IT'S LIKE FOOTLOOSE. SORT OF.

Spontaneous (actually, carefully planned and controlled) enjoyment and delight broke out at Hamburg Area High School in Pennsylavania after Dee Snider helped the kids there beat a bid to band rock concerts. Apparently the school authorities feared that rock music would lead to injuries, and probably teenage pregnancies. A petition was got up, and Snider lead the kids to victory. To mark the lifting of the ban, Snider turned up and did the 1984 Twisted Sister hit We're Not Gonna Take It.

Which is a valuable lesson about seizing political power: you might get it, but you might not like the consequences so much.

music twisted sister dee snider

SALT IN THE WOUND

50 Cent seemed to realise that making a record about the time he and his cronies beat up a couple of guys at a Washington Radio station was pushing his luck a bit - when the video for the song appeared for the frist time on BET Mr. Cent suggested it was apologia, not braggadoccio:

"This is my public apology. To all the people at Radio 1, I'm being sincere; we're sorry about what happened in D.C. It'll never happen again."

Unfortunately, one of their victims isn't entirely convinced by what, to him, seems to be an attempt to make some money and rep off the back of the violence, and so Kwasi Jones is suing 50 Cent. Apparently, the trouble started because 50 Cent was wearing one of those twattish bluetooth earpieces (because, yeah, lifting a phone out of your pocket might waste valuable microseconds when you could be conversing):

Kwasi claims the rage erupted after The Game's manager thought the DJ was making fun of his hi-tech earpiece by making a "Star Trek" Vulcan sign.

Kwasi says they escaped into an office, but when he went back to get a cell phone, the beating resumed.

"Next you know I'm being choked from behind very, very hard, to point where I'm blacking out," Jones said. "But just to be choked like that, you know it was intentional. I think it was to kill me."

Ole' half buck is still facing criminal charges over the incident, but turning it into a song has brought a civil case. Lawyers for Jones are seeking USD280 million dollars for "assault and battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress and negligence for both the alleged beating and the song."

280 million? That's a hell of a lot of distress... and you could buy a lot of bluetooth headsets for that.

Get the 50 Cent look:

You too can look like you're off of Star Trek

music bluetooth 50+cent

DRUNK THEIVES

Apparently, Lindsay Lohan doesn't mind being burgled, providing nobody gets killed in the process:

Lindsay says she's just happy no life was taken from the home, which she leases, only replaceable possessions.

Apparently the thieves drank several bottles of her very expensive vodka before making off with two enormous televisions and a DVD player. Police are asking anyone in New York offered large television sets which might have been recently dropped, repeatedly, being sold by guys with massive hangovers, to get in touch.

music lindsay lohan movies vodka

HUMAN NATURE SURPRISES MAYOR

As a politician in Las Vegas, you'd have thought that Mayor Oscar Goodman would have had enough experience of what sleazes we, as a species, actually manage to be when given the opportunity. But it turns out the behaviour of people when free tickets for a Weezer and Red Hot Chilli Peppers gig were made available surprised even him. Shockingly, the free tickets for the centennial celebrations found their way onto Ebay. Just moments after they'd been handed out. Goodman shakes his head over the misery of it all:

"You get a couple of bums who take advantage of the situation, and what starts off as a very nice gesture ... turns into a sleazy methodology of trying to make a buck from it."

Of all the cities to have their anniversary besmirched by such seedy behaviour, too. It'd be awful if people came away with the sense that Las Vegas' sole raison d'etre is to shake down cash out of people who are only there to shake down cash. For Goodman, though, this behaviour has just spoiled everything:

"It's so unfair because the centennial committee wanted to present this very special event available to everybody free of charge."

music weezer las vegas red hot chili peppers

CRAZY GIRL VERSUS STUPID BOY?

