A BRIEF PAUSE: This time last year, No Rock took a brief break to go off and get married. One year on, we're taking another short break for our anniversary - we'll be back on Wednesday evening. In the meantime, if you're looking for kicks:
Gay Good Charlotte fanfic - "Benjy had questioned his sexuality for the last time..."
The Pink Masturbation Station - a really disturbing email list which seems to consist entirely of a bloke saying "I'm jerking off watching Pink videos - does anyone want to talk to me on the phone while I do it?" (There are not enough words for 'No')
Poems made by Natasha - tributes in rhyme (maybe free verse) to Celine Dion - "your fans adore you and love you a tonne"
Please - don't have nightmares.

WEEK IS A LONG TIME IN POLITICS, TWENTY YEARS NOT SO: We did cringe a little ourselves when the usually reliable Guardian Diary - well, okay, the sometimes reliable Guardian Diary - didn't realise that Tom Watson MP's yoofspeak website was a pisstake. C'mon, nobody's that square*. But we were amused that Tom told his local paper that his inspiration was events "in recent years" like Neil Kinnock appearing in a Tracy Ullman video.
For readers under the age of thirty: Neil Kinnock was once the leader of the Labour Party. Tracy Ullman is now best remembered through mentions in '300 episodes of the Simpsons' pieces.
* - except maybe Cliff Richard

THE END OF THE CAREER: Ananova is carrying a couple of Victoria Beckham stories today. Oddly, they've not linked to them on the Pop pages. Clearly, Ananova has decided that the music story is all over now.

MORE ON 'BEAUTIFUL': After our piece on Christina last night, we came across a website which tried to argue that 'Beautiful's video was on a par with TLC's Unpretty. Nu-uh. Unpretty features women without any need to diet or undergo surgery deciding they're actually fine as they are, thanks. Beautiful features a woman - who, we know from the casting call, is anorexic - being told to ignore other people's opinions. Anyone whose spent any time with a person with anorexia will know one of the hardest challenges is getting them to realise that they're dangerously, life-threateningly thin. The actress in the video may be thin for whatever reason; in the story of the video, she's in need of help. No wonder Christina is the pin-up girl of the ana sites.

SEX AND INDIEROCK TOGETHER - UNLIKELY THOUGH IT MIGHT SOUND - AT LAST: Playboy are running a poll - oh, do settle down - to find the sexiest woman in indie rock. Amongst the runners are bsn favourites Neko Case and Sarah Nixey. We're not expecting Playgirl to ask us to choose between Noel and Chris Martin any time soon.

OH MR WILSON: Stephen Wilson, a federal judge in LA has thrown out a request to close down Grokster and Morpheus on the grounds that the operators of such systems have no control over what people use it for.
Clearly, the RIAA will now have to pour more cash into its pliant placemen to get a law of some sort to stop this outbreak in common sense. But for the mean time - hurrah, a judge who actually thinks the issue through.

WHERE SHOULD WE POINT THE FINGER?: It's been a really odd week already, and now we have to feel sorry for Natasha from Atomic Kitten because people aren't smart enough to get one of her jokes. Yes, you read that correctly. Someone asked her about how she kept in shape, and she said "I don't eat - the way to a nice backside is not to eat." Okay, not a great joke, but clearly a joke. However, the likes of the Daily Mail and its femail website are having kittens - clever wording, huh?
Oddly, we can't find any indication of Femail - or anyone much - raising any objections to Christian Aguilera showing an anorexic girl in a video while trilling happily "you are beauitiful, no matter what they say" over the top. This surely is a much scarier image to be putting in front of young girls, suggesting that when you're seriously at risk from being way, way too thin, you should ignore the advice of the people who care about you and feel yourself to be beautiful? Some people do see the clip as being about overcoming eating disorders because "the girl smashes the mirror in the end" and feels happy, but really all that adds up to is a celebration of the refusal to see the problem. Beautiful is cited as being a 'thinspirational' tune by pro-anorexia websites. But that, of course, might be tricky for the Mail to balance with its "make yourself look thin and gorgeous, tubbso" diet supplements.

