See you on the ice? Maybe not, Mumba

Samantha Mumba - whose Harvey Goldsmith arranged comeback was such a success she's reduced to appearing in ITV's Strictly Come Dancing On Ice - might actually not even manage that: She's collapsed before the first programme. The Mirror describes it as:

a mystery illness

and, also, as a slightly-less mysterious:

Doctors hooked up a drip to the singer, 24, who appeared to have severe flu symptoms and dehydration.

She's determined to go on, though. ITV have taken precautions:

Studio bosses have ordered extra medics and equipment to be on standby in case Samantha is taken ill at Sunday's show.

Extra medics? Really? In case one woman needs a drip?
It's bad news for ITV if she does drop out, of course:

Samantha is one of the favourites to win the show after Gareth Gates and Hollyoaks actor Chris Fountain.

- in other words, she's one of the few participants who people might have heard of.

Mumba drags Goldsmith down

Can anyone think of the problem in building a programme around a slightly charmless man known, if at all, for being backstage, and a bunch of celebrities who the public have tired off? Backstage bloke... dumper fodder... anyone?

Harvey Goldsmith's attempts to restart Samantha Mumba's career managed to dump Channel 4 into last place out of the five main networks with just four per cent of the audience.

Maybe they can get Sir John Harvey-Jones in to try and resurrect Goldsmith's fledgling enterprise.

Goldsmith on the job

Harvey Goldsmith is a busy man, what with fighting ticket touts and promoting stuff. Now, though, he seems to be trying to carve out a niche as a kind of John Harvey-Jones of the entertainment industry, picking up flagging careers and trying to make them fabulous again.

His first guinea pig is Samantha Mumba, who apparently was a little difficult:

The Irish singer may have got away with this behaviour when she was selling millions of records in Europe and America, but that was five years ago. "Samantha's main problem when I met her last September was her attitude... Her second album was a flop, she lost interest in music and moved to LA with her mother and family. "But my best friend now is Samantha Mumba. After a long battle, we get on like a house on fire and she's serious about her music. Her new career stands a real chance of success, but even better than that, she's never late for our meetings."

Interesting. The odd thing, though, is that while Mumba was unquestionably in the dumper, she'd been focusing on her own comeback built on the back of the stage schools she's been running in Ireland. We hope Goldsmith wasn't being used by Mumba to promote a return to active duty she was already working on - after all, how else could she grab an hour of time on Channel 4 in 2007 if she wasn't pretending to be interested in what Goldsmith had to say?

Later in the series, Saxon - yes, that Saxon appear on the series. They're pretty open about the process:

"We saw the Channel 4 program. It's not too bad. At the beginning they put us down a lot, making the festival we are playing a bit small, but the billing was great — SODOM, WITHIN TEMPTATION, SAXON, KREATOR, MEGADETH, BLIND GUARDIAN and many more. Maybe Harvey and the Channel 4 lot have never heard of these bands. The film ends up as a success.

"Although they filmed the band for six months, there is very little of this in the film. The central character is obviously Harvey Goldsmith, and they must be investing a lot of money into their new boy. We feel that Kim, the director, and Claudine, who filmed most of the show, were making a great effort to capture the character of the band but we think they got too close to us and got pulled out on the editing. But actually Harvey's motives are to make the band sucessful in Britain, so although the band are taken down before being brought back up by Harvey, this is the central theme of the program, which is acceptable. Although the facts are being presented in a simplistic and manipulated way, we feel from being involved with Harvey we have done tons more promotion in Britain and we would like to thank all the people who also helped who are not on the film."

In effect, then, Goldsmith might like to think he's acting as some sort of guru, but he's merely acting as a tool by smarter acts to get coverage.

[Thanks - and apologies - to David G who pointed me in the direction of this a couple of weeks back]

Andrew WK re-emerges, tries to reinvent himself as Jello Biafra. Again.

Of all the embarrassing episodes in the NME's history, there can be few darker days than the time Andrew WK was hailed not only as good enough to be given a cover, but to be given a double cover-inside-a-cover. Sometimes, we wonder whatever happened to Andrew WK.

But not very often - we spend longer wondering what happened to Samantha Mumba, to be honest (she's running stage schools in Ireland, since you ask). Still, WK has put an end to the wondering, as he's trying to reformat himself as a Jello Biafra style raconteur - doing three nights in New York:

The talks-- titled "The Joy Trilogy"-- are billed on the club's website as "free-form soulsearching," and "participants are encouraged...to come with their minds wide and high."

Mmm. Did we say Jello Biafra? It's more like something out of an early draft of Dead Poets Society.

Brits: Anything could have happened, but didn't

The Sun is insisting this morning that "hundreds of viewers" complained to ITV about Russell Brand:

[H]e swore before the watershed and hundreds of viewers complained to ITV1 over his risque gags in the live show.

He cracked a joke about FRIENDLY FIRE — days after the furore over the Iraq killing of British soldier Matty Hull.

It then republishes the somewhat tame shirts and skins joke in full.

