"Oh look at those clothes, now look at that face - it's so old..."

It was the rictus, dead eyed grin of the violently disappointed. And the fact that the bearers of it were wearing their now ubiquitous riot of colour and hand-made braiding and epaulets only heightened the insincerity.

For those of you who may erroneously think I was on a table adjacent to Coldplay and Elbow when the latter won Best Band at the BRITs, you are wrong. I haven't been since... 2006, I think. The year Prince blew everyone offstage. This year, I decided I'd like to watch it and indeed got to see about half of it before our toaster decided to fuse all the sockets in the house. I was making a snack while Kings of Leon were on.

The camera is cruel at awards ceremonies, lingering like a rubbernecker at a traffic accident as the losers do their best 'really happy for you' face. When I was interviewing people for that Times piece last week, I spoke to a friend of mine at EMI who attended the awards with one of his artists a few years back. Sadly, the artist didn't win the award they were nominated for and later, no doubt at one of the free-booze-laden aftershows where the real entertainment occurs, they confessed that they had had to work hard on achieving their 'not at all UPSET I HAVEN'T WON' face. Kirsten Scott Thomas who was quoted in the press in the run up to the BAFTAs complaining that it was unfair for Kate Winslet to win both Actress and Supporting Actress at the Golden Globes, didn't bother with The Happy Face - she kept her ice cool, insouciance - some would say, snooty look intact when the inevitable happened and Winslet won again and mounted the stage to gush. I applaud her and anyone honest enough to concur with the title of this week's first line - We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful.

I've been thinking a bit about professional jealously recently. Not just because of the BRITs or because Morrissey has another bilious album out this week, but also because it seems to me that as this recession deepens, and with it expectations on what is realistic and achievable get 'adjusted' in everyone's lives - including my own - I wonder if the spectre of a colleague doing very much better than you gets easier or harder to bear.

I found myself in meetings in various offices in West London last week, each one with a friend I have known for many years and during each one I stepped out of myself and watched the two of us talking and our body language. Is Ben showing signs of jealously that this person has a nice office and a secure job? Is he being over-deferential? Does the person he is in the meeting with behave in a different way to Ben, knowing that he is now a freelance writer in a recession rather than either a) a mate with a job and no agenda or b) a mate still working within the industry?

I'll be honest, the green-eyed monster did leap out and happy slap me a couple of times during these meetings. Incidentally, a massive aside: I saw Othello for the first time last week (I was reviewing it for thelondonpaper) and the green-eyed monster cliche originates there. Ditto the beast with two backs.

So yes, when I was sitting in Universal Records' subsidised Dean & Deluca style coffee bar, the sunlight dappling onto the lavishly presented promotional posters, I can't deny feeling a frisson of envy that several of my pals are safely ensconced here. And waiting to see a very dear friend in the London offices of CAA, the perfect air-conditioned silence in the meeting room, complete with its cinema-sized widescreen television and designer chairs, made me hanker after the sort of AirMile-rich lifestyle that these office furnishings clearly denoted.

But I didn't hate my friends in a Morrissey way - even if some of them are actually Northern. That same morning I had breakfast with my two Scared Hitless colleagues. Regular readers will know that we've been meeting every Christmas for 14 years since we first had a dabble at running our own indie label. We always have such a good time at these meetings that we've decided to have monthly breakfasts - my other two friends are now so successful, particularly the Northern one, that they don't really have time for lunches. We also decided, credit crunch style, to avoid having power breakfasts in poncy hotels but to meet in proper cafes. This time, because we all had things going on in West London, we decided to meet in Georges cafe behind Olympia. I used to come here a lot when I worked at AOL and I hadn't been there since I visited old AOL-ers when was working in the V2 office in Holland Park.

So to get there in time for breakfast I took the familiar tube route that I'd done for getting on for six years - all the way to Barons' Court then across the appalling Talgarth Road past the University of Hip Hop (I assume that's what they all study there, given the students' strict dress code) and down the fig tree-lined Gliddon Road. This journey, particularly the walk at the end brought back memories of having regular, reasonably normal employment and I had expected to feel a nostalgic yearning for more secure times. Guess what? I felt absolutely overjoyed not to be heading for that terrible black glass building. All the horror of AOL's petty bureaucracy, the passive aggressive bullying and general bad times of that part of my 'career' came flooding back and, like a patient undergoing Jungian therapy I almost broke down on Hammersmith Road and pounded the pavement with my bare fists.