I'M STILL JENNY FROM THE POSH: Ah. So it turns out J-Lo might have 'forgotten where she came from' after all - she seems to have a recollection of only "having a little" but unless her private school and posh neighbourhood had some sort of odd rationing going on, it's hard to understand why.

NOT OFTEN YOU GET TO USE THE WORDS 'SINEAD O'CONNOR' AND 'RETIRING' IN THE SAME SENTENCE: But she is, apparently due to ill health, but really: isn't this on a par with, say, Syd Little saying he was stopping doing comedy?

TOGETHER AT LAST: Cheap Trick and Steve Albini. Those of you who care about these things will be happy to be able to link The Popguns to Cheap Trick through this handy conduit.

THE DOORS GET SLAMMED: The dismal sight of the elderly surviving Doors trying to turn their heritage into a pension is receding further into the distance - now big dead fat man in a bath Jim Morrison's ma and pa are suing the half-band on the grounds that it's all a bit tacky.

THE WOMAN IS INSATIABLE: Someone should have thought while they were banning her from pinching pretty things and added a clause insisting that Winona stops dating every bloody rock star in the entire world. But we missed our chance, and now... she's moved on to Conor Oberst. I'm imagining that as part of the 'breaking america' clause in his EMI contract, the label guaranteed that by the end of tax year 2003, Robbie Williams would at least have had Winona clutch his crotch while pinching her own nipple. [Finders fee: Ms Becky Bamboo].

"WELL, WE CAN'T LOSE MORE THAN WE DID THROWING MONEY AT CAREY AND WILLIAMS": We're quite curious to see more details on EMI's plans to allow Europunters to download, burn and mobilise tracks as soon as they're released to radio for playing (how much they cost, what format we're talking about) but at least this looks like a company who've actually thought about what they're doing - they've twigged that there's a massive missed opportunity between the first play on Sara Cox and the eventual turning up of the records in HMV which encourages file-sharing and are trying to do something positive to stop the hole rather than just sitting around moaning. Plus, it can be seen as a signal that EMI have realised that downloads have very little effect on the sales of CD singles, else doing this would risk the chart entry position. It's a step forward at least...

TALKING OF SIGHTS YOU'D RATHER NOT SEE:
The Dixie Chicks have struck back at criticisms of their anti-Bush remarks by, erm, getting naked and blubbing on TV. If these fail, plan C is giggling and saying "We're blonde... teehee... we don't know what we're talking about when we stray of hairsprays and lipsticks."

NO, KEEP THEM ON. PLEASE: Toyah Wilcox, crusader against asylum seekers and former pop star, is apparently threatening to strip off her clothes in a bid to win I Was Once Quite Well Known, Please Shift My Back Catalogue. Oh, sweet jesus. Can we dial a number to make her keep them on?

NOT GOOD ENOUGH: Wonderful news, as some pissed-off Creed fans have decided that not only was the show they attended pisspoor, but that they actually deserve a refund and are suing to get their money back. You can bet Robbie Williams is eyeing the court proceedings nervously - if you can get sued in the states for giving a crap performance, he'd better get used to staying at home.

LIFE BEYOND THE CLUB: Of course, both Rachel and Jo are jostling to have some sort of TOTP presence now they've smashed up S-Club. What's best about this article though is that Tina, apparently "said she wanted to have a go at music", which should make a nice change from the last few years.
Bradley says he's "concentrating on publishing and writing", but, presumably will work in the other departments of his local WH Smith as he is required to.

WHAT THE POP PAPERS SAY: No distance left to run edition
MC Harvey - who apparently has developed a TV presentation sideline to keep him going during those long days when the rest of the So Solids are in chokey - and Alesha Dixon from Mis-Teeq popped up in the Observer's couples special. It would be easy to be cynical about the Posh and Becks of R&B, but they actually come across as rather sweet - MCing together at home to 8 Mile - although Alesha says bemusingly that they're trying to create "unconditional love", which is a little bit like trying to construct happiness - it'll either be there or it won't, you can't make it up.