The paper even tries to suggest that Russell was sharing the outrage around:

Brand said AMY WINEHOUSE’S name was a description of her liver — then credited Noel Gallagher for that gag.

No, actually, he credited Noel Gallagher with the (funnier) suggestion the set was like being in one of Amy Winehouse's tattoo. But you're near enough.

You'll be pleased to hear that Bizarre has come up with a "verdict" for you to write down on a piece of paper and take away:

BIZARRE VERDICT: Playing to a live crowd is a tough feat — but Russell managed to get the right mix of comedy without being too risque.

Hang about, though - you started out saying that "hundreds of viewers" complained - either they don't exist, or your verdict is totally at odds with your story. And has there ever been anyone on a stage who hasn't played to a "live crowd" - the paper seems confused, as if it thinks that it's the audience who's been on tape the last few years.

But as Alexis Petridis points out in The Guardian, not even Brand talking about Keith Allen's willy was going to be able to make the show live up to what it desperately wanted to be (a shadow of its former self):

You can tell it's that time of year again when you hear music PRs, representatives of the British Phonographic Industry and TV executives telling you that anything can happen at the ceremony, expect the unexpected, batten down the hatches for the most outrageous event in history.

This year, even the host, Russell Brand, was at it. The event, he claimed, was going to be "a carnival of mayhem".

What's aggrieving about those comments - aside from the spirit-sapping tone of forced you-don't-have-to-be-mad-to-work-here jollity, and the fact that it's hard to imagine any kind of Carnival of Mayhem sponsored by Mastercard - is that anything can't happen at the Brits. Nothing unexpected has occurred at the ceremony since 1996.

The Daily Mail attempts to work up some outrage about Russell Brand's performance, but you can just tell its heart isn't really in it:

Brand did his utmost to shock throughout the two-hour show. One swear-word and two references to intimate body parts came within the first hour.

A bad-taste gag about Robbie Williams who is currently in rehab, was poorly received. His joke about the size of the singer's medicine cabinet was greeted with boos.

He also did little to endear himself to Tory leader David Cameron by claiming that the politician, who is said to have smoked cannabis in his youth, was an ideal advocate for the anti-drugs brigade.

Yes, that's what a wild and crazy evening the Brits offered: live, on national TV, Russell Brand threw away his chance of ever becoming home secretary in a Cameron cabinet.

The Telegraph observes that ITV carried the show with a live delay (so, erm, not actually live then), musing that this was probably "wise" with Brand on board. But the paper only mentioned the Cameron gag - presumably it had flipped channels to catch up on Location, Location, Location while he was making jokes about photos of the Queen's vagina. Or maybe that sort of thing is now considered fair game in the multimedia Telegraph hub these days.

The Mirror's coverage, led (of course) by the 3AM Girls, isn't bothered about Brand at all. They're much more scandalised by Sophie Ellis-Bextor's wardrobe:

There was some definite nipple action going on underneath this frilly see-through number.

And she told us: "I took more than two hours to get ready and just when I thought I could slip out, I had to read a bedtime story to my little one."
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We hope she's talking about her son!

No, 3AM Girls, she's talking about her penis.

Still, kudos to the girls for getting the interview everyone wanted, with, erm, Jamelia. The column's obsession with Jamelia is a fascinating thing to behold - they even let her guest-edit once, and now they carry her every utterance as if she was Britney or something, rather than a Samantha Mumba understudy:

"Being nominated for a Brit Award meant so much to me.

"You can't help being worried when you read all these things saying that you're about to be dropped or horrible rumours that your album is in some bargain bucket.

"So I felt an enormous sense of relief about being nominated, it made me feel more secure."

That's great. Some people might have thought they were on a rather weak shortlist, just making up the numbers, and felt a little bit used.

Talking of which, how was Lily Allen? The 3AM know, or rather, heard someone who did:

And despite being up for a staggering three awards, the Smile star went home with NOTHING.

Later when a fan told her she should have beaten her rival, Lily let rip: "I fucking know."

A staggering three awards? Three is hardly that amazing a number, is it? There's more than three people left in Westlife, for example.

Back at the Sun, though, Victoria Newton knew what the real story about Lily Allen was, though - it was all about Newton:

SMILE singer LILY ALLEN had little to be cheerful about after she was snubbed for all FOUR of her gongs, as we predicted.

Erm, actually, Victoria, you didn't. Your article said Lily was afraid of losing them all, and quoted "experts" who said it was possible - you, yourself, didn't predict a thing.

Of course, the Daily Record view everything from a Scottish perspective - pointing out that Snow patrol were also up for three awards, and won nothing. And they even made them play live.

The Record is also the only paper which seems to think the victory of the Fratellis is worth a headline - but, of course, national pride prevents the paper from suggesting this might prove they've got a fanbase more prepared to rig a vote than their best breakthrough competitors. It certainly suggests that, for all Lily Allen's new friends requests she gets on MySpace, few of her friends are prepared to spend a couple of minutes bombarding the Radio One with votes. Popularity only means something if people are prepared to act upon it.

