Deus Weekend: Sun Ra

Taken from an anti-racism concert in Antwerp in 2006, Deus run through Sun Ra:



[Part of Deus weekend]

Marilyn Manson doesn't even have swine flu

Although Manson claimed on both Twitter and Facebook that he had swine flu, it turns out that even his illness is duller than he'd have us believe:

According to the Canadian Press, Gillett Entertainment Group and Live Nation have denied that Marilyn Manson has contracted the H1N1 virus (commonly known as swine flu), and have confirmed that he is still playing his last remaining Canadian tour date: tonight (Saturday, September 26) in Moncton, New Brunswick. (Manson also played last night in Halifax.)

Blabbermouth reports that he's now removed the claims of swine flu from his Facebook:

He subsequently wrote, "That illness tried and lost. I am fully functioning. Not sick. My mental health is still up for dispute. Don't worry, world. I am not contagious. Just my goddamn music is."

Well, yes, I suppose it is contagious - a bit like swine flu, it's nowhere near the threat it would like to be, nobody really wants it and it does nothing to make you feel good. And it's best washed away as quickly as possible.

Hall Of Fame shortlist announced

Who'll be given the increasingly-watered-down honour of an induction into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame? Some of this lot:
Abba
LL Cool J
The Red Hot Chili Peppers
Kiss
Darlene Love
Jimmy Cliff
Donna Summer
Laura Nyro
The Chantels
The Stooges
Genesis
The Hollies

It's hard to believe that Kiss - precisely the sort of dreadful good-idea-turned-into-grim-cash-machine that the Hall Of Fame trades in - aren't already in there.

Bookmarks: Some stuff to look at on the internet - NME

Creative Review has got a piece on the making of the new adverts promoting NME TV.

If you've not seen them, they're based around 'throwing TVs out of windows':

They sum up the problem with the NME brand perfectly - lovingly created, wonderfully done, looks like a lot of time and money has been spent on them. But the idea of basing the campaign on 'throwing TVs out of windows'? It's a well-done cliche.

Deus Weekend: Hotellounge

From - as they requested - the YouTube channel, Deus doing Hotellounge:



[Part of Deus weekend]

Open letter to Lily Allen

Oddly, despite that, um, high-level conference, it turns out that Lily Allen still isn't speaking for all musicians:



This is Dan Bull's riposte.

Beachdown drags promoter down

The collapse of the Beachdown Festival at the end of summer is now wrecking the lives of the promoters - Joe Pidgeon is struggling to cope with the debts generated by the flop and has put his house on the market, reports The Argus:

He said that although plans were falling into place to repay all ticket holders, some of whom paid hundreds of pounds for luxury tents, he was still “working tirelessly” to rectify the situation.

After almost a month the Beachdown directors say they are making progress on repaying those people who bought tickets from local vendors after admitting it was up to the festival to reimburse the customers.

Not, of course, the best time to be selling your house. It's a long, unhappy ending for everyone.

Deus Weekend: The Architect

Here's an interesting video artifact - Deus doing The Architect with a ghettoblaster (their description - doesn't look much like it could blast all that much of a ghetto from here) in Rotterdam:



[Part of the Deus weekend]

Beatles sales: Good, but not great

EMI - desperate for good news - have issued a press release trumpeting the Beatles back catalogue sales:

More than 2.25m albums sold in first five days in North America, UK, Japan

That sounds great, right? Two and a quarter million albums? And, yes, it's pretty good.

But that is over fourteen albums and two box sets, which makes for an average of 142,000 per title, in three territories. Which doesn't sound quite so great for such a heavily-pushed campaign. You wonder if EMI might have been better off staggering the releases instead of having one mega-launch.

US: During the first five days of release, consumers purchased more than one million copies of re-mastered Beatles titles, and the individual albums and boxed sets debuted strongly across multiple Billboard charts.

