I Eat Music

PRS For Music have apologised to a shop assistant who works at a village shop in Scotland after telling her that she would need a license if she wanted to sing in the shop. They’ve apparently now sent her a bouquet of flowers with a note saying: “We’re very sorry we made a big mistake. We hear you have a lovely singing voice and we wish you good luck”.

It all started when PRS sent the shop one of those letters informing its owner that he needed a music licence if he had music radio playing in store. The shopkeeper decided to lose the radio instead of paying. Quite what conversation then occurred to lead to a PRS rep saying that the shop would still need a licence if staff members sang to themselves we’re not sure. But such a thing was seemingly said.

The woman in question, Sandra Burt, told the BBC: “I would start to sing to myself when I was stacking the shelves just to keep me happy because it was very quiet without the radio. When I heard that the PRS said I would be prosecuted for not having a performance licence, I thought it was a joke and started laughing. I was then told I could be fined thousands of pounds. But I couldn’t stop myself singing. They would need to put a plaster over my mouth to get me to stop, I can’t help it”.

The whole thing was totally worth it for the picture the BBC got to go with the story, though: news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/tayside_and_central/8317952.stm

A mural by Banksy, which was used as the cover of Blur’s 2003 single ‘Crazy Beat’, has been partially painted over by mistake. Workmen from Hackney Council began covering the artwork, on the side of a building in Stoke Newington in London, with black paint and had removed much of the work before the building’s owner, Sofie Attrill, could convince them to stop.

Attrill told the BBC: “The workmen were smiling as they did it – they thought it was funny. I just burst into tears. But a crowd gathered and we managed to get them to stop before destroying it completely. I don’t care about art or politics – I am just an ordinary girl who liked being cheered up by seeing this on my street”.

She continued: “People have always been telling us to sell it or cover it in Perspex, but we only wanted it to be here for the public’s enjoyment. You can’t take a photo if it’s behind a thick plastic screen. We never wanted to make money out of it like many do – but it was a part of our lives. Now it’s gone. People are always doing down Hackney but this was something we could all be proud of”.

Hackney Council’s Alan Laing initially said in a statement: “The council’s position is not to make a judgement call on whether graffiti is art”, although he later added: “Due to a problem at the land registry, unfortunately our letters stating our intention to clean this building didn’t reach the owner. As soon as we realised this, work stopped. We are now speaking with her about how to resolve the issue”.

I have some pictures of it on my phone, if that helps (that’s one of them just up there).

Courtney Love has responded to claims made by former Hole guitarist Eric Erlandson that she does not have the legal right to use the band’s name without his involvement. As previously reported, Love recently announced plans to use the Hole moniker for her long-awaited new solo album, ‘Nobody’s Daughter’.

But earlier this month Erlandson told Spin: “We have a contract. She signed a contract with me when we decided to break up the band, which was like 2002 or something, so I really don’t have comment on it except that I know my part in that band. The way I look at it, there is no Hole without me. To put it blunt. Just on a business level”.

It seems Courtney only found out about this yesterday, immediately taking to Twitter to put things straight. And by that I mean she said that he’s wrong and then accused him of stealing from her, as is becoming a fairly predictable pattern with her these days.

Anyway, she said this: “I just heard that a former guitar player is saying I can’t use my name for MY band. He’s out of his mind, he may want to check the trademark…”. Let’s just take a pause here before we continue. Okay, here’s the rest. “And his Amex ‘Disease Model Tour’ bills, and umm, lets see his 1999 usage of that Amex and his 2001 usage of – wow – 298K? 198,000 DOLLARS?”

With Erlandson’s credit card usage called into question, Love then managed to get back to the subject in hand, saying: “Hole is MY band, MY name and MY trademark”.

Then she got back to the more important issue of Erlandson and Perez Hilton’s finances: “[Eric] also might want to check his taxes versus my redone taxes on a bogus [Social Security number], and talk to Perez Hilton’s crook CPA accountancy firm (COUGHS then VOMITS) who pay themselves something like $350,000 a week and then dump $38,000 into shell corporations”.

She concluded: “In 2006, Steves went and S-Corped [registered as a small business] the name Hole Inc. No one knows where – probably Delaware – but it’s NOT worth getting into, I’ll tell you that. Buying me some fish fingers in 1989 is not really a concept I can relate too after stealing from me and participating in stealing from my kid”.

Then she finished it all off with this image: twitpic.com/af4tm

So, to recap, Courtney Love says that she owns the name ‘Hole’ and can use it for anything she likes. She also claims that Eric Erlandson is one of a growing number of people (including Perez Hilton’s accountants) to have stolen money from her and, by proxy, her daughter Frances Bean Cobain. The fact that Erlandson once bought her some fish fingers does not make up for this.

Also, as you may have guessed from the length of this piece, Courtney Love is not very good at editing what she wants to say down to 140 characters.

The very first Music Producers Guild Awards took place on 12 Feb at the Café de Paris in London. I know this because I was there. I was there because CMU sponsored the Best Remixer award. Here’s a picture of me, CMU’s Chris Cooke and the winner of the aforementioned award, Calvin Harris. That’s me on the right. I’m not as short as Calvin is making me look. Neither is Chris, although he is shorter than me.

I had a photograph used by Drowned in Sound for a review of a Yeasayer show:

http://drownedinsound.com/event/view/33718