This week's news on Tomlinson death cover up.
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Kurt Wagner on Lambchop, Nashville – and being seen as a redneck
10 Febwww.guardian.co.uk
He is often portrayed as a southern hillbilly savant. But Lambchop's Kurt Wagner is a painter who never planned to be a musician – and is haunted by the death of his close friend Vic Chesnutt
Kurt Wagner likes the backroads. It drives his wife mad, he says, as we pootle through the suburbs of Nashville in his battered Toyota pickup (a stick shift; they're much cheaper secondhand) – she just wants him to go from A to B along the most direct roads. Thing is, he says, the most direct roads aren't always the quickest.
We are braving the traffic to reach Nolensville, 10 miles or so south of the city, where the Tennessee countryside starts to replace the suburban strip malls. His reward for a day of talking about his new album with Lambchop will be baby back ribs – with the Memphis dry rub – from Martin's, the best barbecue place around. "There are barbecue purists who say the meat should stick to the bone," he says, once we've started on the colossal plates of pork. He holds up a rib denuded of all flesh. "They're wrong. This is good, right?"
Barbecued ribs, pickup trucks – it all feeds into the image the British media has constructed of Wagner. He had a job laying wooden floors even after Lambchop became successful! He wears caps advertising agricultural produce! He's from the south! He must be some sort of redneck savant! Why else would he produce these wistful, shy songs, melding lush 70s-style soul to American roots music?
But that's not Wagner. Earlier in the day, in the studio where he paints, he talks about exploring the late 70s Memphis rockabilly scene, about going to art school in Montana, where he became part of the circle of the novelists Thomas McGuane and Richard Brautigan. Later, as we drive around his hometown, he tells me about his dad, a biochemist, and how since a heart attack he's finally started talking about the breakthroughs he made investigating folic acid. He talks about his parents' disappointment when he chose not to follow a reputable career, but instead took up manual labouring to fund his art. It's more Five Easy Pieces than Deliverance.
He seems to live in a very uneasy embrace with Nashville. Lambchop couldn't have existed without it – as the capital of country music, it offers all the infrastructure a band needs to get working for themselves: studios, pressing plants, engineers and so on. But it was a horrible place to grow up. Wagner had long hair – "down to my waist" – and the good ol' boys would throw things at him on the street and shout abuse. There were no rock'n'roll venues, so instead he'd sneak into the bluegrass clubs. "They would let us in when we were 15, 16 years old – if we behaved ourselves they'd let us sit at the back and bring us a pitcher of beer. It turned out it was this amazing music – very fast and thrashlike and exciting. We couldn't go to a country bar – we'd have gotten thrown out just because our hair was too long." Nashville's attitudes "made me want to get the fuck outta here as soon as I could. So I was 17 and I went to Memphis and from there I kept going for a while."
Now, though, in his mid-50s, he couldn't care less about whether British journalists want to portray him as some tobacco-chewing, dog-owning, gun-wielding, share-cropping southerner: "I didn't have a problem with being misconstrued. I was happy to be construed at all," he says, smiling.
Wagner never intended to be a musician. That only happened when he moved back to Nashville in 1986, after Memphis, after Montana, and then a spell living in Chicago. "I truly intended on just being content being a painter," he says. He'd made music all the way through art school, but "never looked at it as an end to my creative thing". It crept up on him as Lambchop slowly transmogrified from complete unknowns to beloved cult through the late 90s.
And even when they started winning a substantial audience, he remained blissfully unaware that he had entered a game where there were rules by which he was meant to play. When Lambchop headlined the Royal Festival Hall in London in 2000, they took to the stage and played their forthcoming album, Is a Woman, instead of Nixon, which they were promoting. "I didn't know that was what we were supposed do and I got scolded: 'Dude, don't you know? That's what they wanna hear.' I was: 'If I was a fan I'd love to hear what they're doing now – I've got the record, I know what that sounds like. I wanna see what's next!' But I didn't realise that's how it works. I guess I figured it out eventually."
Crucial to the story of Lambchop is the late Vic Chesnutt, to whom their 11th album, Mr M, is dedicated. Chesnutt was a Georgia-based singer-songwriter who took – like Lambchop – an off-kilter approach to American roots music across scores of albums and collaborations. "He was pivotal," Wagner says. Soon after Wagner returned to Nashville from Chicago, he went to see Chesnutt play. "I didn't know what time the show was – the club was in some place I'd never heard of, so I went down early to try and find out where it was. He'd just finished his soundcheck and was hanging out and so we started talking and we hit it off pretty well. And over the years he would keep coming through town and I finally revealed to him that I was making music and played him some little tapes I'd done, and he was very encouraging. We finally got around to making a record– I guess he'd been over in Europe doing a press tour or something, and he started talking to anyone who would listen about this crazy dude over in Nashville and his weird little band, and I sort of attribute the interest we got over there to begin with to him even letting people know we existed."
