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It's been a while since I've quoted from the Sage of Britania, but he's got a great fisking of an article on SlashDot.
We know tight playlists aren't for everyone, but they're for *most* people. Amazing as it may seem, radio listeners actually like hearing their favorites on a regular basis. Adults, in particular, punch out more often than not when something new comes on -- no matter how good it is.
Not buying this - for a start: how would Clear Channel know? When have their stations ever tried this? Secondly, the American TV market produces programmes like The Sopranos, Frasier, Seinfeld, Desperate Housewives, Buffy - why is it that when they're viewers, American adults manage to sample stuff that plays with their expectations and does things they might nor expect, and yet when they're listeners they panic and switch off because they get a George Jones album track instead of Islands In The Stream again?
Real music enthusiasts with well-developed tastes have a lot of options open to them these days, if they don't mind paying for them. Hell, I own an iPod, too. But free radio is still out there, playing the hits, ready whenever you need a pop fix or breaking news.
Okay, flame away. But that's the deal.
So, in a nutshell, then: Clear Channel feel they're incapable of programming a radio station that does anything than play the same few songs over and over again; and they've got some expensive research which backs up their timidity. You can hear it in their output, can't you?
Lay on, McDuff....
Oooh, Madonna is really pissed off that some people call her faddish infatuation with Kaballah a fad. She's gone on CNN to fume about how she's really serious about this:
"I wouldn't say studying Kabbalah for eight years goes under the category or falls under the category of being a fad or a trend.
"Now there might be people who are interested in it because they think it's trendy, but I can assure you that studying Kabbalah is actually a very challenging thing to do. It requires a lot of work, a lot of reading, a lot of time, a lot of commitment and a lot of discipline."
Yes, maybe "fad" is a bit unfair... how does "culty obsession" sound?
First, on Geri Halliwell:
Almost as if she knows how bored we all are of her now, Geri Halliwell is attmepting to fool people into buying her next single by dropping her surname. Even more amusingly, she's no longer going to use a dot on the i in Geri, but she's going to use a star instead. Which would look a little sad if a nine year old girl did it, never mind a 45 year old woman.
Then, to Beyonce:
It's hard for Beyonce Knowles to overstate her influence on the world, but she has actually managed it: apparently Independent Women Part One apparently changed Japanese women's self-image overnight:
"This Japanese girl came to us and said, after Independent Women, that a lot of Japanese young ladies started being more proud to have their own jobs.
"Because before, they didn't, you know.
"That's culture we changed. In our own little way. A little bit."
What we like about this is you can actually spot the point where Beyonce realised she'd completely overstated her case and started to try and rein it back in.
We're not sure if the interview took place in a pub, and we can't be certain that a trailer came on the TV for the Charlies Angels film, but we do picutre Bjork stubbing out a rollie and pointing a finger at the screen saying "See that Charlies Angels? I could have been in that, I could. As an Angel. Me." Apparently she turned it down so she could concentrate on her singing. She faced a similar tough choice at the Olympic opening ceremony, where she turned her microphone down so she could concentrate on her lip-synching.
MSNBC have calculated if she continues to hold weddings at the same rate, she'll have been married 39 times by her 50th birthday. Apparently, she was wearing a strapless white dress by Monique L'Huillier, although it's not recorded if she said "I do, like, really, this time. Smell my breath. See? I mean it."
Fred Durst turns his thoughts to birthdays:
i do not like birthdays. it has been this way for me as long as i can remember. i do not like recieving gifts either. it makes me feel very uncomfortable. i really enjoy giving gifts and surprising people though. i cannot figure out why this is. as a little boy i loved surprises and presents. my son loves them as well. i guess i'm gonna have to figure it out later.
He also posts that junk email that claims " it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae." We think it probably sums up both his hardcore fans, who've littered the comments with "wow, that's amazing and so very true" type wide-eyed enthusiasm, and Fred's intellect that he seems to really believe this obvious wasp toss. If it were true, Countdown would be a hell of a sight easier and dyslexia wouldn't be a problem at all, apart from anything else.
