Justin Timberlake wants to go epic

Timberlake wants to keep going, it turns out:

Timberlake, who recently revealed the eight-minute long single 'Mirrors', told Capital FM that his attitude towards long songs is similar to that of some of the biggest bands in the world. "When we were making the record I said, 'If Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin can do 10-minute songs and Queen can do 10-minute songs then why can't we?' We'll figure out the radio edits later."

Without wanting to hurry Justin to a conclusion - that would be the job of the producer who let him down - isn't the difference that Floyd and Zep were making album tracks for an audience that would be quite happy to sit and listen for just as long as it took for the track to finish, or until they needed to eat all the cookies; whereas Justin is making songs for an audience and an era who view a runtime of anything over four minutes as "this track will last for most of the rest of your life".

Sort out the radio edits later? Justin, your role is to deliver the radio edit, and hope it can be edited down to soundtrack a perfume advert later.

Gordon in the morning: That's enough Ed

There's a really strange bit leading off Bizarre this morning, built around a letter Nick Mason has written defending the Ed Sheeran Floyd cover at the Olympic Closing Ceremony.

Gordon thinks this is one in the eye for Floyd fans who were unimpressed:

So-called Floyd fans had even turned on Ed’s teenage fans, who thought he was playing a new song at the event.

But all the abuse looks ridiculous now that the man himself has given Ed a pat on the back for his efforts on the prog-rockers’ hit Wish You Were Here. The drummer, who performed the song with Ed, Mike Rutherford from Genesis and Richard Jones of The Feeling, has sent the Suffolk star a life-affirming letter.

Read more: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/bizarre/4493570/Pink-Floyds-Nick-Mason-defends-Ed-Sheeran-after-fans-confuse-his-cover-of-Wish-You-Were-Here-as-a-new-song-from-singer.html#ixzz23t9dCb3x

In Gordon's mind, then, there are Pink Floyd fans who thought that Mason playing the song onstage, with Sheeran, wasn't any sign that he was happy for it to happen, but will accept it now there's a signed document.

Smart also has a bemusing reference to Mother Teresa:

IF Mother Teresa had been on Twitter, some halfwit would give her a hard time about having crap sandals.

So he appears to be comparing 'doing a cover song badly' with 'working tirelessly in the slums of Calcutta with the poor'; and, to be honest, I think most people would have been too busy asking the nun why she forced people to convert to Catholicism before helping them rather than worrying about sandals.

Perhaps most befuddling of all, though, is this:

Let's not even bother with the misspelling of "no" - so many people from Wapping are spending so much time with police and solicitors these days it's a miracle there's anyone left around to do any publishing at all - and just try and work out what the headline is supposed to mean. Isn't the point of the story that Mason hopes Sheeran fans will investigate the Floyd back catalogue, which would surely mean that we do need education? Or is ed-ucation meant to be taking a lesson from Ed? The pun would work, but would be meaningless.

It's all rather strange. But I bet Mother Theresa would be able to make sense of it all.

Pink Floyd suddenly realise they don't mind digital after all

Last year, you'll recall, Pink Floyd took EMI to court to prevent the label from splitting up their albums to sell individual tracks as digital downloads.

The band insisted it was all about artistic integrity - their music was only to be enjoyed as part of a whole, or else as incidental music on Only Fools And Horses over photomontages of Delboy selling stuff.

But ten months is a long time in artistic integrity, it turns out, as Pink Floyd and EMI have come to a deal which will allow you to buy the odd track here and there.

So, it was never about the purity of the vision; just the size of the cheque.

[Thanks to Michael M]

Hey, Ayatollah, leave those kids alone...

Roger Waters has given his blessing to Candian-Iranian band Blurred Vision's adapted version of Another Brick In The Wall targeting Iran.

Let's hope EMI get the memo and don't go stumbling in with take-downs.

This is the track:



I suppose anything that helps is a good thing, but can't help feeling that using a song that's thirty-five years old is a bit like picking Lord Carrington as the figurehead for your campaign. Still, at least it's not Rage Against The Machine.

