Record Store Day

It is, of course, Record Store Day today in the UK and elsewhere (the "elsewhere" being why it's called Store and not Shop day) - there's probably something happening near you, unless you live in Milton Keynes.

Venuewatch: Worthing Half-Brick

The Half-Brick in Worthing has closed suddenly after the landlord Bob Brookes grew tired of "rising rent and beer prices". In the short term, most of the ticketed music events are being relocated to the Empress Suite in the Conaught Lesiure Centre, but the longer term future for live music in Worthing, shorn of one of its more enthusiastic venues, looks a little bleaker.

Don Henley wants his songs back

The 2010 Senate election is now heating up in America, with Republican senate hopeful Charles DeVore getting the first major lawsuit of the campaign, as Don Henley sues him for using two songs on a YouTube video:

Mike Campbell, Henley's producer, is also named as a plaintiff in the lawsuit.

"Don Henley and Mike Campbell brought this action to protect their song, 'The Boys of Summer,' which was taken and used without their permission," Henley's spokesman said. "The infringers have vowed to continue exploiting this and other copyrighted works, as it suits them, to further their own ambitions and agenda. It was necessary to file a lawsuit to stop them."

I'll bet DeVore is cursing the party who danced attendance on music industry guys, tightening up copyright law to the point where even parents posting videos of dancing babies get take down notices, right?

"We're responding with a counter-claim, asserting our First Amendment right to political free speech," the site said. "While the legal issues play out, it's time to up the ante on Mr. Henley's liberal goon tactics. By popular request, I have penned the words to our new parody song."

Oh, yes - it's not just slapping The Boys Of Summer on the top of some videos, Grove is also enjoying himself writing skits based on his opponent's alleged desire to tax.

To be fair to Grove, his sixth-form parodies are probably better protected by US law than simply claiming using a song as a video soundtrack is "political free speech". After all, if that's a defence, couldn't all peer-to-peer users claim they were making a political statement?

I'm curious to know when "using copyright law to request an unauthorised file be removed" moved from being a vital bulwark in protecting the creative industries into "liberal goon tactics".

Gordon in the morning: The saving of Radio One?

Oh, if only this story was being carried somewhere you could believe it:

CONTROVERSIAL CHRIS MOYLES, the self-proclaimed “Saviour of Radio 1”, is on his way OUT of the station’s flagship breakfast show.

He will be axed this year after he becomes the slot’s longest-serving host in September.

Radio One, as you'd expect, express surprise at the story:

Last night a Radio 1 spokesman insisted: “We’ve no plans to take Chris off breakfast. He hosts a highly successful show.”

Well, that's pretty clear. Oh... hang on, though:

But when asked how long Chris would stay at the station, the spokesman refused to comment.

Well done, Gordon (and Simon Rothstein, who gets a joint credit) - simply because you got an unequivocal statement that - officially at least - there are no plans for Chris Moyles to leave breakfast, asking a different question entirely and not getting a response proves... um, something.

Gordon also provides a thinky-thinky piece to accompany his shock revelation:

WHEN Chris Moyles took over breakfast in 2004, the show was in terminal decline.

Was it? Really? Terminal?

And, sure, the ratings have improved under Moyles, but much of the credit for that should be taken by the increasingly rubbish commercial sector putting up less and less competition.

Zoe Ball and Sara Cox never filled the boots of Chris Evans, the best in the slot’s history.

Mark Radcliffe and Marc Riley (aka Lard) carried on but were too old for the gig. Moyles now faces the same end.

Interesting choice of words - "carried on"? Especially odd since Mark and Marc came before Zoe and Sara. And didn't they get moved not because they were "too old", but because they were too smart for the breakfast slot? After all, if their crime was being too elderly for Radio One's audience, it's surprising they thrived in the afternoon slot for so long afterwards, surely?

His brash, arrogant, no-holds-barred, bully-boy personality was the shock-jock style Radio 1 needed then. But it’s time for The Saviour to move on.

Ah, yes. Radio One really needed a bully at breakfast. Did you read that back before you hit print, Gordon?

