Emerson resurgent

"Hang about... why are we paying Keith double?"

Emerson downgraded

"Keith, we're not going to make you leave the band. But..."

This week just gone

Last week's interesting releases:


Jack & Amanda Palmer - You Got Me Singing

Download Oddments Of The Gamble



Nonkeen - Oddments Of The Gamble

Download Oddments Of The Gamble



Various - Eleven Into Fifteen

Download Eleven Into Fifteen

The Stones distance themselves from Trump

You can't always get what you want
You can't always get what you want
You can't always get what you want
But if you try sometimes
You might just find
You've used something you had no right to in the first place

The Rolling Stones do not endorse Donald Trump. You Can't Always Get What You Want was used without the band's permission.

— The Rolling Stones (@RollingStones) July 22, 2016

What the pop papers say: New life through Brexit

Yeah, we've all been wondering what the point of the NME actually is since it went free - but, over the last couple of weeks, it's started to look like the magazine might have found a purpose.

Unfortunately, it's the decision to leave Europe taken in the referendum. Obviously, given a choice between the death of the NME and the death of the European Dream, we'd plump for saving the one with the Ode To Joy soundtrack over the one parping out the Be Here Now re-release.

Still, it's great to see the NME with a little fire back in its belly. This week's issue is part-cri de cœur, part call to arms - a how-to-cope with the new reality. The advice is, to be honest, the sort of thing that Tumblr users have been sharing for the last month anyway - join a party; "trust your generation", write to your MP. The NME isn't suggesting we build barricades or stockpile molotovs.

In fact, it genuinely suggests sorting out your saving account and thinking about getting together a deposit for a house.

And if that isn't enough to give the sense that this is your Dad trying to help you out, there's the way the issue is presented: The cover line is "Anarchy In The UK".

It's a coverline that doesn't make any sense in its own right - why would a magazine talking about anarchy be promoting savings accounts and political party memberships?

But worse, it's slapping a lazy, Summer of '77 model onto 2016. Is that really the best we can do? The answer to Farage and May is Rotten and McClaren? It's not like the NME responded to the rise of Thatcher with calls for a revival of the Blitz spirit, although the time gap is the same.

So, yes: two cheers that the NME has got a cause, and that it's fighting a good fight. But what it desperately lacks is a way to connect cause to culture. If it can find whatever The Clash would be if they formed this year, it might come together.

Bob Geldof doesn't like your clothes

Bob Geldof. Remember when he was a punk?

He almost certainly doesn't.

Bob Geldof upset fans at a festival when he launched into a rant about Brexit and wearing clothes from Primark.https://t.co/E4QZHcPmX7

— Channel 4 News (@Channel4News) July 22, 2016

There's something touching about Bob Geldof, a 64 year-old multimillionaire, instructing people how they should dress for a "rock and roll concert", as if he was Billy Fury in his pomp.

Suicideobit: Alan Vega

As 2016 continues to cut a swathe through the talented, another name to add to the list: Alan Vega has died.

The family issued a statement via Henry Rollins' website. Which is way more stylish than announcing it via Facebook:

Hello. Henry here. I am afraid I have some unfortunate news. Below is the family approved statement.

We will have a special show tomorrow on KCRW, celebrating the great man’s work. Thank you for reading and thank you for respecting the family’s privacy at this difficult time.

July 17 1618 Hrs. PST

With profound sadness and a stillness that only news like this can bring, we regret to inform you that the great artist and creative force, Alan Vega has passed away.

Alan passed peacefully in his sleep last night, July 16. He was 78 years of age.

Alan was not only relentlessly creative, writing music and painting until the end, he was also startlingly unique. Along with Martin Rev, in the early 1970’s, they formed the two person avant band known as Suicide. Almost immediately, their incredible and unclassifiable music went against every possible grain. Their confrontational live performances, light-years before Punk Rock, are the stuff of legend. Their first, self-titled album is one of the single most challenging and noteworthy achievements in American music.

Alan Vega was the quintessential artist on every imaginable level. His entire life was devoted to outputting what his vision commanded of him.

One of the greatest aspects of Alan Vega was his unflinching adherence to the demands of his art. He only did what he wanted. Simply put, he lived to create. After decades of constant output, the world seemed to catch up with Alan and he was acknowledged as the groundbreaking creative individual he had been from the very start.

