News Beat

So, what’s been going on this week in the music world? While we’ve all been sitting by the fire, eating, drinking and being merry, plenty of hard-eyed musos have been fighting hard to get ahead:

Knee Deep in it
Foremost amongst these, as so often, were U2. The formerly Irish stadium rockers have managed to bag the massive retirment payoff (well, we can hope) that is a headline slot at annual mudfest Glastonbury. They’ve promised to ‘leave their mark’ on the legendary festival. Let’s just hope they wipe up after themselves.
NME

You Scratch my Back
Blagging along in their wake is Peter Gabriel, who has given up writing and performing material in favour of getting classical performers to perform versions of other luminaries’ numbers on the basis they do the same for his tracks in future. Paid twice for doing nothing? Nice work if you can get it.
Billboard

Won’t somebody think of the children?
Also full of senior vigour, The Who have proved a controversial choice as the headline act for the Superbowl. Made famous again as the intro act for TV series CSI, US child safety campaigners have objected to the presence at a national event of Pete Townsend, who was placed on the sex offenders register for 5 years for using his credit card to access child pornography. But apparently it’s all OK as he was doing (self-accredited) research.
NME

While others have taken a hard-earned break:

Reasons to be Cheerful
This is more like it. Great musician lives with polio and cancer, writes great music, dies, has film made in his honour (Sex & Drugs & Rock’n'Roll). Maybe he didn’t die young enough to be propelled to heroic status, but Ian Dury wrote some great tracks and was a decent human being, rare enough in the business. Check out his stuff, and don’t forget to look beyond the hits to some lesser-known gems. Jack Shit George is a particular favourite of ours.
Music News

That’s it for this week. Maybe those lazy youngsters will be back at work next week. Ciao!