You can't help but admire the way Michael Jackson spreads the love around - we were convinced he was a Jehovah's Witness, but since his, ah, unpleasantness presented itself, he's taken to hanging out with highly members of the Nation of Islam, and now he's calling in at the First AME Church in LA - that's African Methodist Episcopal, of course. Any suggestion that this was simply a PR move prior to today's court hearings would mark you out to be a cynic - and if it was, it backfired a bit, because a man facing charges suggesting he's sexually attracted to children really should be careful how he phrases things. Jacko, asked what he was doing at the church, said he'd gone to "worship and see the children." Under any circumstances that would sound a little like it's on a par with a trip to a petting zoo, wouldn't it?
Some people have asked me why I quote Simon as much as I do.
Madonna has insisted on promoters providing her with a totally soundproof room for her current tours.
As I'm sure you've guessed, we're wondering if we can persuade them to build it on the stage around her microphone.
Still wondering?
The popular view that Prince had hooked up with Sony again purely to bounce them into funding his comeback publicity and that he was intending to withdraw back into the comfort of flogging his own downloads again seems to have got a shoring up following the little one's comments during a TV interview in Canada:
"Kids today, I mean, they're so talented and sophisticated. They can create their own albums on laptops. They can deliver it through the Internet. They can even be their own distribution service. I mean, what do we really need record companies for?"
We'd love to know how long the record company flunky who's organising this current trip for Prince laughed nervously for. It's hilarious to see a major label being suckered into basically underwriting a massive campaign against its entire business.
We're guessing the real reason Courtney Love has been allowed to fly to Japan is because, secretly, America is hoping she won't come back and clog up the legal system any more. Japan's motives for issuing her a visa? We're beating she's being lined up for a guest obstacle on Takeshi's Castle.
Courtney is convinced she's going to be able to stay clean for eighteen months, as ordered by the court:
"I've been clean for a month. I can do this. It's easy. I did it years before."
Yes, but birth to ten years old doesn't really count.
We kind of liked this trio of headlines from the Associated Press, which ticked out to us, one after the other:
Rapper Ja Rule Charged With Assault
Hip-Hop Stars Aim to Get Fans to the Polls
Rapper C-Murder Indicted in Shooting
Hey, when a hip-hop star tells you to get out and muddafukin' vote, you better move your skinny ass out there and get voting - and none of those hanging chads, either...
We're curious to know an answer to this one: Apparently, Madonna has hired dancers for her no-selling tour based on their birth sign. Is that, you know, legal? She's also, it's claimed, making the entire cast pray before they can go on stage - we don't know what the prayer involves, but we bet the words "more than half full tonight" will be in there somewhere.
Declare Yourself, the Register to Vote website has killed two socially useful birds with one stone - encouraging people to make their voice heard in 2004, and sewing Christina's mouth shut.
First, on rappers and the police.
Look, we don't know how we can we make this any clearer. If you're driving round with a car stacked up with guns and drugs, it's probably best not to do stuff to draw attention to yourself. Isn't that simple? And yet, time and time again you get people ignoring what should be a very basic rule: Jadakiss, for example, goes driving with guns and drugs in the glove compartment. But rather than following the rules of the road, being polite and not hogging his lane, the shuntlobe decides to start flinging firecrackers from his window. The inevitable happens - "would you mind opening your door for me, sir... is this your weapon, sir..." yadda yadda... court appearance.
Then, on Beyonce and the Pink Panther.
Beyonce has just been asked by BBC Breakfast what she thought of the original Pink Panther movies (she's appearing in the remake, of course): "Well... I've seen the cartoons..." She's probably be expecting them to overlay a Crazylegs Crane with CGI.
Chad Kroeger might come across as a glum type, but it turns out that behind that grim exterior, there's a brightly coloured waistcoat, "character" socks, a Looney Tunes tie and a complete Colin Hunt just struggling to get out. Chad, it seems, is a bit of a "practical joker" (or, as we call it, a bit of a bully who attempts to disguise his attempts to humiliate his employees as being a bit wacky):
Recently, lead singer Chad Kroeger planned retaliation for a previous prank. It involved the band's bus driver and a lightning storm (which shook the tour bus) and resulted in incriminating photos of the band and crew sitting on top of bags of garbage, protecting themselves from lightning.
