Bookmarks: Terence Trent D'Arby

There's an excellent piece about Terence Trent D'Arby at the New Statesman website. Interviewed by Kate Mossman, he's by turns self-aggrandising - claiming he was debated about in the House of Lords, something Hansard doesn't appear to record; charming; alarming; disarming and even - and this isn't something I've ever come across in a few decades of reading TTD interviews - like a human:

I press him about the lyrics to “Giraffe”, a likeable, child-friendly melody that contains the lines: “Giraffe/can I have your autograph?/Please sign it to Sananda”. When I suggest that it sounds like a song from Sesame Street he brightens. For the past five years he has been listening almost exclusively to children’s music with his two sons, aged three and five. Joe Raposo, who wrote many of the programme’s best-loved songs, including “It’s Not Easy Being Green”, is one of his favourite composers. His husky voice swells into a perfect, sparkly croon: Can you tell me how to get – how to get to Sesame Street! “You know,” he says, “I think Elvis Costello was also influenced by some of Raposo’s stuff. You’re not supposed to say that, as an angry young writer, ‘Oh yeah, I listen to Sesame Street,’ but I can hear certain devices of his that sound like that whole Electric Company style of songwriting.”

His boys love “Giraffe”, but he can’t be around while they are listening to it; his wife later tells me she has to wait until he’s out of the house to play it to them. He talks touchingly about love being “something you have to work on – it doesn’t just come to you”. As a young man, he scythed his way through women, partly because of his mother issues, he thinks: then one day he decided to stop, “because you’re only going to wind up looking for the same thing anyway”.

What the pop papers say: Toffs

The New Statesman which, erm, went off the newstands yesterday (No Rock & Roll Fun - last with the news) splashed the Blunt/Bryant 'posh people in the arts' story all over the cover, with contributions from Stuart Maconie and Robert Webb, and - more interestingly - some actual people who make music giving their perspectives.

Johnny Marr actually tried to shift the debate from background to the actual music world; record companies no longer sign up young bands with a view to long-term investment, and:

The worst part of this is the 'pay to play' culture [which] means bands have to hand over cash for 50 or more tickets or pay for whatever tickets they haven't sold, leaving many of them lose heart.
[...]
This is what's happening to young musicians all over the UK, and it doesn't matter what school you went to or what your parent's background is.

Marr is furiously committed to this idea - that background isn't important; it seems partly driven by a desperation to prove that his success wasn't aided by coming from a working-class background when that was supposed to open doors at record company offices.

But it misses the point by a Morrissey and a half - if the only way you can get gigs when you're 18, 19, 20 is by effectively bribing the venue to let you play; if your time 'paying your dues' also involves paying out hard cash, of course the family you come from is significant.

It's not just that coming from a cosier background means a parent might feel willing to dip into the Spanish villa fund to make up shortfalls on ticket sales but also the amount of time families can invest in, say, driving young musicians to rehearsal or a gig. Come to that, if you're growing up in a house which has a large garage to rehearse in, you might have a brick-built advantage over a kid with same amount of raw talent living in a two bed maisonette with neighbours who pound the walls the third time you try to work out a new song.

In sport, there's a suggestion that nurturing the success of a talented youngster can consumer about 12% of family resources; there's no reason why auditions and guitar strings are any less onerous demands than competition and racquet restringing.

Bookmarks: Arctic Monkeys

Luke Nightingale, in the New Statesman, on why it hurts more when the Arctic Monkeys choose to minimise their tax payments:

Their tales are of the streets we walked; streets that were built by public investment. They were born in NHS hospitals, attended state-funded schools. The Arctic Monkeys flourished as a result of incisive and witty lyrics of social realism that chimed with the everyman. And yet, any reference to civic pride from now on will be warped with bitter irony.

Festivals: All yesterday's parties

A quick note on the passing of the holiday camp iteration of All Tomorrow's Parties, and two perspectives on it.

Catriona Gray in the New Statesman sees a positive:

Founder Barry Hogan’s desire to preserve the festival’s authenticity – by calling a halt to it before it has a chance to stale or mutate into another commercial-driven affair – is manifested in his unusual choice of headliner for the final weekend: eighties alt-rock band Loop, who are temporarily reforming for the event.

