Brown: It was all Whitney's fault

There have been some self-serving autobiographies, but Bobby Brown's book is so full of self-service it's like a restaurant with a buffet bar, a salad cart, and a help-yourself desert trolley that also expects you to bus your own table:

In a new book, Brown, best known now for his frequent run-ins with the law rather than his onetime Grammy-winning music career, writes that Houston fueled his appetite for drugs and used him to tidy up her image.

Well, if that was the plan, that worked really well, didn't it?

Brown insists that he never used cocaine before he got together with Whitney, and that Whitney used him to try and dampen down stories that she was gay. Yes, even his tell-all book makes him sound like a Family Dollar Ike Turner.

According to E!, Brown also tells stories against himself:

According to the tome's blurb copy, it notes he dated Janet Jackson and Madonna, "sle[pt] with thousands of women," and nearly died from a drug overdose. For boy-band completists, it promises to reveal "the real reason he left New Edition." And for fans of author and music-video star Karrine "Superhead" Steffans, it offers this critique: "Yes, I've spent several nights at her house," Brown writes. "But she was only good for what her nickname stood for."

It does sound as if every segment is going to end "needless to say, I had the last laugh."

Gordon in the morning: Boyzone sex shocker

Despite the inescapable fact that they now look like the cast of Auf Weidersehen Pet, Gordon Smart buys Boyzone's claims that they're going to "sex up" their reunion tour, quoting a source:

"They've held audition for super hot female dancers in a bid to outsex the ones that Take That danced with on stage. I've heard they will be writhing around in their underwear.

"They're also worried about singing live. They came from an era when nobody used to sing on tour so they got away with it. Think of S Club and Steps. But now it's all changed."

Eh? But Boyzone weren't a Steps style band in the first place, were they? Steps could get away with it because they were, effectively, a band designed to wear jump suits and dance, but since Boyzone were supposed to be a vocal group, not singing would be quite a major problem. You'd have thought.

Shane Lynch is apparently curious to see who's going to be coming:

"I have no idea if it will be our old fans or if it's a new young crowd. When I go on stage I'm going to look into the audience and see who's there."

Here's a clue, Mr Lynch: Don't expect too many of a "new, young crowd". You hardly appealed to a new young crowd before you were old enough to be dads and uncles.

Gordon gets a little hot under the collar watching the new Madonna video (although even he admits that it's "new" in the sense of "if you ignore its very obvious debt to the Rock DJ video - when you're ripping off Williams, it really is time to give up, surely?)

POP royalty MADONNA has proved she’s still the Queen when it comes to getting tongues wagging.

The queen of getting tongues wagging? What sort of title is that? Better than being Duchess Of Causing Irritated Tutting, presumably.

But 'getting tongues wagging' is hardly the same thing as 'getting things raunchy' - you can wag a tongue saying "good lord, we can understand what she's trying to do, but why would Justin Timberlake want to get involved?" just as easily as making a Smart-style "I'm feeling moist", can't you?

Meanwhile, if we tell you that Gordon's headline for a story about Geri dating a man is headlined:

Geri: Ivan new man

... can you guess what his name is?

Gordon does redeem himself by pointing out that 'musicians dating their backing dancers' is a bit of a bad way to meet men, based on Mel B, Britney and J-Lo's track record.

A year is a long time in music

If you remember back to last year, Sean Wright embarked on an album-a-month project.

If you've been wondering how it went: well, he delivered album number 12 in March, completing the cycle. Congratulations all round.

Ms Ono goes to Liverpool

One of the attractions of Liverpool's year as one of Europe's two capitals of culture was a visit from Yoko Ono.

Well, we say "attractions", it was certainly on the diary.

Yoko loves Liverpool so much, she often pops back. Sometimes twice in a decade. This time, she was thrilled:

“I’m sure John would have been totally proud of it and I am too.

“I hope it will be a contribution to Capital of Culture in the sense that I wanted to give some love and encouragement and inspiration to people while doing this.

“I think Capital of Culture is so grand and just the thing to make the next generation very different.”

Although since the supposed point of the Capital of Culture is to celebrate the cultural contribution of a place, shouldn't the aim be for the next generation to be exactly the same (as in, equally creative and that.)

