Gordon in the morning: Kiss chase

You know, that Sun paywall can't come fast enough. Or maybe just build an ordinary wall around them.

Gordon's report on the plan is as awful as you'd expect - he uses the word "lesbionics" and seems to think that there's something "left-field" about the idea.

But really, let's save most of our eyes to roll at Robbie Williams.

The casting call — which is for a new song with rapper and songwriter JAKE EMLYN — asks for: “Two girls who are willing to heavily kiss for one scene! Must have LONG hair.
“Please note, if you have a real partner who you’d like to submit along with you! This role will pay £50 for the day, plus expenses.”

Fifty quid. Fifty quid for appearing in a video for a bloke worth £105 million quid.

Hats off the Robbie Williams who has managed to take an insultingly squalid idea and turn it into something financially repellent as well.

What was that meeting like, Robbie? "Look, if we're going to exploit these women, let's really exploit them, yeah?"

Battle for Voice judging seats more interesting than The Voice itself

With Jessie J having better things to do, and Danny From The Script having other things to do, there's some excitement at the question of 'who will be the judges when the third series of The Voice happens, as it surely shall, for it is foretold in the Bible'.

No, there really is some excitement. So much so that Paddy Power - the bookies that think kicking a cat is hilarious - have started offering odds on who will be spinning around.

The two incumbents who have yet to quit, Tom Jones and Will I Am, are both 3-1 on.

Beyond that, it's a mix of the plausible and the questionable. So, sure, you could see Olly Murs (10-1) turning up week-in, week-out, but the chances of Adele signing up are surely slimmer than the 12-1 odds suggest.

Likewise, you could perhaps see a world in which an 80-1 punt on Grace Jones could come off (for a couple of shows)... but the same odds on Shane McGowan?

Also: apparently Madonna is as likely to turn up on a Saturday night light entertainment show as Dannii Minogue. Srsly?

[Thanks to Michael M]

Shoved: Woman takes violent dislike to dedication to victim of killing

On Saturday night, Lester Chambers dedicated a cover of People Get Ready to Trayvon Martin.

Someone in the audience took exception to this, and jumped on the Hayward-Russell City Blues Festival to attack Chambers.

It's an odd gesture - regardless of whether you accept the process against Zimmerman as being just or not, the fact that Martin was shot to death is surely inarguable, and so dedicating a song to a person whose life was cut short hardly seems an act calling for immediate intervention.

Jody Watley returns from wherever

I think the Washington Post might be slightly over-estimating the level of recall here:

Mention Jody Watley to anyone older than 30, and their eyes, almost without exception, light up in recognition. “Jody Watley? She’s still around?”

I'm sure some - perhaps many - people aged about thirty to fifty-odd might get a glimmer of recognition, but the idea that most centenarians will nod and go "yeah, her" seems a stretch.

Still, she's on a comeback. And she's lucky:

The singer recognizes that among her contemporaries from the 1980s, she might have been the lucky one.

“Maybe it was their personalities, or they were battling more demons than I might have had. But it was incredibly sad to me,” she says of the deaths of Jackson and Houston. “I have always tried to just not get caught up in what the industry can pressure you to do or be.”

Yes, that'd be Watley essaying the unfashionable 'it's better to fade away than burn out' philosophy of fame.

The Post might also be over-selling the extent of the comeback, too:

There’s no doubt the singer is plotting a comeback. She is a prodigious tweeter and blogs regularly on her Web site.

If sending a lot of tweets is a sign of reactivating a musical career, then the Big Ben Clock is probably going to be headlining Glastonbury next year.

Although her guest vocals on this might help a bit:

French Horn Rebellion – "Dancing Out" (feat. Jody Watley &Young Empires) from Norton Director on Vimeo.

On the cover of Rolling Stone

This is the cover of the new Rolling Stone - it's quite controversial:

Yes, to the shock of America, Rolling Stone are running a cover that isn't of a topless female celebrity holding a hat over her tits. Americans are struggling to understand this deviation from house sty...