It falls to the Scottish paper, as well, to provide a sentence which crystallises just how horrible mainstream British music has become:

Paisley singing sensation Paolo Nutini was pipped to the Best British Male Award by [James] Morrison.

We're not quite sure how far from the front the Telegraph's pisspoor Spy column was sitting, but the quality of their backstage gossip suggests they might not even have made it out of Earls' Court tube:

Cleo Roccos hasn't let the grass grow under her feet since leaving the Big Brother house. Spy recently reported that Roccos had been seen in the House of Commons with fellow contestant Jermaine Jackson. Roccos informs me of the plans she is hatching with him.

"We are forming a sort of Nobel Peace Prize meets the Oscars," she tells Celia Walden. "It will recompense people like Nelson Mandela and Al Gore for their achievements and the ceremony will take place in Dubai next February.

We bet Al Gore is already clearing his diary to get a prize off that woman who used to be on the Kenny Everett show twenty years ago. Mandela will be there, though. He's a bit of a showbiz whore these days. He's on Buzzcocks week after next.

Seriously, if The Times has anything about the Brits this morning on its site, I couldn't find it - there was a ticker which seemed to be about Amy Winehouse, but clicking on it didn't do anything. (Firefox 2.0.0.1, Mac 10.4.8 if it helps you, Mr. Murdoch.)

Perhaps we should give the last word, for now, to Alexis Petridis in The Guardian:

It's like a musical equivalent of Ski Sunday. No one watches it to see who wins, they tune in only in the hope of seeing something go disastrously wrong. When it doesn't - and it hasn't for over a decade - the Carnival of Mayhem immediately evaporates from the collective memory.

Five years ago, she waved goodbye to music with the intention of a juicy Hollywood career. She'd landed a part in The Time Machine, playing alongside Guy Pearce and getting a plum position in the credits only nine slots below "Central Park Carriage Driver". The film was about as successful as the Time Machine itself, and since then, erm, Sam's popped up in Boy Eats Girl ("brainless, lowbrow entertainment" says IMDB), Nailed (nope, us neither) and Johnny Was - a movie more notable for Lennox Lewis' role as a dj.

In the meantime, she's been setting up stage schools in Ireland, partly with the aim of finding people to be her back-up dancers onstage and in videos. In videos? Oh, yes. For Sam is about to make her musical comeback.

What sort of musical comeback will it be? She's not saying, but there's a broad hint that we're looking at something populist:

The Dublin beauty is also currently taking part in a Channel 4 reality show, filming her behind-the-scenes attempts to storm the charts.

Another TV series about a faded popstar slogging round trying to recapture earlier glories? Why, it's not like it's a new year at all.

music samantha mumba

3AM Girls break shock news

Who would have thought that Billie Piper wouldn't want to be caught up in a nasty, vindictive, public divorce battle:

BILLIE Piper says she doesn't envy Paul McCartney and Heather Mills's divorce saga.

Really? What insights can we expect in tomorrow's paper? Samantha Mumba thrilled she hasn't had her eyes gouged out? Peter Andre saying he wouldn't want to swap with Steve Irwin?

music billie piper

MUMBA CHARGES DROPPED

Good news for Samantha Mumba: she had been in danger of losing her driving licence, but today had the charges against her struck out when she belatedly provided evidence that she had a licence and insurance. And paid the outstanding tax on her car.

The judge was happy to strike out the charges as she'd proved that she was insured, but still insisted she didn't believe that Mumba was ever a pop star.

music movies samantha mumba

MUMBA RHUMBA

Suddenly, Samantha Mumba is in the news again; albeit for being stopped driving a car on an Irish motorway without tax, insurance or a driving licence. In court yesterday, she was able to provide an insurance certificate but didn't offer a licence or tax disc.

In a bid to prompt people's memories, Ireland Online described Mumba as having appeared in a "recent" Hollywood adpatation of the Time Machine. As recently as 2002.

music samantha mumba

A QUICK LOOK AT THIS MORNING'S FRONT PAGES

It's all terrible for the BBC - not only have a large number of their staff not turned up for work today, taking strike action in protest at Mark Thompson's plans to sack everyone except for himself, but Billie Piper is suggesting she won't turn up for work ever again:



Billie intends to follow all those other TV-and-Pop stars who've traipsed off to LA to become the biggest names in shoeshining and so won't be running about with the new Doctor Who for long. This move - technically known as "doing a Mumba" - means she's being pencilled in for a 2008 series of I'm A Celebrity. Assuming ITV is still going in 2008.

The Morning Star, of course, is delighted at a strike that people will notice is happening:



- although we're not quite sure that the BBC has been brought to its knees. The more honest headline "newspaper review slots doubled in length by mass walkout" wouldn't have been quite as splashy. You'll notice that the Star has gone colour today, which really does seem wrong - it's like them deciding to launch a Saturday supplement to attract upscale watch adverts and Jaguar ads.

music bbc tv billie+piper doctor who

HA HA HA... SHE'S FAT... HA HA HA: Louis Walsh has laid into Michelle McManus, the Pop Idol winner saying that her future lays on "big" cruise ships - because she's a bit overweight, see? Geddit?