The breakfast hotseat has a shelf life and sadly Moyles is past his sell-by date.

Sadly, we no longer need an arrogant breakfast braggart. The modern world no longer requires a honking idiot yelling at it from a position of bemusingly assumed superiority. That's bad news for this bloke:

ON MONDAY, The Sun will be launching a live phone-in show on the internet between 10am and 1pm, Monday to Friday.

Sony award winning DJ, Jon Gaunt will be fronting the show, with famous guests and regular contributions from Sun Columnists.

There's one gaping hole in the Moyles story. Smart claims that Radio One are going to ease Moyles out in September, and replace him with a "rising talent", but:

Drivetime presenter SCOTT MILLS will be asked to step in while a replacement is readied for the prized post.

If you're not dumping the current host until September, wouldn't that give you the best part of a half-year to "ready" your rising talent? Assuming the story, of course, is true.

Best Buy starts descent

The turnstile at which Circuit City handed in its ticket on a journey to extinction was, msot agree, the point at which is dumped all its loyal, knowledgeable staff and hired a bunch of cheaper people. The stores died a little inside that day, and managers who couldn't care less bred an atmosphere of defeat which hurried the chain's demise.

Capitalists never being the sort of learn from even the most recent of histories, Best Buy have decided to get rid of 1,000 of its most experienced staff and cut wages of 8,000 others. By up to fifty per cent.

The justification is "getting more people out on the shop floor" - although who Best Buy really thinks wants to be served by a demotivated and humiliated senior person busted down to sho floor level isn't entirely clear. But imagine the fun of shopping in the Magnolia Home Theater parts of the store, when the guy serving you is thinking "the amount of cash you've just spent there is equal to the pay cut I've just had forced on me." It'll be so much fun, right?

Marilyn Manson: Almost as shocking as a mid-season Skins episode

You want to know why we're nailing boards across our windows and sending the children of the village away?

Why, it's all part of the bracing before the unleashing of another Marilyn Manson record. For, surely, this time it must mark the end of society as we know it.

Oooh, Marilyn, what are you about to do?

"This is not a record that we would leave black and self-titled and mature. This is the experienced record. This album is the 12th-grade guy that has VD and did cocaine in high school, who has been arrested once and the 9th-grade girl wants to fuck him."

That's quite something. Because so far, your albums have been a mixture of the 34 year-old who still lives with his mother and has a subscription to Nuts, and a fifteen year-old boy whose rebellion takes the form of putting chewing gum in the ashtray when his older sister picks him up from Bible Class in their mum's car.

Still, Marilyn, can you make the album sound any more appealing to those who confuse badly-applied make-up with individualism?

This album left many scars

Oh, perfect.

I wrote all the lyrics on the wall of my room. It wasn't to be decorative; it was one of those things, like it's the last thing someone sees before they put them somewhere else.

That's pretty, wow, intense. Even if it does trail off meaninglessly - presumably that bit got hidden when you moved the bedside table to the other side of the bed, right?

And if anyone wants to come into this room and fornicate with me, I think they are a keeper… and when I say keeper, I mean kidnapping.

Oh, Marilyn, you are a one. It's probably just as well you've got more chance of a cow walking backwards down a rope ladder than someone wanting to visit your teenage bedroom.

Because I always wanted to take pictures, my house is set up like a movie set. Instead of lamps I have movie lights and smoke machines and things.

The guy up the road from me when I was a kid was a bit like that, too. And he had stacks of sound-effect records, too. He'd play them at dinner parties, when most people would put on mood music, so you'd wind up having conversations about whether Jim Callaghan could survive the summer to the backing of 'steam train approaching tunnel'.

"I really look at this record as a film, maybe because I sort of directed it. I stopped trying to conform regular life into the idea that it's regular life. Why isn't it all just a movie? If people are watching, they're watching me being an asshole or being boring or creating something amazing. That's just a part of the movie. It allowed me to be more creative."

And also, continued Manson, did you ever think you might be the only person and everyone is just robots or if you closed your eyes it all might disappear?

