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The rain that has been falling has washed away the Hyde Park Hit Factory minifestival, carrying away with it the prospect of Jason Donovan reuniting with Kylie Minogue and - perhaps more significantly - the chance for Sonia to remind people that she used to exist.
Hot on the heels of the corrupt quiz phone-in, this week Ofcom has ruled on another breach of its code, this time by Jason Donovan.
Yes, Jason Donovan, who told listeners to 37 radio stations during his networked programme that:
We don't think Jason Donovan should have sued the Face all those years ago, but even so, it's probably unfair on him that, fifteen years on, the case is reported as having been about being called gay. Today's G2, for example, notes:
The strongest argument for strengthening the welfare state is, surely, that if we remove all children from lives of want, we can stop asking Terry Wogan to struggle through seven hours of live television.
They're claiming that Boyzone are back together "just for Children In Need"; a one-off super special that might be more special if they'd not already released the tour dates for the ongoing comeback. And if it wasn't Boyzone.
Also back in room have been the Spice Girls, playing together for the first time in over eighteen hours. Their lucrative actual comeback for Victoria's Secrets means that time and money which could have been put to charitable uses (or perhaps retaining a couple of newsroom jobs) has gone on a satellite link-up.
The Spices were sat in the Dancing With The Stars studio behind the judges' desk - it looked a little like those sci-fi movies where aliens land and announce plans for crushing our puny race during a hastily-convened press conference. Except no alien invasion squad would have been quite as shambolic as the Spices: talking over each, getting lost in sexual innuendo with Terry Wogan (you wouldn't, would you?) and, at the middle, Victoria Beckham looking as confused as Peter Davison would on meeting David Tennent's doctor.
By the time they came to actually do a song - that ballad which they've given away to the charity - Mel C had changed her costume, the better to resemble a Victorian undertaker. Complete with a big black top hat. We're seeing it as a cry for help.
We're not totally sure, either, but we think they might have recast Scary Spice.
Other musical highlights so far has been the discovery that that woman off Holby City has a pretty good soul voice and that John Barrowman might have excellent delivery for show tunes, but can't actually sing properly. This is a bit of a problem when he's doing Your Song, although if it means that his "songs for your mother" Christmas album turns out to be a one-off, we'll feel a lot more comfortable watching the next series of Torchwood. Jason Donovan, surprisingly, is now a dead ringer for Tony Blair.
They also had a duo called Sam & Mark on in the first fifteen minutes - it's not exactly A Night Of A Thousand Stars stuff when you have to hit Google to remind yourself who they hell it is you're watching. Apparently, they lost on Pop Idol; they still sing like they're hoping there might be a telephone vote to save them.
Steve Harley is currently on, doing a regional opt-out for the East. He usually turns up doing Come Up And See Me whenever people are raising money anywhere in Anglia; he probably earns more for charity than he does for himself these days.
It's all in a good cause, of course: bbc.co.uk.pudsey to donate online.
We do love it when the ill-concealed dislike between sister papers the Sun and the NOTW pops into the open, like today. A month or so back, the News was telling how Kylie doesn't want to be seen with Jason Donovan:
To be honest, "star edits fly-on-the-wall documentary to flattering effect" isn't really much of a story, so it's hard to see why the News of the World is quite so exercised that Kylie has chopped bits out of her In Bed With Madonna clone White Diamond. But exercised it is:
There were two signs that, for all the claims it was a 'prefect tribute', that the Diana concert fell short of capturing the imagination.
The first was that it was so short of top-grade talent Elton had to be dragged in to open and close it; the second was that the anchoring was done by Jamie Theakston and Claudia Winkelman. Clearly, the BBC felt that shunting an entire day of programming off BBC1 was its duty done, but it sent neither Huw Edwards, so it was an event of national significance, nor Jonathan Ross, so it wasn't a major entertainment event, either. They did have Fearne Cotton deployed to stand backstage going "wow... fantastic", like Cassie from Skins; but Cotton, for reasons we still don't understand, seems to be on every live TV event telling us how "amazing" everything is - she did the final of Make Me A Supermodel, so her presence hardly confers gravitas.
