KERSHAWATCH: Talking about Dee Dee, Liz K has just said "It seems like one a year's dying..." - Joey 2001, DeeDee 2002... why, yes it does.

The Bamboo Review: Elbow/Doves

Miss Becky done go see Elbow and The Doves in San Francisco:

[...]anyways. the first band was elbow. I've heard their cd a couple of times and it's not bad. just not flip your lid great, either. besides a few technical difficulties they were good. pleasant. the guitarist had the same adidas as me. he even laced them the same way (straight across). hell, they even looked like the same size (he's a short guy). the singer occasionally sounded like the coldplay guy (what was sare's name for him? bubble butt?) but was much cuter. so that was nice.

then the doves. took them forever and a day to set up. usually the GAMH has quick changeovers but it took over a half hour last night. bah. anyways. I haven't heard the new cd, so most of the show was new to me. good stuff. initial impression is that the songs lack the atmosphere of lost souls, but maybe that's due to ack of familiarity and not hearing the album as a cohesive whole. I liked them a lot, though. good stuff. I noticed they re-used the video playback. I kept getting deja vu at some of the images but it wasn't till the 70s dance party / weird spinning guy that I was certain they'd used the same video (o r parts of it) the last time I saw them. s'okay. cos I like the weird spinning guy. he's cool. they played "spaceface" the sub sub song as the closer. does anyone have a copy of it that they could burn and send me? I'd like to have it...

[EDIT: Reformated to match current No Rock style; content left as was 3-6-07]

THE VINE IS FINE: Great news that when Jimmy Young leaves this Christmas to concentrate on a weekend slot, his daytime Radio 2 replacement will be Jeremy Vine. Vine, you'll recall, won our hearts during a trial stint while JY was on holiday, and managed to slip the likes of The Fall in between slots by Tony DiAngeli.

BYE BYE DEE DEE: Shame to hear about the death of Dee Dee Ramone - although, on the bright side, it does make our nightmare of a reunion tour with Robbie Williams taking Joey's place less likely - but shame on Liquid News; you'd have thought a show still in its own period of mourning (and things are so dark there, they've got Iain Lee presenting) would have had a bit more respect than heralding the "breaking news" of his corpse being discovered by his wife with a silly little tootling noise...

SECOND OF THE DAY: This week's helping of the pop papers:
A trip to Borders results in a copy of Maximum Rock & Roll, and further disillusionment with the state of the British pop press - sure, it's messy black type on newsprint, and it has its shortcomings - an almost fanatical scepticism about online music writing, for example - but it's singlemindedness on what it listens to is unmatched in a willingness to write about any and everything. Seriously - since September 11th, what has the NME given us? A couple of pages the week it happened, the odd crass comment from the Gallaghers, and a few lines about the name of a Primal Scream track. Of course, the response from Kings Reach Tower would be "we're only a music paper", but even Coldplay have grasped that music is made in a context. Apparently, there may only be a couple of Pop Papers before the first exchange of nuclear weapons. This is, to judge by the nme, a possibility that doesn't affect music. Not until Thom Yorke says it does, anyway. So, then, reading MR&R is thrilling, but painful. There's nothing like this in the UK, and that's our loss...

Talking of losses being in the UK, how is it that the British edition of Esquire costs more than the imported US edition? Especially since the US edition boasts Kirsten Dunst on its cover? Of course, KD is on the cover of everything - after all, who wants to look at Toby Maguire? - but that, as so often, isn't the point. All this for £2.75. Maybe time for the OFT to look into magazine pricing as well...

Talking of economics of magazines, the latest attempt to turn a profit is on display at Arena - while many titles are traking the plunge and going handbag (backpack?) sized, rather than do this and pass the savings on the reader, Arena have elected to shave a couple of centimetres off the issue size and keep the price the same. They've also downsized from having a Kirsten to giving Milla Jovovich on the front - well, they know their readership, we suppose, and if they keep on like this, they'll be able to take them all out for lunch soon. The EMAP stable is hiding behind the inexplicably popular Heat magazine and the now-seventh age FHM, but its portfolio is looking thinner and thinner each month. Time for another shake out...

