Michael Jackson’s Misery Concert Of Cash Cowdery And Crassery (or: Michael Forever Tribute) is going ahead next weekend in Cardiff, despite the fact that absolutely no-one from Michael’s family wants it to go ahead, for fear of distracting everyone from the trial of Dr Conrad Murray.

Wait. What’s that?

Sorry, nearly everyone in the Jackson family doesn’t want it to go ahead. So who is letting the side down and letting money come first? It couldn’t be anyone else! That’s right! It’s La Toya Jackson and she’s going to actually perform at the show too! What a gasping idiot.

So, just in case you need a catch up, this is where we’re at.

Michael Jackson died a couple of years ago and everyone is saying that Dr Conrad Murray manslaughtered one off all over the former King Of Pop with a hospital worth of Propofol. Okay?

Now, the whole family has been pretty angry that a tribute show is going ahead (in Wales, obviously a place hugely associated with Jackson) while the trial is going on and, worse still, the line-up of performers is weaker than MJ during the This Is It rehearsals.

So step forward La Toya, a woman who once said that Michael actually did touch some children inappropriately, stripped for Playboy, bailed on a series of shows at Moulin Rouge and appeared on British Celebrity Big Brother… now, to perform at a tribute gig that her siblings are on record as being squarely against.

Class.

She says:

“I have put musical performance behind me for roughly two decades, but there will never be another magical moment such as this to celebrate Michael with his fans to perpetuate the importance of his legacy. I am honoured to share the stage with the incredible performers in this line up and am certain that nothing would make my brother smile bigger or brighter than this tribute concert.”

“In speaking with my mother yesterday, I asked her where she thinks Michael would rather have us be, in this courtroom filled with negativity and lies or on a stage celebrating his music, his legacy and his life and she said without a second of thought, ‘Celebrating his Life with family and fans. I looking forward to putting on a great show and making my brother proud.”

We can only hope that she performs ‘Sexbox‘ because it’s got such a brilliant title.

Anyway, La Toya will join legends like… uuuh… Alien Ant Farm, 3T, Alexandra Burke, Pixie Lott and… ummm… Diversity.

It really is what Michael would’ve wanted. A boundary-pushing spectacle filled with the biggest, envelope-stretching stars.

Christ.

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Over in America, Dr. Conrad Murray is being accused of administrating some mental sounding drugs into Michael Jackson and causing him to carry out his last boogie.

However, it isn’t just the remaining members of the Jacksons that he has to prove his innocence to. The singer’s children also want answers and then, we have the fans that all seem to have been touched by Michael in their own special way.

The Moonwalking For Justice trial is expected to last for months, but this hasn’t stopped a cultish gathering of Jackofans to gather in Cardiff on Saturday 8th August. There, the king of pop’s life will be celebrated whilst a man is still being tried. With both events happening at the same time, some say it’s a bit sickening. But hey, they’ll be mincing their words now. After all, the gig has been injected with totally mad and uber kewl Fearne Cotton. Who wouldn’t want to go?

Don’t know who Fearne Cotton is? For non UK residents, she presents a mid-morning radio show where she educates the nation’s youth with brand new and exciting music that isn’t playlisted or dictated for her to play. At all. No way.

Now and then, she’ll play some rock music because she likes that sort of stuff. And tattoos. We’re constantly reminded that someone has permanently etched a Chinese symbol on to the back of her neck which probably says ‘Totally rad!’ or ‘Genius’ because, according to Fearne, all the music that passes her vacant glare is ‘genius’.

But it’s not just music that Fearne is a fan of. She’s bang into fashion and has been involved with all sorts of launches. Entire blogs are set up in honour of the DJ where they scrutinise every last detail of her apple green pumps against stone washed denim jeggings and orange tinged sunglasses.

Gnarly dude!

Like any media type, Fearne Cotton loved Michael Jackson.

“I was always a massive fan of Michael Jackson himself. Without him there’s a whole generation of performers and entertainers who might never have got their break in music. His contribution was crucial and his premature death a complete tragedy.”

Really?

