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Idlewild - who, by now, have gone past the 'terribly undervalued' stage to 'hoofing national treasures' - have just posted some tour dates for 2010:
Bristol Thekla (March 3)
Gloucester Guildhall (4)
Reading Sub89 (8)
Brighton Concorde 2 (9)
Liverpool Masque (11)
Preston 53 Degrees (12)
Woomble's hair is worth the entry fee in its own right.
Jamie Oliver's amusing promo for his American Road Trip series has upset The Village People. The trail featured Oliver dressed up in the same fancy dress used by the band, and this, they reckon, is a copyright infringement:
Anyone who thinks the Village People are little more than a fun-at-the-time 1970s disco band with hits including YMCA and In The Navy needs to think again. According to John Giacobbi, the British lawyer pursuing Channel 4 on their behalf, "the Village People are still a huge, multimillion-dollar global business."
The name and costumes are trademarked in the US, and hundreds of commercial requests are dealt with every year, said Giacobbi. There was, he said, no such request from Channel 4.
In what might be a regular Christmas week feature, if I can be arsed, some of the musical highlights from across radio and TV today:
2.30 Sky Arts 1 Donovan
"A definitve life of the troubled troubadour" it says here. Hopefully the programme will be slightly better constructed.
3.00 Radio 2 Dermot O'Leary
Dermot's "choir of angels" is promised - "three indie female stars", according to the Radio Times. I'm not betting this is going to be Frischmann/Wener/Madan.
4.50 Watch Top Of The Pops
It says "Christmas 2007", but it's presented by Steve Wright and features Roy Wood, so has the stench of being a Top Of The Pops 2 Christmas special. Mind you, who'd want to see the number one from Christmas 2007 anyway?
6.00 Sky Arts 1 Songbook - Midge Ure
Billed as the "man who co-organised Live Aid", which seems a curious way to try and interest people in his songwriting skills. Like pushing a biography of Churchill on the strength of his wall building.
6.30 ITV Take That: The Circus Live
Trying to plug the X Factor gap, ITV fling out the circus-themed That gig from last summer. Note to Gary Barlow: nothing is improved by adding jugglers.
8.00 ITV Stars On The Street
We've barely cracked open the Radio Times double issue before ITV give it up for the holidays. This is an hour's worth of people famous elsewhere turning up in Corrie, which means we'll get the awful Status Quo cameos, and the puzzling time Noddy Holder appeared in the 40th anniversary live special to bellow "it's Chriiiiistmas" even although he was (a) playing a delivery man and (b) it was actually the start of December. Keith Duffy is going to be featured, too, although since he was regular post-Boyzone, does he actually count?
8.00 ITV2 Take That: Backstage At The Circus
You would not believe what's going on backstage... - ITV2 continues to provide a stalker's edit for the senior channel.
9.00 ITV2 The Xtra Factor: Winner's story
It says here that "Holly Willoughby catches up with this year's winner" to find out what he's been up to. In the last seven days. Which has been in all the papers.
9.55 BBC3 Move Like Michael Jackson
Lie very, very, still indeed
10.00 Radio 2 Even Better Than The Real Thing
Noddy Holder pays tribute to those pisspoor covers albums that ruined many a Christmas morning in the pre-Now That's What I Call Music era. The prepublicity is making much of Tina Charles having helped record the knock-off versions, but not a word that Elton John used to pop up on them before he was able to afford fresh flowers every day. Perhaps they're holding that back as the surprise.
10.05 C4 Wife Swap
Having decided that Wife Swap has run out of steam, Channel 4 have decided to, erm, spend the entire bloody evening running episodes of Wife Swap. This episode brings together Sam Fox and Freddie Starr. Fox famously became a successful pop star overseas after it started getting too chilly to be taking her top off all the time; Starr was in a band managed by Brian Epstein. They even had a single produced by Joe Meek. We very nearly were spared thirty years of a man dressing up as Hitler in order to try and make Des O'Connor laugh.