Marilyn Manson is forty years old.

Downloadable: Jarvis Cocker

Over on You Ain't No Picasso: mp3ed up and ready for listening, Angela - the first fruits of the new Jarvis Cocker album.

Something to listen to: Bootlegs

Coming up on Radio 4 tomorrow night (8pm; repeated Monday afternoon, and on the iPlayer for seven days): David Hepworth doing the Archive On 4 strand with a programme about Bootlegs.

Mobos go North

In what I'm going to be generous and put down to a well-conceived plan to raise the profile of the MOBO awards - the annual music event where prizes are given to people whose music is, in some way, black - has decided to hold its prize-giving in Glasgow this year.

Lemar - for some reason - was given the announcement to make:

"Bringing the MOBO awards here to Glasgow, a city with such a strong and vibrant music scene, is the perfect fit," the singer said. "I love touring in the UK and the welcome I receive when I come to Scotland is incredible."

That'll be why it's Glasgow, then. Because Lemar likes playing in Scotland. Similarly, the locations of the Grammy awards were fixed on using 'where would David Crosby most like to have breakfast the next morning'.

It's not because the event's partners this year are Event Scotland and Glasgow. Oh, no, no. This is nothing to do with chasing subsidy.

There's no reason why a major event should automatically be held in London, although in these straightened economic times, the London-centric music business might be a bit reluctant for people to run up expense bills traveling north for a second division event.

Pirates into prisoners: Web-round up

A quick scoop into the range of reactions to the utterly pointless prison and fine sentences handed out to the Pirate Bay team.

Rhi Jones of the Orchid Thieves, via Twitter:

they should organize a series of music festivals, cheap tickets- money to charity

(in response to Drowned In Sound's requests for appropriate community punishments in place of prison)

Mike Skinner, via Twitter
I think the attitude that music should be free is wrong and their attitude sucked. artists should be selling music but cheap

The IFPI are gurgling with delight:

John Kennedy, chairman and chief executive of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, said: "We're very pleased at the verdict of what was a very important case for us.

"It would have been very difficult to put on a brave face if we had lost, but this verdict sends a strong educational and deterrent message."

Except, of course, it doesn't - who is is deterring, exactly? The Pirate Bay is still there, still online. What is the educational message? That The Pirate Bay is there, presumably. I'm not sure the IFPI have really thought this one through - sure, there are four people in prison, but what good is it doing them?

More from John Kennedy:

“The trial of the operators of The Pirate Bay was about defending the rights of creators, confirming the illegality of the service and creating a fair environment for legal music services that respect the rights of the creative community,” says IFPI chairman and CEO John Kennedy.

“Today’s verdict is the right outcome on all three counts. The court has also handed down a strong deterrent sentence that reflects the seriousness of the crimes committed. This is good news for everyone, in Sweden and internationally, who is making a living or a business from creative activity and who needs to know their rights will protected by law.”

Hey, mister - you're a major record company spokesperson, John. You do not have any grounds to speak on behalf of all the people in the world who make a living from creative activity. Let's not let victories go to our head, eh?

The IFPI's Ludwig Werner is equally giddy:

“The criminal conviction of the Pirate Bay operators will not only hearten the music and film community – it is also a huge shot in the arm for legitimate producers and entrepreneurs, who are trying to create a thriving legitimate online business based on proper respect of copyright. The court has also understood that a criminal conviction in itself is not enough, and that if creators’ rights are going to properly protected, a deterrent sentence was needed reflecting the seriousness of the crime.”

It's a huge shot in the arm, alright. It's like a whole syringe full of smack - it might make you feel good for a bit, but it won't actually make your life any better, and when you come round you'll feel a bit worse, and still won't have any visible means of support.

From the other side, The Open Rights Group suggests the music industry might not want to be popping too much champagne:

Yes, copyright should be respected. Yes, artists need to be paid. But no: illicit copying is not the problem.

The tardiness of the music industry, who after nine years of market failure have only now began to offer alternatives like Spotify, is the problem.