Chesnutt had been injured in a car accident in 1983, which had left him partially paralysed. He used a wheelchair and was in constant pain. He died on Christmas Day 2009, having taken an overdose of muscle relaxants. "For me it was like a day you always knew was going to happen," Wagner says. "If you were friends with Vic you sort of accepted that that was a possibility. It was just part of the package of being his friend – a strange part of it." Wagner says Chesnutt wasn't good at being himself, that he'd tried to kill himself several times, and "sooner or later he was probably going to be successful". The pair would talk through Chesnutt's despair, arguing about someone's right or otherwise to do whatever they wanted with their life, even if that meant taking it. "There was never a conclusive result of these discussions – there were these two different opinions about things, understanding each other's point of view. But in the end Vic was very persistent about it."
Wagner evidently finds it difficult to talk about his friend. He's not big on eye contact at the best of times, but while he remembers Chesnutt his eyes are downcast, and his still hands begin to pick and pull at the seam of his trouser leg. He says he's talking about it more than he should. He's worried he'll be accused of exploiting Chesnutt's memory. He's perhaps more worried by the unjustified fear, lurking at the back of his mind, that he actually is exploiting Chesnutt's memory. "After he passed away, there was some sort of a tribute or a benefit that happened in Athens [Chesnutt's hometown] and we all went down there, and it really left a strange taste in my mouth," he says. "I wondered what I was doing there. It just became more of a platform for bands – a promotional situation – and it really grossed me out, and I realised that what I felt was much more private and personal to the point where I didn't really feel I should share anything about it, except with other friends that were close to him."
In truth, without the dedication, the casual listener would be unlikely to work out that Mr M is an album of mourning – Wagner's writing style is allusive and impressionistic – but he feels he has opened the door for those who might be suspicious of his motives: "I did it, and now I have to answer for it."
He has no time, though, for the idea that confronting his feelings through his work could offer any comfort through the grieving process. "The idea that music is some sort of therapy or art is some sort of therapy, I've never really bought into myself," he says. "I imagine it does help some people. But the idea that it's therapy is an admission there's something wrong with you and it needs fixing." Music is his job, he points out firmly but politely. "It's just what I do. If I was a mechanic I would have gone on fixing cars."
It's more likely, he says, that people find consolation in the music of others, often in the most unexpected way. "Vic's got a funny story about how actually music did help him through once," he says, lapsing absently into the present tense. "We were gonna do a US tour with him and the day before we were gonna leave he had taken off in the van and just disappeared. He turned up in Florida in some crappy hotel. He'd filled his pockets full of rocks and all these heavy things and was sitting there by the pool trying to decide whether to throw himself in and sink to the bottom. Then this Cyndi Lauper song came on the radio and there was something in the song that made him stop and not do what he was planning on doing. It was True Colors or something like that. And I was like: 'You're kidding?' And he goes: 'Really, it was something as dumb as that.' But it gave him enough pause that it actually made him stop. And next thing you know he's surfaced. He's called, he's gonna be all right."
Mortality has been in Wagner's thoughts in recent years. As well as Chesnutt's death, he had his own scare – his "cancer thing" he calls it – when he was diagnosed with prostate cancer a few years back. Those worries have faded, but he's now become someone who notices the ages of people who have died. "I talked to my dad about it. He was like: 'I read the obituaries now, to see if my friends are in.' And I'm like: "Yeah, I'm starting to do that, too.' That's the whole thing with living. You just don't think about this stuff when you're younger, and why should you?"
When he was being treated, Wagner came face to face with the cost of healthcare in the US. He already pays $12,000 (£7,500) a year for his health insurance – "I pay out the ass for a minimum of coverage. I certainly can't afford what I pay" – and suddenly was lumbered with bills for a further $80,000. "It's an illusion to think that even when you have health insurance that you're not going to become financially distraught by having something happen to you. The truth is that it could have been $250,000 in debt. Is that satisfactory? No, it's not. That issue came up with Vic, too. Vic had health insurance but was not sufficiently covered – like any of the rest of us." He's furious that the richest nation on earth can't offer its citizens healthcare, can't guarantee them jobs or homes. He wishes Barack Obama wouldn't be so apologetic in his efforts to change things: "To me, he's still trying to be a little bit too polite in trying to hold out for some sort of reasonable discussion. I'd like to see him point some fingers at the people who are causing the problems."
