughtering bastard, is headlining.

Emily [Eavis] refuses to be drawn in.

"I don't really want to get involved with it, in terms of official comments," she says. "Every year we have people campaigning. Last year we had Tyler, The Creator; we had Beyonce anti-fur; we had Jay-Z and guns; we have this. We can't get involved in other people's politics, if we did that we'd rule out most bands in the world."

Glastonbury - which once advertised itself as "the CND festival", which raises funds for campaigning groups Greenpeace and Oxfam - can't "get involved in other people's politics".

Given this willingness to turn a blind eye to people's politics, you wonder if there's anyone Glastonbury would rule out. James Hetfield's NRA buddy Ted Nugent? Will Macht Und Ehre at last get their big chance on The John Peel Stage?

Obviously, Glastonbury has long since ceased to be about a group of people with shared values getting together, but this year feels different again. It's the first time they've ever gone "look, we don't care about what people think, and given we've already done a homophobe we're unlikely to worry about who we give a platform to in the future."

Tony Orlando on the international stage

Here's a surprise: Tony Orlando, out of Dawn, has pushed his way into the story of the kidnapped Israeli teenagers.

It's a little odd, but Orlando's concern is clearly genuine. And it's not like he'd be so tactless as to try and make cheesy references to his old novelty hit, is it?

Referencing one of his biggest hits “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree”, Orlando told the press assembled outside the home that he intends to urge Americans to demonstrate their own support by tying three yellow ribbons for each of the missing teens.

Oh.

Coming tomorrow: Brotherhood Of Man attempt to prevent the fall of Baghdad by encouraging Isis to save all their kisses for them.

Shirley Manson schools you; so does Dave Schools

Want to learn some German with Shirley Manson? And some bass with Dave from Widespread Panic?

Of course you do. Let's go to Pancake Mountain.

Extra points for linking Kraftwerk and wurst, I think.

The Arctic Monkeys: let's have a quick unwrap

So here's the new Arctic Monkeys video:

Clearly, there's a tongue in a cheek here, right?

Mr Discopop points out that some people might have missed that:

"More gratuitous, self-aggrandizing tripe from the ego of the century," grumps, arrloid, who is not alone in feeling Alex's ego has run rampant like a feral donkey.

"His confidence is sexy but this is a bit much," writes Anna Farid. "The only thing bigger than his ego," concludes FSAfykm, "is his nose".

Mr D shakes his head:

The clip, for Snap Out Of It, pokes fun at Alex Turner's "sexpot" image, with actress Stephanie Sigman (that's her above) in floods of tears, smooching pictures of Alex on her TV and hungrily devouring a steak.

Over on YouTube, though, everyone has missed the point spectacularly.

And he's right.

Up to a point.

Because this is a wonderful cake-eat, cake-keep moment. Yes, there's a terrific sending up of the sexyliciousness of Alex Turner, but at the same time, the very act of sending up the idea is a reminder of that status. And there are less self-satisfied ways of lampooning your sexysexysexy credentials than hiring Stephanie Sigman to prance about in her bra.

It's all a bit 'ooh, fancy that people think little old me is sexy', innit?

BBC launches new music awards show (sort of)

There's always room for more music awards shows, right? Because there's an unlimited pool of talent just waiting to do the 'and the winner is...' shuffle. There are simply too many days that don't have lifetime achievement awards being handed to Cliff Richard, are there not.

So, thank god for the BBC, bravely plugging that gap with a new music awards show, celebrating music.

It's a totally new concept, pulling together Chris Evans from BBC One's teatime magazine show The One Show and presenters from BBC Radio to create a unique experience.

Here's some footage from the pilot:

YouTube, Indies at war

Regardless of the other rights and wrongs, threatening to block certain labels' videos on YouTube unless the label does a deal over a separate product is a bit of an asshatty move by Google.

The BBC understands that even if blocks do go ahead, content from artists signed to independent labels will remain available on YouTube via channels such as Vevo.

Videos which are exclusively licensed by independent record labels, such as acoustic sets or live performances, may be taken down.

Thanks for that, Google. Good to see the not being evil going so well.

Great puzzling openings from music journalism of our time

You know it's going to be bad when a website tells you there are Six Things You Need To Know about a Bruno Mars gig. Six things? You only need three - where, when it starts and when it finishes. That's all you need to avoid the thing like an ebola-ravaged groundhog.

But when the MLive article starts, it gets even odder:

Bruno Mars is the most ubiquitous pop star to play Van Andel Arena in a long time.

What does that mean?

I suspect the idea they were going for was he's the most famous, or simply the biggest, pop star to play the venue for a long time, but it's a really odd way of phrasing it.

"Where are we going, lads?"
"To be ubiquitous."
"How ubiquitous?"
"More ubiquitous than most other acts."

