Like Maximo Park? In Newcastle? Reading this now?

Maximo Park are playing a short-notice gig at the Cluny tonight.

Charity and art in Camden

Next week is pancreatic cancer awareness week. While some cancers get thousand upon thousands of people out jogging against it, and pink-coloured kitchen items, pancreatic cancer struggles to get its voice heard. If cancer had a voice. You know what I mean.

To help with the awareness-raising, there's a rock-meets-art affair at the Proud Gallery in Camden between the 19th and 30th November. The artwork is all by pop stars - Placebo, Maximo Park - and people like The Stereophonics; on the 18th and the 30th, there's a pair of special events which will include auctioning of said artworks.

Maximo Park say 'drink us'

Maximo Park are being honoured - after a fashion - by having bottles of Newcastle Brown Ale shipped with labels designed by the band:

Frontman Paul Smith said: "So many amazing things have happened for our band in a short space of time and to have our image emblazoned on a Brown label is another addition to that list.

"It would be great for our band to be as synonymous with Newcastle as the mighty Brown Ale, and it's both amusing and an honour to be able to deface the label in this manner!"

Newcastle Brown Ale, of course, isn't actually synonymous with Newcastle at all, as it's actually brewed in Gateshead.

We're also a little confused as to how naming a beer Maximo Brown Ale squares with alcohol industry's own Portman Group and rules on not naming drinks in a way that will have "particular appeal to under-18s".

You, You Tube & The Music: Glastonbury 2007

Amongst the live Glastonbury stuff turning up on YouTube at the moment:

Bloc Party: So Here We Are & Helicopter
Arcade Fire: No Cars Go
Arctic Monkeys: Diamonds Are Forever
The Chemical Brothers: Hey Boy Hey Girl
Maximo Park: Apply Some Pressure
The Coral: Dreaming Of You
The Twang: Wide Awake
Manic Street Preachers: La Tristesse Durera
CSS: Let's Make Love And Listen To Death From Above

BBC World News report
A pan round the site

Glastonbury 2007 in full

Bill Gates likes music

Apparently unconcerned that "We write the code which drives the software which allows Excel to add up on spreadsheets" isn't perhaps the coolest of backgrounds, Microsoft has created an initiative it's calling Ignition, which will promote a "new" band across the entire spread of Microsoft's activities. So the video will pop up on X-Box, it'll get streamed on MSN or Windows Live Live Windows or whatever it's called, there's to be some secret special stuff for the relatively tiny Zune market, Bill Gates will wear a band tshirt, that sort of thing.

Oddly, Maximo Park has been the first to sign up for the campaign; as part of the deal they've had to create locked-in content for Microsoft. It's supposedly offering them access to 30 million. That's a combined audience and will include people using XBox Live for gaming and checking email on MSN, so not really a totally useful guide to the size of crowd Maximo Park will be exposed to. We're also not sure if having a single month of ubiquity is going to charm more than it turns off.

Up on the roof

The only slightly hackneyed "playing live on a roof" gig idea has been resurrected by Maximo Park, who are going to go on top of the Baltic in Gateshead to push the new album.

Apparently, they're selling tickets, although since they'll be on a roof, we're not quite sure why you'd want them. It all happens next Wednesday.