Van Tango

Robbie has announced that he is going to quit touring. He has no plans to go back on the road after he's finished his 2006 world tour, because he's so tired of playing live. The tour started in South Africa back in April and it will finish in Australia in Dec. Robb said, "I'm not going to tour for a long time after this one. For me, this tour is a year-long celebration of what I have achieved as a solo artist. After that I'll say, 'Thank you very much,' it's not something that I want to do again for a long time." Robb might just give birth... he should fix the alarmingly huge belly during the long break. His angels could be in tears watching that tummy.

Charlotte Church has managed to do what some others have only dreamt of - she insulted herself. She said: "I am sick of seeing me looking a right heifer. I'm a natural fat girl. I just love food and hate the gym, and it seems to be a pretty curvy combination. I'm a fat cow." With a mind like that, who needs enemies? Charl looked glam in some 50s Hawaiian print dress at a recent event and unleashed a string of expletives after collecting an award. Well.. nothing surprising there.

Charlotte vs Tweedy - Episode '92,384'
The two ladies have taken every opportunity to denounce each other to the tabloids. The latest when Tweedy reference Church's new advert for Walkers crisps saying: "Stuffing her face? Very appropriate." After accepting her award at this week's Glamour Women of the Years Awards Church openly threatened Tweedy saying: "I think she needs to grow up and get a hobby - golf or something, but stop having a go at me 'cos its getting pathetic. Church told the Mirror: "First of all - it was quite funny - but now it's just pathetic. I'm going to knock her out if I ever see her." Hopefully the two will never come to blows, but if I were Tweedy, I'd be keeping my head well down...


Stephen Dorff is currently dating Sarah Harding. The actor, who has been linked to Pamela Anderson in the past, has so impressed the Aloud member, she is considering moving to Los Angeles. Sarah gushes: "I am going (to Los Angeles) to see Stephen next week. I want to concentrate on getting some work out there. I've got a few things I want to look in to. I keep trying to stop myself from talking about him, but I can't help it. It's early days at the moment but I'm really happy. He's so nice." Invasion of the U.S dudes on the Aloud clan? Maybe the Euro boys don't have the right biology after all..

Looking to get more publicity, East 17 have been roaming The Streets. The 90s boyband are taking credit for Mike Skinner's creation. They suggest that Mike was heavily influenced by their mix of pop and rap. Tony said: "The Streets are definitely the closest thing to us in the charts these days. I like them a lot. Of course, if you ask them they'll probably say they were influenced by American hip-hop or something." The group, who are hoping for a comeback have said that it will all depend on how the media take them.. It's best they pack up their bags ASAP.



Let's move on to the hugely anticipated second album from the Leicester boys Kasabian entitled 'Empire', to be released on September 4. Tom Meighan is finding the tolls of fronting such a band a little too much and a long spells of touring over the past three years caused the fella to have a "fucking breakdown". After their tour in America, he struggled to adapt back to normal life. Tom said: "(After touring) I had a fucking breakdown after coming back home. I was scratching at the walls. I didn't know what to do. I was like a caged lion. It was horrible. All that partying and touring took a massive toll on my mind. It was fucking horrible coming back down to earth. We did so many shows over the last three years. We were all like walking corpses. I don't think we could have pushed ourselves any further." The price to pay for being mega rock 'n' roll stars.

Here are five new Kasabian live tracks from the Rock In Rio festival in Lisbon, Portugal [link]. "aaaaaaand LOVIN' it!"

Kasabian are releasing a comeback download only single next month. 'Empire' song will be available as a download on 24 July. The album is also entitled 'Empire' - after the band's private Star Wars-inspired buzzword. It was recorded after they returned from touring the US last Nov. They spent four eventful weeks at Rockfield Studios in Wales putting the album together. Speaking to NME, Tom said: "We've gone from on the farm smoking shitloads of hash and coming up with a load of mashed up tunes, to this time being more 'royal', should I say? We've just took it to another level and raised the stakes. We fucking own it, we're the fucking modernists now! We're not trying to prove anything, we've just let our hair down and gone for it. It's sexier than the first record. It's naughtier too, it's not as aggressive, it's definitely naughty this time round." Welcome back to the indie world.

I'm liking these new tracks [link] from The Veils.

New videos!
Battle - Children
The Young Knives - She's Attracted To
The Presets - Down Down Down

Muse - Map Of The Problematique [live in Italy audio]


SPACE ROCK AT IT'S FINEST!