We love the contention that Lennon woulde be "totally proud" - given that he hardly set foot in the place after Love Me Do came out, it's hard to see exactly what he'd be proud of.

Talking of former Beatles, Ono attempted to defend Ringo's reputation after he laughed at the very idea of the place on Jonathan Ross' programme:

“Ringo loves Liverpool. If someone said anything bad about Liverpool he would punch them.

“I suppose he just didn’t want to say the predictable, you know, when people are asked if they love their mother and of course they say yes. It’s his sense of humour.”

We've rubbed our eyes a couple of times reading this: Is she suggesting that a hollow laugh when asked what you miss about the city is a joshing response? And since when did Starr ever try to avoid doing the predictable?

Bboyobit: Frosty Freeze

Wayne Frost, former member of the Rock Steady Crew, has died after a long illness.

Working under the name Frosty Freeze, Frost joined the second iteration of the Rock Steady Crew, centred on Manhattan. In 1982, the Crew danced at The Ritz, sharing a stage with Bow Wow Wow and Afrika Bambaataa. This provided them with a valuable connections which would turn them from a New York sideshow into, briefly, one of the most prominent names in hip-hop - they were taken under the wing of Bambaataa's Zulu Nation and propelled to international fame: a top ten single in the UK, a major part on a package tour of Europe. And a part in Flashdance.

It went a bit sour after the UK record deal, though, in which the group were first shafted by Charisma and then - after Virgin bought Charisma - they saw themselves dropped. The fall-out split the Crew; Frost would not participate in the 1991 revival. He did join with some of his former colleagues in 2004 for a VH1 awards ceremony.

Wayne continued to appear at Hip Hop events in his home state of New York, up until he fell seriously ill at the start of this year. He died yesterday at the age of 44.

Radioheadfacebook

With a shake of a designer's wand and a spot of coding in the background, Radiohead's website sprouts a social networking add on.

Just like Fifty Cent has.

We're still puzzled as to the marketing value of this, though: don't you want your uber-fans elsewhere spreading the word? Evangelising on Facebook rather than locked in to your cathedral.

What, no Professor Shorofsky?

Peter Paphides constructs an interesting Top 20 in the today's Times, nominating the Top 20 starmakers of our rock and pop age.

It's been inspired by a desperate push from the Music Producer's Guild, who are trying to persuade the Brits to include non-performers in the categories as well. Yes, that would work brilliantly - after all, it's not like everyone used to hit the pause button to cut the now-defunct Best Producer category out their VHS of the prize ceremony in the past, is it? Of course, it's possible that they could have their own Brit Awards - like the Craft BAFTAs - and we're sure if the terms of the deal to transmit the Brits forced ITV to take it, a slot on the alarm-clock side of midnight would be made available on ITV3 one Wednesday to put the highlights out.

But for now, those who also help get Adele records into Woolworths must rely on the glow of the Paphides' list.

It's a fairly resilient list, too, although we're not sure that three people can take the responsibility for Arctic Monkey's success. Although it is refreshing that none of them are MySpace-related.

It's right and proper that George Ergatoudis' Radio One role, and its power to make taste, is recognised. But not if you really believe that his biggest contribution to the UK music scene is promoting The View.

Melvin Benn feels misplaced; and his key success is listed as "Reading and Leeds", although that's a festival rather than an actual pop star, and surely Glastonbury is more influential anyway? Benn's role in Somerset is more Royal Corps of Signals than ENSA, which means that Emily Eavis should have his slot, if anyone, and on that basis, alone, Benn should be disqualified.

Worryingly, Conor McNicholas is absent - worryingly for him, of course; and there's almost nobody from the music press and almost nobody from the Internet. In fact, Peter Robinson is there as the only person representing both camps.

That's not quite true, to be fair: Luke Day is there. Who he? Stylist at Attitude. Apparently, having tarted up the Scissor Sister's image puts him ahead of people who don't make the list - everybody at 6Music and Radio 2, for example. The people who pick the music for Skins. The advertising agencies working for Apple and all the mobile phone companies.