A million copies isn't bad - it's going to help the EMI bottom line no end. But if Jesus had had such a heavily-trailed second coming and could only fill a million seats, you'd be hearing some serious muttering about if the country was really that interested. Even U2 managed to sell half a million or so copies of No Line On The Horizon in the first week in the US.

[UK]: A further 84,000 CDs were sold last week, bringing their total sales of the re-masters to over 354,000 in 11 days and their total UK sales this decade to 6,755,000.

So in the first full week of sales, there was an average of less than one thousand copies per title per day selling. Nice for back catalogue, but - again - disappointing for something that had special displays built in Tesco stores away from the music department.

And if you do the maths - (354,000/6,755,000) * 100 - it works out that the re-releases have only accounted for about five per cent of this decade's Beatles sales. Again, five per cent in a couple of weeks isn't rotten, but it's not especially starting - the implication is that whole marketing blitz hasn't really driven sales much higher than the band have managed in the last nine and a half years without all that effort.

And there was an interesting statistic in yesterday's Guardian which throws a bit of a shadow over these numbers. Talking about Friends, the paper reported:

Last year, 256,000 copies of the complete 10-season boxset were sold in the UK

It's not quite a straight comparison, but without massive promotion, a single box set of a programme that went off the air years ago managed a roughly similar sale in a year to The Beatles' heavily-trailed entire catalogue managed in its first week. Both good business, but it suggests that episode where Chandler goes "oh my god" is a more efficient back catalogue performer than Helter Skelter.

Nobody would argue that the Beatles week resulted in a damp squib - there's enough eye-catching headlines to pepper a press release, and it's generated tonnes of coverage for the band which will help drive sales and keep the mythos churning. But looked at hard, the numbers support the impression that Beatles week didn't quite end with the orgy of consumption the campaign seemed to be building to.

Embed and breakfast man: Deus

Some Belgian proggy-pop today, as - surprisingly - we've never dipped into the mind of Tom Barman before in the semi-regular padding-out-the-weekend-posts-with-video feature.

Deus are hitting their 20th year this year and, partly by dint of keeping going for so long, they're the most successful Belgian rock act of all time. With about five albums. It's not easy being a Belgian rock act, clearly.

Let's start with Instant Street - which, in itself, is now ten years old.

dEUS - Instant Street
by Deus-official

More Deus
Official site
Deus MySpace
Last FM
Deus on Spotify
Deus Wikipedia

Possess Deus
Vantage Point: CD | Vantage Point: mp3
Ideal Crash: CD | Ideal Crash: mp3
My Sister Is My Clock: CD | My Sister Is My Clock: mp3
Any Way The Wind Blows - 2003 film directed by Tom Barman

More Deus over the next few hours, god willing
The Architect - ghettoblaster version
Hotellounge
Sun Ra live
Sister Dew
Slow live

Gordon in the morning: Gordon loves the kids

There doesn't seem to be any explanation as to why Smart is running a photo of Victoria Beckham's kid that doesn't contravene Press Complaints Commission rules on publishing photos of children.

Still, that's not the big news this morning: Oh, no: Gordon's very limited range of references has tightened to an incredible degree:

YOU might not expect KASABIAN to be ROBBIE WILLIAMS fans, but the lads have been raving about his new track Bodies, out next month.

Frontman TOM MEIGHAN, pictured with his name on an Eire footie shirt at the Guinness 250th birthday bash in Dublin, said: "Rob's come back with a monster of a record. He'll definitely get to No1."

Good lord - getting a grating reference to Kasabian, and the day's Robbie Williams story in in two paragraphs. Early to the pub Friday, clearly.

Kats Karavan being readied

The nature of John Peel's programmes makes any attempt to recreate a Peel show on record likely to wind up with a strange and beautiful compilation album; it's hard to picture any other concept for a compilation winding up with this sort of collection:

Small Faces, Thin Lizzy, Aswad, The Damned, Medicine Head, The Jam, The Slits, Funboy Five, The Cure, Linton Kwesi Johnson, That Petrol Emotion, Extreme Noise Terror, Ivor Cutler, Mercury Rev, Milo, Bloc Party and many, many more.