We're only human, so couldn't stand the whole thing, just dipping in across the day. With each peek, there was something totally different from what was going on before - some Classic FM style opera-light; Tom Jones beating up the Arctic Monkeys; Donny Osmond, Jason Donovan and that Lee bloke from Any Dream Will Do having a Hartnell-Troughton-Pertwee momen; Rod Stewart - who we missed, but did see Fearne attesting to to how "fantastic" he was. It's not an unprecedented mix - it's reminiscent of Radio 2's Sunday playlist from about a decade ago - but nobody was expected to sit through that lot from start to finish. And even they get Jonathan Ross to do presenting duties.
The end fell astonishingly flat - the delightful piano-playing princes came on and demonstrated all the ease and comfort when talking to the masses shown by their father (you'd better get used to this, William - you're going to be doing the State Opening of Parliament in a few years) did some mumbling and then, instead of a big finish, there was, erm, some cine film of Diana doing handstands as a child. "This is how she would want to be remembered" - flashing her knickers for the camera, apparently. I know the idea was to make us think of what a terrible waste such a photogenic and energetic life was snuffed out in such a terrible way, but I'm afraid the effect was more "private swimming pools and high-quality cine cameras in the 1960s - didn't exactly have a hard life, did she?" It was noticeable that people were filing out of Wembley before the end.
They didn't even give her brother a chance to do a reprise of his funeral rabble-rousing; instead, he was tucked away, far from the microphones. It was a miracle they didn't have him sitting in a cage of visual metaphor. He didn't look like he enjoyed it, either.
There's a lovely quote from Jason Donovan, talking on the radio yesterday, about his wild years:
We wondered what was making Jason Donovan's leg jitter like a caffeine addict locked in Starbucks during last night's National Lottery - now we know: he's signed a (supposed) million quid deal for his autobiography.
We suspect the payment will break down a little like this:
- My time in Neighbours: £2000
- That singing career: £200
- The true story of making a seemingly endless parade of films about Australian soldiers: £0.75
- Touring in the Rocky Horror Show: Done for free
- Suing The Face for calling me a liar: £9.25
- Accidently releasing my mobile number to the Australian public: £400
- I kissed that Kylie Minogue a few times: £997,390
Darius Perkins' autobiography is still up for grabs.
It's been a bit of a threadbare year, all round. You only have to look at how people have been trying to convince themselves the Arctic Monkeys (off the internet) are heart-stoppingly exciting rather than the sort of band you wouldn't mind seeing as support sometime to get the sense of a year in which the pickings have been fairly thin.
Not, admittedly, as thin as the dire attempts to try and create some interest by barking up a "war on emo", mind. We're pacifists here, but even we can't find it in ourselves to protest against a supposed war on middle-class American boys who are a bit shit at putting on eyeliner. Especially when the "war" boils down to little more than Kasabian having a pop. Kasabian against My Chemical Romance. It's like being made to read a match report from a Conference match that isn't even on the pools coupons, isn't it?
With indie filling up the doldrums, the doldrums are going to have to find space to build a holding area for the grey sludge of PR-created singerish-songwriterish who are showing the supposed democratization of MySpace up for what it is: Keith Allen's daughter and Sandi Thom comparing Ugg boots over the face of humanity, forever.
Mind you, it's not fair to blame it all on Rupert Murdoch's MySpace. The axing of Smash Hits and Top of the Pops have created a world where even if we did get a decent pop star, we wouldn't know what to do with them. And who would want to be a popstar, anyway, when it's becoming clear the lack of a proper pension scheme promises nothing more than an old age devoid of dignity?
Boy George had a taste of cold, hard reality as he got stuck into cleaning streets as a return for wasting police time back when he got confused about all the cocaine in his flat; then, he had to watch as Culture Club hired Sam Butcher to take his place in the reunited band. Having decided they couldn't take to the road with the street-sweeper, they instead chose some sort of binman version of the real thing.
Still, at least the other 80s George managed to keep out of court, although his habit of being so "tired" he has to stop his car wherever he is. Even in a busy intersection. There's no actual law against cottaging, but George's trip to Hampstead Heath could still see him heading to his solicitors - he's threatened to sue photographers who invaded his cruising privacy.