Lambchop nowadays is a much smaller beast than when Nixon propelled them to a measurable level of actual success at the turn of the century, when band members numbered somewhere in the teens. "Right now the core runs to five or six people, and a lot of it has to do with economics." Put simply, Wagner can't afford to maintain a huge band, which is why he's always turned down offers to perform a Don't Look Back-style recreation of Nixon on stage. "I don't know how we did it the first time. Now things are a little more expensive and it's impossible. How can I compensate the band for all that work? 'Here's 200 dollars'? I don't think people understand it just trickles down and in the end there's not much left for the next man in line." Well, there's that, and there's his fear of marking Lambchop down as a group living in the past: "It puts you in a position as an artist that you're signalling better days are not ahead any more. It's the oldies circuit."
How long Lambchop can continue to make music people will want to hear is preying upon Wagner's mind. "Realistically in five years I will be 60, or close to it. Is that something someone's gonna want to see or care about?" he wonders. But it's now 12 years since he gave up laying floors to become a full-time musician, "and now I'm starting to wonder what else I'm fit for at this point in my life, and I honestly can't think of much else."
Mr M is released on City Slang on 20 February. Lambchop tour the UK from 1-7 March. lambchop.net
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Phone hacking: News International faces more than 50 new damages claims
8 Febwww.guardian.co.uk
High court hears alleged victims include Peter Crouch, James Blunt and Nigel Farage as dozens more cases are prepared
News International is facing more than 50 new damages claims from alleged victims of News of the World phone hacking, including Peter Crouch, James Blunt and Nigel Farage, the high court has heard.
Rupert Murdoch's UK newspaper publisher has already settled more than 50 civil actions for invasion of privacy, including 15 involving 21 individuals such as comedian Steve Coogan that were confirmed at the high court on Wednesday, for several million pounds in damages and legal costs. The details of six of Wednesday's settlements were revealed, costing News International another £363,000 in damages.
However, there is no sign of a let-up on the pressure facing News International, with Hugh Tomlinson QC, representing phone-hacking victims, telling the high court that six new cases had been filed, with a further 50 being prepared.
Out of these new civil actions, five have already been selected to be "lead cases". They will, along with the continuing action by Charlotte Church, be considered with a view to establishing a benchmark for damages for the 800 or so potential victims of News of the World phone-hacking identified so far by the Metropolitan police.
These new cases are being taken by Crouch, the England and Stoke footballer, and his wife Abbey Clancy; musician Blunt; Farage, the Ukip leader and MEP; Eimear Cook, the ex-wife of former Ryder Cup captain Colin Montgomery; and former England footballer Kieron Dyer.
The 15 damages settlements revealed at the high court on Wednesday bring the total number of phone-hacking cases News International has settled to 54, with six remaining in dispute.
These are Church, Ryan Giggs, Crimewatch presenter Jacqui Hames and her husband, police detective David Cook, former royal butler Paul Burrell, Max Clifford's former assistant Nicola Philips, and Elle Macpherson's former financial adviser Mary Ellen Field.
Tomlinson told Lord Justice Vos at the high court that Church who was one of a number of potential test cases willing to go to full trial.
The singer, who is suing along with her mother Maria and father James, claims 33 articles published by the News of the World between 2002 and 2006 came directly from phone hacking. She also claims that her father was forced to sell his pub in Wales because of the distress caused by press coverage.
Coogan, ex-football star Paul Gascoigne and the mother of a 7/7 terrorist bombing victim were among the 21 individuals whose settlements were revealed at the high court on Wednesday.
Coogan, who has been fighting a case against News International since 2010, has been one of the leading critics of the company but settled his civil action after it admitted his phone had been hacked by the News of the World and agreed to payout damages of £40,000.
He said after Wednesday's court hearing that it was "never about money" and he had just wanted "to show the depths to which the press can sink in pursuit of private information". At the time he began the civil action for invasion of privacy, the tabloid denied any wrongdoing.
Coogan, who attended court to hear his settlement being read, added that he was delighted the company had finally capitulated after years of denial that anyone other than a "rogue reporter" covering royal stories had been involved in phone hacking. "I am pleased that after two years of argument and denials, News International has finally agreed to settle my case against it for hacking my voicemails. It has been a very stressful and time-consuming experience for me and for those close to me," he added.
MP Simon Hughes was also in court for the settlement and was awarded £40,000 in damages.
Other victims who have settled included singer Pete Doherty, jockey Kieran Fallon, and football agent Sky Andrew, who won £75,000, one of the largest payments announced on Wednesday.
