One of the things we wanted to make sure about was they wouldn’t say we had to put

One of the things we wanted to make sure about was they wouldn’t say we had to put make-up on or wear a dress, you know what I mean?”Personally, I would love to see GLC in an outfit-swap with Girls Aloud, but maybe I’m warped. Isn’t this ever a worry?”We’ve worried…” says Billy, pausing with perfect comic timing, “…but then the offers ‘ave come in.”What are the control issues which arise when an independent-spirited act is bankrolled by a major label (Warner Bros, in GLC’s case)?”It’s not been too bad, has it?” Eggsy ponders “We’ve not had any mega problems. If they ever start serving food, I’m not eating there.”Do GLC, I ask, get many of these corporate gigs?”Not enough,” says Adam without missing a beat. “They’re payers.”Playing devil’s advocate for a moment, I think of the traditional opposition from the indie sector towards commercial sponsorship, and I wonder what the hell GLC are doing here. That was the best photo ever!”Did you place the insect there yourself?”No, it was crawling past It was a local resident in the pub. “They could be into knitting, but you only ever see them falling out of nightclubs drunk.”"We’re always falling out of nightclubs drunk,” Billy admits, “but there are no photographers there.

If there were photographers in Newport, we’d be bollocksed.”"Like that photo you took,” Eggsy reminisces, “of Adam passed out on the floor outside a bar, with a cockroach on his face. GLC are hamming it up to an extent, but GA really are like that.”It’s all ’cause of newspapers,” says Adam. In the subsequent Q&A session, Dwain publicly admits that they “did it for the 25 grand”.It’s interesting that Goldie Lookin Chain and Girls Aloud are on the same bill: Pretend Chavs and Real Chavs. Missing today are 2 Hats, who’s gone to the hotel for a lie-down to ease his sciatica, Mike Balls (aka “The Hardest Man In Soccer Violence”), and the mulleted Dwayne Xain Xedong, who has gone for what the others euphemistically term “some fresh air”.A shamelessly corporate bash such as the Wanadoo launch may seem a peculiar place to be meeting the band who form the centrepiece of an issue about the spirit of independence but, as they will soon explain to me, independence comes at a price.It’s a weird old gig and no mistake, GLC going through their irrepressible prankster rap routine, littered with hits like “Guns Don’t Kill People, Rappers Do” and “Your Mother’s Got A Penis”, to a stony silence from the assembled suits. The other are a bunch of scruffy stoners from Gwent.Lined up on the red sofas backstage, five-eighths of the Goldie Lookin Chain crew (a Welsh Wu-Tang Clan with a comedy chav slant, for the sake of the uninitiated) are reclining and sipping Strongbow – you can take the men out of South Wales, but you can’t take the South Wales out of the men.We’ve got the ever-grinning, eye-twinkling cheeky chappie Adam Hussain, the lanky, almost silent Maggot (aka “The Hip-Hop Vampire”), the sleepy-eyed, bespectacled Billy Webb (aka “Tim Westcountry”), the bearded, booming bass-voiced Mystikal, and the talkative, wingnut-eared Eggsy (aka “Mr Love Eggs”). But that is where the similarities end.One of them, TV talent show winners Girls Aloud, were very publicly manufactured before viewers’ eyes, and are choreographed, styled, and super slick. Free Sea Breezes are being racked up on the bar, and Radio 1’s Colin Murray is rehearsing his spontaneous ad-libs.
Unbeknownst to the tourists milling round outside on Leicester Square, two of the most popular acts in the UK today are about to perform for an audience of a mere 100 guests, mainly communications industry bigwigs, C-list celebs, and media whores such as I.This is the launch party for Wanadoo Wireless & Talk, a new telephone service, and the company has paid top dollar for the aforementioned pair of acts: one all-male, the other all-female, both of whom have recently had chart-topping singles.