"This joke traveled for a good week and a half," Kroeger told The Associated Press during a break before the band's upcoming summer tour.
Oh, my. While we dry our watering eyes, let's just wonder about a man who thinks this isn't only worth doing in the first place, but then - teehee - tells the Associated Press about it and brags that he - giggle giggle - banged on about it for ten bloody days. We know from the records that he's clearly got no idea when something has been milked to death, but this surprises even us.
The article that Simon bases this on continues:
"The guys say, 'Don't ever do anything to Chad,'" Kroeger joked. "'And make sure he doesn't know where your toothbrush is.'"
Please tell me that Kroeger isn't doing what I think he's doing with those toothbrushes.
Because, for some reason, there seems to be a connection between being well-known and the assumption that this must make you a designer, Christina is going to be given the chance to design her own range of panties. We're picturing Mike Baldwin opening an envelope one morning, sliding out a sheet of paper, and discovering the words "Crotchless Thongs" crayoned thereupon.
Why is it that pop stars set their sights so low, designing clothes and the odd handbag? Why doesn't someone get Kim Deal to design a diving bell, or approach Britney Spear to rustle up some plans for a prefab school that could be used in Africa? After all, if singing suddenly endows Gwen Steffani with the skills of a clothes designer - something that most people have to spend three or four years studying to develop the skills for - why not see what other magic design skills are endowed upon people with pretty faces and voices?
Rachel Stevens says "It's odd, until my first solo record I had no idea what sort of steel was best used in load-bearing lintels; one trot out on Top of the Pops and I suddenly realised exactly how to design a house to maximise light and space while minimising the demand for fuels."
It's interesting that Christina Aguilera's ropey voice can't be trusted to sing on any of the dates of her own tour, but it'll be fine for singing at a six-day Pittsburgh event where her payday isn't reliant on how many tickets she can sell for herself; or for recording songs for movie soundtracks.
Geri Halliwell is having singing lessons. Apparently she's trying to get her voice back to the way it was before she had throat surgery, which strikes us a little bit like going to a plastic surgeon to have your birthmarks put back in.
Our Internet Explorer window is headlining this 'Yahoo! News - Courtney Love Surrenders on Ass...'; but she didn't actually turn up on a donkey as far as we can tell. She's added another bail posting of USD55,000 to her pile of outstanding legal items - this is the torch and bottle incident, of course. But at least she's not been locked up, which must mean she's got a hell of a lawyer: anyone who can look a judge in the eye and persuade them that Courtney Love is unlikely to re-offend while awaiting trial deserves to have statues raised to them across the nation.
CHRISTINA AGUILERA: THE KRUSTY THE CLOWN OF THE POP WORLD: No, not because she looks ridiculous and never appears in public without make-up... oh, alright, but as well: she's clearly planning to follow Krusty in slapping her name on any product she can, having just filed 450 trademark claims with the US patent office:
"Among the products and brands she seeks to protect are Christina Aguilera contact lenses, crayons and anti-perspirants; Christina Aguilera badminton sets, ski wear and body shapers; and Christina Aguilera panties, modeling clay and - I blush to imagine it - electronic multipleactivity toys."
Badminton sets? Will you have Christina's face on your shuttlecock?
Slightly disturbingly, her trademark lawyer (hey, you think those cease-and-desist letters to the makers of Christina Meaty Chunks send themselves?) says:
"The goodwill associated with her name could be used to brand a huge variety of goods and services. She's a personality that is relevant not only to the higher teens and 20s, but also to kids."
Yeah, who wouldn't want to send their eight year olds to school with this lunchbox:
You kind of have to see Simon's photo to appreciate it.
