Saturday, October 09, 2010

Bo Ningen weekend: Maguro

YouTube commenters reckon this is quite Butthole Surfers-y... you can see what they mean, but...



[Part of the Bo Ningen weekend]


Absolute hole

Earlier this week, Absolute Radio - which used to be called Virgin Radio and used to have listeners - announced its latest performance.

£4.3 million in losses for 2009. Oh, and nearly a third of the company's turnover vanished into the year.

But they can explain:

The national radio broadcaster blamed the combined effect of the recession and...
Well, yes: recession, that's fair enough. It's hit everyone. You can't be blamed for the recession.

But there was an "and"?
...and a big decline in its audience
Um... isn't a radio station blaming a big decline in its audience for not doing well a bit redundant? Delivering audiences is your business, Absolute; it's not like people not tuning in is a factor beyond your control.


Embed and breakfast man: Bo Ningen

This week's audio-visual treat for the weekend is a spot of TempestRock from London, in the shape of Bo Ningen.



That's their single Koroshitai Kimochi, which came out on a ten inch single around this time last year.

What do we know of them? There are four of them - Taigen, Kohhei, Yuki, Mon-chan. The Guardian loves 'em, as does Loud & Quiet. And they sound like pissed-off fractals trying to control their anger. Which is ace, obviously.

There's a debut album, also called Bo Ningen, out in a month's time.

Buy
Download Koroshitai Kimochi EP
Free download of Koroshitai Kimochi track via NME.com
Download Bo Ningen LP

Bo Ningen online
Bo Ningen on Last FM
Bo Ningen on MySpace

More to come across the weekend
Maguro
Live at The Rest Is Noise
Nonsense live


Gordon in the morning: They call him Mr Big

Pushing Noel Gallagher's appearance on Russell Brand's TalkSport show, Gordon tries a new nickname for Noel:

Mr Big joined Ol' Russ
Mr Big? What are you trying to tell us, Gordon?

Gordon's excited about the programme, anyway:
The show's a great alternative to Saturday night TV - I'll tune in.
Really? Because every second article in your column - in your newspaper - suggests that Saturday night TV is the most important thing in the world. I do look forward to Monday's Bizarre announcing 'don't know what happened on X Factor this weekend, but there was a really funny story about Wayne Rooney on TalkSport'.


Friday, October 08, 2010

Bookmarks - Internet stuff: Kerrang

While searching out something else today, I discovered this guide to bands making cameo appearances in Kerrang's Pandora strip:

Fluffy
Who were they: Skanked-out version of Lush, Select Magazine liked them. Used to perform in fetish bars before making it big, as if the Torture Garden crowd wants to hear anything other than “Pin Ups” on non-stop repeat play.
Where are they now: Somehow utterly vanished, although if you go to Wikipedia’s entry for the band you’re only two clicks away from a cartoon featuring Sarah Michelle Gellar and Alyson Hannigan drawn as children playing with a wooden vibrator. So that’s something.
Is this comic strip funny: I honestly have no idea what’s going on here. Or why Lauren Laverne is in panel five.


Church o'bigots choose Ozzy as their saviour

Good to hear Ozzy Osbourne issuing a quick slapdown to the Westboro Baptist "Church" for them using his Crazy Train as part of their grinding campaign against basic decency.

The big question, though, is why the church was using the song in the first place. A screamingly right-wing high-holy church with The Prince Of Darkness in their record collection? Somebody's not going to heaven...


Roger Waters re-edits his video to get some peace

Those who are convinced that Roger Waters' video was some sort of hidden anti-Semitic message will see his re-editing of his video so that the Star Of David doesn't follow the dollar sign as some sort of proof that they were right. But then if you can see anti-Semitism where there is none, you can see victory there, too.


The copyright industry in action

Companies which still pretend they make music or films get really prickly when you suggest they're little more than copyright farms. The figures behind ACS:Law, the 'whoops, there goes all your private data online' legal firm gives some clarity onto how copyright claims are more a nice little earner than anything. From MediaGuardian:

For a typical letter demanding £300 as settlement for the allegation of filesharing, the record company would get between £60 and £90, while ACS:Law would retain £120. The rest would go to pay the companies which find the alleged filesharers, and to pay internet service providers to hand over data.