The Quietus, though, suggests it might have been a slightly more hard-nosed business decision:

Somewhat melancholy news reaches the Quietus offices this morning in the form of an email informing us that long-running festival hosts All Tomorrow's Parties are "calling time" on the holiday camp editions of the festival. The aim, they say, is to "allow ATP to focus on their growing schedule of city and international based events in 2014 and beyond."

What the pop papers say: Staggers launches attack on the NME front

I've been banging on about how the NME has got locked into a dependency on the sort of heritage act that it was supposed to have blown away back in 1977 for a while now. I doubt it bothers them much.

They might want to be a bit more concerned about a similar complaint from the New Statesman. Because if anyone is going to write from a sympathetic position, understanding the difficulties in shepherding a long-in-the-tooth magazine through hostile times, it's the New Statesman.

Writing on the paper's Cultural Capital blog, Rob Hastings asks why NME readers find themselves cast as Cole Sears, so often seeing dead people:

Personally, I can’t complain. After drunkenly bopping away to Franz Ferdinand and The Libertines during most of my drunken uni nights out – back when I would buy the NME week-in, week-out and blu-tacked the front covers to my bedroom door – the subsequent decline in the bubble of excitement around indie rock in favour of electro and hip-hop has left me cold, making me explore older artists’ back catalogues more often than discovering new bands. Save for Arcade Fire or the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the surest way for the NME to secure me as a reader these days would admittedly involve sticking Bob Dylan or Neil Young on the front.

But perhaps that sums up the sadness of the situation. The magazine’s frequent decision to promote features on “heritage” acts from the past rather than interviews with exciting new groups such as Mercury Prize contenders Alt-J or Django Django must be commercially driven – either because the current crop of up-and-coming acts just aren’t deemed good enough, or because people listening to the hottest acts don’t care what the NME has to say anymore, leaving the magazine groping for older readers to sustain itself.

In the comments section, Alex Lyall thinks he has a gotcha:

Hilarious because NME's new cover has Palma Violets on it. A band much younger than Cobain, Curtis or Lennon

This does miss the point a bit; Hastings doesn't say that they only do heritage covers.

But boy, they do do a lot of them. I think you have to go back to April/May to find a two week period where the cover was given over two weeks running to artists who hadn't already made enough to buy an island (Tyler The Creator followed by Friendly Fires) and probably back to 2008's Fucked Up-Glasvegas-Crystal Castles page ones for a three week run of new music covers.

And next week is a tenth anniversary of Up The Bracket special, so it's not as if the Palma Violets cover really is the start of a new era of looking forward.

What makes it worse, though, is that the Palma Violets cover is part of a New Music special. A special! It's like the New Statesman doing a left-leaning political narrative special.

And the coverlines don't exactly suggest the paper has much faith in new music interesting its readers:

NEW MUSIC SPECIAL 25 BRILLANT BANDS YOU HAVE TO HEAR
PICKED BY LILY ALLEN, THE CRIBS, MANICS, BATS FOR LASHES AND TONS MORE

Don't worry, people - the new noises have been filtered through the same acts we're always going on about.

Are you still nervous?

STILL GOT IT
How DAMON, WELLER, BJORK & THOM embraced the future

What? Still feel that despite offering 'new' music from a bunch of acts with 113 years of experience between them, we might be getting too edgy?

Don't panic, dear reader:

OASIS: THE REUNION
Bonehead spills the beans

An interview with Bonehead about Oasis. Could anything be less relevant to a new music special?

To be fair, the Damon/Weller/Bjork/Thom piece is well meant, but misfires. Barry Nicolson starts out with a thesis that older musicians don't have to get stuck into just playing the hits. That's true, but an article that gathers up artists who share little beyond being a bit older might not want to use a pull quote which asserts:

Age is no more relevant than gender or sexuality

Ah, and if we could only say so confidently that gender isn't relevant.

But with Rolling Stone just about to publish a "special" about Women Who Rock, I'm not sure we can.

G4S actually rocks, you know

Adding itching powder to the main misery of G4S, the security company which has to ring up the army to help them out, was the discovery of the G4S corporate song. There was a video on YouTube, but it disappeared overnight; however, the New Statesman transcribed the lyrics:

You love your job and the people too
Making a difference is what you do
But consider all you have at stake
The time is now don't make a mistake
Because the enemy prowls, wanting to attack
But we're on the wall, we've got your back
So get out front and take the lead
And be the winner you were born to be
G4S! protecting the world
G4S! so dreams can unfurl
24/7 every night and day
A warrior stands ready so don't be afraid
G4S! secure in your world
G4S! let your dreams unfurl
We're guarding you with all our might
Keeping watch throughout the night

Now, even by the standards of Microsoft's Bruce Servicepack and The Vista Street Band, that's pretty poor stuff. Could it really be a G4S song, or was someone pulling our legs?

