NEWS: Keith Richards admits doping up on Daddy

And you thought your parents get up your nose. Rolling Stoner Keith Richards has fuelled rumours that he snorted his dad’s ashes. According to website Ireland On-Line, Richards embellished on the well-publicised comment made during an NME interview by saying: "The cocaine bit was rubbish (not true). I said I chopped him up like cocaine, not with. I'd opened his box up and said, 'Jesus, I've got to do something with dad, y'know, plant the oak tree.

“I pulled the lid off and out comes a bit of dad on the dining room table. I'm going, 'I can't use the brush and dustpan for this'. So you just gotta like, put it together.

“What I found out is that ingesting your ancestors is a very respectable way of... y'know, he went down a treat."

In the original NME article, the guitarist was reported as saying, ‘ I snorted my father. He was cremated and I couldn't resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow’, when asked what the strangest thing he ever snorted was.

It's probably not the first thing that pops into your head when you accidently dust your coffee table with a relations' remains. But apparently combing the area with a dyson and emptying it out at the foot of an oak tree doesn't cross the chemically suffocated mind of a rock'n'roller.

I suppose substituting white crystals for grey carbonised father maybe works in the same way as those nicotine lined puffing pens to a chain smoker. Maybe...

Words: Dean Samways
Image: Google

NEWS: Mercury Music Prize 2007

9 out of this year's 12 nominees are new musical express lovies

2007's Mercury Music Prize shortlist was published this week. In past mercury award ceremonies the selection resembles a puddle of vomit, the result of excessive musical taste mixing, spat from the HMV database. This year, however, the chosen few look like they've been enthusiastically plucked from the pages of the popular music press by a swaggering floppy haired Topman shopper.

This, of course isn't such a bad thing for all those who thought the Mercury Music Prize was nothing more than an excuse for head honchos at sony bmg to lavishly stroke the fat cat's at time warner. an event where praise is thrown hithe and tithe between label bosses before the head back to their offices the next day to plot each others demise. at least this year a large section of the audience will actually know who the acts are. however, this is not so good for smaller acts who, once nominated, received a spike in album sales thanks to massive publicity and those tiny branded stickers splashed all over their album covers.

although smaller acts may have been tossed to the wayside this year, a quarter of the nominations remain harvested from some of the most flamboyently off-kilter musical landscapes, stretching for acres and acres across every genre. according to the bbc these are;

fionn regan, the token irishman who writes, sings and plays folk akin to bob dylan;

maps, or james chapman. probably the most impressive undiscovered artist working off a 16-track recorder in his northampton home before having his ambient and euphoric ode to spiritualized polished by bjork's producer valgeir sigurdsson and arranged by sigur ros mixer ken yhomas in iceland, and;

basquiat strings, a collection of classically trained, jazz mmersed musicians who play as session instrumentalists on top of recording their own material.

excluding arctic monkeys, basquiat strings are the only group to receive a second nomination in the mercury music prize's history, but unlike the snowy apes they didn't actually win it last time around.

and so it seems that as long as the majority of genres are catered for and some of the little people are getting a piece of the greater-record-sales-pie pie, those clever people at the mercury music prize can throw into the hat any tom dick or alex whom has appeared on a nme awards tour/show. still we might be on for a bit of drama in that if the yorkshire quartet do manage to bag a second consecutive award it will be the first time in the near pointless awards history.

pointless? surely not you say? the people behind the prize state it exists solely to champion UK music by promoting the 12 albums of the year by british and irish artists. this is all very well and good but who decides what are 'the 12 albums of the year' across every musical niche imaginable? a bunch of number crunching accountants at the event's sponsor, nationwide? i doubt it. who are the people behind the prize anyway? how do we know their opinion is valid? after all in 1997 when roni size reprazent won the gong they had also listed the spice girls debut album.

then there's the prize. not a record deal as 99.9% of the artists are already signed. Or anything of any real worth for that matter. the artists recieve a sum of money in the region of 70,000 squid. that's £70,000 that won't even touch the sides of the band's by now vast trouser pockets as they jingle already fat with brass. for this reason it's even more pleasing when a relative unkown wins the accolade.

so here's to hoping that the mercury won't become the music industry's booker prize anytime soon but that it does become a little more transparent in it's workings. let's also hope that the view's happy go lucky underdog anthem, 'a song for the buskers', will motivate the judges to vote away from the nme centrefolds and divert the prize money elsewhere rather than toward the spitting amy winehouse.