According to figures leaked online, and information from industry sources, approximately 10% of net revenue that comes from people who pay on receiving the letters is paid to the company that tracks down the IP addresses of suspected illicit filesharers.

A further 15% is paid to the internet service providers for retrieving the data, following a court order, detailing the names and addresses of the people implicated by the IP addresses collected through the tracking software.
I don't think it's any surprise that the pursuit of unlicensed files has become an industry for its own sake, in much the same way that clamping firms have nothing to do with protecting parking spaces and more about shaking the wallets of drivers.

What's missing from this breakdown is any indication of how much goes to the artists in whose name this is supposed to be done. Bugger all, you'd have to suspect.


Gordon in the morning: Speaking in tongues

I'd have thought the cash Rooney gets paid, everyone should get the go to toss insults at him. But apparently not:

MAN Utd's Federico Macheda stunned team-mate Wayne Rooney yesterday by branding him a "chav".
It might have upset a man who always pays for his own prostitutes and doesn't wear fake Burberry, but surely Wayne Rooney wouldn't actually be "stunned" by being called a chav?

Actually, Macheda called him a "coatto", which is more of a rural boor or braggard, surely?


Thursday, October 07, 2010

Letters - two

Kurt Cobain wrote an angry letter to MTV, complaining about how it strangled creativity. He never sent it.

"Dear Empty TV/ the entity of all Corporate / GODS / We will survive without you/ easily - - the / oldschool is going / DOWN FAST/ my lifes Dedication/ is Now to Do Nothing/ But SLAG something / Kurdt Kobaineee professional Rock musician."
With no apparent sense of either irony or shame, it's now turned up in an auction. Rage repackaged for the highest bidder.


Letters - one

Bob Lefsetz has a leaked letter from an annoyed Nas. He's got an album ready to roll, but Island Def Jam don't want to release it.

Annoyed? He's livid:

I won’t even tap dance around in an email, I will get right into it. People connect to the Artist @ the end of the day, they don’t connect with the executives. Honestly, nobody even cares what label puts out a great record, they care about who recorded it. Yet time and time again its the executives who always stand in the way of a creative artist’s dream and aspirations. You don’t help draw the truth from my deepest and most inner soul, you don’t even do a great job @ selling it. The #1 problem with DEF JAM is pretty simple and obvious, the executives think they are the stars. You aren’t…. not even close. As a matter of fact, you wish you were, but it didn’t work out so you took a desk job. To the consumer, I COME FIRST. Stop trying to deprive them! I have a fan base that dies for my music and a RAP label that doesn’t understand RAP. Pretty fucked up situation
He ends his letter with a plea to Def Jam that we should "make money". But the labels don't really know how any more.


Gennaro Castaldo Watch: Oh, we'll all go together when we go

The struggling Waterstones book store and the struggling HMV um, shop, have come together to share their annual sales conference.

Why has parent HMV brought them together? Embedded spokespoke Gennaro Castaldo has the official line:

"We want to bring together all elements of the business because there is a strategic underlying remit to demonstrate how the whole business is working together."
In other words, as both parts of the company are going down the toilet, it makes sense to gather together rather than splash money out on two conferences.

Still, it turns out there is some cash sloshing about HMV still:
Manic Street Preachers were among bands to entertain delegates at the event
Who knew that the Manics were doing corporates? Every delegate got a torch, a CurlyWurly, a book of stamps, a free digital watch with denim strap, a vodka miniature, a Bic-style razor and a copy of the Daily Express.


Neptune Theatre to lose name, become part of Liverpool Beatles Theme Park

News from the further enBeatlefication of Liverpool. The Neptune Theatre, which has been The Neptune since 1967 as a tribute to the city's seafaring past, is finally getting refitted. But as part of the refittings, it's going to become The Epstein Theatre.

