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We're not entirely sure how one could tell that Richard Ashcroft is ill - "ooh, you look a bit pale and peaky, Mr. Ashcroft, are you alright?" - but apparently he is.
Throat and vocal problems have led to the pulling of tonight's Birmingham gig.
Sometimes, we send emails.
With Universal paying $12m to make Eliot Spitzer's payola investigation go away we did find ourselves wondering: who does this sort of crime hurt the most?
When Sony-BMG, Warners and Universal use their cash and influence to take unfair share of US radio time, sure, it's not much fun for the audience, and it's not much fun for the artists, but really, the key victims are the labels who don't have the money to offer foreign trips and cash to get their records onto the radio.
Now, these labels are members of organisations which exist, supposedly, to protect their interests. And one which isn't shy about standing up in public to attack criminal activity. Oddly, though, the RIAA has been strangely silent about this one - almost as if it's not really the industry-wide organisation it portrays itself as, and that it might just be a plaything of the larger members.
Likewise, the BPI seems to be strangely quiet on this one - with the UK government pouring our cash into initiatives to promote British music in the US, surely this sort of behaviour by BPI members works against that, doesn't it? And yet, again, the BPI hasn't managed to find its own voice.
Perhaps, though, we're being unfair - after all, we've been on holiday. So we've sent both the BPI and the RIAA a letter asking them where we can find their reaction to the Spitzer investigations. This is the RIAA one, the BPI one was similar but tweaked:
Hi,
I've been searching the RIAA website to find some comments about the acceptance of payola accusations by three of your members - Sony BMG, Universal and Warners.
Since this behaviour is clearly against the interest of other, smaller members of the RIAA, I was expecting to see some sort of reaction - and censure - against these criminal activities on the part of a few of your members.
Could you direct me to the person who is dealing with this, or perhaps point me to a place on the site where the same sort of trenchant criticism levelled at "illegal downloaders" is dished out over these criminal acts?
Or does the RIAA only worry about crime when it feels its members are the victims?
Simon HB
No Rock & Roll Fun
We'll let you know when we get a reply - it's almost like a race, isn't it?
Part of the reason why the mainstream music industry is in such confusion is the continuing reliance on marketing people, and the identification every few months of a "segment" which sees the big labels and the commercial music media suddenly scrap their original plans and head off in a whole new direction.
So it is that now fifty-quid bloke is over, and now it's MP-she who will drive music-by-flipchart for the next year or so. [MediaGuardian, requires free registration]
"The freedom afforded by new technology means that women are now confidently downloading music at home and broadening their musical horizons in private," said Sophie Watson Smyth, marketing manager of Q and the music magazine Mojo.
She dubbed the new breed of technology-savvy female music fans the "MP-she generation" and said recent sales increases for the magazines had been driven by more women turning to them for guidance on what to buy.
The idea is, you see, that women are too intimidated to go into record shops and ask about music but are able to confidently download music online - which would almost make sense if, firstly, that was in any way true of any of the women we know and, secondly, if modern "record shops" were really the High Fidelty-style geeky-testosterone pits the report suggests and not, rather, a few rows of CDs in Tesco.
If EMAP is serious about taking female music fans seriously, they might want to think how it helps to depict them as nervous mice unable to ask a man in an overall if this Mariah Carey album is a new one.
For how could he be gay, when he's "romantically linked" to Tara Palmer-Tomkinson who is a lady, in almost both senses of the word?
Oddly, the Sun has headlined the story about this gruesome pairage He's loving IT girls instead. Why the capitals? If it's to stress the weak pun, surely the whole of "it girls" should be capitalised? Or does the staff at the paper think that, rather than a debutante, Tara is involved with PC tech support in some way?
It's disappointing to see TPT start to become little more than Geri Halliwell with better deportment following on from her James Blunt squishing.
Still, let's hear what "a pal" has to say:
"For about ten days they just stayed in bed watching DVDs and eating takeaways — it all sounded very intimate.”
Well, not really - it sounds like students in the post-exam period to us. Hardly the sort of behaviour you'd expect Cassanova to indulge in.
Oh, Kelly, even though you're starting to morph into her, you could still do better for a date than your own mother.
Especially your own mother.
There's only one thing worse than the prospect of charisma-disabled stool-perchers Boyzone reuniting, and that's this endless, grinding "ooh... maybe we should... no, we never should... ooh, but maybe we shall" pissing about from Ronan Keating.