Louis, as you can see, is a gorgeous, svelte figure of a man himself. And maybe Michelle will find the career sinks a bit. If she does find herself singing on cruise ships in the future, she might want to pop in and say hello to some of the acts managed by Walsh, like Six, Bellefire and Samanthat 'whatever happened to' Mumba, who will probably be working in the laundry room.

I'M (STILL) RIGHT HERE: Amidst much muttering about her supposedly being dropped by Polydor, Samantha Mumba is adopting a Brentesque career-rescue position ("if a salesman isn't doin well, he doesn't start to turn up on a bicycle, he gets a bigger car"), signing a "big" deal with Hello and iinviting 300 people to her birthday party. If we were the Four Seasons hotel in Dublin, we'd be demanding the cash in advance.

WHAT THE POP PAPERS SAID: The end of an era
Unlike the snowboards down memory lane we've - ahem - enjoyed this week (as a holiday feature ("desperate stopgap") while I've been off giving thanks with the American side of my family, in case you missed the reasoning behind it, this pop papers is one that hasn't been produced with the benefit of hindsight; it's taken from the original home of WTPPS, bsn, from January 1st 2001, and covered the last Melody Maker of them all...

so, this is how it ends then - not with a band, but with a wanker. The last
edition of Melody maker has, perhaps unsurprisingly, got Fred Durst on the
cover...

we'll come to the double issues presently, but first... the guest
publications

Louise whatusedtobeineternal appears in the nack on the cover of 19,
apparently in order to protest against the use of fur. We can only speculate
what socio-economic ills she's been against every time she's whacked 'em out
for FHM, then...

Wired finds space amongst the Sade reviews (who said the techno geek needed
help to get dressed, eh?) to report on a curious side-deal struck for the
new, non-corporate Radiohead: apparently, Capitol records struck a deal with
Napster-ape Aimster to promote Kid A. Kept quiet apparently because of EMI's
attempts to sue the arse of file-sharing applications elsewhere, but the
question remains: how much money has actually been pumped into sly promotion
for Yorke and the gang? and isn't all the stealth advertising for Kid A
somehow more insidious than the billboard-and-back page approach of, say,
the Corrs?...

Caroline Sullivan, the usually-reliable Guardian columnist, manages to piss
off both the cultural hawks and the pop kid doves by telling us how to
pronounce, erm, Dido. It rhymes with Fido, apparently...

Skittishly getting drunk on port, The Economist topped a Christmas issue
that saw it adopting the NME's habit of putting explanatory footnotes to
headlines by pointing out helpfully that thirty years of pop culture has
wound up with The Beatles band at number one in the album chart...

Desperate to fill space over Christmas (erm, 'take the pulse of the nation
at the year's end), The Independent's boxing day issue offered up a
selection of heroes and villains. Moby promised not to go into too mmuch
detail about the US elections, before giving us The Americans Can't Count
101. He picked Bono as his hero - also nominated by John Rocha. Because of
all the good work he did to promote the new U2 records (end world debt?
check facts here); Fay Weldon thought Elton John a hero because spending is
the greater good. Well, its two years since he last mawkishly song-fucked
the corpse of a member of the ruling classes, i suppose. Full marks for
honesty to Erik The Eel (some sort of not-very-good swimmer, apparently) for
choosing himself as his own hero.) "Nasty" Nick from Big Brother chose, erm,
Darren from Big Brother as a villain - "he got so much he's done so little"
whines Nick. Erm, mirror broken, is it? Tara Palmer-Tompkinson picked Buzz
Lightyear and Cruella DeVille, but in the world she lives on, they actually
do exist, so thats alright. The same issue featured obituaries of Victor
Borge, The Singing Postman and Jimmy Shand and an appreciation of Kirsty
MacColl. Now, that would be a hell of a jam session, wouldn't it?...

The first FHM of 2001 - look, Alyson Hannigan... aah... ooh... myum myum
myum... sorry, where were we? Oh, yeah, features one of the Appletons who
lives next door to Donna Air. So they pop round and strip off. Still, at
least Donna's finally done something with her hair - no more the frizzy
perm, even if straight hair makes her completely indistinguishable from the
vast majority of blonde women in bras who make up the meat and spuds of your
FHM covers. Not like flame haired willow, of course... and buffy is so much
cooler than Byker Grove...

Now that NME no longers encourages pop stars to dress up in silly outfits
(Damon as Debbie Harry, Ian Bunnyman as Dorothy from Wizard of Oz - hey,
Ian, we really should talk about that...), Smash Hits has filled the gap in
a special bonus issue. Paul from S Club 7 makes an unconvincing Gladiator,
but Atomic Kitten's ability to do Charlie's Angels is probably explained
both by the credit for "digital manipulation" and also, of course, that in
Ian McClusky (ex-OMD guy), they're used to getting dressed in skimpy
costumes and working to the diktats of a rich bloke who nobody can remember
ever having seen. Cruelly, Girl Thing are stopped on their trip back to the
DSS for long enough to dress up as Madonna. Keith and Shane Boyzone are
mocked even more, by being made to be Eminem. They can't of course. Shane
helpfully observes that there are a lot of beautiful women in the music
industry. No shit, sherlock. There are also a lot of tiny brained blokes.
Richard Blackwood cuts out the middle man by dressing as Craig David - apart
perhaps from Ronan Keating dressing as Daniel O'Donnell, could there be a
shorter journey? Erm, yes, actually, as Samantha Mumba is... Samantha Mumba
on Who Wants to be a Millionaire? Billie does the roses in the bath thing
from American Beauty. Blimey, you can see why Chris Evans wants to date her.
(Yes, because he's on the point of being kicked off Virgin now he no longer
owns it and desperately needs to raise his profile...)