As yet, industry offerings are not as digital native as P2P, with its emphasis on user contribution and decentralised distribution. So they are not as likely to succeed.

Despite that, it is easy to imagine better, more convenient tools than P2P, or new services, such as mixing features, additional exclusive content, or the opportunity to directly financially support your favourite artists.

So let’s not pretend this is a straight choice between the old, centralised recording industry model and a free for all. Consumer power must trump vested interest. That is the real verdict of the Pirate Bay trial.

Just to make a pedantic, but important, point: The music industry isn't offering Spotify. Spotify came from website people, not music people.

But Open Rights is right. The RIAA/IFPI court victory today is just polishing its massive loss. The Pirate Bay grew because the record labels were hopeless at responding to what its former consumers demanded. Getting four people thrown in prison might answer their impotent rage, but it doesn't solve their problems.

And who might be next? Jack Schofield points a finger:

Following the verdict, it will be interesting to see whether the organisations behind the case -- the International Federation of the Phonographic Industries and the Motion Picture Association of America -- will now try to get Google and YouTube into court. There is no shortage of links to copyright information on Google. There is a difference, in that linking to torrent files is a byproduct of Google's ubiquitous search strategy, rather than its purpose. Still, it would be interesting to see Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt jailed as well.

In the NME, Luke Lewis starts off at a tangent:

What is unexpected is the whopping fine: they've also been ordered to pay £2.4 million in damages to record labels.

Hang on. Wasn't The Pirate Bay's defence always that their operations didn't generate any money? The reason they were so cocky – one of them even Twittered his disdain during the courtcase, saying he found it "boring" – was that they were, in legal terms, men of straw. Sue us all you like, they argued, we have no money to give.

This fine suggests otherwise. The amount would have been settled on after an audit of The Pirate Bay's accounts. There must have been significant funds. Which means The Pirate Bay's founders were lying about their motives.

"The amount would have been settled on after an audit of The Pirate Bay's accounts"? This was a criminal trial, and fines are based on damages, not ability to pay. After all, there are numerous instances of people being told to pay damages they can't possibly afford to private copyright-holding concerns. Unless Lewis also believes that maybe those single mothers are also lying when they say they can't afford to pay thousands to the RIAA?

Breaking: Pirate Bay team jailed

BBC News is reporting that the Pirate Bay team are heading to jail:

A court in Sweden has handed down its verdict on four men behind The Pirate Bay (TPB), the world's biggest file-sharing website.

Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde were found guilty of breaking copyright law and were sentenced to a year in jail.

Mike Batt slaughtering bunnies

"How could a light that burned so brightly" pondered Mike Batt's Bright Eyes "suddenly burn so pale?"

Perhaps because they'd been shot on Mike Batt's orders.

A spokesman for Batt, 59, said the composer felt "terrible" about the shooting of the animals and hoped rabbit lovers would not criticise him.

Good luck with that, Mike.

Breaking: Pirate Bay "loses" case

Peter S Kolmisoppi has just twittered:

According to leaked information from the court we lost (got the news last night). Trustworthy source as well.

So it looks like the record companies might have got their Pyrrhic victory.

Mini Liveblog: McNicholas and Mulligan on copyright

Today are doing the Pirate Bay case with Mark Mulligan of Forrester Research and Conor McNicholas, still editor of the NME. Interestingly, nobody from a record company, or the BPI, or PRS, then.

Mulligan cautions that there's a danger in mixing lawyers and copyright - "results are unpredictable and inconvenient", effectively suggesting the best the RIAA can hope for is a useless Pyrrhic victory.

Conor keeps insisting the Pirate Bay case is like "putting your finger in a dam" - it was always a dyke when I was a kid, but I think, on balance, Conor's imagery of trying to hold back a mighty river rather than plug a gentle polder might be more apt in this case.

He suggests that internally, record companies are accepting they need new ways of handling copyright - and then runs out a brief, polished run through of why recorded music copyright is a twentieth century anomaly and doomed to vanish. Interestingly, this hasn't actually made an NME cover story, has it? I wonder if that's because it might be hard persuading record companies to take advertising around an obituary.