We're not entirely sure where the truth lays about the Hoxton scrap between Pete Doherty and fanbs of Crazy Girl. It sounds like Pete was grandstanding and attempting to shift the gravity arounf himself, at least according to Crazy Girl's Tiff McGinnis:

“Apparently he (Doherty) knew somebody in the first band and was jamming with them but we were meant to go on,” claimed Crazy Girl’s lead singer Tiff McGinnis. “So we went on and he kept coming on stage to grab the mic, and all of his (friends) were trying to grab the mic too. When they realised they weren’t going to get to come on stage some chick grabbed a fire extinguisher and sprayed us and all of our equipment,” McGinnis explained. “And then I went to hit her and him (Doherty) and a fight broke out.”

Hmm. Someone single-mindedly determined to stink up the stage "jamming" and getting stroppy when the band people have paid to see try to get on?

McGinnis claims her guitar pedals got doused with water, but the venue's suggesting we all move along, as there's nothing to see here:

“The security acted the way they should have done, and Pete Doherty was asked to leave,” said the 333’s owner Vicki Pengilley. “The bouncers behaved impeccably as they always do. They reacted when they should have done and how they should have done. I know it was unfortunate that it messed up the gig, but there wasn’t a problem. The police weren’t called and they won’t be.”

music crazy girl pete doherty babyshambles

DON'T DO IT TILL YOU'VE DONE IT

Will Shar Jackson ever shut up? We know she must still be really pissed off about Kevin Federline dropping her for the beloved Britney, but she seems to have decided that this has given a chance to carve out a niche as a Britney expert. Even though she talks absolute piff:

"A baby is not a dog. You can't just put it away. I know she (Spears) says she's had experience with kids, but let me say this: 'You have not had experience until you have one of your own... I don't know if Britney realises how hard it will be."

So... erm, Brit shouldn't have a kid because she's had no experience with kids? And she won't have had that experience until she's had a kid of her own?

We think everyone would be a lot happier if, instead of just handing out snippy advice, Shar Jackson and Britney wrestled instead. Perhaps in jam.

music britney spears

THEY'LL VOTE. BUT PERHAPS THEY SHOULDN'T. Electo-pop

The NME isn't likely to run a politician front page this election, but it has carried out an interesting survey for the current issue, which discovers that 73% of NME readers intend to vote on May 5th. A further 6% are expected to turn up at their village hall on May 6th looking a little confused. (This compares with the turnout amongst the NME's target demographic last time round when only 39% actually could get their pretty firm buttocks down to cast a vote.)

If nobody other than NME readers turn up on Thursday week, Charles Kennedy can look forward to being Prime Minister - apparently, 37% of NME readers would be voting Liberal Democrat. Oddly, there's still 17% support for the Tories, too. The sound you can hear is Steven Wells, who has killed himself purely so that he can allow his body to spin in its grave.

Perhaps the real death of the radical image of the NME reader, though, is assured by their decision that, allowed to pick any rock star they liked to run the country, they'd have Chris Martin selecting a cabinet faster than you can think of.

Good god, then even the subjects of George W Bush would take the piss out of us.

music election nme

WHAT AN ORIGINAL IDEA

At least Madonna had a vaguely convincing excuse for trying to turn herself into a children's writer - she did have kids of her own, so it's not beyond the rules of science that she might have spent enough time with them to create a world that she knew delighted them and elected to share those tales with a wider world. Plus, she had a cash-hungry cult eager for money to keep happy. But why is Mariah Carey going to write children's books?

Presumably she wanted to be an author, and someone told her you should write the sort of books you enjoy reading. And someone else told her that 'magazines with me in' wasn't actually a type of book.

The best thing about her plans - for a series called Automatic Princess - is that she thinks we should be impressed with her commitment to writing:

The way I do things, I need to be involved. I wouldn't just be like, 'Here's a concept, go run with it.'

"It's still something I really want to do, and I'm going to do, and I'm going to start getting that into production soon."

(It's important to be able to write crisp, clear sentences when you're working for children). So, Mariah isn't one of these authors who, erm, gets someone else to do the writing for her, then. Or, at the very least, she intends to keep an eye on the person doing the writing.

music books mariah carey

WHERE IS THE LOVE?