The largest settlement of all went to Sally King, an estate agent, and her husband Andrew. They were collectively awarded £110,000 – £60,000 for her, £50,000 in a joint claim, along with undisclosed damages for her father John Anderson and her autistic brother Scott.
The high court heard how King, a friend of David Blunkett, had been subjected to physical surveillance and phone hacking by the News of the World, which instructed reporters and photographers to follow them.
King went on holiday to the US and discovered that a News of the World reporter was booked on the same flight and photographers and reporters waiting at the rural holiday destination.
Her solicitor Charlotte Harris told the court: "The effect of this intensive and intrusive campaign of surveillance, pursuit and harassment, as well as the publication of intrusive and private information on those private individuals has been profound."
Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair's one time spin doctor also settled on Wednesday for undisclosed damages, as did Sheila Henry, the mother of 7/7 victim Christian Small.
Former England footballer Paul Gascoigne was awarded £60,000 plus special damages of £8,000. The court heard that hacking had a "serious detrimental effect on his wellbeing", and that he was told he was paranoid for thinking he had been targeted. His friend Jimmy Gardner also received undisclosed damages.
Sky Andrew, who acts as an agent for footballers such as Sol Campbell, received £75,000. George Galloway received £25,000 and the court was told that he was targeted from the time of the second Gulf war in 2003.
In a statement, Hughes said: "The evidence in my case clearly demonstrates that the practice of hacking was widespread and went much further up the chain than Clive Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire. It was criminal behaviour on an industrial scale."
He added: "Anyone involved in criminal activity at the News of the World must be brought to justice, and all those who allowed a large company to behave in this way must be held to account."
In a statement posted on his blog, Campbell described the settlement as a "satisfactory outcome" for him and added that as part of his agreement, the News of the World publisher had "also undertaken to continue searches of other 'documents in its possession', so that I can ascertain the extent of any further wrongdoing, both for the time I worked in Downing Street and since, and they have agreed I 'may be entitled to further damages in certain circumstances'".
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All aboard the Weezer cruise
6 Febwww.guardian.co.uk
Our indie professor is so indie she signed up for a holiday on a boat with Dinosaur Jr, Sebadoh and Weezer. And she's such a professor, she wrote an end-of-term report about it ...
One of the things I love about a destination festival is that it takes you away from your everyday life. And a music cruise takes the destination festival to a whole new level. When I grew up, it seemed that a cruise was something you did when you retired. The sort of trip you went on when you were afraid to fly or when you'd decided pajama jeans were the best clothing option. I knew at some point cruises had mutated into family vacations, or moving spring breaks with drunken sexual shenanigans, but nothing could prepare me for the awesomeness of the Weezer Cruise.
The cruise departed from Miami for a four-night jaunt to Cozumel and back. It featured Weezer, Sebadoh, Dinosaur Jr, the Antlers, Yuck, Free Energy and others. As well as music, there were activities and theme nights: ugly sweaters, 80s prom, and moustaches. You could try beer tasting with Boom Bip or watch the belly flop contest judged by the Antlers, attend a Q&A with Weezer, or do yoga with Star of Ozma.
Weezer are fortunate to have a wide audience demographic. Cruises are expensive and many people can't get work off in January, but despite this there was an incredibly diverse audience. There were people from Europe, Asia, Australia and North, Central and South America, and a British couple on their honeymoon. Those are just the people I met. What everyone had in common was a love of the band and a willingness to declare this loudly. I suspect this hardcore fanbase inspired the band's decision to play Pinkerton in its entirety. This 1996 album seems to be closest to the heart of the band.
Creative enthusiasm was treasured. I thought I'd see a lot of band T-shirts, but instead I saw people who made their own Weezer capes, shirts, moustaches, sweaters, flags, fingernails and custom hats. Best of all were guys from Mexico who made Weezer futbol jerseys with pirate nicknames such as "Jacques Cos-Teo" – fitting as we were in the Caribbean. The guys gave each Weezer member his own monogrammed jersey. This was a group of people that had Raditude.
My eight favourite things from the Weezer cruise
Watching Weezer play as the ship departs
As the ship set sail from Miami, Weezer did a "so many hits it hurts" set on the open-air deck with the ocean as the backdrop. Opening with Hash Pipe, a track I used to play before classes to get ready to give a lecture, it was the first chance people had to see the scope of their new music family. It set the tone for the rest of the trip as singer Rivers Cuomo leapt off stage to meander through the crowd while singing, to the top of the giant water slide presiding over the ship, obliterating the distinction between performer and audience. Throughout the trip, bands mixed with audience members. There was a total eradication of the notion of VIP, with perhaps the exception of whether you ended up with a room that had window or not. Once outside your cabin, you could end up having dinner with your favourite drummer or just as wonderful, take a day trip to the Mayan ruins of Tulum with Brian Bell, go snorkelling at a tropical paradise with Rivers, or dance until dawn with Lou Barlow. As the trip progressed, people became more confident and had the chance to tell the artists they loved how their music had affected them, a joy to both musician and fan alike. As Rivers stood atop the slide triumphantly with arms aloft wearing a captain's hat, it felt like a moment of communal success for everyone aboard.
