Joe Kavanagh's Music News

It might seem an unlikely destination for a rockstar/recovering drug addict to take up residence after his latest stint in rehab, but Pete Doherty will soon apparently be crashing on the couch of one of the most notorious over-indulgers of all time, according to one UK tabloid. The Daily Star is reporting that the troubled rocker will be moving in with Shane MacGowan when he leaves a UK clinic later this week. The two sometime collaborators have become fast friends over the past couple of years and some believe that MacGowan might be able to serve as a mentor to the younger musician, who is a huge fan of his MacGowan's work and feels an affinity with him due to them both sharing a common cultural heritage and strong Irish roots. According to one online poll, Shane could essentially just point to his own face and ask Pete: "Do you want to look like this in 20 years. No? Then quit now." Gigwise.com recently had a poll of the world's ugliest rockstars, with MacGowan coming out on top, after beating off stiff competition from the likes of Michael Jackson, Shaun Ryder and Marilyn Manson. Doherty is also allegedly in talks to be the manager of a kids' football team for an upcoming reality show. Now I'm no saint myself but I'm not sure I'd let my kids be coached by a crackhead. I mean, who else are they going to ask? Michael Jackson? Courtney Love? ...

Some may view Bono and Bob Geldof as saviors of the Third World but I'll bet neither one of them will look forward to their next conversation with Ian Brown. While others praised the work of Geldof and Bono to bring the world together for the 2005 Live 8 concerts, the former Stone Roses frontman feels that the concerts drew all the pressure and attention away from politicians meeting to discuss global matters, only a few miles up the road in Scotland. Speaking to the Guardian newspaper, Brown sounded off saying: "I get angry about how African kids have to live. I thought the G8 Summit at Gleneagles in 2005 was a real missed opportunity. I applaud how Brown and Blair tried to put it at the top of the agenda. I didn't like the way Bono and Geldof hijacked the G8 Summit demo with their pop concert. The only result was Pink Floyd sold a few more million albums. People have to realize you don't help African children singing along to 60-year-old men playing their tunes from 40 years ago. It was like 1750 all over again: we are the great white do-gooders. If there is another G8 meeting then there should be a court order banning Pink Floyd or Geldof or Bono from leaving their houses until it's over." He also shared his views on climate change, calling out America as being the worst culprit when it comes to regulating toxic emissions, saying: "America won't accept that there is global warming. It's not good enough. We can't all perish because of their blindness. We need to ban all air freighted food. Carrots from Holland. Potatoes from Egypt. It's got to stop. Lamb from NZ. Let's get lambs grazing on the roof of the Pentagon or on the lawn of Buckingham Palace. We should be growing carrots up the side of the Empire State Building or Big Ben. It makes me angry that they've been able to build cars fuelled by corn oil or chicken shit for years. The chicken s**t-powered car will only do 60mph but so what? Leave your house a bit earlier." Brown's latest single, Illegal Attacks, hits shelves this week and is a collaboration with Sinead O'Connor, and I'm wondering whether it's just a coincidence that he has started to become so vocal since he started hanging around with one of the most notorious mouths in music. Then again, perhaps not because at least Ian Brown's rants make sense...

Elvis Costello told a US website last week that he used an idea from a Roald Dahl book when it came time to putting out copies of his latest album. Inspired by Dahl's Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, the singer (real name Declan McManus) told Tennesean.com that he placed ten CD's featuring new material into copies of his greatest hits, although he admits that a lucky winner has yet to emerge. The seminal songwriter told the website: "I didn't want to be like a Luddite, so I put them on a CDR, and I put 10 of the CDRs in 10 copies of the best of record that we released in April, and hid 'em in the shops in America, just to see whether anybody bought records anymore. And as nobody's found 'em yet and it's now September, I guess nobody buys records anymore." Maybe Robbie Williams attempts to crack the US could benefit from a promotion like this. Then again, he could probably put half a million copies out with $100 bills in them and be safe in knowledge that they would remain firmly on the shelves. Or in the budget racks within a week...

A German newspaper has caused a stir by publishing photographs of Sting leaving one the country's most notorious brothels last week. Bild newspaper snapped the sanctimonious singer as he was leaving the Relax Club, despite Sting's best efforts to hide his identity. A spokesman for the singer claimed: "Sting and his wife Trudie Styler have always been open about their interest in strip clubs. I do not know whether he went to this club. However I would not be surprised if he went. It is nothing he would be ashamed of." I'm tempted to mention how his trips to the Amazon are bound to have given him an appreciation for good wood or even how there is nothing as dangerous as the sting of a dying wasp, but I'm not going to bother.