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FRIDAY 10TH SEPTEMBER

This week started with Morrissey, kind of by default, because people had been arguing all weekend over a comment he'd made in a Guardian interview.

Taking what he said completely out of context, he labelled the entire population of China a "sub-species", thus re-opening the debate about whether or not he's a racist.

The, at the very least, misjudged term was actually used by the singer as part of a comment on China's animal rights record, or lack of one. Speaking to poet Simon Armitage, he said: "Did you see the thing on the news about their treatment of animals and animal welfare? Absolutely horrific. You can't help but feel that the Chinese are a sub-species".

Now, if you're going to debate this, you have to ask whether there was intent to present a racist view, and also if (regardless of whether or not that intent was there) it does harm to the victims of this slur in a racial sense.

Morrissey is a fervent animal rights campaigner, he named an album 'Meat Is Murder' and he'll walk off stage at gigs if he can smell burgers. He's also, as Foals' Edwin Congreave put it this week, "famous for being a bit of a dick". He's not someone who keeps his feelings on animal rights polite. I'm fairly sure he'd consider anyone who harmed an animal part of a sub-species. That's the kind of guy he is.

Does his use of the term "sub-species" in this context show intentional racism, or an incredibly unnecessary generalisation of an entire people in relation to a subject he feels strongly about? I'd argue the latter. Would he have made the same comment in the context of anything other than animal rights? Almost certainly not.

But does the comment do harm, in spite of this? Is it likely to lead others to form a hatred of Chinese people purely because of their race? Well, no. If you're already a racist, you might see that quote and agree with it purely because you're a cunt. If you're an animal rights advocate, you might see it and agree with it purely because you find the mistreatment of animals abhorrent. If you're neither, you might see it and wonder what the people of China have done in order to be called such a thing.

Does this debate further our understanding of racism, or the likelihood of bringing about its end? No. But, of course, you could argue that by challenging the use of any language that could possibly be deemed racist, you can eventually remove it from our society and make the world a better place.

But then, you could equally argue that by jumping on everything that might be considered offensive, regardless of context, you remove the potential to have a proper debate on any subject whatsoever. I'm sure at least one of you was offended by my use of the 'c' word in the last paragraph, but if you were to focus on that, rather the whole sentence, we'd not really be discussing the important issue there, would we?

Now, changing tone completely, let's look at the world of CMU Weekly. This week we've got such a brilliant playlist feature for you. We asked Tom Bellamy, formerly of The Cooper Temple Clause, now of Losers, to compile a playlist for us. When we did so, we hadn't realised that he was some kind of comic genius. As a result, it was a pleasant surprise to be reduced to repeated fits of laughter by what he came back with. This makes us happy.

What makes us sad is that one of 'us' is leaving this week. Today is CMU Editorial Assistant George Stone's last day (that's her up there next to me). She's going off to make the world of digital music a better place instead. While I generally take all the glory for putting this thing together each week, she has much to do with it, too. So, sit back and enjoy the final Weekly to feature that special Stone touch.

Andy Malt
Editor, CMU

		MORRISSEY SPARKS NEW RACISM ROW Morrissey sparked a new debate about whether or not he's a racist last weekend, after he labelled the entire Chinese population a "sub-species", in relation to the country's human rights record. It was Guardian columnist Tom Clark who sparked the row in a piece published the day before the interview went to press, accusing Morrissey of using offensive language because he has an album to promote.

		CHARLES HADDON LAID TO REST The funeral of late Ou Est Le Swimming Pool frontman Charles Haddon, who committed suicide at the Pukkelpop festival last month, was held last Saturday afternoon in the Northamptonshire village of Yelvertoft's All Saints Church, with around 300 mourners in attendance. His band's debut album, 'The Golden Year', will still be released on 3 Oct and a tribute gig will take place the following day at London's Koko in aid of mental health charity Mind.

		THREE SUPERSTAR DJS COLLABORATE ON LOVE PARADE TRIBUTE TRACK Paul Oakenfold has teamed up with Armin van Buuren and Paul van Dyk to release a new track in tribute to those who died at the Love Parade festival in Germany back in July. The tribute song is called 'Remember Love' and will be sold in aid of the Association Of Non-Statutory Welfare, which is supporting those who were injured and the families of those who died in the crowd surge incident. It will be released on 11 Sep.

		XX WIN MERCURY So The xx have won the 2010 Mercury Music Prize, or the 2010 Barclaycard Mercury Prize, as those who like credit more than the actual music insist on calling it. Despite Paul Weller coming forward as favourite to win in the last few days, The xx had been favourites to win the Mercury honour and its twenty grand prize money pretty much ever since the nominations list was announced back in July.