"You'll never guess what I'm up to now" promises Kym Marsh from the cover of OK. Guess? We can barely remember who you are...

Real popstars in Sleaze Nation with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs - perhaps. "Cute killers, their name and logo, were invented by Karen and Nick before they'd written one song." As soon as the universities reconvene, we shall discuss if this makes them any, less or more manufactured than Ms Marsh's former factory, HearSay. Also in SN: Peaches. Equally great noise as the YYY, equally image conscious. When the universities reconvene, we shall debate just why the quiet calculations of the Yeahs and Peaches (and, of course, the White Stripes) means so much more than the antics of Fischerspooner - "Less Is More" and "Having the tunes to back it up" may form the central planks of our argument...

Fischerspooner are trailed on the front of the nme, which wisely seems to have dropped its plans to make this week's issue a Jubilee Special, and equally wisely hasn't given them a front page - one Andrew WK in a year is clearly enough. Instead, the glossy hat is thrown behind the Libertines, who at least look like a Great Rock Band. Unfortunately, the GRB they look like is Supergrass, but its a start...

news leads off with a ho-hum thing about Los Bros Oasis hauling an idea for an Osbournes-alike round the TV stations of the land - pity where it's at has closed, isn't it?; a report from the Fischerspooner event - it's a mark of how dull they actually are that Casey Spooner saying "I'm here to get laid" is treated as being outrageous - Casey, every fucking twonk in a band from The Farm to the Stones is in it to get laid; Jonathon 'Korn' Davis is going to open a museum about serial killers - lets hope he gets one of the relatives of, say, Fred West's victims along to say a few words at the opening; Creamfields are throwing good money after a Dublin leg of the loss-making festival; sales of the forest gig Pulp tickets are so bad jarvis has been reduced to crawling through small bamboo tubes to try and raise interest; the Whites' wedding certificate is - as you'll have seen here - on the web, apparently; oh, and here's John Lydon - god, what a boring fuck you've turned into, son. "I am more famous than the Queen" - no you're not, you dipshit. She's on the coins and the stamps. You're on a tatty boxset, a couple of punk compilations and the middle slot on I Love 1977. He then bangs on about how shit the Strokes are, before he actually realises who he's talking about. Then when he does, he moans that Julian *looks* like a junkie. Still, he does strop off that he doesn't give two fucks about what the NME thinks. Not till after he's completed his interview like a good little promo-tour monkey, of course...

How scary, how frightening, how anti-establishment are Korn? The ad for their new album is one of those co-promos for a record store. Korn. Untouchables. Available at Woolworths. Korn promoting Woolies? Just like Richard Whiteley and that nice Joe Brown...

Miss Black America! In On! (Slogan: Tomorrow's stars today. Meaning: Bands who should have had front pages last year) MBA say "We have come to ruin your day." Somehow, you doubt they'll be endorsing WH Smiths anytime soon. There's also Fallacy and Fusion, brit hip hoppers...

Oh God. *More* Fischerspooner? "I'd rather pretend to be famous than actually be really famous" says Casey. You need have no worries on that score, mush...

There's a cut and paste thing about Things People Have Said About E. The NME's line on the drug? A spectacular piece of "Is this okay, AOL?" fence sitting, calling on all parties to, um, consider their drug policy. Right. That's a ringing, um...

Stoke on Trent appears to have appointed itself Music City...

