Van Tango

Geri Halliwell asks George Michael to be her birthing partner. Pregnant Geri has asked best friend George to be her birthing partner if the father refuses to be involved. The former Spice Girl plans to fly to Los Angeles later this week to patch things up with the father, script writer Sacha Gervasi, 39, after weeks of rows. But if the pair fail to reconcile, Geri reportedly wants singer George to be by her side throughout her labour. Sacha is a bastard. Ya better believe it. G.M gets some brownie points though.

Although married in their hearts since their 2003 commitment ceremony at the Viva Las Vegas wedding chapel in Las Vegas, Stephen Gately, that odd 'man' out from Boyzone, and his love Andy Cowles have decided to make their union official with a civil partnership ceremony(lucky that i've not had dinner yet). The couple was so moved by the wedding of David Furnish and Elton John, who played matchmaker for Stephen and Andy, that plans are now in the works later this year to be held in Dublin, Ireland. Elton will be appointed as the guest of honour. Gately says, "I'm having an Irish wedding. We're madly in love." Don't love me for fun, boy... let the reason be looooooovvvvvvveeeeee....

Liam Gallagher has his heart set on realigning his chakras(one of the seven centers of spiritual energy in the human body according to yoga philosophy) in 2006. The supersonic one has signed up for a series of classes... in yoga! Liam is eager to have Ashtanga Yoga classes at the Buddhist Centre, north London, after seeing a pal reap the rewards from the spiritually uplifting exercise. And he is apparently deadly serious about being able to bend his body into all sorts of positions. An insider said: "One of Liam's pals has been doing Ashtanga Yoga combined with meditation for years and is always enthusing about it. So Liam has signed up for two classes a day with a personal trainer and has tried to talk his brother Noel into going - but he isn't having any of it." Wonder how that conversation went..
Liam vowed to make his lifestyle much healthier when he went on tour with Oasis last June. And as well as drinking two litres of water a day, he even managed to complete a mini three-day detox. But then, some sources claimed he went back on the beer and fags. But it's not only yoga he has his heart set on. An insider revealed: "Liam is also interested in taking up meditation classes and learning to chill out. He is also hoping to build a gym at the north London home he shares with his fiancee Nicole Appleton and their young son. And depending on how that goes, he may even build a swimming pool." Large enough to sail in your yeeeelllow submareeeeene?

Complicated no more? Avril Lavigne has ditched her gothic eyeliner and baggy clothes for a stylish, lady-like look. She is now dressed in Chanel and Gucci to demonstrate her new fashion sense in the February edition of Harper's Bazaar mag. Lavigne says, "I'm starting to feel more feminine. I'm getting into hair and make-up and image. It's Twiggy for the 2000s." Her hardcore fans will now ransack their big sisters' wardrobes for branded clothes.

Lindsay Lohan gives a revealing interview to Vanity Fair's Evgenia Peretz. CNN's Brooke Anderson spoke with Peretz about the teen queen's confessions.

L-Lohan.com has the scans and article from the much talked about Lindsay Lohan cover story in Vanity Fair. She looks like the 60s 'Nancy Sinatra' on some of the pics. Nice.

Looks like Katy will return to Britain within a month to face police questioning over her alleged drug abuse. Despite completing a 30-day stint in an Arizona rehabilitation clinic, Moss has continued to evade Britain, and is reportedly considering a permanent move to Los Angeles. But a close pal insists she has always been willing to face the police, and is simply waiting for a break in her busy work schedule. He says, "She is expected to volunteer to see the police in the next month or so. She has always said that she will return to Britain and is happy to cooperate. There has never been any suggestion that she will stay in the US." On Wed (Jan 4th), London's Metropolitan Police assistant commissioner Tarique Ghaffue made a direct appeal to Moss to answer police questions or face arrest under caution. This is the first time i've heard the authorities pleading for an individual to come clean by using the media.

Pete Doherty has hit back at Kate Moss - by removing the heart-shaped tattoo on his arm which features the letter "K". And he has told pals he wants it lasered off "the sooner the better". Pete, is said to be "seriously stressed" after seeing pictures of Kate snogging a young model Jamie Burke on a skiing holiday in Aspen, Colorado. And the junkie rocker - who has been holed up at a pal's house in east London for the past few days - is determined to remove Katy from his life. An insider said: "Pete just wants to get rid of anything and everything which reminds him of Kate at the moment, which is understandable." Or he could hook up with a 20 year old Keira..

