Sunday, December 19, 2010

Not Forgot-Ten: January 2010

http://xrrf.blogspot.com/2010/01/spice-girls-get-to-that-stage.htmlThe BPI was caught trying to actually write legislation rather than relying on the British tradition of buying a politician lunch on a yacht in order to alter laws. The new, legal, ignored Napster tried floating the idea that free music wasn't very good. The legal sledgehammers being aimed at Oink resulted in a not guilty verdict.

Pointless new format: MusicDNA, a download "file that is extremely searchable and can carry up to 32GB of extra information".

Discovering it couldn't really persuade Miley to keep her breasts covered much longer, Disney announced that Hannah Montana was coming to an end. And the chart people declared indie guitar music dead.

Myleene Klass said she'd been warned by police after waving a knife at intruders, and then the story fell to pieces. Not as quickly as all the press stories about heroin being the cause of the Blur split, which were quickly yanked after legal intervention.

After a less than stellar 2009, Morrissey decided to dump his manager - perhaps a new oversight to his career might save him from wandering into racism scuffles, yes? Meanwhile, Bono firmly endorsed the idea that there's a right to pollute which can be bought or sold while the BBC admitted it had over-endorsed U2. Iggy Pop introduced a comedy sidekick self-referential puppet to his awful insurance adverts.

Liam Gallagher started manifesting as a giant flaming head. Perhaps that was a portent warning of Perez Hilton and Simon Fuller joining their forces. But if working with Hilton keeps Fuller away from making his Spice Girls musical, maybe even that has its plus side.

The Sunday Express proved it didn't know much about Twitter or the BBC. Music Week came to the iPhone, setting the sort of over-inflated price its target readership would love to be able to get away with. Beyonce found herself quite unable to turn down the equally silly money on offer to play a private gig for the Gadaffis and Los Angeles taxpayers sued the corpse of Michael Jackson to get the cost of policing his memorial launch show back.

Jonathan Ross said he'd leave the BBC, which worried Gennaro Castaldo more than it probably should. ITV came up with Pop Star To Opera Star, taking people who sing for a living and putting them in a crazy position where they had to sing for a living.

A puzzled Olly Murs couldn't work out why Robbie Williams hadn't been back in touch since The X Factor finished. Perhaps he should try giving Dappy his number, although given Dappy stole a phone number of a critical caller to Radio One and started issuing death threats, maybe he shouldn't.

Over on radio, Kiss cut its specialist programming back even further while XFM announced - with the help of science - that Mr Brightside was the best song ever. Ever. Commercial Radio decided it didn't want to make a fuss about the Haiti Earthquake. Steve Penk complained that Chris Evans' breakfast show was being promoted on the BBC while his programme on North Norfolk Digital or whatever failed to get a mention on the Andrew Marr show. Although Penk did get a lot of press coverage when he played Van Halen's Jump as a severely depressed human being stood on the edge of taking their own life.

Given that all they're really known for is their viral videos, you have to admire EMI's decision to bar Ok Go videos from being used viraly. Let's not rush to embrace the internet too wildly, eh, EMI? Back in the 21st century, http://xrrf.blogspot.com/2010/01/you-too-can-have-your-song-in-rock-band.html">the Rock Band franchise plots to allow bands to upload their own songs into the game.

ContactMusic happily accepted that Biffy Clyro was a Welsh astronaut. Everyone else had nodded when told Van Morrison had become a father, but that turned out to be even shakier than the idea of Welsh moonshots. Guy Ritchie decided he could run a record label with his pub house band as first signings. Nobody stopped him.

Reunited: Swans. Reopened: The old Factory offices, as a nightclub. Remaining split: System Of A Down. Merging: Ticketmaster/LiveNation.

IPC told a copyright court hearing that they were just about to launch a digitised version of the Melody Maker archive. Perhaps they're still choosing colours or something.

This month, Lady GaGa was pretending to be an inventor for Polaroid.


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