"The Band" explain the Libertines "could have been called The Albion, but it's a shit name for a band" - and for a football team, let me tell you...

albums: that woolies-supported Korn effort ("moments when it sprouts wings", 8); Ms Dynamite - a little deeper ("it all goes a bit... well, name any slick US R&B type", 6); v/a - future rock & roll ("so now it hurts [but has] extraoridinary moments", 8)...

sotw is Nelly - Hot In here ("possibly the sauciest record ever"); there is no worst. brian molko's alpinestars type thing is in, though - "a rather grand slab of gnarled cyber-rock", but of course, you'll have read that on the bsh months ago, wouldn't you?...

live: a in norwich ("there's no malice, no snide edge"); the breeders in dublin ("bumblingly elegant"); early deadlines...

and we've been meaning to point out for the last few weeks that Angst isn't called Angst anymore, it's been renamed NMEmail - geddit? - presumably because the NME likes mentioning its name, in capitals where possible, and because there's no room for angst in the shiny new nme world. Which is, he sighed, where we came in...

I COLLECT, I REJECT: True-life rock tat, part one:
The Snoop Doggy Dog golf ball marker

The Bamboo Review: The White Stripes

Another review from miss Bamboo, this time this week's White Stripes SF blowout:

anyways. the first opener was whirlwind heat. they looked really young and were oddly endearing in their earnestness. the singer was wearing a brown velour jacket and he would put the mic in the pocket while he played the keyboard. there were only 3 of them - drums, bass, and keyboard. the sound was very wild and stripped down and they were a good fit as an opener.

next up was brendan benson and the wellfed boys. dave really likes these guys, so I was looking forward to seeing them. they were *excellent*. the music was mostly power pop with a bit of 70's rock thrown in. and one song that sounded like early weezer. good stuff. I'll be looking to buy their cds.

we had managed to grab a spot fairly close to the front (about 6 people back), and right in front of meg's drum set, which was on the left of the stage (our left). the stage was hung with six round paper lanterns, a couple of clocks (set to 3:00), and some curly streamers. all in red and white, of course. and get this - the effin' ROADIES were in black suits with red shirts and black ties. and *hats*. fedoras and derbys with a little red fluff tucked into the band. and they had the soundtrack from the music man as the house music. too cute.

jack was wearing a tight red t-shirt and fairly tight red pants. I'm pretty certain he dresses to the left. what? I was looking at the *guitar* and it was right there. honest. his hair was all robert smith messy and in his face. and we all know how I like messy hair...
he really is a great guitar player. loved the slide guitar (although tim easton has him beat on that). he was very energetic and jumped around, singing into a couple of different mics (one had some nice reverb). you know, there's something about a guy unabashedly singing a song written for a woman to sing that really get me. they did "jolene" (done by dolly parton originally, I believe) and I swear, jack put *so* much emotion into it. it totally killed me. that was the high point of the night.

and meg. meg was in a tight white t-shirt and red pants. her hair was up in high pigtails and her bangs flopped down over her eyes. what she lacks in drumming technique, she definitely makes up for in style. I hadn't really thought about it until I saw her perform, but she really isn't a drummer. her rhythms are all very basic and easy. it works cos it fits the songs and the feel of the music. I think it's awesome though. if the lil' chicas in the audience saw her and went "hey, I could do *that*" I'm all for it.

for some odd reason the mosh pit guys decided to do their banging around right in front of me. so, while I was fighting off the girls behind me trying to push forward (honey, I know how to fight for my spot. I don't give a shit if you climb my back - you're not getting in front of me) I was also trying to keep from getting too badly battered (dude, if you're gonna be an asshole and crash into me, don't get all surprised when I elbow you in the back. except you - yes, you with the sopping wet t-shirt. you're just gross and I will try my hardest not to ever touch you ever again).

they didn't say much other than thanks and jack referred to meg as his big sister a couple of times. whatever. it was great. loud, fast, and totally fun.