Not in Berlin, at least this year: The Love Parade has been cancelled for the second year running; this time because they can't find anyone willing to sponsor the event. They're still hoping they can resurrect it next year, according to the Parade's Sabine Bremermann:

"We will do everything we can, in co-operation with the city-state of Berlin, industry and the media, to find a way to make a comeback the year of the World Cup."

God loves an optimist. We do love that Germans seem to have reclassified 2006 as "the year of the World Cup".

Meanwhile, in the UK, Creamfields somehow is coming back again this year, for whatever reasons they think it's needed. The Liverpool Echo is excited by the line-up; although Faithless, Basement Jaxx, Pete Tong and Lisa Lashes hardly is the most thrilling musical menu we've seen. Still, tickets are only a loss-making £51.50.

Younger readers might be interested to know that Cream was once a quite important nightclub which would play dance music. Dance music was a type of music that people did when rock was in hospital for a couple of months.

music creamfields love parade berlin

INSIDE THE MIND OF THE RECORD LABELS

One of the reasons for record labels suing their own customers is the fear that people might come to view music online as being free by right; we're told the BPI and the RIAA are worried if you can get music for free in some places, it'll stop you paying for music elsewhere. Meanwhile, the free CDs from newspapers are under attack from the same quarter for pretty much the same reason.

And yet, EMI have happily set up, and are trumpeting, a deal to allow the Gap to give away free Joss Stone downloads.

We're sure there is some sort of coherence to the big label's behaviour. No, really, we bet there is.

music joss stone emi downloads

THAT'S REALLY NOT CARRYING A GRUDGE

Jerome Barra is a bit of a lucky bloke - he had been due to appear in court to answer charges that he shot Ray Davies in the leg, but Davies says that he's too busy touring to go to New Orleans to testify. Michael Howard is expected to launch his condemnation of this softness on gun crime at about 9.00 this morning.

music crime ray davies the kinks

DON'T LOOK BACK

Thanks to Peter T who responded to yesterday's mention of the Belle & Sebby Don't Look Back gig with details of when Mudhoney will be doing Superfuzz Bigmuff - the KoKo on September 16th; he also mentions there's rumours of Dinosaur Jr doing Bug and... and here's where we cross out fingers and promise to be good... Sonic Youth doing Daydream Nation.

music mudhoney sonic youth dinosaur jr

BRETT ANDERSON TO ENTER TWO VIRGINS AND ROUGH TRADE

While The Tears continue to mop up the last of their dates in proper venues, for those of you too tight to pay to actually see them can get your jollies for free at three instores:

April 25th - Virgin, Oxford Street London 6pm
26th - Virgin, Brighton 5.30pm
29th - Rough Trade shop, London 5.30pm

They're like refugees, you know.

music the tears

THE FIRST FOLDING OF THE NEW MUSIC ERA

We're sorry to hear that Haymarket is closing Rip&Burn, the music downloading magazine (although the online version is going to remain, well, online). It was always a curious title - it clearly wanted to be a conventional music magazine, which meant the whole "iPod generation" schtick was more a distraction than a focus. We were going to suggest that a magazine which appeared to fetishise the format over the content of what they were writing about would always struggle, as the outward appearance would be offputting to all but the techies who would probably be disappointed by the content about what they'd call content. But we suppose Spiral Scratch did exactly the same thing for the days when music came on vinyl.

music magazines

PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE RUMOURS: and the sexiest women in pop, apparently

According to the Girls Aloud website, Nadine Coyle isn't on the point of quitting the band:

"I have absolutely no intention of leaving the girls and going solo.

"What sane person is going to want to leave the biggest girl band in the country?. The story was a load of rubbish and I didn't even bother reading it."

Well, if it was us we'd probably stay in for a couple more weeks to see if there's any redundancy pay-offs in the offing, what with the other rumours that the band aren't going to be allowed to produce another under-performing album and are about to be broken up. Shanghai Automotive has offered to buy the intellectual propety if any turns up.

In other Girls Aloud news, the new FHM 100 Sexiest poll reckons that not only is Cheryl Tweedy the sexiest woman in music, but she's also second only to Kelly Brook in the entire world.