Taking a slightly less cold version of reality, Steve Strange cut hair to get himself into the Guinness Book of Records on Celebrity Scissorhands, while Jason Donovan claimed he'd allowed himself to be humiliated in the jungle to allow his kids to see a different side of their Dad. When that side is a man prepared to risk eating kangaroo bollocks in order to promote a comeback tour, you wonder if the kids might not be better off living unaware of those depths.
The winner, though, when it came to 80s popstars on reality TV was Pete Burns who - despite having a face like a badly-inflated beachball and arriving in a police-time-wasting "monkey" coat - triumphed on Celebrity Big Brother. No, he didn't win it, of course - Chantelle did, taking Ordinary Boys singer Preston as her prize. Preston was elevated to Ok! Magazine status, and his band promptly relegated from third-generation semi-serious mods to plodding background workhorses for Christmas market balladry which would shame the Andre-Jordan massive.
Burns might not have won, but he left with his star reascending and his dignity more-or-less intact. The star continues to ascend; a run of substandard digital TV programmes and a spell in the big house suggests the dignity burnt up on re-entry.
Pete Burns, of course, hasn't been the only pop star to have legal woes this year. The Bulgarian Madona has been
fighting for her very (made-up) name; Procul Harum took a disagreement about royalties to the bench;
Snoop Dogg's 21 inch baton caused a minor airport hullabaloo, although nothing to compare with his Heathrow ruck. Spike Lee has had more than enough of Snoop's sexism and general bad behaviour - but now that Tony Blair feels comfortable balancing his "respect" agenda with overlooking Snoop's caution under section 4 of the Public Order Act in order to share canapes with him.
But then it can be hard to throw off the allure of rubbing shoulders with the stars for politicians, can't it? Did George Bush feel upset when U2 and Green Day recorded a Katrina benefit single and made a video with a very slight suggestion that the US could have done more? Or would the sting have been soothed somewhat when - as Rolling Stone pointed out - Bono popped down for a photo-op with the President while he was campaigning during the mid-terms in the seat formerly held by Mark Foley, the page-flirting former Republican congressman?
It's been a crazy year for Bono, of course: he discovered he was Dutch, happily allowing U2 to avoid paying taxes at the higher Irish rate. "Who wouldn't want to pay less taxes?" asked The Edge, apparently without thinking through what it would mean for the One campaign's call for governments to direct 0.7% of GDP to foreign aid. Not easy if people avoid their taxes, surely? But then Bono seems happier suggesting that we can all just spend our way out of poverty, hilariously launching the Red campaign which wants people to use a credit card to buy stuff to 'help' Africa. The idea really does seem to be that we should remove the problem of third world debt by taking on a small portion of it as our personal debt instead. Of course it doesn't make much sense, but then he's been busy trying to force an unwanted tower on the people of Dublin to help channel more cash out of the Irish economy towards the Dutch one, and he's had the strain of that court case about his trousers to worry about. It's too much for one man, dammit.
Another man keeping busy was Pete Doherty: in between popping in and out of court, Doherty has managed to fight a photographer, kick a reporter and, apparently, stick a syringe into a comatose girl in the interests of art. Back in April, Pete's cousin was left comatose in the street outside a building in Aberdeen; this month, Pete absented himself from the scene as a man lay in the street. This time the ambulances didn't make it in time.
At least his mother has managed to spin quite a lucrative book out of the turmoil, so it's not all bad.
More families sticking together, as Madonna headed off to Malawi to adopt an orphan and came back with one whose father was, inconveniently, still alive. The obvious solution was to nip onto the television and tell the world that, when David's father said he went to visit, that simply wasn't true. She also claimed that she'd broken no adoption laws, as there were no adoption laws, before also insisting that she'd complied with the non-existent laws completely. Still, at least Maddy's trip to Moscow date went off relatively
quietly, after the venue was shifted on the bemusing grounds that the original site ran the risk of tempting students to fall out of windows.
Still, at least the baby accessorising saved us from her earlier attempts to remind us she existed: Back in March, she was reduced to trying to remind us about that time she kissed Britney.
Not that kissing Britney is that difficult. Paris is getting a go. She'll take all-comers. Except Kevin Federline, obviously.
