the fyrehaus

• Radiohead will play a free gig to be aired on BBC Radio 2. [NME]
• Stream the new albums of We Are Scientists and The Teenagers at NME.com [NME]
• REM will stream ITS new album a week early via iLike, the social networking widget you can use on Facebook and iTunes, etc. [Guardian]
• Brit School gals Amy Winehouse, Adele, Kate Nash, and Katie Melua want to form a supergroup. It’s like the anti-Girls Aloud. [NME]
• Muse wants to launch UFOs at the audience at the V Festival. Apparenly, V pays well enough that they want to spend the money on something really crazy. [DS]

• Ringo Starr doesn’t want you to ask him about his time in the Beatles [DS]
• Clive Davis things that singers shouldn’t insist on writing their own songs [DS]
• Liam Gallagher waxes his chest and eyebrows [DS]
• The Flaming Lips, Goldfrapp, and Jack Penante to headline Lovebox Weekender along with The Human League and Groove Armada in London on July 19-20. [DS]
• Noel Gallagher has taken up shooting and bought some guns. Also Kenicke pulled a knife on him. [DS]
• Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails to headline Lollapalooza in Chicago’s Grant Park, August 1-3 [Brooklyn Vegan]
• Kate Nash, The Hoosiers, and One Night Only added to T in the Park lineup. [NME]
• The Sex Pistols, Paul Weller, and The Hives are playing the EXIT Festival in Serbia, July 12,-16. [NME]
• Kasabian will headline the Creamfields Festival in Cheshire, August 23-24. [NME]
• Franz Ferdinand, Damon Albarn, Reverend and the Makers, and Hard-Fi played the Africa Exprez gig on March 6. I could go for a boot of that. [NME]
• Amy Winehouse, The Pogues, and The Charlatans have been added to the lineup of the Oxegen Festival in Ireland. [NME]
• NOFX will air tour documentary on Fuse. [Punknews]

• Kylie to ditch the famous gold hotpants for her next tour. Apparently we are seeing her “grow old gracefully.” (DS)
• Lily Allen claims she broke it off with Ed Simons because he wouldn’t commit. She also thinks you should watch her show; she’s working really hard at it. (DS)
• T in the Park will include Kaiser Chiefs, Ian Brown, The Prodigy, The Pigeon Detectives, and The Raconteurs. (DS)
• California DJ/Producer AmpLive has released ‘Radiohead Rainydayz Remixes’ as a free download. “It’s not up to you, it’s free.” (via NME)
• Aretha Franklin is pissed at Beyonce for introducing Tina Turner as “The Queen” at the Grammys. I think we should stop endowing royal titles on our celebrities, it just leads to confusion and pain. (NME)
• New reality shows starring washed up hip-hop stars. I would totally watch Coolio’s cooking show. At least once, for sure. (Idolator)

Robert Plant apparently disdains rhyming:

Gordon claims his source reported thusly: “He was drinking with a woman and didn’t like the choice of tunes playing. Radiohead was on and he started complaining. He said ‘What’s this rhyming crap?’”

At this point we doff our fashionable woolen bobble hat to the Led Zep frontman. Disliking music because it rhymes, while on the one hand damning 99% of all popular songs, shows a modernist rigour desperately lacking in the current culture. Well done.

In the same column, Alex Kapranos says that the next Franz Ferdinand album will be dancey and dirty, to which I say, yay!

Says Alex Kapranos in today’s Kim Dawson’s Playlist with Kim Dawson: “The imperfections are what make it perfect, like the cheapest, shittiest guitars and practice amps.

“Logically we should have gone to a big studio and spent millions. But you’ve gotta trust your instincts. This stuff made us want to dance.”

Just in case you care, here’s more coverage of Radiohead’s instore free concert yesterday.

Here’s one with the video you might actually be able to watch outside the UK., complete with jokes about Thom Yorke being driven to drink and razzing his band.

Radiohead is playing a FREE concert TONIGHT (as in Wednesday) at the Rough Trade East Store off Brick Lane in London. The tickets will be first-come, first-serve, and they’ll set up screens and heaters and such outside for people who don’t get in. Also:

A message posted on Radiohead’s website today by guitarist Jonny Greenwood reads: “As it is a little uncomfortable for anyone queuing early, they’re planning a numbering system so people at the front of any queue can get snacks and toilet breaks in the store. Good bagels round there.”

Good bagels? I highly doubt that.

ETA: The Music Slut says that it’ll be webcast on radiohead.tv, for those of you not in London and caring.

It’s a good thing I think he’s a jackass:

As is often customary on these pages, we begin today’s In the News with a question: Is Thom Yorke the new Pete Doherty?

Before you panic, fear not. Yorke hasn’t taken up any of the Babyshambles singer’s less respectable habits (not that we’re aware of, anyway) or started ripping off the Kinks in every song he produces.

No, the reason we ask is because the Radiohead singer has become an odd regular in the pages of this nation’s beloved tabloids, just as Doherty disappears from them without a trace. Yorke appears to be moulding himself into some kind of spokesman on behalf of the internet
. . .
“Oh yeah, Second Life, isn’t it this world in which you buy land and property and sunglasses for yourself and a second ego, where you go into a virtual bar and say hello? I don’t want that. For me it just lays bare the isolation of many internet users, who’ve got too much time on their hands. Sad.”

And here’s how Gord transmits it: “Radiohead’s Thom Yorke has slammed internet fans - despite flogging thousands of albums online.”

What tickles us is that the Bizarre man seems to be under the impression that people who use the internet are one single group of people, like football supporters or, indeed, Radiohead fans, and therefore those who downloaded his album are almost certainly going to be offended by Yorke’s comments, being the loyal internet users they are. “What’s this?” they’ll say, or most likely, IM to one another. “Thom Yorke doesn’t approve of something on the internet! And after he had the cheek to go and use it himself!” Thank god we have Gordon Smart to point out the irony of it all.

Embracing the people is really in over at the Guardian this year, with all their online content, which is totally awesome. They ran their first ever end of the year readers’ poll, and there are very few surprises: Radiohead has the best album and is the best band, LCD Soundsystem’s “All My Friends” is the best single, Amy Winehouse the best solo artist. (No, I’m not reprinting all the lists.)

The best one is this, though: The Top Ten Most Likely To Go Missing in a Canoe and Resurface in Panama.

1) Amy Winehouse
2) Pete Doherty
3) Morrissey
4) Britney
5) James Blunt
6) Klaxons
7) Lily Allen
Spice Girls
9) Richie Manic
10) Mr Winehouse

Radiohead was glad to be voted best band instead of this one, as “We’d be rubbish in a canoe because Ed’s so much bigger than the rest of us, it’d be like the end of Titanic.”

The comments are hilarious as always, complete with complaining about how sucky the list is. The readers’ poll. The people have spoken, and I’m sorry you’re SO indie and awesome, but the people who voted like Radiohead for some reason.