Yes, they voted Kelly Brook at number one, which I think says everything we need to know about the validity of the electorate.

Stripped of the non-musical, this is how FHM readers believe the sexiest women in pop stack up:

1. Cheryl Tweedy (FHM pos 2)
2. Britney Spears (6)
3. Sarah Harding (8)
4. Beyonce Knowles (9)
5. Charlotte Church (10)
6. Rachel Stevens (13)
7. Lindsay Lohan (14)
8. Jennifer Ellison (17; stretching the "non-musical" point here)
9. Christina Aguilera (20)
10. Louise Redknapp (21)
11. Jennifer Lopez (22)
12. Jessica Simpson (30)
13. Joss Stone (33)
14. Nadine Coyle (35)
15. Kylie Minogue (37)
16. Delta Goodrem (39)
17. Holly Valance (42) (Still? And how come the ex-Neighbours bunch come together, eh?)
18. Kimberley Walsh (44)
19. Christina Milian (55)
20. Mariah Carey (58)
21. Billie Piper (61)
22. Nicola Roberts (77)
23. Anastacia (81)
24. Danni Minogue (84)
25. Dido (86) (we suspect by the time you're out of the 60s, it'd just take a book of stamps and an afternoon to get yourself into the chart)
26. Jamelia (89)
27. Frankee (91) (Yes, you do - she did that answer record to Eammon last year. Long memories, FHM readers)
28. Hilary Duff (95)
29. Avril Lavigne (98)

music girls aloud 100 sexiest

SOUTHPORT'S FINEST IN THE LIVE

Still not really got to terms with the idea that Gomez won the Mercury Prize back in 1998 when, really, they'd have been hard pressed to get a good review in the Southport Visiter. Anyway, they must have invested the prize money wisely, as they can't be living off the earnings from subsequent sales, can they?

Anyway, if you're a Gomez fan, you'll probably already be aware of the live album [US release]:


Gomez Out West. It's the closest thing to a closest-thing-to-Greatest-Hits, we guess; there are two CDs and they really make you wait for the good tune, as Whippin' Picadilly is the last track on the second disc.

music gomez

AND SHE'S SPONSORED BY COKE?

Doubtless there are those of you who will need to go off and spend a moment or two settling down at the merest hint of a story uniting Paula Abdul and pissing. But apparently, kegeling isn't Adbul's thing, not with her weak bladder:

Many of her days as a choreographer for the Laker Girls cheerleaders were spent urinating all over the floor whenever she was amused.

She says, "I should have stock in (adult diaper company) Depends. (I would) laugh so hard when we did routines, I would pee on the Forum floor...

"The ball boys would have to go (and clean it up). It was awful."

You wouldn't have been wanting to have her above you in the cheerleader pyramid, would you?

music cheerleaders paula abdul urine

HAIL TO THE THIEF

We really wish that we'd spotted this: Music For America have picked up the news story about Bush's iPod and spotted that he's been, you know, breaking the law:

However, one little piece of the article really got my attention. I'll doth quoteth it here. "The president also has an eclectic mix of songs downloaded into his iPod from Mark McKinnon, a biking buddy and his chief media strategist in the 2004 campaign.". Read that again. No, seriously, read it again. Does his chief media strategist encourage, wait, no, file-sharing?. Did our law-abiding President steal music? Because, I just checked iTunes, and My Sharona, Circle Back, and Joni Mitchell all cost some money and shouldn't be able to be transferred onto the President's iPod from his biking buddy.

Now, since the RIAA maintain their lawsuits aren't about scrabbling a few quid out the hands of the poor but to raise awareness of the "issues", what better way to focus everyone's minds on the evils of filesharing than suing the president? Unless, of course, they're actually really relaxed about everyone sharing music after all.

Tshirt: I'll Share Files Until They Tell Bush To Stop.

music riaa george bush downloads copyright

A TWEEVENING IN SEPTEMBER

Special one-off shamble shows ahoy, with the news that Belle & Sebastian are taking part in a special show at The Barbican on September 25th, when they'll be playing If You're Feeling Sinister from start to finish. It's part of the Don't Look Back season of gigs being lovingly made by the people behind All Tomorrow's Parties - also scheduled for the season are Mudhoney doing Superfuzz Bigmuff, Date and venue to be confirmed.