Dressing up for an 80s prom night
On the Saturday night, there was an 80s-themed prom night. Most people took their cues from John Hughes films. Probably because a lot of them weren't alive during the 80s and others, like a couple of women from Norway, didn't have proms to begin with. This was their chance to participate in an American fantasy. The 80s costumes did not disappoint. There was taffeta and neon, thrillers and spandex. There were even the video vixens from Robert Palmer's Addicted to Love. Each outfit was more fabulous than the next: the men in pastel Miami Vice suits and ill-fitting florid tuxedos and the women in sparkly, laced monstrosities. Rivers appeared at the disco with the trip's sartorial motif of the captain's hat to have a twirl around the room. This was the prom you always wished for because people genuinely liked each other. There were no haters. It made everyone feel like royalty. I'm sure being able to legally drink alcohol helped.
It's the Lou Barlow traveling circus!
Lou Barlow played sets with Dinosaur Jr, Sebadoh and on on his own. It made for seven shows in four days. He came onboard early with Sebadoh, complaining he was resentful of his other band Dinosaur Jr because they wouldn't have to wait to get into their rooms. The first night he went from playing on the open Lido deck to the large amphitheater on the lower deck. On Friday he played the Criterion Lounge where his witty and self-deprecating between-song banter gave them the intimacy of their original conceptions. The set culminated with him doing the hit single Natural One embedded in a Bill Callahan song leading into the song Day Kitty which was sweetly dedicated to his wife. It resulted in a standing ovation. While I liked the quiet intimacy of the one-man show, others preferred the epic volume of Dinosaur Jr as the ship pulled out of Cozumel to the appalled looks from passengers on the nearby luxury liner. Sebadoh did the finale performance in the Palladium hall only to find the bass guitar had been mixed in with the Dino gear so bassist Jason had to go searching for it on another deck.
Realising it's not possible to overdose on Weezer
Not only did you get to see the band play the Lido deck and two shows at the Palladium theater, there were loads of other band-themed events such as a Weezer game show, Weezer trivia, Weezer karaoke, a vow renewal overseen by "reverend" Scott, Rivers reading from the Pinkerton Diaries, and a fan-led Q&A session that produced fun, flirty and interesting questions. There were Weezer bracelets and tote bags in your room. Weezer temporary tattoos were available on deck (although a few people decided to make their cruise tattoos permanent), Weezer napkins with your drinks and, if you wanted, special Weezer cruise merchandise. I couldn't resist the embarkation photo with the cruise logo.
Cruises are sexy
There are some distinct stereotypes about cruises and these were definitely in play. There was a sexually charged atmosphere somewhere between summer camp and spring break. Once at sea, the pools, slides and Jacuzzis were filled with salt water and scantily clad men and women. Some people had rather robust shenanigans like what happened in row six during the Dinosaur Jr set, while others were content with sweet fumbling in corridors. It was nice to see how many Weezer fans have best friends of the opposite sex. There was one singles' party where people competed for the best pick-up line. I won't divulge the winner, but I'm surprised no one used "So you look like a Weezer fan …" for the prize.
As a cruise novice, I appreciated you didn't need to drive home; the room prepared with a towel in the shape of a different animal every night, and the non-stop buffet where you could take your food anywhere you liked. There were tropical concoctions in themed containers. I just had to get a margarita in a smiling coconut, which is now sitting in a place of hhonour in my office. I ate pizza at 4am just because there was a pizza available then.
Watching the yacht-rock revival unfold
Would it be a cruise without yacht rock? The company that promoted the Weezer cruise is SixthMan, based in Atlanta, Georgia, and they have an ace up their sleeves, local band Yacht Rock Revival. This would traditionally be called a covers band, but as everyone is up in arms about authenticity, I think there needs to be a reconsideration of how we think about the performance of "other written" music. In jazz, they don't call other written music "covers" they call them "standards". With their coordinated outfits, visual flair and a distinct repertoire, Yacht Rock Revival are a talented band. In late-70s polyester and a devotion to all synthetic fabrics, they played two sets that included Hall and Oates, Dan Hartman, Steely Dan and the Bee Gees. If you had any doubt you were made for dancing, Yacht Rock would assure you that you are.
