Joe Kavanagh's Music News

The annual booze-up known as the Shockwaves NME Awards took place last Wednesday (Feb 26), at London's Brixton Academy, and offered up its usual share of pomp, intrigue and silliness, over the course of an evening that has earned its own awards for debauchery. Biggest winners on the night were Kasabian, who walked away with gongs for Best Album and Best Album Artwork, while Arctic Monkeys won Best Live Act and Muse were victorious as Best British Act. Other winners included legendary ska outfit The Specials, who secured the award for Outstanding Contribution to Music, while Lady Gaga managed to win the prize for Best Dressed and Worst Dressed; no doubt she would have also garnered the prize for Hardly Dressed, should they ever conceive such a category. In contrast to the tamer award ceremonies, NME ply their eager guests with free booze all night in an effort to inject a little raucousness into the events, which once again cultivated several controversial moments. There to collect his Godlike Genius Award, Paul Weller provided the first contentious salvo, using his moment in the sun to put down entire genres of music. The former front man for The Jam and Style Council essentially maintained that everything in rock music which occurred between his accomplishments as part of those two acts and his later solo success during the Britpop movement, constituted pure twaddle, saying: "You'd had all that shoegazing b*****ks and then the whole Nirvana thing, which I thought was f***ing rubbish - it was just America catching up with punk rock 20 years too f***ing late for me, you know. So to hear some English guitar music [Britpop] again was really refreshing." Maybe he only believes in being gracious in defeat. While the Modfather's comments certainly raised a few eyebrows, two of music's most well-known women almost came to blows on the night. According to witnesses quoted in the UK media, Lily Allen incurred the considerable wrath of Courtney Love backstage at the awards, when the former allegedly alluded to Love's estranged daughter, Frances Bean. Not known for her ability to walk away from a fight, Love proceeded to get in Allen's face, screaming obscenities, until the Smile singer rushed out of the room crying. The war of words did not stop there, as Love took to Twitter later that night and ranted: "I know most people in rock and music in London and I don't know one human being that likes this person". It has since emerged that Allen allegedly put a 'lock' on anyone but herself wearing clothing by Chanel at the recent BRIT awards, which Love also attended. Allen subsequently denied the claim in her riposte on Twitter, claiming: "She's upset because she has got it into her head that I put a lock on some dresses for the Brit awards. She's made no secret of this and when I saw her at the NMEs she tried to talk to me and I told her to shut up, stop spreading stupid rumors about me. And that's pretty much it. I would never fight with her, as a rule I don't pick on crazy old ladies... but it's the sort of thing a paranoid drug addled lunatic might come up with." It's probably a wise decision not to mess with Courtney Love because - to paraphrase James Brown - she might not know karate but that lady sure as hell knows kar-azy. One dude even put a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger rather than spend another minute with her...

There was a time when John Lydon (a.k.a. Johnny Rotten) hated the Royal Family with such vigor that he penned the iconic God Save The Queen, a withering attack on the house of Windsor which caused such an uproar in the UK at the time of its release in 1977, that an incensed mob set upon him, stabbing him and almost gouging out one of his eyes. To Lydon, the Queen was a parasite and the entire notion of nobility an anachronistic emblem of elitism. That time is apparently over, as the sneering singer for the Sex Pistols recently revealed to UK tabloid The Sun, that he hopes to produce a documentary on the Royal Family, aimed at shedding light on their virtuous exploits, stating: "I'd like to get to the inner truth of the Royal Family. For years I've wanted to do a documentary asking how they got there and what makes them so superior. Now I'd like to put the other side too. The good that they do. It's too easy to take pot-shots at them." Pretty rich coming from a guy that kick started his career by taking potshots at them and, for the record, the Royal Family got there by way of Germany and a few accidents of birth. Honestly, I'm beginning to think that somebody has stuffed Johnny Rotten with Cliff Richard. A few weeks back he was going on about how he would love to sing on stage with Pink Floyd, despite the record clearly showing that he first came to the attention of Malcolm McClaren in 1970s London by walking around in a t-shirt with the logo 'I Hate Pink Floyd'. Maybe he's on some moral equivalent of the twelve-step program...

