The big day has arrived

Good news for a Tuesday morning

New Order are NOT splitting up, from the BBC.

New Order's Bernard Sumner and Stephen Morris have said they will continue without bass player Peter Hook.
Hook recently announced on a radio station that the legendary Manchester band had split up, but Sumner and Morris said they were surprised.

"We would have hoped he could have approached us personally first," the duo said in a statement.

"New Order have not split up," they added. The band are known for hits including Blue Monday and Regret.

"Whatever happens musically or otherwise, New Order have not split up, they continue to exist," the statement continued.

Hook told Xfm in May that the band had broken up.

He said he and frontman Sumner had gone their separate ways and were no longer working together.

Hook was a founding member of Joy Division, who became New Order following the suicide of vocalist Ian Curtis.

The band's most recent studio album, Waiting For The Sirens' Call, was released in April 2005.

Hook added on his MySpace page: "I'm relieved, really, hated carrying on as normal with an awful secret so let's move on, shall we?"

But a New Order spokeswoman said it was "probably just Hooky messing about. Everyone knows what he's like".

Indie-Tracks

Haven't the BBC got good taste

Click me.

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From the BBC

TV phone services 'fail viewers'

There has been a "systemic failure" in the way TV channels have run premium rate phone services, Ofcom has found.
The media regulator launched an inquiry following a number of scandals involving phone-ins in programmes.

The inquiry found broadcasters were "in denial" about their responsibilities to viewers and saw phone-ins as a way to generate revenue.

The inquiry comes on the day the BBC's director general is meeting with the Trust over recent editorial lapses.

Do you agree ?

Dial 0898 782537 and let us know what you think .....

There's always a first time

It's always good to do something for the first time (stop sniggering) and later this week I'm off to do something I've never done before, watch Rugby League.

There's quite an interesting explanation of the rules on various sporting websites, but the basic premise seems to be that short of taking someone's head off, anything goes, Ice Hockey on grass basically.

Just to show how hard / mental / brain-dead (delete where applicable) Rugby League players are, here is a story from Australia from a player suffering from an eye infection and shooting pains. Did he have an infection, maybe a cracked or even broken bone ? Nope, read on ..... (From the BBC)

An Australian rugby league player competed for more than four months with an opponent's tooth buried in his head.

Former NRL prop Ben Czislowski (pic above) needed stitches above his left eye after clashing heads with a rival on 1 April.

But Czislowski later suffered an eye infection and shooting pains until a doctor discovered the cause last week.

"I can laugh about it now but the doctor told me it could have been serious," said the 24-year-old, who now keeps the tooth on his bedside table.

Czislowski, who was playing for Brisbane team Wynnum when he clashed heads with Matt Austin, said he was prepared to mail the tooth back to its rightful owner but was holding onto it until then as proof of his bizarre injury.

Tweed Heads forward Austin lost several teeth in the incident and also broke his jaw.

In 2004, Widnes hooker Shane Millard also had an opponent's tooth removed from his head.

Two years earlier, Wigan's Jamie Ainscough's arm became so badly infected there were fears it would be amputated before the source - an imbedded tooth - was discovered.

Next time .....

..... you moan about having a stuffed up nose, just think, it could be worse.

Moscow Olympics

I'm going to keep banging on about Moscow Olympics until they're rightfully HUGE. Just you try and stop me .....

Proof

That you can fool some of the people all of the time.

Craig 'Loyalty' Bellamy moves to his sixth club in seven years, signs a five year contract (like he's EVER going to see that out) and claims he's moved to West Ham to play in Europe.

Well London is NEARER to Europe than Liverpool, but he can wave two fingers to his ex team-mates when they fly over his new Essex home on their way to Barcelona, Milan etc etc.

Tim Gilbertson

Hat-tip to Indie MP3 for pointing this out (and many more, to be fair). Click to hear more.

Pop Echo Records is pleased to announce the signing of rising Edmonton singer-songwriter Tim Gilbertson. Tim's full-length debut will hit shelves and iPods this summer.

At just 20 years old, Gilbertson has already impressed with his penchant for timeless power-pop hooks, inviting comparisons to the likes of Pinback, Modest Mouse, and the Weakerthans. The product of a musical family- mom plays piano, dad plays guitar, his sister is a music teacher, one brother is a drummer and the other plays guitar-Gilbertson's musical precociousness manifested itself early. He began playing guitar at age 8 and eventually worked his way through numerous high school bands. In 2005 Gilbertson set down a five song demo in his brother's Spruce Grove basement studio which led to a Craigslist rendezvous with Vancouver producer Andrew Shaw. Gilbertson and Shaw worked through the summer of 2006, eventually coming away with an 11-song LP. After months of shopping the album around, Gilbertson caught the ears of local label Pop Echo, who were as impressed by the young troubadour's crunchy pop ditties as they were by his maturity and ambition.

The eponymous debut LP from Tim Gilbertson will be released July 24, 2007, on Pop Echo Records.

Beer Gardens

Had an interesting night out on Friday, my first since the smoking ban came into force. I've been out in Scotland & Ireland with their bans, but going into strange pubs isn't going to give a point of reference.

The usual lines of conversation came out:

• Predictions for the next football season (Man United to walk the Premiership was the general consensus, some had Chelsea slipping into the bottom half)


• How you would look flying a kite on a nudist beach


• What happens when you go speed-dating and insult everyone you meet


• Who are the hardest people to come across when you're trying to launch a terrorist attack; the Police, the Army, or a Glaswegian baggage handler ?!!!

But we probably spent most of the evening on various lines of conversation coming out of the smoking ban.

Of the 5 of us, 2 still smoke, 1 is giving up and the other 2 never have.

I'm in the 'never smoked' camp, and to me the pub was fantastic. No fug when I walked in, no smoke drifting across my table and no smelly clothes after. And the beer tastes better.

The 2 people still smoking got up out of their chairs on a regular basis to go to the back of the pub (The Gladstone in Carrington, a fantastic old style pub that used to have a fantastic old style lamp shade).

Looking outside myself, the landlord has erected a large awning / industrial size umbrella over the patio area, installed heaters and quite artistic lighting. In short, the outside of the pub now looks more like the inside than the inside itself! For most of the evening, there were more people outside than in, and it wasn't exactly empty inside.

Between the 5 of us, we struggled to list a top ten of decent beer gardens in Nottingham, other than those who conveniently put picnic chairs in their car-parks, but we reckon that with the ban, and efforts to make smokers still welcome 'in' pubs, sitting outside pubs will soon become as fashionable as going out in the first place. Roll on winter.

It's that time of year again

When football clubs take their squad photos. Here's Sheffield Wednesday's effort.

Change of heart ?

This year, I haven't been forced to watch the human zoo that is Big Brother.

However, I did catch the show last night, and I've got to say that this year, I LIKE Big Brother.

No, really.

Channel 4 should be awarded for the show this year.

Not for the broadcast itself, or the production, or the design, or the "up to date" theme music. No, no, no and no.

Channel 4 should be given an award for taking this current bunch of thick, ignorant, sub-human tools off the streets of Britain for three months.

Hopefully when they come out, everyone will have seen them for the wanabee tossers they undoubtedly are, and start employing the 20 foot barge pole technique.

Or, preferably, the baseball bat to the head technique usually reserved for far more intelligent animals on Arctic ice-flows.

"Never pick a fight with an ugly person

They've got nothing to lose."

Robin Williams (1951 - )

Spot the problem