Who's up for a day trip?
You'd think after two days of radio silence, you'd want to reconnect: check your emails or at least tweet about your amazing adventures, but instead people threw themselves headlong into the perilous quest of the local excursion. It appears in Cozumel they have made the wise decision to make nearly all excursions worthwhile. My best friend and I had been invited to Playa del Carmen for parasailing or to go on a boat to a sand bar in the middle of the sea where you could eat guacamole. We chose the scoot-coupe, a cross between a scooter and a car with three wheels and, in our case, no alignment. It was so bad the others in our group decided either we were drunk or that I must have been the wife of my friend and he was taking revenge on me for some misdeed in our marriage. The trip circled the island with two scenic stops and a drive through town. The waters of the Caribbean are warm and salty, perfect for anything aquatic, and walking on the beaches reminded you that you were on vacation. Halfway around the island, we helped with the final death rattles of our scoot by hitting a dirt patch and got to drive a jeep the rest of the way. The excursions were another chance to meet people from the cruise. The driver was a girl from Oklahoma who I decided to go snorkelling with afterwards. She had come on her own and made new friends every step of the way.
There was a cannonball contest!
On Friday afternoon, there was a Cannonball contest. Sebadoh were judging it. They came up with specific criteria to assess performance including factors such as water displacement, splash height and technique. People loved when contestants did a reveal like whipping off his towel or checking wind resistance before the plunge. This is not the sort of thing I've seen much of before and soon some friends from Mexico City joined us. Actually, until this moment they had been virtual friends. One of them, Santiago had sent me a question about guest lists for my column in the Guardian. It resulted in me trying to get him on guest lists in Mexico City. With all smartphones turned off, we used the old-fashioned way of connecting: calling rooms, getting the wrong person in the wrong language to set up the meeting at the cannonball contest. Yet it worked. I found out that because "professor" in Spanish is masculine, for months Santiago and all his friends thought I was a guy. They were happy to find out my only drinks of choice are Diet Coke and tequila (not together). We talked Weezer and other festivals and bands from Mexico. Santiago can't go to Coachella this year and he later justified it by saying it was because it lacks the cannonball contest. He even wrote to me asking: "Is it still cool to go to Coachella if it doesn't have a cannonball contest?" I asked my best friend once we were home why was the cannonball contest great. He said: "Cannonball contests are terrible. They are always terrible." I was shocked and asked: "Then why did I like it so much." He answered: "It's because we met Santiago at the Cannonball contest. That is what is great about the Weezer cruise. It's about the people you take away from it."
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HTC Needs A (New) Hero: Q4 Earnings, Forecasts Point to Lean Times
6 FebpaidContent:UK
Another bad-news day for HTC, which is sorely in need of one or two killer, new products to turn around its fortunes in the ever-competitive world of smartphones: in a trading update, the company’s sales for the month of January 2012 were down by more than 50 percent compared to a year ago, with the news coming on the same day that the company missed Q4 analyst forecasts.
Taken together, the two highlight what a change HTC has seen since 2010—when, by some estimates, the company was making four out of the top-five best-selling Android handsets in the U.S. (the Hero among them), at a time when Android was fast becoming the most-popular smartphone platform worldwide.
In a trading update issued today, HTC said that it made revenues of $564 million ($16,615 million Taiwan dollars) in the month of January 2012, compared to $1.2 billion (NT$35014) in January 2011. That represents a decline of nearly 53 percent.
HTC did not note how that figure worked out to actual unit sales, but it shows that the company is still suffering from some of the same issues that affected its Q4 earnings, covering the period ended December 31, which were also out today.
In those, HTC noted that revenues were down by 2.49 percent to NT$101.42bn ($3.54 billion)—their lowest point in over a year. Overall annual revenues, however, took in some of HTC’s stronger performance from earlier in 2011: up 67 percent on 2010 to NT$465.79 billion ($15.8 billion). Both the quarterly and annual revenues missed analysts’ expectations, based on a Yahoo poll. Operating profit and margin, as well as gross margin, also declined.
As with the January figures, HTC also did not provide any figures of how these numbers worked out to unit sales.
HTC earlier in 2011 had already warned the market that it would have to revise down its projected earnings because of market pressures, but another significant issue is that HTC didn’t put out any new handset models during the crucial holiday-buying season, effectively dying a kind of death at the retail level compared to competitors like Apple (NSDQ: AAPL).
