WHAT THE POP PAPERS SAY DISAPPOINTING QUARTER ROUND EXIT EDITION
slightly later than usual, with this week's excuse being that we've had to swap offices and every time we settled down to snort derision at the nme, someone came in to find out why we weren't carrying bricks down five flights of stairs...

anyway, it's allowed the new statesman to get to us, timely, with a piece on rock festival food by the wonderful Bee Wilson. She's slightly unfair to Glastonbury, since she hadn't been there since Park Life, and when we last went, its catering was actually vastly better - even spicy goat, if you like that sort of thing. But her summation of the food at festivals sums up the problem with the open air rock behemoths, and Glasto especially, pretty well: "The merchandise is promoted as engendering 'community' or multicultural fraternity. The consumer is encouraged to feel that the transaction is less selfish, on both sides, than normal. But it is really about commerce, with all its concomitant lies and disappointments. What the vendors sell you is the 'counter-culture'. What you buy are just commodities."...

so onto the nme (16 page guide to all the festivals) - the prodigy are on the front with - ha, you'll like this - a mocked-up Wild West wanted poster thing going on. Isn't that original? Certainly the first time I've seen a cover like that since, ooh, the nme went glossy, at the very least...

news: queens of the stone age to promote new album with 'lurid' novel (i.e rubbish book, rubbish stunt, rubbish album); there's a report from Michael Jackson's UK trip (he did some mad, mad things); U2 are the world's biggest earning band - $61.9million in 2001. So, Bono, why don't *you* sort out some of the world's debt? Or do you need to buy some more cool shades?; Kenneth Anger is pissed off that Death In Vegas have called their new album Scorpio Rising - lucky for him, probably, that he never came across Pop Will Eat Itself's scally chums who used the name for their band; The Charlatans have been booted from headline slot at Glasto for a mystery band, who are The Stereophonics (commodity band wins out); even if the wedding certificate for Jack and Meg White was genuine, surely the divorce certificate has to be a fake?; Chris Martin wore Ian Mac's coat to record a track for the new album; for the rest, he was apparently happy to wear Travis' clothes. It's unlikely either fitted well...

on bands: The Beatings - interesting not for anything other than being a slight anagram of a Michael Franti band; The Liars - did anyone order more wacky punks? No?...

Raging Sppedhorn are invited to list things they hate. They choose Lostprophets, German discos, Spanish police (because they arrested simply because they got pissed and started smashing up people's cars - fancy); German service stations; Rammstein; Cradle of Filth's backing singers and dancers (because - erm, they trapped one in a portaloo and shook it so she got covered in shit); New York; Girls; their fans and each other...

Nelly. He has a girl's name. Interestingly, the NME ask him about his kids, and he shuts down. He denies they exist, then refuses to talk about them. Strangely touchy, don't you think?...

The Parkinsons shake onto a ten track CD, choosing suicide and the clash and the shangri-las, so that's alright then...

"If that shit is all true that our government knew about that shit, [that Bush knew about September 11th in advance], I've lost faith in what our government represents" - Papa Roach lose faith in George Bush shock. The shock being - what sort of faith did these chumps have in him before? No wonder the bloody US is in such a state, when the smelly unwashed shouty bands have faith in the process...

Here are the old men: Keith Flint has less hair, his face is as wrinkled as Eneglbert Humperdink's penis. What do you do when you get old? It's more than a little sad - the bits of metal are still in his face, they still think we'll be shocked by bums in videos and songs about drugs. The only thing that's moved on is time. The Prodigy haven't, and like that other comeback band of this year, Oasis, you can see the strain of trying to pretend to be 18 is really starting to show. "I'm not excited by drugs any more" complains Keith. So why should we interested in you pretending to be? Why have they bothered to make more Prodigy records? What is it burning, pushing them to create, to form, to fashion? "It's our job" says Liam. You'll find the clockcard machine over there...

the pull out festival special - which is more half arsed and sorry than ever this year, of course, like the festivals themselves, lists 30 things you must do at festivals this year (buy a digital camera; have the ultimate festival phone experience - sponsored by orange, of course; don't jump the fence; don't build big fires - be GOOD. Consume.) Number one is to watch Coldplay. I fear for you, the kids...

albums - cam'ron - come home with me ("imaginative enough to leave the ghetto", 6); kid 6060 - the action packed mentalist... ("a soundtrack of our lives", 7); my ruin - blasphemous girl ("sacrilige and S&M guitars", 7)...