Mulligan then suggests that Spotify is the opposite of the Pirate Bay case, although that would imply that it's also an initiative taken by the record companies rather than just something they responded to differently.

Conor didn't have very much to do.

Straight after this feature, the business news did a piece on Record Store Day.

Very nostalgic feelings for the Zavvi

Popjustice visit the old Zavvi store on Tottenham Court Road to see what's going on there. It's now a temporary clothes shop - a shop that won't be around for long, rather than a shop which sells clothes that fall apart quite quickly. Because that would be Peacocks.

Oh, yes... and you take space in the store. Which leads Popjustice to hatch a cunning plan...

[Thanks to Matt W for the link]

Downloadable: Lee Memorial

Remember Sodastream? No, no, come back, I'm not about to cue in a YouTube video of Jamie Theakston talking about Spangles and trying to "remember" the words to the Friends theme song. The band Sodastream? Evening Session-flavoured Australian relegation-zone indie pop?

Well, Karl Smith out of Sodastream is back, back, back, doing a band called Lee Memorial. You can find out what they sound like - if you can't guess - with a download of Long Days In.

The set-up for the band is actually more intriguing than "one half of Sodastream" would suggest; former Sleater-Kinney & Popemobile drummer Laura MacFarlane is involved, which surely makes it worth a few minutes of your time to investigate?

Gordon in the morning: Creeping with The Enemy

Success hasn't changed us

- That's the announcement which leads in to the Sun's interview with The Enemy this morning.

It's true.

Other things which haven't changed The Enemy: inventing a flying car; learning to perform open-heart surgery; cradling a dying elk in their arms while angry tanker-drivers hurl insults.

The piece - by Jacqui Swift - claims to be an interview, but also has a star rating for the album at the top.

It's quite sweet, as The Enemy seem to have confused themselves with U2:

[Tom] says: “The biggest achievement is me, Liam and Andy can sit down and still have a pint with each other. We’re still mates. No one’s got an ego.”

Gordon, meanwhile, attempts some SATIRE:

POLE-dancing, PVC and dominatrix action. Sounds like a Saturday night behind closed doors for an MP.

Isn't it all leafing through John Lewis catalogues and buying houses these days, Gordon?

Still, it turns out that we're not talking about MPs at all, but plans for the Girls Aloud tour. Oddly, although Gordon suggests that pole-dancing, PVC and dominiatrixes would be wrong and bad if enjoyed by an MP, he doesn't seem to have a problem with it as part of a family entertainment.

It’s with great pleasure I bring you the news that the foxy five have been taking secret lessons in pole dancing for their Out Of Control tour, which kicks off next Friday at Manchester’s MEN Arena.

Hang about, though, that's pole-dancing "behind closed doors", isn't it?

I’m told: “The girls have been taking tips from some of the best pole dancers in the business to put together a really naughty dance routine for their song Fix Me Up.

“Each of the girls has their own podium-mounted pole to show off their skills and costumes. It’s jaw-dropping stuff.”

Yes. Yes, it's jaw-dropping alright. Or, at least, enough to make you bury your head in your hands.

For Gordon, there's nothing better than the idea of women pole-dancing. Well, almost nothing better. You've gone a bit misty eyed, there, mate - what were you thinking about?

I wonder if they had a spare gimp mask left over for her hubby ASHLEY COLE?

Perhaps if you ask nicely, Gordon.

Roxette return, possibly

It's surprising the bands you never even noticed had split up. Roxette, for example. They'd split. I don't know, I guess if I'd thought about it, I might have thought they were doing cabaret somewhere, or tromping round whatever the Swedish equivalent of the Butlins-Pontins circuit is.

But, no, they'd split. But they're getting back together. Vaguely:

[Per] says, “I think we will do that, one way or another, maybe not touring but one way or another I think we’re going to do something together. I don’t know when, but I can’t really see any reason why not. Maybe not touring but one way or another I think we’re going to do something together. It’s just a matter of what Marie feels comfortable with and what I’m doing at the moment, so I keep my fingers crossed.”

