I Eat Music

It’s all been about the iPad this week, hasn’t it? Well, not all of it, but certainly some of it. And, in some small part, that has been my fault.

First off, tech blog Pocket-lint asked me to contribute to a feature called How The Apple iPad Will Change The World. I gave my thoughts on what effect it might have on the music industry both before and after the launch.

Then, not content with filling other people’s publications with my words, I went and dedicated my editorial in CMU Weekly to the iPad, as well. Here’s what that looked like:

I do so love an Apple product launch. The hype that always precedes them can only ever mean that the new thing Steve Jobs trots out with will be a big disappointment by comparison.

I suspect that this might be part of the plan, though. People always flock to point out that the latest Apple gadget is pointless, unoriginal and over-priced. And then what happens? Once the products are actually released – with our expectations reduced a little – those devices seem rather cool. And so you have the iPod, the iTunes Store, the iPhone and all the rest. The impact all those things have had is undeniable, despite all the initial naysaying.

Will that be the case with the iPad? Only time will tell. So far its main contribution to the world is to fill Twitter with jokes about “Dom Joly’s new iPhone” and iTampons. It’s certainly not the home computer replacement I was hoping for, and nor am I going to start carrying one around in my bag instead of my iPhone (I’ll still need that for phonecalls, if nothing else). However, if, as I suspect, the iPad turns out to really be the uber-terminal for accessing online content, at home or on the move, it becomes more attractive.

Following their purchase of digital music platform Lala.com late last year, it’s been rumoured Apple might launch a service that would let you store your entire iTunes library online, ready to be accessed from anywhere. If that included films as well as music, and assuming WiFi and mobile internet connections can handle it, you’ve suddenly got a fast, friendly and lightweight way to access all your entertainment content from anywhere.

I’m not entirely sure if that’s something worth having in addition to a laptop. Possibly not. But if you only really use your laptop as an online entertainment centre, well, then why have a laptop at all? And you should never underestimate Apple’s ability to sell something people didn’t think they wanted by the millions. As with all these things, it’s the content that really makes it what it is. All you need is one truly great app to make the iPad a must-have.

Read this edition of CMU Weekly in full here.

Songwriter Ellie Greenwich has died aged 68 from a heart attack, following a bout of pneumonia, her niece told reporters yesterday.

Born in Brooklyn in 1940, Greenwich, with her husband Jeff Barry, became known as one of the most successful pop songwriters of the 60s, working out of the Brill Building in Manhattan, which also provided working space for other songwriters, including Carole King, Burt Bacharach, Hal David and Phil Spector.

Amongst a string of hits, she and Barry penned songs such as ‘Da Doo Ron Ron’ and ‘Then He Kissed Me’ for The Crystals, ‘Chapel Of Love’ for The Ronettes (written with Phil Spector), ‘Doo Wah Diddy Diddy’ for Manfred Mann, and ‘River Deep, Mountain High’ for Ike & Tina Turner. One of the couple’s most famous songs was ‘Leader Of The Pack, a collaboration with producer Gordon ‘Shadow’ Morton, which was a hit for The Shangri-Las in 1965. The couple were inducted into the US Songwriters Hall Of Fame in 1991.

Greenwich had begun writing songs as a teenager, and her first commercially released work was ‘Silly Isn’t It’ in 1958, which she performed herself under the name Ellie Gaye for RCA. She released her first solo album, ‘Ellie Greenwich Composes, Produces And Sings’ ten years later, as an early project for Pineywood Music, the writing and production company she set up with Mike Kashkow in 1967, following her divorce from Barry. She also provided backing vocals for artists such as Dusty Springfield, Bobby Darin and Frank Sinatra in the 60s and 70s and continued to produce other artists, including Neil Diamond.

In 1984, many of her 60s songs were given a new lease of life by the musical ‘Leader Of The Pack’, written by Anne Beatts, with a story based on Greenwich’s life. It transferred to Broadway’s Ambassador Theater in 1985 and ran for 120 performances.

Greenwich is survived by a sister.

