Mensch & Murdoch turn Bataclan into terrorporn

When terrible things happen to people, it's not unusual for the authorities to withhold some of the worst details. It's done out of respect for the dead, and out of concern for their families.

So it was with the slaughter in the Bataclan - the public was told of the murder; the bestial nature of what happened inside the venue was alluded to. But the fine detail - the horrific fine detail - wasn't made public.

There was no need - if you felt you required something more than 'people murdered because they were at a gig' before you felt it was unacceptable, before you were horrified, you might have a problem yourself.

At this point, enter Heat St. You probably haven't heard of Heat St - it's Rupert Murdoch's version of the Drudge Report, with Louise Mensch as the drudge.

You might wonder why, with a media empire stretching from the Wall Street Journal in the first circle down to The Sun and Fox News in the seventh needs a tattle-based website. It looks like the main motivation is a way to get "things" "out there" without tarnishing his mainstream brands.

And, yeah, if it's something that could tarnish a brand like the New York Post, you can imagine the sort of content they're publishing.

Hence, it was the natural home for an "exclusive" detailing what happened to people inside the Bataclan. Doubtless, Mensch and Murdoch would defend the publication in some vague 'it is important to know what we are dealing with'.

And it is.

But who didn't already know? Why hadn't already imagined the detail? Where is the audience going 'when I thought it was just shooting the people sitting in the area reserved for the disabled and laughing, I was going to cut ISIS some slack but this feels like they went too far?'

There's nobody who needs this terrorporn.

It's funny that the sort of people who wail 'you're playing into their hands' when the BBC forget to add "so-called" in front of "Islamic State" are quite happy to re-up ISIS propaganda and to burnish their reputation when it might get a few extra clicks for a website.

There are monsters everywhere. Why would you work with them?

Somehow Paris attacks have become about Morrissey

And so we turn once again to Morrissey, who has somehow managed to turn the murders in Paris into a thing about him. True To You, the fanzine which effectively functions like Pravda to Morrissey's Kremlin, published this email:

Universal Music, the approach made to David Joseph, since denied by David Joseph


On 18 Nov 2015, at 15:29, Boz Boorer -------------------- wrote:


Dear David,


My name is Boz Boorer and I represent all of the musicians who played
on I'M THROWING MY ARMS AROUND PARIS (Morrissey).


We are shocked that you have made no move this week to promote the
above song (download/special 7-inch/special CD) to support the people
of Paris. Any other artist would be number 1 with this song RIGHT NOW.


Why are you doing nothing? There is no other song in modern music that
aptly supports the people of Paris.


Most sincerely yours


BOZ BOORER


JESSE TOBIAS
GUSTAVO MANZUR
MATTHEW IRA WALKER
MANDO LOPEZ.


-----------------------------------------------------------------------


From: John Reid --------------------
Date: November 19, 2015 at 6:39:51 PM GMT-2
To: Boz Boorer --------------------
Subject: Re: Paris


Dear Boz

Thank you for copying your email to me.

I think we all know that this would be an appropriate and compelling gesture.

I spoke with David Joseph today. His position is that owing to Universal having a very close connection to the events, much as they see your point, they are not intending to release any records in response to the tragic events of last Friday. They feel it is too raw for them given the death of one of their staff members and instead they are going to show support and solidarity in other ways, including concerts in Paris later this year by some of their artists.

However, I believe that Universal would licence the song back for eg a release for proceeds to relevant charities (which I assume would be the plan). In short there may be a possibility here but it would have to be a release via a third party. Personally I think there could be a very forceful statement to be made. It will of course require M's input. Have you discussed this with him - I assume so.

If you want me to pursue this, please let me know. Time inevitably is of the essence.

Yours sincerely

John

John Reid
Partner
Russells Solicitors

It's an odd situation to be in, feeling sympathetic towards a major label, but... actually, their line of "it's too soon to do something like this, but let's talk about doing something" seems to be more appropriate a response than an email going "we should be number one by now".

That reference to number one could be put down to clumsy phrasing, were it not for this bit:

There is no other song in modern music that aptly supports the people of Paris.