The disappearance from the web of the video overnight suggests that G4S are a little better at securing their own copyright than... well, apparently anything else they turn their hands to to judge by the Olympishambles.

If you feel you really must, you can - currently - hear the song on Soundcloud or buy it from Amazon.com.

Yes, buy it.

Yes, it's a genuine song, and Jon Christopher Davis is a serious musician - by which I mean he takes himself really seriously.

So, a genuine song, done with a straight face. But... on sale? To buy? What sort of deluded company sells its own corporate song?

G4S does. And explains why:

When the marketing team at G4S Secure Solutions (USA) enlisted the services of two Texan songwriters to write a song, the team never envisioned the reaction it would receive from company employees around the world. Best known for professional, integrated manned security services and technology solutions rather than music publishing, G4S is turning a corporate marketing campaign into a global fund raising effort.

G4S is the world’s second largest private sector employer and executives at the corporation are hopeful that a large proportion of their global workforce will support the download of their new G4S song entitled “Securing Your World”. In doing so, the company hopes to raise substantial funds for charity.

Nick Buckles, Chief Executive Officer, G4S plc commented on this wonderful initiative: “The G4S song “Securing Your World” was such a hit with employees, that our management team thought it would be a great opportunity to use it to raise funds for people in need – specifically families and children. We are encouraging G4S employees worldwide to help make this charitable effort a success, and ask that they get their friends and families involved as well.”

Recording artist Jon Christopher Davis and record producer Sparky Pearson penned the words and music for “Securing Your World” to help G4S launch its new branding at the American Society for Industrial Security (ASIS) conference which was held in Dallas, Texas. The song was performed live at a reception attended by more than 650 customers, partners and G4S employees. Requests for the song started pouring into G4S shortly thereafter, and sparked the idea for the fund raiser.

Nick Buckles continued: “The proceeds from “Securing Your World" have the potential to make a real difference in people’s lives. This is a simple and fun way for everyone at G4S to be part of something special. I hope they all join in the effort.”

Notice anything strange there? There's talk about "raising substantial sums for charity", but it's incredibly vague about what that charity might be. Even when they get down to specifics, it's "specifically families and children", which is somewhat vague.

There's not even an indication if these specific "families and children" live in America, or if their need is urgent (beat starvation), or long term (educate a village). There's a muddy image at the top of the page:

This suggests that the company will be raising money to help the victims of stock photography.

You'll notice that none of the vague charitable images are anything like as large as the G4S logo in that.

There's a different page linked to where employees could buy the single, but that's vanished from the internet. Maybe more was explained about the nature of the charity there?

The G4S Rocks Facebook page makes no mention at all of the charity, nor does the Amazon page where money is still changing hands. the Twitter account has never tweeted.

For a supposed push to raise "substantial sums" for charity, they've not really put much effort in, have they?

If you search G4S's Corporate Social Responsiblity site for G4S rocks, there's four responses, all of which appear to be pointing to press releases:

All the links go to 404 pages, but at least from the snatch of text we can be reassured the money was going to go to "worthy" organisations. So that's alright, then.

There have been vaguer charities - George Costanza's The Human Fund, for example.

And given the shambles at London 2012, we shouldn't be surprised that G4S aren't very detail orientated.

But a company instructing its low-paid employees to buy a corporate anthem with a little bit of moral blackmail around a claim that it's for a charity of some sort? The song is more dreadful than a reading of the lyrics alone would reveal.

Hosni Mubarak: My part in his downfall

John Rentoul has a useful feature on on his twitter feed where he lists questions to which the answer can only be no.

He's just nominated this question from the New Statesman:

Wyclef Jean's contribution to the Egyptian revolution

Is the Haitian rapper the real reason behind Mubarak's exit?

Of course he isn't, and it's as insulting as the frequent claims of David Hasselhoff to have somehow brought down the Berlin Wall. But why would you think Jean was responsible at all, Susannah Butter and Victoria Mitchell?