sotw - vitalic - poney ep ("disco bon jovi hedonism"); the oasis stop crying your heart out debacle rates "a lachrymose slure through the Noel book of emotional cliches")...

live: new order in finsbury ("justification for their continued presence"); get up kids in west hollywood ("decided to grow up"); the vines in new york ("about to become extremely important"); apparently the Isle of Wight festival's been and gone, and nobody noticed...

finally, the nme (or at least James Oldham) has got a party line on burning and downloading: "Our stance is... record companies used to say home taping was killing music, and of course it wasn't. The whole issue of downloading music is the same argument with different knobs on." 'Course, we might have been more impressed if you'd not waited to see what it did to your ad sales before coming out with an opinion - 18 months after the Napster wars is a little late to come up with a party line...

VIVA FOREVER - OR AT LEAST A LITTLE LONGER: Viva, the not very good video channel for German speakers, and it's much better sister, have been bought by AOL. Now, while usually the dead hand of AOL doing a takeover of a local product is the start of the end, at least it means that Viacom, owner of rival MTV, have lost in their attempts to buy (and, presumably, merge or kill) their rivals. Its hard to know who to cheer sometimes...

NOTHING EXCEEDS SUCCESS. EXCEPT FAILURE: Ken Barry, the useless twit who brought EMI to its knees, thought anyone was interested in Mariah Carey and was responsible for 1,500 being kicked out of their jobs has paid grievously for his error. Sorry, I'll read that again - he's been paid generously for his error. £6.1 million quid. The label bosses are whining "We had a contract, what could we do?" - um, maybe also sack the idiots who agreed to a contract that allows an utterly failed person take home millions and millions of pounds. Even if we didn't suffer from bad class envy, we'd be sick at this one. Where are the shareholders?
FT reports - imagine if he'd been any good... who could have afforded him?

UNDERCOVER SPAMBAND ACTIVITY CONTINUED: So, out of curiosity, we replied to that Call to Spam yesterday from Soul Hooligan bloke. We asked him (if you'll forgive the That's Life-ism):
Jason... do the boards have to be Soul Hooligan message boards? Or what? What are the rules?
His response was curious:
Hey, sorry about that, some files were corrupted and were sending a few emails at once.
Which sort of implies that this standard reply has been set up because he's been getting lots of emails asking 'why do you keep sending me this' - in short, he's managing to spam his own spam legions...

REALLY, REALLY, PISSPOOR SPAMBANDS: This almost defies comment
Hi, Mike Erdelyi Here "The Animal" I Have A few Song At Iuma.com I am in a few local bands this is from studio and live performance I Used to be In The Jammin Sammin Band for 8 Years I am currently in Eliza Blue playing Guitar and Lead and backing vocals and in The Sport "n" Woodies I Play Bass And Lead and backing vocals
I also play Solo And duet formations Please Listen to and Play Some of my music on the air you can pull it from the net here

CAN THIS BE TRUE?: Edison was offered the image of Nipper the Dog for his label, before HMV; he turned it down saying it was ridiculous as dogs don't like music.

OH MY OMEN: Last night the good lady wife and myself watched ITV1's Weddings From Hell (we watched Panorama after, to balance out our minds) and in it, there was a couple who, on their wedding day, recorded a pop video. Believe it or not, they did Tragedy, simply because in the Steps version, they're dressed for a wedding. They didn't seem to have noticed that the three weddings depicted are stopped before they take place, or that the song they were ineptly lip-synching to went "Tragedy - when the feeling's gone, and you can't go on/ Its tragedy" and so on. The marriage didn't last six months.

Israel imitates Glastonbury

I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE: So, Billy Joel has checked into rehab, has he? Wonder what pushed him over the edge - I'm guessing the Westlife cover of Uptown Girl, but on the other hand, maybe he's finally crumbled over whether he should sleep alone in his own bed, or if he should sleep with somebody else.

NEW AIMEE MANN ALBUM DUE: "It literally feels like all my problems are over" she tells Rolling Stone. That must be a bugger - if you haven't got any problems, what the hell are you going to sing about? Maybe someone should tell her Al Qaeda want her dead.

PERHAPS A LITTLE HARSH: Recent search term that brought someone here was "Nelly Furtado shit on the radio." I'm not sure if this is a slur on her talent, or a newsflash.