Pink Floyd sue EMI for allowing people to not buy the rubbish ones

You've got to love the irony: for years, the major labels have been trying to find ways of forcing people to buy digital music in bundles, only for Pink Floyd to get upset with EMI for, erm, allowing people to buy individual tracks:

"Pink Floyd [are] well-known for performing seamless pieces," said Robert Howe, the band's lawyer, at a High Court hearing yesterday. "Many of the songs blend into each other." To reflect this, Pink Floyd's renegotiated 1999 contract "expressly prohibits" EMI from selling songs out of context. And yet, Howe argues, EMI "[permit] individual tracks to be downloaded online and ... [therefore allow] albums not to be sold in their original configuration."

EMI's defence is the 1999 contract didn't even consider digital downloads. Seriously? Nobody at either EMI or on Pink Floyd's team considered selling songs online in 1999? No wonder the old labels are struggling to cope.

It's not clear why Pink Floyd are desperate to make people give them money for songs their audience don't actually want, but legal experts suggest it might be a mixture of "arrogrance, ego, and old-fashioned greed."

Kasabian set their sights a little too high

Inspiration is always a good thing. Nice to have something to aim for. And so why should we all react with stifled giggles when NME announces where Kasabian's ambitions lay?

Kasabian have said their next album will draw on Nirvana and Pink Floyd as influences.

Apparently Serge has had a go at that RockStar game thingy and reckons that he's mastered the Cobain bloke doing the Bon Jovi song, so they're all set.

Seriously: Pink Floyd and Nirvana? Come on, you're struggling with sounding a bit like a Hard Fi tribute act. Ambition is great, but let's be a bit realistic.

"Sergio Pizzorno has got a body of songs that are sounding great," frontman Tom Meighan told BBC 6Music. "There’s one that sounds like Nirvana, which is really grungy, a big riff."

And... the Pink Floyd "influence"?

"It’s nothing like what we’ve done on this record, it’s really old school grunge. There’s a lot of Pink Floyd, 'Dark Side Of The Moon', piano-based songs at the minute."

Note the cautious use of the phrase "at the minute", as if aware that a back door must be left ajar to allow an embarrassed 'well, we took all of them off in the end' should the collective ear of the nation hear the record and say "wasn't there meant to be some Pink Floyd going on here? Because all I can hear is Keane?"

Not here, my dear: Rick Wright's will

The Telegraph seems strangely obsessed with Rick Wright's decision to leave his ex-wives nothing in his will - is there some social mos that I've missed that you're supposed to leave money to people you've divorced?

What's more eyecatching is the amount of cash left behind by Wright:

Profits from writing, recording, performing and royalty meant that Wright was worth £23.7 million when he died a year ago from cancer at the age of 65.

I think the paper means "royalties" rather than "profit from... royalty." Wright wasn't, as far as I know, running a string of Duchesses in the Polite Cage Fighting scene.

Twenty-three point seven million. Sloshing about. It's an interesting figure, at a time when the BPI and UK Music are straining to uphold the current arrangement of the music industry, suggesting that it's file-sharers who are stopping young artists from making money. How many four-piece guitar bands could have been kept going it just half of that cash had been redirected rather than sent straight to Pink Floyd? The pile of pounds shows that the music industry really isn't working very well for most bands, but incredibly nicely for a few.

Bill Wyman doesn't hold with all these computer games

Somewhat ironically, considering he was talking at a charity Beatles event piggybacking on the hoopla around Beatles Game, Bill Wyman has been grumbling about Rock Band style games:

[He claimed] they will lead to fewer young people taking up real instruments.

"It encourages kids not to learn, that's the trouble. It makes less and less people dedicated to really get down and learn an instrument".

"I think it's a pity," he said, speaking at Abbey Road studios while recording a charity Beatles song for Children in Need.

Yeah, young teenagers shouldn't be playing computer games; they should be enjoying their time dating elderly rock stars, eh Bill?