Which is quibbling, to be fair. The 20 in full:

1. LUCIAN GRAINGE
Chairman, Universal
2. SIMON COWELL
President, Syco Records
3. JIM CHANCELLOR
Managing director, Fiction
4. PAUL LATHAM
President, Live Nation UK
5. GEORGE ERGATOUDIS
Head of music, Radio 1
6. JACKNIFE LEE
Record producer
7. ORLA LEE
Head of marketing, Polydor
8. ALISON HOWE
Television producer, Later… with Jools Holland
9. JAMES FORD
Record producer
10. ZANE LOWE
DJ, Radio 1
11. CENZO TOWNSEND
Audio engineer
12. SCOTT RODGER
Manager
13. GEOFF TRAVIS and JEANNETTE LEE
Rough Trade supremos, mentors to Duffy
14. MELVIN BENN
Director of festivals, Mean Fiddler
15. DARCUS BEESE
Senior A&R manager, Universal/Island
16. PETER ROBINSON
Editor of Popjustice
17. ROGER FAXON
Director, EMI Music Publishing
18. CARL FYSH and WILLIAM RICE
Purple PR
19. LUKE DAY
Stylist
20. LAURENCE BELL
President, Domino Recordings

The Yoko Factor

Yoko Ono has found the time to put a sympathetic hand on Heather Mills' shoulder:

Ono has urged Mills to 'stay strong'. She says, "It's not very easy for a woman to be associated with the Beatles. I think all the wives did suffer but suffer quietly and endured." Yoko also says the mother-of-one "needs to do her very best and try to survive."

Ono's "quiet suffering" includes lawsuits against EMI, cutting deals with Nike to use Instant Karma on adverts for plimsoles, flogging Lennon's artwork to create a range of baby clothing and signing off on using his face to promote Speke Airport. The suffering mostly involves having to look at the large cash sums in your pocketbook without whooping out loud.

Let's hope Mills can somehow figure out a way to "survive" on twenty five million, eh?

It might seem odd that Ono - who has always portrayed herself as a diligent widow tending the flame of the her husband's legacy - might offer so much support to Heather, although 'pursuing a vendetta with Paul McCartney' might suggest an element of common cause.

[Thanks to Michael M for the link]

Woah, Columbus? Kooks cock snooks

There's a chance to look at the inside-head-thoughts of Luke Pritchard and The Kooks in today's Guardian music and film section.

There's his view of America:

Ask if they are prepared to do anything to break America and you are told: "But that makes it sound like a bad thing to drive around playing shows in all these crazy little towns you'd never get to see otherwise - how could that be bad?"

"Crazy little towns", eh, Luke?

Their first tour of the US was in 2006:

Los Angeles Safari Sam's (September 24)
Club NME, Los Angeles Spaceland (25)
San Francisco Pop Scene (26)
Brooklyn North Six (28)

Here's their 2007 American tour itinerary:

Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival (April 29)
San Francisco Slim’s (30)
Portland Doug’s Fir Lounge (May 2)
Seattle Crocodile Café (3)
Chicago Metro (5)
Columbus The Basement (7)
Toronto Government (8)
New York Irving Plaza (10)
New York Irving Plaza (11)
Washington DC 9:30 Club (12)
Boston Paradise Rock Club (13)

And here's where they're playing next month:

5/18 San Diego, CA - House of Blues
5/19 Los Angeles, CA - The Wiltern
5/22 San Francisco, CA - The Fillmore
5/24 Vancouver, BC - Commodore Ballroom
5/26 Portland, OR - Wonder Ballroom
5/28 Salt Lake City, UT - Avalon Theatre
5/29 Denver, CO - Ogden Theatre
5/31 Minneapolis, MN - Fine Line Music Café
6/01 Milwaukee, WI - Turner Hall Ballroom
6/02 Chicago, IL - Vic Theatre
6/04 Toronto, ON - Kool Haus
6/05 Philadelphia, PA - The Fillmore @ TLA
6/06 Boston, MA - Paradise Rock Club
6/07 Washington, DC - 9.30 Club
6/11 New York, NY - Terminal 5

Good lord, you've really gotten off the beaten track there, Luke. With the possible exception of Columbus Ohio, there's nothing that an pensioner's whistle-stop tour of the States wouldn't have visited. And Columbus is hardly "a crazy little town": it's the state capital of Ohio, 15th biggest city in the US, population of three quarters of a million.

Could Luke be trying to romanticise his band's "struggles"?