And at breakfast with my two former music business colleagues I felt no jealousy - I am fortunate that they are doing well because they are friends and quite frankly in these times you need all the successful friends you can get.

In Toby Young's column in the Guardian,(always a good read) he uses the Anvil film (directed by a friend of his) to talk about just this sort of professional jealously and comes to the conclusion that as you get older you accept your friends' success much more gracefully. But he also points out that happiness in life is U shaped - you're happy when you're young and again happy when you're older but the most miserable years are your 30s and 40s when you realise the dreams you have are unrealistic and you start to face the reality that you won't perhaps be a pop star, or, I dunno, an international banker.

I'm not sure men ever give up on dreams like these - a mate of mine came up with the theory that this is why old women are generally a lot more sane than old men - because they frequently achieved fulfilment through childbirth and motherhood. Men carry on collecting coins, toy cars or - bit close to home this one - records, and harbouring dreams of becoming international playboys or Internet poker tycoons. That's why grandma is so adorable and wise, while grandpa sits growling in his chair holding a magnifying glass over the Telegraph crossword.

Which takes us back to Coldplay - do you think they really cared about losing out to Elbow? Maybe I was projecting my own suppressed jealousies onto their sweet angelic, internationally successful faces. No, I think they are young and ambitious enough to care. And there is nothing wrong with it; jealously and competitiveness is what drives ambition: no one is successful without it. From lifetime achievement BRIT winner Neil Tenant, who famously admitted putting Pet Shop Boys CDs to the front of record shop racks whenever he had the opportunity, to Paul McCartney who, despite all he has achieved, is still trying to be cool. Even someone you would think was above such pettiness, Franz Kafka, wrote in his diary about his close friend Oscar Baum, another writer in Prague at the time:

Envy of the apparent success of Baum whom I like so much. With this, the feeling of having in the middle of my body a ball of wool that quickly winds itself up, its innumerable threads pulling from the surface of my body to itself.

Yes, that ball of wool was present at the BRITs and if I'm honest, is present whenever I see other writers getting features, or indeed getting their calls returned by editors. I'm getting out that Morrissey CD right now in fact ...

Good taste: it's all a matter of taste

Quick! While it's there, have a listen to me saying how great Phil Collins is on national radio. That's right, last Friday, I was back on Radio 4, gently closing the door marked Credibility on my musical taste via the medium of Front Row.

Of course, there is a certain amount of editorial exaggeration when it comes to these things but in saying that we should not be so harsh on Philly C (as he is known hip hop circles) I was being genuine. And as I suggested might happen in the piece itself, I have already had put-downs from some of my more image-conscious chums, announcing that all contact must now be severed; all skinny tie albums returned.

I've always been concerned about the need to be honest about musical taste and there is nothing that angers me more than people expressing enthusiasm for music they feel in order to wear it like a badge. I have no problem with people genuinely getting excited about say, Slint or Autechre; it's when they claim to really adore something for reasons other than listening to it that I get annoyed. I recently had an argument with a pal of mine, who works in the music business (and am being no more specific than that, I'm afraid) who claimed that most people in record companies and music publishers only listen to things they have to for their job but otherwise remain entirely indifferent to music new or old. I think that's harsh but having said that if you read those annual lists of top executives My Favourite Records of the Year that appear in Music Week, you will see lists of records that most have them have listened to no more than once. If that.

Like everyone, I pride myself on my eclectic taste but in my case, I honestly do have ludicrously broad taste - I bought the current Feeling album for example and whilst not as good as the first, I have played it a damn sight more than than the Bon Iver record. I'm not saying this to be iconoclastic or join the queue of Julie Burchill wannabes, I'm just telling you the truth. I like the Keane record too - admittedly, not enough to keep the CD after ripping it onto iTunes, but certainly enough to keep it on my hard drive and enjoy the tracks that crop up on Shuffle alongside Gregory Isaacs, Magazine and Friendly Fires.

Are you still reading this? I suspect that some of you may be thinking - where is this going? What is he going to reveal to us next? I mean, I know he signed Sleeper but Jesus, does he really need to show us his dirty sock draw?

