Fifa’s elderly delegates refuse to become Slaves to the Rhythm
Even Grace Jones struggles to make executive committee members get up and dance at their congress
Billed by Fifa as "one of the most iconic figures of the 1980s", Grace Jones performed regally at Zurich's Hallenstadion arena – until, that is, 10 minutes in, she realised she was at the wrong gig.
"Are you ready to party?" she asked, to the hall-full of ageing malcontents, Fifa's "fair play" logo sewn freshly into their blazer pockets. "I thought this was a party?"
Perhaps Jones's agent, selling her the headlining of Fifa's 61st annual congress in Zurich, had spared her the finer context – the stacks of cash-for-votes in a Trinidad hotel, or Jack Warner's "tsunami" of revelations.
Instead, in a form of benign welcome from Grandfather Blatter to his football "family", the opening ceremony offered a surreal hour of middlebrow Swiss entertainments against an Alpine backdrop of mountainous corruption scandals.
A "medley of Swiss and international artists" including juggler Alan Sulc paraded their unquestionable talents to the same restrained applause the delegates sprinkled on the speeches.
Blatter laced his latest address on football's global appeal with his now trademark demonic paranoia. After his complaint on Monday that "devils" are munching at Fifa's good name, Blatter told the hall the organisation is facing "danger" now, and must decide how to react to "the threat of this danger."
If that failed to fire the party mood, Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee, also struggled to transform the delegates into Slaves to the Rhythm. "Thirteen years ago we had to face the same ordeal in Salt Lake City," he said, referring to the IOC's own cash-for-votes scandal rather than the honour of watching Alan Sulc.
Jones, too splendid for this gathering, did her best, jumping off the stage to prompt the incongruous sight of Fifa executive committee members clambering up to dance.
Nicholas Leoz, the 82-year-old Paraguayan whose staff believed it only fitting the FA Cup should be named after him – possibly, but not definitely, to help secure his World Cup host country vote – found Jones sitting in his lap, injuncting him to "Pull Up to the Bumper Baby".
Jones was followed by Micheline Calmy-Rey, president of Switzerland, who soon had the delegates back in their seats. Her speech, on football's power to unite the world, like the old advert for Coke, Fifa's latest disaffected sponsor, seemed as if it would politely avoid reference to the matter in hand. Then she too weighed in.
"What counts is fair play," Calmy-Rey said earnestly, and hearts sank further. "Where there are concerns about corruption and transparency it is necessary to listen and reform your governance."
They had to be told to applaud that by host Melanie Winiger – described by Fifa, typically generously, as "a former Miss Switzerland".
The nation's president was followed by "a seven-piece breakdancing group, Flying Steps, and the white cello". Then it was over, this surreal Swiss evening of singing and dancing and talk of corruption.
FifaGrace JonesDavid Connguardian.co.ukRoger Nichols obituary
Recording engineer who collaborated with Steely Dan for 30 years
The albums of Steely Dan were renowned for their sophisticated musical content and for their benchmark-setting audio quality. An indispensable contributor to the latter was their recording engineer Roger Nichols, who has died of cancer aged 66. Nichols also worked on recordings by other prestigious artists, including Diana Ross, the Beach Boys, Rickie Lee Jones, Plácido Domingo and John Denver.
Born in Oakland, California, Nichols was the son of a bomber pilot in the US air force, and during his early years the family followed his father's postings around the US. In 1957, they settled in Rancho Cucamonga, California, where Roger attended high school. One of his classmates was the guitarist and budding bandleader Frank Zappa, with whom Nichols made his first recordings with a reel-to-reel tape recorder. "We would do multiple passes of guitars and bounce them together," Nichols recalled.
Nichols's interest in music was from a technical angle, and he displayed an early flair for scientific experimentation when he built a six-inch mirror telescope when he was 13. He studied nuclear physics at Oregon State University and, in 1965, was employed as a nuclear operator working on the development of the San Onofre nuclear plant in California.