That oddest sensation, sympathy for Heather Mills, ran through our veins as The Sun launched an attack on the woman it desperately wanted all of us to call Lady Mucca (the lame-ass nickname was so misjudged even Paul McCartney would blanch at using it.) The paper spent several days showing pictures of Heather from a sex book, frothing about how disgusting it all was, while making the pictures available online so that its readers could be disgusted in private at a time of their choosing. The paper never quite explained why it was bad for Heather Mills to appear in sexy photos, when a lot of News International business plan relies on the appetite of British public for buying pictures of young women in sexy photos.
The sympathy, though, can only run so far, and as McCartney and Mills-McCartney have continued their public war of attrition, you find yourself hoping the judge will give them a divorce and pass custody of the money to a foster family.
David Cameron's attempts to reinvent the Tory party as something other than a bunch of in-fighting toffs started to come apart when he launched a bemusing attack on Radio One for encouraging knife crime by playing hip-hop. Lethal Bizzle wrote to him to suggest he might look like a white, upper middle class member of the ruling classes by making a sweeping generalisation about music coincidently enjoyed by young black men; Cameron didn't reply but instead damned Bizzle in the Mail on Sunday on the basis of, erm, someone else's lyrics.
Cameron better watch his back: Dickon Edwards of Fosca stood for the Greens in a council election this year; surely Number Ten deserves its first reformed Romo PM? Come to that, does Jessica Simpson's departure from music hint at freeing up time for a run at the White House in 2008?
Robbie Williams was as successfully not gay this year as he's been every year of his life, although his inability to let go of the past got him into trouble when he wrote a song slagging off Nigel Martin-Smith. Victoria Newton gleefully printed the lyrics in her Bizarre column, and then not quite so gleefullly ran an apology. Newton had also claimed that Williams was going to turn up at the Take That reunion concerts. But he didn't.
Indeed, without a Robbie to ruin what would have been a perfect reunion, the band decided to do it themselves. By sticking around afterwards, doing grown-up ballads. Thank God the public sent All Saints packing and East 17 sent East 17 packing double swift.
Away from all this creative activity, the RIAA (and its client organisations like the IFPI and the BPI) have been quietly pursuing their strange new businesses. The lack of anything approaching investment in music by the record labels suggests they have embarked on a new business model of trying to get money from suing kids, bringing lawsuits and then admitting they don't have evidence, trying to force songwriters to receive less from records and even even persuading Microsoft to pay them a tax on sales of the Zune and a slice of YouTube revenues from Google.
We don't know if the RIAA companies are currently employing more lawyers than musicians, but it seems likely. They could even get them to make the records, as it can't be worse than watching musicians trying to offer legal advice. Mick Hucknall's bid to pass off copyright extension as a "socialist" measure shows where that would lead us.
Perhaps that accounts for the slightly dispirting 2006 - if you want to make it in the music industry in 2006, you're better off studying IP law than trying to learn how to play a guitar.
The usual fall-back when attempting to paint a picture of a person at sea with popular culture is to invoke that judge asking "What are the Beatles?"
But perhaps it's time to update the image - how about A Beatle asking "what exactly is a Jason Donovan?"
To be fair to Paul McCartney, Jason's not really done that much recently, and it's unlikely Macca's had the chance to watch very much ITV what with all the legal business and the flying back and forth and so on.
Congratulations - if that's the word, rather than a sad, sympathetic clucking noise - to Matt from Busted, who's joined the long list of winners of I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here - beating off Myleene Klass and Jason Donovan, in something of a triumvirate triumph for fading popstars.
Matt will now be hoping that his career path follows that of fellow former plastic band member Kerry Katona, whose humiliation in the jungle was so worthwhile she was reduced to flogging Iceland's Prawn Rings in the break bumpers for the current series.
It's interesting that Myleene seems to have now finally abandoned her attempts to reinvent herself as the thinking graduate of Cowell's single-idea TV academy. She'd started the year co-presenting an astronomy programme alongside Adam Hart-Davis, and ended it showering herself next to Toby Anstis. Still, she tried some cod philosophy:
"I have had a lot time to reflect on things. You realise your family are just the pinnacle of everything. You realise how much you rely on them."
Certainly, we do rely on our family not to make us strip to our pants and shove cockroaches into our crotch, all the while threatening to withhold food from Liza Minnelli's ex-husband if we don't appear to enjoy it.