Mojo lets itself fall into the lazy Beatle issue trap - Paul McCartney, he's nicer than you think, you know; probably - and offers perhaps the least enticing free gift of recorded time: some lucky sod will open their magazine and discover an original Yoko Ono artwork has been slipped inside. This is on a par, of course, with getting those crappy scratch cards they wedge in the nme nowadays.

Word demonstrates its first editorial wobble, giving the cover to Blur on the basis that the new album is meant to be really, really good - we never quite felt the same about Select after it had done that two-part 'every single moment' blur to date special, whcih shifted the magazine from being ravingly stupid about music into being the sort of wide-eyed boyfan who, having realised sexual intercourse is something that will happen to other people, has set about memorising the messages scratched on run out grooves in the hope that just maybe it will fill the yawning chasm in his life. And that was before Blur started to turn - as they seem to be - into the English U2 (Word reports Albarn ringing Alex James during a gig to get the audience to leave him a message - it's only a few steps down the road to wearing devil horns and hanging out with Bush).

But it's not all Blur. There is the mighty Danny Baker : "You must have it together by the time you're forty, and that doesn't include looking like you're still 19. 'Oh, look, I can still fit into the jeans I had when I was a teenager'? Well, you should be ashamed of yourself." Up against this there's his former 'rival' on the london airwaves, Edith Bowman. Edith thinks she's quite the rebel because - hooo! - she played the Datsuns on Capital FM. Oooh, fresh spinach dip, you rebel. It was her last day, so it really was on a par with muttering under your breath.

The there's Caitlin Moran, who normally I can either take or, much more often, leavel, who writes a much-needed condemnation of the rubbish that follows in the wake of an artist discovering cocaine: "miles Davis became so nit picky and ruined he gave recording for ten years and then came back covering Cyndi Lauper's Time After Time; Peckinpah went from Straw Dogs to directing Julian Lennon videos [...] commedians start wearing frock coats..."

Lucinda Williams entertains Mark Ellen; it's a tribute to Ellen's superior writing skills that the two of them getting smashed to a bosanova background turns out more "wish i'd been there" than "you had to be there" - nobody wants to piss on Smash Hits 25th birthday but, really, back in the 80's they had people of this quality editing their title; they might have only been writing about pop, but at least they could write. If you had a current Smash Hits hack and a half-trained monkey in front of you these days, you wouldn't choose the SH chap first to daub rude graffiti on a lamppost.

Kerrang has got a cover story on The White Stripes - normally we'd allow ourselves a gentle snurkle that a band who bear no hallmark of ROCK in any way, shape or form commanding the cover of K!, but the nme has got Coldplay on its cover which leaves Jack N Meg's mild maybe-incest and blues looking like a bunch of noisy pigs butt-fucking each other in a fireworks factory.

News leads that The Strokes might be coming to Britain again, maybe, who knows;Courtney's new album is going to be called America's sweetheart, which suggests she's the last person left following Madonna's lead; Marilyn Manson - crazy name, crazy... oh, hang on, dull, obvious name, isn't it? As was his album launch party - he GOT ON THE ROOF! With a loudhailer! Which he shouted through! So, not so much the God of Fuck as the Liberal Democratic candidate for Churchill Ward; Noel Gallagher's taking the rest of the year off and it might be not until the start of 2005 that there's another album from Oasis (and, therefore, it won't be until Easter 2005 that it gets marked down to £7-99 by Asda in a desperate bid to shift them). Still, lets just bask in the happy glow that Noel Is Fucking Out Of Our Faces until Christmas. Aaaah. Meanwhile, Ryan Adams has said he's quitting music, but he was just toying with us. There's a piece about why you "still" love McCartney, which suggests that the nme thinks its audience has been around the block a bit; but then there's another piece which - sidebarring a story about the Monkees influence on the new The Thrills video - starts with "the Monkees were the boyband of their day", which suggests the nme then decides its audience is about three.

InMe - who we always Claudius like think of as I, NME - choose some CD tracks (The Used, Pete Yorn and Talk Talk)

Kings of Leon think they have a "70s porn star look", but actually they seem more like the 118 118 guys from the TV advert. Asked about Iraq, they say "We don't wanna give an opinion on that, 'cos who the hell cares?" I'm sorry, but I really don't have time for tossheads like that any more.