As a side project, he and a couple of friends built their own recording studio, Quantum Studios, in a converted garage and began recording high-school bands and developing their own custom audio equipment. The studio business grew rapidly, and included recording tracks for artists including Kenny Rogers and the First Edition and a lucrative line in commercials, often featuring the then unknown Karen Carpenter on vocals and Larry Carlton (a future Steely Dan collaborator) on guitar.
Nichols and his partners began supplying equipment to other studios, and after they had equipped ABC Records' first studio, Nichols was hired to work there. He was introduced to Steely Dan's masterminds Walter Becker and Donald Fagen by their producer Gary Katz, who had brought them to ABC Dunhill (as it had become) initially as in-house songwriters for other artists. Nichols immediately felt a rapport with them, not least because they shared a passion for audio perfection. "The striving for true hi-fi was common ground with Donald and Walter and Gary," said Nichols. "It wasn't a drag for me to do things over and over. In my own way, I'm just as crazy as they are."
Nichols was an integral part of Steely Dan's 1972 debut album, Can't Buy a Thrill, and the band were so keen to have him aboard that they delayed the recording sessions until he returned from his summer vacation. The album reached the top 20 in the US and generated the hit singles Reelin' in the Years and Do It Again. It was the start of one of the most durable careers in rock music, as Steely Dan created progressively more complex music throughout the 70s, on albums such as Countdown to Ecstasy, Pretzel Logic and Aja. Their 1980 album Gaucho featured Nichols's own invention, the Wendel sampling computer, which created percussion sounds for use when real drummers "weren't steady enough".
Nichols's efforts brought him Grammy awards for his engineering work on Aja and Gaucho, and on Steely Dan's song FM (No Static at All), featured on the soundtrack to the film FM (1978). When Steely Dan later reformed to make Two Against Nature (2000), Nichols's contribution brought him three more Grammys. He also worked on their 2003 release Everything Must Go, and on solo albums recorded by Becker and Fagen. "Basically my whole music industry life has been involved with these guys," Nichols reflected. "We pushed the envelope and did whatever it took to get as much of what happened in the studio on to the end product."
Nichols made time for other interests. He began collaborating with Denver in 1980, and won a Grammy for his work on Denver's children's album All Aboard! (1997). He shared Denver's passion for flying and took trips in the cockpit of Denver's Lear Jet. Nichols, a certified scuba instructor, also liked to go diving with his wife, Connie Reeder, and Denver, and they were friendly with the oceanographer Jacques Cousteau.
Nichols invented a rubidium atomic clock to synchronise digital recording equipment, and in 2005 he set up Roger Nichols Digital, to supply sophisticated recording software.
He is survived by Connie, his daughters Cimcie and Ashlee, his sister Melinda and his brother Jeffrey.
• Roger Nichols, music engineer and producer, born 22 September 1944; died 9 April 2011
Placido DomingoUnited StatesAdam Sweetingguardian.co.ukNico Muhly: Strings and stabbings
From scoring Oscar-winning films to helping out Björk, Nico Muhly is in demand all over the globe – and he's still only 29. The US composer tells Tom Service why his first opera is based on a Manchester knife attack
To go for a walk with Nico Muhly is to experience another way of seeing the world. Five minutes into our stroll through central London, the 29-year-old US composer is telling me how some priest friends of his are planning to reintroduce an ancient Anglican rite to church services. Then, spying a Japanese restaurant, he points out the oddness of its sign being written in an Indian script. This is followed by a ticking off when it becomes apparent that I am unfamiliar with the niceties of Udal law, a Norse code of conduct that still functions in Orkney and the Shetlands.
Then, when we see a poster for Sing-Along-A-Wickerman, he tells me he dressed up as the classic horror movie's salmon of knowledge for the same show last year. "And I did pretty well. I
Pulp are on the comeback trail. Different Class? Or Help the Aged?
If you remember the first time, do Jarvis and co merit a second go?