Paula Abdul got her break via Michael and… uuh… umm… aaah… well… that’s it. Fearne Cotton thinks MJ is worth paying tribute to – for money – based solely on the existence of Paula Abdul and possibly 3T?

*prepares noose*

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Ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages, roll up for what promises to be the greatest court case spectacle that the world has ever seen!

In the UK, we only get hastily sketched drawings of court proceedings, sometimes making us think that cartoon characters actually carry out heinous crimes. But in America, good old fashioned family time can be spent watching an alleged murderer on TV! AMAZING!

We’re not sure if the court case brought against Dr. Conrad Murray will suffer a similar fate, but after endless delays and arguments, the trial is set to go ahead. No doubt it’ll drag on forever and the eventual outcome will be appealed, but for now, everything is running correctly. One of the most difficult tasks was the jury selection process and, after months of screening potential jurors, twelve have been selected. Are there any questionable doubts? Of course there are, stupid. It is a Michael Jackson trial after all.

Normally, a jury selection process is a piece of cake. In high profile cases like murder, the likelihood is that members of the jury will be called in from different cities around the country. Or if you live in America, from a different states. But in the “Moonwalking For Justice Trial” where Dr.Conrad Murray has to convince everyone he didn’t let the singer do a boogie on the floor after his brain and heart were tripping out, this can be a little bit tricky.

How do you remain impartial to the death of a world famous musician who has not only been making records since the sixties, but has a money-sucking family exploiting his name after his death? It’s quite difficult, especially because Jackson died two years ago and multiple reports and opinions have been knocking around.

So who is on the jury then? It’s been reported that:

“The trial of Michael Jackson’s former doctor Dr Conrad Murray will face a jury of 12 people, it has emerged. It will feature, among others, a male who briefly met the singer when working at a Disney Theme Park in 1980, a bookseller, a school bus driver and a professor.”

Hold on a doggone second! A male who briefly met the singer at Disneyland?! It’s a given that Jackson regarded him as a nobody but we would’ve thought that any minimal contact or interaction with the person at the centre of the trial would be an issue.

If this was a life changing experience for the individual, then chances are his opinion on Dr. Conrad Murray will be a little biased. We assume they’ll see Murray as some kinda cold hearted evil murderer. After all, this is under the proviso that all his fans are missing a few screws. Jacksonites continually tell us that the king of pop touched a lot of peoples lives.

[insert child molestation court case joke here]

The only way that the “Moonwalking For Justice” trial won’t go ahead as planned will be if Dr. Conrad Murray falls sick and can’t attend, which would be ironic. If news of this got out, we’re sure that a mentalist Michael Jackson fan impersonating a doctor would be on hand to administer some sort of wacko cocktail of drugs to Murray instead of making his headache go away.

Either way, let the circus begin!

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Michael Jackson’s death may well be very sad for those who still bought his albums post-Dangerous (yes, these people actually exist), but it hasn’t been all bad news for the world.

You see, like deep sea creatures gorging on the carcass of a dead whale, Michael Jackson’s cadaver has created something of a cottage industry, where everyone is making a nice living out of an injection of Propofol.

And one person doing very well out of Michael’s death is Jermaine Jackson who, ironically enough, is paying his mortgage by scalding everyone who is making money out of Michael’s deathly mishap.

So what’s the deal?

Well first off, Jermaine thinks that MJ was killed by greed, power and money. Again, that Propofol may have something to do with it and years of alleged substance abuse. But yeah, greed, power and money.

Speaking before the manslaughter trial of Conrad Murray (coming to a TV near you later this month), Jermaine says that those surrounding his brother failed to look after him, as they pushed him to play his money spinning comeback gigs.

Of course, you could argue that Jermaine failed to pick the phone up frequently enough to make sure his quite obviously ill for a number of years brother was up to the job.

JJ say:

“Why didn’t somebody call me or Jackie or Tito or Marlon or his family, to say, ‘Come down here, your brother is not acting normal?’ Had we been called, he would be alive today. We would have taken him to the hospital”

“Because they wanted the show to go on… It’s all about — this is a story about greed and power and money. And not looking at the person in Michael.”