He bridles when the Sophie Heawood suggests they might be posh:

But suggest they are posh, and there is a murmur of dissent - their frontman may have boarded at Bedales, the liberal school in Hampshire, but, he says, he felt out of place there among the offspring of millionaires. And they didn't all go to private schools, they protest - new bass player Dan Logan was home-schooled - and what does class matter anyway?

You have to be quite desperate to try and live down your well-connected, fluffed-pillowed roots to offer "being home-schooled" as an example of a tough background. It's right up there with "I'm not posh; my chauffeur doesn't wear a cap".

The band try and fight the accusations that their music is a bit limp, but actually wind up demonstrating exactly what the problem is:

"The thing is," says Pritchard, "talking to other friends in bands, whether they're signed to indies or majors, they seem to have a lot more meddling from their label. But because we deliver pop songs - in their terms, songs they can work with - they always leave us to it. Our A&R guy only came to the studio once while we were recording the album."

Now, that could be a sign that the label have such faith in The Kooks that they don't need to worry about what they're up to. On the other hand - actually, the same hand - the label have such confidence that the band are going to deliver something so commercially attuned, they don't need to worry. If a cow learned to cut its own arse up into steaks and to make beefburgers with its own eyelids, you wouldn't need a slaughterman.

Daily Mail: When headlines disappoint

This, we must admit, did sound exciting:

Viva La Diva! Mariah Carey's outrageous demands for a dog chauffeur, 100 pairs of shoes and a £1,000 throne

But it turns out she wanted someone to drive her dog around, not to have her own car driven by a labrador in a peaked cap.

Darkness at 3AM: When headlines fib

This morning, there's an eyecatching headline on 3AM:

NICOLE LEAVES LIAM!

Although, actually, a more honest headline would be 'Liam behaves like an embarrassment at the Rolling Stones film so Nicole didn't stand next to him'.

Which, actually, is 'wife stands in different part of room to husband'.

Still, the report of Liam at the movie is almost endearing:

An onlooker said: "It was hilarious. He was really getting into it and at one point stood up and started clapping and cheering."

Ah, bless. He probably thinks Mick Jagger is really twenty feet tall, as well.

Gordon in the morning: Jennifer Aniston breasts shocker

In a picture special, Gordon reveals a shock for all of us: Jennifer Aniston has nipples. You can even see them if you squint a bit. Obviously, not the actual nipples - it's not like she's topless or anything - but the vague outline of them under a top.

Yes, Gordon has resurrected his "Smarties league", which, erm, is somehow trying to quantify having nipples and turning it into a competition. As if, somehow, pointing at a woman because her nipples are slightly erect in a photo becomes slightly less the work of a prepubescent mind if you make a list while you do it.

One of the bigger boys told Gordon a secret about what ladies have down there during morning break yesterday; it can only be a matter of time before he organises some sort of Fuzzy Lady Garden knockout cup.

Meanwhile, Smart hears news that Adele and her boyfriend have split, as teenagers often do. Gordon's upset:

I was chuffed when the teen songstress finally found a fella [...]
now the larger-than-life singer has been DUMPED for a stick-thin model

Yes, Gordon's tears are little more than a chance to trot out some 'Adele's fat' references, while having a pop at people with funny names:

Bassist Slinky — who I would love to see introduce himself with a straight face — is now dating the equally crazily named Burberry model MORWENNA LYTTON- COBBOLD.

We've been looking at Morwenna's name, trying to work out exactly what is so "crazy" about it. It can't be Morwenna, which while not common isn't exactly unusual, and the surname isn't of the Spacemonster-Spaghettihat sort of made-up silliness. Could Gordon have been thrown by the idea of a hyphenated name? I'm picturing him sitting in the office yelling "look, guys, this girl's got a minus sign in her name..."

Carphone Warehouse: We won't be music cops

Carphone Warehouse, despite having one of those Kid Jensen style names that looks more and more ill-chosen as time goes by, has told the BPI that it's not going to be bending over and watching its customer's filesharing.

Charles Dunstone says TalkTalk won't SnoopSnoop:

Mr Dunstone, whose TalkTalk broadband is Britain's third biggest internet provider, said the demands are unreasonable and unworkable.

He also said his firm will refuse to cooperate with the BPI, despite threats of legal action.