Vertically-challenged singer Prince, is currently in a bit of a pickle in Irish courts, over charges by a promotion company that he pulled out of a date in Dublin's Croke Park two years back. Irish promotional company MCD, are suing Prince for $2.3 million, because they assert that the singer's management company William Morris Endeavor Entertainment, assured them in February of 2008 that their client had agreed to perform in the famous stadium in June of the same year. MCD also contend that they paid half of Prince's $3 million performance fee, in addition to the venue's booking fee. They also claim to have placed over 55,000 tickets on sale, billing the event as the last gig that Prince would ever play in Ireland, only for Prince to cancel his appearance at the last minute. While the singer has yet to comment on what transpired, he is expected to appear at the trial next week, as a Dublin commercial court attempts to determine who should be left holding the bag for the mess. Whatever the outcome, I'm pretty sure that the gig Prince performed before this one was supposed to take place will now go down as his last ever gig in Ireland. Given his devotion to the Jehovah's Witness faith, it might have worked out cheaper for MCD if they attempted to bribe on of the higher-ups at the Watchtower to tell Prince that a gig in Ireland would guarantee the onset of the rapture...

I read somewhere last week where P Diddy is teaching the Arctic Monkeys how to rap and I just hope that he's using a book to do it because P-Puff-Diddy-Daddy teaching someone how to rap would be like me offering lessons in Mongolian Wrestling...

The internet never ceases to amaze me. Former Joy Division and New Order bassist Peter Hook, told an interviewer last week that he had recently completed a Joy Division song called Pictures, which had been left unfinished for the past three decades. According to Hook, the incomplete song had been sitting around since the suicide of Joy Division's troubled front man Ian Curtis, in 1980. He went on to declare that although he would include the track in his live set, he would never record it, stating: "The odd thing in that situation is that you can't sell it and once you've recorded it, it's gone and people will just download it for free. So for me to go in and record it... we could do it but the fact that we wouldn't make the money back on it stops me from doing it." I hate to break it to him, but a brief search on the auld t'interweb showed me that not only is the song well-known to Joy Division's hugely loyal cult following, but there is already a recording of it available for free online, under the title Pictures On My Mind. The online version was allegedly recorded at one of the band's jamming sessions over thirty years ago, and given Peter Hook's confessed dalliances with various drugs, it's perhaps understandable that he forgot about it. As long as he doesn't come out saying that he's currently putting the finishing touches on another unfinished track that he was thinking of calling Blue Monday...

Pierce Brosnan told an interviewer last week that upon agreeing to appear in Mamma Mia! The Movie, he abruptly brought his family out to see the stage version of Abba's musical extravaganza, only to have immediate reservations about his decision. The Navan-born actor claimed: "I took my mother and stepchildren, Charlotte and Christopher, to see the stage production of Mamma Mia! in London. I thought, 'What have I done? This is so schmaltzy. Oh dear, oh dear!'" Those were my exact sentiments when I saw the movie... Actually I tell a lie, when I saw the trailer... Actually, I'm exaggerating again because I couldn't even bring myself to watch the trailer. Those were my exact sentiments when I heard that Pierce Brosnan was singing... Except times one hundred...

Leona Lewis is so frustrated in her efforts to find ethical clothing which contains no animal products that she has decided to begin work on her own fashion line in the coming months. Speaking to Vogue.com, the Bleeding Love singer declared: "I'm trying to make that happen as soon as I can. It's a challenge - mostly with shoes - as I don't wear any leather and am very ethical about what I wear. I love wearing Stella McCartney, but one day I hope to have to my own line of ethical clothes and accessories." I'm not saying that everyone has to follow in her guilt-free footsteps but her ethical nature and principals are laudable in an age when most stars don't think any further than their bank accounts. The likes of Jennifer Lopez and Paris Hilton often walk around wearing more fur than a feckin Wookie...

Poor old Gordon Lightfoot. The Canadian singer was surprised to wake up last week to hear reports all over the media paying tribute to him in the wake of his untimely death. The 71-year-old folk-pop maestro was apparently the subject of a prank, after his demise was announced on Twitter, and only cleared up rumors of his death when he called Canadian TV channel CP24, telling them: "I don't know where it come from, it seems like a bit of a hoax. I was quite surprised to hear it myself... I feel fine." It's a pretty poor day when you have to wake up and prove that you are alive. Mind you, there are some mornings that I wake up, after a particularly heavy night out and check the death notices just to be sure I'm not in them...

Girls Aloud singer, and phenomenon du-jour in the UK, Cheryl Cole, has decided to dump her philandering Chelsea footballer husband Ashley Cole after a Tiger-like five women have come forward to say that they have slept with him during the course of his marriage. Cheryl is apparently already in the process of getting a tattoo the back of her neck, which reads 'Mrs C' removed, mind you she might end up marrying George Clooney, Dave Chappelle or Cap'n Crunch and then she'll have put herself through all that bother for nothing. Sources close to the singer maintain that Cole is tired of her husband oscillating between apologizing profusely, while begging forgiveness and using the "It's your fault because your away so much" defense, which is essentially the same as the "Now look what you made me do" defense. Personally, if I were in such a situation, I'd imagine that I would go for the classic Richard Pryor approach: "Who are you going to believe? Me or your lying eyes?"