A Beatles reference? How surprising. It's further evidence that the city has long since moved on from the days when it insisted there was more to the place than just the moptops; nowadays - providing it doesn't get in the way of knocking down housing like Ringo's old gaff - it seems that there's little else to Merseyside.

To be fair, Epstein did work for Cranes in the building when the company operated both the theatre and a shop underneath, so there is a link.

But it's not really about honouring Epstein; as Joe Anderson, Liverpool Council Leader, makes clear, it's just about offering an extra stop to shake down unsuspecting tourists:

"For our Beatles industry this development means Liverpool has a new attraction and a new story to tell and for the city we will soon have a new theatre with a world famous name which will hopefully make it a commercially more attractive business to market and operate."
The bit about 'the Beatles industry' makes a sad-eyed sort of sense - oh, imagine if Ringo's house hadn't been in the way of lucrative development land - but anyone who believes that calling a building Epstein rather than Neptune is going to make it any easier to operate a theatre is, frankly, deluded.

Alan Williams was unavailable for comment. Plans to rename Merseyside Lennonside are currently before the regional government.

[Thanks to James M for the link]


The spaceman sues Dido

Dido stuck a NASA picture on the cover of her 2008 record, Safe Trip Home. It features a tiny little astronaut floating in space.

Trouble is, the astronaut, Bruce McCandless (no, I hadn't, either) is suing claiming that the use violates his privacy rights.

Sure, you go floating in space you don't expect to be papped, but... seriously?

cacd-031010991534
As Techdirt observes:

[I]t's difficult to see how much of a claim he has. It's not as if he's identifiable in the image, or that anyone will see it and think: "Hey, I'll buy this album because I know astronaut Bruce McCandless endorsed it." That's ridiculous. Most people will have no idea who the astronaut is, nor will they even care.
To be frank, the hardest thing for McCandless to do is to prove that anyone knows who he is before he can start to claim people are trading on his image. Surely this is just a shot of an unnamed guy at work?

Also: why has it taken him two years to file this claim? Has he been on Mars or something?


Gordon in the morning: Gordon finds out how pregnancy works

PREGNANT Sophie Dahl keeps getting bigger - which is more than can be said for her pint-size hubby Jamie Cullum.
Um... yes, Gordon, that's generally what happens during pregnancy.


Wednesday, October 06, 2010

The charts no longer really measure what they did

According to the Billboard charts, The Cast Of Glee are a more successful band than The Beatles:

The "Glee" cast has surpassed the Beatles for the most appearances on the Billboard Hot 100 chart by a non-solo act.

The cast of the Fox television musical series about a high school glee club has six debuts on the chart this week. That gives it a total of 75 songs on the chart to the Beatles' 71.
The Billboard charts used to measure sales of records. It's not entirely clear what it measures what it thinks it does now.


Howard Marks sticks up for George Michael

Why would Howard Marks be offering sympathy for George Michael all of a sudden?

Speaking at the West End opening of the film in which Rhys Ifans plays him...
Oh, yes, that would be it.


Darkness at 3AM: Most of Sugababes turn to alcohol

That driving a car while drunk thing? 3AM reckons Amelle Berrabah can explain:

The Sugababes star, 26, who faces court after she was caught driving over the limit says: "I didn't know it was possible six hours later. The fact you can still be over the limit several hours later should be better known."
"I had no idea stabbing a man several times in the head could kill him. The fact you can stab someone nowhere near their heart and still kill them should be better known."

If anyone's going to get away with pretending they're so stupid they don't know that alcohol remains in your system, I guess it would be Berrabah.

Unfortunately for Amelle, it's actually in the Highway Code:
[Alcohol will] take time to leave your body; you may be unfit to drive in the evening after drinking at lunchtime, or in the morning after drinking the previous evening
So even if she had managed to never notice that you can still feel drunk hours after drinking, she should have at least heard the news before she took her driving test.

Instead of pointing this out, though, the 3AMies treat her like she's arrived bearing previously unknown news:
Don't say she didn't warn you...
No, 3AM. Our biology teacher warned us when we were about ten years old.