10.20 Sky Arts 1 Thin Lizzy Live And Dangerous
More of a danger to themselves, as it turned out, but given this was filmed in 1978, at least it's one programme featuring Phil Lynott that won't mention Leslie Crowther.
10.40 BBC HD A Little Later
As befits a programme lobbed on to stop the schedule falling to pieces, Radio Times don't bother to tell you who's on. Good luck, HD viewers.
12.15am C4 Live From Abbey Road
There's Michael Buble, so plenty of opportunity to visit the bathroom between the mighty Little Boots and the Temper Trap.
1.00am BBC4 The Roxy Music Story
Or you could watch Velvet Goldmine.
1.00 6Music BBC Introducing...
Sweet Baboo
Joe McElderberry - winner of last week's Mickie Most showdown - has somehow put a brave face on his being bullied by the internets to pop in and "edit" Gordon's column for him. Obviously, it's a task he's fantastically under-prepared for, but that hasn't stopped Gordon for the last few years.
It gives Joe a chance to continue churning the marketing pitch talking about Rage Against The Machine. He says he hadn't heard it before - which is believable, he comes across so musically naive you could believe that he had to Google Robbie Williams before the final. He's heard Killing In The Name now, though:
"I wouldn't buy it. It's a nought out of ten from me. Simon Cowell wouldn't like it. They wouldn't get through to boot camp on The X Factor - they're just shouting."
"They can't be serious! I had no idea what it sounded like. It's dreadful and I hate it. How could anyone enjoy this? Can you imagine the grandmas hearing this over Christmas lunch?
It turns out Joe is a sensitive lad and is really upset by the Facebook campaign urging people to download RATM's track to stop him getting to No1.
He said: "I think people are jumping on this to have a go at Simon and The X Factor rather than me. But Simon gives people a shot."
Joe added: "I will be really disappointed if it doesn't go to No1 after all the effort I've put in to this and winning the show."
Shane, also 33, said: "I've got faith and respect for God - God doesn't make mistakes. So therefore, I've got to understand that it's all for a reason. If I don't understand why then one day I'll be told - but not right now."
Who is MTV's man of the year? Why, that would be Michael Jackson.
Because what finer achievement could there be than, erm, dropping down dead from a body full of god-knows-what? Hey, MTV, you should nip up to Glasgow and watch the effects of the anthrax-heroin; you'll be picking up new heroes like an Underground train picks up passengers at Kings Cross.
[More updates on end of the year polls updated regular, like]
The BPI has just unveiled a big survey which - let's be honest - is just intended to try and push the case for ISPs being made to police copyright law in the UK.
They claim the nation is pretty much planning to download more and more unlicensed tunes, until even Simon Cowell is forced to get a proper job:
BPI chief executive Geoff Taylor said the findings were "disappointing" and expressed concern at a rise in illegal downloads from blogs and newsgroups.
More than 3,000 people aged between 16 and 54 took part in the online poll.
When questioned about their future plans, current users of unauthorised services reported that they actually intended to increase their illegal activities in the coming six months.
Mr Taylor said: "There are now more than 35 legal digital music services in the UK, offering music fans a great choice of ways to get music legally.
"It's disappointing that levels of illegal peer-to-peer use remain high despite this and the publicity surrounding imminent measures to address the problem. It's vital that those measures come into force as quickly as possible.
"The growth in other, non-peer-to-peer methods of downloading music illegally is a concern, and highlights the importance of including a mechanism in the Digital Economy Bill to deal with threats other than peer-to-peer."
Blabbermouth can barely save themselves from puking up their office festive pies with excitement at how astonishingly astonishing Slipknot are now:
Grammy-award winning hard rock iconoclasts SLIPKNOT have once again defied expectation. While no strangers to radio success, SLIPKNOT are climbing the charts again, but this time with an introspective track that challenges what some would expect from a hard rock radio song. This genre-bending new single, "Snuff", is currently Top 5 at Active Rock and Top 20 at Modern Rock and is climbing steadily.
