Joe Kavanagh's Music News

It may be have worked for Radiohead but don't expect U2 to follow in the tracks of the Oxford band any time soon when it comes to giving away music. According to U2's manager, Paul McGuinness, Radiohead's decision to use an honors system for payment on their last album, "backfired", despite the fact that Radiohead themselves appear extremely happy with how it went. McGuinness claims that U2 generate far too much money from album sales for them to ever contemplate giving their music away for free. No s**t, as we mentioned last week, U2 are repackaging their first three albums with a couple of meaningless add-ons and re-selling them because they mustn't have made enough money off them the first time, so there is little chance of them giving away something they can repeatedly sell. It should be noted that Radiohead played two nights in Dublin's Malahide Castle last week and tickets were on sale for $200, so I don't think that Thom Yorke and company will be in the poor house any time soon. The glass house maybe but not the poor house. Half man, half-plastic, wholly idiot, Gene Simmons also had a pop at Radiohead last week, calling them boring and claiming: "I admire bands like Radiohead, but the idea of being that serious? F**k that, get up on stage and blow s**t up! Bands that stand by their microphones and strum their guitars are forgetting one important point - people are bringing their eyes, it's audio and visual. If you're not fulfilling the visual part it's like watching a movie with your eyes closed. One of the biggest compliments we get is [when people say], 'I f**king hate their music but that's the best show I ever saw in my life.'" I thought the best compliment Simmons could get was "That doesn't really look like a bad wig" but his last statement says it all really and I guess that Gene Simmons has never laid down in a darkened room listening to a song on headphones. Of course he hasn't, he was too busy having sex with the 735,000 women that he claims to have slept with. Following his logic, Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor is a far greater movie than Citizen Kane because of all the explosions...

U.S. hip hop act, N.E.R.D. could use a geography lesson after they nearly missed their Friday headline appearance at the Isle of Wight Festival because they could not find the 1,000 square-mile island. According to the UK media, festival organizers got a call from the band early on Friday morning asking where the hell the damn island was, only for them to discover that the Pharrell Williams-led outfit had been searching up and down the coast of Scotland, instead of at the very southern tip of England. Typical men not asking for directions I suppose and further evidence of why it takes over 20 million sperm to find one egg...

Although N.E.R.D. would have had a hard time explaining their absence away, Ian Brown had a readymade excuse for missing his Saturday headline slot at the festival, should he have chosen to use it. The former Stone Roses singer was playing a gig in Sheffield last Friday when two men approached the stage, dragged him off it and began assaulting him. In the ensuing melee, Brown was struck over the head with a bottle opening a nasty gash under his eye that required stitches. No reasons were offered for the assault at the time of going to press but the two men involved were arrested and Brown went on to play a storming set at the festival the following night. This is not the first time that the singer has endured trouble at gigs, as anyone that has checked him out on Youtube will attest...

Annie Lennox came out swinging against the media this week, berating them for their treatment of Amy Winehouse. The former Eurythmics singer posited: "I wish somebody could stop everyone taking pictures of her and get her out of the spotlight. I want to see her healthy, not wrecked." While I do agree that obsession with celebrities has reached epidemic levels, I also concede that Amy Winehouse kind of brings a little of it on herself when she walks around Camden in her underwear, puking her way around the most well-known bars in the area. Also the biggest damage done to Amy recently has been self-inflicted, by virtue of footage that her husband shot of her singing: "Blacks, Pakis, Gooks and Nips". As the stink continues to grow from this particularly unsavory incident, Winehouse defended herself in the media saying: "I don't want to play anything down, but I'm the least racist person going." It's kind of a paradox to say that the least racist person going would sing lyrics like those, no? Just because you say it at a party, with friends, behind closed doors does not mean you aren't a racist. As a matter of fact, it makes you one of the scary ones that pretends differently when they're out on the street as opposed to the idiot with a pillow case on his head who doesn't try to hide his ignorance...

George Michael claims that his current US tour will probably be his last as he seeks a life a little further removed from the madness of celebrity land. Speaking to the media last week, the always refreshingly honest singer claimed: "Mainly the reason is because I'm 45 and I think pop music should be about youth culture. It shouldn't be an endurance test. If I can just live further from the spotlight I think that'll be better for all really." Are you listening Rolling Stones? It probably wouldn't matter even if they were unless their hearing aids were turned up to 11...

Poor old Chris Martin, it appears that the pressures of putting out an album to critics waiting with knives sharpened has begun to get to the usually amiable Coldplay singer. The warning signs were there last week, when he was telling reporters about his occasional feelings of inadequacy when he thinks of the fact that his wife was once the girlfriend of Brad Pitt, something he apparently reflects on quite a bit. He also severely strained his knee during rehearsals, so badly in fact that the band was considering postponing their upcoming world tour. If all that wasn't bad enough, then he also walked out of an interview with the BBC when he took issue with the host asking him about his lyrical obsession with death. He needn't have worried though, initial reviews of the album have been favorable and it appears that it will sell by the shed-load if sales of 100,000 in the first few hours are anything to go by. Heck, Sirius Radio Network even beamed the album out into space so Coldplay might even pick up a few extraterrestrial fans. I don't suppose Sirius could organize a gig for James Blunt in the stars? I hear the sun is nice this time of year...

Duran Duran have accused Madonna of copying them simply because she used the services of producer Timbaland and Justin Timberlake on her current hit single: 4 Minutes. Duran Duran bassist, John Taylor claims that his band were there first, when they collaborated with the duo on the band's last album, the absolutely awful, Red Carpet Massacre. If working with the same producer is copying, then I would be interested to hear how Duran Duran characterized the time they did an entire album of other people's songs just to try and make themselves interesting for the first time in years. In fact, Duran Duran pretty much throw in a couple of cover versions on every one of their albums so I don't think they should be accusing others of copying. Taylor also wondered why the band has never been asked to play Glastonbury, saying: "Nobody asked us to do any until V in Australia and it was a very different vibe." This question is a little easier to answer, if I may. I'm not 100% sure of the correct term, but basically, it's because your band is utterly, and irredeemably crap.