That’s Jermaine Jackson there, who is currently promoting a book he’s written about Michael Jackson. A book that he wasn’t writing when his brother was alive.

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The only people counting down the days to the Michael Jackson ‘Moonwalking For Justice’ manslaughter trial, are members of his immediate family and his slightly psychotic followers.

Oh, how we look forward to seeing scores of Jackson fans with badly scrawled banners, candlelit shrines and people walking around in monkey costumes.

And poor ol’ Dr. Conrad Murray – who’s accused of administrating the lethal drugs that caused Michael Jackson to go in to cardiac arrest – has a few hurdles to mount before the trial even begins.

Over in Cardiff, an ill-timed tribute to the King of Pop will be taking place and somehow, the American authorities have the comedic task of sifting through jurors, so they’re totally impartial. Despite the focus of this trail not focusing to the times Jackson allegedly spent with children, it’s great to see Jermaine Jackson dragging up this grey period of the families’ life for us to ponder over again.

Whatever your opinion on Michael and his sleepover trial, which involved accusations of more than just holding hands, it seems there’s always a Jackson member around to remind us of the incident. The bloke didn’t face court appearances just the once – he had allegations thrown his way twice. To most outsiders like us, this didn’t look good at all. Surely if Jackson got off the first time he wouldn’t make the sloppy mistake that got him caught again? Apparently so it seems and brother Jermaine Jackson was fearful that things could get bad. He said:

‘If they were going to sit and crucify my brother for something that he didn’t do, America deserves us not to come back here. At the end of the day, this is supposed to be the land of the brave, home of the free, democracy, freedom of speech. The way they were treating him, none of that existed. Why should he go to jail for something he didn’t do?’

As we all know, the courts decided that despite his name being tarnished forever, Michael Jackson was cleared of all charges in 2005. But why did the Jacksons have a Plan B in place in case everything went belly up? Again, it has been reported that:

‘A private jet financed by a friend was on standby to whisk the King of Pop to Bahrain if Michael was convicted in his 2005 court case. The former Jackson 5 member said his younger brother was not aware of the escape plot, but would have agreed to flee America ‘in a heartbeat’ because he would not have survived in jail.’

Not being able to survive in prison? We’d agree on that point. Looking at the frail and skeletal figure of Michael Jackson, he wouldn’t have the energy to bend over in the shower and pick up the soap. He’d only anger fellow inmates with his constant whining and requests of someone to do it for him. Once again, questions have to be asked why Jermaine Jackson has decided to post this statement that’ll please mental fans of Michael’s that he wouldn’t be thrown into the slammer.

It seems that Jermaine Jackson has a book out! How about that, a piece of merchandising conveniently planned for the Murray trial and weirdly placed tribute show in Cardiff. This is where we’d finish off with a tasteless joke, but the title of Jermaine’s book is better than anything we can muster up:

You Are Not Alone: Michael Through A Brother’s Eyes.

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Gene Simmons is a man who says he loves women folk, but you get the distinct impression that he actually hates them. Or, worse still, is afraid of them. That’s why he’s always unfurling that gigantic tongue of his at them.

As an aside, it’s hard to picture what went on when he bunked up with Diana Ross. She so slight that you can imagine he wore her like a glove puppet on his monstrous mouth piece.

Either way, all that’s behind him now as he’s all set to make an honest man of himself and marry his fiance of three decades, Shannon Tweed.

The pair already have some kids together (poor mites), but obviously, now that Simmons has little to offer the world outside of reality TV appearances and his dreadful pedestrian stadium plop-rock, he’s needing something in his life to make him feel of worth.

And which beautiful place, filled with history and romance, will host the knot tying? A HOTEL OF COURSE!

On October 1st, Gene Simmons will get married at an ‘iconic Beverly Hills hotel’. Fitting really, seeing as Gene proposed in that most intimate of settings – before a television crew.

We can imagine that the wedding will be filmed too, which is obviously a breathtakingly romantic gesture.

Seeing as there’s already a depressing sex-tape (and if you search for it, you’ll never hear ‘I Wanna Know What Love Is’ in the same way ever again) that features Gene knocking around, TV execs can be hopeful that the Kiss frontman may agree to recording his first shag as a married man too.

