Gallagher's Glories

It's one of my favourite phrases: "like a cage match between Pol Pot and General Pinochet", the idea being that at least one villain is going to get their just deserts after a little entertainment. So what do we make of the latest outburst from tired and irrelevant Dadrock icon Noel Gallagher about the poor ticket sales at this year's Glastonbury Festival? He blames none other than the choice of Jay Z, hip-hop impresario, boycotter of fine champagne, and part owner of the "Brooklyn" Nets, the team that would very much like to despoil his old 'hood with the aid of gallons of subsidies.

"Sorry, but Jay-Z? F***ing no chance. Glastonbury has a tradition of guitar music, do you know what I mean? Even when they throw the odd curveball in on a Sunday night and you go, Kylie Minogue? Don't know about that."

I will avoid the suggestion that the curse of Bruce Ratner travels as far as lovely Somerset, and say only that the collision of two pop icons, each so malign in his own way, is a rather gratifying spectacle.

Thing is, indie music fans really are quite racist. The New Musical Express has figures for the newsstand sales of all of their covers featuring recording artists of colour, and they're not pretty. The most charitable explanation I have is that they don't think that "American Gangster" has erased the memory of that terrible deployment of the Public Enemy horn sample