MORE ON SINGING POLITICIANS: Thanks to Kiril for his suggestion that, while MP4 might be bad, it's not as bad as the thought of a singing John Ashcroft. Which, disturbingly, isn't the product of his fevered imagination, but an all too horrible reality.

I HEARD YOU ON THE WIRELESS BACK IN '79: Trevor Horn is planning a massive bash in aid of Prince Charles' charity on November 11th, Having worked with the likes of the Pet Shop Boys and Frankie Goes To Hollywood, you'd expect some top acts to be lined up. Erm, ABC and Lisa Stansfield have both signed up to play the Horn at twenty five celebrations, although to be fair he's dusting down his Buggles suit and, sweetest of all, there's going to be a Propaganda reunion for the event. And there is the promise of "more top selling acts" to be added. Please, god, not Simple Minds.

QUOTE: "Alex James? Looks like a country squire now... he looks like a pig farmer from the West Country" - Mark Radcliffe singing the praises of pop stars who are happy to age naturally on Radio Two this week.

INNOCENT VICTIMS: This is Skye Sweetnam. Like a lot of teenage girls, she's upset about the cancellation of Britney Spears tourdates:



Unlike most of those pissed off they won't get to see Britney near naked cavorting with men, though, for Skye, it's a business problem. Her debut album is due out in September and the main thrust of the marketing was to be the support slot on Britney's Canadian dates. Now that's not going to happen, she's having to work twice as hard to get a profile. It's like the butterfly flapping its wings thing - Britney puts too much weight on her kneejoint, and in Canada, a career crumbles into dust.

BANTON PUTS FISTS WHERE MOUTH IS?: Baju Banton seems to have stepped up his unpleasant homophobia from recording tiresome songs calling for gay men to be shot to actually carrying out queerbashing. Police in Kingston, Jamaica are seeking Banton in connection with an attack on gay men. Several witnesses place Banton at a house where a dozen armed men forced their way into a house, beting up the gay men inside. At least two people were hospitalised.

AS IF SINGING ACTORS ISN'T BAD ENOUGH...: Juliette Lewis fronting up a punk band? It might be okay, but... it does make your toes curl, the very thought...

...WE'VE GOT SINGING MPS TO COPE WITH: Denis Healy once suggested that politicians needed their hinterland to make them rounded people. Wer're not sure he would have had MP4, a band made up of, well, yes, four MPs who played a gig for the BPI this week. The BPI interpreted the number of politicians who turned up to see their colleagues making a show of themselves as an indication of legistlative support for their anti-downloading campaign. Although even if that were the case, a pisspoor fifty two members suggests that the Commons is pretty happy for us to carry on with the kazaa.

JUST ACCEPT IT AIN'T GONNA HAPPEN: Every so often, the Simon Cowell wants to make Prince Harry a pop star pops up somewhere in the world's press. Sometimes it's Prince William. Everytime, it's just a load of old royal equerries.

AND THEY CALLED IT BROTHERLY LOVE: Donny Osmond's been in town (assuming you're reading this in Edinburgh) - not in his role as singer or TV presenter, but as a preacher come to save our sorry asses. Brother Osmond popped in to do a fireside chat about Mormonism, apparently as part of his son's Brandon's two year mission to persuade Scottish types to join the Latter-Day Saints. He laughed off the "public perception that the church is a type of cult", apparently unaware that when people shout "You're all a bunch of oddly-dressed weirdos, sticking together, with odd ways saying stuff that ordinary people can't make sense of" they're referring to his reading of Crazy Horses rather than the Book of Mormon.

WELSH WOMAN AT WELSH FESTIVAL : Cerys Matthews is about to play her only gig in the UK for the whole of 2004 - at Sesiwn Fawr in Dolgellau; she's going to be playing new material as well as stuff from Cockahoop. Apparently she's trying to teach her daughter to speak both English and Welsh, which is resulting in a kind of weird Germanic hybrid.

NOT TOO CLOSE TO THE EDGE: Whoops, there goes the U2 album; The Edge somehow mislaying his copy of Vertigo somewhere in France - suggestions that he took it to the Record and Tape Exchange in order to get some cash for fags are being strenuously denied. Of course, Island are shitting themselves it'll end up on the web. And so are music fans. Meanwhile, Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned, the new Prodigy album, has popped up on a Russian website and by now will be slightly disappointing people right across the globe.

POP SICK LIST: Spending the day tucked up in bed with a big, orange-plastic wrapped bottle of Lucozade on Sunday will be Teena Marie, who has her comeback slightly buggered by an injury leading to cancellation of live engagements.

THIS EVENING'S CHRISTINA UPDATE: Plans snap wedding, baby to take limelight from Britney; teases strippers by "lifting clothes up" (that's okay, it's empowering; her mam said so); going bald.