[EDIT: Edited to reflect current No Rock layout; content untouched - 03/06/07]

THE QUEEN HATES BRIAN MOLKO: Or, um, something... this, from the people who run the Brickshithouse:
If some of you have been having problems buying the fantastic new single 'Carbon Kid' from Alpinestars featuring Brian Molko then please hang in there. Due to the fact the Queen has thrown a massive party the distributers have failed to stock most shops in the UK. BUT rest assured you will be able to buy it from most independent and major record stores from tomorrow morning (THURSDAY), so run out and buy it then!
Curious - this suggests that this week's charts could be the oddest for quite a while, as the jubilee was already likely to have a distorting effect what with shops being shut at odd times, and the sub-Live Aid back catalogue effect that the creakies on the bill would be counting on, and now distribution fuck-ups... good god, we might have an unpredictable chart for the first time since the 1970s.

WE NAME THE SPAM BANDS: Maroon 5 are especially stupid - they clearly know that to make it into the scum-sucking spam band slot, you need to try less hard. Their wedgie email to bsn actually managed to spell their own name wrong. Dolts.
...AND THE SPAM BRANDS: And a special hats off to Coca Cola - the most recognised brand name on the planet, spending on advertising so high they could just give everyone a bottle instead, and still they attempt an inept, guerilla marketing campaign. To launch the not disagreeable sounding new Vanilla Coke, they've built a site that stinks of officially licensed tail-pulling (even sneaking in a reference to New Coke - dangerous) and then got the sort of dolts who usually talk up skatebands and goatpunks to try and drive traffic by posting rubbish messages along the lines of "Someone gave me a can of vanilla coke, which you can't get in the shops yet, and it had a link to this site" - which is VCLounge. Which is a lousy set-up, isn't it? Because since the site is meant to be believed as an unofficial, leaked information deal, why would the URL be on the can? And if its not in the shops yet, surely the can would have had to have come from someone with some sort of link to Atlanta anyway? Begone, brown fizzy stuff.

OLD, OLD, OLD...: From the current Spin, without further comment:
Stephanie Egas Age: 16
Q: Has your family accepted the fact that your friends call you the "Super Korn Fan"?
A. My parents are still fighting with me over the band. My sister likes totally different music, so I have no support. But I don't care; I'm still rocking. Whatever. It's just screaming to them. They like old stuff, like Blondie.
Finders fee: becky bamboo

R KELLY UPDATE: So, now there's a warrant for his arrest. Why has this taken so long? If the police think it is him, surely they should have arrested him weeks ago? And if they don't... well, why bother? Curious, don't you think?

OASIS: NEWSINGLE WATCH: The sleeve of the new single depicts a square yard of tarmac. The contents are less exciting.

WHY SHOULD SHE WANT TO DO THAT?: - the question asked by a member of Kittie mailing list Crucify Then Learn, on the discovery that former Kit Fallon has taken a new direction with a more political bent. Maybe to get as far away from people like you as possible? Her new project, Amphibious Assault, comes complete with a warning that the metal community might need to prise their minds open a bit before approaching, and fits into an illustrious history of rather fine shouty band people becoming excellent thinky bands. The amphibious assault blog is a fine mix of music and eyes on the world. Recommended.

RAISE A GLASS OF - inevitably - HYDROGEN PEROXIDE BEER: Of course, it's an irritating sign of aging that bands you still think of as "new" are onto the retrospective/wrap up stage of their career, but it gives us all a chance to sample the collated delights of the Rock Stars of Love, eighties noise punks who've compiled a collection of their Billboard non-hits. And, um, we meant to write down the distro details, but we forgot. How punk rock is *that*, eh?

LAST WEEK, SHE SAID...: Last week's pop papers fell down a blogger-crack over the bank holiday, so here it is again...
It seems every month is a further fall from grace (or at least, a step from the zeitgeist) for the Face. Once it jumped and skipped like a taut young Russian gymnast, now it skeeters about with a grasp as sure as Boris Yeltsin two hours after closing time. It's an indication of how far its fallen that this month it celebrates the Jubilee/25th anniversary of punk (yes, we got that if the Queen had been around for 50 years, that means that the McClaren self-mythologising department had been running for 25) and - oh, my god - front pages the return of the Prodigy. The elevation of Popbitch bloke to the editor seems to confirm that The Face now thrives merely on talking about the sorts of things that weekend colour supplement editors believe young people are interested in (Eminem, Prodigy, Punk) and that to make any sense, it should be approached as a publishing equivalent of the "I love..." TV franchise. ("That Eminem was mad, wasn't he...?")

