I just received an E-Mail from Sunrise, the organisators behind most of the Morrissey-gigs in Germany, revealing the following information:

Morrissey - Isle of Dogs Tour `99

Wed, 13 Oct 99 Cologne E-Werk
Thu, 14 Oct 99 Hamburg Docks
Sat, 16 Oct 99 Bremen Pier 2
Mon, 18 Oct 99 Dresden Schlachthof
Tue, 19 Oct 99 Berlin Columbiahalle
Wed, 20 Oct 99 Leipzig Haus Auensee.

Ticket Sales begin on 13th August.

As I mentioned in the comments, Richard Blade took it upon himself to put two and two together and come up with five like so many others and jumped the gun. Richard does not I repeat, DOES NOT know Johnny Marr will be joining Beck at Coachella for a fact. He said something to the effect of <wouldn't it be great if?> There is NO word yet on either Morrissey's or Beck's camp as to whether or not Johnny will even be there.

Good things around Tal Bachman these days, his top 40 song "She's So High" is attracting attention, it caught mine. I was wandering around his website and found a few Smiths references. I hear the new cd is like a mixture of old 80's style rock and alternative.. we'll see...

Here are the snippets in question...

[Tal Bachman] had grown intimately acquainted with what he describes as "the popular music canon of the previous fifty years" - everything from Rodgers and Hammerstein to Roy Orbison, from The Kinks to Irish folk music, from Antonio Carlos Jobim and John Coltrane to The Beatles and The Who, from Led Zeppelin to The Smiths.

"When I was eighteen I stopped listening to music," Bachman states flatly. "I was a huge U2 fan, but The Joshua Tree unnerved me, and Rattle and Hum terrified me - my favorite band was cracking up! The Smiths had long since broken up, The Cure had become redundant, Queen had been comatose for years, hair bands sucked, and I just freaked out."

TRICKY'S GANGSTER PARADISE

New album stars notorious London villains

TRICKY has masterminded an album which sees some of London's most notorious gangsters recount tales of their violent crimes set to dance music.

 Mad Frankie Fraser, Chadie Richardson end Dave Courtney all contribute to the LP, called 'Product Of The Environment'. It is released on September l3 through Tricky's own label Durban Poison and Palm Pictures and is described as the "real deal account of what happened on the streets during this time".

Eleven gangland names feature on the record, talking about incidents they have served time for or have hitherto remained quiet about.

Although Tricky conceived the project some time ago, the music on the album was written and performed by Tricky's keyboard player, Gareth Bowen, who also interviewed the gangsters for the project. Bowen got to know Jack Adams, an accomplice of the Krays, after working at London's Barrington Studios, which Adams owns. Adams introduced Bowen to a number of underworld nines, including Great Train Robber Tom Wisby end another Kray associate, Tony Lambrianou, who served time for the murder of Jack 'The Hat' McVitie. Both appear on the record.

Palm Pictures deny the LP glamorises violence or that it exploits the gangsters' victims - some of whom were murdered.

A Palm Pictures spokesman said: "Anybody that was killed during the time that they talk about was within that group of people. There were no innocent bystanders, all those murdered were part of that system."

However, he chose to gloss over the fact that the driver of the train in the Great Train Robbery, who died after being hit over the head, was nothing to do with London gangsters.

 The spokesman added: "They (gangsters) don't regret what they've done. They don't see any of it as particularly wrong."

 Meanwhile, Tricky's own album, 'Juxtapose', is released through Island on August 17.