WEEKLY WHINE

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GoobNet's quick look at the recent newsmaking events in the music industry [or lack thereof]:

GERMANY

The fourteenth annual Love Parade in Berlin was held yesterday, with something like half a million participants. This is down sharply from the 1,500,000 partiers who turned out just three years ago for the techno festival. This year, with a theme of "Access Peace", some seem to be getting bored with the event. Organisers have been working on several proposals to make the public unbored. Starting next year, the Love Parade's floats will no longer need to carry restrictor plates, so that their top speeds can again reach 300 km/h. In addition, each parade goer will next year receive a free water balloon to use as they see fit, which should no doubt make things much more interesting.

UNITED KINGDOM

By contrast, the crowds that turned out at the seafront in Brighton, England were three times as large - 150,000 - as organisers had anticipated. Fatboy Slim, who hails from the area, put on a free concert just for the hell of it yesterday, and folks turned out in droves for exactly the same reason. Local emergency services said that it was easier to get ambulances in across the water than across land. Luckily, Brighton has an underwater hospital, constructed earlier in the year to demonstrate the habitability of coastal areas after Earth's sea levels rise.

UNITED STATES

An "emergency" summit in New York was held last week on how to enhance the sales of British albums in the US. One unidentified record executive said that British acts would sell better "if they didn't utterly and completely blow". Executives have been in panic mode since APR 2002, when no Brits were amongst Billboard's list of the top 100 singles in the United States. Meanwhile, executives in San Marino have been in panic mode since 1530; no Sammarineses have been amongst the American top 100 list in that span. The top San Marino group, They Might Be Sammarineses, snuck in at number 43,171 on the most recent list, with their hit "Serraville (Not Serravalle)".

MALAYSIA

Censors in Kuala Lumpur have banned one of Kylie "Stop Using My Last Name" Minogue's concert videos because it included what was described as a "lengthy series of silly costumes". Minogue's manager was quoted in response, "Silly costumes? Kylie? Never!" Malaysia's Film Censorship Board are notorious for banning films for capricious reasons, just to show off their power. Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me was banned upon its release because Miss Kensington turned out to be a Fembot, and Schindler's List was also blacklisted because "the black and white made our eyes hurt".