A pro team from Osaka (J-League) is playing against a team of primary/elementary school players. The pros have 11 players but the kids team has 100.

Are you watching FA?? This could catch on...

Tracey Thorn seems to be ahead of the game.

This beautifully grown up tune has just been released as a free download promoting her new album. Don't let Cheryl anywhere near it...

http://www.traceythorn.com/

This looks fabulous...

Will members of the human race ever be so cool again?

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/333deeac-1477-11df-9ea1-00144feab49a.html?ncli...

For anyone, like me, that completely missed the adverts for this tour there's some footage here of Green singing Fruit Tree with Danny Thompson on bass. It's sublime...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/music/celticconnections/2010/artists/way_t...

and great report from robram here...

http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/content/way-blue-songs-nick-drake

Are there any other Last.fm subscribers out there?

I've just discovered their new playground where you can create all sorts of graphs and 'visualisations' from your own chart data. Anyone care to share Tube Maps?

Click on this image to see mine in all its glory...an interesting reminder of what you've been listening to for the last 18 months.

I've just come across this quite illuminating article on record company finances (if you like that sort of thing). It's from someone who used to be in a band and now is trying to understand what his back catalogue is earning from music downloads and streaming.

It seems pretty incredible to me that a major label like this can get away with being so disinterested in informing their artists about the state of their account (maybe most of them aren't interested). Personally I think I'd like to know what is due to me (or rather how much of my debit has been paid off).

Forgive me but I do like a good graph...

This has just been produced by those marvellous Last.fm people. It shows the top 15 most scrobbled artists in 2009 (London vs. The World). Personally I'm delighted to see that from a slow start The XX feature consistently and strongly in London and around the world, and that Cheryl Cole can only mange a little blip...but just what was Peter Broderick up to in April?

Click on the picture to see it in it's full glory.

Anyone else been on a Stanshall refresher recently? All that podcast talk of Vivian and the Bonzos set me off.

I've just come across this excellent blog which has loads of Viv and all sorts of psychedelic nonsense, it's well worth a look.

http://weirdtownstuff.blogspot.com/

can produce some wonderful things.

Just as long as I don't have to look at them...

A few weeks ago, the government announced its intention to introduce new methods to manage illegal file sharing and downloading. This was based on research that discovered that 7m people in the UK are illegally using file sharing software. The proposal includes new laws to cut off, or slow, the internet connections of those who are found to be illegally file sharing.

The logic behind the calculation of the 7m figure is great. A survey asked 1,176 net-connected households if they used file-sharing software, 136 people said yes, that's 11.6%. They then assumed all file sharing is illegal...and 11.6% was adjusted up to 16.3% to compensate for lies.

They then made an estimate of how many people in the UK are on the internet - 40m (although Government stats for 2008 say 33.9m).

16.3% of 40m = 6.52m. Lets round that up to 7m. OK we can change a law based on that.

http://www.pcpro.co.UK/news/351331/how-UK-government-spun-136-people-int...

There's got to be a more accurate way hasn't there??

A slightly contrived but very entertaining radio programme put together by Don Letts this week about musicians based in and around Notting Hill Gate.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00mj7nc/The_Other_Notting_Hill/

Some great stories from Paul Simonon, Damon Albarn, Lemmy, Aswad, Viv Albertine, Nik Turner, Chris Salewicz, Joe Boyd.

...and no mention of the Beatles anywhere.

I don't know about anyone else but it all kicking off over here...

Cos I got more glide in my stride and dip in my hip
And I wear a mean dark pair of shades
And you can't see my eyes unless my head is bent
No jive....Gimme 5......

TEA-YOOO-OOON

It's the Mike Skinner crop circle that will greet everyone arriving by train at Glastonbury this week.

They've been practising hard in their back garden with equipment supplied by B&Q.

It's quite a good likeness if you squint a little.

I think it's worth A+ for effort.

There's a interesting Christies auction coming up on the 1st July. It's tagged 'Popular Culture: Rock & Pop' the catalogue is interesting reading. It looks like it would be worth the catalogue price just to have a look around.

How about John Lennon's 1958 Hofner Senator - estimate £100k

If only I had some money...

Tommorow there's the annual celebration of independent record shops. It sounds like a worthy cause.

There are loads of UK stores participating...

In London Rough Trade are doing stuff but I think I'll go down to Pure Groove to see Graham Coxton and Patrick Wolf are turning up for in store promos.