So far it may be in the Virgin Islands, Africa, South Korea or Poland. Not to be outdone by her brother, Janet Jackson has purchased a bank with the NBA star Magic Johnson.And not one to step out of any limelight, Madonna is negotiating a film with Rupert Everett, about a single women who persuades her best friend to father her child, while her Maverick Entertainment company has been asked to produce ideas for television shows.. Already the cameras are rolling for Bowie to star alongside Harvey Keitel in a Spaghetti Western called My West. All those volunteers aren't used to having to pay attention for an hour, and, since every tape is timed to play at a certain time, we can't have people going to the bathroom."Technical hitches and involuntary bowel movements aside, it's certain that you'll won't see a band presenting great music in such a way this year. The "typical roadshow thing" may be in for a big wake-up call.Zaireeka - experimental concert by the Flaming Lips, The Forum, London NW5, tomorrow (0181-963 0940); 'Zaireeka' is on Warner Bros.. Publisher, car designer, actor, musician, the ever-fruitful David Bowie has just finished Everybody Loves The Sunshine with Goldie. At similar events in the US they've had problems as fans trip over cables, unplugging the speakers."Yeah there's a great deal of thought that has to go into it," Coyne says. "We've even timed the length of the show in line with the capacity of the average human bladder.

I started to see DJs just showing up with their records and I thought what a great way to be. They don't have to bring musicians and instruments with them to recreate sounds I started to see that you don't have to do that anymore. A younger audience seems to accept that they can listen to recordings and it doesn't necessarily have to be a band in front of them."So welcome to stage three - the boom-box experiment - which has its only scheduled European performance tomorrow in London. Instead of cars, there will be 40 ghetto blasters on stage, conducted and mixed by the three Lips members. Some of the operators are invited (members of My Bloody Valentine, Lush and the Boo Radleys are supposed to be coming along), but most will be made up of fans selected from a mad scramble at the start of the concert.

The other important point about Zaireeka is that it does contain real Lips songs of sheer beauty as opposed to some noodly cacophony.In retrospect, it's clear that the Lips are a band oppressed by the confines of traditional recording formats. There's also the conundrum that over their seven-album career they haven't received the recognition accorded to lesser bands. Sure, they were quirky and psychedelic, but what about fuzzed-up pop gems such as "Turn It On" and "Be My Head"? Then again, maybe it was because they rattled on about outer space, giraffes and brains and had song titles like "Guy Who Got A Headache And Accidentally Saves The World" that consigned them to the cult corner.To hear Zaireeka as Coyne and company planned it is a pain, as it means getting four CD players and, preferably, four operators in one room at the same time, but Coyne's argument runs along the lines that, too often, listening to music is passive. "It's like when you go to the movies you sit there and shut out everything else. With Zaireeka, with all the setting up that's involved, I wanted listening to music to become an event.