*pukes in hand*

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Do you know who Jo Calderone is? No. Well it’s Lady Gaga in men’s underpants. Okay? And when GaGa dons some skiddy briefs, drops the ‘s’ from ‘she’, all kinds of mischief can be had, including trying to molest Britney Spears who still has the look of a mental ward about her.

Great scenes, especially given that Jo Calderone is an anagram of ‘Cajole Drone’ – the only sensible suggestion we’ve got for an analogy concerning this pair mating (or ‘Re: Jade Colon’).

Calderone presented Britney Spears with the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard award (no idea what that means) and tried to dry-hump the awardee on-stage before nipping off to the men’s toilets do urinate everywhere that isn’t the urinal itself. That’s impressive staying in character.

Spears said of the Calderone encounter:

“We got onstage and felt it out.”

So that’s what it’s called these days. Oddly enough, Spears told the crowd that she resisted Calderone because she didn’t want to upset Gaga.

Kissing Madonna is fine though, apparently.

And where was GaGa?

Calderone says:

“She’s really fucking pissed at me. Gaga said ‘Fuck you,’ she said, ‘If you really love me you’ll go instead of me and get in that spotlight.’ So I did.”

He added, talking about humping Britters:

“She’s fucking hot, Britney. Gaga’s my girl, but Britney’s fucking Britney Spears. Didn’t you jerk off to Britney when you were a kid?”

We have absolutely no idea what’s going on, but we think we kinda like it.

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We’re a little obsessed with Michael Jackson here in the ‘spray hole. Well we would wouldn’t we? He’s fascinatingly odd. We could stare at his gargoyle face all day long. Y’know, that one that didn’t change at all in the 40-odd years he hobbled around this poor planet.

His behaviour was like a particularly odd drama too. It was both hilarious and hugely upsetting. What a strange chap he was. And strikingly, it’s the weird that was picked up by his fans. Sure, they couldn’t ever hope to match his talent, but they sure could act like reserved lunatics. That’s definitely attainable.

Of course, these fancy-dress, groin-grabbing goons give sensible people the eebie-jeebies, and not exempt from that is Beyonce, who is happy to perform at the upcoming Michael Jackson tribute concert, provided its nowhere near those wide-eyed evangelical Jacksonites. She’s going to perform from the safety of a satellite link-up. Smart girl.

B has been confirmed for the ‘Michael Forever Tribute’ event, which will harrow everyone in Wales when it takes place on October 8th at Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium.

Because she doesn’t care too much for this particular show (what will Michael’s brothers all thinking that it’s a little on the crass side, seeing as they’re going to be in court that weekend), she’ll just be appearing on a big screen performing a Jackson 5 song.

She may not even do it live.

She’ll be joined by such luminaries as Leona Lewis, Christina Aguilera, JLS, Cee Lo Green, Alexandra Burke, Pixie Lott, Craig David and Smokey Robinson.

Even the latter, an obvious legend, isn’t that big a draw, what with years of plastic surgery leaving him looking like he’s got tights on his head, always ready to rob a bank somewhere.

What a terrible tribute to a fantastically famous man.

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Ding dong the witch is dead sang the Munchkins in the Wizard of Oz when their evil overload melted to death. We don’t know if any of the alleged victims of the Michael Jackson touching-up trial sang anything along those lines, but it’s genuine fact that Jackson fans consoled themselves via mass weeping sessions, crotch touching and high pitched squeal offs with each other when their hero died.

It’s been well documented that Michael Jackson died after going into cardiac arrest in June 2009. Like most daytime TV adverts, there was a blame for how Jackson died, but nobody has yet claimed exactly how.

As it stands, Jackson fanatics are pointing the finger at Dr. Conrad Murray who was appointed as his personal doctor, feeding him all sorts of fun drugs. After what seems forever, a trial has been set for late September where Murray will have to prove his innocence against a jury and protesting Michael Jackson fans around the world, including Inspector Morseland, Oxford.

