Dosen't sound too bad

This is Stephanie Dosen, who's from Nashville. She's turned her back on the delights of her home state for a while, though, in order to tour the UK:

Wednesday 7 February – NEWCASTLE – Cluny
Thursday 8 February – EDINBURGH – Cabaret Voltaire
Friday 9 February – GLASGOW – King Tuts
Saturday 10 February – STOCKTON – Georgian Theatre
Sunday 11 February – LEEDS – Faversham
Tuesday 13 February – BIRMINGHAM – Glee Club
Wednesday 14 February – SHEFFIELD – Leadmill
Thursday 15 February – BRISTOL – Thekla
Friday 16 February – NORWICH – Arts Centre
Saturday 17 February – BRIGHTON – Duke of Yorks
Monday 19 February – NOTIINGHAM – Social
Tuesday 20 February – MANCHESTER – Matt & Phreds
Wednesday 21 February – LONDON – ULU
Thursday 22 February – OXFORD – Zodiac

What she sounds like is this. "Music for weary sailors & tangled mermaids", of course.

Do try and keep up, Sue Carroll

The Mirror's Sue Carroll isn't happy with the police:

PETE Doherty has been charged with four driving offences. Good to see the police not bothering with anything trivial then. Like suspected drug abuse.

Leaving aside the question of if driving without insurance or a licence is more or less of a danger to the soft heads of everybody Sue Carroll holds dear, she seems to have missed that, erm, Pete Doherty has been arrested numerous times for drug use, is currently undergoing a court-imposed testing regime which hasn't found any evidence that he's using, and that the police who stopped the car did charge the two passengers with suspected drug abuse - so, clearly, if there'd been any reason to charge Doherty with drug offences on this occasion, there'd have been charges. Unless Sue is outraged that Doherty isn't being charged under the 1835 "Being talked-about in the tabloids for possibly doing a drug deal in Thailand and oh, that cameraphone footage which was in the Sun" Act.

Kerry Katalone

There's an upside to having terrible slanging matches with everyone you know, carried out through the inner pages of tabloid newspapers. As Kerry Katona is discovering, it keeps the wedding costs down:

"Originally I wanted a big showbiz wedding but since I don’t speak to my mum anyone more things have changed.

"I really just want to keep things private because I've got no friends or family."

You'll note Kerry's definition of "keeping things private" is to give an interview to Reveal magazine about how nobody is coming to her wedding because of the circle of mutual loathing into which she has become locked.

Keith Allen to Keith Allen's daughter: You bloody will go to the ball

Having generated a media-cloud by thinking she might not go to the Brits, now Lily Allen is getting a media-cloud by deciding to go after all.

Apparently, her Dad is Keith Allen out of Press Gang: who knew? Keith says Lily's got to go:

"It’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing to be nominated for four Brits — you must go and have a good time."

Clearly, then, Keith doesn't think his daughter's career is going to have anything close to an upward trajectory.

Less in the Mix

This Friday, prepare to wave goodbye to another ecclectic corner of the radio schedules as Mixing It winds up to make way for the new Radio 3 schedules. The last programme features People Like Us in session.

People Like Us' Vicki Bennett provides the eulogy:

Over the last 16 years, Mixing It have been a big supporter of PLU, and we are very sad (and somewhat outraged) that it is being axed by the BBC next month for no good reason that we could possibly imagine other than notions of change and progress. The same thing is happening with Canada’s beloved “Brave New Waves”.

And away we go...

Alesha Dixon is, it seems, a canny lass. Many women, watching their husband go dancing off Javine Hilton, would cut their wedding dress up into pieces and force it into Harvey So Solid's mouth. Perhaps while bouncing up and down on him in size ten boots.

Not Aleesha, though: She's flogging her dress on eBay. Obviously hoping to find a buyer who doesn't believe in jinxes and so on.

Something to listen to: Rap comes to the Commons

This doesn't seem to have turned up in the papers this morning, so you might want to get to Yesterday In Parliament before next Tuesday to hear what happened when the Home Affairs Committee investigation into "Young black people and the criminal justice system" turned its attention to rap music. Amongst those called to give evidence were DJ Dodge and Radio 1's Andy Parfitt.

There were all the factors you'd expect: an MP reading out some rap lyrics totally out-of-context ("Murder... murder... murder... street"), Andy Parfitt stumbling through a defence of how, you know, erm, sometimes rap deals with difficult subjects. DJ Dodge pointed that there were two positive rap songs produced for every one negative rap song (although he didn't have anything to back up the claim - I love the idea that there might be a team who rush out a pair of "Trees are lovely" rap every time there's a new Tupac track unearthed) but that the negative songs are the ones which get the attention.