SHOEHORNED REFERENCE: There's apparently a really good cause at the heart of the Beyonce designing shoes for reebok - Tyra Banks has invented one too, apparently, and judging by the threat of next week's America's Next Top Model, she considers herself something of a Beyonce, too. The shoes get auctioned off for charity of some sort, although it'll probably harm their price that they've never actually been worn been their designers, thus closing off interest from the key shoe fetishists community. Reebok have, apparently, recently been given some sort of praise for their attitude to worker's rights, although apparently under an agreement which allows them to choose which part of their operations they'll be inspected in. And the applause came from the FLA, who don't seem at all bothered by the concept of company unions apparently used at Reebok's suppliers in, say, El Salvador, even although that hardly constitutes worker's recognition. Still, Beyonce, Queen Latifah and Tyra are probably a bit too busy to sweat the fine details, eh?

APOLOGIES IF QUORN: Andre from Outkast will be celebrating this evening, with a plate of Holland and Barrett's Porkless Pies and a glass of that wine that doesn't have bits of cow in it, as he accepts the garland of sexiest vegetarian of the year from PETA. Andre beat off stiff and not-so-stiff competition from the likes of... well, Bryan Adams and Annie Lennox. And Eddie Vedder and Boy George. But still, it's an honour.

MEGASUIT: Heavy metal stars falling out hardly warrants a second look round here, but the numbers in the legal battle between Megadeath singer Dave Mustaine and former bassist David Ellefson are so huge its worth a second look. Ellefson is claiming ten million quid in royalties and profits from Mustaine, and adding a side grump that Mustaine was supposed to have given control of Megadeath Inc (would have been a great name for an arms company, that) to him when the band split up.

Ten million quid? We're so in the wrong game here.

RIAA REALLY LOVE P2P. THEY JUST CAN'T BE WITH IT, RIGHT NOW: As Orrin Hatch's bonkers bid to criminalise manufacturers of devices which could be used for piracy makes its way through Senate, the RIAA's Mitch Bainwol has sent a letter to the legislators praising peer to peer networking. In an "I come to praise Ceaser, not bury him" style.

"There is nothing inherently evil about P2P," writes Bainwol. "On the contrary, it's a magnificent technology. But it has been hijacked by some unscrupulous operators who have constructed a business model predicated on the taking of property financed by my member companies."

He means "music", by the way. You might turn on the radio to hear songs and tunes, Mitch Bainwol takes a lady back to his penthouse flat, turns the lights down low, and whispers into her ear "Shall I put on a little property financed by my member companies?"

We've been waiting for a while to see how the RIAA was going to continue to make its case for the damage being done by downloads in a market that's actually doing rather well. Bainwol delivers the new line: it's killing singles:

"In 2000, the top ten hits sold 60 million units in the U.S. Seven of the ten sold more than 5 million units each; every one of them sold at least 3 million units. Then the slide kicked in. Last year, in 2003, the top ten hits were cut almost in half, to 33 million units. Just two of the ten sold more than 5 million units; five of those top ten hits sold less than 3 million units."

et's not even begin to ask if he thinks that Now Thats What I Call Music entering America at roughly the start of his study period might have had an influence on that, nor should we tap our biros on our teeth and wonder if the reason the RIAA has carefully insisted singles downloads be certified for Gold and Platinum separately from the sale of physical product is to ensure they have an always falling CD singles market to moan about. See, the whole iTunes selling 100,000,000 in a little over a year might undermine using singles as evidence for the sky falling in, should they be counted in with the plastic disc sales figures.

EVERYBODY GOT THE DOWNLOADS NOW: Latest corporation to remove their trilby and toss it in a general direction of the music download ring is Ebay, which is hoping to find some music makers keen to flog their downloads using the Ebay infrastructure. It could be really tempting for smaller labels and individual artists if the six month test proves to be a success - a nice way to avoid being lost in the melee of those 1.3 million tracks over on OD2, and, presumably, a fatter slice of the revenue to keep for themselves.

Now, don't be mean and mutter "Was that still going, then?" as news reaches us that Jack, the little magazine for men falls under the axe. No number of interviews with Bobby Gillespie and cover illustrations of outsized women treading on tiny buildings could make the magazine commercially viable, it turns out.



The title was the 943rd straight failure in a row from James Brown, not that we'd call Loaded a lucky shot or anything.

MORE WOE FOR LOVE: Courtney's habit of not showing up on time in court is starting to cost her - Ms Love has been hit with a demand for a USD40,000 bail bond for the LA drugs charges; she's already blow 55,000 by not showing up at the hearing about the court charge last week. She's also lost the right to allow her attorney, Michael Rosenstein, appear in her place. He sucks a tooth:

"Courtney's failure to appear in the other matter has resulted in the district attorney requesting her presence in this court, revocation of her own recognisance and my ability to appear on her behalf. Once Courtney's able to be before the court we'll be able to resolve all the issues that are occurring."

DO YOU REMEMBER THE SECOND TIME: We have our doubts over the authenticity of the quote Ananova have lifted from The Sun about Britney Spear's wedding plans:

"She hasn't decided on a wedding breakfast menu yet but has said she isn't skimping on anything. She said she wants a massive affair that is nothing like the Las Vegas cheap wedding she had before, which was annulled after just 55 hours."

Obviously, it's not quite as unlikely as if the "insider" had slipped in "as you know" or even "as you might have read about in the News International press", but it sounds like cod to us - a fairly safe bet (this time, let's invite people and not get drunk before taking the vows) dressed up as insight.