Oh, hang on. Apparently that isn't the problem. Thinkprogress' Judd Legum tries to boil down what the problem is here:

New Rolling Stone cover turns the Boston bomber into Jim Morrison. A comparison: pic.twitter.com/UJKhAMJSGO

— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) July 16, 2013

Oh, yes. It's a head-and-shoulders shot on the cover of the magazine, and they had a head-and-shoulders shot of Jim Morrison about three thousand years ago, so it's clear that what they're trying to do there is turn one into the other.

It couldn't just be that they've put a photo of the subject of their cover story on the, erm, front cover, could it?

The complaints seem to fall into two large clumps, on a sliding scale of ill-informedness.

The first is a suggestion that RS is trying to make Dzhokhar Tsarnaev into some sort of rock star, because they've put him on the cover of a rock magazine, and what else can it mean other than 'Tsarnaev is a rock star'.

The magazine sighs, and tries to explain that while people might think RS is a rock magazine, it really isn't:

The cover story we are publishing this week falls within the traditions of journalism and Rolling Stone’s long-standing commitment to serious and thoughtful coverage of the most important political and cultural issues of our day.

I think that's quite mild, really. After all, Rolling Stone is arguably at its worse when it talk about music, lurching between Tom Waits and Janet Jackson (providing she's got her top off).

It makes you wonder what the complainants think PJ O'Rourke has been filing all these years - do they think he was reviewing Green Day gigs and asking Bonnie Rait about her fitness regime? Do they assume that Hunter S Thompson's main order of business was joining Sting in the studio?

The second group seem at least vaguely aware that the title covers current affairs but, in the style of the 'he's looking like Jim Morrison' observation, that it's wrong to have an accused murderer on the cover, especially when he looks so bloody handsome.

America, it seems, wants its monsters to look like monsters (except the ones out of Monsters Inc). How dare Rolling Stone suggest there might be a more nuanced position; that the man accused of bringing death and misery to so many could look like the sort of boy you'd hope your daughter would take to the prom?

Bizarrely, CVS and a grocery chain have even gone to the lengths of pulling the magazine from their shelves. They happily sold copies of Time with Osama on the front; they stocked and shipped back Newsweeks with Bin Laden covers. I'd love to see CVS explain what policy it is that they're invoking here.

The point being missed in the all the squawking is that the cover is the story - that to his friends, he was just the sort of kid who would make a great prom date:

Someone mentions one of the surveillance videos of Jahar, which shows him impassively watching as people begin to run in response to the blast. "I mean, that's just the face I'd always see chilling, talking, smoking," says Jackson. He wishes­ Jahar had looked panicked. "At least then I'd be able to say, 'OK, something happened.' But . . . nothing."

Rolling Stone has published a thoughtful article about not judging something by the cover. It's a pity a lot of people won't get to read it, because they're so quick to do just that.

Gordon in the morning: Jay-Z goes to Wiltshire

Back at the weekend, Jay-Z went to Wiltshire to look at the Magna Carta, like what his new album is supposedly named after.

It looks to have been one of the publicity stunts that aren't meant to look like publicity stunts - the type where you get spotted and are all "oh, I was trying to make this a private visit how terrible that you will put it in your newspapers at a time when I'm trying to sell my record."

Trouble is, it turns out nobody noticed. So now, his team have released pictures of Jay-Z not doing a publicity stunt at Salisbury Cathedral, just to make sure that nobody misses him not drawing attention to himself on the visit.

source said: “Jay-Z kept the visit quiet because he didn’t want it to become a big publicity stunt. He travelled down from London in a small group in his classic Aston Martin."

Nothing says "this was a low-key visit" like making sure journalists know the swish car he was driving when he popped down.

Glastonbury 2014: Removing a stain on the Rabbit Hole Stage

I'm not sure it's quite the first booking for next year's Glastonbury, but one band has already been signed up.