Not only did Apple make a timely release of a new iPhone model, the 4S, but it turned out to sell so well that Apple, by some estimates, saw the biggest growth in market share of any handset maker in the last quarter.
And it’s difficult to say that this is an issue with Android per se, when Samsung, a competitor of HTC’s also making Android devices, appears to be going from strength to strength in terms of its market progress, reporting a sales rise of 30 percent in its last quarterly earnings.
HTC, for now, says these are “short-term difficulties” with their “brand strength, innovation, and design/engineering capabilities” helping them longer-term. But, as we’ve seen with others in the smartphone world, that promise can only hold for so long.
In reality, HTC needs to get its act together and fast. For Q1, it expects revenue to be in the region of NT$65-70 billion “due to product transition,” it writes. But at a time when the smartphone market continues to grow, that is a massive decline on Q1 2011, when HTC posted revenues of NT$104 billion.
On top of that, the company’s product margin appears to be swiftly nosediving: it expects a margin of 7.5 percent in Q1, down from this last quarter’s 12.71 percent and less than half of what HTC posted as an operating margin a year ago: 15.81 percent. Gross margin, it forecasts, will be 25 percent: also a fall but not by nearly as much compared to 29.25 percent margin a year ago.
Related
- Samsung/HTC: Two Sides Of An Android Coin. Why's Samsung Winning The Toss?
- Sprint, HTC Hatch Plan To Remove Carrier IQ Software From Handsets
- Sony Ericsson: Big Loss, 'Intense' Competition. Can Sony Turn This Around?
- Samsung Takes The Apple Route For Its Next Big Launch, the Galaxy S III
- Samsung: Smartphones Up 30 Percent But You Have To Guess How Many We Sold
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Kennel owner accused of covering up dog's death
5 FebTelegraph - UK News
A kennel owner has been arrested by police after a dog went missing while its owner was on holiday.
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Rewind TV: Coppers; Bouncers; Party Paramedics; My Child the Rioter; Protecting Our Children; God Bless Ozzy Osbourne – review
5 Febwww.guardian.co.uk
In a week where crime and social dysfunction filled our screens, a close study of social workers provided a much-needed glimmer of light
Coppers (C4) | 4oD
Bouncers (C4) | 4oD
Party Paramedics (C4) | 4oD
My Child the Rioter (BBC2) | iPlayer
Protecting Our Children (BBC2) | iPlayer
God Bless Ozzy Osbourne (BBC2) | iPlayer
Perhaps it's the dispiriting effects of midwinter and the economic gloom, but there does seem to be a lot of television at the moment devoted to crime and social dysfunction. Especially on Channel 4. Since offloading the burden of Big Brother, the broadcaster has taken on the onerous task of showing us that side of British life – punching, vomiting, urinating and flashing – that was once the preserve of Police Camera Action!.
Last week it was possible to watch drunk and abusive people in Tayside in Coppers and drunk and abusive people in Newport in Bouncers. There was not much to choose between them. They were all pink-faced, tattooed, bloated and violent – and, to resort to the old joke, that really was just the women.
With due respect to the Scots offender who relieved himself in the back of a police van, it was the Welsh who edged this unofficial UK gross-out competition. A Newport doorman recalled the time he had kicked his way into a male lavatory to find a woman in mid-bowel movement simultaneously performing a sex act on her boyfriend or, at least, the man she happened to be sharing the cubicle with.
I'm not sure that I needed to hear that anecdote. Still, I feel critically obliged to share it, not because that's what passes for entertainment in the pubs and clubs of Great Britain, but because that's what passes for entertainment on British TV.
"Drunk Camera Action!" has become the rallying cry of countless observational documentaries, all put together with the same dramatic division between the forces of chaos and order, the same half-ironic narration, and the same gloating appetite for corporeal excess.
Coppers is the best of the bunch, because it's the least exploitative and the most informative. But it's undermined by the ubiquity of its techniques. The almost identical approach was adopted by yet another Channel 4 offering, Party Paramedics, which, for variation's sake, showed us drunk and abusive people in Kavos.
Never heard of Kavos? It's a hangout in Corfu for British youngsters who want to screw each other, and, as such, should not be confused with Davos, the global gathering in Switzerland for oldsters who have screwed us all.
This time the head-shaking guardians of society were not Scottish cops or Welsh bouncers but Greek physicians manning a clinic in the middle of Kavos's nightclub strip, like some outpost of civilisation in the darkest heart of debauchery. Say what you like about the Greeks' inability to control their spending (and who are we to speak?), but at least they can control their drinking.
"I wanna get wankered," spluttered one Englishman, already making a good fist of the job. Others professed a more traditional desire to get "paralytic every night".