The BPI, of course, is belligerent and threatening in response:

But the BPI said internet firms need to educate their customers not to steal music.

It also claims that if they do not help with the fight against music piracy, then the government will bring in legislation to make them cooperate.

Obviously, this isn't a direct quote from the BPI but even so - "make them co-operate". How co-operative is one being if compelled with threat of legal action?

It's possible that TalkTalk is more worried about the cost implications than the privacy concerns, but at least someone is telling the BPI a firm "no".

MySpace is all about the music

There's a couple of interesting pieces on the announcement of MySpace Music, a joint venture between News International, Sony-BMG, Warners and Universal. First up, Hypebot weighs the winners and losers - EMI being a prime loser. It seems that getting a new digital overlord onboard hasn't come a moment too soon for EMI, although it might have been a few moments too late. There's no structural reason why they're not part of the joint venture, which suggests that the team running EMI's digital strategy simply made a bum decision.

As Hypebot points out, they're going to join sooner or later. But not being part of the first wave makes them look like they've not quite got their act together.

More worryingly for EMI, their eventual elevation will be like the UK joining the EU - you can never, ever, quite make the place your own when you turn up when the party has already been running for a few hours. You're always on the backfoot.

Amongst the winners for Hypebot, perhaps surprisingly, is Facebook - the theory being that as this is a non-exclusive deal, there's now a model for them to use and precedents set. It makes Facebook Music a much, much easier sell.

Over on PaidContent talks to Chris DeWolf, MySpace CEO. He offers some reasoning as to why Universal woke up this morning as a company suing MySpace, and goes to bed as a business partner:

We went out and talked to our users, with focus group, polls and determined what was the optimal online music experience, especially in a social environment. Modern music is all about letting users define their own music experience. So we mapped that up, put that together, and then went to the labels, and said: ‘Here where we think the future of music industry should go, and here’s how it should look. Lets do this together.’ We spent the next few months putting together the business plan that made sense for us, labels and the artists. And we got the deal done fairly quickly, in music industry terms. I think they are all thinking the same way, and out of the box. CD sales are down 20 percent over last year and how do they replace it. We showed them a viable model.

We're not sure that a group of people thinking the same way can be thinking "out of the box", but let's not let a mixed metaphor drown out the sound of a penny dropping.

Caveats, though: This isn't the first trumpeting of a major MySpace music initiative: Snocap? MySpace's record label?

And, more to the point, it's not entirely clear this is doing anything more than finding a way to charge for the music that's already all over MySpace like a Geldof girl over a skinny-legged guitarist. It's certainly interesting, but we'll wait until the boom before we'll know if the world has shattered.

Acceptable in the airports

Calvin Harris claims to have lost his new album in the Heathrow turmoil:

The dance musician, from Dumfries, in the south of Scotland, was returning to the UK from America when the bag containing his laptop went missing.

A spokeswoman for his record company confirmed it contained the only copy of work on Mr Harris' second album.

[...]
"They have offered about £750 in compensation," said the spokeswoman.

"You can't really put a price on something like a new record."

Well, presumably you could, if you wanted to - after all, that's what record companies businesses are all about, isn't it?

More to the point: who on earth would check a laptop - never mind one which has your only copy of your new album on? And, without wanting to sound too harsh: if the album was worth a whole lot more than £750, wouldn't it have been worth making a back-up copy?

Jay-Z goes to LiveNation

So, all those predictions about Jay-Z joining Apple to launch a record label: Not true. It seems that he's instead going to join LiveNation instead, in what NME.com describe as:

a deal similar to those already signed by Madonna and U2.

Although since the U2 and Madonna deals are quite different - one a recording contract, the other a merchandising one only - it's hard to see how it can be similar to both.

The NME report also suggests that LiveNation is going to help fund Jay-Z's other business interests, as well, which proves that even although the banks have decided to stop pissing away money on crackpot schemes, there are still people who will fund any old whim providing it's got a shiny brand name attached to it.

Madonna and Guy go to bed for a quick RIM push

Yes, it's true: Madonna and Guy Thingybloke both take their Blackberries to bed and love their Research In Motion mobile devices.

Madonna apparently needs hers in case she "remembers something during the night" - presumably like how her career isn't what it once was, her creativity has been worn out since the end of the last millennium, her credibility has been shot ever since she became a spokesperson for a cult and that Swept Away is still available on DVD. If she remembers all that, a quick check on her First Direct account balance will always calm her down.