That's what puzzles us most about the RIAA lawsuits - despite not making any impact on file sharing, they really do seem convinced that bringing all these legal actions is sending out a valuable message and making them look like fair-minded folks just trying to protect their farm. But how on earth can demanding half a million bucks from a single Mum on a twelve dollars an hour wage for music her daughter downloaded make the music industry seem anything like coldhearted, greedy cunts? How much music is this kid supposed to have "stolen" to tot up to 500,000? If we take the music industry's belief that 99 cents is a fair price for a track, that's getting on for forty-two thousand albums' worth of music - what sort of fucking computer has this girl got at her home? She must have an iPod the size of a small fridge to cope with the hard drive space. And yet, despite being an obviously fraudulent demand for money with menaces, the RIAA thinks that saying "give us four thousand bucks and we'll keep it out of court" shows them as being reasonable - jesus, why doesn't Cary Sherman just turn up at the woman's home with a bottle of cheap wine and sweat on his upper brow, suggesting "there are other ways of paying off your debt, love... make yourself pretty and we can make all this go away..."?
You wonder how delighted Victoria Beckham must have been at the meeting where they decided that she doesn't stand a cat in a washing machine's chance of being loved in Britain, so it's time to target the US. And how the fixed smile must have lurched a little at being told that she's going to have to be branded as Posh Spice Victoria Beckham - or, in other words, "Nobody knows who the fuck you are, so we're going to hang a big sign saying 'Used to be a Spice Girl' round your neck for all eternity. A few years back, being a soap opera condemned you to never have any further success - the popular view was that once you'd spent some time as Matt Skilbeck, the public would never accept you in any other role. That's clearly passed now - you can't move for TV dramas cluttered with people who used to be soaps stars - but it seems the curse of typecasting has now moved on to pop stars. We're not entirely convinced that America will buy Beckham's ropey old rubbish, even if it has got 'Ex-Spice Girl' stamped all over it, but at least if she's off humiliating herself in New York it'll spare us for a little while.
We're also a little tired of the modern habit of labelling people "haters" if they don't like something - Fred Durst popularized the concept, trying to make out those that ridiculed him did so out of hate rather than simply because he's a pudgy middle-aged bloke trying to pass himself off as 18 - and now 19 are trying to blame Beckham's failings on people hating her. No, no, no: finding someone sadly hilarious isn't the same thing as hating them at all.
Avril Lavigne reckons that she's matured and so have her fans:
"That's important to me ... writing about things I'm going through at the age I'm at. My fans are pretty much like my age."
Oh, yeah? What sort of twenty year old would go down the Mall to see a free performance from a teenscenster, Avril?
Someone has pinched four guitars from Creed. "What did God do about it, eh?" asks Playlouder. Answered everybody elses's prayers, surely?
Britney Spears has apparently told German FHM that she doesn't think she's sexy in the least, which you can see in the way she takes the stage dressed in any old thing. She also claims to have "secretly been just as sexually active as Janet Jackson", which makes it sound like they're comparing notes or something. Unless "as sexually active as Janet Jackson" has become a new half-way staging post between virgin and slut: "I've broken my chastity pledge, but I won't sleep with just anyone. I'm only as sexually active as Janet Jackson." Spears elucidates further:
"But as far as sex goes, I've done similar things to what Janet Jackson has done."
Which we think means she's shagged James DeBarge, which is a frightening thought.
Avril Lavigne has decided that it's time to quit her native Canada, for the odd reason that "it's too cold" (Tomorrow, Toronto is expected to be a chilly 21 celsius overnight, while Montreal is looking at a chilly 24 during the day on Sunday). Presumably, she's using the "weather" excuse to hide the truth, that she's a bit vacuous and wants to live in a shiny town where they make films and you can get sushi at any time of the day and night and the shoeshops are large. But in case any Canadians feel a bit miffed that she's pulling a Lennon ("pulling a Lennon: to mythologise a birthplace you flee as soon as your bank account allows you; to continue to express your love of a place despite wild horses not being enough to drag you back there"), she has pledged that she'll bring up her kids "to visit Canada. See? How bad can it be if she'll let her children treat it as a vacation location?