There's a background: the Rabbit Hole Stage was struggling to find someone prepared to play their headline slot against The Stones on Saturday this year, so Hamish Guerrini made up a silly name - The Railing Stains - and put that down for the slot.

The trouble is, nobody at the festival realised it was a joke, and the band name started to appear in promotional literature.

They even got picked as a "top thing to see".

Still, no harm done, eh? It's not like there's a real Railing Stains.

Except there is. They're a Brighton-based Stones tribute, and naturally they were surprised and excited to discover they were playing Glastonbury.

They tried to find out how to get in, but failed. The Argus captures the happy ending:

After hearing of the band’s disappointment through The Argus, Mr Guerrini added: “When I found out we tried to get in touch, it would have been great to have them play.

But unfortunately it didn’t happen.

“As a way of making it up to them I would love to book them for next year on the Rabbit Hole stage.”

That's, of course, assuming Eavis doesn't poach them for the Pyramid stage.

We've had lots of letters: Misheard lyrics

In case you only ever read No Rock after it has come through a feed, you might have missed James' comments on the truly terrible 'misheard lyrics' survey.

And that would be a shame.

So here it is, above the line:

Speaking of horrible PR stunts and press releases, have you seen that dog of a story about 'most frequently-misheard lyrics' that's been doing the rounds? I wasn't too surprised when it first turned up on Digital Spy - They'd publish a pizza delivery menu if you stuck a photo of Peter Andre to it - but then it turned up on the BBC News site :( http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-23284179

Apparently a survey of 1350 people has found that the most-misheard lyric is by the Eurythmics - It claims a third of people surveyed thought the line was "Sweet dreams are made of cheese". It also reckons the second-most-misheard is Rihanna supposedly singing "We found Dove in a soapless place".

There was something particularly irritating about this story, more so than the average survey-as-cheap-PR-where-news-used-to-be piffle. How does this sort of survey work? Did they ask 1350 people "What lyrics do you mishear?" and then hope that lots of them suggest the same ones? And isn't a survey of misheard lyrics a bit like asking people to name all the countries they've never heard of?

But mainly; That Rihanna one. Really?? In a song called 'We Found Love', people actually thought she was singing 'We found Dove'? They honestly think we'll believe that many people confused an 'L' sound with a 'D'? I suspect they're talking boddocks.

Sorry, I appear to be ranting in a comment box. Bad habit.

Bookmarks: Spotify

Stuart Dredge has written a thoughtful bit in response to the latest shock that letting one person listen to one song on one occasion doesn't make very much money for anyone. There's a bit of straw-manning - Dredge insists that you can't call Spotify sceptics digital luddites, which feels like knocking down a different argument from a different age - but it's at its best when Dredge explores how Spotify could be used to bolster incomes in a more creative way:

my inkling is that the biggest way streaming services can help new artists make a living is to go further still, and become the bridge between people discovering music, and spending money with its creator elsewhere.

It’s happening a bit: Spotify’s new Discover tab often tells me when a band I’ve been listening to is playing nearby, via Songkick. There’s a lot more scope here to provide artists with tools to sell stuff though, including themselves.

What if everyone listening to your music on Spotify could see that you had gigs coming up, or were selling an exclusive/deluxe music bundle on Bandcamp, a DJ mix on Beatport, a limited-edition t-shirt, and so on? What if a streaming service could point all your listeners towards the Kickstarter campaign that will fund your next album?

What, in short, if Spotify (and Deezer, and Rdio, and the rest) became much better and bigger funnels towards all the other ways you’re making money from your music? But still paid you for every stream on their services.

Ex-HMV man forced to bow to His Ex-Master's Voice

Tony Cregan had been managing HMV in Derry when the brilliant minds who had restructured the chain suddenly realised they didn't know what they were doing and closed the place down.