This interesting point - that maybe we should be asking why negative rap strikes a chord, rather than if negative rap causes crime - was more or less sidelined by the committee, though, who then rolled on to the question of upbringing.
[EDIT - Fixed the link; see comments]

Scouts at Rats

We've just been told by one of the loveliest press people that I Was A Cub Scout are going to be playing Water Rats in Kings Cross on Valentine's Night. It's all a bit of a last-minute arrangement, which suggests none of them could get dates.

Warners first to be Last

Warners and LastFM have cut a deal which is going to allow the Warner catalogue to be pumped to last.fm users on the basis of Last's "if you like this, you'll love this" software. There's going to be some sort of advertising-supported stream of Warner goodness for those who want it.

We like what last.fm does, but can't help feeling they underestimate music lover's love:

"It is very difficult to keep up to date with all the new music that is coming out," [co-founder Martin] Stiksel told Reuters in an interview. "Being confronted with too much choice can actually be daunting and you go back to listening to the same old stuff."

Now, last can be a useful tool for coming across music that you haven't thought of, but its tendency to force people into ever-smaller groups of closely-similar tracks is a little depressing - there must be many people who like Oasis and Seth Lakeman, but far, far more who like Oasis and Kasabian. So you're more likely to be led down the narrow alley than off on an adventure across the moors.

But the thought that it's being driven by people who think that it's somehow "difficult" to keep up with music and sees the thought of a thousand names, each hiding a giddying range of possibilities of whole new musical loves, as some sort of work is a little crushing. It's making discovering new music on a par with thinking you're having a varied diet because you always give the monthly special at McDonalds a go.

Jobs calls for an end to DRM

Having finally launched the iPhone, Steve Jobs has had some spare time on his hands, and spent some of it having thoughts about music. He's blogged them, or rather, commandeered a page of the apple website to share what he's thought.

And you know what he's thought? That it's about time the labels dropped DRM.

Yes, yes, of course the iTunes music store uses DRM, but, apparently, he'd rather not have to bother:

The rub comes from the music Apple sells on its online iTunes Store. Since Apple does not own or control any music itself, it must license the rights to distribute music from others, primarily the “big four” music companies: Universal, Sony BMG, Warner and EMI. These four companies control the distribution of over 70% of the world’s music. When Apple approached these companies to license their music to distribute legally over the Internet, they were extremely cautious and required Apple to protect their music from being illegally copied. The solution was to create a DRM system, which envelopes each song purchased from the iTunes store in special and secret software so that it cannot be played on unauthorized devices.

Jobs mulls three options for the future - carrying on with Zune stores working for all the Zune players in the world (there are now several, we understand), iTunes selling for iPods, and so on. Clearly, though, Jobs wouldn't be launching a flashy "look at me" initiative if he was merely trying to keep things as they are. He's not from Microsoft.

Option two is for Apple to license the FairPlay DRM to other companies, allowing iPod enabled music to be sold by other stores. Jobs points out that to share the code would be to make the secret DRM somewhat less secret, and probably even less secure.

Option three - what we must now see to be the Apple party line - is surprising and refreshing:

The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely. Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music.

Which is quite a pledge.

So, what's Jobs up to? Obviously, he's trying to head off calls for Apple to share FairPlay - indeed, he encourages us to go and badger the record labels to dump DRM instead of badgering Apple to open up the AAC code:

Much of the concern over DRM systems has arisen in European countries. Perhaps those unhappy with the current situation should redirect their energies towards persuading the music companies to sell their music DRM-free. For Europeans, two and a half of the big four music companies are located right in their backyard. The largest, Universal, is 100% owned by Vivendi, a French company. EMI is a British company, and Sony BMG is 50% owned by Bertelsmann, a German company. Convincing them to license their music to Apple and others DRM-free will create a truly interoperable music marketplace. Apple will embrace this wholeheartedly.

But isn't this insanity, Jobs calling for an action which would take away the competitive advantage of the iTunes Music Store?

Maybe not. After all, he's in the business of selling players, not music, as his own message makes clear when he sets out to prove iPod owners aren't "locked" into iTMS:

Through the end of 2006, customers purchased a total of 90 million iPods and 2 billion songs from the iTunes store. On average, that’s 22 songs purchased from the iTunes store for each iPod ever sold.