Deep inside the velvet-lined, candle-lit cavern of Sound, a self-consciously luxurious London nightclub, busybodies busybody about, a whirl of clipboards and headsets. There is only one way to work with Muti: his way”La Scala flautist Davide Formisano: “The relationship between Muti and the orchestra is sick We’re like a separated husband and wife bickering”. It reopened in December after a three-year closure, following renovations that cost an estimated £42m.MAD ABOUT MUTIFranco Zeffirelli: “[Muti is] drunk with himself, drugged by his own art and his own personal vanity; he can only talk about himself, he’s become a caricature of a conductor”Carlo Fontana after staff demanded Muti’s departure: “The people of La Scala have rejected absolute monarchy”Music critic Norman Lebrecht: “The opera world has got used to Muti’s limited vocabulary. It requires us to respect each other, to share our passion and to understand each other – feelings I thought underpinned these 20 years of work at La Scala.”There has also been a political dimension to the struggle, with Mr Fontana backed by the unions and the centre-left opposition on Milan’s city council, while Muti is supported by much of the Italian right.The venue is the world’s best-known opera house and has launched the careers of composers and singers ranging from Giuseppe Verdi to Maria Callas. He said it had been impossible to “make music together considering the atmosphere created by the insinuations, the insults and the incomprehension”.In his resignation statement yesterday he said: “Despite the great esteem the board of directors has for me, the theatrical show of hostility from people I have worked with for nearly 20 years has made it utterly impossible to continue our relationship, which has to be based on harmony and trust Making music together is not just a team effort. Last year the shockwaves were felt as far away as Britain when the Royal Opera House and La Scala fell out as Muti blew his top and refused to travel to London to conduct a production.The cause of his wrath was a simple tweaking of scenery requirements in order to comply with health and safety regulations.Muti, long hailed as one of the most gifted conductors of his generation but one who ruled with a baton of iron, even cancelled some recent performances himself because of the difficulties at the theatre. Muti insisted on the theatrical integrity of every production and was furious at efforts to find modern works.He had a notorious temper and a reputation for perfectionism.

The two had been at loggerheads and the official reasons for his axing were unexplained “differences”.It is thought Mr Fontana’s desire to programme more populist works in La Scala’s season and Muti’s resistance were at the root of their problems. Staff had become critical of his excessive power and turned against him by striking on the first night of every production, refusing to rehearse with him and forcing the cancellation of some performances.Unhappiness with his tenure led to the film and opera director Franco Zeffirelli lambasting him and accusing him of being an “absolute dictator” and a “caricature of a conductor”.The dispute had been worsening since the sacking of La Scala’s administrator, Carlo Fontana, earlier this year. One of the most famous figures in music resigned dramatically yesterday after an acrimonious power struggle at the world-renowned opera house La Scala, Milan, which prompted a virtual mutiny.
Riccardo Muti quit as musical director at the Italian institution after an autocratic 19-year reign, following an escalating dispute in which more than 700 staff, including the entire orchestra, had demanded he should go.He cited the “hostility” of his colleagues as the reason for his departure. There was just one single issued, “Keys to Your Heart”, before Strummer moved on.Micky Foote, the 101ers’ sound engineer, remembers the effect that the first show with the Sex Pistols had on the musician.”There was a much younger audience than we were used to and he realised there was obviously something stirring outside squat city,” he said “It opened Joe’s eyes to the situation.”. Their live set consisted of raw primal versions of R&B classics, but gradually gave way to their own compositions. It was not until the tail-end of the band’s life that they began to attract record company attention. His widow Lucinda has been keen to make all his recordings available, and as a result EMI is to issue the entire studio sessions and a number of live songs, several of which had been lost until now, on the CD Elgin Avenue Breakdown (Revisited).The 101ers rose from the west London squatting scene, and the band’s name was derived from the number of the house in which they camped out.

It was with the formation of Strummer’s next band the Clash that, along with the Sex Pistols, punk became a fully fledged movement.Yet despite the 101ers importance as a springboard for Strummer – the man who put politics into punk and who died in 2002 – they left little in the way of a recorded legacy, just one single and a posthumous compilation given only a limited release in 1981. Motoring historian David Burgess-Wise has called the Prince Henry “perhaps the first true sports car”, which you’d think Vauxhall might make more of, but there you go. But it’s t rue: with its mighty 60bhp engine, relatively sporty handling and an impressively high top speed of 75mph, the C-type was the VX220 of its day. Unfortunately its success was short lived and the company was sold to General Motors in 1925 in whose (rather shaky) hands it remains to this day.. They were there at the birth of punk and gave the soon-to-be music icon Joe Strummer a chance to cut his teeth as a songwriter, though few outside a London clique had a chance to hear them. The show in question, at London’s Nashville Rooms, saw the 101ers supported by brash young upstarts the Sex Pistols – a performance that convinced Strummer he needed to pursue a new musical direction, adopting the less-is-more approach of punk.”After I saw the Sex Pistols I realised we were yesterday’s papers,” Strummer once said of his decision to leave the “pub rock” scene of which the 101ers had been a part.