There are posters again, but at least you get Tim Burgess in the bath. Although they have two bloody Shaun Ryder posters (including the most over-used NME picture of all time - yes, he's standing on a big letter E, very clever) which takes the edge off a little. What, no Paris Angels?

reviews - albums
radiohead - hail to the thief (not out until June 9th, so expect this one to be run and re-run) - "a good rather than great record", 7
yeah yeah yeahs - fever to tell - "not the fuck and run job they promised, mixed with a grander plan", 8
macy gray - the trouble with being myself - "she's not keen on her adoring fans", 6


singles
sotw - interpol - say hello to the angels - "you'll still be singing it [come] august"
mu - lets get sick - "not to be confused with nu or mew"
moving units - moving units ep - "gang of four revivalists"

live
blur - paris l'espcae clacquesin - "trout farms be damned; this is a high"
primal scream - glasgow garage - "tonight, right on the money"


and finally, Roger Morton thinks that one day Avril lavigne will wake-up, realise she's been played, and need to make a Tori Amos style angry classic. yeah, and one day my cat will wake up and want to be a lion, but he still won't actually grow a freakin' mane.

WHAT THE POP PAPERS SAY: No distance left to run edition
MC Harvey - who apparently has developed a TV presentation sideline to keep him going during those long days when the rest of the So Solids are in chokey - and Alesha Dixon from Mis-Teeq popped up in the Observer's couples special. It would be easy to be cynical about the Posh and Becks of R&B, but they actually come across as rather sweet - MCing together at home to 8 Mile - although Alesha says bemusingly that they're trying to create "unconditional love", which is a little bit like trying to construct happiness - it'll either be there or it won't, you can't make it up.

Mojo lets itself fall into the lazy Beatle issue trap - Paul McCartney, he's nicer than you think, you know; probably - and offers perhaps the least enticing free gift of recorded time: some lucky sod will open their magazine and discover an original Yoko Ono artwork has been slipped inside. This is on a par, of course, with getting those crappy scratch cards they wedge in the nme nowadays.

Word demonstrates its first editorial wobble, giving the cover to Blur on the basis that the new album is meant to be really, really good - we never quite felt the same about Select after it had done that two-part 'every single moment' blur to date special, whcih shifted the magazine from being ravingly stupid about music into being the sort of wide-eyed boyfan who, having realised sexual intercourse is something that will happen to other people, has set about memorising the messages scratched on run out grooves in the hope that just maybe it will fill the yawning chasm in his life. And that was before Blur started to turn - as they seem to be - into the English U2 (Word reports Albarn ringing Alex James during a gig to get the audience to leave him a message - it's only a few steps down the road to wearing devil horns and hanging out with Bush).

But it's not all Blur. There is the mighty Danny Baker : "You must have it together by the time you're forty, and that doesn't include looking like you're still 19. 'Oh, look, I can still fit into the jeans I had when I was a teenager'? Well, you should be ashamed of yourself." Up against this there's his former 'rival' on the london airwaves, Edith Bowman. Edith thinks she's quite the rebel because - hooo! - she played the Datsuns on Capital FM. Oooh, fresh spinach dip, you rebel. It was her last day, so it really was on a par with muttering under your breath.

The there's Caitlin Moran, who normally I can either take or, much more often, leavel, who writes a much-needed condemnation of the rubbish that follows in the wake of an artist discovering cocaine: "miles Davis became so nit picky and ruined he gave recording for ten years and then came back covering Cyndi Lauper's Time After Time; Peckinpah went from Straw Dogs to directing Julian Lennon videos [...] commedians start wearing frock coats..."

Lucinda Williams entertains Mark Ellen; it's a tribute to Ellen's superior writing skills that the two of them getting smashed to a bosanova background turns out more "wish i'd been there" than "you had to be there" - nobody wants to piss on Smash Hits 25th birthday but, really, back in the 80's they had people of this quality editing their title; they might have only been writing about pop, but at least they could write. If you had a current Smash Hits hack and a half-trained monkey in front of you these days, you wouldn't choose the SH chap first to daub rude graffiti on a lamppost.