Not "this song is a love letter to the people of Paris". Not just "this song aptly supports the people of Paris". Not merely "we believe this there is no other song that supports Paris as aptly."

Just an arrogant assertion that there is no other song at all, in the whole of modern music, which supports the people of Paris.

One thing this sorry tale needs less of is fundamentalism.

Virgin closes in Paris

Who knew - besides the French - that there was still a chain of Virgin Megastores in France?

Not for much longer, though, as the Parisian flagship branch is closing and management are struggling to come up with a plan to keep the other branches going - although it admits this will involve closures and downsizing, even if they can pull it off.

The unions are, understandably, unhappy, blaming the owners - Butler Capital - for not having adapted quickly enough.

Although it's lovely to put the blame on a private equity group (Butler own all but 20% of the company; the other 20% is held by Lagardère, who bought the shops from Branson's Virgin back in 2007), it's selling records in a shop. It's increasingly hard to see how that can work as a mass-market proposition.

Al Jourgensen collapses, cancels

Ministry were playing Paris last night, only they didn't make it through the set. Al Jourgensen collapsed. There's a statement:

MINISTRY frontman Al Jourgensen collapsed onstage during the live MINISTRY performance and was rushed to hospital via ambulance where he was examined by numerous physicians and diagnosed to have had a full-system collapse due to extreme dehydration and heat exhaustion intensified by the lack of ventilation on stage at the venue. Doctors confirm via blood tests conducted that Jourgensen's alcohol blood levels were well below normal and no narcotics were found in his system.

"As a result, MINISTRY has cancelled today’s appearance at the L'Etaples, France Rock En Stock festival in order to allow Mr. Jourgensen a few days rest to recuperate and receive additional medical attention in Switzerland. Jourgensen fully intends to complete the remaining shows on the MINISTRY 'DeFiBriLlaTouR' European leg.

"Jourgensen extends his most sincere apologies to his devoted Parisian fans who displayed so much love, respect and concern for him before and after the MINISTRY show."

It's lucky Al made it - can you imagine how grim it'd be if you called your tour the Defibrillato(u)r and ended up needing one?

Let's wish him well and enjoy perhaps his finest moment:

Bookmarks: Django Reinhardt

Django Reinhardt spent the Second World War in Paris. Jazz saved his life, even as it cost others theirs, explains Sociological Images:

Reinhardt, then, survived because the Nazis loved jazz music, even as Hitler censored the music and, on his orders, people who dared to listen to, dance to, or play it were encamped and members of the groups who invented it were murdered. Irony indeed.

It's what he would have wanted

An ordinary Sunday in Paris? Or a flashmob mourning Michael Jackson in his own style - i.e. by making a holy show of themselves in public as horrified and confused onlookers stare:



If they'd waited a little longer, they could have pretended it was for Merce Cunningham.

Darkness at 3AM: Postcard from France

The 3AM Girls report from Paris fashion week. Lily Allen turns up in high heels. They do, I'm afraid:

Lily Allen wears her own stiletto eyeful towers

Let's be generous and assume they abandoned a carefully constructed Notre Dame pun after seven hours work, shall we?

Winehouse under a legal cloud again

Given her non-appearance in Paris last night, Amy Winehouse might have some extra legal bother to deal with again:

A statement on the Rock En Seine website said Winehouse's appearance had to be scrapped at the "last minute".

The statement added: "We are very sorry about this situation and share the disappointment of the festival-goers."

Winehouse is said to be recovering at home. Her spokesman declined to comment on the threat of legal action.

He had previously said: "Amy Winehouse was regrettably unable to perform at the Rock En Seine show in Paris due to illness.

"She was taken ill at her house and wasn't able to travel to France for the concert."

Presumably, if you're so ill you can't travel, you'd know more than two hours in advance - I know the Eurostar is brilliant, but even so, you wouldn't be thinking "well, I'm due on stage in Paris at eight o'clock, so I'll need to be heading off just after PM finished", would you?