I'll tell you where I'm going with this, I'm saying that so much of what Good Taste is, is about people not being courageous enough to recognise what they like.

A friend of mine who is a bit older than me was at Art School in the 70s when punk arrived. He told me recently what it was like there when the Clash and the Sex Pistols arrived - most of his mates were listening to Gong, Genesis and Yes and punk was rejected by most of them because they 'couldn't play their instruments'. There was a status that these groups had which you just couldn't knock. Recently he had a argument with a famous dance crossover artist about the unknockable status of the Clash - this musician was suggesting that you simply couldn't say anything negative about the band - they were the benchmark. But, said my friend, all you are doing is is what my old mates at art school did about Gong - you are adding to a consensus of what constitutes good taste - which is based on nothing more than random opinion.

My friend Polly went to see Ralph Fiennes in Hamlet at the Hackney Empire in the 90s. It was the hottest ticket in town and she was very keen on Ralph too. But she walked out. "Why?" I asked. "Because I didn't understand all that blank verse; I was bored." Now this girl is no fool, she is extremely bright, reads loads and went on to a very successful management career. It's just that she'd not seen much Shakespeare and had never read Hamlet. So rather than sitting in the dark for another two hours in the dark, she walked back to her flat in Hackney and had a bite to eat. There were probably lots of folk in the theatre that night who were dreaming of doing the same thing but just weren't courageous enough.

I went to the Royal Opera House this week to review a production of Hansel and Gretel. It was the first time I'd been to the ROH despite the fact that I've lived in London all my life so just going inside the building was a treat - brimming with posh old ladies eating Green & Blacks. The review I wrote was a fairly accurate description of what I felt about the show (a good night out) but if I'd had been a little more courageous I would have said- you know what, it really only got going in Act 111; I was pretty bored by Acts 1 and 11 - I mean, where was the drama? Where was the jeopardy? And frankly where was the trail of breadcrumbs? And I'm sure a lot of the punters there were thinking the same thing but the fact that the seats are the price of a weekly supermarket trip meant that they were clinging on to every morsel of proffered entertainment as if it was their last, laughing at things that had they been on the telly, wouldn't have raised a smile. And one last thing - you know the gingerbread cottage that the children eat in the story? Well in this production, it was a dolls house- two mouthfulls of digestive biscuit and it had pretty much gone; like Stone Henge in Spinal Tap. Sort it out! But there you go, I'm in print (next week) saying it's a good night out. Coward.

Earlier in the week I had slightly more fun at shouty metal entertainers, Slipknot. I went with my brother who is a big fan and it must be said they purvey a genius balance of dry ice, scary serial killer imagery, and trad metal with a mid song demeanor of Vegas Rat Pack: "Hey London, it's great to be back!" says the singer in a mask made of human skin, "you guys are just like family, we love you!"

There you are - that's how eclectic my taste is opera, Slipknot ... Keane. Next week I'm reviewing two ballet productions. It's all entertainment, catering for different tastes, maybe, but all of it is of merit and shouldn't be dismissed as worthless just because someone with alleged 'Good Taste' has set the consensus that it's no good. My mum is swayed by this sort of thing a lot: "Oh, it's not been very well reviewed, has it..." she'll say about a film or a play and I'll say, "Oh really, what did they say about it?"

And she'll answer, "Well, I don't really remember but they didn't like it."

"Just one review?"

"Yes, it was in the... Evening Standard, I think." (or whatever paper she happens to have seen that week)

"Oh right - who wrote it?"

"Oh I don't know. Anyway, they didn't like it."

And that's that. End of story. All that time and effort by the creators and just because someone got in print and didn't like it, thousands of people like my mum spread the vague word that it's not worth bothering with the film/book/play/album. My old head of A&R used to get so wound up by bad reviews - comparing the amount of energy, care, and creativity and of course cash that goes into making and releasing an album, with the solitary figure in a room, getting paid 30p a word for writing, "It's a bit rubbish."

So, when I say I like Genesis, The Feeling and Keane, I'm not trying to be contentious. I'm just saying, they may not be for you, but they are not entirely without merit. And liking them shouldn't make you remove me from your Christmas card list. I could tell you that in amongst my current listening is Soft Machine, The Rich Kids, Jake Thackray and Fleet Foxes. Some of these you might like - there is merit in all things. Apart from James Blunt, obviously. Now he really is rubbish.