Alan’s life is a lesson of what it is to truly live for art. The work, the incredible amount of time required, the courage to keep seeing it and the strength to bring it forth—this was Alan Vega.

Alan is survived by his amazing family, wife Liz and son Dante. His incredible body of work, spanning five decades, will be with us forever.

Last year, Rollins, Vega and Martin Rev took part in an In Conversation event, where the time Suicide played with The Clash in Glasgow came up:

MR: The Clash was a riot every single night and that was straight after supporting Elvis Costello, which was also a riot every single night on the continent. But The Clash was a UK tour, the climax of which was Glasgow. And, as probably many of you know - or know from your parents - at that point Glasgow was one of the poorest cities in the world, if not the poorest. They said, ‘If you can survive Glasgow, you can survive anything’ and they were right. It was a riot. Hatchets were thrown.

AV: It’s true!

MR: We found it embedded in a bass drum; an actual hatchet. A fucking axe head.

AV: They threw an axe at me! They threw an axe at me!

Elizabeth Lamere: And nobody believed you… [LAUGHS]

MR: The money that was thrown could be lethal, too. For the guys who cleaned up afterwards it was pretty good though…

AV: See, we started with The Specials. Two bands opened on that Clash tour. I liked them by the way... they were all fucked up [LAUGHS]. They were great, really great. So they got The Specials and then out comes Suicide and it was ‘BOOOO!!! BOOOOO!!!’ We got booed to shit and had to work our way up from there… upwards, or sideways or downwards. I don’t even know. And The Clash were great and always on the drum riser before the show. I loved them.

MR: But you have to remember that The Clash got the same thing. It was the height of punk, so to show your affection you used to spit and throw things. The Clash went on and if you were watching the band - and that was the band that everybody had paid to see - you saw all kinds of shit. And Glasgow was hardcore. Very serious.

AV: But at the front was a bunch of fucking Nazis. Every kind of available filth in the world. And at the back were the poor guys who liked rock & roll and they were exquisite. Go to the back!

MR: And they were fighting each other. The punks, the nazis and the skinheads. They all had their own personal thing. The only unifying factor was that they all hated us.

Here's the band playing without a hail of phlegm and tanners. Wonderfully, it's not clear exactly when and the poster doesn't seem sure if its CBGBs or Max's in Kansas City.

This week just gone

Out a week ago now:


The Julie Ruin - Hit Reset

Download Hit Reset



Shura - Nothing's Real

Download Nothing's Real



Roisin Murphy - Take Her Up To Monto

Download Take Her Up To Monto



Avalanches - Wildflower

Download Wildflowers



The Amorettes - White Hot Heat

Download White Hot Heat

Bookmarks: Bow Wow Wow

Louder Than Bombs has caught up with Annabella Lwin, who you'll recall as the thirteen year-old McLaren bounced to the front of Bow Wow Wow:

Well I tweet here and there…I don’t know if I’m an official tweeter. I’m excited to be part of a new generation. A lot has changed obviously. It’s a good thing. It just keeps evolving. There’s an old saying, I don’t know where it came from, but it’s “Don’t put your daughter on the stage Mrs. Worthington”, and that’s when i kind of realized what that meant, through all these years. going from being a novice, to being in a band, to doing what I do now actually.

It definitely is not what it used to be when I started out. I think it’s become more homogenized. I don’t know if music is going to get better or worse, let’s put it that way. Everybody’s doing music in their living room now. The Reality TV world, they tried to look behind the door like “The Wizard of Oz”, but it’s a bit of a disappointment, isn’t it?

Punk's not dicks: Viv Albertine unerases the women

There's a punk exhibition at the British Library right now. You might think it perhaps curious that an anti-establishment movement is being celebrated by the establishment, but the process of assimilation has ensured that a familiar narrative has been smoothed over the spikes of punk.

Not least that women have been dropped from the narrative. Viv Albertine - at the library for an event to mark the exhibition - wasn't having that...

At her talk last night @viv_albertine was so incensed at the exhibition signage's female erasure she amended it 👌👏 pic.twitter.com/x0LD2uem7F

— Gareth Ware (@musicismyradar) July 15, 2016

Update: it turns out it wasn't Viv who did it:

@laurasnapes actually she didn't: a young woman came up to us and announced she'd done it

— Jon Savage (@JonSavage1966) July 16, 2016

Update: it turns out it was Viv who did it:

@JonSavage1966 @laurasnapes - I did do it

— Viv Albertine (@viv_albertine) July 16, 2016

So, erm, hope that's clear.