This is what is going into a four disc set Kat's Karavan, which also promises:

some clips of John’s own links appear from time to time

Turns out that there's not more of this because the BBC hasn't got any of Peel's stuff in the archive. (None at all? Presumably they must have saved the last programmes for the World Service at the very least?)

Comes With Music comes with longer contracts

The slowly sinking Comes With Music Service has waved a distress flag in the UK, offering its few customers a free contract extension as it suddenly realises it has no idea how to handle renewals. Reuters explains:

Nokia had said previously that consumers could extend their 12 month music packages on a monthly-basis through mobile operators. But the first subscribers in Britain were prepaid clients to the 12 month music package, and were not linked to particular operators.

Analysts said Nokia's latest move also reflects the company's uncertainty about how to renew subscriptions for customers who do not have an operator package and who do not want to buy a new phone with the service.

There's added uncertainty, as it's not clear where the money for the tracks downloaded by subscribers will come from. Clearly, Nokia isn't afraid of losing its shirt on this deal - so there can't be much expectation of anyone actually using CWM that much. And now they've got three months to try and work out how to make the system work.

Endangered Rhino?

Rhino Records - the catalogue arm of Warners - is having one of those restructuring that sounds like it'll wind up without much structure left. Variety is reporting up to 40 redundancies:

A statement from Rhino cited a "fundamental transformation of the physical new release and catalog business" as a reason for the cuts.

Company said Rhino will evolve into an entity that "handles WMG's global digital catalog initiatives, film, TV, vidgame and commercial licensing, and name and likeness representation for legendary artists."

Ah, yes. Which of us didn't dream of working in the likeness representation industry when we were kids, eh?

Something The Sun forgot to mention

Oddly, when The Sun was apologising to Lily Allen this morning, they forgot to mention that they were sending a more tangible form of apology in the shape of £10,000.

Eminem's publishers turn up in court

It's been a while since we've heard from the publishers of Eminem's music, who seem to be objecting to the presence of Eminem's tracks on legal download services. After a long period of bubbling discontent, they've finally got Apple and Eminem's label into court in what seems to be an attempt to legally enforce the ability of the tail to wag the dog:

Publishers Eight Mile Style, along with an affiliated company, Martin Affiliated LLC, allege that Apple had no right to sell the songs on iTunes. The company also says that Eminem's contract with Aftermath Records did not give Apple any rights to market his songs online.

The idea that a label can't market a track digitally seems to be an odd one, and while it's clearly a nonsense, it's nice to see a record label having to defend itself in the face of an irritating, grasping sort of legal action.

And, clearly, Eight Mile Style have some explaining to do as well:

Speaking in court in Detroit, Apple lawyer Glenn Pomerantz told US District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor that Aftermath Records have the rights to use Eminem's recordings as they wish, and added that despite taking Apple to court, Eight Mile Style had still cashed royalty cheques and hadn't asked Apple to stop selling Eminem's music, reports Associated Press.

Eminem, notes NME, was not in court for the business. The case is expected to last a week. Or possibly forever.

Daily Telegraph finally beats the 1960s

Ha! The Daily Telegraph never liked the 1960s, coming in all flash with expensive haircuts and electric guitars, pushing away the glorious austerity of the 1950s. And now the paper has been proved right:

The Mamas and Papas incest case shows that it's time to stop celebrating the Sixties, says Gill Hornby.

Yes, of course. One bloke had an incestuous relationship with his daughter, which completely negates the putting of a man on the moon, the invention of the laser, Twister, KerPlunk, the Beatles (when they were fresh) and The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band and the World Cup and the Mini.

Of course, Gill doesn't just rely on a spot of incest to stack up his case:

The Beatles might crop up, perhaps The Rolling Stones. Yes. And who had the Christmas number one in 1969? Rolf Harris, with his groundbreaking, radical Two Little Boys.

