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  Hello there, happy new year!

It seems a bit weird saying that now, but this is the very first CMU Weekly of the year, so I think it's justified. Even though I already said happy new year to many of you in CMU Daily two weeks ago. Well, whatever, you can't tell me what to do.

Happynewyearhappynewyearhapppynewyear.
 
Anyway, yes, here you have before you the promised all-new CMU Weekly, which we've spruced up and streamlined for your enjoyment. My ramblings up here at the top remain, as do the Powers Of Ten playlists and the Beef Of The Week column, in which I will continue to inform you of the best battle the music industry has to offer.

Everywhere else it's all change, though. Each week we'll now provide you with the ten most important stories of the week on theCMUwebsite.com, plus ten more things that might interest you, like free downloads, new bands, tour dates and Justin Bieber getting hit in the face with stuff.

So, that's all good. But biggest and best of all is the new CMU podcast, which we're very excited about. It's been a long time coming - I think we originally recorded pilot episodes back in 2009 - but we've finally managed to get it off our computers and out in the world.

The format is simple: Each week, CMU Business Editor Chris Cooke and I will babble on for 30 minutes about what has happened in the music world over the last seven days. Hopefully you'll find it mildly entertaining and slightly informative, that's pretty much what we're aiming for.

I'll leave you to read and listen to all of that, then we can all meet back here again next Friday and do it all again. That'll be nice.

Andy Malt
Editor, CMU
 

 
 

  This week's biggest stories and developments in the mad world of music making...

The HMV story...

HMV suppliers denied credit insurance
HMV consults KPMG over debts

The 'release window' story...
Universal and Sony close 'release window'
Vaizey welcomes 'on air, on sale' policy
Musicmetric says closing the release window will deliver – but now what about inconsistent release dates worldwide?

Some digital stories...
Nokia phones no longer come with music
Reports say Spotify has US deal with Sony
Steve Jobs takes more medical leave

Some file-sharing news...

IFPI publishes depressing stats, renews three-strike calls
More ACS:Law shenanigans in court

This week's obits...
Longstanding music industry player Don Kirshner
Broadcast's Trish Keenan

One more...
Blur still doing something

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  Gang Of Four
Formed in 1977, Gang Of Four released their debut single, 'Damaged Goods' the following year. Their first album, 'Entertainment!', was released by EMI in 1979, but the band lost the label's support after the BBC banned lead single 'At Home He's A Tourist' for referring to "rubbers".

Moving to Warner Bros, the band recorded three albums in the 80s before splitting. Frontman Jon King and guitarist Andy Gill reunited in 1991 to record 'Mall' for Polydor and then 'Shrinkwrapped' for Castle before the project petered out once again.
 
Already championed by the likes of REM, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Nirvana, there was renewed interest in the band in the early 21st century as new acts like Franz Ferdinand, Bloc Party and The Young Knives (the latter of whom recorded with Gill) cited Gang Of Four as a major influence. This prompted the band's original line-up - King and Gill plus bassist Dave Allen and drummer Hugo Burnham - to reform in 2004 for a world tour and a compilation of re-recorded and remixed versions of some of their songs.

Although Allen and Burnham have since bowed out again, Jon King and Andy Gill have written and recorded their first new album for sixteen years, entitled 'Content', which will be released though Groenland on 24 Jan. Ahead of the release, we asked Jon King to put together a Powers Of Ten playlist for us.
 
GANG OF FOUR'S TEN
Click here to listen to Jon's playlist in Spotify, and then read on to find out more about his selections.

01 Robert Johnson - Cross Road Blues
The man at the root of it all, who sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for a life without boundaries. An incredible musician, with an irresistible lure for women, who was murdered by a cuckolded husband in a bar brawl, the way we'd all like to go.

02 Muddy Waters - Mannish Boy
Muddy made the Delta electric, and the Voodoo promise of Robert Johnson became a man's sense of his own worth in a world where he was told he was shit by the forces of evil.

03 The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Voodoo Child (Slight Return)
I listen to this song all the time, Jimi saying it all through the strings, where the improvisation takes you higher and higher to a transcendent place where every moment is a blessing and the villains and criminals and straights who poison our worlds are struck down and everything is possible.

04 The Jimmy Castor Bunch - Troglodyte (Cave Man)
The kind of music that Brian Eno told David Byrne to listen to, copy and then sing over in his wonderfully squeaky way. Get with this take on Palaeolithic man's struggle to be the fittest.

05 Aretha Franklin - I Say A Little Prayer
One of the greatest pop songs ever, a hymn to being in love and alive and hopeful. Every moment is a gift; we are touched by perfection of Aretha's voice and the unmatchable music and words of Burt Bacharach and Hal David.

06 Dr Feelgood - Roxette
Canvey Island's greatest, and one of our greatest inspirations. I loved everything about them, saw them many times, every show a joy; Wilco Jonson shooting about the stage in maniacal amphetamine bursts, chopping a staccato world from his guitar as the late, great, Lee Brilleaux sweated and stomped his way through an alcohol-fuelled brilliance.

07 Plan B - Stay Too Long
A monster guitar riff, a Smokie homage, a Stax-sized groove and on it Brit-style story of what goes wrong if you hang around when a welcome's worn out; a brilliant punk rock/hip-hop/motor-town mash-up. Superb.