In the list of pop stars you'd expect to go slightly nuts, David Cassidy would seem an unlikely figure. Even so, he managed to pull off the trick of pissing off the Welsh while playing a gig at Cardiff International Arena. It's not bad enough that he demanded total silence during one song, or stopped playing 'I Think I Love You' because - horror of horrors, fans were singing along - but he also took the piss out the Welsh accent and observed that he didn't know how people could live in Wales "without slitting your wrists." The official line is that "the weather was getting to him and he was exhausted" - so, apparently, if David Cassidy gets caught in the rain he turns into a pompous prick.
Prince seemed to have been too kicked back during his current reappearance in all our lives, so it's nice he's still found something to kvetch about: being described as a 'comeback' artist:
"I would ask people who want to call this a comeback, where they think I'm coming back from?"
Well... years in the wilderness, a bunch of largely ignored, not-very-good stuff, what seems to have been over a decade of not actually being the funkiest little guy in the globe and spending time dicking about changing your name to something from the Dingbats font and writing words on your face, since you ask.
I know it's been a while since we've had a quote of the day (well, at least offiically).
We always thought Warners desperate bid to try and pretend the fact they were calling Madonna's label a cash-sapping pain in the ass wouldn't affect their working relationship with the former pop star was a bit of a desperate hope - like Seymour Skinner trashing his mother in public and then whispering "We're still going antiquing Saturday, right?" to her - and so it turns out. Madonna hasn't taken the demands for her to pay squillions to cover the cost of piles of unsold Tyler Hilton and Home Town Hero albums that well, and Warner's "but we can still be friends" has been thrown back in their face. In fact, she's called Warners suit "nothing short of treason". As our man in the capital David McIntosh asks: "So does she consider herself a nation, a sovereign or perhaps both? Will a successful legal action result in the death penalty for Warner bosses? Or is she just a ridiculously self-important pop star without a dictionary? We should be told."
THIS ISN'T IRONIC: When Alanis Morissette wants to know if a relationship is doomed, doomed, we're all doomed, she takes a trip to Paris, sits under the Eiffel Tower, and waits for the metal structure to tell her. Alanis, sweetness, if someone dragged us halfway across the world, and sat under a monument listening to hear if the affair was at an end, we'd be already mentally working our way through our contact book to choose a new date for the weekend. It's no wonder you think la Tour has got it right every time - we're betting each occassion has been a "Yes", hasn't it?
We don't really know who Michael Buble is (and, to be honest, he sounds like a grade-a chump) but, nevertheless, we're impressed with his trumpet player Justin Ray, who blew his instrument so hard he passed out and fell off the stage. That's commitment.
DAMMIT, WHAT'S WITH YOU PEOPLE - WHICH PART OF 'PAY OFF' DO YOU HAVE TROUBLE WITH?: Despite having (supposedly) tried to buy her silence with a couple of million bucks, and the case reaching an apparent natural end last year, Celine Dion's husband hasn't heard the last of the sexual assault case against him. Yun Kyeong Kwon Sung now thinks she can prove her claim that Rene Angelil forced himself on her in the Imperial Palace, Las Vegas, because she believes she's found his spunk all down the front of her dress. Now, that's something we'd have thought you might have spotted before, ourselves - "how embarrassing... there's dried semen on this dress. No wonder Miss Tibbs was looking at me so oddly when I wore it to the summer fete" - but a judge has given them the OK to give the dress a going over.
Paul McCartney has told an online chat at msn.com that he hopes his work with the Frog Chorus will absolve him of guilt for experimenting on frogs when he was a kid. Macca claims that he was cruel to frogs when a young boy to prepare himself for "when he'd be conscripted into the British Army." Yes, things were different back then, when Britain was at war with Atlantis. So, McCartney feels that helping some animated frogs to have a top ten hit will encourage real frogs to forgive him for the torture they endured at his hands. So far, he's not revealed what he intends to do to apologise to us for the torture we endured at the hands of the Frog Chorus.