Cregan, being enterprising, and understanding the local market, reckoned this would be an opportunity, bought an empty retail unit, and opened up a new record shop.

Cheekily, he branded it HVM. (I really wish I could tell you he sent out press releases from Castalro Gennado, but he didn't.)

Were HMV's new owners Hilco delighted to see one of the people they no longer wanted doing well in a market from which they had chosen to withdraw?

Of course not:

In a letter from its legal team it warned Mr Cregan that he was causing confusion in the minds of the public that the business "is associated with or connected with that of our client".

The warning added: "The continued presence in the market of your business operating under the name HVM has caused and will continue to cause substantial damage to our client's reputation and goodwill."

You know what else harms goodwill towards HMV? HMV behaving like asshats. In fact, that probably does far more damage to any feelings of goodwill towards HMV, given that they've come across as humourless and bullying on a national level.

Rather than get into a legal battle, Cregan has simply turned the sign upside down and rebranded as WAH.

Funnily enough, an identical thing happened to a woman who took over a defunct Woolworths.

Gordon in the morning: Premier league

There's something quite sweet about the news that Justin Timberlake booked his team into a Premier Inn after the Wireless Festival.

It might have been less sweet a gesture if you were on a budget, and going to the Wireless Festival, and discovered the cheap hotel rooms had been taken by someone who presumably could afford to stay elsewhere.

To be fair, though, all the cash he's dumped into MySpace, maybe Premier is all Justin can run to these days.

Thom knocks off Spotify

Thom Yorke has pulled his music from Spotify.

Relax, it's only the solo stuff and Atoms For Peace at the moment.

Why has Thom done this?

Yorke pitched in to the debate. "Make no mistake, new artists you discover on Spotify will not get paid. Meanwhile shareholders will shortly be rolling in it. Simples," he tweeted, and added as a riposte to critics that the suggestion his move was pointless missed its purpose: "'Your small meaningless rebellion is only hurting your fans ... a drop in the bucket really.' No, we're standing up for our fellow musicians."

This set-up - musicians working hard for peanuts while shareholders cream off the cash - is a totally unheard-of situation in modern music, sweeping away, as it does, the previous arrangement whereby the major labels were run as charities and bold, experimental music cascaded onto the shelves of HMV. Back in the past, the labels looked after musicians and made sure that any singer or drummer able to afford to hire a good lawyer five years in could renegotiate the initial deal in which they'd signed away everything for something close to nothing and make enough to eat at least twice a week.

It's true that you won't make much from a handful of listens on Spotify. But is there a better way for new music to be discovered?

Nigel Godrich, Yorke's producer, has an idea:

"Streaming suits [back] catalogue. But [it] cannot work as a way of supporting new artists' work. Spotify and the like either have to address that fact and change the model for new releases or else all new music producers should be bold and vote with their feet. [Streaming services] have no power without new music."

Really? This is such a schoolboy error that I can barely even look at it without feeling awful for Godrich.

He's suggesting that this is a thought process that would happen:
- I fancy listening to music. Shall I go to the service that has all the music I've enjoyed all my life, or shall I go and listen to that service that has no songs I've ever heard before?

Some people will do the latter; but they're probably the people who would be off looking for new music everywhere anyway.

What Godrich is suggesting is akin to, say, HMV only stocking records that are year old, and another shop stocking new music only.

But even the most aloof of indie stores knew they had to have some Rolling Stones or Bob Marley in the racks, if only to tempt people over the doorstep in order to ram Chvrches into their hands.

There have been numerous attempts to build new music sites on the internet - many were just as cynically motivated by 'cheap' non-major music as Spotify are motivated by paying light royalties. I think it's fair to say that none have had any real breakthrough.

Yorke is right, up to a point - you won't get rich off Spotify. You might, if you're lucky, add a few pennies to your income.

And an artist like Yorke can afford to turn his back on Spotify without disappearing.

But if you're starting out, I'd think long and hard before getting off the high street.