Bookmarks: Simon Scott

Headphone Commute have caught up with sound artist (and Slowdive drummer) Simon Scott, and takes a peek at his kit:

Can you please share some aspects of sound design in your work?
I always begin by using a field recordings to compose and create. Since 2010 it’s been consistently The Fens in Cambridgeshire where I’m surrounded by a subterranean landscape that fascinates me, and I generally work with these audio segments in MaxMSP. It’s endless in terms of compositional possibility so I’ve stuck to The Fens as a sound source and I actually don’t want too many options so I haven’t started using some of my field recordings from further afield yet. Right now I like the framework I’ve built for myself in Max and the limitations of just using environmental recordings from my small corner of the world, but I sometimes do need to simply just compose if I am working on a score or other project that isn’t a solo record.

Buskers beat the Metro ban

Busker in Washington, DC, have had a tough time of it in the last couple of years. Transit police have been moving them on from their pitches with more-than-required firmness.

Also more than legal firmness, too. Alex Young had already faced down the Metro transit authority and had the courts put a stop to the practice; this week he went back to court and won his costs. Which by that time, had got up to USD50,000.

The Metro had made things worse for themselves by trying to argue down the costs:

Jeffrey Louis Light, a private civil rights attorney who represented Young in conjunction with the Rutherford Institute, a Charlottesville group that advocates for civil liberties, said Metro’s decision to contest the fees increased them by about $20,000 as the issue was drawn out in court.

“They’re a business,” said Light, who will take home $33,447.10 in the case at hourly rates of up to $661. “They need to make sensible business decisions. This is not one of them.”

Jeffrey had a further burn for the transportation authority:

“They spent time arguing over whether this guy should have his guitar case open, and for what?” he said.

The head of the Metro, Paul J. Wiedefeld, is currently learning the chords from The Boxer in order to cover the costs.

Mensch & Murdoch turn Bataclan into terrorporn

When terrible things happen to people, it's not unusual for the authorities to withhold some of the worst details. It's done out of respect for the dead, and out of concern for their families.

So it was with the slaughter in the Bataclan - the public was told of the murder; the bestial nature of what happened inside the venue was alluded to. But the fine detail - the horrific fine detail - wasn't made public.

There was no need - if you felt you required something more than 'people murdered because they were at a gig' before you felt it was unacceptable, before you were horrified, you might have a problem yourself.

At this point, enter Heat St. You probably haven't heard of Heat St - it's Rupert Murdoch's version of the Drudge Report, with Louise Mensch as the drudge.

You might wonder why, with a media empire stretching from the Wall Street Journal in the first circle down to The Sun and Fox News in the seventh needs a tattle-based website. It looks like the main motivation is a way to get "things" "out there" without tarnishing his mainstream brands.

And, yeah, if it's something that could tarnish a brand like the New York Post, you can imagine the sort of content they're publishing.

Hence, it was the natural home for an "exclusive" detailing what happened to people inside the Bataclan. Doubtless, Mensch and Murdoch would defend the publication in some vague 'it is important to know what we are dealing with'.

And it is.

But who didn't already know? Why hadn't already imagined the detail? Where is the audience going 'when I thought it was just shooting the people sitting in the area reserved for the disabled and laughing, I was going to cut ISIS some slack but this feels like they went too far?'

There's nobody who needs this terrorporn.

It's funny that the sort of people who wail 'you're playing into their hands' when the BBC forget to add "so-called" in front of "Islamic State" are quite happy to re-up ISIS propaganda and to burnish their reputation when it might get a few extra clicks for a website.

There are monsters everywhere. Why would you work with them?

This week just gone

Most-read things in the first half of the year:

1. Liveblog: The Brits
2. Record Shop Day brings about The Avalanche's closure
3. Half Man Half Biscuit cycle trip
4. Liveblog: Eurovision
5. James Blunt tries to say the right thing
6. David Cameron's Rita Ora briefings
7. Russia aren't happy about Eurovision
8. Radio X listeners love Oasis
9. Illness causes Prince to break a journey
10. Beyonce makes the right wingers' heads hurt


New releases:


Garbage - Strange Little Birds

Download Strange Little Birds



Various - C87



Shawn Colvin & Steve Earle - Colvin & Earle

Download Colvin & Earle

Franz Ferdinand: Walk away, walk away

Nick McCarthy, who was with Franz Ferdinand before anyone had heard of them, and was still with them now people don't remember them, has quit the band. There was an official statement on Facebook, which explained Nick wanted to spend more time with his family.