When the time came to create a visual for "Snuff", once again the band did the unexpected. The band has unveiled a short film (see below), co-directed by SLIPKNOT's own M. Shawn Crahan and renowned photographer/director P.R. Brown, to accompany the track.
Yes, yes, it's era-end days for your Wogan and your O'Grady and your More4News. (Don't you hope Catherine Tate will pop in to the More4News studios to run through a best-of bits as she did for O'Grady?)
But another era is also being wound up, as Owen Pallett is no longer going to be trading as Final Fantasy. At legal gunpoint:
riends,
I began playing solo violin shows in 2004. Although it was essentially a solo project, I named the band Final Fantasy, as the experience-- and the tone of the material-- was reminiscent of the hours and hours I had spent as an adolescent playing those epic JRPGs.
But the laws of trademark infringement exist for good reason, and so I am voluntarily retiring my band name. In the new year, my record Heartland is coming out, and it is my first to be released in many territories, including Japan. With this in mind, I feel it is in my own best interests to definitively distinguish my music from Square/Enix's games.
So, I am no longer playing shows as Final Fantasy. Subsequent releases, including Heartland, will be issued under my own name, Owen Pallett. Prior releases will sometime soon be re-packaged and re-issued.
I thank Square/Enix their kindness and support, and I thank you all for your understanding.
Salud!
Owen
Nothing is more surprising than the revelation that people were still busily beavering away on that Michael Jackson tribute gig. Or at least were, as once against, something Jackson is connected to goes to slush. The promotion company, World Awards Media, has wound itself up.
I suspect hardly anyone is keeping the date clear now.
The further suspicion that the Rage Against The Machine for Christmas campaign is the best thing to happen to the X Factor continues with Gordon running angry statements from Simon Cowell and Cheryl Cole, apparently without any sense of irony:
SIMON COWELL has blasted the campaign to get RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE to the festive top spot - branding its supporters "a hate mob".
Music mogul Simon is so angry he interrupted his hols in Barbados to ring me yesterday.
He raged:
"All these musical snobs have ganged up against Joe."
"If you take me out of the equation, you have a teenager with his first single being attacked by a huge hate mob on Facebook."
"It almost feels like a little kid being bullied."
It feels like a spiteful campaign aimed at an 18-year-old who won a talent competition.
"It's David versus Goliath and it's not fair on Joe. It's getting out of hand."
Mild-mannered CHERYL COLE, Joe's mentor on the ITV show, is none to pleased either.
Chezza thundered: "I would be devastated to see Joe lose out. He put his heart and soul into every single week of The X Factor.
"I cannot bear to see him lose to a mean campaign that has nothing to do with his efforts.
"If that song, or should I say campaign, by an American group is our Christmas No1 I'll be gutted for him and our charts."
Press releases can sometimes make you feel so sorry for those less fortunate, can't they?
JAMIE CULLUM LAUNCHES "ONE MAN BRITISH INVASION" OF AMERICA
People are giving stuff away like it's Christmas, or at least economically worthwhile to provide free things in the hope of getting some business later. People like Mixhell, Soulwax and Crookers. This is the link to get the track, but before you do, you'd best read the writing on the back of the package:
Mixhell collaborating with Soulwax and Crookers on a sort of audio
exquisite corpse. It goes like this: Soulwax put down a synth track,
Mixhell laid down some electronic and acoustic drums, a cute kid says
crookers coco (crookers shit), Crookers and Soulwax take turns
mixing. Get that?
This, I would suggest, might be considered NSFW in the sense that to enjoy the lot of it, you'll have to hope nobody sees what you're doing. Pixies, pushing their Minotaur box sets, have released a 33 minute promo splurge:
Having lost custody of Frances Bean Cobain, Courtney Love has done her best to prove how fitting she is as a nurturing, supportive parent by, erm, sticking a rambling, vindictive attack on her daughter on the Facebooks:
"I hate to sound cold but any kid of mine who pulls this shit has lost her position... she was deceptive, she lied and she's lying to herself."