Jason Donovan - a man whose truthfulness has been proven in open court - explained his reasons for taking part in the show. No, not "at least it's over faster than a Southport panto and you don't have to spend six weeks in a poor-quality hotel":
Donovan described his time in the jungle as "three weeks out of my life to do something different".
"For my kids, it was a great opportunity for them to see their dad do something different," he said.
Well, yes, although what your kids get out of watching you make a former newsreader eat emu bollocks on prime time TV is something they'll have to explore with their therapists in the years to come, we suspect.
... and now he's got some legal backing to shore that up. He's won undisclosed libel damages from The People, Star and Hot Stars over claims that he'd deceived the public when he neglected to mention in Feel that he'd had casual homosexual sex:
His counsel, Tom Shields QC, told the court: "Mr Williams is not, and has never been, homosexual."
The August 2004 report in The People, owned by MGN, said Mr Williams was about to deceive the public with the publication of a book, Feel, that would say he only had sex with women.
Feel was an account of the performer's life told, with Mr Williams' co-operation, by Chris Heath, who had lived alongside his subject from 2002 to 2004.
Northern & Shell published in Star and Hot Stars magazines in September 2004 claims that Mr Williams kept secret homosexual encounters.
Zoe Norden, solicitor for MGN and Northern & Shell, said: "I accept that the allegations to which my friend has referred were untrue.
"The defendant apologises to the claimant and expresses its regret for the injury and distress caused."
The publishers had also agreed to print prominent apologies and pay Mr Williams' legal costs.
The curious thing here is, of course, that had the case gone to trial Williams would have had to have demonstrated that being accused of being gay had lowered his standing in the eyes of the ordinary person in the street, or harmed his life or work in other ways.
However, the allegations that he was liar are another matter - and you;d be a hiding to nothing fighting an expensive libel action in a bid to "prove" someone was a liar or deliberately misleading the public. (This, of course, is what was at the heart of the Jason Donovan versus the Face case.) Because, after all, being called gay - when you're a man working in the pop industry - is hardly a career-shattering allegation.
THE HITMAN AND E.R.: Pete Waterman has waddled down to Buckingham Palace to pick up his OBE for services to Bananarama and post-pub television. Michela Strachan is expected to receive a Damehood in the Birthday Honours.
"The Queen asked me about the songs - I was quite shocked she knew them" said Pete, although he didn't say exactly what she'd asked. I mean, if she'd said "surely if you'd given Rick Astley 'Too Many Broken Hearts' that would have given him a much stronger career base to work from, while it was wasted on Jason Donovan who clearly wasn't that interested in a long-term pop career" - that would be shocking. If all she asked was "Is it difficult coming up with so many ideas for your [quick glance at clipboard] 200 hit songs?", that would be slightly less shocking.
WELL TONIGHT, IT SEEMS, IT'S THEM INSTEAD OF US: So, nice to see that Band Aid 20 is shaping up to be a battle of the egos - apparently everyone was keen to put their name down for the "tonight thank god it's them instead of you" bit, but Bono has made it clear that he's doing it. According to Robbie Williams:
"Everyone wanted it. But before anyone could start getting an ego about it, Bono just said, 'That's my line and I'm doing it - so their rest of you can fuck off.' That settled it!"
So, not quite before anyone got an ego about it. We wonder why Bono wasn't so quick to put his foot down when the line was being sung by Jason Donovan and Matt Goss out of Bros for Band Aid II? Wouldn't it be lovely if all three of them joined together to do it this time?
AND THEN KYLIE SAID TO JASON: Let's hope he can get time off from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, as it's claimed Kylie has invited Jason Donovan to appear on the greatest hits tour. Singing Especially For You, we presume, rather than just as a dancer or something.
Stefan Denis is currently requesting all other callers leave his phoneline free in case he gets offered the support slot.
WHAT THE POP PAPERS SAID: WAS THE FACE SO GREAT?: So, the final edition of the Face has been and gone, and everyone has lined up at the graveside (topped off with a model wearing a gauze bikini and wonky make-up) to lament the death of one of the bright sparks of the music-lifestyle publishing continuum. But was it really such a great title?
We picked up a back issue at random (i.e. last time we popped down to see my Dad, I grabbed a copy from my old bedroom) to see if it really was the vital, cooler than you publication. The issue in question turned out to be Number 72, the April 1986 edition - ninety pence to you, love. So, with fourteen years to run, and the Jason Donovan slip-up far in teh future, how was the magazine doing?