Today’s most popular iPod holds 1000 songs, and research tells us that the average iPod is nearly full. This means that only 22 out of 1000 songs, or under 3% of the music on the average iPod, is purchased from the iTunes store and protected with a DRM. The remaining 97% of the music is unprotected and playable on any player that can play the open formats. Its hard to believe that just 3% of the music on the average iPod is enough to lock users into buying only iPods in the future. And since 97% of the music on the average iPod was not purchased from the iTunes store, iPod users are clearly not locked into the iTunes store to acquire their music.

In other words, Jobs isn't afraid it'll make too much of a dent in the Apple bottom line for there to be competing stores selling interoperable tunes.

But of course, this isn't about DRM free music at all, is it? It's no coincidence this has coincided with WalMart's move into movie downloads. This is using "music labels" as a shorthand for "movie studios".

Urban warfare

Keith Urban - still counting the days, rather than weeks, sober - has launched a legal action against another Keith Urban. It's a bit like when another Gary Bellamy called Down The Line last week, prompting a slightly confused Gary Bellamy to double check "you're not me, are you?"

Keith Urban - who, to keep things straight, we'll call Mr. Kidman for now - is upset that the not-quite-as-famously-drunk Keith Urban shares his name and, as such, is using a website in his own name pretending to be him. Mr. Kidman reckons that by using his own name, Keith Urban is selling his not-very-good artwork to people who think that they're buying a not-very-good picture by a not-very-good country singer, rather than a not-very-good picture by a not-very-good web designer.

Really, Mr. Kidman should be thinking about suing Keith's parents. After all, they were the ones who initially encouraged their child to squat using the Keith Urban name.

It's called The Good, The Bad and The Queen, isn't it?

Damon Albarn apparently hadn't given a name to his new band, Untitled Blur B-Sides Project. But nobody noticed, and have been calling it The Good, The Bad and The Queen. So now he's clearing his throat to draw attention to how clever he is:

"We don't have a name for the band. Isn't it sort of more important that the quality of something is inspirational - as opposed to just categorising everybody as the same thing? That’s all it really is," he told the Daily Record. "And if that’s pretentious, then I have to accept that."

We love that half-defensive, half-proud final sentence. Albarn dreams of being thought clever enough to be pretentious. He's probably already sending the clipping to Pseud's Corner just so he can cut it out and stick it in his scrapbook. Under a picture of Clement Freud.

The side-effect of the Beatles truce

There's more to the peace deal between Apple and Apple than the acres of press coverage churning out about how "ooh, this means The Beatles will be number one again" (even though it means no such thing - where are the large numbers of people who like the Beatles so much that they'll download from iTunes, but who haven't yet ripped the tunes from their CDs, coming from?). As Wired points out, because Job's Apple is now allowed to be "in" the music industry, it's now able to sell preloaded iPods.

(No, it turns out the U2 iPod came with a workaround voucher which let purchasers fill their device with Bono - specifically because hitherto the Beatles banned Apple from selling prerecorded music.)

First up - so we're told - is to be a Yellow Submarine iPod. As ever, the deal isn't about selling music from Infinite Loop - it's about using music to sell iPods.

Not even being allowed to sleep now he's dead

Warren Zevon might be dead - he is, that wasn't just an internet rumour - but that's never going to stand in the way of a busy release schedule. Rhino are repackaging three of Zevon's albums, Excitable Boy, Stand In The Fire and The Envoy, along with some alternate and reworked versions. All becomes available at the end of March.

Manics in slightly reduced circumstances

The suspicion that the Manics are now a declining force is reinforced by both the number of dates booked in for their next tour and the step-down in terms of venue size - Brighton Dome rather than the Centre, for example.

The dates in full, then:
Cambridge Corn Exchange (May 8)
Leeds University (9)
Cardiff University Great Hall (11, 12)
Glasgow Barrowlands (14)
Newcastle Academy (15)
Sheffield Octagon (17)
Carlisle Sands Centre (18)
Preston Guildhall (20)
\Wolverhampton Civic Hall (21)
Norwich UEA (23)
Nottingham Rock City (24)
Llandudno Venue Cymru (26)
Manchester Apollo (27)
London Forum (29)
London Astoria (30)
London Shepherds Bush Empire (31)
Bristol Colston Hall (June 2)
Truro Hall (3)
Southampton Guildhall (5)
Brighton Dome (6)
Leicester De Montfort Hall (8)
Reading Hexagon (9)

Haiku

Gnarls Barkley
Winter poetry comp
Offers prizes

Spector shrinks his case load

Giving him more time to concentrate on the whole murder case thing, Phil Spector has settled with a former assistant. The pair were locked a sue-loop, Spector claiming she'd pinched money from him; the assistant, Michelle Blaine, claiming he'd shown her his penis and once asked her to book a prostitute for him.