We never met Michael Jackson and didn’t have the opportunity to be seduced by him after drinking Jesus Juice in penis shaped golden goblets. Therefore, we can only go on what information we vaguely know about him. Of course, “true” Michael Jackson fans know that what ever is printed about the sequined hand is full of lies, but we’re pretty confident on the following:

He bought a lot of weird stuff.

Think about it, Michael Jackson was friends with Mohammed Al Fayed, a man who coincidentally owns Harrods in London. Harrods sells overpriced tat, such as paintings which look like they were the work of cattle vomiting on a canvas. Because Jackson was such a regular visitor, he now has a statue outside Fullham FC ground due to being such a good and gullible customer.

Jackson had a few financial difficulties.

It was well known that he suffered with crippling debt. Psycho fans will argue that it’s because he spread love and peace to various charities. He also spent money on legal cases and the aforementioned weird stuff.

He really liked drugs

We don’t know if Michael Jackson snorted line after line of cocaine, but after becoming a human sparkler following the accident on the Pepsi commercial set, he did need the occasional drug. This is presumably where the painkillers started and where Dr. Conrad Murray got involved.

Because we’re not doctors, we generally swallow pills until the pain goes away. Was this Dr. Conrad Murrays approach? Who knows, but it’ll no doubt be a basic argument used by Michael Jackson fans who’ll claim he was turned into a quivering zombie creature, but one that could still perform at a series of gigs at London’s mobile phone sponsored arena.

We personally prefer “moon walking for justice,” but Jackson fanatic Debbie Longshaw wants the Justice For Michael instead. Commenting about the rally, she said:

“Like the rallies in other cities of the world, the Oxford one will be peaceful, with people holding banners showing their love of Michael and also singing his songs.”

Peaceful demonstrations? Well that’ll probably be the case as poor Debbie isn’t having much luck in finding anyone in Oxford who listens to Michael Jackson. She said:

“I have been on forums everywhere trying to contact Oxfordshire-based fans, without any luck so far. There must be some out there. I’ll be waiting to hear from them.”

Perhaps they all think Jackson is a fucking oddball in Oxford?

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Moon walking. That’s what the slightly deluded, psychotic and mentally challenged Michael Jackson fans will be doing at his tribute show in early October, whilst frothing at the mouth.

However, it does seem slightly strange that Jackson’s followers will gather in Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium whilst alleged manslaughterer Dr. Conrad Murray faces trial. According to you lot, he didn’t give Michael a lollipop after his visit to the doctors, just a cocktail of lethal drugs.

In the society we live in, people have all sorts of opinions on Michael Jackson. Sure, he made some semi-decent records, but we like to remember him as the man whose face literally looked like it had been freshly moulded each morning by a child with thumb-hands. We can say that because free society allows us to speak our minds. Just like the time Gene Simmons of Kiss thought out-loud that Michael Jackson was one of those paedophile types. Nice to see him rewarded with a slot at the Cardiff at the tribute show then. That won’t be awkward will it?

Just in case you never caught the Gene Simmons quote that he gave to Classic Rock magazine last year, then feast your eyes on it here:

“No matter what my fond memories and fond images of Michael were, with one allegation of paedophilia after another and another and another… Oh dear… The only sexual references ever made about Michael Jackson that were made by anyone, anywhere around the world, have always been made by kids, and specifically males usually 10 to 14 years of age; never females, that age or older, and never grown men.”

“Where there’s smoke there’s fire. There’s no question in my mind he molested those kids. Not a doubt.”

Whenever famous people get caught up in these scandals, their fellow ‘celeb friends will often rally behind them to offer support. Michael Jackson never really received this due to severity of the charge brought against him. And presumably, because people thought ‘Well, yeah, it sounds like it could be right in fairness’.

Despite being found innocent both times, the damage was done and it did plague the rest of his career. But hey, at least Jackson went back to the recording studio, Gary Glitter didn’t have it so lucky.

It’s always easy to place the blame and immediately believe the accused of a crime before the verdict has been passed, but to point the finger again? Either the children he invited round were all conniving bastards, or the Jesus Juice that Jackson seduced them with wasn’t powerful enough to wipe their minds of the previous night’s illicit activities.