It had Nick Kamen on the cover - not, we should point out, as a model, but in his brave new career as a singer. Nick Logan was still editing ("Contributing editor: Robert Elms") and Neville Brody was still doing stuff with letraset and pencils - so you'd expect something classy, right? And yet, not only is Kamen being marked as the figure to watch (in what way was he ever going to be cool? He was, like, the Tetley tea folk or Douglas the Butterman), but there's also a lot of excitement over Charlie Sexton - "does he have more to offer than a pair of cheekbones?" Erm, no, as it goes. Kamen is pledging to keep "a low profile", which he managed to do successfully for twenty years after.
There's a double page spread about Coca-Cola posters, which even at the time was less youthful heat, more middle-aged collector (pity they missed out on plugging the lucrative market in Frys Five Boy plate adverts), but the first sign that the Face in 86 was very much a thirtysomething's desperate desire to be hip was the big plug for Absolute Beginners. TV-am even spotted this was a clunker, and yet The Face seems to be buying the dream: "with a richness of colour and witty detail, the set and costume designs kaleidescope time and space... lots of colour, noise and posing..."
Gary Oldman is in, too, plugging Love Kills although he "pins no special hopes on its success" - the face's dream seemed to be creating a British film industry by word of mouth, presumably in the hope that it might generate someone more interesting than Oldman and Kensit to write about.
And this, surely, is the stuff that the Face dropped into hindsight's blindspot - for every trend they saw coming and jumped firmly onto (they weren't really ahead of the game with acid house, it's just most of the aciiiid kids had got so wasted when they read about it six months later in The Face they thought it was a new thing), they backed a whole Grand National of lame old nags. This month, British youth was about to become... New Jazz freaks. This whole scene was built on the wobbly back that Courtney Pine looked quite good in a suit. Gayle Thompson tried to sound a note of warning, that it wouldn't be any good unless people actually started to play instruments instead of simply buying a couple of black and white posters of guys with saxophones from Athena, but The Face wasn't listening.
Still, they got it right about Doc Martens, although it's hardly much of a risk in suggesting 'young people will wear Docs' at any point since 1975.
Raymonde get a lot of coverage - they were also favourites of the Record Mirror at the time - James E Maker was complaining that you couldn't trademark the way you look, although even if you could have done, the Intellectual Property rights on the Raymonde look wouldn't have bought more than a small portion of chips.
Jon Savage helps the reputation for predicition a bit, though: "It's not a question of hating Americans - no such polarisation - but in being selective about its products and rejecting saturation. Meanwhile, we turn inwards, and to Europe, and to the East."
There's an interview with Patricia Highsmith - the sort of thing The Face would never have done in the recent past, four gorgeous long pages, mainly densely typed. She relates her early days working as a rewrite girl for comic books, earning four bucks a page.
It's a fashion special, so there's extra pictures of clothes. In 1986, Face fashion shoots were still fairly straight - well, homoerotic, but done straight: people wore the clothes, and would generally stand in the middle of the frame. The coming looks were School Girl-meets-Matador and slightly scarily hung boys in tight pants. We never saw anyone wearing these looks. They also interview Jean Paul Gaultier, who, like Absoluite Beginners, anyone with half an eye could see was absolute, screaming rubbish; even back then.
The TV review mentions Blind Date ("LWT's recent...") without any hint that it might nearly outlast the Face. Prince had just done an interview for MTV: "I haven't built any walls around myself" he claimed, as if making a mental note to nip down to B&Q for a bunch of bricks and a trowel.
And so, really, the magazine wasn't all that - as a guide to the coming world, it's as far off beam as the ladybird books which confidently predicted flying cars, silver jumpsuits and single pills providing all our nutritional needs. The best bits - the signed columns, the theoughtful telly reviews and the Highsmith interviews - would be dumped in a quest for ever rising sales, while the sub-Peter Yorke trendspotting would eventually overwhelm the title. If the Face was ever going to be a measure of the core temperature of the young people of Britain, in 1986 its thermometer was missing the rectum by a good distance.