A little glimpse into how divorced from reality she is:

"It's not unromantic, it's practical. I'm sure loads of couples have their Blackberrys in bed with them."

Besides practicality being the sworn enemy of romance, does she really think lots of couples go to bed with Blackberries? It's not like they've got cameras in them.

Meanwhile, Madonna has also told Elle in the same interview about life with Guy:

"I had to marry someone as tough as me. Guy's definitely tough. I had to marry a challenge, otherwise I would just get bored," she said.

"Whatever else Guy is, he's never boring."

She had to marry a challenge? What, was there a Rubik's Cube sat in the back row of the church sobbing "it should have been me"?

And while we hate to take issue with her claim that Guy's never boring... well: Layer Cake.

It's on a par with, say, Will Young joining UKIP

Some nervousness over in Kuwait where, apparently, pop star Hussein al-Ahmad has quit the industry. Not for him, though, the usual afterlife of the failed popstar - he's not going to make two poorly-received movies, try his hand at writing an autobiography and then booking a comeback tour with Kim Wilde and Bananarama.

Oh, no: he's supposedly joined Al-Qaeda.

The trigger-happy terrorists are delighted, of course, hoping that fans will buy into the concept of jihad in the same way that Britney Spears fans will happily buy her perfume because it's got her picture on it.

They're making a video to celebrate their new signing:

Al-Ahmad's friend, Miftaf Lughzi confirmed this in an interview with the Arabic satellite television channel Al Jazeera.

"I believe that a video has been produced by al-Sahab [the television production arm of al-Qaeda]," said Lughzi.

"He should have given an interview which will be released on the Internet in three months," he said.

In three months? Bloody hell, the Stone Roses could make a video faster than that. Even EMI would suggest that in the digital age, you might look at a slightly faster turn-around between recording and distribution.

Al-Ahmad became famous through a local Pop Idol-style programme, Star Academy, although clearly the offer of a large number of virgins in paradise forever seemed more attractive than the number seventeen slot in the Kuwaiti download chance and the opportunity to have your life shaped by the closest thing Al Rawdatayn has to a Louis Walsh.

It might seem strange to us to exchange a pop career for a life in armed struggle, but who has seen Alex Parks recently?

Wasn't there meant to be a virus wiping all mention of him off the internet anyway?

Despite it having been an April Fool's Joke, the NME's 'Winehouse to appear in Doctor Who' story is looking set to have as much of an afterlife as the Bob Holness saxophone line: Fark is reporting it as close-to-fact this morning. It's now April 3rd.

More to the point, though, is the question of why, when Harriet Jones voted against the Iraq War, she didn't pull the UK out of Iraq when she was PM - as, clearly, the Torchwoodentops were watching news coverage of it the other week. Doesn't make any sense, does it?

[Thanks to Michael M for the tip about Fark]

The Word is sorry

Morrissey has had his day in court over the NME story from last year, and has won an apology from a magazine. Although it's The Word that has apologised in the High Court, for a piece by David Quantick that referenced Tim Jonze's original NME report and, according to Morrissey's legal team, could, in the words of the MediaGuardian report:

have been construed to suggest that he was a racist, held racist opinions or that - as the child of migrant parents - he was a hypocrite.

The magazine offered its sincerest apologies to Morrissey.

Morrissey himself issued a statement reiterating his intention to pursue the NME and Conor McNicholas.

Venuewatch: The Point goes to court

One of the UK's premier circuit venues, The Point in Cardiff, is having to go to court to fight a 'keep the noise down' notice that had been issued after neighbours complained.

Of course, when the Point opened, there were no neighbours, but now part of Cardiff's share of the oversupply of posh flats have appeared round the corner. You have to wonder why the venue is being forced to bow to the will of people who moved into flats by a nightclub and then realised it could be noisy. It's precisely the urban equivalent of those idiots who move to the country and complain about the tractors.

Apple at the top of the tree

Although it's as much down to WalMart cutting back its CD ranges as growth in the iTunes store, last month Apple became the biggest music retailer in the US. According to Ars Technica, nearly one out of every five songs sold in America comes through iTunes.