It may, I suspect, not be touring. But he might, from that, just have dinner and a movie in mind.

Brand valued at TalkSport

Understandably, TalkSport are all thrilled at the idea of Russell Brand and Noel Gallagher popping up on the TalkSport radio to talk about sport. Very, very excited indeed:
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"They are global names," [says TalkSport's Moz] Dee. "He is a Hollywood movie star and Noel belongs to the biggest band in the world. They will bring a level of notoriety to wherever they go. But it wouldn't work if they weren't genuinely passionate about sport and about football.

The first half of that sounds a little bit like a pitch for a Hollywood rom-com, doesn't it? "He was a Hollywood movie star... he was a rock star. But when they came together, it was the perfect kick-off..."

Still, it's nice to see Dee is an equal-opportunities hyperboliser - one middling hit does not a Hollywood movie star make, any more than the largely-ignored-by-America Oasis count as the biggest band in the world.

Sent Home(coming) without pay

The slightly provocatively bylined "Scotland's music festival" that was to have been Homecoming is off. And not simply because of T In The Park saying "I'm sorry, what?"

No, money is at the heart of the cancellation, as so often is the case:

OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT

It is with great regret that organisers of the Homecoming festival have announced that this year’s event has been cancelled.

This is due to new demands from the council requesting 50% of the profits and a £60,000 bond on the land.

All ticket holders will be entitled to a full refund, and arrangements are currently being made to organise new venues and dates for some of the artists that were scheduled to perform at Homecoming 09.

More details will be revealed as soon as possible.

The website still claims that "tickets are selling fast", which suggests there must be a surprising number of people who pursue refunds for fun and entertainment value alone.

The council would be North Ayrshire, who somehow neglected to mention these demands when announcing the licence for the event.

The festival was to be part of the big Homecoming Year being held in Scotland throughout 2009, which is in no way an attempt to persuade American tourists to visit by telling them that they're probably just as entitled to wear tartan as anybody else.

Regina Spektor:

Good news: Assuming it doesn't leak online and have its launch date brought forward, Regina Spektor's new album will be with us on June 23rd [US release date]. There's going to be a "world" tour in support, or at least a tour of parts of the world.

Gordon in the morning: Everyone is on teh drucks

Oh, what larks: a recording session supposedly featuring Amy Winehouse and Snoop Dogg went, predictably, nowhere and Gordon knows why.

They were all on the drugs.

AMY WINEHOUSE isn’t shy of herbal refreshments and SNOOP DOGG has built his career on smoking industrial-strength marijuana.

Gordon's view of drugs apparently was formed when he was a student, and hasn't shifted much since:

So when the two teamed up in the studio, mountains of Monster Munch were eaten... but not a great deal of music was laid down.

This all took place last year, but presumably the dude who told Gordon had, like, totally forgotten all about it.

Oh, and this is your headline on drugs:

Amy's tracks pawsed

Gordon does know he's not an actual dog, right?

Also in this morning's Bizarre is a piece by Sara Nathan, which turns the question of elective caesarean into, well, a spectator sport:

PREGNANT COLEEN ROONEY is planning a Caesarean birth for her baby, so hubby WAYNE can play for England in a key World Cup qualifier.
[...]
Now pals have revealed that excited Coleen has consulted doctors about having a Caesarean in late September. That would allow Man Utd ace Wayne, 23, to witness the birth and help care for their tot in its earliest days before joining his countrymen for the crunch match.

The excellent Tabloid Lies already spent some time this week explaining why the match isn't actually a crunch match at all.

What makes this story worse though is Nathan then goes on to gibber:

“Pregnancy is a miracle, but it’s still the early stages. I really want to be able to keep as quiet and calm as possible for the sake of our baby.”

... and what could be a better way to help with that than by speculating on the delivery method and linking it, falsely, to if England will qualify for the World Cup or not?

But, since you mention it:

The couple, jointly worth £30million, do not yet know the sex of their child.