WHAT THE POP PAPERS SAY: The Royal Mail keeps your promises edition
Boy George was grilled by readers of the Independent - nice for him, he loves talking about himself. And Clare Short, who he says is the sexiest politician. He’s asked why the American Critics didn’t like Taboo, replying “This is typical English misinformation. There were four or five really bad reviews and about 20 fantastic reviews. We had reviews saying it was one of the best scores on Broadway in 20 years.” Wonder where that “typical English misinformation” came from - could it be that feature, for example, in the New Statesman last November which dismissed the pile of bad reviews as being motivated by hatred of Rosie O’Donnell? That, of course, was Boy George’s diary.
Over at the Guardian, a week of guest editors for G2 kicked off Monday with Franz Ferdinand offering a naked cock on page three. Thing is, it was a very horrid cock, like a skin tortilla, and not attractive at all. It didn’t go down well other readers, either: someone wrote to the letters page to complain that it was all rather adolescent.
The Face entered what might be its final furlong (apparently there are potential new owners gathered round, although nobody has yet had their money accepted - we’re kind of hoping they’ll put it onto bidup TV, where Peter Simon can take charge of the whole process.) So, the current issue doesn’t actually acknowledge explicitly that this could be the last time, but there’s that general air hanging over proceedings. The whole thing comes with a booklet celebrating “The Face versus Sex”, claiming to be a collection of the sexiest pictures the magazine has run; the cover of the box it all comes in has a permatanned Giselle wearing some tape. It looks not unlike the bag the Loaded Tenth Anniversary issue comes in (also women wearing just tape), except the Loaded covers look like they’re trying a whole lot less. Which sums up part of the Face’s problem - it used to be really sexy, effortlessly so; now it’s reduced to flashing neon lights and putting cards in phone booths.
The magazine proper also has that end of era feeling - there’s a rapprochment between Neil Stevenson on behalf of The Face and Jason Donovan, which is on a par with the NME-Morrissey summit. It’s a curious piece, a great read but almost too perfect a collapse-of-the-hellmouth ending: Donovan explains that the reason why the Face’s allegations stung so much was it was the magazine he most craved approval from, he wanted that kiss of cool. And now here is, being given that kiss - while playing the lead in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. It’s what he once wanted, but does it mean anything now?
There’s also about nine thousand pages of pictures of training shoes. Even The Times does fashion better these days.
The NME has finally come through the postal service - Mike Skinner on the cover, and a delightfully gory picture of the Matt Bellamy incident for the big picture - blood pouring down his face, the similarities with Andrew WK’s fake photoshoots are drawn. In other news, there’s a picture of Pete Doherty with writing all over him, kind of like Willow in the season four finale, but with biro. And it’s not in Greek.
The pick of the news pages, though, is the arrival of Matt Phillips of the BPI to offer comments on the downloading survey from a couple of weeks ago. It’s funny, you know, we could have sworn it was a massive, angry rejection of the BPI’s methods and attitude to downloading, but Matt seems to have read something completely different, thanking the NME for “highlighting the threats downloading poses to new music.” He then trots out the usual mix of emotive language (“stealing”), attempts to counter spin (“Our campaign is not about ‘arresting people for listening to music’”) and talking bollocks: “the good news is that there are already well over 300,000 tracks available legally” - not if you use a Mac, there aren’t; “Of course we want more music to be available to buy. It can’t all be put in place as quickly as we’d like” - why not? The only thing that’s holding up the European launch of iTunes is record company quibbling; the only thing stopping all the big label’s back catalogues being available to buy is the big labels - after all, they’ve had five bloody years to get their systems ready; “It’s disappointing that eighty five per cent of your readers think that downloading doesn’t damage artists. How could it not?” Erm... because, as has been established time after time after time, downloading stimulates sales, in the same way radio play does. There’s then this absolute doozy: “If filesharing continues in the way it has... the industry can only react by investing in fewer artists.” Which would make sense, except that EMI made healthy profits of eighty million quid, and promptly dumped one out of every five of its acts. So why should anyone expect that buying a record is going to in any way lead to investment in new artists?
Razorlight burn a CD, using only illegally downloaded tracks from Serafin, The Undertones and The God Machine.
Peter Robinson takes on Eamon, which is a bit like letting Bamber Gascoigne have a go at Jordan. Sample:
“Do you think there is any sense in which your single could be construed as being lightly misogynistic?”