Gordon in the morning: Fear, Fame, whatever

There's no real difference between Fear and Fame, is there? Not while Gordon and his team are around.

In other news, Robbie Williams says that it was all down to hormones:
Robbie: I wasn't fat, it's my hormones
Just to be pedantic, if that's true, it doesn't mean you weren't fat, it just means you were fat for different reasons to overeating or undermoving.
But the right medication, and finding love with US actress AYDA FIELD, helped him rediscover his spark. His return was confirmed last October when he starred on The X Factor, singing comeback single Bodies from his album Reality Killed The Video Star.
It's not impossible that being in love could shunt your hormones in a positive direction, I suppose. No less likely than Gordon trying to recast last year's album as a return to form. The sort of return to form that requires a desperate swallowing of pride to return to the more successful Take That.

Perhaps the disappointing sales of the album were down to hormones, too. Tricky bugger, Johnny Hormone.


Tuesday, October 05, 2010

Roger Waters sighs, explains that he's not an anti-Semite

To be fair, Waters doesn't need to explain what he's trying to do, as even the ADL seemed to have understood his stage show before they then pretended not. But Sideline have reported his formal response:

"Contrary to Mr Foxman's assertion, there are no hidden meanings in the order or juxtaposition of these symbols. The point I am trying to make in the song is that the bombardment we are all subject to by conflicting religious, political, and economic ideologies only encourages us to turn against one another, and I mourn the concomitant loss of life. If 'The Wall' show did have a political message it was to seek to illuminate our condition, and find new ways to encourage peace and understanding, particularly in the Middle East."
The other charge - that Waters deals with global politics in such a broad-brushed way that it would make a sixth form common room cringe - remains on the record for now.


Bookmarks - Internet stuff: Wayne Rosso

If you can get past the hanging-it-on-John-Lennon's-birthday part, Wayne Rosso's summation of the problems facing music labels in The Dream Is Over.

It's not piracy, it's their own obstinacy that is going to destroy them:

There will be no new players of significance to enter the business. Investors don’t want to entertain the remotest possibility of funding any start-up that deals with music, no matter how clever and innovative. As one major media venture firm told me a few months ago, they’re tired of writing cheques for big advances to record labels. Not to mention the huge legal fees that start-ups have to spend in order to get licensed, a process that takes at least a year (for no apparent reason, I might add).


Trembling Blue Stars realign to finish for good

There hasn't been a Trembling Blue Stars record since 2005, but shortly, there will be.

Bob Wratten's got the team together again for one last record, turning what had been an ellipsis into a proper full stop. Actually, it's two last records, but they go together.

The album is Fast Trains and Telegraphs Wires has also got Cath Carroll on it.

That's two nights running we've had a story about a new record with Cath Carroll on it.

The ep is Cicely Tonight Volume One. Even though there's never going to be a number two.

You can buy the records now, or listen on Spotify.

[Thanks to @sweepingnation]


Hopefully this will make things right, America

Second-wave Kate Nash has perhaps split opinion a bit, but she's just announced that her American tour support is going to be Peggy Sue.

Of course that's exciting. Here's one of those streaming-audio box widgety things with Lover Gone trapped inside it:




A reason to go out. If you're American.

These are the dates:

10/29/2010 Los Angeles The Music Box
10/30/2010 San Francisco Warfield Theatre
11/1/2010 Portland Wonder Ballroom
11/2/2010 Seattle Showbox at the Market
11/3/2010 Vancouver Commodore Ballroom
11/5/2010 Salt Lake City In the Venue
11/6/2010 Denver Ogden Theatre
11/8/2010 Iowa City Englert Theatre
11/9/2010 Chicago Vic Theatre
11/11/2010 Columbus Newport Music Hall
11/12/2010 Detroit Majestic Theatre
11/13/2010 Toronto Phoenix Concert Theatre
11/15/2010 Washington 9:30 Club
11/17/2010 Philadelphia Theatre of Living Arts
11/18/2010 Boston Paradise Rock Club
11/19/2010 New York Terminal 5
11/20/2010 Montclair Wellmont Theatre


Sorry, America

It's two uninspiring solo artists detached from their welcome-outstaying bands for the price of one:

Beginning November 10th in Los Angeles, CA, Healy will join The Killers' front man Brandon Flowers for a two-week tour of the United States.
Staying in never sounded so good, right?