But friends say they have joked that they will choose James if it turns out to be a boy — because they think the baby was conceived after their 007-themed bash on New Year’s Eve.

Really? Only if the baby was conceived on New Year's Eve, Sara, wouldn't Colleen's due date be the 23rd September, making it almost impossible that the baby wouldn't have been delivered long before the match? And rendering your story a bit pointless?

UK Zune soon?

Probably not, but that's not stopped everyone getting excited by the prospect of a new look Zune (or, more accurately, a Zune that desperately wants to be an iPod Touch), and even more rumours that it might actually be sold in places other than America and Canada. These rumours, of course, clash with the other rumours of an imminent demise of Zune as a brand. It wouldn't be entirely impossible for Microsoft's Zune division to be pushing ahead with expansion plans even as another part of the corporation is drawing up plans for liquidation, so you could quite happily choose to believe both of these claims.

Leonard Cohen to play car park of some sort

What the hell is Mercedes-Benz World, then? It is, as the name suggests, exactly what you'd expect:

As the flagship of Mercedes-Benz in the UK, and located on the famous Brooklands site, Mercedes-Benz World is a memorable day out for any motoring fan.

Not only can you get hands-on with all our cars; you can take the opportunity to test drive the latest models around the handling circuit, or put both the car and your driving skills to the test with one of our various Driving Experiences.

And although driving is our first passion, it's not all we have to offer. Inside, you can take a walk around the exhibitions and get up close to the famous Gullwing and Maybach. In the cinema, you can learn about the history of the Mercedes-Benz brand; and in the simulator you'll be transported down a production line.

It's like a big car lot, then.

A strange choice of venue, then, for an open-air Leonard Cohen gig, you might think. Pity it's too late for Frank Butcher to be MC.

Kevin Shields invites you to a Christmas party

This year's Nightmare Before Christmas is in the control of Kevin Shields, who has wasted no time in booking some acts, including Sonic Youth and, somewhat more puzzlingly, De La Soul.

Although given their 'splitting the audience into bits and getting them to sing against each other' schtick, perhaps a holiday camp is just the right stage for La Soul.

The Horrors, too, are rewarded for having attempted to pass themselves off as the Telescopes by getting a slot, too, which means they're going to have to keep it up until December.

MySpace Music UK still on its way, promises MySpace

During the easter track smackdown thingy, I was asked why MySpace Music wasn't one of the services. The short answer would have been that, with MySpace Music UK yet to launch, it didn't seem fair to test them.

But that does raise a question: Where is MySpace's UK version of its much touted save-the-house Music service?

Still very much in the future, apparently:

Courtney Holt, president of MySpace Music, distanced himself from steps which had been taken before his arrival in January but admitted the social network may have jumped the gun and approached partners too early.

"I'm working on trying to make sense of a business that existed as a bunch of features," he said. "So we went silent while we brought in the right people. Perhaps we launched the business before we had the key stakeholders in place internally."

You launched before having internal people in place? Wow. That's quite a surprising approach.

Could you perhaps offer up some more gnomic insight, though, Mr Holt:

"Most of the steps on the label side have been dealt with," he said. "We've taken active steps for international expansion. The product side is global so we've done the work for the core offering wherever we go."

What he means it there's a template that they can use. Which, when you're at least a month behind your original schedule, is a quite a weak point to be clinging to - right up there with "well, she hasn't actually yet taken out a court order" in finding cold comfort.

Jacko auction axed

The on-off-on-off Michael Jackson stuff auction is now, ooh, off, what with all the lawsuit business and so on.

To an outside eye, it would appear that Jackson was going to flog all this stuff when he needed the money, but now he's shaken down people for O2 tickets, he's decided to keep his tat:

Jackson's manager, Dr Tohme Tohme, said the auction had only come about after a significant misunderstanding. "It was his personal property. It was never supposed to be sold."

It's so simple to arrange a ten million dollar auction on a misunderstanding, isn't it? Used to happen on Terry And June a lot, with the episode generally ending on Sir Dennis barking "Medford! I distinctly said wine and dine the Japanese client, not arrange for my belongings to be sold to the highest bidder!"