The conclusion was amusing:

We'd love to say this is a result of personal or musical differences, but it's not. Those differences are what we formed the band around in the first place.

Bring Me The Horizon, and peel me a grape

What would the festival season be without a few squabbles round the back of the VIP area?

So lets drop by Spain's Resurrection Fest - imagine Download, if it was somewhere warm and less picky about the bill.

There, Ben Baker - once of Minor Threat and currently part of Bad Religion - spotted something backstage.

I'm going to stop these people every time I see them today and tell them how much their band sucks

A photo posted by Brian Baker (@brianbakers) on Jul 7, 2016 at 4:05am PDT

There is something quite cute about Bring Me The Horizon deciding that they're important enough to not need to show passes, but being self-aware enough to know that most people couldn't pick them out of a police line-up, even if the rest of the line-up consisted of drawings of Andrea Leadsom.

They, though, weren't happy. Brooklyn Vegan reports they responded grumpily:

Matt commented on the Instagram:
Hahah I can’t imagine being as old as you are and still acting like a 14 year old girl. Saw you at least 10 times and you didn’t bat an eye lid. You got bigger things to worry about nowadays anyway, like ya pension, or cold weather. Dickhead.

Oli added, “Yeah we are not your enemy, winter is your enemy.”

Here's a pro-tip: if you're going to attack someone for being old, probably don't do it in a way that allows your target to smile patronisingly at you, pat you on the head, and say "oh, you poor child":

It seems you’ve missed the point entirely. The issue here is entitlement. My post was a comment on your collective delusion that working local crew at a thirty band festival should be required to memorize your faces to spare you the indignity of breaking stride on the way to your backstage oasis or even worse, the humiliation of carrying credentials. Your literal display of arrogance (and the hilariously unrecognized irony within it) was what I was sharing with my followers. I honestly don’t know if your music is bad or good – it’s not for old people! I meant that you suck as humans. Sorry for the confusion.

We can help you on the music point, Brian. It's not for any people.

In these strange times, we need Lily Allen

Long-term readers of No Rock will know that I've never been Lily Allen's biggest fan. But we live in strange days, and she's pretty much made herself invaluable over the last couple of weeks.

In fact, her delightful sharing of Rupert Murdoch, Nigel Farage, and the now-defunct Liam Fox having fun at a barbecue is one of the delights of the summer so far:

I'm at a garden party. Hope I'm not sitting next to Voldemort or Fromage. I might be sick pic.twitter.com/ILsuu6kDPM

— lily (@lilyallen) July 3, 2016

Liam fox , Murdoch and Farage , breaking bread here. pic.twitter.com/wxY5mZquBb

— lily (@lilyallen) July 3, 2016

Apparently some of the guests tutted that Allen would post these images, but she had a really great riposte for that, too:

Allen also said that other guests at the party had told her she should not post pictures or videos of Murdoch. “His publications have been making money from publishing pictures of me, though,” she said.

Steve Brookstein joins the Brexit debate

Sorry, Steve, did you have something to say?

The irony is Conservative women have less hang ups about sex than Labour women. Generally speaking. #MarkSteel

— Steve Brookstein (@stevebrookstein) July 2, 2016

Let's just pause for a moment and be impressed that Steve is using both "irony" and "less" incorrectly, almost as if he was trying to flush pedants out of a hedgerow.

How do you know this, Steve? Do you run a YouGov poll on anyone you might have sex with? Or have you gathered this knowledge slowly over the years - "she was willing to break out the nipple clamps and espoused a Friedmanite approach to the money supply. That happens so often."

Funkobit: Bernie Worrell

Bernie Worrell, co-founder of Funkadelic and Parliament, has died.

As The Guardian's obituary observes, in effect he was paid in exposure:

Worrell’s contributions as a keyboardist, writer and arranger didn’t bring him a lot of money, the source of much legal action and fierce criticism of Clinton, but fellow musicians paid attention.

As a result, when he was fighting cancer it took a fundraiser to help cover his medical expensese. Although it was a pretty impressive fundraiser.