Today, he's suggesting that the band might get back together:
“I saw Take That last Friday. They were completely brilliant. When the lads appeared I hadn’t heard a noise like it since Boyzone’s last concert.
“I was feeling ‘This would definitely be nice again.’ ”
The noise he's referring to was the bleeping of the credit card machine on the merchadise stand, of course.
Ronan: reunite, or don't. It makes no odds to us - it's simply a question of which banner you're pumping the same roughage-free mixture out under. But stop confusing the world with one which is hanging on the decision. 75% of people still think Boyzone and Westlife are the same people and haven't even realised you split in the first place.
Pete Doherty's ongoing campaign to find more and newer ways of illustrating just what a selfish moron he is has found another level - apparently, injecting in front of the media is no longer enough; now, he's taken to squirting blood from his works over MTV camera crews.
Even Drew McConnell thought that was a step too far:
“I think the interview is over my friend. I’m really sorry about that mate, that’s fucked up.”
Doherty, though, was very pleased with himself:
“That was a wicked shot. That’s going to make a cracking link that is.”
Doubtless Pete will be attempting to recast this as some sort of art happening before the day is out.
It's based on a fairly small survey sample, but new research suggests that not only is it struggling behind Apple, but AllofMP3, the unofficial Russian service is doing almost twice as much business as it is.
Amongst all the understandable mirth at Paris Hilton's slip up launching her cellphone video game (she didn't know what it was called) it's been slightly overlooked that she had some other name difficulties recently.
Guest-hosting Saturday Night Live, she took six goes to get the name of the band right.
The band were the not-entirely-complexly named Keane.
Generally, Paris failed to impress them:
"I basically have three enduring memories of that experience. First, her stupid little dog kept running into our dressing room and we kept booting it out, and second, she had a man, a security guard, whose only job was to carry the dog around. The other one was that she was completely unable to pronounce the name of our band. They had to dress-rehearse, like, six times. 'Ladies and gentlemen, Keanie!' Just on and on. I mean, there's no reason she should know who we are, but it's not that difficult. And at the end, when we had the big sort of group hug, in my attempt to be kind of cool about the thing, I trod on her foot."
Hey, Tom, be careful there: she needs that foot for stomping petulantly with.
There's a curious little post on the official sort-of-blog on the Britney Spears website:
I no longer practice Kabbalah; my baby is my religion
Well, it's a lot cheaper, and you can do that one at home.
It's not that Republican Congressman Michael G. Fitzpatrick is really that bothered by the thought of American youth being corrupted by the Arctic Monkeys, it's all those online predators stalking MySpace which has led him to introduce a bill designed to block under-18s from accessing MySpace on school and library computers.
That's going to be a tough one for Fox News - we know how much they love a paedopanic over there, but what will they do when one of their beloved hyper-religious Congressional heroes introduces a bill aimed at choking another part of Murdoch's empire?
In the most pointless arguments since the Schlewsig-Holstein question, Peter Andre and Jordan are falling out about what to put on their duets album:
A studio source said: "They've been arguing over songs, production and who sings what. Jordan wants soft Dido-style vocals to show off what she calls her 'expressive soulful voice'. But Pete thinks she should go more disco and wants some hip-hop too."
Why worry, guys? It's merely an excuse to throw a launch party to sell to OK anyway, isn't it? It's not like anyone's actually going to listen to it.
Personally, we couldn't care less either way, but we do raise a curious eyebrow on discovering that Robbie Williams has instructed the ITV team filming the Beckhams "gorge yourself for the starving" party that they can't film him:
An insider tells us: "Everyone involved has been so positive until now. There was disbelief when word came from Robbie's aides. No one can understand why he's being such a misery-guts about the whole thing.
"James Brown's an international superstar, far more famous than Robbie, and he's happy to be filmed, so what's Robbie's problem?"
I'm not a doctor, but I believe the medical term is "he's stuck so far up his own arse he only sees the sun when he yawns."
It also turns out that Williams insists on playing Angels now, whether people want him to or not:
He said: "You don't get Robbie without Angels. I was supposed to be doing three songs, but they've got me playing for an hour now.
"I don't usually do things like this party, but I did get a letter from a young girl called Victoria.
"She said she had a husband called David who's very stressed at the moment because he had some important work coming up over the summer. I just thought: 'Why not? He could probably do with a bit of live Angels in his life.'"
Good god, we knew things were grim for the Beckhams, but not that grim. Fancy being patronised by Williams.