"Frances is clearly deluded that can buy her grandmother a small house in LA. I'd love to see how that works. She thinks she has all this money. The point is I have all the money she has."
Vampire Weekend are burning through Murdochian cash by streaming new song White Sky over on MySpace. Go have a listen.
[via You Ain't No Picasso]
The pointlessness of John Lydon's attack on something modern is underlined by his bemusing treating of Coldplay and Radiohead as if they were interchangeable, but let's let himtry some of the clodhopping iconoclasm that he feels we expect of him:
He said: "Coldplay and Radiohead bug the hell out of me because it's so soulless. It just seems pointless. It's nice, but it's tosh. They don't care about you. They care about lining their coffers."
This from the man who has starred in an advert for butter.
Apologies if cornflower: Kelis is thinking about launching her own range of sauces. Apparently, she's just completed a course at a cookery school and now has a certificate which allows her to make her own sauces.
I know what you're thinking. But even I'm not that desperate for a cheap punchline.
It's yet to be convincingly explained to me how Americans get given prison dates the way the British get hospital appointments - an invitation to come over some time in the future.
Lil Wayne, American justice has decided, must spend time in prison to make society safer (he was waggling a gun round.)
Fair enough. But if prison is vital in turning him from a gun-toting threat to society into a good and honest man, why does he not have to go until February? Isn't it a bit dangerous having him wandering round over Christmas, potentially shooting at Santa as he flies overhead?
Or... are the authorities really saying that prison has such little effect, it doesn't really matter when you go?
It's like David Bowie turning up on the Bing Crosby show, as the two titans of filling media space come together to mark the most magical time of the year. Even Gordon Smart knows that if you need an inarguable but unilluminating quote about record sales, it's a call to HMV you need:
Gennaro Castaldo, of music chain HMV, said: "Rage has taken a slight lead, as you'd expect given the size of the Facebook campaign.
"But we believe Joe's cover of The Climb will come storming back over the next few days.
"Chances are that the best part of half a million copies of the X Factor single will be sold over the rest of this week."
Animal Collective have guest-edited issue 65 of Fader, and - in the spirit of the season - the results of their efforts are available for free download.
Due next year, continued: The Victorian English Gentlemen's Club. Their new single Bored In Belguim is due on January 25th. In the meantime, to get us through the festive season, here's an acoustic version of the song:
Last night, we heard how Chris Brown was angry that shops weren't stocking his record.
He should have kept his mouth shut, as his whining has just led to throwing a bright light on how many unwanted copies of his album are floating around: 400,000 copies of the record have been released to stores. Despite the best expectations being 175,000 copies.
And, erm, despite him only managing to sell 100,000. Perhaps he's now going to turn up complaining that people don't have copies of his record in their homes.
Bettie Serveert haven't delivered a new album since 2006. They're not going to manage one this year, either.
But next year? Next year they've got plans: New album Pharmacy of Love is due in March, and leading off, there's an EP, Deny All. That's out on January 26th. Be looking at Deny All now:
There was something to be said for the Rage Against The Machine Christmas campaign - it felt like a genuine, grassroots attempt to organise people into a 'none of the above' vote for a Christmas number one.
Sure, it was utterly pointless and contained a nub of self-defeat about its very existence, but anything that was making people hyperventilate and send emails saying it makes you seem "like a grouchy spoil sport" couldn't be all bad.
But today, Tom Morello has joined in, squishing the last specks of joy out of the campaign:
Morello has lent his support to the campaign, using Twitter to voice his approval.
"Rage's 'Killing In The Name' & The X Factor's goofy Christmas single are neck and neck for num one spot on UK chart," he wrote. "England! Now is your time."
Possibly his greatest gift to the musical world, Billy Corgan now says he regrets breaking up The Smashing Pumpkins:
"Breaking up the band was a mistake because I think it broke trust with the audience." Corgan told Spinner "You had an audience that was very invested in that idea - whether they were invested in the people or the idea or the songs, I don't know. Like a relationship that you break off from and then try to pick back up, it's never quite the same."