Imagine no possessions. Now, imagine those no possesions, but limited edition no possessions

No surprise about more overpriced Lennon tat emerging - limited edition models of Lennon's Imagine guitar coming from Gibson.

What's interesting, though, is that Gibson have announced that it wasn't their idea:

Gibson Acoustic's director of sales and marketing, Robi Johns, said Yoko Ono asked the company to release a limited number of the model of guitar that her husband played.
I don't think I can recall an instance where Yoko's instigation of a tacky cash-in was quite so publicly acknowledged.


Gordon in the morning: Joe McElderberry comes out again

Gordon has been listening to - and by "listening to" I mean "reading in New magazine" - Joe McElderry talking about coming out:

He said: "I was nervous. It's not ideal to have to tell the whole nation that you're gay! I thought, 'Oh my god, this is big stuff'.

"But once I realised who I was as a person, I thought, 'Right, I'm just going to be honest'.

"It makes your life easier."
Bless, Joe thought he was telling the entire nation and that it was "big stuff". Honey, only about six or seven people could even remember who you were, and one of those thought you were Susan Boyle's butler.

Still, I'm sure it did make Joe's life easier. By which he must mean 'it's easier to co-operate with the national newspaper which is going to out you anyway, rather than let it happen to you'.


Resonance and discord: Max Tundra axed

Nobody would deny that radio stations have to change and refresh their schedules from time to time - after all, can you imagine what it would be like if Radio One still had Chris Moyles festering at breakfast? Oh. But you get the point.

What matters, though, is how they set about doing it. Max Tundra's Rotogravure show appears to have been dropped from the Resonance FM schedule without anyone bothering to tell him:

I took great offence at the fact that a radio station Content Manager would send an email informing of plans to alter a long-running radio show, then fail to respond to a perfectly polite reply sent that same day, eschewing any further discussion in favour of dropping the show from the schedule without warning - a whole month before the original date suggested - and failing to let me know that this was happening.
Of course, we do only have Max's side of the story.

Resonance FM's Twitter stream offers something a bit like a counterview:
a glut of ego gymnastics from Max Tundra, the author of "masturbated by a guy for small change" doesn't help either

For the record and for his fans, Mr.Tundra was not dropped nor shoved. Just paused until early next year to make way for some new content.
Which would be fine, but Max's beef is with the way it was done. I don't think it's "ego gymnastics" to complain about discovering your show has been replaced by a pre-record a few hours before you're supposed to be going on air.

Resonance is a wonderful radio station that sounds like no other; it's disappointing to discover that the management appears to be very like the worst commercial Top 40 stations.


Monday, October 04, 2010

Bad news, Crispian Mills

Crispian Mills - the senior trustfund from Kula Shaker - is releasing a solo single.

The bad news for Crispian is that, far from getting rid of what was bad about Kula Shaker by going solo, he has brought a fairly large chunk of the problem with him.


Indie heaven: The Hit Parade are back... with Cath Carroll

It's now - what? - ten past nine in the evening, which means it's well past getting giddily excited at the news that today sees not just a new single by The Hit Parade, but Cath Carroll is back with Julian Henry for this one.

It's called I Like Bubblegum and you can buy it now. And you should.

(Really, this message should have been typed out and photocopied instead of blogged.)


Gordon in the morning: Did he mention the JLS condoms?

There's some not-entirely-believable story about Ortise running out of condoms and having to rush out to get some more this morning. It's one part a chance for Gordon to imagine Ortise having sex to six parts a push for Durex.

Let's hope the JLS condoms aren't as thin as the disguise on this advert.

Oritse said: "I never get embarrassed about using condoms or buying them, no way. It's part of the movement.

