The Verve latest EMI artist to go on strike

Jazz-Hands summit to be convened to resolve dispute. Elsewhere, Pete
Doherty floods the bathroom, and will.i.am discovers his Armenian roots

Paul MacInnes
Tuesday January 15, 2008
Guardian Unlimited

Writing about the business pages is fun. More fun than writing about
the gossip pages, that’s for sure. Business writers are numerate, for
starters, don’t finish every story with a pun and – unlike Bizarre’s
Smart Gordon – aren’t hell-bent on casting themselves as some kind of
journalistic Kray twin set on imposing his own code of morals on the
whole of showbiz.
Sorry, that was an aside.

What we meant to say was that there’s lots of stuff about EMI in
today’s business pages. Some of it has already been redundified by this
morning’s announcement of up to 2,000 job losses at the "troubled music
group" (like troubled Britney Spears, only with slightly greater
overheads), but the Telegraph remains ahead of the crowd with a story
suggesting the Verve could be the next artist from the label to go on
strike.

Here’s their introductory paragraph for your consideration: "The Verve
are to join Robbie Williams and Coldplay in threatening to withhold
their next album from EMI until they receive assurances about marketing
and the company’s financial health."
The paper goes on to quote the reformed Wiganites’ manager, one Jazz
Summers, as saying: "Why would we deliver a record when EMI is cutting
back on the marketing and is in financial difficulty? I am going to
tell Guy Hands I want assurances."

Tell him he shall indeed, as Summers and a delegation of pop managers
(with perhaps the highest ratio of sunglasses per capita outside of the
Austrian Snowboard Polishers Union – aka ASPU) are scheduled to meet
with Guy Hands later today. May we be the first to christen this
meeting the Jazz Hands faceoff. We thank you.

It’s a faceoff that looks set to be heated too, if Jazz’s
Hands-smacking is anything to go by: "He has got not a clue [note
dramatic inversion] of what this business is about." Ouch. More
tomorrow no doubt.

Peter Doherty. Those two words used to stand for a whole host of
disreputable activities, from wearing the same hat for weeks on end to
failing to clean weeping sores adequately. These days, now that he’s
clean of the drugs (copyright every credulous showbiz hack in the
land), those habits are a thing of the past. And, instead, he’s
watching Watership Down.

3am have been reading Pete’s blog and have cribbed the following tidbit
about Pete’s current stay in Barcelona for their readers’ amusement
this morning.

"I was in bed by 3, watching Watership Down and working on some new
songs."

There then follows a brief period in which Pete writes about buying
trinkets from a market.

"Shit, pesky internet. Forgot about my bath and just flooded the
bathroom.

"Oh dear. Oh dear oh deary lordy be. Ankle deep."

Let this anecdote stand as refutation of all those jokers who believe
blogging to be nothing more than intimate revelation of inconsequential
experience. Let that final line also stand as a reasonable marker as to
what you might expect from Pete’s new solo album, as discussed this
morning by Kim Dawson in Kim Dawson’s playlist.

"Pete Doherty insists that his forthcoming solo project doesn’t spell
the end of Babyshambles.

"The former Libertines member has completed half of his
highly-anticipated debut solo album, but has vowed to continue making
music with his bandmates too.

"Pete, 28, said: ‘It doesn’t conflict with Babyshambles at all. It’s
just a continuation of what I do.

"’I’ve always done solo recording, but instead of just knocking it out
on the internet like I used to I’m getting a little album together.’"

Obviously, by the time the album’s finally released, knocking it out on
the internet is likely to be the only viable business model remaining.
But videos of him running a bath, they’ll be worth a fortune!

And finally, mainly because we can’t be bothered to re-run all the
coverage of the Brits nominations from today’s pages seeing as they’ve
all dutifully trotted out the "return of pop’ line the organisers have
been putting out for a few weeks, an observation.

If you use Google chat, and type the word(s?) will.i.am, the software
instantly turns it into a link. It’s a process which works on no other
pop star, at least none of the names we’ve tried.

Here is why: In the News has exclusively learned that will.i.am looks
like a URL to computers, who our production team tells us are
programmed with tragically little knowledge of hip-pop luminaries.
Also, .am is the suffix for websites in Armenia (officially, the
Republic of Armenia).

Every day’s for learning.