He had a varied career - he was part of the band featured in Rikki And The Flash, the so-so Meryl Streep movie; he played with Talking Heads during their imperial phase. And, perhaps less magnificently, he was part of Buckethead's post-Guns N Roses existence:

Worrell had been inspired to take up the synth by Emerson, Lake And Palmer. From a Passion of the Weiss interview last year:

I have to say when I was in college at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. I had an Emerson, Lake & Palmer [album]. That’s when I first heard the Moog synthesizer.

It tickled my fancy. That was a big one. [Note: Emerson played an enormous Moog modular synth.] After joining P-Funk, they came out with the Minimoog, which is the granddaddy after the one that Keith Emerson [played]. I bought one, and then came “Flash Light.” And “One Nation” bass line, that’s a Minimoog. Bass line on “Aqua Boogie,” that’s a Minimoog. There’s actually three Minimoogs on “Flash Light.” Everybody gravitates towards the bass line, but there’s two more doing cartoon voices.

With Worrell so influential on black music, this does mean that Emerson, Lake & Palmer are legitimately one of the founding forces of hip-hop. Kind of.

Leave will screw the music industry, too

While as a nation we try to come to terms with just how self-defeating half of our compatriots are, you might be wondering what it means for music.

Before the vote, Pitchfork warned that it would probably be bad:

British media coverage of EU funding trains a negative focus on all the so-called red tape you have to endure to access it. But there are endless EU programs that benefit the music industry, which Britain excels at securing: In 2012, UK applications (in general, not just for music) had a 46 percent success rate, almost double the average success rate of 24 percent. If the UK leaves the EU, in all likelihood, that funding will no longer be available. The benefits of this money are vast, wide-reaching, and often not obvious to the public. The Village Underground, a well-appointed, 1000-capacity warehouse venue in east London, currently benefits from two EU programs. Liveurope pays them to host emerging European bands support slots on bigger bills, giving these acts the chance to get out of their own countries, and prompting venues to have a more diverse program. Creative Lenses is a four-year investigation into new business models for the cultural sector.

The BPI issued a statement:

“The outcome of the EU Referendum will come as a surprise to many across the music community, who will be concerned by the economic uncertainty that lies ahead and the impact this may have on business prospects.
"However, the UK public has spoken, and once the short-term political and macro-economic consequences have played out, this decision will mean new priorities for the music industry in our work with Government. We will, of course, press the Government to swiftly negotiate trade deals that will ensure unimpeded access to EU markets for our music and our touring artists. Our Government will also now have the opportunity to legislate for stronger domestic copyright rules that encourage investment here in the UK and which will protect UK creators from piracy and from tech platforms siphoning off value through copyright loopholes. We are confident that British music will remain hugely popular across Europe and we will work hard to make sure UK labels are able to capitalise on that demand.”

Half Man Half Biscuit: Ride away

This may be the best thing You And Yours has ever broadcast: A Half Man Half Biscuit cycle trip

Blissobit: Prince Be

Attrell Cordes, better known as PM Dawn's Prince Be, has died.

A Facebook post from Doc G confirmed the news earlier today:



Prince Be has unwell for some time - Doc G spoke to The Stranger in 2011 as he took on the PM Dawn mantle, and wasn't ruling out a return to stage:

I don't know if he'll ever be able to join me again. Prince Be is doing his best to try and get back his health. I think the death of Nate Dogg woke him up. He was slacking a bit. I don't know if Nate had diabetes, but, you know, the strokes... Prince Be can still sing a bit, but he has paralysis in his right hand and it's a little tough. I wish I had the funds for a portable dialysis machine. We'd go on the road. I have this whole vision to get him back out there. I actually had an idea of putting him in a wheelchair and dressing him up like a Utopian Professor X.

Prince Be was American, but PM Dawn wouldn't have been PM Dawn without Britain.

When Be was six, his dad gave him a record by Donovan - and you can see the influence of Donovan's lyrics and worldview on the candy, universal outlook of PM Dawn. More crucially, when the band couldn't catch a cold in the US, the UK liked Ode to a Forgetful Mind to earn the band a deal with an offshoot of Island Records. Prince Be relocated to London, explaining why to the LA Times in 1991:

That spiritual orientation of the late '60s, stressing peace, love and equality, permeates Prince Be's views. He said he even moved to London recently because he finds the atmosphere there less stressful than on the East Coast.