Seasick Steve live in 360 degrees
The blues singer played a gig in aid of homeless charity The Connection at St Martin's – now watch it from every angle
On Thursday 26 May, Seasick Steve headlined the annual Streets of London Concert for Homelessness at the Electric Ballroom in Camden. All proceeds went to The Connection at St Martin's, a specialist centre that provides support to more than 200 homeless people each day. Below you can watch a stream of the show, filmed using Mativision 360-degree technology allowing you to select camera angles, pan across the stage (and crowd) or just leave static to enjoy an intimate set from Seasick Steve, including tracks from his new album, You Can't Teach An Old Dog New Tricks. Enjoy!
• For more information about Streets of London and how you can help the homeless, please click here. You can make a £2 donation by simply texting 'GIVE00 £2' to 70070. Alternatively, you can make the donation online.
Seasick SteveHomelessnessPop and rockBluesCountryFolk musicAmericanaCharitiesMichael Craggguardian.co.ukLondon Sinfonietta/Collon – review
Queen Elizabeth Hall, London
It is sometimes said that there is such a thing as a London Sinfonietta Piece, written to tick boxes with the new music establishment – whatever that is. If this concert suggested anything, it
The Kills – review
ABC, Glasgow
It's a happy coincidence that the Kills have added more substance to their surfeit of style just as Jamie Hince's imminent marriage to Kate Moss raises the band's celebrity stock to potentially bankable levels. It doesn't exactly seem to be Heat readers who have flocked to one of their biggest headline shows to date, but the transatlantic boy-girl duo do seem to be reaching a new audience with their fourth album, Blood Pressures, which boasts better melodies and a broader emotional range than we've heard yet from the purveyors of
Harry Beckett Tribute – review
Vortex, London
On the late, great Barbadian trumpeter Harry Beckett's birthday – 30 May – a score of musicians came to pay their respects. Beckett, who died last year after an almost six-decade career in UK jazz, was at home with everything from improv to dance music. But he brought a lightness of touch and infectious optimism to it all, even in the most austere of sonic adventures. A raggedly upbeat evening caught that personality, and the raft of changes in jazz thinking Beckett had witnessed.
Trumpeter Chris Batchelor reflected his mentor's skipping phrasing and melodic fluency in the first half-hour, in
Moby says Britney Spears ‘isn’t music’. So what is?
In hypocritically describing pop as 'advertising for ringtones', Moby fails to grasp the genre's great emotional highs and lows
In 2003, Moby co-wrote and produced a track for Britney Spears's fourth album, In the Zone. At the time, he was ridiculously popular following the success of his albums Play and 18, while Britney was still more famous for her pop songs than her personal life (well ... almost).
It seems, however, that their working relationship has soured somewhat. Earlier this month Moby, while trying to defend her to The Quietus, ended up calling her "a broken-down shell of a human being" and in a new interview with Spinner he claims her songs, and those of the majority of current chart pop, are "fun, but I don't think of it as music". He goes on: "It's manufactured. I appreciate it as a pop culture phenomenon and some of the songs I like if I hear them in a shopping mall or something, but it doesn't function as music for me."
For Moby, a song can only be classed as "music" if it has "integrity in a really interesting, direct way" and though he claims to not be criticising the likes of Rihanna, Britney and Ke$ha directly, he goes on to refer to their output as "hyper-produced corporate product" and, the old classic, "advertising for ringtones".
Setting aside his blatant hypocrisy – licensing your entire album to commercials, as Moby did with Play, makes you guilty of producing "advertising for Vauxhall Corsas", if not ringtones – it's an argument that seems to follow most pop music around these days. At the heart of it is the theory that all music needs to have been wrenched from the emotional core of a tortured soul, ideally recorded in a basement toilet and augmented only by the scratching of fingers on guitar strings and tears, ACTUAL TEARS. It forgets that music can be fun and instantaneous, or that great pop stars are often used as a front for great pop songs, often written by great songwriters (Max Martin, Cathy Dennis, Stargate). It also hints at another old adage: that pop is for children who lap it up without giving it a second thought.