With their debut long-player out shortly, The Rifles are soon set to release another taster from the album in the form of new single She's Got Standards [vid]. The track follows on from the success of Repeated Offender and is sure to the band's biggest track yet, on it's release on June 26th. The album No Love Lost is out on July 3rd.

Australian rockers The Grates' next single will be coming out on July 3rd. The three-piece who have recently completed a tour supporting The Zutons, will release 19-20-20 as their new single and as the next taster for forthcoming album Gravity Won't Get You High. This is another great band which deserves more recognition.

Ash have revealed details of their new album, which they're currently working on in New York. Apparently, the band are currently working on 27 songs. Tim Wheeler said: "They're all arranged and sounding good as a band. I've still got to write most of my lyrics, though. I always write the melody and the music to begin with. The sound we're getting playing in a room with just the three of us has been really exciting. We'd quite like to capture that three-piece live band sound, but then embellish it with other interesting stuff. At this point we've got a blank page and it feels like we can do anything with it. We're all pretty excited about it." The band are planning to produce the album themselves, with Wheeler favouring a more simplistic approach: "I like this tight 70s guitar band sound that's around quite a lot at the moment. And I've been listening to a lot of older records, stuff like Bo Diddly. Those records were probably just recorded with a couple of microphones in a room, but to me it sounds awesome." They plan to record the album next month and then road test the material with a few low key shows in their adopted home. More Ash-y tunes are always welcomed.

Drummer Harry Judd's McFly bandmates have written a song about his fling with La Lohan. Harry hooked up with Lindsay when McFly had a cameo in 'Just My Luck' but has refused to kiss and tell. His bandmates on the other hand have no such compulsion: "The song is about Lindsay who Harry hooked up with in America," singer Danny Jones admitted. "He bloody loves it. The song, called 'Please, Please, Lindsay, Please', includes the line "you love yourself more than you love me" and Danny realises this might not go down to well in the Lohan camp: "We did swap numbers though and she said she'd call us when she comes over here. She wants to buy a flat in London and has asked for our advice. Lindsay's a great girl. She has a real presence about her." Lohan gonna be McFly-ing soon? It doesn't bother her much about this little fling as she feels like a man when she falls in love. What? She tells style magazine Harper's Bazaar: "I've become like the guy in relationships. Lately, I just cannot be in a monogamous relationship, but there are people I want to date." This comes months after she revealed that she is not always dating every other day....

La Lohan reveals a lot of leg as she exits her car in Beverly Hills






Scarlett Johansson has the best breasts in Hollywood, according to a new poll. The Lost In Translation actress' ample assets claimed the top spot in the vote, conducted by America's In Touch Weekly magazine, leaving Jessy Simpson and actress Salma Hayek in second and third places. Scarlett once confessed to naming her breasts 'the girls', recently sent pulses racing after posing nude on the front cover of Vanity Fair magazine with Keira Knightley. No arguments here.



High Jackman, has signed up to feature in the new Baz Luhrman film. He will star opposite Nicole Kidman is an as yet untitled pre-WW2 romantic adventure movie. Kidman will be playing an aristocratic English lady while Jackman will be a rough and ready cattle driver who both travel to Darwin just in time for the city to be bombed by Japan. Filming will kick off early next year. This will be a good screen pairing.


Is this an illusion? Pete Doherty has seemingly heeded all the warning and advice of others and checked himself into a rehab centre in Portugal. He apparently flew out to clinic earlier this week. A band source claims that Pete has gone of his own accord and that he organised the trip without the intervention of others. He will be in detox for the next couple of weeks before once again being fitted with an "opiate-suppressing implant". Somehow this reminds me of the 'temporary' cure for the X-clan mutants..

OK to Copy CDs to PC and MP3 Player
Music buyers will no longer face the full arm of the law should they copy their CDs to their own PCs or MP3 players, as long as they do so for personal use. No lending your friend one ear of the headphone set then. Peter Jamieson from the BPI said that they want to purely focus on those who are making music available for others, rather than those simply making copies for themselves. He said: "We believe that we now need to make a clear and public distinction between copying for your own use and copying for dissemination to third parties. We want make it unequivocally clear to the consumer that if they copy their CDs for their own private use in order to move the music from format to format, we will not pursue them".