Of course, we’ll never truly find out what happened and the same will inevitably happen when Dr. Conrad Murray takes to the stand for an event that will quite quickly become a parody of itself. We expect demonstrators, the release of doves, ’round the clock reports via ropey news stations and a trial that’ll last months and eventually deliver a verdict we can all see coming.

But at least we’ve got Kiss to distract us now, who automatically make themselves the top draw at the tribute gig. So far the other acts have been relatively limp to say the least. Thus far, we’ve got second rate American pop punk with Alien Ant Farm who performed a terrible cover of Smooth Criminal, Christina Aguilera has been asked to bring along the pyrotechnics and recreate Jackson’s accidental hair burning moment that happened during that Pepsi advert and oddly, Leona Lewis. Because she looks like a horse, we imagine that she’ll be used as an animal double for Bubbles.

If people are being invited based on their past incidents of writing slightly negative things about Michael Jackson, like Gene Simmons did, then hecklerspray fully expects an invitation to be dropping on to the door of our bedsit.

No seriously. We want free tickets. Okay?

***EDITOR’S UPDATE***

Organisers of the dreadful looking Michael Jackson tribute concert in Cardiff have dropped Kiss from the line-up. MJ’s brother, Jermaine said:

“This mishandling reinforces my view that this promoter is getting it all wrong.”

It’s Michael’s alleged mishandling of minors that kicked this all off in the first place! Oh, and we still want free tickets.

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Have you ever got in from the pub and started fishing records out that you own, quietening everyone down and saying… “Right. I’m going to stick a record on and you have to guess who it is! You’ll never believe who it is!”

There’s loads of tunes out there that see bands doing something really odd or off-the-wall which sound nothing like their usual schtick. And here’s a playlist that is about just that!

So what we have here is big-band singer Bobby Darin trying his hand and folkie-protest singing, funk outfit Parliament making a rock ballad, Neil Young ditching the sound of country rock in favour of sounding like an ’80s video game and a whole lot more!There’s almost certainly going to be some band names that you see in the tracklisting below which will put you off checking them out… but don’t be fooled! Kiss, for example, are funky as hell and just wait ’til you hear the Status Quo tune!

So here we go.

If you don’t have Spotify, feel free to do whatever dubious methods you have at your disposal to get some new sounds in your ears. There’s a lot of gems in this playlist.

Move It On Over – Del Shannon

Little Old Man – Bill Cosby

All I Can Do – The Carpenters

Me and Mr Hohner – Bobby Darin

Funny Funny – Sweet

Reach Out Your Hand – Brotherhood of Man

Feelin’ Alright – Lulu

Purple Haze – Dion

Guess I’m Dumb – Glen Campbell

Turn Of The Century – Bee Gees

Good Time Liberator – Kenny Rogers

For What It’s Worth – Cher

Hot Dogs – The Archies

When Sunny Gets Blue – Jan & Dean

Yo-Yo – The Osmonds

Merry Go Round – Lou Reed

Can’t Help Thinking About Me – David Bowie

Bird Doggin’ – Gene Vincent

The Silent Boatman – Parliament

New York Groove – Kiss

Your Mamma Won’t Like Me – Suzi Quatro

The Nearest Faraway Place – The Beach Boys

10538 – ELO

City Lights – David Essex

I’ll Cry Instead – Joe Cocker

Scotch on the Socks – The Shadows

Contact – The Three Degrees

Thank The Lord For The Night Time – Neil Diamond

Up Up and Away – Sammy Davis Jnr

Reviewing The Situation – Sandie Shaw

Lakky Lady – Status Quo

Ain’t Nothing But A House Party – Cliff Richard

Transformer Man – Neil Young

Don’t Say It’s Over – Leo Sayer

Click here to listen to the Spotify playlist of No Way! Give Over!

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It’s time to tell you about a song you didn’t know was a cover, again. Which means of course, facing people who did know so they can roll their eyes and cuh! “I though everyone knew that!” And this time, we’re looking at a stadium rock classic in ‘God Gave Rock ‘n’ Roll To You’.

You probably remember this song from ‘Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey’ as performed by Kiss. One of the ways that the band attracted attention to themselves around this time was to get out the cotton wool balls and take all their make-up off, leaving everyone to coo about how painfully ordinary they looked.

