No Rock And Roll Fun

AH, BUT WILL IT BE ANY GOOD?: Michael Stipe promises new REM album will be crystaline and real - we presume he's talking about the music on it and not suggesting it's going to be coming out on some new, untried format.

Although maybe they are planning to release it on this new "CD killer" format - invented by genuine "boffins", according to MacWorld - which is some sort of plastic that can store a gigabyte of information inside itself, somehow. Which is of course, good news for the big Record Companies - they reckon this will be ready within five years, so if they can just hold on until then they might be able to flog us the same tracks all over again, all over again. The plastic is incredibly cheap and light to transport round the country, so we'd expect it to retail at a 75% mark up on standard CD prices.