Katy Perry's playing the arena in a few weeks. She's even more ubiquitous.

Scott from 5ive does a nice thing

It's easy to snurkle at the activities of pop stars, so for a change here's someone doing something nice.

Scott Robinson out of 5ive went on All Star Mr & Mrs and won some money. They gave it to the hospice which looked after his wife's grandma.

(They're not allowed to say how much money because the programme hasn't gone out yet, and you know how modern people hate spoilers.)

Now, back to the snurkling.

Much Music Awards 2014: Justin Bieber still popular

Justin Bieber - despite having turned out to be awkwardly racist - remains popular in Canada, where the Much Music awards gave him some sort of people's choice prize to him.

Apart from the mild surprise that Much Music is still on the air, there's not much about the winners that will cause people to drop their sandwiches:

VIDEO OF THE YEAR: Hedley, "Anything"

INTERNATIONAL VIDEO OF THE YEAR (ARTIST): Lorde, "Royals"

INTERNATIONAL VIDEO OF THE YEAR (GROUP): Imagine Dragons, "Demons"

POP VIDEO OF THE YEAR: Hedley, "Anything"

DANCE VIDEO OF THE YEAR: Autoerotique, "Asphyxiation"

HIP HOP VIDEO OF THE YEAR: Drake, "Worst Behavior"

ROCK/ALTERNATIVE VIDEO OF THE YEAR: Sam Roberts, "Shapeshifters"

INTERNATIONAL VIDEO OF THE YEAR BY A CANADIAN: Drake, "Hold On, We're Going Home" (f. Majid Jordan)

DIRECTOR OF THE YEAR: Thugli, "Run This" (Amos LeBlanc; Ohji Inoue)

POST-PRODUCTION OF THE YEAR: City and Colour, "Thirst"

MUCHFACT VIDEO OF THE YEAR: SonReal, "Everywhere We Go"

YOUR FAVE VIDEO: Hedley, "Anything"

YOUR FAVE ARTIST OR GROUP: Justin Bieber

YOUR FAVE INTERNATIONAL ARTIST OR GROUP: Selena Gomez

The main point of the event is to promote Canadian music (although presumably not Bieber), so how did that go?

Digital Spy covered the event, and they did find space amongst the big pictures of Lorde to reflect the local talent:

The Canadian winners included Sam Roberts Band, SonReal and Hedley.

And, er, that's i

Bonnaboo: Kim Kardashian's husband goes down badly

Kanye West's attempts to pull off being a serious artist while working part-time in a circus have failed, cold hard reality reported this weekend.

West went to the Boonaroo Festival, and found says the Examiner, a crowd in no mood for his braggadocio:

Variations of “F--k Kanye” began appearing throughout the audience on graffiti including walls, barriers and port-a-potties.

You'd think that when even the chemical toilets are singling you out, you'd take the hint.

But oh no; not Kanye.

About halfway through his set, when the song “Heartless” was being introduced, Kayne started shouting “Where the press at? F–k the press!”

Many members of the news media were in attendance for the show. But West continued with his rant. He bragged to the crowd about his strong work ethic and his commitment to music.
Kanye continued, “humbled in a way that gave him strength” because at 37, “what you see [of him] now is only the beginning.” and later added, “I am the No. 1 muthaf–kin’ rock star on the planet!”

Paul McCartney might beg to differ. Mick Jagger might beg to differ. Indeed, given Kanye's move to being a hip-hop Honey Boo Boo, even James Arthur might have a case for challenging that claim.

In the absence of other rock stars, though, it was the audience who raised the objections:

The crowd did not take that sitting down. The audience forcefully booed him and many got up and left. But the festival attendees did not leave the area, they migrated over to the UK dance band “Disclosure’s” tent before the duo’s set even began.

The raucous crowd shouted well-organized chants of “F–k Kanye!”
Bonnaroo is noted for its mellow crowd. The festival’s official slogan is “Radiate Positivity.”

That's not entirely true - after all, the last time Kanye appeared back in 2008 he got booed off the Boonaroo stage. That time, though, it was turning up six hours late and the displeasure could have been a commentary on poor time keeping. In 2014, I think we can safely assume this was a content issue.

Smarter than the average meter

Smart meters are pretty controversial. Or, at least, they should be. Sure, there's a bunch of easily-dismissed EMF radiation panic about them. And, yes, they can help you keep track of the energy you're using (in case somehow you might have so many rooms in your house you don't know when you've got a radio switched on in one.)

But more concerning is the privacy aspects. All of a sudden, your meter will be sending data about your behaviour to the power companies. It's becoming a large civil rights question in America.

"Right, but what has this got to do with pop music?" you're probably wondering.

Well, faced with intrusive technology that ultimately could tell British Gas when you're home and EDF if you're awake in the middle of the night, what sort of shill could the industry find to sell their case?