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Wyclef Jean's contribution to the Egyptian revolution

Posted by Susannah Butter and Victoria Mitchell - 11 February 2011 17:45

Is the Haitian rapper the real reason behind Mubarak's exit?

When not fermenting revolution in north African states or running for president in Haiti, Wyclef Jean is a rapper. Photo: Getty Images.

The Egyptian people triumphed today - but not without a little help from former Fugees rapper and erstwhile Haitian presidential candidate, Wyclef Jean.

The rapper uploaded his song "'Freedom' (Song for Egypt)" onto YouTube this morning. This afternoon, Hosni Mubarak stepped down. Coincidence?

Yes.

I will, however, offer a full and frank apology if two weeks of protests and the deaths of hundreds failed to move Mubarak but a bandwagon-jumping tune from Wyclef Jean made he give up.

Bookmarks - Internet stuff: Louise Wener

Hopefully, the next edition of Louise Wener's Different For Girls can drop the off-putting thumbs-up on the cover from Fearne Cotton now that Jude Rogers has reviewed it for the New Statesman:

Wener also dismantles the myth that the likes of Blur were intelligent pop revolutionaries. She describes their rudeness, their ruthless ambition and their "easy, bohemian, moneyed odour". And then there are the groupies. Wener leaves nothing out. The bassist Alex James tells a young woman, "You're ugly, but I'm going to fuck you anyway," while their tour manager is despatched to select attractive girls from the audience and give them after-show tickets, known as "Blur-job passes".

6Music back on death row

Just a few days after the BBC Trust said it thought 6Music was a good thing and should be preserved comes a nasty rumour that it's going to be axed anyway.

The Times is widely being credited with uncovering the story that 6Music, along with the Asian Network, Switch, Blast and half of future web activity is to be axed - although the death of 6 was first re-rumoured in last Friday's New Statesman radio column. The Staggers reported that:

. At a meeting in early February, the channel's controller, Bob Shennan, told the gathered staff that they had three weeks to wait before the wet towel was officially removed from its bucket to be wrung. (One imagines his gestures while speaking - fingers unusually honed from writing redundancy cheques.)

The idea is that the BBC will shrink to allow "commercial rivals" room to thrive, although it's not entirely clear which company is planning to create an advertising-supported programme along the lines of Marc Riley's, or the Freakzone. Or the music programmes on the Asian Network, come to that.

It's a bit like having Radio Five axed all over again, but this time with actual listeners to disappoint. (The loss of Five, taking with it virtually all BBC children's radio, proves the fallacy of believing if the BBC stops doing stuff, commercial radio will delight at having a space to work with - advertisers want markets, not gaps in them.)

Obviously, I love 6Music and don't want a station I enjoy to be switched off for no real reason, but there is a wider policy question here, too. There is an interest in shifting radio from analogue signals to digital, but most of the digital commercial stations have struggled precisely because it's very hard to fund interesting new services from the money you make selling commercials around it. If the BBC cuts back its digital-only radio offerings, and the commercial sector can't afford to offer much, why would anyone bother to buy a digital radio? Killing 6Music isn't just killing off a station enjoyed by half a million happy licence payers; it's effectively the end of the DAB dream.

What the pop papers say: The Uses of Shit edition

If you have the internet at home, at work, or maybe just an aunt who has a Teletext enabled telly, you might have already caught wind of the leap from website to magazine taken by Popjustice. In it's media-straddling, it's lost none of its spike, wit or passion, we're delighted to report, and has merely become the same thing it always was, only in a format which you can roll up and use to keep wasps away from your picnic lunch while you slumber during the lunch interval when Sussex play at Hove. Fuelled by a love of pop the way an eight year old gets fuelled by the colouring in supermarket own brand orangeade, popjustice not com's genuine love for its subjects allow it to get away with ideas that would have other journalists being escorted from the plush interview suite. The upside for the bands is that people who we'd had pegged as utter dicks come across as actually rather nice. Thus Busted happily answer the questions Martin Bashir had previously put to Michael Jackson, and Girls Aloud - who, hitherto, we would have had made into some sort of crab paste substitute - appear to be quite witty and smiley, almost to the point where we're thinking of having some sexual fantasies about them.

But the highlight is Ross Trueman's A to Z of pop. Printing the unaltered drafts is quite a wonderful move, especially when he tries to deal with the subject of kiddie-fiddling in music. That, alone, makes the magazine worth it's measly two quid fifty. You can get hold of one by sending a cheque or postal order for GBP2.50 to Popjustice, PO Box 33761 London SW3 5WR, or ordering online at popjustice.co.uk/mag. We recommend it highly. And hugely.