Asinine headline of the week

Did the Daily Mail really find it necessary to ask this question:

So why was Corinne Bailey Rae so deeply in love with her husband found dead in a drugs den?

Aside from being a pointless question in the first place - because the heart wants what the heart wants, Alison Boshoff - the second half is clumsy and a little cruel. Presumably, when Bailey Rae fell in love with Jason he wasn't, at that point, dead in a drugs dead?

Darkness at 3AM: Who is the enemy?

This is actually from yesterday's 3AM column, the latest one available online. The Enemy have been planting trees as part of a volunteer initiative - which is admirable. We had our eye caught by Tom Clarke's quote, though:

"Giving up a bit of our time opened our eyes to the difference volunteers can make to ordinary people's lives."

How nice that - despite hitting 41 with their latest single - Clarke can still find some time to help out the ordinary people. It's expected he'll also help the poor folks and the little guys in other initiatives later this year.

Just a side note, though: hats off to whoever added the words "The band have never heard any records by The Jam" to the Enemy's Wikipedia entry. Twice.

Gordon in the morning: Some things hurt more, much more than cars and girls

Lewis Hamilton and Dannii Minogue are having a secret date. It's on May 25th, in Monaco.

Admittedly, that's not very secret, is it?

It's also not very much of a story - despite a hopeful headline:

Get a vroom will you Lewis!

... the pair are still almost two months away from their first date, never mind touching. So there's a surprising amount of padding. We discover that Dannii "knows a lot" about cars - although there's no mention of how much Hamilton might know about second-string sibling pop. Of course, Dannii has breasts, which is always good for a line or two:

Nice to see she’s playing her cards close to her ample chest.

And, of course, Gordon needs to share his forecast for this relationship:

Lewis clearly knows his way around shiny bodywork and Dannii is in pole position. I reckon this pair could burn some serious rubber together.

Yes, they might screw each other, Gordon. Thanks for your insight.

But if 'couple arrange tentative date' is the big news, what does that imply about the rest of Gordon's work this morning?

Sexy stars and their lucky dogs

Yes, Gordon spends some time looking at photos of people with their dogs and tries to introduce a slightly disturbing sex angle:

IF I get reincarnated, I want to come back as a dog - they grab the attention of some of the world's sexiest stars.
[...]
So I'm praying it's a dog's life for me next time round.

But, Gordon, you know it's not like Jennifer Aniston has sex with her dog, or that Rhianna's dog doesn't think "waa-heeey" - because it's a different species. You do know that, don't you?

RIHANNA's lucky hound looks hot under the collar after being held tight by the singer when she stepped out in Hollywood.

Apparently not. The thing is, the dog in the photo doesn't even look like it's anything other than slightly scared, never mind "hot under the colour".

Krautrockobit: Klaus Dinger

Co-founder of Neu!, Klaus Dinger, has been buried in a private ceremony in Germany.

Briefly taking the drummer role in Kraftwerk in 1970, he appeared on debut album Kraftwerk before leaving to concentrate on other projects. With fellow Kraftwerk escapee Michael Rother he founded krautrock touchstone Neu! and with it, the Motorik sound. Although considered the creator of the genre, Dinger never succeeded in getting his preferred term, Apache Beat, to stick.

By the time of Neu! 75, the very different approaches of Dinger and Rother was tearing the band apart - in effect, the album was a shared record by two separate bands. A hiatus became, in effect, a split disc by two separate groups, and Dinger set off to create a band in which he would hold more sway.

The result, La Dusseldorf, carried much of the Neu fanbase with them, and although not perhaps causing the McCartneys and Bonos much concern in terms of competition, the band managed sales into seven figures.

An attempt at a Neu! reunion in 1985 managed to reignite the creative spark of the band, but also regenerated many of the conflicts; the band fell apart again after a few months, although they had recorded enough for an album's worth of material, Neu! 4, which wouldn't see a release for almost a decade.

After the failure of Neu!, Dinger moved on to what was almost a Krautrock version of the Bucks Fizz/Dollar hybrid - La Neu, fusing Neu with La Dusseldorf; he was given a sub-label by Captain Trip record to try out ideas which saw about eight albums of varying invention and quality. The label, Dingerland, and La Neu both ceased to work in 2001.

Dinger suffered a fatal heart failure on March 20th.