How great is it that Jackson is now being managed by a man named in honour of the Chuckle Brothers, by the way?

Gordon in the morning: National pride

The BPI's press release trumpeting that the UK has a small but growing market share in US recorded music sees Gordon coming over all proud:

Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the airwaves...

Yes. Really.

AMERICA is in the grip of a second British invasion.

Third, if you count the time we stole large swathes of the land, killed all the buffalo and then killed most of the people who lived there.

New data from the British Phonographic Industry shows British acts’ sales have surged in the past year, making us punch far above our modest size in the huge market.

Really? Surged, you say?

UK acts now account for a whopping one in ten records sold in North America.

Oh, yes - that's more than French acts, German acts, Dutch, Eritrean and Gabonese acts put together.

But since the UK population is one-fifth the size of that of the UK, surely selling one-tenth the number of records is actually punching below our weight? Especially when you consider that we have the advantage of a shared language, and the major companies selling recorded music are the same both sides of the Atlantic.

Still, tell us about the surge:

And 2008 saw our share of the multi-billion-dollar American scene leap 1.5 per cent.

So, for every £100 worth of records we sold in 2007, we're now selling £101.50 worth?

That's not really a surge, is it? That's an upwards trickle.

And it does also mean you have to pretend that all of AC-DC is a UK act to make the figures work.

And it's not really even £101.50 records to every £100, as none of this takes account of the fall in the value of the US market.

Still, "British artists sales fall less quickly than US artists" isn't the sort of headline you'd whip out the Union Jack bunting for, is it?

Gordon, meanwhile, is cross because the numbers don't exist to prove that Leona Lewis and Coldplay are better than The Beatles and The Stones:

No reliable sales data was produced at the time, but my insider at the BPI tells me they suspect today’s artists have had a bigger impact.

His "insider" at the BPI, that would be. Yes, the BPI - the body which is paid by the major labels to make them look good - is apparently leaking details which make the major labels look good (if you don't think about it). Gordon, it's fine to actually gather news from people who want to be quoted.

So, secret strictly off-the-record briefing insider, tell us more:

The source said: “It’s frustrating because the US recording industry has not kept the correct data from the time to prove it conclusively.

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“But we’re certain British pop music is having more of an impact in America now than it has ever done.

“It’s a huge feat to get to ten per cent because the US record-buying public are notoriously insular in their tastes and often resistant to imports.”

Actually, given that the British music industry are allowing quotes to appear in the UK press effectively telling Americans that they stick to their own, maybe there was good reason for not revealing names. Really, BPI, you think that's the way to talk about your biggest overseas market?

It's not even true, is it? Not especially, and certainly not amongst Americans who buy lots of music.

Still, there is tiny evidence of a Bizarre Invasion into the US - some old tat about Mel Gibson's marriage is, I think, Pete Samson's first major appearance on Bizarre since he quit being Gordon's deputy in favour of the plush Sun US editor's job.

Want to buy a second hand brand, slightly damaged?

Given that Circuit City was a hole long before it closed all its stores, you might wonder who would be interested in buying the name and the brand. Systemax, apparently. That's the same people who picked up the CompUSA brand when that chain crashed, and have since been gingerly reopening stores under the name.

Which must annoy them that most empty Comp USAs still have their lights on at night, which means their expensive brand gets eroded a little bit each time someone drives by.

Still, they're quite keen to take on the values of Circuit City, too. It's probably given Systemax's interests in electronics they won't be overly bothered by the chain's CD business.

We7 gives away Depeche Mode previews

The last Depeche Mode album was a surprising return-to-importance, so there's high hopes around the new one. If you want to know what Sounds Of The Universe sounds like, NME and we7 have hooked up to poke the sound to you through a widget. (Although, strictly speaking, if it's embedded in a page and can't be moved or borrowed or copied, it's not really a widget.)

Spoitfy are also streaming the album, but only to premium users. So, that's five points to Spotify and ten to... oh, hang on; we're not doing that at the moment, are we?