However, the song was originally released in 1973 by Argent, which had some rather famous people behind the kit themselves.

Between the band members and songwriters for Argent were a couple of members of ace ’60s group, The Zombies. Remember them? They did ‘She’s Not There’ and ‘Time of the Season’ and weirdly, were one of Elvis’s favourite bands in the whole world.

However, it was non-Zombie Russ Ballard who penned ‘God Gave Rock ‘n’ Roll To You’ which of course, went onto be a giganto hit for Gene Simmons & Co.

After Kiss brought the song out of retirement, the track went onto become something of a Contemporary Christian rock anthem (covered by the Christian Rock outfit Petra). Of course, being Christians, they couldn’t help but meddle with the words to fit the agenda and the godly version has rewritten lyrics.

With vaguely fortuitous timing, rumour has it that Argent will embark on a full tour in the not-so-distant future, which will please the Bob Harrises amongst you.

Anyway, enough chat. Here’s the two most important versions of the song, starting with a badly mimed version of the original.

Argent ‘God Gave Rock ‘n’ Roll To You’

Kiss ‘God Gave Rock ‘n’ Roll To You II’

Feel free to get in touch with any other unknown covers that you think we should feature!

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The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame is, as everyone knows, a hallowed place reserved only for those who rock the hardest.

You know, like Abba. And Genesis. Those cats are responsible for more melted speakers and blown minds than you could ever hope to count. Why, remember the time when Phil Collins bit the head off a Yorkshire terrier during the second chorus of I Can’t Dance onstage that time? Or when the beardy one out of Abba broke away from the middle eight of Dancing Queen to carve the word ‘HATE’ into his bare chest with a broken jam jar?

That’s why both Genesis and Abba will be inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame next year. And that’s why KISS won’t be, the cat-faced bellends.

On the face of it, KISS have done more for the cause of rock and roll than any other band on the planet. They wanted to rock and roll all nite to such an extent that they couldn’t even find the time to go to school to learn how to spell the word ‘night’ properly. They believed that God gave rock and roll to us, when in reality he’s only really responsible for Jesus and pestilence. They pledged allegiance to the state of rock and roll, even though rock and roll isn’t even a congressional district, let alone a state. That‘s how much KISS love rock and roll.

Everything that the members of KISS have ever done, solo or as a band, has been done with end goal of being inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame. Everything. The tongue waggling. The stupid facepaint. The deliberately bad hair. The genuinely harrowing sex tapes. The awful songs that all mentioned rock and roll every three lines. That world’s worst cover version of Firestarter. So they must be pretty arsed off that they were beaten to the punch by Abba and Phil Collins this year. The Boston Herald reports:

The Rock Hall announced its class of 2010: prog-rockers Genesis, Swedish disco stars ABBA, prepunk punks the Stooges, reggae hero Jimmy Cliff and British Invasion band the Hollies… “There are disco bands, rap bands, Yiddish folk-song bands in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but not KISS,” [Gene] Simmons griped last year. “I believe we have more gold records in America than any other group, but it’s OK.”

Still, it doesn’t matter what Gene Simmons thinks. All we know is that next year’s Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame ceremony is going to be the best ever. An old reggae man, a topless rocker whose body looks like a condom full of eels, a band that nobody cares about, some Swedish billionaires and Peter Gabriel done up like a poxy tulip – what more could you possibly ask for?

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When Scarlett Johansson tells you something isn’t sexy, we wouldn’t hold it against you if you believed her.

She’s a style icon, a Hollywood megastar and a thoroughly beautiful girl. But when the ‘not sexy’ thing she’s talking about is getting off with another one of the most visually pleasing women in the movie business – Penelope Cruz – then, well, we wouldn’t hold it against you if you went and told Scarlett she was talking a great big pile of crud.

The kiss they shared wasn’t a subtle ploy to distract everyone in the world from the fact that all the Hollywood types seem to be getting struck down with one illness or another. No, it’s just a part of that new Woody Allen film, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, which is clearly going to be a great big bag of balls.