AMERICA APPARENTLY RUNS OUT OF WOMEN: The staff at Maxim have drawn up another list of 'the 100 hottest women' and, somehow, have come to the conclusion that Jessica Simpson is the hottest star in the States right now. Jesus, even Avril Lavigne - currently reduced to plodding round shopping centres, like the scouts do when they pack your shopping (badly) for you in return for a (grudging) donation - even Avril has more star quality in her stupid tie than Simpson has in her Milky Way flipped head. They put Simpson ahead of Beyonce. These are people who have little more to do with their lives than draw up lists, you know. It's not like they had to squeeze coming up with 100 women in between a shift at the Frisco Burger drive-thru window and hitting the books for a history test. They don't spend the nights fighting evil. The maxim team are able to just sit down and spend a whole month thinking about the various merits of females of note in the continent, and even so - they put Jessica Simpson first.
There's an interesting survey which should make some grim reading for a music industry desperately trying to convince the world that CDs aren't a format designed purely to maximise profits for record companies. Even children - famous for happily encouraging parents to pump their cash into ridiculously overpriced novelty items featuring pictures of Sarah Michelle Gellar in her pants or poorly animated robots - have twigged that the music industry charges ridiculous prices for CDs and DVDs. Children - children, dammit, who would tell you that a bloody tin of Steps spaghetti shapes is cheap as chips at two quid fifty - think that the price of CDs is way out of what I believe they call "whack."
Jimmy Buffett has made a restuarant change its name - it had been called Cheeseburgers N Paradise, but now has, following a letter from Mr. Buffett's lawyers, become Beef N Buns N Paradise. If it was our place, we'd then have introduced an all you can eat Jimmy Buffett. But we have a habit of talking ourselves into trouble.
I'm a little disappointed (but only a little bit)....
I'd quote this one, but it's just a bit on the raw side....
With his daughter safely off to rehab, Ozzy Osbourne has been taking time to fret about the way the internet is a threat to us all. The Prince of Darkness says that he's shocked by drugs being available on the internet, which is understandable - his vague grip on the modern world would mean that discovering that hooking a typewriter to the telly allows you to do shopping at all would probably give him cause to spend a few hours lying down in a darkened room; he then starts to sound just like someone's Dad: "In this day and age, the availability of getting drugs is incredible. You can get it online. In my day, you couldn't get it online, and thank God. I would have been dead if I could have gotten it online" Okay, someone's alcoholic Dad, but a Dad nonetheless. Yeah, just imagine if Ozzy could have got drugs online - it might have left him permanently fucked, unable to string together a coherent sentence and in such a bad way that he could be lead like a puppy into making a twat of himself on television to help feed someone else's Godzilla-sized monster need to be famous in their own right. We must be thankful that the difficulties Ozzy faced in getting hold of drugs - sometimes, it could be as difficult for him as having to open a door and remembering how to ask for some drugs - ensured he survived into a fit and healthy old age.
Writing in The Age, Helen Razer struggles to cope with the Cobain myth. Rather clunkily, she kicks off "In the first quarter of the past decade, any kid with their antennae trained to pop culture knew and understood an object called Kurt." An object? And surely, erm, part of the problem was that while everyone thought they knew Kurt he kind of pointedly revealed that nobody ever quite understood him. But nice to reduce the man to an object as his memorial. It gets worse: "To gauge Cobain's popularity is simple: he claimed enough airtime, ink and eyeballs to be a bona fide celeb." He may also have made a record or two, we hear.
Here's a pretty good analysis of the RIAA's current behavior:
Bulletin boards bulge with calls for RIAA boycotts, literal CD burnings, and pledges from people who claim not to download songs (or even own computers) to stop buying music. They're lashing out against artists such as Madonna who endorse the RIAA's position. There's even a support network. Jesse Jordan, a 19-year-old student sued by the RIAA for copyright infringement, raised his $12,000 settlement (plus $5.67 extra) via PayPal donations from over 900 sympathizers.
Music fans have adopted a stance secretly shared by many in the music establishment. "Remember," a major-label marketing executive e-mailed me, "every time you download a song, you're depriving a senior vice president his expense-account dinner."
As Simon put it,
...[I]t's a timely and concise summation of just why the RIAA's actions over the last three years have made any impartial witness wonder if they were trying to burn down the store and claim the insurance."
WELL... YES, WHAT DID YOU EXPECT: Courtney Love slowly realises her behaviour might affect those around her:
During an appearance on US TV’s ‘The View’ yesterday morning (April 1), the star said her daughter had been "stigmatised" because of her recent behaviour.
