Blog acolytes are by now feverish with anticipation for the Music Monthly, which, as we reported yesterday, has gone to the presses and is making its way to the streets as we speak.
From his VIP suite in an exclusive central London music venue, Caspar Llwellyn Smith, OMM editor, sent us his post-match analysis on putting this month's mag together:
It's been the usual rollercoaster ride – haggling with music prs over the 'talent'; arguing with writers over their words, negotiating the odd hangover, and crying with pleasure when the cover image - of the great Jerry Lee Lewis - arrived from an illustrator we'd commissioned in America.
Oh, and then the last minute panic: I'd asked our picture desk, many moons ago, to get hold of a picture of Jerry Lee – the subject of an incredible 10,000 word profile in this issue – sitting with Kate Moss. The photo first appeared in Terry Richardson's latest book, Terryworld – it's just about the only picture in it that you could reproduce in a family newspaper.
Anyway, Terry had gone awol, the original was in Germany and we had to hold the page back from the printers over the weekend. And there was a similar story with Robert Downey Jr, our Record Doctor's patient this month. What is it with these people? At least Michael Jackson didn't do anything really silly in the gap between printing and publication, so our brilliant report on his fans camped outside the courtroom in California didn't lose any currency.
And what we were listening to throughout the four weeks of our production cycle? The forthcoming Four Tet album, six tracks from the forthcoming collaboration between Ali Farka Toure and Toumani Diabate collaboration, more of Antony and the Jonsons and The Game. And now the Oasis LP has just turned up this minute. You want the world exclusive ...? It's: 'good'. Perhaps much more so than that, but it's early days.
And what about the rest of the newspaper? Our weekly news conference yielded the usual run of exciting tales, scoops, debate. Sadly none of which we can yet reveal in case prying eyes from rival newspapers read it and steal our great ideas.
We can disclose that there will be developments in the Jamie Oliver school dinners saga; that the Sports desk is dreading putting pages together on Saturday night when the Six Nations Rugby is decided some time between editions and that opinion in Observer Towers is very much divided over how excited we should get about the new Dr Who series. (Have a guess where the blog stands on that one.)
As usual conference chatter went off down some entertaining dead ends, this time the subject being Nitrous Oxide, the laughing gas of dental surgeries and obstetric wards, and how not a lot of people realise that it is used as the propellant in cans of whipped cream.
Blog responsible behaviour monitor says: we know what you're thinking, but don't try it at home.