		GAGA SHUNS FUR, OPTS FOR MEAT-WEAR INSTEAD Last year, US animal rights group PETA were pleased when Lady Gaga vowed to never wear animal skins, though that's possibly because they didn't realise the singer planned to wear the flesh from under the skins instead. On the cover of the latest issue of the Japanese edition of Vogue Hommes the singer is wearing a bikini made of slabs of meat. PETA's President, Ingrid Newkirk, this week condemned the image.

		BRITNEY'S FORMER BODYGUARD SUES FOR SEXUAL HARASSMENT The former bodyguard of Britney Spears, who previously accused the popstress of abusing her children, has now filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against the singer. Ferando Flores claims Spears repeatedly exposed herself and made sexual advances towards him while he was on her staff. Spears' people said the lawsuit is "another unfortunate situation where someone is trying to take advantage of the Spears family and make a name for himself".

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Tom Bellamy, Losers
Losers, aka DJ, producer, radio presenter and CMU columnist Eddy Temple-Morris and former Cooper Temple Clause man Tom Bellamy, release their debut album, 'Beautiful Losers', next week through Gung-Ho! Recordings.

The duo say that they were aiming to make a classic dance album, with a sound that wouldn't date. Of course, it's too early to say if they've managed that, but the Prodigy and Soulwax-influenced sounds contained within the record certainly hint that they could have succeeded. Tracks like last single 'Flush', with the back-and-forth rhyming of Enzy and Riz MC (and if you've not seen the video for that track, you need to stop reading this and watch it now), and the Massive Attack-esque epic of 'Azan' really stand out, as does the closing cover of Jane's Addiction's 'Summertime Rolls', with vocals from Placebo's Brian Molko. But overall, it's not just a collection of tracks, it's a complete album, bringing to mind those big LPs of the 90s from the likes of The Prodigy, Leftfield, and Underworld with a sound that's still relevant to the 21st century.

Ahead of the release, we asked Tom to put together a Powers Of Ten playlist for us. Not only did he do so, but he provided us with hilarious blurbs for the tracks he chose and applied his own complicated set of rules to the selection. Tom explains: "OK, so back in the Coopers days we used to spend endless hours on the road finding stuff to do. One thing to pass the time was to have a 'Club Mole' (named after our roadie at the time), this basically meant a hotel party involving fancy dress and as much alcohol/random strangers as we could get our hands on. DJing would commence and continue in a 'one on one off' system. As I remember we actually had laminate passes made up we were that dedicated/bored".

"Anyway, Club Mole lives on and has found it's way on to Spotify but has cunningly morphed into a drinking game. The first dude puts on a random band and then picks a band starting with A. When the random song has finished if no one in the room has guessed the band starting with A everyone bar the person whose go it is drinks. Band A is played and then it's the next person's go with B. If at any point the band is guessed the song is played, the picker drinks and you move on until you get bored/vomit/start dancing/decide to turn it into the karaoke version. Easy. So here is, what would be the start of me playing against me".

TOM BELLAMY'S TEN
01	And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead	Mistakes And Regrets
	One of the most underrated bands ever. Thoroughly nice chaps, too. Just don't get in the way of an airborne floor tom.
02	Beck	Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometimes
	Best cover ever on one of the greatest films ever (nothing surpasses 'Back To The Future'). Eddy has a version of this song that's about 450BPM and nearly made me spontaneously vomit on the dancefloor when he dropped it. Awesome stuff.
03	C + C Music Factory	Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)
	Tuuuuuuuune. I used to dance to this in the living room with my Mum on a Sunday afternoon. Hi Mum.
04	Deftones	Minerva
	I'm putting these songs on as I write about them... I just got goosebumps all over. I know this because I am stark bollock naked. TURN IT UP!
05	Elbow	Friends Of Ours
	Pete (Elbow's bass player) told me about eighteen months before this record came out that he was gonna start plumbing with his brother cos it wasn't looking good. He would have been such a good plumber, too. "Before leaving get to the bar, No one round here makes you pay. Never very good at goodbyes, so a gentle shoulder charge, love you mate". Big Hands anyone? (The bar in Manchester, I'm not suggesting Guy Garvey has big hands.)
06	Foo Fighters	Walking After You
	Everyone associates Foo Fighters with heavy rock, but this song is the complete opposite and absolutely gorgeous. How can anyone not like Dave Grohl? I want to be his best friend so much, I think he would really enjoy my roast dinners.
07	Grandaddy	Everything Beautiful Is Far Away
	I've always wanted to make a record like this. Turns out I'm making it at the moment, well excited. Watch this space.
08	The Horrors	Mirror's Image
	I wasn't a fan of The Horrors when they came out. I just thought they were a poor man's Eighties Matchbox. However when they returned with this, they really cemented themselves as a heavyweight band. Astonishing record, what a great move getting Geoff Barrow from Portishead in to produce it. Awesome live to, and I'm not remotely pissed off that Faris wears the same boots as me. Copycat.
09	Interpol	Unititled
	One of the best opening tracks to an album ever. I once saw Carlos D walking to the shower having not combed his hair. It ruined the image I had in my head that even in bed he would be fully clothed, gun holster and all in pristine condition.
10	Jane's Addiction	Summertime Rolls
	The Losers album finishes with our cover of this, featuring Brian Molko on vocals. It seems appropriate that I too should end this little game of mine with the original.