Smash hits proper has its Poll Winners list - of the Five best british band,
Britney best dressed female variety. westlife win six awards, none of them
deserved. The spice girls scoop up most of the worsts, though Liam gets sad
loser of 2000 - c'mon, he excaped Patsy and now is dating an All Saint -
can't be that much of a loser...

They say 'all farewells should be sudden' - or at least Richard Ashcroft
did, and clearly it was in the case of Melody Maker, busily trailing next
week's issue and a ten part series starting in an issue it wasn't to live to
see. Could it be that someone at IPC realised that what would have been
Volume 78, Issue 1 was set to have Papa Roach on the front and yanked the
plug out before things got any worse?

In news, Toploader say they've been "lucky" - too right, mate. Go ask Donna
Air what she did to sort her hair out and come back to us and Bis promise to
be busy next year...

They ask Marilyn Manson about the American dream - he explains that he's
trying to destroy rock stardom from the inside. Well, yeah, make it any more
ridiculous and boring and you'll probably have succeeded, pal...

Always having pretended that Mr Agreeable didnt exist in the pop papers, as
it surely is his final column (not in the nme, please god, no) let's slaute
the comedy genius: Coldplay are cunts. Muse are cunts. Toploader are cunts.
Radiohead are cunts. And Eminem is a cunt. How amusing. Cunt.

Matt Belamy from Muse is challenged that re-releasing Muscle Museum was a
cash-in. He wheedles that he was in Japan when it happened. Yeah, yeah,
yeah...

'Have Oasis become a joke' asks the Maker, apparently ignoring the three
covers they gave this sideshow during their last year...

Roody Womble from Idlewild quite rightly scoffs at the idea that he'd be
worried by the success of Coldplay...

Theres some sort of two page spread that tries to depict rucks in rock as a
London tube map. The sort of thing Select (sniff) used to do incredibly
well, and the Maker, um, couldn't...

Cory Taylor from Slipknot shares the tale of a girl from Australia who
emailed him offering to slash her arm open to let him fuck the wound. Ohand
apparently, he's going to have an even more scary mask made for himself.
Probably a transparent one, then. Interestingly, for a band who are supposed
to be shaking the guts of normal rules, he baulks at someone breaking a real
taboo - nominating (in a Big Brother themed feature) Gary Glitter to be
evicted. Hmmm...

Luke Haines from Black Box Recorder has no such qualms about pleasing the
Daily Mail, suggesting his perfect Xmas bash would be burning down Hamleys
during an outing of sick children...

Phew - Justine Elastica denies ever having gone out with Bob Gillespie, and
says she has no plans whatsoever for next year. Well, next album won't be
due until 2008, will it?...

More recreation of Charlies Angels - this time Sophia Ooberman, Sarah Black
Box and Manda Bis don the outfits. Its suprisingly convincing, although
Manda's kung-fu pose looks more like a member of the Salvation Army who's
left their tamborine at home...

"Evil" from the Bloodhound Gang talks about the maddest moments of 2000. Tee
hee, he went with two women from Hooters at the same time. At the same time.
There was the news, though, that Lupus pissed into Mel C's waterbottle when
they were both on TFI Friday...

Damon Gough out of Baldy Drawn Boy reveals his hat is stuck on with maggots
and mould. Yum. Not that it matters, with that beard nobody's ever gonna
want to take your hat off...

"People who don't like us are immensely strange" says Chris Coldplay. Yeah,
and people who do like you are incredibly, incredibly NORMAL. Maybe Mr.
Agrreeable had a point. He also reckons that Teenage Fanclub "do the sort of
thing we do." If anyone has access to a musicologist, or even a half-deaf 84
year old, and would like to disprove this, we'll be happy to hear...

There's an interesting 'after they were famous' feature - most shocking of
all Leon Mayer of Northern Uproar now works as a hairdresser, and looks like
Josh out of Toploader, but... erm, a sexy version. Fuck. I fancy one of
Northern Uproar. Other gems include Dave Hill out of Slade now being a
councillor, Rick Buckler from the Jam working with antiques (not so very
different from having stuck with Weller, then) and Miki Lush now subediting
Tv Times...

Two pages are spent trying to establish why Hilary Woods won the sexiets
female in Rock award - a JJ72 fan called Paul reckons the band would still
have been succesful even if she'd been a "minger." Paul is, of course,
spectacularly ugly. The editor of The Sport offers her a job in its table
dancing club. Only Tim O'Leary off Brookside actually points out that she
wouldn't stand out of a crowd...