POPBITCH TWANG: Every week (perhaps) we find the point where the Popbitch mailout stretches the elastic of credibility a little too far. This week, it's with this:
Moby has a lookalike in New York who is reputed to get lots of sex by claiming to be Moby. He's spookily identical - except for a strong Texan accent.
Oh, yeah? Come with us, if you will, to New York...
Bloke: Will you fuck me?
Bird: No way - you're bald and ugly
Bloke: Actually, I'm that Moby
Bird: (running away) Jesus - bald, ugly, boring and hypocritical? You really do have it all...

AND...: a big bollocks to Ant Zine for spamming activities, too...

THEY CALL IT VIRAL MARKETING BECAUSE IT MAKES YOU FEEL SICK: So, continuing our close observation of how this works, Soul Hooligan's latest attempt to make it look like their fans are full of spontaneous love is this email:
OK everyone, Here’s a new contest to get the Soul Hooligan jukebox out around the net. Whoever can get the Jukebox link featured at the most sites will win a Kik Wear t-shirt, Soul Hooligan CD, limited edition poster and some other goodies!!! All you have to do is send me the direct URL to the site where the jukebox is being featured. It can be any kind of site
Whoever posts the jukebox link at the most message boards will receive a Soul Hooligan CD and a VHS copy of Algebra for your viewing pleasure!!! (must be a minimum of 20 posts) Just copy and paste the direct URL of your posts and put them in an email and send them to me.
Both contests end 6/26!!!
Don't forget this is Maverick records, a not entirely under-resourced record label, trying to wedge up the web with unpaid for adverts...

TEN: Ten groups making the most use of samples, according to this project1. Front Line Assembly
2. Skinny Puppy
3. Xorcist
4. Velvet Acid Christ
5. My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult
6. Meat Beat Manifesto
7. Electric Hellfire Club
8. Divine Misfire
9. Ernst Horn
10. Ministry
Bubbling under is Pop Will Eat Itself, with 26 different sampling sources, including that "lets get down to it boppers" at the start of Can U Dig It, which apparently comes from The Warriors. But then, you probably knew that...

LEEDS CASTLED: Irony of ironies... while the licensing authorities down in Somerset insisted on Mean Fiddler being involved with Glastonbury to guarantee safety, it's clear that Leeds Council doesn't share their faith in the abilities of the London-based promotions company, refusing to grant the Leeds leg of the Reading Festival a licence over concerns about... safety. The Mean Fiddler are going to appeal the decision - of course they are. Two campaigns have been attacking the festival plans - one by the Friends of Newsham Park is less concerned at the possibility of burning Korn tshirts, and more worried about the environmental impact of the event (again, ironic considering that MF are now the guardians of the Green Field at Pilton); the other led by the Yorkshire Post. Course, if ticket sales were poor, it could offer a handy backdoor for the organisers...

UNIVERSAL COWED: We've not really had as much fun with the chronic crisises at Vivendi-Universal as we might have done, but since part of their attempts to turn themselves from stock market basket case into a lean sleek money panther seem to involve kicking Jarvis, Candida onto the dole, that special treatment must end. V-U are trying to stop their sobbing by flogging off their water businesses - yeah, we know, what's movies and music got to do with poo and piss (oh, hang on: is the answer Limp Bizkit, Mark?) but we've got a better idea. Why not take a cue from the way they treat their customers, and simply get all their shareholders to buy their shares again? They could reissue their shares as "Special editions", by reprinting them on nicer paper, with a three extra lines and a different logo on the top. And they could do a version that has deleted paragraphs. Or the accoutant's cut, so you can experience the share certificate the way it was meant to be before the solicitors got their hands on it. Or... (continued p 94)

BIZKIT INQUEST UPDATE: Well, explaining that he's been "so upset" its only now he's been able to talk about the young woman who got crushed to death at a Limp Bizkit set, Fred 'not so upset and keen to get to the bottom of it that he could actually be arsed to go to the inquest' Durst has made an interesting statement through video link: "We definitely said that if they did not fix security we would not play". So, either the Big Day Out Organisers had fixed security to their demands, or else - why did Bizkit play? And if Durst was so concerned about the security and organisation, why on earth have witnesses reported him goading the front of house crew even while they were trying to pull people from the crush? We look forward to finding out as the case continues.
Inquest report on dotmusic - lets hope he's more convincing in this video than the bit at the start of My Way or the Highway...