A MILLION LOVE SONGS...: In the race for the downloader's pound, size matters. Which is why OD2 will be pleased to have been able to quadruple the number of songs on its service from 300,000 odd to 1.3 million - nearly twice the number of Napster and iTunes. While this is very exciting, we're not entirely sure where they've found these extra songs from. if it's as a result of their being bought out by Loudeye - which would seem to be the most likely source of the surge - won't most of these songs be more exciting for an American audience? We're betting they still won't have Reserve doing The Sun Went Down The Tower.

AH, BUT WAS IT WORTH HIS HEALTH: It may have broken his heart, but at least David Bowie's world tour managed a bumper payday before it all got called off. The North American leg of Bowie's jaunt was the top-grossing US live event in the six months to May 18th, pulling in USD45.4million from the 722,158 paying customers. No, we don't know what's special about May 18th - maybe its rock midsummer. Second place? Bette Midler on forty million; then Simon & Garfunkel (36m), Shania Twain (34m - and that's just one leg), Prince (26m), Rod Stewart (25m), Metallica (22m) the Beyonce- Alicia Keys - Missy Elliot package (19m) equalling Britney Spears (19m) and George Strait banking 16m.

THE MODERN DANCE SLOWS DOWN: After a couple of minutes reading the words that have appeared on his dining room wall, Fatboy Slim pronounces dance music to be in "freefall". Although he also calls it "stagnant", which would seem to be impossible, at least from a physics point of view. Norman's solution? Well, he says that there's a crying need for a new Daft Punk, but shrewedly he seems to be plumping to head more towards the rock world instead. After all, you don't want to be the one holding the maggotty package when the music stops.

TORONTO DON'T LOVE LOVETT: In a bit of a bad summer for North American festivals, there's been another high-profile casualty, as the Toronto Bluesfest gets axed after poor tickey sales. Lyle Lovett, Wilson Pickett, Cake and Wyclef Jean just didn't prove enough of a draw.

MOTHER UNDERSTANDS: Apparently, Christina Aguilera's mum was a bit upset when her daughter stopped appearing in sensible jerseys and skirts and decided to wear her knickers as daywear. But now, she's starting to understand why Christina chooses semi-nudity. No, it's not to titilate men, silly:

"She gets next to no negative mail. I believe that people are beginning to finally understand the message behind it all. The people who respond and the lives her message is changing far outnumbers the minority of critics who simply aren't grasping what she's doing.
Christina and I usually don't talk 'business' at all, but she has asked me often concerning my feelings... wanting to make sure I knew what she was doing behind it all.
She never even needed to explain. I've loved every bit of it, and I'm so very proud the she is one of very few out there who have the courage to be herself and work tirelessly at sending out messages of self worth, independence and strength to females today. Those who remain clueless are missing so much."

So, there you have it - Shelly Keans knows that when her daughter gets 'em out, it's a positive message about female empowerment. On which basis, Razzle must be the most significant feminist tract this side of A Vindicatation of The Rights of Women.

DARKNESS NOT CLEAR: We're not exactly sure that saying you're going to announce a tour later this year quite counts as news, but The Darkness have issued a 'statement to follow' statement anyway. Probably three nights at Wembley, but who knows for sure?

UH-OH... PETE TOWNSHEND'S BACK BEHIND HIS COMPUTER KEYBOARD: This time, Townshend's using his broadband connection to launch a broadside against Michael Moore. Moore had wanted to use Won't Get Fooled Again on the Fahrenheit 911 soundtrack; Townshend wanted to see the movie before saying yay or nay - we all know how Pete likes to diligently research things - but they wouldn't or couldn't let him, so he said "Don't use it, okay." Now Moore - are you keeping up there? - has said that Townshend is a Bushite and a supporter of the Iraq war. Which has made Townshend really angry, despite, erm, his support for the war in Iraq - "although now I am less sure we did the right thing."

The details, really, aren't that interesting, but we were puzzled by this claim: "I wish him all the best with the movie, which I know is popular, and which I still haven't seen. But he'll have to work very, very hard to convince me that a man with a camera is going to change the world more effectively than a man with a guitar." Erm... is Pete suggesting that documentaries have less influence on politics and public opinion than agitprop singers? We'll believe that when Alistair Campbell announces he wants to fuck Billy Bragg.

TWENTY FOUR HOURS FROM TULSA: JJ Cale and Tulsa are having a mutual love thing going on. First, Cale called his new album To Tulsa With Love, as a dedication to his birthplace. To repay the compliment, Tulsa have declared July 5th JJ Cale Day. To paraphrase Nile Crane: "Is it happy JJ Cale Day, or Merry JJ Cale Day? I never can remember."

"I'D HAVE GOTTEN AWAY WITH IT IF IT WASN'T FOR THOSE DAMN KIDS FROM FAME TSHIRTS": A cautionary tale: If you're going out to do some bad crimes, don't wear a distinctive band tshirt. Choose something more generic, like a coldplay one.

KIM AGAINST PMT: Last week, Kim Wilde was fighting to save the fells. This week, she's taking on PMT. If she carries on like this, we're going to need to elect her to be in charge of something.