Gigwise asks the important question

"Where are the stars of Britpop now" asks Gigwise, with the answer coming back that they're mostly all over BBC TV and radio talking about Britpop.

Still, if you've ever worried about what became of Menswear, Gigwise have gone to look for them. (The phrase "does anyone know if there's anyone selling shoelaces on this market" might be useful here.)

Robbie Williams: Now Menswear wade in

After Robbie Williams' attack on second-string indie bands has lead to a major skirmish.

Contactmusic is reporting from the frontline:

Menswear? Star? That's a bit of a stretch, surely?

It's the drummer, Matt Everitt, who has at least had a post-Menswe@r career in radio - he's the only one of the band who has his own Wikipedia page. On this basis, the Times have handed him an op-ed slot to start the fightback:

"I find it amusing that Robbie Williams... can let one comment from Brett Anderson... get his back up... It's quite endearing, but also slightly worrying...

"Menswear weren't manufactured, but I can see why people went on about the whole style over substance thing with us... We actually used to go on stage to Back For Good by Take That, a staggeringly great pop single. In the mid-nineties there wasn't really any rivalry between pop groups and the guitar bands...

"Traditionally your big pop acts allow record labels to invest in guitar bands, because they take longer to develop. Some rock bands take a few albums before they start making money and those tend to be the bands, like U2 and Radiohead, that in the longterm become important and fund everything. It's always been like that."

And that's an important point. It's worth remembering that even when Take That came off the production line, it took them four goes before they managed a hit; some of the bands slated by Williams didn't get given the same space to develop a following before the label pulled the plug.

All the glitters is not platinum

This happened a week or so ago, but I think it bears retelling.

Chris Gentry, who was once in Menswear, bought a platinum disc online, and posted a picture holding it, with a humorous note saying Nuisance had finally gone platinum after all these years.

Digital Spy picked up the story, and ran it as FACT.

Now, Digital Spy you could perhaps forgive for not spotting it as being a bit unlikely. Johnny Dean, however, you would have thought would have spotted it was all a bit of a giggle.

After all, he'd have been told how many copies the record would have sold, right?

Um... unfortunately, Holy Moly reports that although he had that information, he decided to believe the Digital Spy story rather than the more likely-sounding facts:

But lead singer Johnny Dean was less sceptical. A “source close to the band” tells us he immediately began to enquire as to the whereabouts of his missing money, making accusations of mismanagement, believing himself to be the victim of a great rock ‘n’ roll swindle.

Now, to be fair, it's not implausible that that could have happened - labels and management and accountants have done worse in the past.

But surely more implausible is the idea that there were over quarter of a million copies of any Menswear album in existence?