BLIMEY, DIDNT KNOW PEOPLE STILL USED THAT: Good news for the RIAA, as AudioGalaxy have paid them a huge sum of damages and elected for service suicide. From now on, Audiogalaxy will only allow people to share files that have been pre-approved by copyright holders - which so won't work for so many reasons they might as well switch the machines off now and open up a lemonade stand.

TALKING OF...: It had to happen - two people, Americans, obviously, are suing a record company for flogging shoddy merchandise. In this case, a copy-protected Aerosmith CD. (It's the copy protection that's the shoddy bit, not the music). Now, the labels should have seen this coming, and they better have one hell of a defence prepared, because if they lose, the claims against them could make the Milli Vanilli recompense look like the maundy money.
BBC News reports - RIAA says "games manufacturers have been doing this for years" sort of missing the crucial difference between a Playstation and a CD player

WALKMAN - NOW OF THE PEOPLE: More bad news for Sony, as an Austrian court have told them they don't have the right to stop another company from describing its personal hi-fi products as Walkmans. The court reckons that the term has stopped being a trademark and has become a generic, and as such is no longer usable only by Sony. We find ourselves in the odd position of feeling sorry for Sony - after all, the only reason Walkman has developed generic usage is because they grew the brand from nothing. Obviously, it's probably their own fault for pursuing the case in the first place - why won't international corporations ever stop and think before they go trying to crush small companies? - but even so. Strangely, today, a European court has told Philips they can't stop other people from making three-faced shavers.

SQUISH: No sooner were we playing We Love Life and enjoying it, than we hear rumours that the mighty Pulp and their label have separated. Bugger.

UM... ARE WE FILLING OUT CONTRACTS BY ANY CHANCE?: After the repackaging of the 'best of', the b-sides compilations, the DVD retrospective, now the Charlatans are about to stick out a live album. And while the ability to flail to a live version of Sprotson Green in the cramped but comfortable spaces of our own home is tantalising... isn't it about time we had something new? jesus, Madness are getting to be more prolific than you guys...
NME.com reports - obviously the starsailor opening was to get the audience all quietened down...

AND WE THOUGHT THE UK POP PRESS STANK: Consider what's happening in the US of States, where Rolling Stone has dragged Ed Needham, former UK editor of FHM, to the helm. Ed, now managing editor Ed, thinks what the magazine needs is "more fashion." Dunno about the US, but in the UK pop papers bids to re-invent themselves as style bibles usually suck - "Panties and belts Mike Joyce's own" territory - and surely thinking that stick thin models in barely there skirts is the answer to RS is to misunderstand the product? Under Jann Wenner, the Stone has been slipping down the cracks with covers of the J-Lo in bikini/topless Janet Jackson/Britney being Britney nature, and people at least know who they are. You'd have thought that maybe it would be time to return to what Rolling Stone was for, originally, and start giving a voice to the voiceless. Rather than cribbing from Women's Wear Daily, Needham should be down at Maximum Rock & Roll and Punk Planet, trying to persuade radical young things that it'd be worth sacrificing some of their principles in return for some readership. Ain't gonna happen though, is it? How soon do you think Brandy's stretchmarks will have subsided enough to airbrush out, Ed?

DON'T CRY FOR THE RECORDING INDUSTRY: It's shape isn't as bad as they want to tell you - indeed, keep telling you. Sure, the sales of records might have slipped, globally, a little, but the meat of industry, selling tunes as opposed to plastic discs is thriving - music publishing raked in a nice $3.5billion in 2001, a couple of hundred million more than the year before. Worry about Oasis albums on the net? They could afford to buy us all one. Although, erm, we'd rather you didn't.
FT reports - spare any chord change for a cuppa, guv?

ONE FOR THE MONOPOLY BOARD: Friday, BBC-1, 4.35 - 5.00 S Club 7: Don't Stop Movin'
Friday, ITV1, 4.35 - 5.00 S Club 7: Back to the 50's.
And people think it's impossible to get away from Football...

MAYBE THE ANSWER LIES WITHIN: Recently selected as a top blog by Blogger, The Date Project is a diary covering the attempts of an Oregonite to convert his singledom into something altogether more pair-shaped. However, he announces that the whole project is being carried out to the sound of just two CDs - both of which are by Cake. So, really, all the plans to talk to three people a day and stand in better parts of bookstores are doomed already. Jesus, man - get yourself some decent music. You want to have some sex? You want a second date? Buy some Charlatans and a James Brown best of; get dressed to The Cardigans and go to bed with Miss Kittin in your ears. That'll sort you.