Nick Mason - who was hanging about - nodded:

"It irritates me having watched my kids do it. If they spend as much time practising the guitar as learning how to press the buttons, they'd be damn good by now".

Naturally, the makers of Rock Band style games deny they're a bad influence:

But Alex Rigopulos, co-founder of Harmonix Music Systems, which created the Rock Band series, refuted the musicians' claims.

"We're constantly hearing from fans who were inspired by Rock Band to start studying a real instrument," he said.

It's true. After a couple of months using the guitar-style button keypad, many young people progress to the three-button joystick or the fully-programmable trackpad.

And, as if on cue...

While Paul McCartney is all misty-eyed talking about how everyone got fair shares back in his day, and you could always ask a policeman to leave your doors open with change from a packet of Spangles because it was all trees, Pink Floyd launch a lawsuit claiming EMI has systematically been diddling them out of royalties.

Managerobit: Bryan Morrison

In something of a grim week for Pink Floyd, their former manager Bryan Morrison has died after two years in a coma.

Morrison had been manager of The Pretty Things when he started promoting Pink Floyd gigs; he later became their manager before moving into music publishing. More recently - and despite originally believing it to be "a game for stupid bastards" Morrison had brought his skills to reinvigorate polo. His aim, he explained to Marq magazine, was to try and bring the spirit of football on Hackney Marshes to the horseback game.

In that Marq interview, he stressed that polo wasn't as genteel as some might believe:

‘I’d always been into fast cars and would have seen polo as too soft to bother with,’ says Morrison. ‘But actually polo’s as tough as it gets. In fact it’s damn near killed me on three occasions.’

The words proved to be prophetic - it was during a polo match that he sustained the injuries which would lead to the coma. Weakened during his two years, Morrison had become increasingly incapable of fighting infections and, it's believed, this is what finally claimed the life of the 66 year-old.

Progobit: Richard Wright

The death has been announced of Richard Wright, Pink Floyd's keyboardist.

A founder member of Pink Floyd - and, indeed, a member of the pre-Syd version of the band, Sigma 6 - Wright initially shared vocals with Barrett and contributed a more than generous share of the songs. Wright contributed The Great Gig In The Sky to Dark Side Of The Moon, but got caught in the crossfire of band politics. Roger Waters had him fired during the session for The Wall, shamefully reducing Wright's credits to that of "session musician".

After his cashiering, Wright teamed up with Fashion's Dave Harris for the short lived Zee band - one album, Identity, eventually seeing the light of day; then, the Pink Floyd wheel turned once more and, with Roger Waters out of the band, Wright returned. It wasn't an entirely equal-footed return, though - for what are usually described as "legal reasons", on A Momentary Lapse Of Reason Wright's face was banished from the sleeves and his name appeared in smaller letters than the other members'. Presumably to satisfy lawyers who had temporarily misplaced their reading glasses.

The paperwork was sorted out, and so by 1994's The Division Bell the Floyd were again recording Wright's songs. A peace, of a sort, was even made with Roger Waters, when the four non-Syd-but-still-classic members came together for whatever charity gig it was - Live8.

Meanwhile, Wright finally got around to following up his 1978 solo album with a second record, Broken China.

Wright died of cancer earlier today. He was 65. Dave Gilmour led the tributes, blogging:

"I really don't know what to say other than that he was such a lovely, gentle, genuine man and will be missed terribly by so many who loved him. And that's a lot of people. Did he not get the loudest, longest round of applause at the end of every show [when they toured together] in 2006?"

The original plan fell through when the pig dirigibles couldn't carry the weight of the cabins

Cruises. They're great, aren't they? Being trapped on a floating hulk of metal; having to dress up for the captain's table; Looooooveee... eeexciiiting aaand newwwww..... You know the only thing that could make cruises even better?

If they were prog rock themed.