Another day of Gordon spuming over Guy Ritchie this morning, I'm afraid, as the only man in the world excited about Sherlock Holmes delivers another advert for the movie:
Over a whisky at the London bar, Guy was bursting with excitement as he told me about the new-look Sherlock.
And it wasn't just alcohol fuelling his enthusiasm, the new blockbuster version of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's super-sleuth is a roaring success.
I saw it before last night's premiere and it's a belter, sure to be one of the biggest box office hits of the year following its UK release on Boxing Day.
More misery from the heart of Courtneyworld this morning: Love has lost custody of Frances Bean. Again.
Given that Frances Bean is now 17, this might be the last time her guardianship is swapped out by the legal system. Let's hope.
I admit it. I snickered a little at the Axl Rose statement about nothing much happening at LAX airport.
Now, though, Axl is even more angry than he says he wasn't, issuing a statement which says he never issued any statement:
"Axl Rose denies releasing press statement regarding rumored LAX incident," read the new statement on the band's official MySpace blog. "I did not release any statement or authorize either any statement or anyone to release a statement regarding anything at any airport anywhere," Rose explained, apparently referring to a statement issued on Thursday by a Los Angeles-based publicity firm that blamed the LAX scuffle on an "unruly group of paparazzi." A spokesperson for that firm could not be reached for comment at press time, and though the original statement is still on the band's MySpace, the name of the firm has been removed from it.
"We had recently began working with newer individuals in management in relation to our current Asian tour in support of our Guns N' Roses album Chinese Democracy in addition to [manager] Irving Azoff's though as it happens we are once again touring Asia without management of any kind," the new blog entry says. "Imo this nonsense may be some type of manufactured or publicity stunt."
Apparently considering he has some sort of divine right to have his dull music stocked by all good retailers, domestic abuser Chris Brown is wailing that some shops won't stock his record:
"Just was at Walmart in Wallingford CT, 844 north colony," Brown tweetedon Saturday night. "The[y] didn't even have my album in the back ... not on shelves, saw for myself." Brown said he talked to the store's managers and "they didn't even know anything. Wow!!! But they had Alicia Keys album ready for release for this Tuesday comin ... the manager told me that when there are new releases it's mandatory to put em on the shelves ... BUT NO SIGN OF #GRAFFITI. BS."
"I'm tired of this s---," Brown tweeted on Friday. "Major stores are blackballing my CD. Not stockin the shelves and lying to customers. What the f--- do I gotta do..." Brown later said he would not be retracting the comments after they quickly spread online, adding, "I'm not biting my tongue about s--- else ... the industry can kiss my ass." He also lashed out at "people who r constantly tweeting me wit bulls---," but did quickly apologize to his young fans for "all the cursing."
John Frusciante has officially been unofficially described as out the Red Hot Chili Peppers, says someone who knows, supposedly, but doesn't want to say who they are.
"Josh Klinghoffer has been playing with the group for a couple of months now," says the source. "Optimistically, the Peppers are trying to lock down a replacement for John, who has apparently quit.
"Mentally, John checked out a long time ago. He's interested in doing his own thing, his own albums - the whole big rock band machinery just doesn't appeal to him anymore."
Rupert Murdoch is fond of lecturing on morality - The Sun, John Gaunt, Fox News, it's all about telling people about what they believe to be right. And wrong.
How about deliberately cutting lose thousands of musicians from their payments? Where does that sit on the morality wheel? Because that's what the News Corp MySpace takeover of Imeem, as Hypebot reports:
MySpace only bought some of imeem's assets and assumed none of its mounting debts. Included in those unpaid debts were money owed to the 110,000 artists who used imeem owned SnoCap to sell there music on the web on a number of sites including imeem and MySpace itself.
Steve Brookstein ("Joe McElderly"), the winner of the latest X Factor, is enjoying his moment while journalists around the nation write his name on their hands in a desperate bid to try and remember it. Joe has been talking to Telegraph:
The 18-year-old from Tyne and Wear said: "Oh, who doesn't fancy Cheryl Cole? Come on!"