Gordon in the morning: Money for nothing

You remember how on Friday Gordon Smart was telling us how bloody loaded Little Mix are?

This morning, a piece by Will Payne on Bizarre tells us that actually they barely earned anything. Especially when compared with... oh, let's not spoil the surprise:

X FACTOR bad boy Frankie Cocozza made more than £120,000 last year.

The tearaway thought he had blown the chance of a lifetime when he was booted off the 2011 series in week six after boasting about taking cocaine.

But he has gone on to make more money than any other contestant from that year, including that year’s winners Little Mix. The four girls made £116,223 each in the same period.

So Gordon's impressed noises on Friday about how it was paying off for the girls, working so hard have now been drowned out by the revelation that Cocozza is pocketing more cash... doing what, exactly?

Most of the cash came from his stint on Celebrity Big Brother — worth £30,000 — plus magazine deals and club appearances worth up to £4,000 a night.

Frankie Cocozza is, it turns out, a one-man Only Way Is Essex. He's the artisan option for reality TV.

This week just gone

This week, I spent an incredible amount of time with The Face's best recordings of 1983.

What were the most popular?

1. Tina Turner - Let's Stay Together (really?)
2. Malcolm McLaren - Duck For The Oyster (oh, for the love of...)
3. Tom Waits - Gin-soaked Boy
4. Shannon - Let The Music Play
5. M-Tume -Juicy Fruit
6. Animal Nightlife - Native Boy
7. Malcolm McLaren - Soweto
8. Nile Rodgers - The Land Of The Good Groove
9. 23Skiddo - Coup
10. Grandmaster Melle Mel

If Tom Waits is sat at home going "third most popular - not too shabby", the average dwell time on that page is fourteen seconds. Fourteen.

There was a flurry of releases:


Darren Hayman & the Short Parliament - Bugbears

Download Bugbears



Julia Fordham - Under The Rainbow

Download Under The Rainbow



Over You - Throwing Up

Download Throwing Up



Emily Barker - Dear River

Download Dear River



Maps - Vicissitude

Download Vicissitude



Bastille - Pompeii

Download Pompeii



New Order - Live at Bestival

Download Live At Bestival

The Manics against the fascists

It doesn't seem to be any heightened sense of irony, and just plain-old ignorance, that led to the English Defence League using the Manics' If You Tolerate This, Then Your Children Will Be Next to promote one of their hatey-hate rumble marches.

Someone clearly didn't get as far as the "then I can shoot fascists" line when they came up with idea.

the NME claims at first that the Manics are taking "legal action" as a result, although further down the article the "legal action" starts to sound a bit watery:

A spokesperson for the Manics told NME that the band were "horrified" that their track was being used in the promo and that the label requested the video was taken down immediately.

Which is action, but hardly the full force of the law.

Terrible marketing stunt turned into terrible marketing press release

There was a thing earlier in the week about how Durex were supposedly marketing Daft Punk themed Get Lucky condoms.

It turns out they're not, but like a drunk man hopefully filling his pockets from the Johnny machine in the bogs, Durex are hoping they can capitalise on a promise. Can you spot the moment when their email to MTV News turns from factual correction into jolly-marketing message?

We are aware of reports that Durex has launched Daft Punk branded condoms following their hit single 'Get Lucky,' " he said. "There is no Durex promotion or partnership with Daft Punk in the U.S. or any other markets and Durex is not posting free packs to the world's top DJs as suggested. However, we do hope that by using Durex condoms, music-lovers will continue to make sweet music together and have great sex!"

They might have just got away with it if they'd stopped after "make sweet music together", but you can just picture the room when that statement was hammered together...