That was, younger readers, the last time anything even approaching a novelty record reached number one.

Now, you or I might wonder if picking the Christmas number one, one week before the end of the decade, is perhaps going to say anything much about the music of the previous ten years. But not Gill. The existence of Rolf's single somehow means that Giant Steps, Easter Everywhere and Carryin' On are wiped out.

It's a silly, spurious article, and to try and hold a decade responsible for an act of incest is as unfair as blaming Gill Hornby for Conrad Black's crimes simply because Hornby writes for the Telegraph.

Downloadable: El Perro Del Mar

As a taster for the due-next-month new album from El Perro Del Mar, download and enjoy Change Of Heart, which is a free sample thereof. The new album is called Love Is Not Pop, even although the reverse is often true.

Self-selecting subset of musicians propose pointless fudge, congratulate selves

It's important to remember that - even although members of the FAC, Lily Allen and Sandie Shaw turned up and had a lovely vote last night, to talk of this as somehow representing the views of musicians is confusing "a few acts on major labels" with "musicians", and so should be read as another subset of interested parties rather than a representative approach.

But what did they decide last night?

After a three-hour meeting in London, the Featured Artists Coalition, which emerged as a breakaway lobby group in the summer, backed the government's proposed introduction of "technical measures" to combat the rising tide of copyright theft. If they ignore two warning letters, persistent illegal filesharers should have their broadband connections throttled "to a level which would render filesharing of media files impractical while leaving basic email and web access", according to a statement after the meeting.

Well, that's just a pointless, meaningless fudge, isn't it? Either you throttle the connection to the point where it has an effect - which will mean it'll stop anything worthwhile happening online, which is the same as removing web connection altogether - or you'll just leave those accused by the music industry able to use the web in a meaningful way, which makes it an empty threat.

There doesn't seem to be any point in this suggestion. Either you believe that the right to participate in society and access to communications is a basic human right, or you don't. It's like proposing a punishment for drunk-drivers which would see them still able to drive, but with a speed limiter that stops them going above ten miles an hour.

Meanwhile, UK Music have sent a letter to Lord Mandelson which, once again, proves they don't actually understand the technology in which they profess to be expert:

"We support government proposals which would see internet service providers (ISPs) send notifications and apply technical measures to impede and discourage the use of unlicensed peer-to-peer networks and to encourage the use of legitimate services.

"We agree that a clear distinction should be made between how technical measures are applied to the casual infringer, compared to how they are applied to the persistent infringer, with temporary suspension of broadband accounts being applicable only as a last resort."

"The use of unlicensed peer-to-peer networks"? Do UK Music not really understand the difference between the peer-to-peer network (which may or may not be licensed) and the sharing of files without copyright owner's permission? Do they really not understand the problem they're trying to "solve"? Are they suggesting that the networks themselves need to be licensed, rather than the files?

It's insulting to call Sharkey and his chums Luddites. At least Ned Ludd understood the technology he was attacking.

Spandau Ballet decide we need new material

For reasons that aren't entirely clear, Spandau Ballet are going to record some new songs:

Guitarist and songwriter Gary Kemp said: "The band gelled immediately and we immediately played better than we did even back in the day.

"The new song was a way for us to show that Spandau Ballet are back, not just to play the hits on tour but also to take on our contemporaries in the pop charts."

Right. When you say your "contemporaries", you do know that you're talking about Men At Work and the late Renne And Renato, don't you?

Gordon in the morning: Robbie Williams is talking about Robbie Williams

I think Gordon and I agree on this one, up to a point, as Robbie Williams talks about going into rehab:

He said: "Robbie Williams does not go into rehab just if his life gets a bit out of control. It was damn serious. Death had to knock on my door to help me with my decision."

Yes, Robbie has gone all "George is getting upset".

Serious stuff. So serious, I'm prepared to ignore the fact he's speaking in the third person.