Kerrang has got a cover story on The White Stripes - normally we'd allow ourselves a gentle snurkle that a band who bear no hallmark of ROCK in any way, shape or form commanding the cover of K!, but the nme has got Coldplay on its cover which leaves Jack N Meg's mild maybe-incest and blues looking like a bunch of noisy pigs butt-fucking each other in a fireworks factory.

News leads that The Strokes might be coming to Britain again, maybe, who knows;Courtney's new album is going to be called America's sweetheart, which suggests she's the last person left following Madonna's lead; Marilyn Manson - crazy name, crazy... oh, hang on, dull, obvious name, isn't it? As was his album launch party - he GOT ON THE ROOF! With a loudhailer! Which he shouted through! So, not so much the God of Fuck as the Liberal Democratic candidate for Churchill Ward; Noel Gallagher's taking the rest of the year off and it might be not until the start of 2005 that there's another album from Oasis (and, therefore, it won't be until Easter 2005 that it gets marked down to £7-99 by Asda in a desperate bid to shift them). Still, lets just bask in the happy glow that Noel Is Fucking Out Of Our Faces until Christmas. Aaaah. Meanwhile, Ryan Adams has said he's quitting music, but he was just toying with us. There's a piece about why you "still" love McCartney, which suggests that the nme thinks its audience has been around the block a bit; but then there's another piece which - sidebarring a story about the Monkees influence on the new The Thrills video - starts with "the Monkees were the boyband of their day", which suggests the nme then decides its audience is about three.

InMe - who we always Claudius like think of as I, NME - choose some CD tracks (The Used, Pete Yorn and Talk Talk)

Kings of Leon think they have a "70s porn star look", but actually they seem more like the 118 118 guys from the TV advert. Asked about Iraq, they say "We don't wanna give an opinion on that, 'cos who the hell cares?" I'm sorry, but I really don't have time for tossheads like that any more.

There are posters again, but at least you get Tim Burgess in the bath. Although they have two bloody Shaun Ryder posters (including the most over-used NME picture of all time - yes, he's standing on a big letter E, very clever) which takes the edge off a little. What, no Paris Angels?

reviews - albums
radiohead - hail to the thief (not out until June 9th, so expect this one to be run and re-run) - "a good rather than great record", 7
yeah yeah yeahs - fever to tell - "not the fuck and run job they promised, mixed with a grander plan", 8
macy gray - the trouble with being myself - "she's not keen on her adoring fans", 6


singles
sotw - interpol - say hello to the angels - "you'll still be singing it [come] august"
mu - lets get sick - "not to be confused with nu or mew"
moving units - moving units ep - "gang of four revivalists"

live
blur - paris l'espcae clacquesin - "trout farms be damned; this is a high"
primal scream - glasgow garage - "tonight, right on the money"


and finally, Roger Morton thinks that one day Avril lavigne will wake-up, realise she's been played, and need to make a Tori Amos style angry classic. yeah, and one day my cat will wake up and want to be a lion, but he still won't actually grow a freakin' mane.

NORMALLY, A GOOD DAY FOR ATOMIC KITTEN DOESN'T MAKE US PICK UP OUR STEP AND LEAVE US FEELING THAT THE VERY SUN ITSELF IS SMILING JUST ON US ALONE. BUT: If the New York Post is right, they're going to break big in America this year. And that makes us laugh and laugh and laugh, as we imagine Robbie 'eighty milliams' Williams watching as a bunch of scouse chipshoppers hoover up dollars with limp Blondie covers while his desperate attempts to persuade the US to at least notice him fall by the wayside. Hurrah!
It's more about their money that one of them has won a prize for having a nice bottom, a fact which has made the always ready to preen Liverpool Echo delighted. Doubtless Natasha's fleshy anus will be rapidly worked into the pool's City of Culture bid.