- Do you think people will understand what we mean by 'make sweet music'?
- Yeah, Dave, I think they will
- Are you sure? It might be a bit subtle.
- It's not subtle, Dave. It'll be fine
- But what if people don't know what condoms are for?
- Look, Dave, you might have spent the first six weeks on this account thinking we were selling tiny sandwich bags, but most people will get it
- I think we really need to make it clear we want people to have sex with our condoms on
- Dave...
- No, seriously. We don't want to get sued if people take it literally, and put our condoms on their flutes and whistles and the lubricant destroys their instruments. Let's just add 'by doing sex into the condoms peniswise' to make it clear
- Dave, this is like the time you wanted us to rebrand as Durex Penis Covers. It's not necessary
- I'm not going to sign this off until you amend it
- Okay, Dave...

Bookmarks: Rap

Excellent work by Businessweek, which has produced a graph comapring rap star's claims about their wealth with how much they actually have:

Nicki Minaj
"I'm in Saint Tropez on a big boat, go my way to make a billi like a big goat"
Song: Up In Flames, 2013
2012 earnings: $15.5 million

Embed and breakfast man: Placebo

Let's come back up to date. Here's the new Placebo single.



I think the kindest thing to say is that at least Brian's rhyming dictionary is up-to-date, isn't it?

Face '83: Grandmaster Melle Mel

This is the spiritual heir to Gudbuy T'Jane - a song which had a 180 degree turn done from its original direction. To be honest, a song about cocaine being a good thing would have been a tricky sell, even in 1983, so probably a wise move to make it an anti-drug anthem. Or, perhaps, a suggestion that if you're going to get involved with drugs, carrying kilos of the stuff in order to avoid jail.



Let's give the point to The Face, to make the final scores:

Recordings that have stood the test of time and thus vindicated The Face's ability to spot a good thing:
25
Recordings which history has undermined and should at least cause The Face to blush:
20

That's not a bad strike rate for the Face, really. In 1983, at least, they knew what they were doing.

Up to a point.

This concludes The Face's best recordings of 1983. Thank you for watching.

Face '83: The Gap Band

GAP was an acronym. Who knew, eh? They were originally the Greenwood, Archer & Pine Street Band, which is a horrible, horrible name for a group. Seriously.

This is pretty good, and went on to be sampled and sampled and sampled again:

It's been so sampled it's almost a storecupboard staple more than a record.

And it somehow survived Andy Cole's cover version.

Yes, footballer Andy Cole.

Do you want to see what he did?

Back in 2008 there was a campaign to try and get the song into the charts, which Cole was not entirely thrilled about:

"I was a great deal younger when I made Outstanding and I can categorically say it will represent my one and only attempt to make an impression in the world of music," Cole told the Nottingham Evening Post.

But can we hold a later cover version against The Gap Band?

Not really.

The Face 24; history 20.

[Part of The Face's best recordings of 1983]

Face '83: Steve Arrington

The list has this down as 'Steve Arrington - I', but it's actually Steve Arrington's Hall Of Fame, Volume One.

Blimey.

Arrington had been a member of Slave, and this was his first solo effort. Here's a taste of what it was like: the track Speak With Your Body:



Arrington was about to discover Jesus, release an album with a bona-fide international hit (Feels So Real), quit music, became a minister, got praised as the first guy to balance secular soul with gospel music, and win a Grammy kinda-sorta.

All of that, though, was in the future. This wasn't the future. And looking from the future, this doesn't seem all that. The Face 23; history 20.

More-or-less as I write this, Arrington is in a studio somewhere prepping this album for re-release.

Face '83: Monyaka

Oh come on: the band not only namecheck themselves, they SPELL OUT THEIR NAME. That's pretty needy.



You can kind of understand them milking their moment centre stage, though - Monyaka were the go-to backing band for over a decade in Jamaica. They probably didn't realise that stepping forward would lead them to being over-enthusiastically adopted by Radio One and then just as quickly dropped.

Here's a handy rule of thumb: if something can be watered down enough to sit comfortably on Steve Wright In The Afternoon, it might as well not have happened.