"That's why I'm here. This is the first time she's been stigmatised because of me," she said. "And I just snapped. I'm ready to pop them." She told the show’s hosts her recent antics were the reason Frances Bean, who is 11, had been refused a place at an exclusive girl's school.
"They didn't say it, but I can tell," she said. "I just know. They dissed her bad. And [Frances] called me, and she said, 'Mother!' Where did 'Mother' come from? It's not 'Mom' anymore? And she said, 'I'm outraged!' She tore up the rejection slip, and she put it in her dog's bowl."Let's just park for a moment the delicious irony of Kurt Cobain's daughter even trying to get in to a cross between the school in 90210 and Roedean, and focus instead on this:
"If I need to dye my hair brown and come on this show every morning [to help Frances], then yeah, I'll do it... My kid is my first priority."
We're just looking back through the last eighteen months or so of press cuttings, and trying to spot exactly what form this prioritiziation has taken.
FROM TITSCRAPE TO MIXTAPE: To be frank, if someone had snapped us sucking Courtney Love's left one, we'd be trying to decide if we could wipe out the shame by dedicating the rest of our life to helping blind, orphaned kittens, or if it would just be a case iof a sharp knife and a farewell note. However, Kofi Asare is clearly made of stronger stuff and is attempting to bounce a career out of being photographed with Courtney's tit in his gob. He's releasing a rap mix-tape off the back of it, called either Milk Money or All I Wanted Was Some Chicken Nuggets. We'd have gone with "Mmm, you can really taste the uppers."
As much as I hate to say this, there wasn't much from Simon today to quote. It's a hiccup, I'm sure.
There's been a lot of material published on file sharing, most of it by the branch of the copyright industry that releases music, and much of it attempting to prove that file sharing will ruin sales, bankrupt musicians, make Christina Aguilera have to reinvent herself as some kind of cheap two-bit whore, leads to cancer of the head and limbs, blinds kittens in an indiscriminate fashion and was responsible, through some sort of worm hole in time, for the attacks on Pearl Harbour and the Maradonna 'Hand of God' fiasco. But there's not been much independent work done on the effects of people swapping music online, mainly because the file sharers aren't part of a few multibillion dollar industries with cash to spare to buy off a few dodgy Stats Profs.
There's a nice attempt at jiggling history in the BBCi report, which suggests that Billie [Piper] has "shunned the music world in favour of acting." That would be "shunning" in the sense of sniffing "I'm so bothered anyway" when she turned up at Music Inc. and found her desk had been cleared, her door pass didn't work, the woman on reception wouldn't make eye contact with her and just kept mumbling "You'll have to speak to the management" and someone from accounts who happened to be walking through the entrance hall made some half-arsed mutterings about how "we'll have to do farewell drinks some time, only not this week as I'm playing squash with Charlotte Church."
YOU’D NOT CATCH ME IN A TIGHT SWEATER, OH NO: Thank god someone’s prepared to stand up and say “enough’s enough” when it comes to raunchy pop stars. Jessica Simpson has had enough of Britney Boob-tube who, shockingly, has a sexy image:
"You don't need to be going there unless your career is based on that sort of thing, and mine certainly isn't.Unfortunately, in today's society, you have to be everything, and sex sells. I think she knows what works for her and what's gotten her to where she is right now. I don't think we see eye-to-eye on the situation, because for me, I would rather sell my music. I don't want it to be about my sexuality.”
It’s a difficult thing to stand up and be counted in this high-pressure music world, and so we’d like to applaud Jessica’s decision to not be sold on her sexuality. But we’re not sure she should be setting her sights on Britney as the worst offender - how about going after the pop strumpet who gave this interview
For me, my favorite Jessica "I really don't want to be sexy" article has to be the one.