Guardian diary, can you tell us?

A diary date, finally – 8 July sees the launch of the Smart Meter Central Delivery Body's nationwide campaign to persuade everyone to buy gas and electricity via a new "smart meter". Special guest speaker: Sir Bob Geldof. Whatever the worthy cause, call for Bob.

Ah, Bob. Increasingly, taking great strides to be on the wrong side.

Hey Ho, Let's Go... eventually

It's taken the best part of forty years, but The Ramones' debut, Ramones, has finally gone gold in America.

The differential in sales between Ramones albums and Ramones tshirts is, perhaps, a question for another day.

Claim of thrones: Alfie Allen doesn't exactly back up Lily

A short while back, Lily Allen was telling people that she could have been in Game Of Thrones but they'd tried to cast her in an incesty role with her brother.

Oddly, though, Alfie doesn't seem to know anything about this. The Mirror reported this:

The actor, who plays Theon Greyjoy on the hit HBO series, has refuted that Lily was ever an option to play Yara Greyjoy.

He said: "The only thing I'm going to say on that is that it's not true."

Interesting in many ways - not least that The Mirror doesn't know what "refute" means. Also interesting that that report appeared on the Mirror site nearly a fortnight ago, but the Daily Mail is reporting exactly the same story this morning like it's news.

Also interesting is how the Mirror takes Alfie as saying 'it's not true' and somehow manages to take from this that Lily was never an option.

Still, it must be hard for Alfie - now the rising star of the family, suddenly finding a relative trying to wet their beaks by saying 'yeah, they offered me a role but I turned it down'.

At least that's lightning that won't strike twice, though.

Oh. Hang on.:

Keith Allen could be joining his son in fantasy drama Game Of Thrones after auditioning for a role in the bloodthirsty show. - See more at: http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/television/game-of-thrones-alfie-allens-dad-tries-to-get-in-on-the-act-30349270.html#sthash.qfodOVZf.dpuf

The actor told The Times he has gone for the role of a slave who leads a rebellion "like Spartacus".

He said: "Every scene is a bloodbath. Frankly I think I'm cut out for that."

Allen also revealed he had previously auditioned for the part of his son Alfie's on-screen father but said he deliberately failed the screen test.

He told The Times the offer was "a bit cheesy, a bit obvious" so he "did a rubbish audition"

Sources close to Alfie Allen say he's mulling a "I could have pranced about bellowing in a Fat Les video" counterstrike.

For those who haven't seen Game Of Thrones, it's a series a bit like Merlin but with more nudity.

This week just gone

The most-read things so far this year:

1. Liveblog: Brits
2. Armenia try a homophobic entrant for Eurovision
3. Simon Bates dropped by Smooth
4. Terry Christian's suggestions about disability are, erm, interesting
5. Liveblog: Eurovision
6. The kids? They're all buying cassettes these days. Supposedly
7. MTV assumes women at gigs are waiting to be picked up
8. Alfie Boe humiliates audience members
9. It turns out Michael Jackson was a little odd
10. Man has to refocus energies from cancer onto dealing with Aston Merrygold's prank


These were last week's interesting releases:


First Aid Kit - Stay Gold

Download Stay Gold



The Proper Ornaments - Wooden Head

Download Wooden Head



Bob Mould - Beauty & Ruin



Chrissie Hynde - Stockholm

Download Stockholm



Various Shambling Beauties - C86 Box Set

Casey Kasem: TMZ show their class

Traditionally, the international standard for heartlessness was 'the relative who nips upstairs at the wake to try on the deceased's shoes'.

The world today, though, moves more quickly. The world is more douche-spattered. And thus, TMZ have redefined that international standard of heartlessness:

Casey Kasem is still clinging to life, and TMZ are trying to get a fight going over the corpse he has yet to vacate.

Well done, TMZ. You've made Uncle Digby leaving a funeral with better shoes than he arrived in look like a humanitarian.

James Arthur embraces exciting, open, bold new future

James Arthur has been dumped by Syco, who suddenly realised that there was no role for a record label in running a career which seems to consist mostly of making a dick of oneself on Twitter.

It does mean the end of the modern tradition which would see, once a month, Arthur take to Twitter to deny rumours that Syco were dropping him.

But the good news is that this will free Arthur up to spend more time building his social media presence (or "regularly turning the pile", as gardeners would describe it.)

He's started already, look:

"Just to clear things up - I am no longer with Syco. I would like to thank all at the label for making a great record with me," Arthur tweeted today (June 11).

"I now have to move on and do something different - the future is bright! #LOVE."

It's unclear what the "great record" Arthur refers to is - speculation is that some of the Syco interns and Arthur collaborated on making the world's largest rubber band ball.