A suggestion: Make the mercury music prize an award to champion brand new leftfield acts taking their first baby steps in the lion pit that is the music business.

the 12 acts and albums nominated to recieve the mercury music prize 2007 are:

Arctic Monkeys - Favourite Worst Nightmare
Basquiat Strings with Seb Rochford - Basquiat Strings
Bat For Lashes - Fur and Gold
Dizzee Rascal - Maths and English
Klaxons - Myths Of The Near Future
Maps - We Can Create
New Young Pony Club - Fantastic Playroom
Fionn Regan - The End of History
Jamie T - Panic Prevention
The View - Hats Off to the Buskers
Amy Winehouse - Back To Black
The Young Knives - Voices of Animals and Men

Words: Dean Samways
Images: Google

COMMENT: "Who are you? Who, who, who, who...grandad?"

Glastonbury Festival organiser, Michael Eavis, today admitted what many younger festival goers have suggested for many years, the five day summer event is too middle aged.

Telegraph.co.uk and Radio 1 are just a few of the news outlets who have been running this story all day. In all these pieces Eavis is quoted as being worried by the changing demographic of the Glastonbury crowd and worried about the lack of the "NME crowd" despite the current punters being "fantastically well mannered and polite and respectable".

During my time wading through the Somerset fields this summer i must say that, yes, there was definitely a high number of 30/40-somethings sat in foldable chairs with cold beers and warm ciders precariously placed in the cup holders. The nicely pleated ponchos and vast golfing umbrellas are not the gig attar you would expect of people going to see The Klaxons, even if the ground below your feet is more water based than vinyl floored.

Mr Eavis is on record as saying that the way to solve this is to make more tickets available over the phone lines next year. Plans are afoot to dedicate 40% of the 2008 tickets to telephone orders so that teenagers "will be able to use their mobile phones to get tickets."

It's seems to me though that there are several factors that the organiser might be overlooking:

1. £145!!!

When i first went to Glastonbury in 2000 tickets were 80 squid which was amazing value for seeing David Bowie do a hour set. 145 big ones to see two headliner acts who have only just released two albums and another who are touring their asses off trying to get their over-rated back-catalogue back on the turntables of their now vintage fans seemed a bit step.

If Eavis wants to attract a younger crowd he needs to bring the cost of tickets into the pocket-money-market brackets. Yes of course a middle of road career ladder climber can afford a small fortune but an NME reader can hardly afford a decent music magazine let alone half the monthly rent of a inner city flat.

2. MCR not DSB

Eavis' words suggest he's after lynching all the music fans that save up their haribo money to basking in the August sun of the reading festival, if this is the case, and I hate to say it, he's gonna have to cater for their ears.

This isn't to say that I'm suggesting My Chemical Romance should headline every one of the 70 stages at next year's fest, nor am i saying that Dame Shirley Basey should be banished from the fields of Avalon forever more, especially as I'm told she was amazing. What I am suggesting is that, maybe, just maybe, Glastonbury needs to attract bigger bands. Instead of The Pipettes on the Pyramid Stage during the day, improve the line-up so much that Snow Patrol find themselves relishing in that slot. That's a near perfect outcome I know but you see what I'm getting at.

Clearly Glastonbury is intended to be the most diverse festival on the face of the planet and it really is. Nowhere else will you see Arctic Monkeys and The Marley Brothers on the same stage while a jazz world stage blasts out tropical tunes that are so fresh to everyone you are pulled to experience it. Throwing more and more mainstream acts into the mix simply won't work. The festival is perfect as it is...please don't bring in Marilyn Manson...Smashing Pumpkins yes, Manson no!


3. Acid fried the hippies...and that's why they dead!

Eavis has got to realise that he will not be welcoming the travellers back with open arms. Hippies, like the potential younger audience, can't afford the price tag to attend the sometime annual event. This is a unattainable goal if this is indeed really what organisers are hoping. What additional joy and youth would these fence hoppers bring to the festival anyway? Free love now costs stis (or stds) however you want to say it, and the festival costs an extra couple of decimals of debt.

All this doesn't really drag many conclusions. What we can take away is that the festival must only see minimal changes. A big band here, a younger act there, while still staying true to the charitable nature of the event, if that means refusing to pay Jagger and his band of pirates a million pounds then fuck 'em.

Making more tickets available through the phone lines will not mean that more younger people will attend. Many of the people the festival want to attract know the internet like the flatplan of Kerrang and more have broadband. They'd rather sit at a computer hitting refresh instead of holding a warming carcinogenic device up to their temples only to keep hitting redial.

Improve the headliners, attract the bigger acts and the audience demographic might just change but the Glastonbury Festival's cultural identity is so stubborn and leftfield that it won't stand for any efforts to force change...not even from it's Father.

Words: Dean Samways

Image: Google