Rosie Millard reports from the Madonna public debasement that was the HMV gig for the New Statesman. She reckons it cost HMV eighty thousand in lost sales: “We’ll get letters of complaint. Bound to. Madonna’s a minority interest” sniffs the manager - which really is a measure of how far she’s sunk on the public affection scale - she once was a sniff behind Princess Di; now she can’t even match buying three for thirty quid DVDs for thrills.

“Like all the best parties, Britpop left a lot of fag-burns on the carpet” observes Andrew Collins, reviewing John Harris’ Britpop book The Last Party, also in the Staggers. Praising Harris’ deft linking of politics and music in the nineties, Collins then observes that Britpop was the first musical movement which was all-inclusive. This left the NME and Select fighting for access to ‘their’ bands with The Sun and Observer - and this is probably a state from which the nme never quite recovered.

The Tatler hosts Gwen Steffani as cover girl, offering a couple of pages of pix and some so-so at home guff. They also claim that Gwen’s style has been more inspirational to teenagers than that of Kylie or Britney, which seems a bit of a wild claim - round our way, they still lean to the less-mother-pleasing definition of skank style.

MediaGuardian covers the link-up between Conde Naste and Ministry of Sound to create a new magazine called Trash. Now, with a title like that, it could have been great - it could have been a contender; a clarion call to the discarded and forgotten of the world. Instead, it's going to be another celebrity magazine, clamouring in the increasingly over-crowded market for celebrity exclusives. It's named after - and inspired by - the Warhol film, on the surely mistaken belief that if Andy was alive today "he'd be obsessed with Jordan, he'd be obsessed with the Beckhams, he'd be obsessed with Footballer's Wives." Maybe - if he'd decided to move from New York to Redditch - and this is where the problem kicks in. The business plan imagines they're going to sell one out of every five copies overseas - of the names they've dropped, maybe David Beckham has international appeal. But I've stretched my incredulity down over my knees, and I still can't see a small crowd gathering at Boston harbour clamouring for the latest on Jordan and Gillian Taylforth.

In what we can only assume was some sort of prank, The Guadian invited Dave Lee Travis to comment on the current state of the singles chart. DLT - or 'the Hairy Cornflake' as he (and he alone) would refer to himself to the amusement of none - slams the record industry. Not that he thinks it's all bad - he's just not happy with acts who sell on image, but "Daniel Bedingfield is a good new artist, Kylie is doing some great stuff [there's an artist proud to say 'I don't look good and I'm not going to bare my stomach', as DLT demands], and Eternal, too." (We think he means Mis-Teeq rather than Eternal). But it's a bit rich for Travis to condemn "the load of tosh" that he says is British Music, 2003. Because isn't this the same Dave Lee Travis responsible for the reprehensible novelty hit Convy GB in the 70s? The same DLT whose period in charge of the Breakfast Show came at a time when the likes of Art Garfunkel's Bright Eyes sat at number one forever and a day, until they had to introduce myxamitosis into Woolthworths Record Department to deal with it? We have issues with the British Music Industry - you might have noticed - but if they were producing music that didn't leave Dave feeling sidelined, confused and alienated, they'd have real problems.

Thom Yorke is blue; or at least he is on the cover of the nme. But of course. Icy and miserable, innit? It's another one of those frothing over-the-top review as news story specials – up til page five is taken with 'band return, play some songs'; there'd be more, but they're saving some stuff for next week, of course. The Edge went to the Dublin gig; the nme treats this as if it makes the event legendary, but it smells to us more of Death hovering round at a christening.