That's where we differ, though - Gordon's prepared to ignore it (after all, if he doesn't, he's stuck without a story about Williams today, and that would never do) but, to be honest, I can't help thinking that at least it directs attention away from what a pompous twit the rest of the quote makes him look like. Perhaps if Robbie Williams did sort his life out before waiting for death to come knocking, Robbie Williams wouldn't have been in the mess Robbie Williams was in in the first place.

In related news, Death has also issued a statement, denying that he ever went to Williams' house: "I sometimes drive past Jason Orange's house waving my scythe, but that's just for shits and grins. Let me tell you, the Underworld is no rush at all to bring Robbie Williams in. No rush at all."

Elsewhere, Gordon is apologising to Lily Allen:

IN May we reported in Bizarre that Lily Allen had made various offensive remarks about David and Victoria Beckham and Ashley and Cheryl Cole in an interview with a magazine.

We now accept that Lily didn't say these things to the magazine and we apologise to Lily for the upset and embarrassment caused by repeating them.

God, this 'copying things from other people' is fraught with danger, isn't it? Although I suspect after her week cutting and pasting and scanning and posting, Lily might be a bit more sympathetic.

Beta Band boys back as Aliens

Gordon Anderson seems to be well again, and has hooked up again with his former Beta Band bandmates. They're now going to be working as a trio under the name The Aliens. It's a lousy name for the Google era.

There's an album, Luna, due out towards the darker end of October.

Bookmarks: Some stuff to read on the internet - Rorschach

Brooklyn Vegan catches up with Charles Maggio of Rorschach, in the middle of their comeback tour:

Are these one off dates or do you have any intentions of
keeping this going? More dates, more material?

We have been offered what would amount to an entire US and partial European tour, but unfortunately our lives are such that touring is not really an option. These 5 days are the only thing on the schedule now, we have no intentions of getting back together, it was always just about having fun. No new material is planned, but a remixed/remastered double lp/cd of both of our records will be for sale at the shows.

Lily Allen quits the battle

"Cry God for England, Harry and... you know what? You lot are here now, I'm going to bugger off back to the tent and watch the football. Good luck."

Yes, almost to the second as we were saying that you had to at least admire Lily Allen for engaging with the process, no matter how wonkily, she was pulling out of the debate:

The singer posted messages on Twitter saying she was not going to attend an emergency meeting of music artists this evening to hammer out a unified position on illegal filesharing.

The star says: "Hello, there is a meeting today in London where artists are meeting to discuss Piracy. My job done.

"I wont be attending the meeting because it's going to be a press frenzy and I don't want to detract from the issues. I'm proud of the fact that I've been involved with this debate but I'm passing the baton on to other artists.

"And I've shut down the blog, the abuse was getting too much."

You've got to love the idea that the press might be able to cope with thedrummerfromBlur and Billy Bragg, but it would the very presence of Lily Allen so dazzling it would be unable to keep its mind on the details. And didn't the whole idea of the "Lily Allen Filesharing Battle Blog" kind of play on Lily Allen attracting interest?

Did Allen really see her "job" as having somebody else arrange a meeting? Because I don't remember there being a strapline on the blog saying "trying to get The Futureheads and Natasha Khan (if she's not on tour) in a pub talking"?

And even if the "abuse" (people disagreeing with her) is too hard to take, why has Allen taken down the site? All those musicians taking time to write down their perspectives on filesharing - only for Allen to put them online for two minutes and then whip them down. How does that help the debate at all?

The sense is that Allen suddenly realised she'd waded well out of her depth and has decided to bail before finding herself having to respond to questions rather than just angrily moaning when caught out.

Perhaps she realised that 'artists who want to get paid should get a fair market rate' is uncontroversial, and that the real question is what that fair market rate is.