The poster pullouts are all of Radiohead. and all from 2000. so, thats
several pictures of Thom looking grim and trying not to appear like a man
who is now able to buy the whole of the Thames Valley and fill it with
crack...

Daphne and Celeste dress up as pop stars - Celeste does eminem, daphne does
fred durst... and run for your lives, Paul Draper confirms that Chad is
still working on his solo stuff...

Gail Porter (some sort of topless model, apparently) reviews the films of
the year and manages to not say anything bad without adding a positive
'but'. She even can't bring herself to slag 'Kevin and Perry Go Large'...

Lauren Laverne does the TV of the year, happily slagging The Royle Family as
"just grim" and pointing out that media poshos sneering at council houses
isn't much of a groundbreaker. And then suggests that the rich cow who won
Millionaire should spend the cash on having her scab removed. And, in six
words, sums up the basic problem with Big Brother: "They were all such
horrible people..."

Four pages of Fred Durst, anyone? Look, he's pretending to piss on the
Christmas tree. Look, he's holding mistletoe... but giving the finger. Ah,
but don't hate him - apparently our hatred will only fuel Limp Bizkit
further, and he says he'll kiss us on the lips if he sees us...

Mark Greaney from JJ72 says the band are going to spend 2001 taking heroin
and cocaine. Sadly, he's only joking...

Albums of the year - Marshall mathers at 1, Coldplay parachutes 2; Badly
Drawn's Bewilderbeast at 3. Daphne and Celeste's 'we didn't...' comes in at
36, one place ahead of Asian Dub Foundation...

Singles of the year - Groovejet/Spiller 1; Stan/Eminem 2; Yellow/Coldplay 3
(eh?). And can anyone explain why Thong Song is at 11 and Opps I Did It
Again down at 46?...

When praised for the line "Dope, guns and fucking in the streets", Brian
Molko immodestly fails to point out that it isn't his...

Kelly Jones whines he doesn't want to be doing fireworks and screams all his
life. Well, go and work in a shitty cheese shop, you ungrateful sod...

and finally, as far as the melody maker is concerned, forever, dougie payne
is in psychobabble. He thinks his life is most like 'The Man Who Fell To
Earth" and would like lack of manners to be illegal...

Sniff. A hastily inserted A5 sheet reads "we're sorry to tell you that this
is the very final weekly issue of Melody Maker. From next week we'll merge
with NME, the world's biggest music weekly... You've been great. Stay
beautiful."...

Talking of the NME, its got a double, too. They had the exclusive on that
Manics Cuba gig - apparently, the only place in the world where they could
charge the going rate for a gig and still be worth the money (17pence, of
course)...

On has its own top 20 records - At The Drive In at number 1, The For
Carnation at 2 and Sugababes - not Superdrag, dammit - at three with
overload...

Spiller is the On Dance single of the year, too...

NME take Muse to the Eden Project in Cornwall. Matt Belamy hates feeling
reliant on people, which is a bit of a bugger seeing as his career hangs on
the whims of several coke-addled music biz execs and a few thousand record
buyers...

The Charlatans answer reader's questions - my "Tim, will you marry me"
having gone astray, we get instead to find out why he doesn't miss England -
they have Pizza Hut, Starbucks and McDonalds in America as well. Blimey,
you'll get MTV in the States next. But Tim doesn't see him taking a kiddie
to any fast food restaurant soon - "unless you count my dog."...

Norman Cook and, oh god, Anna off Big Brother (are you lot still here? what,
the bus not turned up yet?) look back over the big stories of the year.
Apparently Anna is going to cling to her worn out welcome mat to "go round
the world talking to women" for BBC TV next year. Right. Hats off to Sylvia
Patterson for pointing out to Norman that, yeah, while he may be dead in a
hundred years and so doesn't care if the human race cant last, that his son
might not be. Ah...

Doves go for a pint, and explain there's a boxer on the album cover because
its about "fighting your corner..."

Ash make the paper Christmas lunch, and more of your heroes crumble:
Charlotte believes Mo is the best thing that's ever happened to
Eastenders...

Johnny Greenwood does, erm, an interview. Like Radiohead don't do. Hardly
ever. Lets pretend he didn't...

Eminem's mum claims that Slim and Kim's split is all some sort of twisted
media stunt... (surely not?)...

Another Coldplay interview, then. Interest us, Chris: "I'd really like it if
I didn't swear."...