WE IMAGINE IT'S MEANT TO BE PRONOUNCED 'VERSUS': But what a rubbish concept - Vs - as in "flicking the Vs", which comes across to us like an attempt by the Blue stable (same management) to try and manufacture a So Solid Crew that parents can approve of. One of them is a Ms Dyna-Lite; the other girl looks like a scouse girl who's aspiring to be Kat Slater. Then there's the boys - Screech from Saved By The Bell, someone who looks a bit like Zammo's mate who wasn't the gobby one, and a grumpy looking bloke in a vest. Lamentable, but the way things are, they'll be in the charts within a month, and the one with the grisly porn past will be all over the Adult Sport by Midsummer.

--speechless--
this years novello awards nominations are so desperate and sad, we are going to pretend we haven't heard them
http://www.ananova.com/entertainment/story/sm_773173.html - if you really, really must

LOOK! OVER HERE! WE'RE LESBIANS: Tatu have tried to talk up an audience for their UK shows by trying to pretend that they're going to be so dirty onstage people are going to be upset by them ("defended their raunchy stage show") on Radio One. Missing the point wonderfully, they seem to think people's problem with them is because they're (apparently) lesbians - "it's nothing strange" they trill. No, girls, what people have the problem with is the tawdry way your boss makes you turn lesbianism into a cock-squishing pantomime of school skirts and panting. Still, if next time you try adding "we just stand under buckets of cold water in white shirts", you might manage to at least fill the first forty rows...

THERE AINT NO PARTY LIKE AN S CLUB RETIREMENT PARTY: We're amused that Newsround think the S Club split is not merely "shocking" but worthy of an exclamation point's worth of shock. Especially since the past S-Club stories on the report page ('We're not splitting' says S Club's Rachel; S Club split rumours are rubbish says Paul; Jo's NOT leaving S Club despite back problems) suggests that the end had received greater pre-publicity than the Millionaire Major show last night (and, to be honest, a certain charming desire to believe the spin of every second-rate pop act that happens down the Newsround way).
What will the world be like without S Club? Apart, of course, from the newly-retitled S Club 8 (Juniors as was) who will presumably carry on grimly flinging their Back To School George range-clad asses about until Operation Ore has all of the only people interested in that sort of thing off the streets.

AAAAAAAH, WE SCREWED UP: Sorry to those music heads of you with no interest in the war, as in a fit of chocolate-egg-driven madness we inadvertently posted three warticker posts to No Rock. We've now moved them to the right place.

TRICKY, TRICKY, TRICKY: You'd hope that Run DMC would have got a more fitting memorial than the re-release of Its Tricky as a single to bark up an audience for the career-closing Best Of.
We're bemused by the rubbish mix that's been dumped out onto the racks - considering how grumpy the band were about that Jason Nevins remix a couple of years ago, it's hard to see how this reworking got cleared; or indeed "why" - Run DMC were a rap act, so why bury the rap in a cloud of so-so beats? It's like "improving" Placido Domingo by really turning up the strings in the mix.
But what's worse is the horrible video - and we mean "horrible" in the sense of "it fills us with horror watching it." If you've not had the pleasure yet, an elderly security guard is locked in a booth while a bunch of skate kids and BMX boys run riot in what looks like an underground car park. Now, the old "the kids versus the man" set-up is a fine tradition in music videos and rock movies, but this is a much nastier reworking of the idea. Whereas in, say, that Musical Youth video or Footloose, the authority figure is pretty much a comic foil. The rules they seek to impose are unfair, or outdated; their come-uppence is delivered by the wits of the kids and their superior ability to skank or breakdance - so in 'Pass The Dutchie', the Youth's victory is won in court through a demonstration of how it's just some tunes for everybody to enjoy. The 'It's Tricky' promo, though, has no saving graces - the old guy is clearly shown as being trapped and afraid in the booth, the youths menacing and self-involved. There's no Roscoe P Coltraine looking on and blustering as the youths skate round him; just one old, exposed, vulnerable old man looking on the brink of a heart attack and unable to even run to safety.
For a band who worked hard to improve their own community, Run DMC deserve a better memorial than this; a clip which apparently makes heroes of mindless thugs.