Yes, Britney doesn't write that many of her songs, but would ... Baby One More Time or Toxic have worked as well if someone else had sung them? Or if it's genuine emotion you're after, have a listen to Cold Case Love from Rihanna's Rated R or Britney's own Everytime, performed in the aftermath of her break-up with Justin Timberlake.
Let's not get carried away – there is a lot of bad pop out there (Black Eyed Peas, Pitbull, Olly Murs, I'm looking at you). But to tar it all with this incredibly patronising brush doesn't do anyone any favours. If Moby's idea of "proper music" is somehow linked to longevity (his ringtone comment degrades it as something throwaway), it will be interesting to see whose music stands the test of time. Personally, I'd rather Umbrella was remembered over We Are All Made of Stars.
Britney SpearsRihannaPop and rockMichael Craggguardian.co.ukNew band of the day – No 1,033: The History of Apple Pie
Their name might sound as twee as Belle and Sebastian's book club, but this lot are flying the flag for lo-fi noise rock
Hometown: London.
The lineup: Stephanie Min (vocals), Jerome Watson (guitar), James Thomas (drums), Kelly Lee Owens (bass, backing vocals), Aslam Ghauri (guitar).
The background: With Mona's debut album getting so-so reviews, the Vaccines record underperforming, and Brother hardly becoming the stadium giants of their frankly unrealistic ambitions, it's not been a vintage year so far for bands. Meanwhile, outfits from opposite ends of the sonic spectrum such as Wu Lyf and Odd Future are doing things differently, operating, notionally at least, more as collectives with music as just one aspect of their outputs. And the sheer plethora of singer-songwriters and solo performers, whether folk, country, grime-tinged or neo-soul, suggests the writing's on the wall for the traditional four-square indie rock band.
But there's Yuck getting rave notices, and now here come the History of Apple Pie, helping to keep the guitar/bass/drums unit alive. In fact, they're mates of Yuck, or anyway Yuck have been saying nice things about them, and like their London counterparts they appear to have a similar reverence for late-80s US and UK rock. We've had the C86 revival, courtesy of Vivian Girls and, oh, too many to mention. Now it makes sense to move on to the 1987-8 revival as we approach the 25th anniversary of that period. We've read that they're also influenced by 13-era Blur and Pavement, but that amounts to the same thing, because they, too, were born out of the dream melange of melody and noise as pioneered by Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr and My Bloody Valentine.
This isn't quite clear from their debut single You're So Cool, which incidentally was written about a schoolfriend (of theirs, not ours) who knew every word to the film True Romance. This one, in terms of clarity of production and vocals, nods more to 60s girl groups as per the C86 bands. It's on B-side Some Kind that their 88-worship becomes apparent as a burst of guitar-noise like a revving motorbike leads into a tune that uses Dinosaur Jr's Freak Scene – the Smells Like Teen Spirit of the pre-grunge generation – as its model, with an MBV-ish approach to dazed-and-confused, when-you-wake-you're-still-in-a-dream sleep-singing from the two girls in the band, who play the Bilinda Butcher/Deb Googe roles to near perfection. On Tug, over a chugging rhythm and an overlay of solo guitar drizzle, "singing" becomes a series of gaseous, sibilant sighs. Woozy does it. We're not sure about their name – it's a bit twee – but the History of Apple Pie are giving bands a good name.
The buzz: "Gloriously melodic slice of lo-fi noise-pop" – musicfansmic.net.
The truth: They're at the Strawberry Wine stage of their development. Let's see if they've got a You Made Me Realise in them ...
Most likely to: Kill the idea that the band is dead.
Least likely to: Go on a killing spree.
What to buy: You're So Cool is released on 27 June by Roundtable.
File next to: Dinosaur Jr, My Bloody Valentine, Sonic Youth, Yuck.
Links: myspace.com/thehistoryofapplepie.
Wednesday's new band: To Kill a King.
IndiePop and rockPaul Lesterguardian.co.uk