It is, however, twenty five quid to get in to see B&S; you can buy tickets at the Barbican - although the price does suggest the later stages of a frenzied session on Ebay to us.


We've not seen ours in years:

We would not have known this without the divine Ms Rae
mudhoney music belle and sebastian

THERE IS A FURTHER STEP DOWN IN DIGNITY AVAILABLE

Ah. We'd kind of wondered if there could have been a format more crushing to the ego than Hit Me Baby One More Time. VH1 has created one - remaking, which not only drags the washed-up and half-forgotten out of their retirement, but then forces them to have plastic surgery as well.



Taylor Dayne has been through it, although she wasn't that jazzed by the surgery and injections of poison botox - she was doing it for the cash, and the kids:

“What was I thinking?” Dayne asks defensively. “I was thinking my kids got to have a good week at Epcot Center. I was thinking, it’s paying my bills. I’ve grinned and beared a lot of crap … .”

Never mind what Dayne was thinking, what on earth was the programme's creators thinking? More normalisation of plastic surgery served up as entertainment. On the other hand: Noel Gallagher wants to look ten years younger...

music tv taylor dayne plastic surgery

METALOBIT

American Head Charge guitarist Bryan Ottoson has been found dead on the band's tour bus.

Police reports suggest that Ottoson may have overdosed on prescription drugs; Ottoson was reported to have been drinking heavily before the tour bus left Jessup in Maryland; his body was discovered Tuesday morning when the bus pulled in to North Charleston, South Carolina.

Formed by Martin Cock (actually Cameron Heacock) and Chad Hanks, AHC grew from a chance meeting in a Minnesota rehab facility, which would set the tone for the band's course. The band quickly developed a reputation for onstage and offstage excess, as Ottoson acknowledged in an interview with Crave magazine:

I don’t think it was a conscious decision, we didn’t sit down and say were going to focus on the music more and not have the excess and people playing naked and all that, we just kind of kept it in our heads that we wanted it to be about the music a lot more this time, because I think we got pigeon holed into a shock rock band which I don’t think we are. I understand why we got that, but I think we’re much more about the music at heart, so we have definitely been a lot more focused on performance and not being a jackass on stage. We are still pretty crazy on stage, we kind of wanted it to be scaled down but we get bored and we can’t help our selves and we just do whatever the fuck we do. I almost got knocked out on stage the other day, and Karma got arrested for allegedly kicking a security in the card that was fucking with some people or something. So it’s starting to get a little crazy again. We just do what we do and end up being fucking weirdos I guess.

The band's official website biography ends on what now seems a fate-tempting note:

In the end, Order prevails - if just barely - which is a good thing for American Head Charge and their ever-growing legion of fans. If Chaos had come out on top, this dangerously self-destructive but supremely talented band would've surely imploded, leaving nothing but wrecked gear, lost souls and mangled body parts. Instead, with all their limbs still attached and pulsing with the endorphins of catharsis, AHC will spend 2005 on the road - and this time, hopefully, not the road to perdition.

The remaining members of the band have pulled out of the next few dates of the shared tour with Mudvayne, Life of Agony and Bloodsimple, but understandably they've yet to decide on a long-term plan.

music bryan ottoson american head charge metal obit obituary

FIND THE ANSWER WITHIN

One of the most under-rated bands of recent years (or rather, one of those bands whose reputation gets lost under the weight of an out of proportion hit, like Cornershop), the Boo Radleys are about to release a two disc retrospective, Find The Way Out. And they've even bought the loveliest designer in music, Steve Wood, back on board to do the designwork and got stuff from the rare pre-Creation days, so it's not just a record company wodging a load of old tracks into any old packaging. Splendid.

music boo radleys

THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF 3AM

We'd wondered for a while why they called the Mirror gossip column 3am - but we're starting to get it. It's chock-full of the sort of stuff you come up with at 3am in the morning when you're pushing for a deadline and will take whatever you can get. Amongst today's items: Charlotte Church spills some drink on her blouse; Jessie Wallace from Eastenders looks at a picture of David Beckham in a restuarant and - to be honest, we like this one - the turning of "Noel Gallagher goes to see Coldplay" into Chris/Noel slash fiction:

At a secret Coldplay gig on Tuesday night, Martin couldn't stop looking up at his Oasis rival in the VIP section of the Round Chapel in Hackney, East London.

