Dooley, you may be infuriated to hear, has spent most of the last week hanging out in Los Angeles. We can exclusively reveal that the weather is rather better over there, but the crime rate is much worse.
By which we mean, in tabloid sensationalist speak: Alexa Chung stole Music Week’s swan! Sort of. The MUSEXPO conference took place at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood, where the pool features a large inflatable swan for guests to frolic on.
Early in the week, as US chat show host popped by to hand KROQ’s Kevin Weatherly his International Music Person Of The Year in a poolside ceremony, Music Week tweeted a pic of said swan. Only for Chung – who was also staying in the hotel – to follow suit a day or two later. True, her pic did get rather more likes than ours, but Dooley would like to think our #swangoals hashtag beat her #swanningaround one all ends up.
Chung was joined in catching some rays by Radio 1’s newly-blonde Nick Grimshaw, who Dooley’s poolside mole also spotted having a meeting with R1’s new head of music Chris Price. Couldn’t they have done that in London?
But then a combination of MUSEXPO and Coachella seemed to mean half of the UK music biz was in LA for one reason or another. Some of them even live there nowadays. Dooley ran into Paul Oakenfold at the International Music Industry Awards, where he was supporting A&R winner Korda Marshall. Oakenfold is an LA resident now, but dropped a few hints that he’s planning something suitably patriotic around England’s Euro 2016 campaign…
Talking of things back in Blighty, the British media was united in grief and praise following the sad death of Prince on Thursday. Well, nearly. All the next day's papers featured one of music's undeniable geniuses on their front page on Friday - except the Daily Mail, which instead rattled on about bloody sex dwarves, coming over here, stealing our Sheena Eastons etc etc...
Meanwhile, in tellyland Eamonn Holmes played a (vaguely) human version of the Mail by claiming, on something called This Morning, that the “problem” with Prince was that he was “more of a girls' artist than a boys' artist” and maybe a bit too “flamboyant”. Dooley can't help thinking that, in this case, 'flamboyant' is being used as a euphemism. Dooley can't abide euphemisms, which is why, where appropriate, he or she uses, sometimes quite flamboyantly, phrases like 'boorish twat'.
In California, meanwhile, they just paid tribute by having seemingly every car radio and shop in Hollywood blaring out the great man’s hits. Sometimes it snows in April, even in LA. See you next time…
