Joe Kavanagh's Music News

In what could amount to a landmark decision the recording industry won an important battle against file sharing last week when the four founding members of Pirate Bay were fined and given jail time in a Swedish court last week. Fredrik Neij Goffrid Svartholm Warg Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sundle were each handed a one year jail sentence and collectively fined a total of $3.6 million, when a judge ruled in favour of a group which included all of the major labels. The men immediately filed an appeal and an unrepentant Sundle later blogged: "Even if we had the money I would rather burn everything I owned and not even give them the final dust from the burning. Not even the ashes. This is like 'The Karate Kid'. In the beginning there are the bullies who are bullying Daniel San. Then he gets beaten up. That's where we're at right now. At the end we're going to have this epic win. In the end we're going to kick their ass." If they ever charge that guy with being a complete muppet, no amount of appeals will save him. President for the International Federation of Phonographic Industry John Kennedy welcomed the court ruling saying: "These guys weren't making a principled stand, they were out to line their own pockets. There was nothing meritorious about their behaviour, it was reprehensible. The Pirate Bay did immense harm and the damages awarded doesn't even get close to compensation, but we never claimed it did. There has been a perception that piracy is OK and that the music industry should just have to accept it. This verdict will change that."...

The Edge (real name: Dave Evans) continues to rankle his neighbors in Malibu as he pushes ahead with plans to build five luxury homes on a hilltop overlooking the star-studded city. Local residents are up in arms over the plan as they say it will be a blight on the scenery. Speaking to the Los Angeles Times local councillor Jefferson Wagner clamed: "The downside of this is a permanently scarred mountainside for the benefit of a very few that for many years all will view. For somebody so revered even to be orchestrating this type of development in such a sensitive area is hypocritical." This sounds like a cause for Bono...

Sandi Thom has hired a pet detective agency in order to discover what has become of her cat, which disappeared from her mother's home in Edzell, Scotland. The singer has called in Animal Search UK, as she suspects that the moggie was shot and then disposed of at the bank of a local river. Writing on her website she announced: "The police have confirmed it is illegal to shoot a cat However, to enable them to make an arrest we have to find wee Tooty's remains, or this sickening person will get away with it. How would this person behave, if someone walked up to his dog and shot it dead?" Animal Search claims that there is "pretty firm evidence" to suggest that the cat was shot and I'm wondering what the heck that could mean. Did Ace Ventura tell them that someone had threatened the cat with a gun? Was Phil Spector seen in the neighborhood around the time it went missing? Is it just me or does it all seem a bit much? I suppose I'm worse for writing about it really...

While we are on the subject of Phil Spector, Starsailor singer James Walsh claims that he was shocked when he heard the news that the eccentric producer was facing murder charges over the death of Lana Clarkson, claiming that he did not notice anything in his behavior which would lead him to believe that Spector was capable of murder. Walsh told Newsbeat: "It is hard for me to pass judgment on whether he is guilty or innocent. We certainly never saw an aggressive side to him while we worked with him but like everybody else we do not know exactly what went on inside that house. Recording with Phil Spector was an amazing experience at the time. The two tracks 'Silence Is Easy' and 'White Dove' were recorded in the first week of working with him. He then returned to LA and came back to England some weeks later a different character. The out going charismatic producer we had met previously had become withdrawn and hard to communicate with. We persevered as long as we could out of respect for the man and his reputation but we had to call it a day after a while. Some weeks later while the album was being mixed we heard he had been arrested for murder." Not exactly a ringing endorsement all the same, is it? I'm also pretty sure that Spector wasn't trying to sleep with Walsh. Starsailor were the last band that Spector worked with before he embarked on the gunplay trick that ended in Clarkson's death. Spector was found guilty of second degree murder yesterday and will be sentenced on May 29...

Keane have told the Daily Star that they are upping sticks from their base in the UK, in order to concentrate on cracking the American market, which is probably a good thing seeing as their last album sold about five copes in Britain, despite being rather good in all fairness. Speaking to the tabloid, singer Tom Chaplin also claimed that the band is seeking to escape the posh label that the British press has labeled them with. If anything, I would have thought that they'd sound even more posh on the other side of the pond. British people with that kind of accent usually have two options open to them in the US entertainment industry, playing the part of posh people in movies or playing the role of a villain...

Scottish producer/songwriter, Calvin Harris has admitted that he was lying when he claimed some time back that British Airways had lost the only master copy of his latest album. Speaking to Popjustice, Harris said: "The first tactic of delaying the album was pretending that I lost it at Heathrow. That one worked pretty well. That was concocted between me and my sound engineer, Jimmy. I should make it clear that they did in fact lose our bags - that is fact - but it was not true that the album was in them. I would never check a hard drive in luggage. So the thing about Heathrow wasn't so much a lie, as, well, an untruth." Kind of a dog ate my homework thing really isn't it and I'm not sure he should have admitted that in public. At the time, his record label Colombia also excoriated British Airways in the press and you just know that some poor guy or gal in the baggage department got torn a new one in their efforts to find it. If I'm a baggage handler at BA I would make a point of sending any bag with the name Calvin Harris on it to Outer Mongolia, should the opportunity ever arise in the future...

Depeche Mode front man, Dave Gahan claims that he awakens every night at 4:15am, which is the exact time that he clinically died, when his heart stopped for two minutes after a drug overdose 13 years ago. Speaking to the German newspaper, Bild, the singer claimed: I'd say that story must get a little tiring for his wife if she is awakened at 4:15 every night, with the words: "Wow honey, it happened again. Remember that time I died!"...

Staying on the German theme, police in Hamburg are anxious to talk to guitarist for German band, Tokio Hotel, Tom Kaulitz, after he was seen assaulting a 19-year-old fan on CCTV. The footage allegedly shows the woman approaching a car that Kaulitz was sitting in, only for him to throw a lit cigarette at her. Irked, the woman stubs the cigarette out on the window, whereupon Kaulitz leaps from the car and starts beating her, leaving her with a black eye. Police were summoned but Kaulitz had fled by the time they reached the scene. Goodness knows what he would do to people that don't like his band, of which there are many. Maybe his band can open for Chris Brown on his next European tour and the two can exchange notes on beating up ladies because Chris Brown and Rihanna are apparently the new Ike and Tina Turner. Incidentally, and I'm getting a little off track here, but I'll leave you with the best tabloid heading I ever saw, which was printed the day after Ike Turner died, when the New York Post ran with the immortal headline: 'Ike Beats Tina To Death'...