Of course, if the Face was looking at 2002, it would be just as scary, as you know they'd fall for Fischerspooner's press releases. Luckily, Alexis Petri-dish in the Guardian didn't take the pills they were handing out for their London debut, and was prepared to call a man in sequined underpants mime walking against the wind by its name - not a provocative new sound, but "a bad musical based on the lives of the 80s pop stars - Springtime for Heaven 17". The same edition of the Guardian's birthday column reveals the scary fact that Tony Hadley is only 13 years younger than Ron Wood...

It's that time of the year when FHM readers reveal their hands, and with it, the sad state of their masturbatory fantasies - the 100 Sexiest Women (amongst 13 year old boys and the recently divorced). Anna Kournokovia wins - strangely, she seems to have convinced men that she's sexy in the same way she's convinced the sporting world she's a tennis player (i.e. despite the evidence of people's own eyes and so on). Worse, Rachel Stevens is apparently the sexiest woamn in music. Attractive, yes, and possibly the sexiest woman in pop... but... c'mon: you'd rather Tori Amos, wouldn't you?...

So, onto the nme then, apparently late while it was being put into bags so the me-too Fly (Bring it on) could be added to the mix. the June edition does have a very sexy Tim Burgess on the cover. "I like listening to hiphop and looking at cows" he says. God, couldn't you just eat him with a spoon? The Coral claim to be the most exciting new band in the country - um, sorry, guys, after a year you have to stop claiming to be New, and accept that you're starting to fall behind the hype. And just why does Cardiff have its listings in The North section? Shouldn't they at least call the edition "The North & Wales"? Still, its nice to see a bit of regionalia in the music press - it reminds us of the days when there'd be two regional editions of the TVTimes cheek by jowl in branches of WHSmiths on ITV border areas. (This will probably form the basis of next month's Face front cover)...

The nme proper has the Vines on the cover, thereby being the first nme in months to have an act both vibrant and sexy on the first page...

news leads off with an argument between Norman Housemartin and Damon Seymour - probably about a comb, we'd imagine; The Libertines are likely to go into the Top 40 despite not being played on daytime radio because of swearies - so, that's a shock, then. Hold the front pages for "Free poster propels Aaron Carter into top ten" revelations next week, nme; Primal Scream have changed the name of Bomb The Pentagon to I'm Glad Tim McVeigh Got The Creche(*); September 11th also changed the Coldplay album - sadly, not from "whiney shit", though. And, apparently recording it in Liverpool made Chris Martin think again about hanging out with celebs. Presumably because "hanging out with celebs" in Liverpool means snorting coke with Ned Waste and the clumsy one out of China Crisis, which would make us think about staying in a little more, too; The bizarre sight of Joe Strummer telling kids to pay £100 for Glasto tickets instead of sneaking in reminds us just what punk did for us - fuck all; is it too cheap to say that the headline "Alien Ant Farm Crash Horror" refers to the line "the band survived"? Or too tacky to suggest that the driver might have been the first suicide attacker for art's sake?; Placebo have started to work on their fourth album, including a track called cavity search. The album is expected in mid-2003, so expect to read posts on bsh saying how good it is ("it's good"; "it's very good"; "it's great") sometime around the end of this september; the nme does two pages about the world cup, the general standard of which can be surmised from them asking Jason from A to predict the score of England versus Nigeria; the nme has finally caught up with that story about Limp Bizkit's search for a replacement for Wes being a crock of cheap publicity and bitter dream-crushing...

on bands: "we went from a pub in Blackburn to playing in front of 1,500 people" brags Gallagher-endorsed Mick Spencer from the 'burn - yes, a band named after the place they come from - scarily, they also sound and look like the similary-uninspired The Farm; heavily advertised Easyworld also appear. You know how people speculate on what would have happened if Cleopatra's nose had been a little bit longer? Well, this is the just slightly less attractive Ash...