Quincy Jones reveals how his working relationship with Michael Jackson came to an abrupt end after the legendary producer tried to steer the singer's sound towards hip hop: "Michael fired me. He said, 'Quincy doesn't understand the business any more. He doesn't know that rap is dead'. But it's OK. It wasn't so obvious then [how big hip hop would become]"

Casey Affleck denies that his new documentary film following Joaquin Phoenix as he tries to make it as a rapper is a hoax: "I can tell you that there is no hoax. That never even entered into my consciousness until other people began to talk about the movie. I'm very interested to hear those sorts of reactions and I appreciate that point of view, and I understand how a lot of this movie could be confusing"

Jerry Hall opens up about her marriage to Mick Jagger in her new autobiography: "[By 1979] I had weaned him off drugs, but they had been replaced by sex. Mick wasn't touring and had too much time on his hands. He started going out a lot without me. He would say he had a meeting and then call to say it was running late. He had been linked with several girls in the gossip columns, but he denied it, of course"

US blogger Dustin Curtis learns that Justin Bieber accounts for 3% of all of Twitter's server activity at any one time: "Every time Bieber tweets, his messages have to be delivered to more than five million people who then endlessly retweet it. Apparently, his account receives more than 60 @-replies per second for a while after he tweets, which is something Twitter wasn't originally designed to handle"

Sebastian Bach, formerly of metallers Skid Row, explains why his buddy Axl Rose always appears stage late: "There's no big mystery - it's his voice. It's his job to sing like that, and sometimes that sound is hard for him. To sing in that range is just not an easy thing to do. And he does what he can, and if it takes him 45 more minutes to warm up his pipes so he can sing 'Sweet Child O' Mine' [so be it]"

Foals keys man Edwin Congreave on the night earlier this year when Morrissey came to see his band play: "I was a teen fan of The Smiths. And Morrissey is obviously famous for being a bit of a dick, for want of a better word. I was excited he was coming to our show and I wanted to know what he thought of us. And, true to form, he left after about three songs. So I think he told us what he thinks of us"

		Deftones. They've been through a lot more downs than ups in recent years, but Deftones' latest album, 'Diamond Eyes', was a huge return to form after 2006's diappointing 'Saturday Night Wrist'. This week the band announced that they are coming to the UK to tour in November. Hooray! They also put a sextape online this week. By which I mean they posted the video for their song 'Sextape' on MySpace - mysp.ac/9V7Jpa

		Ben Folds and Nick Hornby. Anything by Ben Folds is CMU approved, such is our confidence in him as both a songwriter and musician. Even if he doesn't share that confidence in himself. His collaboration with British writer man Nick Hornby is ready to go and is sounding rather good, but Folds recently admitted to Billboard he wasn't certain it would all turn out OK. We think it's sounding pretty good - nonesuch.com/albums/lonely-avenue

		Blonde Redhead. With their utterly brilliant new album 'Penny Sparkle' due out next week, Blonde Redhead announced this week that they will play one show, and one show only, at London's Shepherds Bush Empire on 29 Sep. But back to how good the new album is. It's supergood and very much worth your undivided attention. You can download the opening track from the album, 'Here Sometimes', right now - blonde-redhead.com

		Rough Trade. With two shops in London, Rough Trade have asked where fans might, hypothetically, like them to open next. While they're not planning an immediate expansion, the company's Retail Director Stephen Godfroy says he really does value the input of his firm's customers on the general direction of his business. Godfroy has set up a Twtpoll regarding possible locations for future Rough Trade expansion - twtpoll.com/dfc6ij

		Sutekh. Experimental electronic producer Sutekh hasn't released a new studio album since 2002's 'Incest Live', and for his first record in eight years he's chosen to blend his own style with the music of Bach. The result is a mixture of staccato MIDI, sampled pipe organs, skittering percussion and a satisfyingly strange album, which you can hear in full on SoundCloud until Monday - soundcloud.com/cloudcreaked/sets/sutekh-on-bach

		Foxy Shazam. Named after a term for a cool pair of shoes at frontman Eric Nally's school, Foxy Shazam make infectious, hands-in-the-air rock n roll similar to that of Andrew WK. But where he's all about partying hard in the style of someone in their late teens, there's something a bit more innocent about Foxy Shazam. Their eponymous new album, their third, but first on a major (Warner/Sire) follows on 11 Oct - foxyshazam.com

#34: Beef Carpaccio

Andy Malt Editor	Chris Cooke Business Editor & Co-Publisher	Caro Moses Co-Publisher

Georgina Stone Editorial Assistant	Paul Vig Club Tipper	Kanye West Speech Writer

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