Aside from the scene in question, of course.

Yes, the thrilling news that Woody’s film wasn’t laughed off at Cannes – far from it, it received a thirty-six hour standing ovation or something – has got a lot of people convinced it’s for one reason and one reason alone, and the ethereal lifeforce that is hecklerspray agrees wholeheartedly: hot lesbian action.

But while most red-blooded males and, let’s face it, a hell of a lot of females, gay men, transexuals, hermaphrodites and everything else inbetween agree with the theory that ol’ Woody is using the technique of making two beautiful women lezz off on screen purely to get some artificial buzz surrounding the flick, the women themselves seem oblivious to the fact that it’s a really, really brilliant marketing ploy.

Speaking to some people who were trying not to gawk at her that little bit too much, Scarlett Johansson said:

“There were 60 crewmen eating salami sandwiches. It’s really the least sexy thing you can ever imagine.”

Actually, we can imagine something a lot less sexy, it’s just we’re not allowed to mention it here by law. There have been problems in the past that hecklerspray can’t really re-visit, unfortunately. Needless to say, salami is the last of the things to be worried about.

Penelope Cruz, on the other hand, took an altogether different view of things – speaking to some other people, or they might have been the same ones, we’re not really sure, the star of hecklerspray favourite Chromophobia said:

“We didn’t talk about it much, then Woody told us how the shot was going to be, but Scarlett and I don’t have any funny stories to tell about it. It felt [like] nothing, nothing happened.”

See – it’s always the same. Those that get all the breaks in life don’t bloody well appreciate it, whereas those underdogs who would take pleasure in the situation are forced to sit back and watch. Actually, come to think of it that’s pretty win-win, so we’ll stop complaining now.

Good lord it’s a slow news day.

There’s some damn weird logic working in this world.

If a 23-year-old male singer were to say that they wanted to kiss a 15-year-old pop sensation on Sunday, they would rightly be chastised. Probably shot or lynched too. Or just looked down on a lot. They’d probably write a book about their experiences a few years down the line, when the dust had settled.

But when it’s a 23-year-old female singer saying they want to play tonsil hockey with a child this Sunday then it’s just laughed off… Hang on – what? That’s not funny. That’s just dodgy.

Yes kids, everyone’s favourite possible condom saleschild and she who makes frankly incomprehensible videos especially for our new editor’s birthday, Miley Cyrus, has come out and said she will not be engaging in some same-sex-underage-dear-god-that’s-just-plain-weird smooching with Katy Perry.

‘Who the hell is Katy Perry though?!’, hecklerspray hears you cry, and frankly, we’re not sure either. Apparently she’s had some hits with some songs that seem to hint at a fondness for homosexuality – her two biggest hits of ‘UR So Gay’ and ‘I Kissed A Girl’ would seem to attest to this. No big deal, the girl can like who she wants to like.

But when you’re blatantly trying to fire up some kind of media frenzy by offering to publicly snog a kid then, well, you need to be told when to stop. Last time hecklerspray tried something similar we were subjected to beatings on a nightly basis by a man with tattoos on his eyeballs, whose nickname included the words ‘nonce’ and ‘basher’.

After being informed of Katy Perry’s apparent wish to take advantage of an underage girl, thus recreating the Britney Spears and Madonna ‘hot’ action of sharing a smooch on stage, young (emphasis on young there) Miley told E!:

“No thanks. She sang on my record. So I think she’s kind of getting back at me, because she was doing harmonies and backgrounds.”

Is that bitchy? hecklerspray doesn’t understand Ameri-child speak, much as we are forced to put up with it. It would fit in with Miley’s apparent new character of pure, unadulterated evil that she seems to be cultivating, so yes – we’ll go with ‘bitchy’.

We just have one real question about all of this: why does no one seem to realise that Miley Cyrus is still a kid? She certainly doesn’t seem to, the constant stream of unsettling news about her possible nudity/semi nudity in showers doesn’t seem to want to do anything but appeal to the dodgy among us and things like this don’t really help.

So Katy Perry, please, in future keep your hands, lips and everything else to yourself. At least until Miley’s over the age of consent, then knock yourself out.