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Jack White's Blunderbuss was the biggest-selling vinyl album of 2012. Released between Columbia Records and White's own Third Man Records, his debut solo album sold 33,000. The figure was enough for Blunderbuss to knock The Beatles's Abbey Road from the top spot, which had been the biggest-selling vinyl record for the past three years running.

In British pop history the feature film often marks the fatal moment of imperial overreach of a particular scene or band. From Magical Mystery Tour to The Great Rock And Roll Swindle or Absolute Beginners, be they grand follies, works of cynical exploitation or pretentious fiascos, they almost always mark the end of something.

Dave Grohl will debut a new supergroup, named Sound City Players, at this year's Sundance Film Festival, reports Rolling Stone. The show, due to take place on January 18, will see Grohl take to the stage with guests and musicians featured in his documentary on the now-closed Sound City recording studios in Van Nuys, California, which will premiere at the annual film festival in Park City, Utah. Artists appearing in the documentary include Fleetwood Mac's Stevie Nicks, Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor and Josh Homme from Queens of the Stone Age.

London's Olympic Stadium in Stratford, East London, is set to reopen in July 2013 with a series of rock concerts, reports BBC News.

Neil Young, Patti Smith and Alabama Shakes will perform at a tribute to Bruce Springsteen in Los Angeles next month. The MusiCares show will take in LA on February 8, two days before this year's Grammy Awards and will also feature performances from Mumford And Sons, Elton John, Sting, Tim McGraw and Faith Hill, John Legend and Tom Morello. Jackson Browne, Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks, Kenny Chesney and Juanes will also perform at the show. The gig is being hosted by The Daily Show comedian Jon Stewart.

There’s a lot to be said for the charisma of premature death. And the manner of his particular dying – turning blue on a motel floor at the age of 26, his heart fatally faltering, ice cubes being stuffed up his ass in a pathetic attempt to bring him back from the brink after one binge too many – booked Gram parsons an automatic place of honour in a rock’n’roll Valhalla already overcrowded with dead young heroes, Jimi, Janis, Brian Jones, Jim Morrison, Otis Redding, Sam Cooke and more already among its spectral population when Gram died in September, 1973.

DIRECTOR Jacqui and David Morris STARRING Don McCullin Towards the end of last year, war photographer Don McCullin recently travelled to Syria for one last trip to the frontline. Interviewed on Radio 4 from Aleppo in December 2012, 76 year-old McCullin said, “I’m not important in all this. I’m just a carrier pigeon bringing this back home.” An amazing, humbling reflection on a career spanning close to 50 years, that saw Don McCullin cover Biafra, Vietnam and Northern Ireland, bringing back home photographic proof of the horrific fallout of war on civilians.

Beck has hinted that he could release two new albums in 2013. The US star, who earlier this year released a 20-track album comprised of sheet music titled Song Reader, told NME that he could potentially release two more conventional records in the next twelve months.

The sales of albums in the UK fell by 10 percent in 2012. The statistics, released by the BPI, also reveal that the CD album market shrunk by a fifth, with sales of albums on CD down 19.5 percent year-on-year with only 69.4m albums sold. Sales of digital and physical albums combined fell overall again by 11.2 percent to 100.5m over the past 12 months – although singles sales hit a new high.

Postcards from paradise...