Since she's pretty much faded from public view, it's perhaps apt that Avril Lavigne has surfaced with a tiny part in a movie about a missing girl. She's starring with Richard Gere:
"He was like really cool. In between takes he was giving me pointers. It was so crazy as I’ve known about him since I was little. My parents thought that was so cool."
"known about", you'll notice, rather than "have liked him." Still, how cool was that cool thing that happened, then? Cool, eh?
It's not, of course, unknown for Pete Doherty to take the stage in a skirt, but it's pretty rare for him to look quite so much like a provincial cross-dresser as he did in Cologne at the weekend. The truth is clear, kids: heroin really screws your ability to look cute when trannied.
Not that he wants to have a go at anyone, or anything, like, but... Damon Albarn isn't impressed by the bleeding hearts of showbiz:
“Radiohead — I’m not going to get into anyone, but bands who care about certain things and then go on one-and-a- half-year stadium tours are just total hypocrites.
“In one sense you’ve got this developing humanist thing that’s coming out of you, which is great.
“Then you’re creating these massive impersonal events where you set yourself up as the subject of thousands of people’s adoration. Where is the humanity in that? That’s just idolatry.”
It's much more human, of course, to only ever appear at awards shows in the guise of computer-generated cartoon holograms.
He's also not letting Live8 off the hook yet - causing consternation at The Sun, who see criticism of Geldof (except from Murdoch papers) as the modern heresy:
Despite the event raising millions for charity, Damon moaned at the time that there were not enough African groups on stage with the Western performers.
He said: “You can’t question Geldof’s passion. But him and Bono — if you’re so interested and care about Africa, think about the people, see them as a neighbour. Be interested in what they are interested in and don’t impose your own ideas. It’s imperious, it really is.”
We're not quite sure why the "millions raised for charity" in any way negates Albarn's original criticisms - you could raise millions for guide dogs by charging people to stick fireworks through people's letterboxes, but that doesn't make it any more moral - but to be fair to Geldof and Bono, they have been to Africa as often as Mr. Damon; I don't think anyone could accuse them of not understanding the nature of the problems, just that they have lost sight of the solutions.
These times we live in create the least likely of rebels: because he makes his Channel 4 show in BBC studios, and the screwed-up new live music licensing laws were so poorly drafted they managed to make television studios on a par with pubs, Paul O'Grady can't lead his audience in a sing-song. He's threatening to break the law:
“We can’t have live music which means I can’t sing, dance, play the organ or the bugle.
“It turns out if I have live entertainment I could be arrested. But I don’t mind being arrested. I’ll stand up in court and say, ‘Yes, Your Honour, I did play a bugle!”
Idiotic laws create idiotic situations. Perhaps a high-profile pointless prosecution of O'Grady for tooting his horn might do a lot of musicians some good.
We just hope that the contractions weren't brought on by reading one of the tabloids scoffing at her acting yesterday: Geri Halliwell has had her baby.
It came early - sorry "she", as apparently it is a female human child; Sacha Gervasi is rumoured to be less than happy at having been kicked into touch and consulting lawyers.
And after Thom Yorke goes solo, so too does Nicky Wire. Wire is going to do a first-ever solo set to close the Hay Festival next month.
What should we expect?
"A mix of baroque comedy and useless guitaring."
So, picking up where the last Manics album left off, then.
Following on from James Dean Bradfield's solo album plans from last week, we now hear that Thom Yorke is about to do his own own thing:
"this is just a note to say that something has been kicking around in the background that i have not told you about.
its called The Eraser.
nigel produced & arranged it .
i wrote and played it.
the elements have been kicking round now for a few years and needed to be finished & i have been itching to do something like this for ages.
it was fun and quick to do.
inevitably it is more beats & electronics.
but its songs.
stanley did the cover.
yes its a record!
no its not a radiohead record.
as you know the band are now touring and writing new stuff and getting to a good space so i want no crap about me being a traitor or whatever splitting up blah blah...
this was all done with their blessing. and i don't wanna hear that word solo. doesnt sound right.
ok then thats that.
i think its out in july and im pretty certain XL are going to put it out.
love thom
He doesn't want to hear the word "solo", despite, erm, it being a solo sideproject.
Strictly speaking, of course, Ian Brown never was a Muslim, although presumably he had to at least be convincing when he claimed to be one - he did this in prison to avoid eating the pies:
"My sister bought me the Koran in 1990. I always thought the stories in it were magical."
"So I'd already had a love affair with it, but when I got in jail the first day, I saw what everyone else was eating."
