The first ever What's Going On...

From way back in January of 2006! The things I was getting het up about then... I don't even remember why I cared. Still... I do like the bit about Ian Curtis.

You could be forgiven for thinking, after the year that was in it, that Bob Dylan was the closest any human being had ever come to God.

You’d be wrong, however, as that mantle has been unashamedly grasped by none other than ex-Verve warbler, Richard Ashcroft, who said recently of the Big G, “I love the man, I feel like him.” But he’s not just blowing his own, oh no, apparently: “There’s only Richard Ashcroft and Liam Gallagher who know what it feels like. We’re the only ones who know how many people we’ve touched and how powerful that is. I feel like I’m on a one-man mission. I’m here to use my tools and my gift to take them to a higher level.”

Gallagher, when asked, said, “Who the fuck’s Richard Ashcroft?” After careful explanation, he retorted with, “Well, who the fuck’s this God character then?”

In more enlightening news, Mercury Prize-winning hip hopper, Ms Dynamite, recently strutted her stuff all over a policewoman’s face in London after being, um, asked to stop kicking a nightclub door. She was taken into custody and charged with disorderly conduct and assaulting a police officer – although now she’s no doubt regretting her decision to leave the Glock at home. Imagine the scandal? Imagine the record sales! Sigh…

The hip hop don’t stop there, no not neither. Patrick “The Paedophile Out Of Donnie Darko” Swayze is planning to follow up his 1987 Dirty Dancing hit with a rap single. He was overheard talking his way out of a mugging by saying, “Rap rhythms are an emotional undercurrent for ballads.” This melted the heart of the 12-year-old crack addict holding the knife to his balls and he was allowed to go. The single is tentatively titled, I Still Gots My Wallet, Yo.

It’s not all bad news though, for noise fans anyway. Sonic Youth are also in the studio recording their seven-hundredth and eighteenth album. They’re working in their favourite New York studio and had given some songs names, like Pink Steam, Do You Believe In Rapture, Or, and Sleepin’ Around. The as-yet untitled album is due out sometime this year.

Guitarist Lee Ranaldo said of the new material: “Some of it seems to be an extension of the last couple of records…” More of the same, eh, Lee? He goes on, “Some hearkens forward into a new territory and also back to earlier, more dissonant and atonal stuff we’ve done.” In a nutshell – more of the same.

Interestingly enough Joy Division will be reforming to record songs for a film about the band. Presumably it will also cover the death – and, it would seem, the recent resurrection – of Ian Curtis. He won’t like that…

Terror strikes the heart of Nashville as Bee Gee Barry Gibb splashes out $2.5million on Johnny Cash’s house. I hope he haunts you like no country singer has ever haunted a squeaky-voiced gimp before, Barry!

And as if that wasn’t enough tragedy and mayhem for one lifetime – Van Halen are threatening to reunite! Lead singer David Lee Roth was recently quoted as saying, “I talked to the drummer [Alex Van Halen] and the inevitable will happen…” Do you have to make it sound so sinister though?

Seriously, who’s next? Hawkwind, perhaps…

Oh, and Tom Jones got knighted alongside Arcade Fire, Arctic Monkeys, Declan O’Rourke and the Conway Sisters. Bono didn’t get one this time, but he said he doesn’t mind because he’s the Pope’s favourite.