Other news: Dave Grohl's made a porn video – a full on, Trisha type affair. Xcept it's just a spoofy old pop video type thing, and it features the increasingly unwelcome presence of Jack Black; the nme runs a map of exactly where the 'Leeds' Festival will be this year – not quite the arse-end of nowhere, but up the motorway from the back of beyond; a confused reader seems to think the Leeds Festival "has put Leeds on the map" – yeah, who'd heard of the place before?; a spokesman for Thames Trains frets that the closure of the London-Reading line during the Reading Festival will cost it money, although they can offset that by not needing the heavy-handed methods to ensure fare dodgers don't slip through the net. Of course, Network Rail claims that even with the Reading Festival "there will be half as many people travelling" – what, less than any other weekend? I'd love to see some figures to back up this statement; having broken her music career in less than two singles, Kelly Osbourne has now decided she'd like to be an actress – "I’d rather do an independent movie because I don't even know if I can act yet" – Kelly, didn't your wooden Doritios adverts give you even a slight hint?; The Matrix are going to work with Bowie – we suspect the thin white duke has got the Lavigne songwriters and Carrie-Ann Moss confused, bless him; meanwhile, Simon Fuller is forcing the unpleasantly named Amy Studt, the British answer to Avril Lavigne (I thought that was 'Please, stay at home'?); there's an interesting story about the trustee of Andy Rourke's bankruptcy looking to sell on his royalty stream that isn't given the attention it deserves – Rourke is, unsurprisingly pissed off – but, boy, what a great gift for a Smiths fan. Or Morrissey, come to that.

Manchester University has been freezing the accounts of students caught file-sharing – "there was no warning to students before that from the university" wails Oli Coleman, who is studying philosophy and politics. Is that the quality of students in Manchester? Now, we have problems with unis being forced to police copyright law, but… the university sent an email saying "You've been downloading movies; delete them and stop doing it; if you do it again, we'll freeze your account", which seems to be fair enough – they could hardly say 'You've got illegal copyright material on your computer, don't do it again', could they? Or are Manc Students running on back-up power and feel that unless there's a sign saying 'shoplifters will be prosecuted' then they're free to thieve?

Ian McCulloch chooses ten tracks that he'd burn to a CD if it wasn't all illegal and everything – the Dandy Warhols, Bowie, Nirvana, and The Coral. Oddly, no Coldplay, despite his claims elsewhere that Chris Martin is the greatest thing ever.

The Agenda: They're Atlantan (Georgia, not under the sea) and punk garage. And they "want to dance to the sound of 'right now'"

In a nifty sidebar to the Electric Six piece, they 'out' four stars who went in and out the closet. Only, erm… Bowie didn't say gay, did he? Nor did Brett Anderson. And wasn't only one of the Village People not actually gay? And as for even considering Tatu… But anyway: Are Electric 6 gay? "Only at weekends" says, erm, Dick.

There's a cuttings Keanu piece, fulfilling the legal stipulation that every magazine must have something about the Matrix Reloaded in.

Sexier than fish: A two page spread of mainly semi-naked Libertine loveliness. Yum.

Oh, we've got posters again, on a Glasto theme: a blurry Jack White; Richard Ashcroft stood in front of a caravan – uniting the two dullest things from England in one image; a not very good shot of Thom Yorke which makes him look like he's taken a bite of a dogshit sandwich; Liam apparently mincing off stage with a can of Stella Artois; a distant Morrissey who could really be anyone at all; Courtney Love looking like she's just woken up and a shot of Nick from Queens of the Stone Age's back. If these are the best shots of the festival in the nme archives, they can save themselves a few bob by not bothering to send a photographer this year.

There's things to do this summer, like a kind of substandard BBC Holiday magazine with the words 'The Libertines' sprinkled throughout.

reviews
albums
audio bullys - ego war - "would gain three points if it came out as an instrumental only", 6
shed seven - where have you been? - "disco down sounds worryingly good", 5
various - under the influence - "[Morrissey's, the chooser] most consistent album in years", 7
ex-models - zoo psychology - "the musical equivalent of a DIY trepanning", 8
ten benson - danger of deaf - "you can almost smell the beer, vomit and mild terror", 7

singles
sotw - are weapons - hey world - "something that'll really appal your parents"
skin - trashed - "she's stuck to another skunk anansie trait - writing dogshit tunes"
busta rhymes and mariah cary - I know what you want - "she seems to have tamed Busta somewhat"


live
evan dando - Bristol anson rooms - "there's the soul of a survivor"
rocket science - Manchester night and day -"awesome"
22-20s - Cambridge boat race - "about as 'now' as steam powered radio, but so 2003"
mogwai - Northampton soundhaus - "crucially, Blur are still shite"
stellastarr* - Camden barfly - "Frank Black shoved through a mangle"

there's a letter in angst from JZ of Chicago, who fucked the drummer from The Music and thinks she may well have been the "pig faced girl" Phil was talking about in a recent NME. She bridles that she'd only gone to see the Vines anyway, and besides, she'd been drunk, and besides, she'd done it for a dare. Julia, honey - we might consider sleeping with the drummer from the Music for a bet - if the stakes were high enough to cover the necessary pre-shag alcohol, the days of post-shag cleaning products and grooming, and still have enough over to make it worth our while. But, for a dare? You really thought you couldn't live with your mates spending the next few weeks going "You didn't sleep with the Drummer from The Music?" rather than the rest of your life marked as Not Merely the girl who slept with him, but then announced to the world that she did. Jesus. An exchange place at Manchester University awaits you.

