Thursday, February 03, 2005

WHAT THE POP PAPERS SAY: Hot oats with lemonade
Ah, the Royal Mail is back to its irregular service, and so Pop Papers falls on a Thursday.

The NME comes with a little plastic card which entitles you - yes, you - to 10% off at HMV. Off NME nominated albums. Providing you go into the shops. Although you can look at the list of albums on the web if you wish. But, erm, yeah, that is a special card which guarantees you a ten percent saving off Franz Ferdinand, the Scissor Sisters, The Libertines, The Streets or Green Day. It's not quite clear why HMV went to all the bother of producing a plastic card for such a limited offer.

This week, it's Johnny Borrell on the front, and the weekly does a pretty good job of surfing a developing story: it even manages to throw up some more of the ever-changing story of what's wrong with the Borrell throat (we'd missed the 'hospitalised to have nodes removed' story) - but best of all, Mark Beaumont brings the clearest reports yet of the Denver incident, and speaks to Johnny the next day: "I don't wanna say 'it's so hard being on tour' but spending so long without talking to anyone outside the band you do get quite isolated..." Denver, of course, was the ninth date on the tour, which is hardly like being into the fifth or sixth week of a major haul.

There's an interesting thread linking Razorlight to The Dears as well - bands inspired by early Blur are starting to work their way through the system. Borrell talks about how he thinks his record sets out to be as good as - and exceeds "all the great songs, like when Bang came out" while Murray Lightburn loved early Blur so much he went on a pilgrimage to the Good Mixer. He does admit that "when I met Blur I realised they were assholes and I really started to dislike them." Which, to close the circle, reminds us: there's a report from the making of the new Gorillaz album this week.

Peter Robinson meets Roots Manuva. Roots predicts that "urban" is about to die as a tag, probably buried by Joss Stone. He also suggests making Ready Brek with hot 7-Up, though, which makes us wonder if he should be allowed on his own in a house.



Excellent piece by Keith Laidlaw on the conviction of Luke Mitchell for the murder of Jodi Jones. Oddly, it's taken a music paper to point out that the only real case the prosecution offered was "he liked Marilyn Manson." The right person may have been convicted, but there was such reliance on Mitchell's love of the clowny goth in court, it suggests that there wasn't very much effort put in to proving the link.

Onto more wholesome young people - Athlete happily turned down groupie's offers of lesbian sex shows for the tour manager - which seems to suggest that even Athlete fans haven't quite got the grip of the whole groupie business.

reviews
live
green day - brixton academy - "a straight-faced reading of Queen's We Are The Champions"
yeti - 93 feet east - "yeti wink at you from the shadows"

albums
bloc party - silent alarm - "aren't just hoping, they're trying", 9
chicks on speed and the no heads - press the space bar - "uneven intrigue guaranteed", 6
six organs of admittance - "join this carnival of freakery", 9

tracks
totw - doves - black and white - "a modern-day ghost town"
pure reason revolution - the bright ambassadors of morning - "starts like Enya... rounds up Pink Floyd"
felix da housecat - ready 2 wear - "nobly epic"

And finally, they interview the three replacements for Peel - Rob DaBank promises "a never-ending jukebox of new music from all over the shop." Hmm. We'll see.


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's an exagerration to say the Manson stuff was 'the only real case' in the Mitchell trial. There was a huge amount of other circumstantial evidence, and I'd be surprised if the jury really considered tha Manson 'evidence' to be at all relevant.

Simon Hayes Budgen said...

There was a little circumstantial evidence - although not being Marilyn Manson I've not read all the court reports - seemingly that he didn't he seem bothered enough that she didn't turn up for their date; that the family said they never saw his dog lead him to where the body was and that his mum bought him a new coat and made up an alibi for him. But the prosecution did rely heavily on the Manson link - remember, they were playing Mazza videos to the jury before Christmas, and made him a large part of their summing-up.

I'm not suggesting that there's been a miscarriage of justice - perhaps this is one of the cases where the police are certain but just can't produce any clear evidence - but the waving around of his DVD collection isn't really any substitute for something solid linking him to the crime.

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