In fact, during the band's encore Chris could hold back no longer and risked serious injury by climbing up to the second-floor balcony to give Noel a hug.

There was a problem, though:

"You could tell from his face he hadn't quite thought about getting back to the stage. In the end he plucked up the courage to jump," said our source.

"It would have been a downbeat end to the show if he'd broken both legs."

It really would have been a pisser if Chris Martin had smashed both his own legs, as we've spent the last three weeks in negotiations with Crusher Nobbs to get the job done.

music chris martin noel gallagher coldplay oasis

LOSSY COMPARISON

Of course, up until now, the BPI has had little evidence that it was losing any money as a result of illegal downloading, so it needed to come up with something to prove it wasn't just being vindictive. So, it commissioned and paid for a survey which, surprisingly, came up with a staggering figure for the level of loss: Six hundred and fifty million pounds lost - lost to the music industry as a result of downloading.

Crikey, that's a lot.

How did they come up with the figure? Erm... TNS surveys got 10,000 people aged between 12 and 74 to keep track of what they spend on music. Then, it compares the total spend by downloaders with what they would have expected them to spend if their spending patterns were typical of the market as a whole, subtract one figure from the other, and bingo - 650 million quid.

Except, there's a couple of big problems here: first of all, why is the survey matching the "downloaders" spending to "market trends" rather than the non-downloaders spend? Surely they'd make a better control group?

Second, the BPI doesn't explain exactly what constitutes a downloader - presumably they had to self-identify, which probably means that anyone who follows the music world with half an eye would have pretended not to be downloader at all. And does someone who was a downloader in 2003 still count as a downloader in 2004? Even if they've given up?

Third: The 'downloaders' behaviour seems to be based on the 18% of the sample TNS reports as being downloaders - although some of these are actually using legal services (were these still factored into the figures? And was money spent on actual downloads counted as part of their music spend?)

Fourth: There are other reasons why the level of cash spent by the downloaders might have fallen. Since they're the ones with the best access to the internet, isn't it possible that their 33% fall in music spend between 2002 and 2003 could almost entirely be explained by the comeptitive prices of music CDs for sale through Amazon, CD Wow, and so on?

Not much of this is addressed by the BPI. Still, they got an eyecatching headline figure, which is all that counts, isn't it?

music statistics downloads bpi

MEMO TO ANANOVA: 'SING A SONG' IS NOT 'PLAY A GIG'

We know the popular image of gay men is of a blokes who love a tragedy, but even so, are they going to be that arsed by Kelly Osbourne bumbling her way through a single song at G-A-Y?

music kelly osbourne

THE MOTHER OF THE CHURCH PRONOUNCES

It's been a little while since we heard from Charlotte Church's mother, but she's broken her silence to whine about the paparazzi and how they keep Charlotte's profile buoyant despite her not actually having done anything noteworthy for years ("makes Charlotte's life miserable.")

Mrs Church branded the paparazzi "absolute scumbags" who harassed her daughter "morning, noon and night".

According to IOL.com quoting 5 Live she said: "I've been with Charlotte when we've been pushed, stamped on, anything to get that photo. I have no respect for them whatsoever, I don't see it as a job."

And of course she's right to have no respect for them. What sort of person chooses a career where their income is purely dependent upon leeching off the profile and success of a young woman?

To try and help take the pressure and press focus off Charlotte, old mother Church decided to give Five Live a bunch of gossip about who her daughter has been shagging:

"She wouldn't listen, I knew it was going to happen. She knew it was going to happen with Steven, I think, but not so much with Kyle."