American Head Charge - why do they make me think of a cross between The Spice Girls and Slipknot? Their worst drug experience was snorting bad coke in Europe that turned out to be heroin. If you buy their record, this might be repeated. On the other hand, it might go top ten. Decisions, decisions...

The best thing about Jimmy Eat World's tour round the States was, of course, Jay Leno saying he thinks Rival Schools are "Y'know, more meaningful" - when mainstream america has the better gags, it's time for EMO to stop...

What ten tracks would Jon Spencer Blues Explosion put on a CD? ODB, the grateful dead, and you'd better hope you never get invited on their tourbus, little girl...

"I've read about Iggy Pop. He made loud music and didn't like wearing a shirt. Can we go to Wendys now?" - in this week of Fuck Off Now, Again, Sex Pistols, thank god the Vines are more interested in Music than digging up the corpses of Sid and Johnny. The Vines might just be the one to bet on, you know...

albums: liberty x - thinking it over ("the people who do that sort of thing have assembled 14 strong tracks", 8); eminem - the eminem show ("expansive without being pompous; its flaws are small", 9); Jesus and mary chain - 21 singles ("the stuff of rock & roll's essential lexicon", 9); easyworld - this is where I stand ("only two responses to living in eastbourne - act old like toploader, or kick up a racket [like easyworld]", 6)...

singles: sotw the libertines - "a new dawn has come, and What A Waster is its breakfast show jingle"; no worst single - strange in a day when Will Young's Light My Fire is up for review...

live - fischerspooner in new york. This is interesting, actually, in light of Alexis Petredis' london review (above) - see, the nme have been talking Fs up in a way that's going to leave them with even more egg on their face than the non-arrival of Andrew WK. And, clearly, they're rubbish; art school wank times sigue sigue sputnik minus the excuse of at least being first. But the nme can't just say "Look, they're another Minty. Sorry." Instead, we get Alex Needham trying to argue that pisspoor trousers and 14 year old shock is "one in the eye for the keeping it real brigade" - sorry, Alex. Oasis fans don't care, and the boa bunnies want something more than a couple of ideas pinched from early spandau ballet videos to raise our interest...

other live: electric soft parade at the astoria ("confidence in them is not misplaced - if only they had some of their own"); Billy Childish in Tufnell Park ("like 1945 never happened"); Rammstein in the docklands ("a new standard. If the next band you see don't have flame throwers, boo them.")...

finally, from angst: Shaz osbourne is sue lawley in leather.
* - actually, it's called Rise now because they don't "want to be political"**
** - actually, it's because apparently calling for people to be murdered isn't quite so cool when people have been murdered

OTHER MUSIC BLOGS ARE AVAILABLE: and most of them are more fun to read than this one, too. And no, that's not just false modesty - there's sex and sunshine, for example, which flips between German (sometimes) and English and is way too cute and huggable for a site that advances an excellent argument as to why it loves depressing music

BURCHILL GERTCHA: We never really thought that Julie Burchill was especially bright, but today's think piece in the Guardian takes the prize - she's Too Stupid To Understand Pink Songs. Julie, sit down - she's not beating herself up over "not being conventionally pretty" - the point about the line is that she's saying she isn't, in her opinion, pretty at all, and has more about herself than that, anyway. It's a statement of pride, not shame. Sure, it might be debatable, but really, if top 40 pop songs are beyond your grasp, maybe you should stick to writing hurt letters to the Evening Argus.
Burchill on Pink, and women, and so on - other half-formed thoughts are available...