"I'm not going to get caught out. I'm an avid believer of no glove, no love."
The management have tried to explain to him that it's not actually necessary if all you've taken back to your room are photos of Kelly Brook in Playboy downloaded off the internet, but Ortise can't be sure where his hand has been.


Sunday, October 03, 2010

The Anti-Defamation league thinks Roger Waters is just another brick in the wall

Roger Waters' thirtieth birthday performance of The Wall isn't going down well with everyone. And it's not just people who really wish he'd move on and do something else that are vexed; Sideline reports that the ADL are up in arms:

Abraham Foxman, the Anti-Defamation League director says: "It is outrageous that Roger Waters has chosen to use the juxtaposition of a Jewish Star of David with the symbol of dollar signs. While he insists that his intent was to criticize Israel's West Bank security fence, the use of such imagery in a concert setting seems to leave the message open to interpretation, and the meaning could easily be misunderstood as a comment about Jews and money. Of course Waters has every right to express his political views about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through his music and stagecraft. However, the images he has chosen, when put together in the same sequence, cross a line into anti-Semitism."
It's almost as if Foxman is saying 'we know what he means, but we're going to play the anti-semitism card anyway' there, isn't it?

The ADL seem less worried about Waters' use of other religions' imagery, for some reason.


Bono's friends: Bringing the baggage with him

This advert appeared in the New York Times recently:

Yes, that's Bono and Mrs Bono striding off a small plane carrying Luis Vuitton bags with them.

To be fair, the precise bag they're carrying does give its profits to an African charity, and Bono and Ali have handed their fees for doing the advert over, too.

But even if you don't see how spending a ridiculous fortune on posh bags is really an answer to Africa's problems, you'd have to agree that having Bono turn up with a luxury suitcase and - oh, no - a bloody guitar is enough to set the continent back a good ten years.


Apparently you should just sit and take it

@Glastowatch is annoyed about people expressing their frustration:

And so begins the moaning
They link through to a Facebook group which more-or-less grunts its frustration:
glasto ticket fiasco thousands left unhappy people gloating about getting 16 on one person ACCOUNT YET 1000'S TURNED AWAY PREHISTORIC COMPUTER SYSTEM 1 COMPANY TO HANDLE IT..SURELY THIS IS AGAINST WHAT THE TRUE MEANING OF GLASTONBURY IS...JOKE IS NO BETTER THAN TESCO A FILTHY GIANT
Is that really "moaning"? Isn't it understandable frustation? Sure, not everyone who wants tickets will get tickets, but is it really necessary to force them to spend hours on a Sunday morning battering a fallen-over computer system in order to let them down? Is it moaning to expect a company selling tickets that cost well over a hundred quid - and who extracts a healthy 'booking' fee - actually works? Does Glastowatch really think you should just shut up and shrug?

Perhaps if someone took notice of the 'moaning' in the previous years, there wouldn't be a bunch of these ungrateful, whining ticketless ingrates around now?

[UPDATE: This post originally started with a reference to Michael Eavis attacking Seetickets, which was actually me being duped by a fake account.]


Lois Maffeo weekend: Sotto Voce

Lois was briefly in a band with Rebecca Gates, who would go on to be in The Spinnanes - trading as Cradle Robbers, this is what they sounded like:



I've just come across this, too: a bunch of articles Maffeo wrote for The Stranger in 1999.

[Part of The Lois Maffeo weekend]


Glastonbury 2011: SeeTickets still isn't up to the job

Although less of a nightmare than in previous years, it still seems from Twitter that the Glastonbury ticket process is still a rotten, tumbling mess:

@Jack_Dent:

# Wasted a Sunday morning trying to book my lad a Glastonbury ticket. Think he may have just got 1 via a mate. The booking system is shite.

@glastofest oh great thanks, the bloody See tickets website is still not working #glastonburysucks 10 minutes ago via web in reply to glastofest

@glastofest errrno, it times out. it's a useless, frustrating system. No worries though, you'll sell all the tickets!! about 3 hours ago via web in reply to glastofest
@JackHCarter:
trying get a glastonbury ticket takes the PISS
@newmusicdave:
Sold out! Never even got on the website. That's 2 yrs in a row now. Waste of time #Glastonbury
How many years now have they been selling exclusively online, and they still can't get the system to work properly?