And, finally: " Here's a suggestion for Rosie Boycott, Charles Moore and those other members of the media nobility who have argued, on a point of principle, for the legalisation of marijuana. Do what I did the other evening and go see The Dandy Warhols in concert. After three hours or so of likeable but interminable wibbling, you realise just what the stuff can really do. It's not an argument against legalisation of the drug, I suppose. But it's a convincing argument against its consumption." Rod Liddle, The Guardian, 21-5-03

[Edited 20-06-07 at the request of JZ]

Normally we'd hold this back for pop papers, but...

Amanda Platell's piece on Popbitch needs to be dealt with right now, we think. For those of you who haven't been bothered by her rather tiresome existence, Platty was part of William Hague's crack team who helped him turn a Labour landslide into another Labour landslide through their rather useless Tory election campaign last time round.

Suddenly aware that she'd thrown her weight behind the biggest bunch of political weebles since Disraeli took a holiday and left his dog Footy in charge for a fortnight, she then flogged a snippy fly on the wall documentary to the telly going "Ha ha, look how rubbish the Tories are", in the vain hope we might forget that the most rubbish thing they did was hire her to do the press work for them.

Now she writes the sort of mediawatch column in the New Statesman which would embarrass a fourteen year old Livejournal writer for its lack of understanding and startling insight. Okay, we don't like her; you may have got that. Anyway, like a whale deciding to try some KFC instead of plankton, for a change she's writing about an internet issue; like that whale, she gets metaphorically stuck in the doorway and thrashes about a bit.

The cyber-gossip website Popbitch - it's proud motto 'Unfounded rumour peddled as truth' - has set the newspaper industry back years

Um... "proud motto"? actually, Amanda, that's a joke. You see? Popbitch doesn't actually pretend to be a news source, and doesn't take itself all that seriously. If you don't get that, you might be about to make yourself look a bit of a wally.

The industry has worked hard at self-regulation...

Really? By appointing a bunch of newspaper editors to pass judgement on other editors? That would account for the quality and restraint shown by the British press, then. It makes you wonder exactly how deep the shit dumped on the Diana butler would have been but for this admirable self-restraint. And have you seen The Sport, Amanda? Those pictures of Sara Cox with her tits out that the Sunday People sneaked through the bushes didn't actually exist, then?

... but the dilemma over whether to print what has now become known as the Beckham rumour, the very same that first appeared on Popbitch, has thrown the whole process badly off course

Amanda, sweetie, the rumour did appear on the messageboard at The Bitch, but not first - it actually appeared initially on a Manchester United message board. About ten seconds research would have told you that. But anyway, let's get back to the issue - surely if a newspaper is admirable and self-regulated, then there's no dilemma at all. "Do we print an obviously false story alledging misconduct by a celebrity?" I'm sorry, I can't see any dilemma there at all, even if you add "because someone said it on the internet." Every day, thousands of things are said about people on message boards all over the world, and yet somehow there's no great panic attack at editorial conferences as a result - does David Yelland really stride into Wapping and say "Lads, I've just seen on Usenet that Christina only fucks black guys and always takes it up the ass - do we run this?" Palpable nonsense. If the tabloids want to run gossip as fact, they will, but lets not shed any tears that the poor little things are worrying about self-regulation. "Curse the internet - we wouldn't be in this position if they'd never said anything. We could just get back to buying up stories from close friends of Princess Diana and the former Mrs. Barrymore and not need to worry about the pledges we signed about invasion of privacy."

The tabloids had a field day, either running the rumour - claiming it was utterly untrue - or running the story of the rumour without the details, which in many ways is worse

Well, on the later point we agree with you. We notice you - um - run the story of the rumour without the details, Amanda. Now, tell us, how is it Popbitch's fault that the tabloids are so lazy they get most of their stuff of the web these days? Have you heard the phrase "shooting the messenger", Amanda?