08 The Slits - I Heard It Through The Grapevine
We once shared an office with The Pop Group and The Slits. We played a bunch of triple billed shows with The Buzzcocks and The Slits. The sadly recently departed Ari Up, a true original fronted the band, always a treat, always an experience.

09 The Ting Tings - That's Not My Name
This and its sister track 'Shut Up And Let Me Go' promised the world, but the palette was maybe too tight to deliver long-term on such a majestically poptastic scale. A real treasure of estuary-flavoured rockism.

10 Joni Mitchell - Blue
This song is a special lyrical treat, brought to life with Joni Mitchell's eccentric phrasing and vocal swoops.
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  Artists, tracks, videos, tour dates, release updates and other online nonsense to check out this weekend...

This week's CMU Approved...
Nurses
Trophy Wife – A Quiet Earth (James Yuill Remix)
RebekkaMaria – Winter Winterkill (Rasmus Hedegaard Remix)

This week's Same Six Questions interviews...
Seefeel
Joan As Police Woman

Other cool stuff...
Cults, the first signing to Lily Allen's record label
The Shoes debut album and UK tour details
Marnie Stern's demo tape
Mount Kimbie to play Heaven show
Tim Ten Yen's first full moon single
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  #48: Kanye West v the media (but not Britney)
Poor old Kanye, he just can't do anything right, can he? Not even be nice to someone and poke fun at himself at the same time.

Last Friday, when Britney Spears' 'Hold It Against Me' beat his collaboration with Jay-Z, 'HAM', to the top of the iTunes singles chart in the US, West tweeted: "Yo Britney, I'm really happy for you and I'mma let you be number one, but me and Jay-Z's single is one of the best songs of all time! LOL".
 
I hope I'm not offending anyone when I say that any person who didn't get that this was a play on his now legendary interruption of Taylor Swift's MTV VMA acceptance speech in 2009 is a massive idiot. No? Right, good, everyone got that. I'mma let me finish.

Britney's manager, Adam Leber responded to West, saying: "Thanks for 'letting' us be number one. Much appreciated". The fact that he put inverted commas around "letting" does suggest that he wasn't taking this in quite the jovial spirit it was intended, but I'm sure Adam Leber isn't a massive idiot, so it's probably just a grammatical tick that can be easily explained away.

Whether Kanye read Leber's tweet as hostile, or even saw it amongst the bombardment of replies from massive idiots, isn't clear, but he later tweeted: "On a serious note, I'm truly happy for ... Britney Spears... No hate in 2011!"

So, there you have it. Kanye West made a joke, some massive idiots got the wrong end of the stick, Kanye turned the stick around for the idiots and everyone was happy. Well, everyone except Kanye, because over the weekend he discovered that various websites were reporting that he'd engaged in a "Twitter war" with Britney.

The claim that this was war originally came from UsMagazine.com, it seems. Though faced with the same jovial quotes I've just republished for you above, the website had to add in a portion of West's 2007 MTV VMA outburst following Spears' terrible performance of 'Gimme More' to make it all seem a bit more war-y.

Upon discovering the same report republished on MSNBC, Kanye actually did get angry. This is good news because Kanye West is much funnier when he's angry and not telling jokes. He loaded up Twitter once again and ranted: "I thought LOL signified a joke... I didn't get the '2011 LOL doesn't signify a joke any more' memo... LOL or something else, I guess".

He continued: "Just saw that MSNBC said I tried to start a Twitter war with Britney. This shit takes the air out my lungs sometimes from blogs to news reports... enough already! All I do is focus on my work ... There's a new lie everyday... a new media spin ... I'm one of the most considerate people in real life. Maybe over considerate. Over caring. Overly real".

Yes, Kanye, that's your problem, you're too bloody real for your own good. Oh, but he's not finished: "There is no astronaut training for celebrity... even though this whole life is so outer space! I was actually surprised that a record as raw as 'HAM' could make it to number two on iTunes. How can you 'let' someone be number one?! That was the whole joke! I know intelligent people know this, so bear with me. When I said the comment about Britney I was giving her props for being number one, not dissing her at all! But stop making it seem that my aim is to hurt or down people! That's just not my style!"

Forgetting that brevity is the soul of Twitter, he went on: "As pop stars we're all in this shit together! We on the inside of the TV! If the media wants to make a story, just say I have atrocious spelling and terrible grammar. If you don't give em a story, they just make one up. I'm just trying to focus and stay creative! Keep bringing dope shit to the world!"

He didn't actually finish there, but let's pretend he did. I think we've got all the salient points. If not, here they are again in summary:

1) Kanye West is a big joker
2) Kanye West doesn't like the media
3) Kanye West gets annoyed too easily
4) Kanye West is too real
5) Kanye West wrote a song called HAM
6) Why aren't we making jokes about that?
7) It contains the line "I'm about to go ham"
8) "I'm about to go ham", for crying out loud
9) That is fucking hilarious
10) But it doesn't tie in as well with the title of this column as Lady Gaga's beef carpaccio dress
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Andy Malt
Editor
Chris Cooke
Business Editor &
Co-Publisher
Caro Moses
Co-Publisher
           
Eddy Temple-Morris
Columnist
Paul Vig
Club Tipper
Alex Reid
Cash Procurement (Jordan Office)

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