The Face 23; History 19

[Part of The Face's best recordings of 1983]

Face '83: SOS Band

You know what this needs?

More Lindy Layton.

The SOS Band - and this track in particular - are pivotal in music history as, having taken a quick break from touring with Prince, Jam and Lewis finished their production work just in time to get snowed in by a blizzard. Their 'not being able to travel through impenetrable weather conditions' lead to Prince firing them from The Time. Freed from The Time, freed up time for them to concentrate on production, and that had positive effects for everyone.

They'd go on to produce fifteen cracking US number ones, and a Mariah Carey one.

Well chosen, The Face.

The Face 23; History 18.

Glitter is falling from the ceiling. Fireworks are shooting off. The Face now cannot be beaten by history. The Face wins. But how wide will the margin be?

[Part of The Face's best recordings of 1983]

Face '83: New Edition

One last push, and we can forget we ever eased the lid off the box marked 'Face best-of 1983'. If you've remained aloof so far, the general idea was I'd post a load of videos from 1983 and try and slap a veneer of science over judging if the records The Face magazine thought would be historic markers for the year actually were as timeless as they'd hoped.

At the moment, The Face has scored 22 good choices; the harsh judgement of history has won 17 rounds.

Next up is New Edition:

New Edition, famously, launched the careers of Ronnie DeVoe, Bobby Brown, Ralph Tresvant, Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, Miley Cyrus, Cyrus Vance, Andrew Bridger MP, The Backstreet Boys and that bloke with the head like an egg off this year's Apprentice.

What's really scary about this band is not that they were so young, nor that they were so obviously the first serious attempt to clone and update the Jackson Five model, but that by the time of Candy Girl, they'd been going for five years already.

Five years.

After their first tour, following this massive hit, the boys made $1.87 each.

To be fair, their management did cut them a cheque for this amount - they didn't just get a letter telling them they'd receive a payment once their earnings had reached $25 - but it's all a bit disgusting.

This track, then, isn't young people having fun. It's kids being ripped off.

The Face 22; History 18.

[Part of The Face's best recordings of 1983]

Gordon in the morning: Little Mix, big money

Gordon has got ever so excited at Little Mix's earnings. He starts off with the headline that they've banked over a million, but then the detail makes this a little less exciting:

In the financial year ending December 2012, the girls made £1.2million.

Gordon smacks his lips expecting more:

That’s before all of the income from their UK tour and album royalties would have come in, so they’re looking at another decent whack in the next 12 months.

Perhaps, although who knows how much the cost of all that help for the album was?

So, let's just focus on the money for the year to December, shall we?

£1.2million you say? That's not bad... except...

After their expenses — lots of hairspray — they netted a profit of £464,893

So as people, they actually only earned less than half a million.

Still, that's good, isn't it?

That’s almost £200,000 more than the US President earns a year.

That's true - Obama takes home about £265,000. Depending on exchange rates, of course, and remembering that he lives at the place he works which makes a mockery of the concept of "take home pay".

Except, of course, there's only one president of America, and there are four Little Mixers.

So that works out as £116,000 each, or about half a US President.

That's still not bad - although about forty grand less than MP Andrew Bridger makes when you add his second job and his MP salary, and Andrew Bridger says that's not enough.

And, as Gordon's "source" points out, they've worked bloody hard for that cash:

A source said: “The girls have barely had any time off since they won The X Factor. They got straight into the studio, then their tour, then were thrown into trying to crack America."

The band might want to look into who that source is, though, as they might have been dumped in it with HMRC:

“Given the girls have almost no expenses — they are always working, they get most of their clothes free and things such as bottle service in nightclubs are gratis — a lot of the income into that business will be saved up.”

Really? Because remember what Gordon said earlier:

After their expenses — lots of hairspray — they netted a profit of £464,893

Interesting that a band which has very few expenses managed to claim three quarters of a million difference between net and gross. Little Mix might want to find out who represents Vodafone.