My phone rang constantly with people wanting to know the truth about the Beckhams.

How thrilling your life must be. Let's hope your friends don't ever get a computer with web access, or indeed half a life, that your phone may never be stilled.

One former newspaper executive shared with me his rather sinister speculations about the rumour. (I will spare you the details)

Yawn. It's not going to be forces at work in the country again, is it? While we're namedropping, my newsagent filmed a cameo for Hollyoaks this week. Don't we lead thrilling, thrilling lives, Amanda?

No newspaper would have run the story unless it had appeared on the website, so Popbitch has enabled some newspapers to get perilously close to breaking their own codes and others to succumb to their baser instincts

What on earth are you talking about? Do you realise how ridiculous you sound? "A big boy did it first, Mummy." Any newspaper that runs a story simply because it's on the internet really ought to think seriously about closing itself down; and since when did the british tabloids need the excuse of "it's on a website" to invade someone else's privacy? If the press can't contain themselves faced with a bit of nonesense on a usually unreliable website, the problem with self-regulation is shown clearly, but it's not Popbitch that's set them back years - it's the paper's editors, honey. You might as well try and blame Sara Cox for sunbathing topless, or Paul Burrell for getting arrested.

Although the laws of libel for the internet are the same as for newspapers, they are much more difficult to enforce

You don't really know this for certain, do you? In fact, as far as we can tell, it's a lot easier to enforce libel laws on the internet. You might have noticed, for example, that popbitch pulled all references to beckham - as they have earlier to leslie and clarkson - without any need for any solicitors to get themselves into a court room. References to the Beckham story disappeared as soon as they appeared. Whereas a libel, once its in a paper, sits there, unchangable in that edition.

Tracing the source of a mumour can be almost impossible...

I'm assuming, Amanda, you're aware that libel law applies to anyone repeating a libel, and so "tracing the source" isn't entirely neccesary, as you can bring action against the owner of the site where the libel is published rather than the person who posted the libel in the first place

... and, if found, there is little chance of them having the fund to fight a legal action.

Have I missed a major change in the defamation laws in this country? Is it now impossible to launch a legal action against someone on the grounds that they can't fund their defence? Or is Platell just typing words more or less at random?

Closing a website is a lot easier than closing a paper

Eh? It's not, you know. Rupert Murdoch closed Today by calling everyone in and saying "This is your last edition", didn't he? And, um, if its easy to close a website, doesn't that make it easy to enforce the laws of libel rather than "much more difficult"?

A few thousand pounds later, the culprits are up and smearing again in cyberspace with the same audience of 20 million people

A few thousand pounds? Amanda, is that how much you think it costs to establish a website? And surely the "culprits" would be, by then, under a court pledge not to repeat the libel, so they'd be in the same position as if a newspaper had reprinted a libel. (Of course, The Sun is just one paper who's abused the spirit of self-regulation to do just that - maybe running the "You're Still A Lying Trucker" story alongside the judgment of the regulators that the original "You Lying Trucker" story was Popbitch's fault too.) And to accuse - as you appear - Popbitch of running a smear campaign against David Beckham is just hysterical nonsense. As for the "audience of 20 Million", what is that figure? Where did it come from? Are you really suggesting the average website has a larger audience than Coronation Street?

We may just have witnessed the death of privacy

Let's hope there was a tabloid cameraman snuck into the hospital room to capture the moment - you know, like with Russell Harty and Gordon Kaye?

It is ironic that the website's founder, as revealed in the daily Mirror, is Neil Stevenson, editor of the Face magazine...

No, that's not ironic. Unless you're Alanis Morrisette. And "revealed" - how did the Mirror find out that deep dark secret? Reading The Face's press release when he was appointed? Looking at the news story on mediaguardian? We simply don't know.

... a publication that regularly features the stars Popbitch smears.

Again, "smears" is histrionic, and more importantly - have you read either the Face or Popbitch? Because for all the Face's taking of its eye off the ball, it doesn't feature former Spice Girls, footballers or pierced pop stars who make up Popbitch's stock-in-trade. Again, a spot of research before launching into print could help.

Talk of a celebrity boycott of the magazine comes as no surprise

And, to cap it all, after berating the press for running groundless, unsourced rumours, you end on one yourself. Hats off.