Embed and breakfast man: MGMT

The mighty Yo Gabba Gabba invite MGMT to be some sort of drug-addled Viking with the following results:



[via You Aint No Picasso]

Mandelson enjoys record industry day out; sings record industry song

How lovely for Lord Mandelson to have a day trip out to the music industry PR establishment, The Brits School. Once again, he's taken the opportunity to try and normalise the idea that private companies should have the power to demand people are thrown off the internet:

“Downloading somebody’s work without paying for it – whether it be music, film or computer games – is not a victimless act. It poses a genuine threat to our creative industries and to the livelihoods of talented, hard-working people striving to get a foothold in them. It’s essential that the voice of young artists is also heard,” he said.

“In the end this problem will be solved not simply by new laws but by new approaches to doing business. We believe that temporary account suspension as a last resort, in the most serious cases, is worth considering to allow these new business models to develop.”

The mention of new approaches to doing business is welcome - because, when your business has changed beyond recognition and the market price of your basic product has fallen to almost zero, that's what you have to do. The banging the drum of the "temporary" suspension - and will we ever get to see a suggestion of what 'temporary' might mean? - suggests that the message hasn't really got through.

Do I need to run through again the arguments why downloading a file might actually be victimless act? (Mainly, because there's no direct correlation between an unpaid download and a lost sale.) Do I need to run through again why it's just possible that upholding a four-company cartel throttling the access to the marketplace might not be the best way to give artists a chance to be heard? Why filesharing can offset some of the skewing of the market in favour of the Big Four?

It's forgiveable that Lily Allen waffles and pops when talking about filesharing - as I've said before, however wrong she might be, she's at least engaged with the process. But Mandelson is supposed to understand this sort of thing, and he's making the policy - and yet he gives no indication he's thought about this any further than reading through a discussion paper, funded by the intellectual property industry, over a good lunch, also funded by the intellectual property industry.

It's not there

Lily Allen's 'we'll only throw them off the internet a bit' blog has currently lost all its content. Hope it's not a DCMA takedown notice...

Lily Allen says goodbye

One of the few things that Lily Allen got right about her Not Alright campaign against fielsharing is that she was talking about something in which she had a direct interest.

So it was surprising that she went out of her way to deny having a financial interest in the issue:

“Just so you know, I have not renegotiated my record contract and have no plans to make another record (applause).”

It's alright that you have a financial interest in it, Lily - that's not a problem. And if it was, not making another record wouldn't absolve you from the perceived conflict of interests, as you've still got tracks which will be selling for a couple of years yet.

Interestingly, her "spokesperson" has rushed forward to try and explain to Popjustice that "no plans to make another record" doesn't actually mean she doesn't plan to make another record:

Anyway, deeply unfashionable as it is in an era of just copying, pasting, publishing, retweeting and waiting for the comments to roll in, we took the 7.8 seconds' worth of effort required to send a querying email to Lily's spokesman, who sent this back:

"She is not quitting pop music and is still promoting her current album, which is why she said she is not thinking ahead to another record."

I guess, like Allen's copying of an article without link or attribution, it should have somehow been perfectly obvious that what she said didn't actually mean what she meant to say.

Let's take Lily's 'questions answered' post at face value, though:

I think there is discussion going on, on this blog and wider. One of the things i'm trying to do is to get out what file-sharing does to new artists ,not answer every question about what might become law.

But isn't the blog calling for something to be done? It certainly looks like it. Surprising that it's turned out to be purely informational. Can't seem to find any figures to do all this explaining, though.

Loads of comments are angry about cutting people’s internet off permanently, but from what I’ve seen, no-one’s saying that. The governments proposal is for warning letters, then if they’re ignored, for “temporary account suspension”.

Oh, so you only lose access to communications, news, job applications, your business (if you have one), your bank account and online shopping for a "temporary" period. On the say-so of a private company, without any due process of law. That's alright then.

And newsflash people, the ISPs do this all the time already if they fail to pay their bills or break their licenses.

That's not the same thing, though, is it, Lily?

Also the government legislation is targeting uploaders – people that make music available illegally – not downloaders.