Whoops, I'm on Radio 4...

"Maybe it's because everything else is really loud now. In bars, or a car, or on headphones when you travel by tube - you're just never going to notice Charlie Watts' hi-hat or Joe Strummer's delicate fretwork. Record companies think: if I leave any quiet bits in, I'll lose the public's attention!"

"Can you start again from 'In bars'?"

"OK." I clear my throat and unwittingly make a effeminate squeak.

"In bars" my voice has now taken on a desperate tone, "I'll do that again.."
"Whenever you're ready"
"In bars OR in a car... oh bollocks... excuse me."
"That's OK, take your time..."
Christ, who wrote this shit anyway? For a moment, I feel like Orson Wells in those infamous frozen fish adverts, then I realise, it was me, I wrote this shit. It's all my fault.

I'm in a plush studio in BBC Broadcasting House, recording a 'column' for the arts programme Front Row. A&Rmchair has caught the attention of some people there and they've suggested I do one of their spoken columns on some aspect of the music business. I pitched a load of things and the thing they've gone for is Remasters. If you've ever attempted to get any of your writing accepted by radio or newspapers, you'll know how it's actually the pitch that is most of the work: the persuading, the levering of call returns, the attempts at constant politeness when you want to scream: WHY AREN'T YOU GETTING BACK TO ME? In this case they were astonishing swift and the pitch was the easiest thing.

But of course, as every glass-half-empty person knows: nothing is ever easy. What occasionally happens and happened in the case of this column, is that once the pitch is accepted you discover that the point you wanted to make is not as straightforward as you thought and it's consequently much harder to write than you originally envisaged.

It turned out that my argument - about remasters being effectively the same record only a bit louder - was not quite right. Earlier in the week, the Guardian had asked me to write something about the EU's findings on the health risks of having your personal stereo volume up too loud, so I was getting into volume quite deeply. And the more research I did, the more I discovered about the 'Loudness War' that's going on in the music mastering industry. Mastering has always been about making Everything As Loud As Possible but with the increasingly sophisticated digital compression available, there seems to be a demand to make every album release like a TV ad - IE something which cuts through any background noise.

This means that if it's an old record (and by old, I mean pretty much anything before the mid-nineties) it won't bear any relation to how it sounded when it first came out, because every light brush stroke, every whisper and every cough is brought up to the levels of a kick drum or powerchord so that rather like this sentence there is no light and shade, no nuance or subtlety and eventually after a while it just becomes an unfocused background noise which anyone over the age of 16 finds they need to turn off to preserve their sanity.

So back to my 'column'. Just as I am punching the air with joy that I might be on Radio 4, I start getting the fear that what I've proposed this isn't a brief, pithy column where I can pretend that I'm as funny as David Quantick, no, it's actually a lengthy, detailed article where I should talk about Metallica and Elbow and the the Loudness War and get quotes from mastering engineers from the US and the UK and I bring in loads of my own experience of cutting records... and you know what, suddenly I find my prose becoming a bit laboured and worthy and I realise that I'm writing something for a trade magazine. Bugger.

In the I end, I think I manage what I think is a fairly acceptable balance between facts and a bit of observational humour. Something like this blog, I hope. Except I don't anticipate - blimey, you'd think by now I'd start planning ahead wouldn't you? - that the tweaks and rewrites I make should actually be typed into the script I'm reading from. As it is, I am now sitting facing the microphone surrounded by sheets of A4; some are print-outs of my original piece emailed to the producer, some have her suggestions on in blue, some are my hastily-written-on-the-tube notes which, like all my handwriting (even the the variant of it where I use a quill and vellum), are completely illegible.

As I read off my A4 spread, my head is bobbing about like Bruce Foxton as I look for the relevant sheet. It's no wonder I'm talking bollocks. Fortunately, the producer is a total pro, she makes me feel as if I'm actually quite important to the programme and even sends another producer away who wants to use the studio we're in. The fact that we've been in here for days and the actual presenters now want to come in and record tonight's programme is kept from me.

I quite like it though - being in a studio when it's me doing the recording. All my life has been about going to studios where someone else is doing the recording - I'm the just the person whose organised it, just the person who's putting the cash up for it. There've only been a couple of times I've actually appeared on recordings myself and then they were brief. The first was when Neil Hannon was making his second Divine Comedy album in The Church in Crouch End - incidentally, I'm not counting the first DC album as it is indie rock and not really part of the cannon.