Sunday Mirror tries to respark Kylie's old flame

The Sunday Mirror reckons that Kylie and Olivier Martinez are about to reunite. They may or may not be, but it seems the paper is assuming they must be because they met up in Paris - as if former lovers can't remain friends. "They're talking to each other and happy in each other's company" is a difficult concept to fit into the tab's needs for a basic lovers/fighters
dichotomy.

We were amused, though, by the commentary on the photos of the couple which insists they "only have eyes for each other" above a picture which shows them looking in a totally different direction:

Winehouse jumps the barriers

Amy Winehouse nearly didn't make it to Paris for the fashion shows - yes, we know, the very thought is world-threatening, isn't it? - after having a meltydown and leaping over security barriers because she couldn't bear being separated from Blake:

One passenger tells us: "Amy was crying, gesticulating wildly and shouting while the man with her was trying to calm her and get her through the gate. She mentioned Blake's name more than once.

"Eventually they went through security, but then Amy came running back. She hurdled the security gate then ran up the escalator, shouting and screaming, into Waterloo station concourse.

"It was quite a sight - this tiny girl with a massive beehive leaping over a barrier. It was pretty clear she was not keen on getting on that train to Paris."

A policeman spotted Amy and ran after her, urging her to stop. She was eventually persuaded to get on the train.

Presumably not by the policeman, though? Do the police now have a role ensuring passengers travel even when they've changed their mind?

It's probably lucky Amy was getting the train to Paris - if she'd tried leaping over barriers at an airport, the results might have been more bloody.

Bookmarks: Some other things to read on the internet

Arcade Fire invite Paste to tea:

Where there are sidewalks they meet at ugly angles, and factories squat on almost every corner. Its biggest institutions are a peat bog, a large creamery and a beet-sugar refinery. “The studio is amazing for recording in,” Win tells me, “but when you actually want to do anything, being stuck in Farnham can drive a man crazy.”

As he prepares to fight for Marlyebone Hight Street, Dave Rowntree talks to Guardian:

The drummer doesn't want to talk about whether he agrees with Albarn on Iraq because he's standing in a local election. He sounds, for the first time, a bit like a politician. Then he changes his mind. "I want to give you an answer. I'm not a pacifist. I do think some things are worth fighting for."

Rowntree's position on Iraq is equally personal. His girlfriend, Michelle de Vries, is the daughter of Daphne Parish, the nurse who was arrested by Saddam Hussein with the Observer journalist, Farzad Bazoft, on the cusp of the first Gulf war. Bazoft was executed; Parish was freed. "My girlfriend flew round the Middle East and got her mother released. She'd met all the people involved - Saddam and the psychopaths Uday and Qusay [Saddam's sons]. In the war, I was getting a very different view of what was going on in Iraq from a lot of people."

Jack Wilson tells The Stranger about the man who filled his iPod:

And that one lyric, the one about having once roared, keeps coming back to me. It seems to describe him. He was charismatic, entertaining, and charming. He could have been an awesome salesman—the product wouldn't have mattered—and he was great with computers. Did he torture himself with thoughts about what he could have been? Did he long for the years before he had fucked up his life, when he was free and the world was open to him?

Then I realized I was thinking more about Rowan than I was about Rebecca, the woman he'd slain. Listening to his music put me inside Rowan's head; it made me consider things through his eyes. I wanted to throw up.

The New York Post discovers Jarvis Cocker's life in France involves gestures, shouting:

He's lived in the City of Light for four years, but he's not fluent in French, although he says he can make himself understood. His job, songwriting, doesn't really call for being fluent. That's one excuse. His other is that his brain's hard drive is full.

"You can't chose what you want to delete from your brain," he says. "I'm supposed to be a writer. I don't want to lose my English."

Simon Reynolds sets off in the Observer Music Monthly to reclaim Tangerine Dream's place in electropop history:

At its most abstract - solo albums by Klaus Schulze and by Tangerine Dream's leader Edgar Froese - these were clouds of sounds to lose yourself in, a Rorschach mindscreen for projecting fantasies onto. Yet unlike the hipster-credible Krautrock of Can, Faust and Neu!, or more esoteric (ie unsuccessful) Sixties electronic outfits like Silver Apples, the cosmic synth voyagers have never been named by contemporary bands as a cool reference point.