Good on us, it might be said, for bringing Greek tourism and medicine such lucrative business in their hour of need. But, really, what is it with Britons? Why are we on such intimate terms with alcoholic oblivion? And whatever happened to embarrassment?
Drunkenness may be as old as history, but its brazen parade for the camera is a much more recent phenomenon. It's also one that Channel 4 appears dedicated not just to enabling but celebrating.
My Child the Rioter was a superior but no more inspiring film. Several young people were interviewed, alongside their parents or parent, about why they took part in last summer's riots. The reasons given were, with one exception, for fun, for free goods or because everyone else was doing it.
Those who insist on seeing the flame of political rebellion in England's burning cities last year had their work cut out casting these dim-witted kids and their docile parents as the revolutionary vanguard. But Liam, the father of a student rioter called Ryan, was on hand to rouse disappointed sofa insurgents. "Robbing trainers isn't political," he explained. "The reasons for robbing trainers are political."
His son, of whose actions he firmly approved, said that he "wanted to see policeman being attacked, being injured". Ryan could have stayed in and watched Coppers, but then he wouldn't have witnessed what he characterised as "a redistribution of wealth" and an attack on "government institutions".
Liam also cited another motivation for the masses laying siege to Foot Locker – the £20,000 it costs to "get educated". You could see his point. His son was studying culture, power and identity at Salford University. He certainly has a strong case for a refund.
The best documentary of the week was Protecting Our Children, a close study of the much maligned duties of social workers. The film followed a trainee social worker, Susanne, as she advised and evaluated a couple – Mike and Tiffany – with a three-year-old son, Toby, who couldn't speak, was still wearing a nappy and had suspicious bruising on his body.
Mike was an aggressively defensive type who couldn't see the need for his son to have a toothbrush as he himself never brushed his teeth as a child. All you need to know about Mike's parenting skills and ability to make rational decisions is that he only had one front tooth remaining.
The family's flat was covered in dog faeces and Toby didn't have a mattress to sleep on. "Would you leave a dog there?" one senior social worker asked after a visit. "So why would you leave a child there?"
But removing a child from parental care is a complex moral and legal process. When to intervene? Can the parents be helped? Is the state too invasive? What complicates the issue further is that, to have a good chance of being able to recover from the effects of neglect and abuse, a child needs to be placed for adoption as young as possible.
Navigating this impossible path is an embattled group of professionals who know that with one false move they might be starring in a tabloid vilification campaign. There are plenty of strapping men who wouldn't relish going up against the likes of Mike when, in his own words, he's "irated". Susanne kept her cool and was impressive throughout, although she could possibly have done without the face jewellery. Some parents might not appreciate being judged by someone with a ring in her lip and stud in her cheek.
Tiffany became pregnant and gave birth prematurely. Mike hit her, she said, and they split up. Then she decided to put both children up for adoption. In the circumstances, it was a happy end. Or what passes for it in social work.
According to God Bless Ozzy Osbourne, all the most unappealing behaviours discussed above, including the scatalogical indiscretions, were for 35 years part and parcel of the former Black Sabbath singer's life. He was a mindless rebel, alcoholic, drug addict, wife abuser, neglectful parent and all-round obnoxious idiot. And a hero to millions.
Perhaps sensing that his drunken pranks, such as biting the heads off doves and smearing his excrement on hotel walls, had become the stuff of teenage holidays, Osbourne gave up booze several years ago. If only sobriety could do for his voice what it's done for his liver. To hear him caterwauling during a sound check was to wonder at the meaning of his claim that he suffered from "terminal perfectionism". Had the perfectionism reached its end?
Much of the documentary was spent recalling his wild years when he looked like Gazza in a fright wig and platform heels, a riot of mad mugging and destructive compulsions. Osbourne earned his reputation. He put the hours in drinking vodka and snorting coke. He never shirked responsibility when it came to being irresponsible. And, let it be said, he's not without a certain inarticulate Brummy charm.
But the whole genre of rock reminiscences is inescapably self-parodic. Not for the first time, as the battle stories of vomit-choking, guitar solos and tour deaths were retold, the ghost of Spinal Tap hovered mockingly over the proceedings. What's sometimes forgotten is that the joke in that masterpiece wasn't just on heavy-rock musicians but the very idea of rockumentaries.
If this film largely endorsed the Ozzy myth, it also left the impression that the only truly remarkable thing about Sharon Osbourne's husband is that he's not dead. So let that be a warning to the truculent hordes in Newport and Kavos. Carry on acting like you are and in 35 years, when you're a multimillionaire, you might have to stop. That should give them pause for thought.
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