Smoke gets everywhere — in the studio, on stage, up popstars' sleeves... seeking out the sticky bits of news and gossip you won't find anywhere else.

Popular British guitar player Mark Knopfler turned up on stage in a pub in Holbeck, Leeds, and jammed for two hours with local blues player Steve Philips, and his band; fortunately pub landlord Ian Drake is a fan...

Mick Hucknall from Simpery Red was known as Brillo Pad at school... watch out for a boom in oddball mid-sixties guitars, such as Hofners, Baldwins/Bums, Epiphone, and the cheaper Gibson & Fenders...

Jeff Beck and Sting have recorded a live version of the blues number 'Been Down So Long' for the "Live For Life" US Cancer Research fund-raising album, which also includes previously unreleased tracks by Bob Marley, The Go Gos, and REM...

...this is how Dave Sharp of The Alarm, well-known primitivist rocksters, gets his primitivist guitar sound in the studio: the noise goes from the guitar into two noise gates. One noise gate opens for the click of the plectrum, then closes immediately; thereupon the second noise gate opens to allow the sound of the note to pass through. Each of these signals is given a separate channel on the desk, is EQ'd, then remixed and thrust manfully into its own Marshall stack, and given to the player's headphones so he can "actually hear what (he's) really playing". Primitive, or what?...

David Byrne has been directing a film, by the name of 'True Stories': nine new Talking Heads songs will grace the soundtrack, but you'll probably have to wait for it until September...

...balm for World Cup sufferers. British dealers sojourning in Japan (p26) thrashed a team of Scandinavian shoppies 2.1 thanks to the twinkling toes of Freddy Mail and securicor hands of John Wright. See pic for your own local hero...

Quiz: how old are headless guitars? Answer, older than you think. Les Paul, 70 last month, was designing them in the forties...

...watch out for a forthcoming LP by Martin Ansell; check out those blistering guitar solos. Blistering, maybe, guitar, no. They were all played by Howard Jones (the HJ, that is) on his Yamaha KX5 remote keyboard, using sampled guitar sounds...

Prince has been recording with trumpet person Miles Davis...

U2, after a period of existential anxiety that has had them close to disintegration (or splitting up) have been getting back to their roots by rehearsing in drummer Larry Mullen's bedroom, using just a Walkman as their studio...

...watch out for a boom in go-go music in July, with the release of 'Good To Go', a film about the Washington DC-based dance funk...

Keef Richards an' Ron Woods are going on tour with Nobby Dylan over the Summer ...

Nik Kershaw has turned down Phil Collins as producer for his next LP, in favour of... Nik Kershaw...