The press are even more keen, Mrs Church said, since Charlotte and Gavin got together.

"When they are together it's an absolute nightmare."

Yes, that should stop the press hanging out outside her front door, Mrs. C.

music charlotte church photography

ROCK AND ROLL STAR

We wonder if it's time for Noel Gallagher to be breaking out the Retinox and the Bosweloids - apparently he tells video directors to try and make Oasis look ten years younger. Presumably he means ten years younger than they look at the moment, rather than ten years younger than they actually are. Although what's the point? Make Liam look like he was born ten years later than he seems to have been, and you're still barely into the paeolithic era.

Noel doesn't like making videos:

"I fucking loathe videos. This is not the reason why I started a band, to stand on a video stage all day and mime a song 500 times, knowing that when you get to the end of the 499th, you're thinking, 'I don't even fucking like this song anymore, it's stupid.' But it's a necessary evil for me."

Odd that it takes 500 listens for Noel to become sick of an Oasis song - we find the average for us is somewhat less (about 499 times less, to be accurate). The thing, though, Noel, is that it's in no way an necessary evil at all - you don't need to make videos, and you don't even need to release records. A necessary evil is when a guy who works down a sewer has to wade through shit to get to work because he need the wages. You're free to stop at any time. In fact... that would make everyone happy.

Noel also has more to say ab...

music oasis noel gallagher

PARODYOBIT

Singer John Fred Gourrier has died at the age of 63. Known as John Fred, his greatest moment came in 1967 when his parody of Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, Judy In Disguise (with Glasses) knocked The Beatles off the number one slot in the US.

Although his greatest hit, it wasn't Fred's first - as a teenager, he'd recorded one of his own songs, Shirley, with Fats Domino's band and had a hit with that. It was Domino who had inspired him to become a musician:

"It changed everything about me," Gourrier recalled in 2002. "Back in 1953, we were hearing Bing Crosby and those guys. You just didn't hear what Fats was doing. It completely floored me and I was sold, that record right there."

Self-confessed "white boys playing black music", they won themselves a fan in the ultimate rock star:

"Wayne [Cochran, a friend] knocks on the door," Gourrier remembered. "He says, 'Hey, E! I got a guy from the South that wants to see you!' So Elvis says, 'Well, if he's from the South, bring him on in here.' So Wayne says, 'Elvis, I want you to meet John Fred.' Elvis stopped and said, 'John Fred and the Playboys -- 'Boogie Chillun'.'"

While his national fame didn't last, Gourrier remained a legend in his home town of Baton Rouge, regularly playing fourth of July events and hosting a rock and roll radio show on the local radio.

Gourrier's death was due to complications following a kidney transplant. He was 63.

music obit obituary john fred

TEJANOBIT

The death has been announced of Laura Canales, the first big female star of Tex-Mex tejano music.

Born in Kingsville, she had the good fortune to be just the right age and in just the right place to ride the first wave of tejano, which fused keyboards to Mexican polka. Originally a member of Snowball and Company, Canales enjoyed enormous success in her home state of Texas and - more importantly - carved a place for women amongst the otherwise male-dominated tejano scene.

Known variously as "the barbaba Streisand of tejano", "the queen of the tejano wave" and "the grand dame of tejano music", Canales died from complications after gall bladder surgery. She was 50.

music tejano obit obituary laura canales

THE GREAT PAY-OFF IN THE SKY

It's taken them three decades, but Pink Floyd have finally paid up for the second-most famous wail in popular music. ("Woooooooooaaaahbodyform" being the number one, of course.) The band have come to an agreement to pay Clare Torry for her vocal work on The Great Gig In The Sky off the Dark Side of the Moon. She'd originally got about thirty quid for her trouble; Rather than merely claim Roger Waters was a tight-fisted bastard, Torry had sought more on the novel grounds that she'd used a unique vocal technique for the tune, and so had a right to the shares of the copyright.

The size of the settlement has not been announced.

You can now enjoy with a clear conscience:

... although you can't skin up on the CD format as well. We're told.

music clare torry pink floyd