“I didn't know what the fuck was in the pies, but the lads said if you were Muslim you got chickpeas, lentils, rice, chicken curry on a Friday. So I said my religion was Muslim."
Now, there's some debate over if the Koran suggests death as a punishment for apostaty, or merely warns of punishment in the next world following death; it's even less clear if it's considered worse to stop pretending to be a practising Muslim than stopping actually being one.
Having got his unlikely new position as Home Secretary due to the "foreign crims at large" panic, John Reid's new Home Office is apparently trying to flex its muscles by ensuring Snoop Dogg never comes to Britain again.
A source told The People: "The Home Office is taking a tough line on him. After the foreign criminals deportation fiasco the last thing the new Home Secretary needs is a criminal flying in and out at will."
Is this entierly fair, though? His caution for the Heathrow ruck isn't grounds for excluding him, and if - as seems likely - his US record is going to be the grounds for the ban, how come it's not been important for this last fifteen years or so?
Justice is one thing, but shouldn't - in the interests of fairness - Reid explain why the sudden change? And if it's just to make him look tough, is that right?
Can it be true? Is Charlotte Church really about to call it a day?. The People says she is:
SINGER Charlotte Church is so sick of fame that she wants to quit showbiz.
Blimey. How do we know?
Church, about to launch a Channel 4 chatshow, was opening an optician near Cardiff [when she told fans.]
So, she's prepping a chatshow and won't turn down a few quid for opening a Specsavers? Hardly the actions of someone weary of the world of showbiz, is it? So, what did she actually say?
"Anyone dreaming of being a celebrity and constantly in the spotlight must be mad. I was just a 12-year-old who wanted to sing. If it all ended tomorrow I wouldn't care. I like the simple things in life. I'm not really the party animal people think."
So... rather than "I quit", it was more "I wouldn't mind if it stopped", then.
Another Sunday, another paper, but the same story: McCartney marriage turbulence.
We're not sure if the close friend who spoke to the Mirror is the same close friend who spoke to the NOTW last weekend, but:
"Heather has always bawled Paul out, basically walking all over him.
"Paul has put up with it because he's a kind, gentle human being. But something just snapped with Paul. He's had enough of being treated like a doormat.
"He's beaten up emotionally and just needed time out. So he just walked out."
The friend continued: "It's not the end - yet. Paul will go back to Heather because he adores her.
"But at the moment, he is having time out from her. "Paul's very down about the whole situation. He's a very sensitive, thoughtful bloke, so when she shouts at him a lot, he finds it soul-destroying."
Of course, the "kind, gentle" Paul is the same Paul who flew into a squawking rage and sacked his friend and publicist because someone once took a photo of him in a public place, but never mind. Let's just take some joy in the bet-hedging of this piece - if the couple split, the paper gets a "told you so"; if they don't, it can point to its source saying "well, of course he'll go back to her." Don't you feel better informed?
The childhood sweetheart who Robbie Williams flew to America and then dumped less than a week later has given up waiting for him, and married someone else.
Rachael Gilson was, according to Williams' autobiography, his one true love - and, as we know, Robbie wouldn't lie to his fans in a book, so we can only conclude he must be heartbroken.
Of course, this really comes under the "we've only got her word for it" heading, but "TV presenter" Emma Kearney claims she's been shagged by James Blunt:
"It felt great making love to a toff," she revealed. "James might talk with a plum in his mouth but he's as fruity as a barrow boy under the duvet. He couldn't keep his hands off me. He's an absolute wildman in bed. We were at it like rabbits."
It's a pity the hack who wrote her quotes for her lost interest in the fruit theme halfway through - surely Blunt should have gone bananas in bed?
Who's Emma? Well, even her online CV seems unaware she presents TV, but she has been a prostitute in both Brief Lives and Outlaws.
She's going to overload us with information, you know:
"It was when I slid up close and kissed him it all exploded.
Blimey - as qucikly as that? We've got an email here that's offering a pill to help solve that problem, James.
"Suddenly it was game on with this long, deep, passionate snog. We were both panting. And when James's wandering hands finally worked out that I had no knickers on he let out a long groan and just had to explore further!
So, actually, only one you was panting then?
"That's when I suggested we hit the sack. But when I revealed my pull-down bed in the wardrobe James couldn't stop giggling — he said he used to have one just like it at school."
But of course, at public school you don't get to share it with "midwife" from Coronation Street.
"James's lips were absolutely everywhere and as I looked down there were those big blue eyes of his gazing up at me. Wow! I couldn't help but return the favour and he loved every minute."
