It's been a bad week for musicians looking to hang on to their dignity. At a gig in Liverpool the other night Morrissey quit the stage after just two songs after being hit by a drink hurled from the crowd.

A few days before that, a few moments into a show in Dundee, Calvin Harris was struck by a rogue shoe, causing him to collapse to the floor, clutching his face in agony. In the interests of journalistic record we reprint a photo of the incident, which is not – we repeat not - the slightest bit funny.

Pic courtesy of The Courier

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The other week I went to Malawi, to the Vinspired Lake Of Stars festival (Kenya Airways - good nut selection), where The Maccabees had been invited to play.

You would have read about this already in the mag, of course. Well here's exactly what it looked like, but moving:

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Somewhat ludicrously, it seems Jamie 'Afro' Archer is being positioned as the 'rock' contestant on this year's X Factor – despite the fact that he looks like a cross between Sideshow Bob, the bloke from Toploader, and Toad from 'Mario Kart'.

The Daily Mail are calling him the next Susan Boyle, potentially "another hairy angel in the making". He's a hairy something, alright. The other night he did Primal Scream's 'Rocks' (or 'Get Your Rocks Off', as X Factor producers seem to think it's called):

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Seems like the buzz surrounding Ellie Goulding has really ignited in the past few days.

Radar Editor Jaimie Hodgson interviewed her backstage in Bristol the other night, not long after her debut TV performance had gone out on 'Later... With Jools Holland'. Watch 'Under The Sheets':

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Hats off to photographer Roger Sargent for putting together this enormously affectionate tribute to NME writer Steven Wells, who passed away earlier this year.

If you've recently formed a band, and are worried you kind of suck, you can probably take heart from this footage of Muse, taken from a Battle Of The Bands at a deserted English Riviera Centre, Torquay, in November 1994 - because they sound awful.

This was not their debut gig - that was in Teignmouth, in February of the same year. But it's certainly one of their first. Matt Bellamy was 16. And it's interesting to note, from the compere's introduction, that they'd changed their name from Rocket Baby Dolls to Muse by this point.

As you might imagine, they sound pretty terrible, clearly influenced by Nirvana's sludgier moments, and there's not much evidence of the mighty musical profiency which they later developed. In fact, it all looks pretty desolate - as local Battle Of The Bands tend to be.

These four clips (there are more after the jump) were posted by Miky Dunn, whose band also played that night.

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