Daphne and Celeste (had NME and MM already merged for this issue?) go buying
presents for people. Brian Molko gets purple nail varnish and a charm
bracelet; britney gets a bottle of virginity restorer - handy, that, she
could keep scoring seven million dollars time and again; and eminem can look
forward to unwrapping a can of penis enlarger...

nme singles of the year 1 - real slim shady/eminem; 2- yellow/coldplay; 3 -
caught out there - kellis. In the lower reaches there's a surprise mention
of saint etienne's heart failed in the back of a taxi...

albums - queens of the stone age are at number one (that'll be us going
"eh?" when it appears in 'Lest We Forget' in a couple of years); XTRMNTR at
2, and PJ Harvey's 'songs from...' at three. As ever, the NME album choices
are more interesting and debatable than the Makers, and (inevitablity) thna
its readers will be...

nme films of the year fails to find a slot for High Fidelty, but does
include Virgin suicides...

tv 2000 places Nasty Nick ahead of Jam and seems to think that awful Judy
Finnegan bra thing was in any way a great moment...

and, more or less, thats it. This edition of what the pop papers say is
dedicated to starcrossed spitfires, who will get a pint of beer each if they
can get their name on the cover of the NMEnwMMfef before next christmas...

REBELLION IS - IN CASE YOU MISSED THE MEMO - THE NEW CONFORMITY: - so says the Daily Telegraph's Neil McCormick, anyway. Obviously columns about popular music in the telegraph are designed to provide an excuse for pictures of female popstars, rather than to offer any perspective on the music scene, but did he stop to think his thoughts through? Rebellion is in, except its manufactured. Righto. So, erm, being told to pretend to rebel would be - what's the word? - conformity, wouldn't it? Sweetly, he suggests Girls Aloud 'Sound of the Underground' was 'counter-culture referencing.' But if the target audience all assumed it 'the sound of the underground' was that woosh you get a few seconds before the tube arrives, can that be the case?
As if realising that he was stumbling over himself, Neil frets "When even an old-school svengali like Girls Aloud impresario Louis Walsh (the brains behind Boyzone, Westlife and Samantha Mumba) embraces rebellion, what is left to rebel against?" Erm... how about old-school svengalis like Louis Walsh trying to package rebellion and sell it back to the kids for a start?
Gonna make a tshirt out of your dreams...

What the pop papers say: Anglo-American edition

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WHAT THE POP PAPERS SAY: Bono is God edition
Q magazine has drawn up a list of the most powerful people in the music biz, and reckons Bono is the most powerful. Now, of course, there's good reason for this nonesensical statement - "Fat Bald LA exec you've never heard of makes all the major decisions about what you'll hear" is going to be a difficult coverline to sell - but, really, do we need to feed Vox's monstrous ego any further?...

Talking of things we'd like to just stop, now, forever: Now - Mel B and Max, back together, apparently. Oh, god almighty, has she finally come to the conclusion that her grasp on fame has become so slight she can only get the oxygen of publicity by being locked in a destructive relationship? Remember all those think pieces about how positive the Spice Girls were as role models?...

Onto the nme, then, which has the Vines on the front. Just as the Manics have to have the comedy welsh references, so the Vines have to be headlined "Strewth"...

news: "This is the moment" reads the caption on a full page shot "when truancy reached new heights." Um, no, it isn't. That's a picture of two people on a roof - it doesn't really document New York coming to a halt (and haven't we had enough of that to last a lifetime?), but it does suggest that Meg might not be the only White to forego the attractions of support. And we find it hard to believe they were married - surely nobody would turn their back on *that*?. The nme reports that "many" of the 9,000 strong crowd found out about the gig on nme.com, extrapolated from one person who emailed them and said they did.

Isn't playing a gig on a roof a bit corny now, though? Like releasing a single for one day and then deleting it - are you listening, The Music, with your Getaway? Or Liam walking offstage - its bad enough having to go to an Oasis gig, but then to have it turned into a fucking Noel acoustic wank-off seems to be cruel and unusual; shamefully, the nme manages to find space for the trouble-on-boat Mobo story but not the nasty homophobic events outside; less shamefully, but still a bit rum is the apparent belief that Nothing Compares 2U is a Sinead O'Connor song (the clue, you dolts, is in the title); Trucks have dismissed the people who beat them up because of their 'Its Just Porn Mum' song as "five big lesbians" - erm, because lesbians don't like porn, we suppose? - although, more accurately, they were a bunch of schoolgirls. "It's about a kid who wants to watch porn" Mark from Trucks says, justifying himself, "it's not about hardcore anal or anything like that." More's the pity; Jarvis Cocker is given a "bad Monkey" for appearing in the BT advert; the paper tries to work up some sort of hypocrisy charge because the Pulp wouldn't let Nestle for a free CD - although we don't quite see the connection, what with Nestle being targetted by baby milk action and BT not, we think (as we've said before) Jarvis was probably endorsing broadband music downloading as a fuck-off to his former record label; Interpol have been threatened by an old lady weilding an axe - surely that's Courtney Love, isn't it?; Chuck D has called MTV Nazis because they wouldn't play the Public Enemy track calling for freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal - they were happy for the name to be mentioned, but wanted 'free' taken out as "we [MTV] are an unbiased company [and] we felt it was a personal and political position on an individual" - so, no Free Nelson Mandela, then; and presumably that song where Kelly tells Nelly she really loves him - which surely is a personal position on an individual - will be out too, will it?...

the coverage of the robbie deal focuses on his "make america like me, please" begging from Mr Williams. A bloek from Billboard points out that he's sold less than 700,000 albums in the whole of the US, and that all his desperate star-stalking in LA (Marilyn Manson, Ozzy, um, Rachel Hunter) hasn't caused a flicker on his recognition needle. It's no coincidence that Robbie's trying the fame-by-association tactic in the states, since his paling around with Oasis in the UK turned him from the cheeky one out of Take That into the irritating rich cunt he is today. But has he got anything to offer America? Let's hope he packs some humility...

on bands: electric 6 - detroit disco punk and longview - manc shoegazers. (They don't say shoegazers, but you just can tell)...

