Whatever happened to...?

I'm assuming, by the way, that since there hasn't been a ceremony since 2008, the NME Awards USA has quietly died a death?

Gordon in the morning: Yes, yes, Virgin, tee-hee

Gordon giggles with delight this morning, as Russell Brand may-or-may-not have had sex with an air hostess who works for Branson's airline:

Now Brand beds a Virgin

Do you see what he did there?

Actually, what has he done there? Just because you work for Virgin doesn't make you a Virgin, either in fact or in title. Gordon's not a News International, is he? If you had a relationship with a burger bar manager, you wouldn't think "well, now I've had sex with a McDonalds", would you?

Mind you, at least you can see what he was trying to get at, which is more than you can say for the headline on the report about the NME Awards:

Klaxons gong-goed in States

What? What does that even think it's meant to mean?

Smart then manages to miss what you'd thought would have been the most important part of the evening for him - when Ronson joined the stage invasion and fell over, he said "this'll be in The Sun tomorrow, won't it?" Somehow, Gordon managed to miss it.

NME USA Awards

We're a little bit confused, still, about the point of the NME's American awards, where most of the prize winners seem to be the same sort of people who win the UK awards, just given out by slightly different people.

And surely nobody would bother inventing an entire awards show purely to allow Perez Hilton a chance to give a prize to the Klaxons? Hilton didn't go down that well, either:

There was quite a lot of booing when gossip dude Perez Hilton took to the stage. All he was trying to do was present the Award for Best International Track to Klaxons.

I quite liked him, actually. He said some nice things about us, about putting Beth Ditto being naked on the cover of NME and how "frikin' awesome" he thought that was. And he did a kind of "Fuck Bush!" thing, which is always nice.

To be honest, for a weekly magazine, it's not that good news if the nicest thing he can think of to mention was about 48 issues ago; more to the point - does it really matter that Perez Hilton thought that the Ditto cover was "awesome"? Just because he likes something you've done doesn't automatically validate his opinions.

Mind you, Hilton wasn't the most out-of-place presence of the evening: Tom from MySpace, everyone's default friend, was called upon to hand out prizes; presumably in return for Rupert Murdoch's sponsorship. The Klaxons tried to bounce him off the stage.

The winners, in full, then:

Best band: The Killers
Best album: The Foo Fighters
Best film: Juno
Best international live act: Arcade Fire
Best new international live act (and could there be any more tortuous category name than that?): The Klaxons
Best new live act: Vampire Weekend
Best tv: Heroes
Best international solo artist: Kate Nash
Best new solo artist: Mark Ronson
Best breakthrough act: Santogold
Best solo artist: Albert Hammond Jr
Best international album: Favourite Worst Nightmare - Arctic Monkeys
Best Indie/Alternative Track: The Killers - Tranquiliser
Best Indie/Alternative Live Band: My Chemical Romance

The oddest thing is the way a London-based musical publication is pretending to be American for these awards - surely the Britishness of NME is its main selling point to an American audience, and yet all of a sudden it's suggesting that Kate Nash is somehow foreign. Curious.

Inspiration winner (again) Mick Jones wasn't entirely helpful to his hosts:

Former Clash principal Mick Jones received the Inspiration Award. He said he used to read NME religiously every week as a youngster.

"I don't now. I scan it on the Internet, like the rest of you," he added.

Let's hope he doesn't prove too inspirational and sparks off a flurry of subscription cancellations, then.

Addiction resumes - for just one hit

Yeah, yeah, we know: You're only coming back to it for one time, you're strong, you can just get a taste and not need to develop a full habit again. Just one. For old time's sake. You're strong, you've stopped before, and stopped for a long time. A little one isn't going to turn into a full-on comeback, is it?

Janes Addiction confirm their 'one-off' reunion for the NME US Awards show.

Together at last, sort of: Murdoch & NME

You'd have thought that - what with all the synergies and stuff that supposedly fly from mergers - the natural, streaming home of the NME US Awards would have been on Bebo, also part of the Time Warner empire. Instead, they've given 'em to rivals MySpace.

Now, what was it NME editor Conor McNicholas said about MySpace exactly a month ago?

I've almost completely given up on MySpace and Facebook already. They're really great fun for three weeks, but I just don't have the time any more. If you're 15 years old, though, and fantastically self-obsessed, they're a brilliant invention.

Bringing the NME awards to an audience of self-obsessed fifteen year olds. That's the way to build a brand.

NME Awards: Now in two largely indifferent nations

The excitement of the NME Awards, crossed with the excitement of the Grammys. Yes: this year, for the first time ever (and possibly last time ever), there's a US leg of the NME Awards. Although since there's nothing to stop Brits voting in it, or indeed to have prevented Americans from voting in the UK awards, we're a little lost as to what the distinction is.