No, I don't think it is - I don't think there's any such distinction in the legislation. And do you know how filesharing even works? That the default is a two-way service? That many of the people who have been dragged to the courts didn't see themselves as uploaders but as downloaders? And if Mr Smith is unable to log-in to his business email because his son has been accused of file-sharing, does it really matter if the son was uploading or downloading?

Loads of comments are from people that are convinced music should be free. It’s not free to make, so it can’t be free, can it?

There's not actually any logic to that - there are lots of things that cost money to create which don't cost money at point of delivery. They just use different business models - libraries, the motorways, NHS, ITV programmes, Capital Radio.

If you’re downloading all your music for free, some real music fan somewhere is paying for your music.

Does anyone really download all their music for free? And does this follow? And does it matter? If I listen to all my music on Capital Radio, some "real" music fan is paying for the music - does that make me some sort of thief? Should I have my radio taken away?

Unfortunately there aren’t enough people paying, which is threatening new music.

Really? Earlier this week, Universal Music still made a USD186million profit in the last six months, so there's not exactly a shortage of cash in the labels.

You don’t even need to be good at maths to figure that one.

You don't have to be good at maths because you're just making statements rather than offering figures to support your argument, Lily.

The music industry’s not divided ,look at the letter from The Futureheads – members of the FAC , on here.

Different people are saying different things, and the FAC - unlike UK Music - doesn't claim to be speaking with a single voice for all the music industry.

We don’t agree on everything – SO! – we’re all creative people and are never going to agree on everything. We do all agree file-sharing’s not alright though.

Really? All of the music industry? Still, it's nice to see that Lily has abandoned her previous claim that the FAC did support filesharing.

Gordon in the morning: Stale Spice at the back of the cupboard

Even while giving the idea space, not even Gordon can pretend to be excited as Mel B tries to get another Spice Girls reunion:

THEY promised us there would be no more SPICE GIRLS after the reunion tour ended.

But MEL B just can't resist an opportunity to get up on stage clad in leopard print, brandishing her whip.

Scary Spice and husband STEPHEN BELAFONTE have put together a deal for the girls to reform one last time - at the World Cup in South Africa.

Bloody hell, B, have you already burned through the cash you were given for the last ill-advised reunion?

Smart comes up with a plausible reason for the plan:

I'd imagine the girls' husbands and boyfriends will be backing the World Cup plan - so they can blag a free trip to the tournament.

(Women, of course, wouldn't be interested in free tickets for the football - it's not like Mel C was known as sporty, and played football at a competitive level, is it?)

Elsewhere, young woman fails to recognise 44 year-old record shocker:

EMMA WATSON needs to gen up on her music.

The Harry Potter star was dancing to THE BEATLES' Day Tripper at the afterparty for London Fashion Week's closing Burberry show when she asked banker boyfriend Jay Barrymore . . . what the song was.

He told her - and she went bright red in front of guests at Burberry's Westminster HQ.

Really? Why would you expect a 19 year-old to know a song from her grandparent's youth? If anyone has anything to worry about this, I'd say it'd be the Beatles industry rather than Emma.

Bookmarks: Some stuff to read on the internet - Lily Allen

Gary Marshall has done a lovely piece for TechRader responding the Lily Allen's use of a copied article¹ and a scanned letter to fight copyright infringement:

It's clear that Allen doesn't see that she's done anything wrong - her apology isn't exactly graceful or particularly apologetic - and that's the point.

Many, many illegal downloaders don't see that they've done anything wrong, either - and by doing the very thing she's campaigning against, anything Allen has to say on the subject of respecting copyright is going to be ignored.

That's a shame, because there's a debate to be had on the issue of copyright and fair use. But there's another debate to be had, too, which is whether the existing system is even worth protecting in the first place.

¹ - Oh, yes - she pinched a piece from TechDirt and passed it off as her own. And when caught, she says it was obvious she wasn't trying to pass it off as her own work, despite not having mentioned it wasn't. It's quite fun to read the comments, where Allen's supporters try to explain that THIS ISN'T THE SAME THING AT ALL.