He hailed her as the "best mentor" a boy could have and said she was like a big sister to him throughout the competition.
X Factor's Joe McElderry: I fancy Cheryl Cole and I want to be George Michael
His debut single, The Climb, is favourite for the Christmas number one but is threatened by an internet campaign urging people to spoil Simon Cowell' Christmas by sending Killing In The Name by Rage Against The Machine to the top of the chart.
A diplomatic McElderry said: "I haven't heard the song yet, but I just think it's healthy competition. Everyone's obviously battling for the top spot, so I'd just say good luck to them.
"That's like a dream come true, if I could get a Christmas number one. I'm crossing my fingers that it's giong to happen but whether or not it will, we'll see. It's a massive deal."
The Leona Lewis fan who hit her during a book signing has been detained after pleading guilty to common assault. Peter Kowalczyk is a man with schizophrenia; he has been detained for an indeterminate period of time.
As we come to terms with the apparent paradox that, the duller the X Factor blood-sausages are, the more people watch them straining to grab at a tune, what news this morning of Simon Cowell?
Leigh Holmwood has news, and it's not pretty:
SIMON Cowell has admitted he can feel so overloaded with work that he suffers dark moods and feels "trapped" by his fame.
The X Factor boss, 50, claimed his job was sometimes like a "tidal wave" due to all his responsibilities - and it can "get too much".
He said: "I get to a point where I get overloaded, where you can have a week or a month where you're responsible for so many things. You have to deal with so many people.
"This can go on from leaving the office until five or six in the morning.
"You just have enough and it's just too much information and at that point I will go on my own somewhere and work it out in my head.
"Sometimes you feel it's like a tidal wave of stuff that continues to come."
In an interview on BBC2's Newsnight to be shown tonight, presenter Kirsty Wark asked if he ever suffered "dark moods". Simon replied: "Yeah, don't you?"
In an interview with Australia's Sky News, of which News Corp. is a partial owner, [Rupert Murdoch] was asked why he expects Internet users to accept his plan to charge readers to access his newspapers' stories online when they can read the news for free on other Web sites such as the BBC's.
"But we're better," he said in the interview broadcast Saturday. "And anyway, if you look at them, most of their stuff is stolen from the newspapers now, and we'll be suing them for copyright. They'll have to spend a lot more money on a lot more reporters to cover the world when they can't steal from newspapers."
But he said he didn't think the matter would end up in a courtroom.
"They know the law," he said. "They will adapt."
ELTON JOHN is back at the centre of a record company bidding war - 40 years on from when he first became a star.
A source said: "Elton says he's writing his most exciting new stuff for years - possibly decades.
"Working with P'Nau has got the creative juices flowing again.
"They have got a load of big companies sniffing around."
Who knew that bankers' earnings could end up looking quite reasonable in comparison? It turns out that Peter Andre - a man who doesn't actually possess a box to keep a talent in, much less have anything to put in such a box - is expecting to earn five million quid next year.
Who can make sense of such a bemusing situation? Step forward HMV Vacuous Sack expert, Gennaro Castaldo:
HMV spokesman Gennaro Castaldo added: “His star appears very much in the ascendancy again while sales of Katie Price merchandise would appear to be down.”
A dark day for Polka in Minnesota: their local Polka Queen, Bev Rambough.
She's quitting her cable polka show to build a comedy career, but she's left disappointed people behind:
"I've gone to polka events with her, and she's a rock star to all the octogenarians," said Rambough's lifelong friend Dina Rogalla. "I went to the Medina Ballroom with her once, and she was rushed -- by elderly people with walkers. They come up to her and want to touch her, pet her. They love her so much. She's got stalkers."
It must be frustrating for Buju Banton - all that time shaking hands with gays, trying to convince people that he's not really as homophobic as his gay-hating music makes him seem, and what happens when he finally turns up in America to play some gigs?