The thing we like the best about Pink's live show is that she uses the inflatable dolls to take the place of her co-stars on Lady Marmalade - although it's a bit harsh to call Mya a pumped up plastic sex toy, it's levelled out by being an understatement for Christina. Pink reckons the show isn't as raunchy as the reviwers say, mind:
"It's not as raunchy as they say, it could be a lot worse. Even what I have right now, they tell me to tone down. There's a little, I wouldn't say nudity exactly, and I wouldn't exactly say simulated sex with rubber dolls either. But some people would!"
We're guessing it's not simulated, then.
BROWN DRIES EYES, LEAVES COURT: You know, we'd have sobbed like a baby if we'd been sent down, too, but there's good news for Bobby Brown as he gets released from chokey. Oddly enough, that big unpaid child maintainence bill that he said he couldn't afford had been settled - strange how spending a night with Marilyn, the squat thrust champion from Block C, can jog your memory about where you might have put sixty thousand dollars aside for emergencies, isn't it?
As he came out of court, Brown told reporters: "I thought it was paid. Things happen like that when other people are dealing with your business."
Yeah, it can be a bit of a bummer when you cede responsibility to make sure your own kids have shoes and enough jello and Mr Goodbars to survive on to somebody else. You can't be expected to know that your own kids have been left to doing the best they can on Mac and Cheese, can you? Obviously, if you ever saw them you might have spotted the ribs poking through the goodwill store shirts, but I daresay that's something else you palmed off to someone elsewhere in the Brown Organisation.
See you back in court May 5th?
The less-than-tactful Great White Burning House of Love compilation is being pulled from the stores. The band's management claim that the label responsible for the clanging name hadn't thought through the connection between the album title and the not-entirely-under-reported burning to death of a hundred people at a Great White gig. Which is a bit like saying "What?" when caught flogging Diana Car Crash Princess Headless Dolls.
A twofer today:
Details of what actually happened are vague, with the warning being given variously to the police, the promoter and the venue at some point between two hours and five minutes before the Bizkit were due to go on, and oddly, Fred Durst [lead, um, "singer" for Limp Bizkit] seems to be claiming that he took the decision to evacuate the concert hall in the face of opposition of the police (who expected a riot) and the promoter (who was worried about his money). You often find that when police are taking a bomb threat seriously, they'll leave it to a pudgy American to make the call on what to do. There was, of course, no riot of fans, who seem to have been remarkably calm about the news that they'd have to go home without seeing little Freddie jiggling in his bright red cap.
Durst is very quick to stress that he's got film of the police telling him about the bomb, almost as if he thought people might accuse him of making the bomb up to get out of playing. How cynical does he think people are?
and this one
"I'm one of Geri's [Halliwell, one of the Spice Girls] biggest fans" says Dale, proudly; that's a common boast but whereas with most acts the question is if the fan really is the biggest, when it comes to Geri we'd have to ask if the use of "one of" and the pluralisation of "fans" is correct.
Dale says that Geri is "just a normal person", which makes it curious why he chose to have someone scar her face into his flesh - unless he's also got his milkman tattooed on his ass and the local lollipop lady across his shoulders, I suppose...
Apparently still mulling how best to best Britney's latest attention grabber - we're guessing it'll be a broken arm and a leg in plaster - Christina Aguilera is preparing to move into a new house. It's one designed for Liza Minelli, which means either Christina has very scary taste indeed, or is going to have to gut the insides and start again from scratch, although we might point out to Sarah "if you want to sell a house, you must keep it as neutral as possible, don't impose your taste on the prospective purchasers" Beeney that the custom built Minnelli manse still managed to hit a five million dollar sales target.
I've been enjoying reading Simon's blog so much that I think I'm going to start a Quote Of The Day (hereafter referred to as QOTD).
PANTLESS: In a desperate bid to try and interest someone - anyone - in her new album, Alanis Morissette has been reduced to the old phonesex standby of 'I'm not wearing any knickers.' "Ooh," she squeals, "when I'm at home I walk about... with any clothes on." We're not sure it'll sell many copies of the record, but it'll do wonders for blind sales in her neighbourhood.
Expect to see one of these a day until I get bored with it.
This was so good, I had to copy the whole thing:
NOTHING CHILLS THE BLOOD LIKE: ...the words "actor turned singer." Minnie Driver, don't make us hate you.