Erol Alkan is the man who saved the indie club, apparently. Apparently, before Trash, there were no clubs that didn't restrict themselves to the same Big Indie Names. Hmmm, maybe they should have tried travelling beyond London...

Vendetta Red cheerfully admit that they're california skatepunk cliches, so let's move on...

Australia is the new Rock & Roll Continent, apparently. Now, this is just pre-packaged stupid in flatpack boxes. Attempting to suggest that some town may be the burning groin of new music - Seattle! New York! Liverpool! - may just about work; the country-as-crucible claims are more tenuous (Japan, the other week, wasn't it?) but... "the new rock & roll continent"? Please.
Maybe we should offer this revised standfirst instead:
The NME had to pay for writers to fly to Australia to cover the Vines homecoming, so to try and spread the strain on expenses we decided to write up some other bands - including You Am I, in jesus' name - and will do our best to suggest that Australia and New Zealand - an area larger than the whole of the US, plus quite a lot of sea - has some sort of cohesive 'scene'...

"If anyone else asks me if I'm suicidal, I think I'll kill myself" wails Craig Nicholls. Hey, The Vines man - are you feeling suicidal, then? Despite the coverline, it seems that The Vines aren't actually having quite as euphoric a return to Oz as we're meant to believe - "suspicion", "hostile" and similar words pepper through the reportage. We might be being a bit dense, but we can't find a credit for the piece, which may just be an oversight, but is a shame as it's a well written, even handed piece of journalism, marred only by dreadful layout - you get six columns on page 34, then four pages of posters (can you hear the tumbrels? They have Melody Maker poster mags stuck all over them) and a page of Vines pictures, then another six columns, then an ad for Jack Daniels, then another page, and then it concludes thirty pages further on. The nme seems to have forgotten how to present journalism, even though clearly it hasn't lost the knack of writing. And its nice to see Swervedriver getting a small sidebar to themselves, as a result of Craig wearing one of the band's tshirts, although the reference to them not likely to do well during the Britpop Wars is bemusing, since they'd long since given up before the end of shoegazing...

albums - a self-aggrandising review of the nme/war child 1 Love album - Alex Needham gives it ten, which is scandalously wrong. It's a compilation album that has both Darius and Jimmy Eat World on it - who could possibly embrace its entire contents to such an extent? Bah. And Needham's contention that doing an album in aid of War Child is timely what with the imminent Iraq war is dodgy but probably accurate - better start building up the resources to pick up the pieces now, boys. It's curious Oasis are involved, though - thought you couldn't be arsed, boys? Thought you didn't think we could do anything? Thought you were just in a band?...

foo fighters - one by one ("a man who's finally learned to fly", 8);
brave captain (Martin Carr of the Boo Radleys) - advertisements for myself ("best since giant steps", 8);
the delgados - hate ("all you need is hate", 8); apples in stereo - velocity of sound ("vaguely contemporary", 7);
graham coxon (Graham Coxon of The Blur) - the kiss of morning ("an auspiscious manifesto", 8);
the soft boys - nextdoorland ("nothing to spoil their unsullied cult reputation", 8)...

single of the week: the beatings - bad feeling ("a scalding gang chant chorus")
also-rans: simian - never be alone ("call the police")
shaggy - hey sexy lady ("the sid james of pop-reggae")
samantha mumba - I'm right here ("infectious")
disco d featuring princess superstar - fuck me on the dancefloor ("everything is just so...")

live - the coral in newcastle ("only the beginning");
the darkness in King's Cross ("a spirit-sapping ironic take on Queen and AC/DC")'
erase errata in london metro ("stroppy, exciting and confusing")...

and finally, viral marketing has gone mad: a plug for www.rathergood.com/punk_kittens has made it into NMEmail. Is nowhere safe, or shall we prepare for the offer of Viagra next week?

NO SURPRISES: If I thought the Brits were too moribund to even bother mentioning, then I spose I should feel lucky that I'm not Irish. Their music awards yesterday saw everything bar newcomer and female going to either U2 or Westlife. Perhaps the saddest, most shameful prize was that the best Irish pop single of 2001 was, apparently, that cover of Uptown Girl Westlife knocked out for charidee. I'm sorry, but had I been totalling up the votes, and found that on the top, that people had decided the country had produced nothing finer than a one-shot take-off of a Billy Joel song that was irritating when it was first written, I'd have paid off the caterers, written off the deposit on the hall, and cancelled the event.
U2? Again? [BBC] - curse you, Mumba, you have foiled our duopoly...