So... you gazed up at him, too? Is that what you mean?
"We went at it for almost an hour —every position you can think of. James loved me holding on to his hair as we got more excited. He sings such sad songs but in bed he was really lively. And what an imagination!
"As he hit the peak of his excitement James sang out my name ‘Emma! Emma!'"
We love the idea that if you sing sad songs you won't enjoy sex very much. But can she be sure that he was shouting "Emma" and not "Mama"? We know what these public school boys are like.
"Twice he did it—and so loud I was frightened he'd wake the neighbours.
"It was the most erotic serenade I've ever had! He really knows how to look after a girl in bed."
Good lord, Emma, if having your name grunted while the bloke unloads himself into you is "the most erotic serenade" you've experienced, you must have been either a virgin or incredibly unlucky.
There was pillow talk, too, of course:
"Then he was talking about how he rode beside the Queen on parade. He was impersonating her and doing her accent.
Both impersonating her and doing her accent? If only he'd spoken like her as well, eh?
"He was telling me about how one day there had been this really big parade and some new guards were brought in, so he and his friend were replaced.
"James said the Queen hadn't been consulted about the switch so when she sat in her carriage and looked around she was upset to find out they weren't there.
"Then James put on this royal voice and said how the Queen declared, ‘Listen you! Get my guards back right now!' James said she was really cool."
Of course, what would really tie this story up would be a wonderful coincidence. Can you do that for us, Emma?
"I was so excited because I'd just bought his album Back To Bedlam that day!"
Perfect. The cheque, we guess, will be in the post.
George 'there's nothing wrong with me' Michael has been photographed getting some naptime at a set of traffic lights; the News of the World has the story and pictures:
On Thursday night the gay star went cruising near his home and dozed off at traffic lights in Highgate, north London.
Cruising, do you see? As Bill Morrissey once said of Mississippi John Hurt, they've really mastered the single-entendre there.
They changed FOUR TIMES before he was woken with a start by a driver tapping on the window.
"He was sweating heavily and had his iPod on," said the driver. "That's probably why he didn't hear all the angry tooting behind him. He got going again—but was weaving all over the place. Then he hit a bollard. I doubt he even noticed it. He looked wasted. He just drove on."
To be fair, though, someone had just let off a massive flash gun in his face which isn't a perfect addition to safe driving.
As you may have spotted, we've been off on holiday and in a holding pattern for the last two and a half weeks (yes, a lovely time, thank you), and in that time, the most popular individual stories have been:
1. Pete Doherty photographed apparently injecting himself
2. The ever-popular 'is KT Tunstall a lesbian'
3. Nick Carter investigated over sexual battery claims
4. Pete Doherty photographed apparently injecting someone else
5. Michael Jackson drafts Crazy Frog man
6. Robbie Williams and James Brown hoiked together by Victoria Beckham
7. Alex James: cheesemaker
8. Charlotte Church is at war with Pink
9. Tom Hanks to make an Abba movie
10. Robbie Williams is like a ten foot ghost or something
You can read the weeks in full:
From 7th May
From 30th April
From 23rd April
Or, take a single gulp of the week before we went off on our holidays
... and these have been stuck on the right awaiting your interest for too long:
Now... back to normal service...
There are two things known about Ronan Keating. The first is that he has a penis which could cast a shadow across three counties; the second is that he's terribly, terribly nice.
Being nice has served him well. He's doing nicely out of being nice.
But now, he's tired of being nice. In fact, he wants us to know he's a bit of a hell-raiser:
"All the Mr Nice stuff is a bit fucking annoying. I drink too much, I smoke when I'm drunk, and I wake up feeling like something's died in my mouth."
Yes, sometimes those grape kneehighs can go straight to your head. The difference, of course, Ronan, is when Keith Richards wakes up and feels like something small and furry has died in his mouth, there usually is something small and furry in there - or sometimes the Cheeky Girls, if it's been a really wild night. A half of Strongbow and a quick drag on a Senior Service doesn't make you Tommy Lee.
It doesn't mean the end of the Manics - which he says like it's a good thing - but James Dean Bradfield is set to release a solo album.
It's going to be called The Great Western, and it's made Bradfield quite happy:
"I just realised...I actually really enjoyed it a lot. Seeing 'Words and Music by James Dean Bradfield' written down actually made me feel happy. For once I've lost a bit of my insecurity."
James, of course, is the man who used to stand on stage and bellow 'you love us' over and over again, so it's nice to see him coming out of himself.