"You can hear the difference in the songs that were written over there," he said in another interview recently. "New York is really stressed out so the songs I write (there) are really morbid. London, though, is (as) if you took New York's fire and poured water on it, so you still have the embers."

But Prince Be also found Britain to be more comfortable on a social level:

"They're not so race conscious over there. They understand me better. It's a shame but it's hard being black and spiritual in this country."

You'll see Prince Be described as an optimist in many places over the web; there can surely be no better proof of his optimism than a man who moved to John Major's England because it felt like a Shangri-La.

EMI: Hands handed arse; tries to save face

It's been a while since we heard about Guy Hands, the man who borrowed large sums of cash to buy EMI and then discovered he wasn't very good at running a record label.

He's been in court this week, trying to blame his failures at EMI on CitiGroup, in a legal case which was basically Hands' Terra Firma going "waah waah, why didn't they tell us".

The fraud case was supposed to last into July - rather like Euro 2016 - but ended somewhat abruptly with a humiliating defeat - rather like England's Euro 2016.

Hands climbed down:

“Terra Firma confirms it unreservedly withdraws its allegations of fraud,” David Wolfson – standing in for lead QC Anthony Grabiner – told the hastily convened court. Terra Firma will also pay the costs of the US bank, likely to run into millions of pounds.

Hands, who had been claiming at least £1.5bn from Citi, had been questioned by the bank’s lawyer for the previous two days, and his evidence had been expected to last into next week. He had faced repeated questions about his recollection of events in 2007 when Terra Firma took over EMI just before the credit crunch and had been accused of having a “hazy memory”.

At one stage during his questioning of Hands, Mark Howard QC, representing Citi, said: “The problem is, Mr Hands, your story is shifting and it is impossible to reconcile these different versions.”

Much as EMI had relied on releasing poorly-conceived best of 'special edition' collections, Hands was trying to sell a bunch of remixes of old material, but the court wasn't really buying.

His case having crumbled underneath him, Hands was left trying to whistle a brave tune:

Hands, who was not in court, said the latest claim had been brought in good faith. “However, it has become evident that our documentation of the fast-moving and complex events, and memories of these events after nine years, are no longer sufficient to meet the high demands of proof required for a fraud claim in court,” he said.

“The matter is now closed,” said Hands, saying that the Terra Firma business he founded in 2003 was looking to the future. “We have an exciting portfolio of companies, a talented and experienced team, supportive and loyal investors and €1bn of capital to invest,” he said.

It's funny, isn't it, that he hadn't noticed he couldn't remember all that "fast-moving" stuff until he'd been taken to pieces on the stand.

And while Hands might believe the matter is closed, that isn't entirely true. Terra Firma have agreed to pick up all of Citi's costs. That Billion of capital might be whittled down a bit in the coming weeks.

To be alive at this time

Fighting for scraps on the edge of fame:

Real Housewives Of Cheshire star Dawn Ward found guilty of assaulting pop star Sinitta

Justice has been done, though:

Dawn, a cast member of the ITVBe series, stood quietly in the dock as District Judge Elizabeth Roscoe told her that she would be bound over in the sum of £500 for three months and ordered her to keep the peace and be of good behaviour. No costs were awarded.

ITV Be, the cruellest injoke of a channel name (you wonder if they brainstormed other dismissive titles, like ITV Who? and ITV Second String). Still, the thought of having a £500 fine hanging over her will focus the mind; that's going to knock out the earnings from about six series of the programme.

What were the pair fighting over?

Yeah. Nobody cares.

This week just gone

Last week, these releases intrigued us:


Tegan And Sara - Love You To Death

Download Love You To Death



Ladyhawke - Wild Things

Download Wild Things



The Kills - Ash And Ice

Download Ash And Ice



Amber Arcades - Fading Lines

Download Fading Lines



Dexys - Let The Record Show: Dexys Do Irish and Country Soul

Download Dexys Do



Cats Eyes - Treasure Houses

Download Treasure Houses

Wouldn't Quadrophenia 2 just be Octophenia?

It's not often you find yourself agreeing wholeheartedly with The Who, but their reaction to the plans for a sequel to Quadrophenia are pretty much spot-on:

Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey have denied involvement, calling the project "a blatant attempt to cash in".

In a strongly-worded statement, they said: "For the avoidance of doubt, this project isn't endorsed by The Who, Who Films, Universal or any of the other rights owners of the original."
Bill Curbishley, the band's manager who produced the original film, added: "Quadrophenia is a significant and influential film based on The Who's music, not some Carry On franchise.

