No Rock And Roll Fun

IT'S LIKE A RADIO ONE ROADSHOW. ONLY WITHOUT THE PRANKS, OR BITS AND PIECES, OR THE MUSIC. AND WITH POP PAPERS: For one week only, What The Pop Papers Say is coming to you live - yes, LIVE - from sunny Tunbridge Wells; off the very Pantiles themselves. It doesn't make it any better, just means we're in an incredibly good mood.
Ta-ta Tatu trilled the Daily Star, leading on the reports that the prospect of seeing REAL LESBOS IN THE FLESH maybe KISSING AND STUFF wasn't proving to be the box-office turn-on they'd hoped. The Daily Star decided the fact that Britain had - apparently - turned its collective mac - sorry, back - on the women dressed as jailbait was worthy of a front page, which sort of underlines the whole Tatu problem; if they could play one-off gigs in solitary toilet cubicles up and down the length of the country - or, maybe if they had some sort of personal booth on offer - they'd be raking the dollars in. But offer the prospect of ninety minutes surrounded by other paranoid aging virgins fighting the urge to whip it out in some cavernous hall, and nobody's going to pay for that.
What do you call a skinny pervert smackhead dressed up in Bowie's greatest hits? No, not 'Brett', you call it Kate Moss. As part of Vogue's music special they've got her all up in David's old clothes. It's an interesting idea, although why it should be any more interesting than pictures of Bowie in Bowie's old clothes we're at a loss to grasp.
The Brett-Justine-Damon triangle which was at the sweaty crotch of the music we've grown to grudgingly call Britpop was put under a microscope by the Guardian Weekend, sampling John 'Q former editor' Harris' soon come book that will be the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire for the bright days between shoegazing and... blimey, what replaced Britpop? It's affectionate but honest, and we await the book with interest. Interest that would not be undimmed by a review copy, you know.
The Face's continuing inability to separate 'next wave' and 'already there' throws up its biggest wrong so far - this month, they've not only got Christina Aguilera on the cover, they've got her arse on one of the inside pages. Why? Has the magazine so firmly abandoned the bid to spot trends that it's now interested purely in shifting copies? Will it be Tatu for June?
So, quickly to the nme, which almost deserves less than this skating glance for its "eight page coldplay tour souvenir" pull-out. They nearly redeem themselves with Hot Hot Heat on the cover - not beautiful, but at least musical; Karen O claims the Yeah Yeah yeahs album makes you want to fuck (yeah, but as Xander once said, for seventeen year old boys, talking about linolleium...); The Black Keys say "people think Jack White invented the blues" - um, no they don't; not a living soul would believe that; Alison Goldfrapp does the Burn It CD line-up (Vangelis; Carpenters; Motorhead); Madonna's album is given 7 ("a men in black II, an unneccesary sequel"); 7 Nation Army is the sotw. Meanwhile, the raging against the price of Glastonbury tickets rages on - "scalpers charge too much" they wail. Yeah? Have you ever bought a ticket from a tout? Or asked in the hope you could afford to sneak in by using hard cash to by-pass the queue system? Then how can you complain about the same system operating now? Of course the price has trebled, but lets not pretend that it's that that will stop the Kids from going to Glasto this year - the price of tickets to start with had been set high; last year Eavis said he was glad the ticket price had dissauded teenagers from going. Nobody moaned when Mean Fiddler put the prices up and out of reach; why the fuss now?
Normal service back next week.