Spector is set to get half a million from his assistant, and now all the cases are off. He's expected to invest the money in his defence on charges of murdering Lana Clarkson, charges which he denies.

Explosionfest

Coming later this year: a two-stage benefit festival for victims of the Buncefield explosion. Amongst those the event is hoping to help are people whose jobs went up with the oil depot in December 2005.

I Predict A Riot is a song by The Kaiser Chiefs

Is it possible for Ricky Wilson to do anything without people yelling "I predict a riot"? Even when he's abasing himself, the 3AM Girls work it in:

WE predicted a riot when Ricky Wilson came face-to-face with Liam Gallagher, who called the Kaiser Chiefs "a bad Blur".

Ah, but as with nearly all the 3AM team's pronouncements, this prediction came to nothing:

But he says: "I ended up apologising - 'Sorry we're so rubbish.'"

It's unclear if Wilson will now be offering refunds.

Scissor Sisters - Sniiiiiiiip!

In a further indication of how far from having fingers on pulses the Brits organising committee is, one of their key acts for next week seems to be heading dumper-wards, at least in the US:

Jake Shears, 29, is refreshingly honest about Ta-Dah. He said: "The single I Don't Feel Like Dancin' hasn't done anything. The album's dead. It flopped. It stiffed. It tanked."

Meanwhile, ITV is trailing the awards with Russell Brand wandering through cages of dangerous people saying, effectively, "ooh... we're going to be dangerous because we're live."
Russell, sweetheart, GMTV is live for hours every morning. Not being on tape isn't, in itself, a guarantee of edginess.

You make me feel naked, undressing me with your eyes

Louise ThatUsedToBeInEternal has decided the "size zero" hoohah is the perfect opportunity to bring her TV presenting career back from the digital channels ("is something calling out for proper investigation") and so is, erm, going on a diet to reach size zero for ITV1.

Of course, the idea is to tell everyone how terrible it is, which she almost does, too:

“But towards the end I remember thinking, ‘It’s kind of nice to feel your jeans loosening.’ Oh my God, it felt pretty good. It was the first time I could wear skinny jeans and flat shoes and not feel fat.

“At that point I actually liked my body better, which is frightening.

Psst... Louise, it's meant to be a moral crusade...

"But my face and neck looked gaunt and, anyway, I couldn’t have maintained it. I felt like crap.

Simultaneously feeling like crap and pretty good, then. Thanks for that insight.

Last night, ITV was railing against Pro-Ana sites; now, it's about to run a programme which is effectively a zero-plan diet:

During the diet, Louise survived on veg, oats, water and omelettes — fewer than 800 calories a day compared to the 2,000 she needed. She also ran or cycled three miles a day and worked out.

So, what has all this taught Louise? Erm...

“I’ve got to be honest and say that if I did a photoshoot now I’d still expect things about the pictures to be touched up, People wouldn’t want to look at you with all your dark circles under your eyes and your patchy skin.

“And I think that’s fine — as long as we talk about it and don’t cover it up. Girls just need to know that we don’t really look like that.”

Oh. Right. So it's fine to cover up, providing you don't cover up? Isn't that a little like not having your cake, and not eating it?

Confused

The Sun, of course, hates paedophiles and the very idea of the sexualisation of children:

Paedo gang jailed for 27 years... Hedgcock, 41, sent out pictures of the two girls aged 13 and 14 in school uniforms and said they walked through woods near his home.

On the other hand, and a couple of clicks away, Victoria Newton has no problem with the fetishisation of school uniforms:

HERE are GIRLS ALOUD fulfilling every man’s St Trinian’s fantasy – in saucy school uniforms.

I'm sure there's an important difference I'm missing out on.

Oh, yes - Girls Aloud are selling crisps. That'll be alright then.

Doherty driven to the dock

Pete Doherty is due back in court on 13th Feburary - this time for a bunch of motoring offences: failing to produce driving documents, driving with no insurance; driving with no MOT and failing to comply with driving licence conditions. The passengers in the car with Doherty when he was stopped last November have both been charged with drug offences.