What's interesting, though, this year is that it's not just the fans taking to Twitter to attack Seetickets for being useless:
@MichaelEavis:
See tickets have indeed let us down today I'm sorry but there will be another sale of cancelled tickets in 2011. Still some left now though
If even Michael Eavis, a man who can't see a mudbath without pointing out the rejuvenating properties of Somerset clay, is saying Seetickets isn't up to the job, why are Glastonbury still using them?


[UPDATE: Oh. That turns out not to be an actual Michael Eavis account. Sorry; thanks to the comments which pointed that out.]


Lois Maffeo weekend: The Trouble With Me

Back to Lois working under half of her own name:



This was a 7" on K Records.

[Buy: Lois records]

[Part of The Lois weekend]


Woot-ton: Something someone said about Ronan

A couple of weeks back, the New York Times printed a letter of complaint from the News Of The World's managing editor Bill Akass. Responding to the Times' story about Andy Coulson and his team phonehacking their way through the great and the good, Akass snorted out this paragraph of disgust:

Sources: In the days prior to publication the Standards Editor Phil Corbett wrote to all staff reminding them of the NYT’s ethical guidelines with regards to anonymous sources. We were surprised therefore to see the finished article was based almost entirely on anonymous sources – a “dozen former reporters”- whose credibility, seniority, motives or qualifications we are therefore prevented from challenging. The article also cites anonymous “detectives” and “prosecutors”.

There was one single named source who claimed direct knowledge of wrongdoing, as opposed to hearsay or supposition. This is pretty thin evidence on which to hang a 6,000 word investigation. I believe that by failing to adhere to their own stringent rules when dealing with the News of the World story, the NYT’s reporters and editors demonstrated clear bias.
So, running stories with only one named source is bad. It's worse than bad, it's unethical.

Hmm. There's a bit in Dan Wootton's column about Natalie Imbruglia standing in for Keith Duffy on a Boyzone tour (a bit like using champagne instead of root beer in an ice cream float) and that is sourced. But then there's a totally separate story about Ronan Keating:
Ronan, who is already battling for his marriage to YVONNE, is also struggling to cope as the anniversary of Steo's death on October 10 looms.

A source said: "The memory of Stephen's death is flooding back to Ronan. They were very close, like brothers, and Ronan has been going through a rocky patch."
And on and on runs the quote. From an unnamed source. "[W]hose credibility, seniority, motives or qualifications we are therefore prevented from challenging."


Lois Maffeo weekend: My Head Hurts

This Go Team is a Calvin Johnson side-project (no exclamation mark), which drafted in Lois for vocal work:



[Part of Lois Maffeo weekend]


This week just gone

The most-read stories about Robbie Williams of all time are:

1. Daily Mail calls Williams "portly"
2. Courtney Love has set Williams up with her friend
3. Williams dates a 'humble' barmaid
4. Noemi Baenninger has perfect recall of having sex with Williams
5. Williams played Trivial Pursuit instead of dating Tara Palmer-Tomkinson
6. Random Berliner claims she's framed her Williams sex knickers
7. Williams takes up blogging, briefly
8. Charity proposes bringing together James Brown together with Williams
9. Williams sky-gondola stunt flops
10. Cannibal hopes to eat Williams; is disappointed

These new releases covered the period we were on holiday:


Sia - We Are Born


Download We Are Born



No Age - Everything In Between


Download Everything In Between



The Royalettes - Gonna Take A Miracle



David Sylvian - Sleepwalkers


Download Sleepwalkers



Deerhunter - Halcyon Digest


Download Halcyon Digest



Edwyn Collins - Losing Sleep


Download Losing Sleep



OMD - History Of Modern


Download History Of Modern



Robyn - Body Talk Part 2


Download Body Talk Part 2



Manics - Postcards From A Young Man


Download Postcards From A Young Man



Interpol - Interpol


Download Interpol



Killing Joke - Absolute Dissent


Download Absolute Dissent