Merrill clinched: Google man leaps to EMI

EMI's Terra Firma bosses might be showing a lack of care with its music and A&R staff, but their hirings for the technology side at least shows a determination to try and understand the web. A bit. Douglas Merrill has been poached from Google to take the responsibility for the company's digital strategy, encompassing:

“leadership responsibility for all of the company’s digital strategy, innovation, business development, supply chain and global technology activities.”

Given that their CD sales are disappearing, that's going to be pretty much all of what EMI does in five years. If they asked him to put a damp cloth round the washrooms every couple of days, he'd be the only member of staff they need.

Talking to PaidContent, Merrill was clearly a man who isn't quite in a position to talk about specifics:

I think the industry as a whole has got some really interesting experiments in what the future world is. I think EMI has done some really terrific things like their recent move to DRM-free. But, as for me, I always start with principles. The first principle is simple: Fans want to experience art and artists want to create. What the roles of the music labels are in connecting artists, helping artists create, to fans, helping fans experience, I think it’s TBD. ... I think there are some interesting experiments but what I want to do at EMI is a whole bunch more experiments. We don’t yet know what the real business model is going to be. We have to do more experiments, try more things to see what works. Artists want to create and they want to sell, fans want to experience those things. What’s the role of the labels? I don’t know.”

Considering EMI must have offered a lot to him to tempt him away from Google and his "ideal" CIO role, the good people at Terra Firma might be a little concerned to hear his plan is, uh, you know, to try stuff. It's the sort of approach that works well in tech companies; it might go down less well in a 100 year-old business that has been fading for the last few years. The Messiah turning up and asking for a year or two to fiddle with test tubes and bunsen burners might prove a disappointment for those who are left there.

Thirty years of straight lines

Coming soon, according to stuff leaking onto the internet, a 30th anniversary celebration tour of Parallel Lines. Whitney Matheson suggests this could be why Debbie Harry hadn't been doing Blondie stuff on her recent jaunts; presumably, also, the UK festival dates will be a chance for the band to get their grooves sorted before kicking off on the birthday dates.

Gym Class Heroes: henceforward performing in pants and vests

The Gym Class Heroes actually end up with more clothes than they start with by the end of their live sets, what with the girls and boys throwing their nethergarments at them. So they're going to scoop them up and donate them to charity. They're probably letting us know so that, in future, fans will thrown more warm coats, fewer unwashed gussted-items.

Gennaro Castaldo Watch: Leeds Festival has riot before it happens

Yes, it's quite a feather in the cap of the Leeds Festival: while its reputation for sometimes ending in riot and disturbance is oft told in tale and song, this year it's managed to generate a mini-riot before anyone had bought a ticket.

HMV in York opened early to flog tickets, but the queues which started to gather were a little unruly, reports the York Press:

The area outside the HMV store in Coney Street "looked like a bombsite" after rock fans arrived in the early hours to secure their places at the Leeds Festival.

They took tables and chairs from nearby bars, as well as pub umbrellas to shelter them from the rain, before leaving them littering the street along with piles of other rubbish.

Some urinated in doorways and lanes leading to neighbouring shops, while city centre street-cleaning teams endured a torrent of abuse and had to dodge cans and plastic bottles hurled at them as they tried to tidy up - leading to police being called in to calm the situation yesterday morning.

Gennaro Castaldo - who else? - rides to try and smooth the ruffled feathers of traders and abused street sweepers:

"It was unfortunate and regrettable that a small minority of people queuing for the tickets showed a lack of consideration and respect for most of the other fans there, and also for the environment they were in," said spokesman Gennaro Castaldo.

"All we wanted to do was give real music fans a chance to buy tickets for this great event rather than missing out online or having to resort to touts. If anybody was upset or offended by the behaviour, including our immediate trading neighbours, then on behalf of HMV, I offer our most sincere apologies.

"We're also very grateful to the council and their employees for being on the case so promptly to clear up the litter - they did a great job."

You'll note that Castaldo seems to have asked if there was any way that HMV could perhaps help to cover the costs of the extra cleaning and the police being directed from their every day work - after all, the money made from flogging 200 sets of Leeds tickets must leave something in the kitty for HMV to make amends.

[Thanks to Ben H for the link and tip]