Kanye West shooter jailed

Last week, Abidan Raphael was sentenced for shooting two security guards at a Kanye West gig at the NEC. Raphael - who shot John Tough in the face and one of Tough's colleagues in the abdomen after being ejected from the NEC twice, was given a life sentence. His girlfriend, Joanne Bushell, received a three year sentence for helping Raphael.

Wasn't there meant to be a line of at least some sort between love and hate?

Just in time for Valentine's Day, Kim Mathers has been talking about marrying Eminem. Twice"

She also admitted to being unfaithful in the past and revealed that she attempted to commit suicide in 2000, because of the lyrics to the song "Kim," in which Eminem writes about murdering her in response to her cheating.

"This is supposed to be a man that loves me, and is supposed to protect me, from being hurt, and here he is disrespecting me in the worst way possible in front of millions of people, and in front of our kids, my family, my friends," Kim said.

She said the last straw came during a concert in Detroit that she attended. Kim said that the rapper promised not to perform the song but changed his mind at the last minute, while she was in the audience.

"He decided to do that song, and not only perform the song, but use blow-up dolls to reenact me being choked," Kim said. "Just disrespectful things to the blowup doll and then [throwing] the doll into the crowd...I made it home...I went upstairs in my bathroom and I slit my wrists and ended up in the hospital."

After which, of course, you'd certainly want to sign up for some more, wouldn't you?

Kim is quick to stress that Eminem is a great father. Because throttling your mother in effigy is what every kid needs to hear their Dad is doing, right?

The dwindling Razorlight

Remember, people: there's nothing wrong in the Razorlight camp. Johnny Borrell loves every one of the band - not as much as he loves himself, of course, that just wouldn't be possible. But he loves them like he loves his second-favourite cola, or the idea of some kittens.

So let's not read anything into the latest in a long-run of Razorlight incidents - Johnny and bassist Carl Dalemo having a fight onstage can't possibly mean the band are a step closer to turning into Johnny with a solo career, can it?

Spritiualized and Space-y

Coming later this Spring: Spritualized doing an acoustic tour with the added promise of Spacemen Three songs worked into the mix. There's going to be strings and choirs as well. It all sounds lovely:

Glasgow Academy (April 23)
Leeds City Varieties (24)
Wolverhampton Wulfrun Hall (25)
London Shepherd's Bush Empire (26)
Minehead Butlins All Tomorrow's Parties (28)

Apple beats the Beatles

After what seems like a generation of attrition, there's finally been a peace deal cut between Apple the computer people and The Beatles' Apple corp.

Apple Inc will now take control of the Apple trademark, licensing it back to The Beatles for use on the things they see the need to use it on.

Steve Jobs is very happy:

"We love the Beatles and it has been painful being at odds with them over these trademarks.

"It feels great to resolve this in a positive manner, and in a way that should remove the potential of further disagreements in the future."

Apple-the-label's manage Neil Aspinall is also very happy:

"It is great to put this dispute behind us and move on. The years ahead are going to be very exciting times for us.

"We wish Apple Inc every success and look forward to many years of peaceful co-operation with them."

The great thing is, everyone gets money. It's winning all round.

Shall we take a trip?

In a bid to try and drum up (no pun intended) some extra tourist visits, the English tourist board has turned out a map of the country suggesting rock landmarks you might like to visit.

It's a mixture of the screechingly obvious (The Cavern Club) - to the questionable (is it really approrpiate to suggest the place where Richey Edwards' car was found as a jolly holiday outing?). There's an enormous bias towards The Beatles, even in not-very-Beatley places like the South East. The Brighton Centre pops up in the list - for neither of its claims to fame (final appearance by Bing Crosby, last-ever Jam gig) but merely because it sometimes puts on gigs. But surely nobody would turn up at the Brighton Centre on the off-chance that there might be a band on?

Still, it's nice to think that people might pack up some sandwiches and head off to see the Uffington White Horse simply because it was on the cover of English Settlement. Although surely anyone who cares enough to do so would already know where it was?

Distilled wisdom: Brodie Dalle respins

The Distillers have called it a day, after half the band upped and went off elsewhere. Andy Granelli had relocated to Darker My Love and Ryan Sinn had found space with Angels and Airwaves, leaving Brody Dalle and Tony Bradley.

Rather than drag on under The Distillers flag of convenience, the band have topped up with Wizard A and Jon T Bonerham and are now working under the Spinnerette banner. Although that MySpace has been up since the end of October before anyone (us included) much noticed.