		New tapes of an interview with John Lennon from 1970 reveal his anger at his former bandmates over their treatment of his wife Yoko Ono: "They despised her. It seemed I had to be happily married to them or Yoko – and I chose Yoko. George insulted her right to her face and I didn’t hit him, I don’t know why. Ringo was alright but the other two really gave it to us. I’ll never forgive ‘em"
		Little Boots tells Sky News that people should stop talking about women in the music industry as one group (they went ahead and wrote an article that did that anyway): "It’s kind of bad – a girl isn’t some kind of genre you know. The exciting thing is that everyone’s really different and people should embrace that"
		Motley Crue frontman Nicky Sixx says Axl Rose let his fans down with Guns N Roses’ recent album, ‘Chinese Democracy’: "For it to fail was pretty crazy after so many years of being recorded. Then the tour got cancelled. A buddy of mine went to go play guitar for him. They rehearsed for three months and Axl never once turned up. Finally I think the fans just went, ‘Fuck it – can’t do this anymore’"
		Bono makes the Spiderman music written by him and The Edge sound rubbish (also, the story of Spiderman is not a "myth"): "It’s not a straight take on the myth. We’ve taken it to a much more dizzy place than you’d expect. We’ve got big tunes. We’re very proud of it. Our Peter Parker is much more… not Kurt Cobain, but a kind of slacker, a more kind of shy sort of guy"
		Patrick Wolf apologises for this on-stage rant: "Major mis-communications backstage x lack of sleep due to very busy schedule x singing many songs about battling x an intense education from the extreme parts of London nightlife/wildlife/streetlife as a teenager x Steve Strange going on very late x a full day of cameras flashing and questions x being 26 years old and should have known better = bad wolf"
		Liam Gallagher reveals that he and his brother Noel haven’t spoken since last year: "He doesn’t like me and I don’t like him, that’s it. He hasn’t told me what he thinks of anything this year. We’ve got nothing to say to each other at the moment. We don’t travel together, so I never really see him. The only time I see him is on stage and we’re a little bit busy that time to be fucking scratching each other"

These quotes all come from the 21 Aug 09 edition of CMU Weekly. Check it out to find out the kind of stupid stuff that keeps me awake at night, here.

Bono and The Edge have been chatting about their forthcoming Spiderman musical, ‘Turn Off The Dark’, which is due to premiere in New York next February, provided enough money can be found to stage it.

Bono told Radio 1 that the story is “not a straight take on the myth”, adding: “We’ve got a new villain, it’s a girl. It’s a very extraordinary role. We’ve taken it to a much more dizzy place than you’d expect. We’ve got big tunes. We’re very proud of it”.

Okay, let’s just ignore the fact that Bono called it a myth, rather than a story born out of a comic book, and just let him describe the story’s main character Peter Parker: “Our Peter Parker is much more… not Kurt Cobain, but a kind of slacker, a more kind of shy sort of guy”.

Oh God, this whole thing is making me want to pull my face off. Quick, The Edge, say something to rescue this from sounding completely awful: “It touches on opera, it touches on rock ‘n’ roll. There are some real character driven songs as well, very unusual song types for us. It is a new challenge. The thing is we don’t really like musicals. Most musicals are really pants. They’re really not very cool. It is much more like opera than a straight musical. We’re actually not calling it a musical for that reason because we don’t want to put people off. We just thought, ‘Well if we’re going to do this we should do something that knocks it out of the park and hits on every level with great tunes’”.

Okay, so it’s an opera based on the ‘myth’ of Spiderman with a lead character who is a bit like Kurt Cobain? If one of you tries to tell me this would have been performed anywhere but a room above a pub to atrocious reviews without the involvement of Bono and The Edge, I will slap you.

Anand Wilder, guitarist with CMU Favourites Yeasayer, has revealed that he is working on a new musical, which is set to hit the stage and be released as an album at some point in the future. Entitled ‘Break Line’, Wilder is co-writing it with pianist Max Kardon and has roped in collaborators, including a gospel choir and members of MGMT, Chairlift, Dirty Projectors and Man Man, to help out with the recording.

A spokesperson told Pitchfork: “The story revolves around an interracial love affair in a coal mining town around the turn of the century”.

In addition to this, Wilder is working with the rest of Yeasayer on the follow-up to their 2007 debut album, ‘All Hour Cymbals’. News of which is seriously lacking on the band’s recording news blog, here: odd-blood.blogspot.com

This article originally appeared in CMU Daily on 26 Feb 2009