This new band White Rose Movement makes music that sound so 80s. I always get reminded of sounds from the likes of A-ha, Tears For Fears, Erasure, Human League, etc. whenever WRM is played. Anyways, they are great band and should be huge this year.
-> White Rose Movement - Love Is A Number audio / video

Videos on this week's edition of Rage on ABC Broadband include Franz Ferdinand's The Fallen, The Dirty Secrets' C'mon, The Strokes' Juicebox, and Regurgitator's 'Pretty Girls Swear'. Watch it online in broadband or modem formats.

A wife, one evening, drew her husband's attention to the couple next door and said: "Do you see that couple? How devoted they are? He kisses her every time they meet. Why don't you do that?"......"I don't know her well enough."

Keane are reportedly putting the finishing touches to their second album, which is set for release in the Spring. The three-piece have been working on the new album since the Summer with producer Andy Green, and are about to begin mixing the record for a release date of around May 2006. Tim Chaplin said Keane wanted to come up with something "bold" this time around. He explained: "We definitely don't want it to sound too polished or easy, we want something more raw and funky and exciting that reflects our live show more. "I'm incredibly proud of the first record and I wouldn't change a thing about it. It's about our time together and the seven years it took to get here, but we want to move forward and take a bold step in another direction." Change for the better or worse? We shall see.

Arctic Monkeys have explained the real reason behind the release date change for 'Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not', and they're insisting it's not due to the leak. Laurence Bell from the band's label Domino has stated that it's because the manufacturing process was quicker than had been previously expected. "People are always putting albums back so we thought it would be fun to bring some forward. We did the same with Franz Ferdinand. The manufacturing went quicker than anticipated and the thinking is that the albums are going to do more good if they are in the shops rather than sat in the Domino warehouse for an extra week. And the sooner people can hear this incredible record the better. It's going to be the soundtrack to 2006." The album will now hit the shelves on January 23.

Arctic Monkeys interview in Amsterdam.

When The Sun Goes Down Video.

BRMC - Ain't No Easy Way (live) video.

After holidaying in London, Kylie and Olivier returned to Paris where they were seen strolling down a deserted street early in the morning. After months of chemotherapy, Minogue's health is said to have improved in recent weeks but Martinez still kept a protective eye on her. While she is talking to her record company about returning to the studio this year, the confessed workaholic will need to take it easy. Cancer patients can suffer the effects of chemotherapy for up to a year afterwards. Olivier has reportedly bought her a puppy to cheer her up while she battles breast cancer. He hopes the cuddly pooch will help aid the star's recovery. A source revealed: "Olivier heard that having a dog is therapeutic, so he couldn't think of a better gift." Ain't that sweet.

The laughing ego has landed? Robbie Williams is getting bored with music and is toying with the idea of becoming a stand-up comedian. Williams told German newspaper Die Zeit that the foray into comedy could help change his image as a gifted performer plagued by depression when the curtain falls. "My father was a stand-up comedian for years. Maybe I will be one day, too," he was quoted as saying in remarks printed in German. Williams said his best friend, Jonathan Wilkes, would be going with him on his next tour and that Wilkes helped him cope with the pressure of fame. Pressure?

Oasis rarities!

Full live streaming of The Strokes - Secret Gig in Amsterdam. Best moment was when Jules told someone in the crowd - "I don't know what you've just said but it sounds great.." One hour of indie soma madness.

Levi's - Spaceman advert (Nov '95). Remember this?

A new technology could let your computer recommend new music you might like based on an acoustic analysis of the tunes it already knows you enjoy. By analysing the characteristics of a song - like timbre, rhythm, tempo and chord changes - then comparing it to a database of a million songs, the software can recommend similar pieces of music, and even rank them by characteristics, like their key or dance-ability. "The goal is to be able to have as complete a description of a piece of music as a human being can do," says Xavier Serra, director of the Music Technology Group at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. "That's beyond the current state of our knowledge. But what we can do now is enough to develop music recommendation systems based partly or totally on the automatic generation of descriptors."

Royal Philips Electronics is developing an MP3 player that uses the technology. The device would help users classify their own music collections. Serra says that once a collection is beyond about a thousand songs, people lose the ability to keep track of what they have. An automatic classification system would let them describe the type of music they are looking for, and then find it in their own collection. Serra says SIMAC was able to train on a database of a million songs from Sony. For its music recommender, it combines acoustic analysis with a data mining engine that crawls the web looking for music reviews and other textual information that might also give clues to what the piece of music is like. Dan Ellis, a computer scientist at Columbia University in New York said, "If the task is to distinguish classical music from rock, machines can do that pretty well. If you're otherwise going to have to manually sort through them, that's a big win. But more work needs to be done in areas like identifying individual artists, or generating playlists that an individual user will like." Despite a lot of academic interest, commercial applications are still relatively unsophisticated.