“Uh... you kill me with these words. I don’t know what these words mean, man.”
“From day one, since I was a sperm, I’ve been the strongest.” That’s Jentina, who’s the British Kelis, says Radar. British because she was born in Woking, but she’s actually based in Miami.
“I dont like there being drugs I haven’t tried. I’ve done GHB ... it’s like drinking a Stella that’s more pilly.” You don’t really interview Mike Skinner, you just transcribe, but John Mulvey has an interesting perspective on why the Streets work, despite enough contradictions to short circuit a laptop in a bath: “All the impulses he displays ... aren’t that special. This is the way we are. It’s just that, unlike Mike, most pop-stars over-simplify their lives when they sing about them.”
The second half of the Morrissey interview is accompanied by a photo of him looking more like Terence Stamp than ever. He also offers Alex Needham some advice on his love life, and its bad news: “Buy yourself a nice budgie. That’s my advice to you... you’ve been roaming the planet for 29 years, and if [love] hasn’t struck you on the head by now I think you’d just better really get used to that television set and get yourself a nice comfortable armchair. You see, when you’re a bit younger you constantly think ‘It’s bound to happen. I’m bound to turn around a certain corner and be faced by life everlasting.’ And it’s a trick of the light, I’m afraid.” Clearly, Mozzer’s revenge for the decade and a half in the wilderness is to crush all hope from the lives of nme writers.
The Bees are kinder to the nme, though, offering thanks for being called ‘dance-craze’, while Goldie Lookin’ Chain share a spliff (more accurately, a Brendon) with the paper and the Zutons piece is done as a cod-Poirot investigation (‘who killed the Zutons’, see?). Two of these three bands are part of this week’s scene, Shroomdelica, which is another one of those that we think won’t be on everyone’s lips in a few weeks (wasn’t it Scouseadelica a few months back?)
reviews
live
pixies - minneapolis - the scariest thing is Frank Black could sit in for Frank on the desk at ER now, and nobody would notice the difference - 9
young heart attack - manchester roadhouse - “cheap, sleazy”, 7
d12 - shepherds busg empire - “the dirty dozen just aren’t dirty enough”, 5
yeah yeah yeahs - glasgow barrowlands - “there’s magic at work”, 8
albums
prince - musicology - “something like form”, 6
patti smith - trampin - “it takes an old master to administer a kick up the arse to the young pretenders”, 8
singles
sotw - the streets - fit but you know it - “a glam-urban lager race of a choon”
the von bondies - tell me what you see - “underlines why they are one of the most average bands in rock & roll”
And finally, Wolfman loves Marvin Gaye.
PRIMAL ACTION: Kaye Moss has called in lawyers over the News of the World's claims she's moved in like Flynn after Bobby Gillespie and his girlfriend had split. Not only is Gillespie still with Katie England, he's especially pissed off that Murdoch's Sunday paper airbrushed England out of a picture to make it look as if Kate and Bobby were holding hands.
If you're going to click through to the Media Guardian article, we should point out that it contains a (fairly common) error; it claims that Jason Donovan sued the Face because it alleged he was gay. Actually, Donovan sued the Face because it claimed he was lying about being gay - the allegation that someone is a liar being a far more serious slur on reputation. Or so Alistair Campbell tells us.
BEWARE THE CROWDS: As a New South Wales mall cancels an appearance by Australian Pop Idol winner Guy Sebastian (which just sounds like a name Velvet Goldmine would have used if it had been based on a book by E M Forster), he plans to fly to England for the frightening World Idol finals and - according to his spokesperson - "to open British bank accounts, which is difficult at the best of times." Eh? Difficult at the best of times? Maybe if you have trouble answering questions like "name" and "address", and perhaps having your postcode in a different format might make it trickier, but it's hardly like trying to apply for Indefinite Leave To Remain. And we're curious as to why he's trying to open up accounts in the plural - is he expecting to be earning a lot of money here soon? If so, we hope he's got a job lined up at a London pub, as we can't see his wafer slim talent turning into a massive payday for him.
He says that he's excited by his role in World Idol, as it'll give him the chance to show the world that Australians aren't all crocodile wrestling ockers. Guy, sweetness, we've met Jason Donovan and Rolf Harris. We know that to be the case.