He's arrested on drugs charges and thrown in the slammer.
The Floridian authorities are linking him to five kilos of cocaine, with intent to supply. Let's hope Buju has a plausible explanation, or he might be finding more time to explore how he feels about close personal contact with other men.
On Wednesday night, Jay Reatard was playing Emos in Austin when the set went a little awry, as the Austin Statesman reports:
While the set had all the makings of a fun night of pop-punk, it was sadly abridged at only 40 minutes — less than the opening performance by Austin’s own Harlem — after two rowdy fans attacked Reatard on-stage shortly after he announced he was playing the night’s final song. He retaliated by swinging his microphone stand and departed mid-song, giving the at-times rambunctious audience the finger as he exited the stage. There was to be no encore — the lights went up and the PA music kicked in as the two intruding fans were arrested by police outside the club’s Sixth Street entrance.
“Jay was attacked, totally unprovoked, by two different people, both of whom were later arrested. One guy bolted onstage and came swinging at Jay, but security took him away pretty quickly. Soon after (the band hadn’t stopped playing, by the way), another guy sprinted onstage and hit Jay. Unlike the first guy, Jay didn’t even see this guy coming. So Jay defended himself with the mic stand until security took that guy away, too. Jay is safe and unhurt, and the cops were there for about an hour afterwards.”
While they're desperately trying to find someone willing to invest in their business, Terra Firma are trying to shift the blame for their ridiculous investment in EMI. They're suing Citigroup for fraud.
Oh, yes:
British equity firm Terra Firma Investments has sued Citigroup Inc., claiming it paid a "fraudulently inflated price" of 4 billion pounds for EMI's label and music publishing interests in 2007 as a result of misrepresentations made by the lender. In the action, filed Friday in New York Supreme Court, Terra Firma claims to have lost equity in the billions of dollars as a result of its heavily leveraged purchase of the struggling music company.
The suit adds that Citi has "sought to wrest control of EMI by pushing it into, or to the brink of bankruptcy."
The always-generous Bradford Cox makes available more quality free Deerhunter stuff: an album's worth of 2005 rare stuff.
What next, after the talent-stretching pointless album? Why, how about a small role in an equally pointless movie?
Yes, Pixie Lott is heading towards Hollywood:
In an exclusive interview, the 18-year-old Essex girl told the News of the World: "It's really exciting - it's great that my first film is a big American one. Music is my priority, but I love acting and I'd like to get some more experience in that."
Hey, there's no problem at EMI, right? It's just that Terra Firma are desperately trying to find a billion quid to prop the company up.
But, hey, right now it's able to cope with being £2.6billion in debt, it's just worried that if something bad happens, it might have to hand the whole thing over to Citibank.
Citibank - can you imagine them trying to run a record label? They can barely cope with running a bank.
EMI are trying to sound upbeat, but the disappointing performance of the Beatles remasters and the general yawn which met the return of Robbie Williams can't be helping steal nerves at Terra Firma.
The real question, though, is if you had a billion quid, why would you throw it in the debt hole? Wouldn't you wait for the collapse and use it to buy the decent bits of EMI in a fire sale?
The most popular posts from five years ago this year:
1. Amy Lee plots to strangle Britney Spears with her corset
2. Liveblog: The last Mark and Lard show of all
3. RIP John Peel
4. Is there no end to the Bedingfield clan?
5. Remembering the old Radio Five
6. 2004 Best-of lists
7. Don't try to rip off Cliff Richard fans
8. Oasis when they were still fab-ish
9. RIP Jan Berry
10. Atlantic Records propose cheapo and luxury versions of CDs
Back in 2009, these were the interesting releases this week:
Ray Davies - Kinks Choral Selection
download Kinks Choral Selection
The Get-Up Kids - On A Wire
download On A Wire
Deus - Worst-Case Scenario [Deluxe Edition]
download Worst Case Scenario
The Silkie - You've Got To Hide Your Love Away
The Cute Lepers - Smart Accessories
download Smart Accessories