Nick Cave wrote a sequel to Gladiator

If you were going to come up with a sequel to a popular Hollywood hit movie, would you put in a call to Nick Cave?

No, we wouldn't, either. But Russell Crowe is not like us, and thought Cave would be the man for the job. Despite it being Nick Cave, and his character being dead.

Cave came up with a plot. Or possibly lost one. Hard to say:

"So, he goes down to purgatory and is sent down by the gods, who are dying in heaven because there's this one god, there's this Christ character, down on Earth who is gaining popularity and so the many gods are dying so they send Gladiator back to kill Christ and his followers.

I wanted to call it Christ Killer," Cave continues. "And in the end you find out that the main guy was his son, so he has to kill his son and he was tricked by the gods. He becomes this eternal warrior and it ends with this 20 minute war scene which follows all the wars in history, right up to Vietnam and all that sort of stuff and it was wild."

It's hard to believe this movie was never made, isn't it?

It's a pity they didn't give the new Star Wars trilogy to Nick.

Filmmakerobit: Toshi Seeger

Toshi Seeger, archivist, organiser and film-maker, has died.

For many years, Toshi programmed the Great Hudson River Revival festival, booking folk artists who had yet to break.

There's a wonderful story on Persimmon Tree by Sue Leonard about the time she met Toshi and her husband, Pete Seeger:

Toshi also shot films, folklore research films. At one point she went to Huntsville, Texas, where she produced a film of the prisoners chopping trees and singing their songs. The film, “Afro-American Work Songs in a Texas Prison,”can be found online in the Library of Congress archives. When Pete’s career became all-consuming, her projects were “bookshelved”.

This “bookshelving” prompted Sue to ask, “How did you keep from losing your identity being married to Pete?”

“I didn’t. My girl children taught me not to lose so much.”

Toshi Seeger was 91; she died July 9th.

Face '83: The Packman

So, a quick leap over the Ike & Tina Turner reissue, and a grudging 'yeah, I guess' to Thriller - you couldn't review 1983 without mentioning it and... if you skip the weaker tracks... I suppose that's one in The Face's favour.

Back at the start of this adventure I was puzzled by the presence of The Pacman on this list, and a helpful comment suggested this might be the song I was looking for:



Whether this is the song The Face intended or not, it's hard to see how 'pretending to be PacMan' would ever create a song that stood up to the test of time. And if it was this song...

... well. It's a miracle The Face even had the confidence to publish again.

The Face 22; history 17.

[Part of The Face's best recordings of 1983]

Face '83: Fab Five Freddy

We've come across Fab Five Freddy earlier, when he was pinching Phase Two's role in Wild Style.

Now he's up in his own right:



So, how great is this track? Let us count the ways: it's based on a dirty French film. It doesn't have an a-side and b-side, but male and female versions. Freddy went on to present Yo! MTV Raps, but was just about able to carry off the toe-curling name.

The Face 21; history 16.

[Part of The Face's best recordings 1983]

Face '83: Indeep

We've already, for sake of... well, brevity isn't the right word as, boy, this feature is dragging on, but let's say brevity... for the sake of brevity we've decided to skip reissues from the list, so go home Derek Martin, you're safe.

This bring us to Indeep's Last Night A DJ Saved My Life.



As an aside, whoever put this onto YouTube manages to claim that this is the "official video" despite not only being clearly from Top Of The Pops, but being clearly from Top Of The Pops with a sodding UK Gold logo burned into it.

So... has this stood the test of time? Or does the "away goes trouble down the drain" followed by the sound of a toilet flushing reveal that what The Face has done here is to pick a novelty record for its best recordings of the year?

You'll recall that we discussed InDeep earlier this year, and in particular the way that toilet flush was considered good enough to get its own track on the album.

Oh, The Face. History has the benefit of hindsight, but you should have spotted this one coming.

The Face 20; history 16.

[Part of The Face's best recordings of 1983]