"Any follow-up could only be made by the authors of the original and would need to be worthy of the name. This karaoke sequel announced recently would be totally ridiculous."

The filmmakers, though, think they've got this covered:

the follow-up would be set in the present day and based around events in the book To Be Someone, by Peter Meadows, which was inspired by the original movie.

His book picks up where the narrative of The Who's album (rather than the film) ends, following the hero, Jimmy, through the punk era as he becomes a drug dealing gangster.

Director Ray Burdis - who previously produced The Krays, starring Gary and Martin Kemp - claimed Townshend had given Meadows' book the seal of approval, suggesting this counted as an endorsement for his film.

Yes. That's exactly how that works.

Spotify: An upside-down pyramid

Digital Music News report on the proportion of users who Spotify rely on:

90% of Spotify’s Revenue Comes from 30% Of Its Users

This, surely, isn't that surprising though - if you're operating a freemium model, it's probable that most of your revenue will flow from the premium end rather than the free end:

89.9% of Spotify’s revenues come from just 31.4% of its users, according to more financial data now surfacing. The 2015 filing, registered with EU regulators last week, showed that paying subscribers generated a hefty $1.96 billion in revenues. By stark comparison, free, ad-supported users generated a relatively paltry $222 million.

It is a problem for Spotify, though, who are currently burning money like you wouldn't believe.

That effectively translates into a cash inferno, with everyone seemingly benefiting… except for artists, a group witnessing deteriorating per-stream revenues over the past few years. According to the same filing, rank-and-file employees are enjoying sharply-rising salaries, with average compensation now surpassing $168,000 per year. At the upper end, top executives and board members are pulling down north of $1.3 million a piece, with stock options potentially minting billionaires after a successful IPO.

Not, of course, that Spotify's business plan is to get close enough to profit in order to cash in its chips. Of course.

This week just gone

The most-read May stories:

1. Eurovision: Liveblog
2. Russia don't like the Eurovision result
3. Eurovision: Tumblr speaks
4. Azeailia Banks isn't that nice
5. Why did Yacht think anyone would be interested in a sex tape?
6. NME misunderstands Eurovision half time
7. Banks tries a half apology
8. Beyonce has upset the police
9. Robbie Williams gets a dubious gig
10. Cilla Black was Dionne Warwick's Moriarty


Last week and interesting:


Kate Jackson - British Road Movies

Download British Road Movies



Marissa Nadler - Strangers

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Melanie De Biasio - Blackened Cities



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It turns out there is one piece of London property with affordable rents

There's cutting a deal, and there's cutting a deal:

#NowReading some unbelievable stuff about The Brixton Academy. pic.twitter.com/pmwE6dpZaU

— Karen McDermott (@Karen_S_McD) June 3, 2016

The annual rent on the Brixton Academy was set in 1929, and won't be reviewed until 2029. £8,0002,600 a year.

Miley Cyrus: If you have tears, prepare to shed them now

Poor Carl McCoid. He used to like Miley Cyrus. He used to like her a lot.

So much so, he got 29 Miley Cyrus tattoos, all over his body.

The problem? Oh, Carl:

He said: "People can't seem to see past the tattoos and it was having a very negative effect on my life where I felt trapped by them. I've just gone off her."

Carl is trapped in a cell of his own making. A skin cell, if you will.

He's blaming the tattoos for his inability to get a girlfriend - which might be confusing symptoms with the problem.

Still, was Miley impressed with his efforts?

Miley said in an interview last year that Carl's tattoos were "ugly" and "creepy", but Carl, a dad-of-three, insists her comments are not the main reason he wants to get them removed.

Carl appears to believe that Miley is too raunchy. And:

Carl, who runs his own ironing business from home, realised his obsession had gone too far when he stood in front of the mirror and was shocked by the sight of his Miley-covered torso.

Potential girlfriends don't like them. Miley Cyrus doesn't like them. He doesn't like them.

Oh, Carl.

He has spent £2,700 on the tattoos, which he says seem to be the only talking point when he goes on dates. He said: "The conversation just seems to be centred around them and it just gets boring. I feel like I can't move on."

He's having some of the tatts removed, and others will be covered over with other designs. Presumably meaning on future dates the conversation will be centred on why he has a tattoo of Miley Cyrus wearing a Groucho Marx face mask.