Now, though, comes the great gig in the sea:

This one-of a kind voyage will feature the music of Think Floyd USA: The American Pink Floyd Show, and will celebrate material from Pink Floyd’s earliest days through the present. Think Floyd USA will take listeners on a musical and visual flight through the Pink Floyd galaxy performing all of Pink Floyd’s classic hits from legendary albums such as Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals and the all time classic, The Wall.

Oh, we can see it now: Hey! Purser! Leave those ships alone!

The organisers proudly insist this is the "first Pink Floyd themed cruise to the Bahamas", as if to leave open the possibility that there might, perhaps, be some boats crossing the Med with Radio KAOS pumping across the dancefloor.

The really wealthy, of course, go on yacht-rock-themed yacht trips.

Gordon in the morning: And pigs might fly

The trouble with Gordon Smart's Bizarre is that it's hard to believe anything that appears in it. Take today's big spalsh, which appears to claim that Dave Gilmour offered a Pink Floyd Glasto appearance to Michael Eavis, and that Eavis turned him down. Smart rails against this:

Wish you were there, Floyd
[...]
It truly beggars belief.
[...]
This year’s lineup has led to the fest not selling out, something unthinkable over the event’s recent history.

He’s dangerously out of touch with a public – youngsters and all – who would have delighted in some Floyd action.

But when you read the article again, it's apparent that Gilmour didn't offer Floyd - just his own, slightly less-thrilling, solo set. Which is less of a draw than Pink Floyd proper.

And while Gordon is happy to pad out the article by his raging and out-of-touch belief that "young people" would turn up for a Gilmour gig, he doesn't mention when the offer was made. Presumably fairly recently, otherwise Smart would have fumed earlier. Possibly too late for the headline act to be changed anyway, even if the offer was genuine.

Not to mention that, time and again, it's been clear that the failure of Glasto to sell out had nothing to do with the three names on the Pyramid stage, and everything to do with the miserable experience offered by an overcrowded site in a muddy field.

More festival running order squabbles as Gordon insists that, in the teaser, that

MIGHTY BOOSH star Noel Fielding forced to ban The Kills from performing at festival

Really? But both the Boosh and Kills sites still lists The Kills as appearing.

It turns out, though, that once again Gordon's story is slightly weaker than it might appear:

THE MIGHTY BOOSH star NOEL FIELDING has been forced to ban THE KILLS from performing at his festival’s finale – to placate his girlfriend.

The comic has developed an intense friendship with The Kills’ ALISON MOSSHART.

But Noel’s partner DEE PLUME was so furious at their inclusion in the July 5 bash at The Hop Farm in Kent that she threatened to pull her band ROBOTS IN DISGUISE from the gig.

Ah, so The Kills haven't been banned from performing, only the singalong at the end. God, fancy that, eh, not being allowed to hang around for everyone else to finish to go on and take part in a clunky, Live Aid style finale.

Although, having "revealed" that the Kills won't be allowed to take part in the finale, Gordon then seems to forget the point of his own story:

All the bands are due to sing together at the end. That will be interesting.

Only, surely, if Mosshart and Plume are on stage together. Which, erm, Gordon has just insisted they won't be.

Bowling for a pig

How everyone laughed and pointed when Roger Waters set free a pig during his Coachella set. The pig floated above the sun-burnt heads of the gig-goers. And then floated off.

Which was a bit of a bugger, as Waters had spent a lot of money on that pig, and hadn't expected him to disappear. So he's now offering a reward for its safe return.

CMJ prints some details of how to identify the pig, presumably in order to help you distinguish Waters' pig from any other floating porcine balloon you might come across in California.

EMI enjoys a DRM-free boost

The "risk" of allowing DRM free tracks out legally onto the internet has paid dividends for EMI, with Dark Side of the Moon enjoying a threefold increase in sales since the shackles were removed. Other EMI acts have also seen an upswing in sales, although admittedly not quite as eye-catching.

It's not clear, though, if this is unit sales or in terms of revenue - because with DRM-free tracks costing more, that could account for almost all of the 17% increase in Siamese Dreams sales, for example.