I was friendly with him at that point, having tried to sign him but ultimately leaving it to his very capable label Setanta. The album, Promenade, features a track called The Booklovers and Neil had an idea to overlay the lyricless verse parts with the imagined voices of famous writers saying things they might have said. Everyone who popped by the studio was asked the same thing: pick a couple of writers from Neil's list and say something appropriate to them. I picked Mark Twain because he wrote my favourite book Huckleberry Finn and JG Ballard because I had just read Crash at the time (by the way, if you haven't read it don't be put off, it's much better than the film). So I did a terrible Southern accent for Twain and said "but I can't even spell Mississippi" and for Ballard I uttered the expression for dashboard which Ballard uses time and time again in Crash - normally when someone is having sex on one - "Instrument Binnacle". It is worth tracking down the album for the track Tonight We Fly which is the sort of song which continues to work on your body even after all the hairs on the back of your neck are standing up. Hannon's an underrated genius, who will eventually be recognised as such - I bumped into him several years after my recording experience with him. He was in John Lewis looking at fridges with his wife and I was still so star struck I didn't know what to say - no white goods gag came to me in my moment of need. But despte being proud to share an album with that song, I have to say Booklovers is probably one of its weaker tracks.

The second time I feature on an album is on Stephen Duffy's I Love My Friends, the second record he made for my label Indolent. He asked me to shout 'Oi!' on the track Something Good, so he could mix it in with his own lyric 'shouts'. I really went for it with every ounce of South East London yobbo I could muster, hoping my vocal prowess would possibly lead to more invitations from him. Sadly it wasn't to be, largely because, we never made another record together. You see, I was required to drop him by BMG (Indolent's paymaster) before that album was even released, a tragic story which most A&R people probably have some variation of. On the CD booklet of the few copies we originally manufactured, Stephen had dedicated the album to me but when Cooking Vinyl finally released it six months later, my name was inevitably missing from the label copy. Still, do try and hear this album (it still sounds amazing 12 years later) and you can hear my attempt at being a yob - albeit fairly low in the mix

I haven't heard the finished Front Row column yet. The producer has to edit it together and insert all the music I talk about - let's hope those remasters do actually sound different from the original otherwise we're all buggered. And let's hope I get invited back into a studio soon, I think I've finally got the taste for it.

NB: The piece was broadcast last night (Monday 27 Oct) so if you want to listen to it, go to the Front Row website, click on the Listen Again button for Monday's show and you'll find me about two thirds of the way through.

Love Triangle

The London Transport guard looks at me, no doubt speculating on the level of terroristic threat I pose to the network, "So what's in the box, then?"
"A hundred triangles."
"A hundred what?"
"Triangles - you know, the ones you play..."
He looks at me as if I am insane. And it's true, it can't be very often that a passenger asks to leave a large box by the turnstyles of an Underground station these days, unless they're planning for mass panic. But I do in fact have one hundred of yer very finest Chinese 5" triangles with me. I'm on route to the West End (of London not Glasgow) to deliver them to the Scottish band, who are in town the day before the Glastonbury weekend to play a warm-up show. The triangles are part of their merchandise - more observant readers will already be making a link between the triangles and the name of the band but relax, I'm not in the least bit close to spelling it out for you.

Anyway, in true managerial plate-spinning style I have a whole load of different meetings and deliveries to make and of course given that I have so much to remember, one thing has fallen through the net - I've forgotten my mobile. However, thinking that the LU official won't be quite as forgiving if I tell him this, I have told him that I've left my tube pass at home, and asked if I can leave my heavy box with him briefly, while I pop back to my nearby house and pick it up. At this point it's worth remembering my recent experience with that bus driver, who not only would not let me off his bus but wouldn't actually even talk to me. If this fella has been to the same London Transport School of Customer Service then I'm in trouble. Not only do I have to drop off an important package for a former eighties pop star, who I'm trying to impress so he wants to work with me, but I also have to sort out the industry guest list for the night as well as smooth out pretty much everything else before driving to France tomorrow.

I'm actually writing this from France, by the way, something which may seem an entirely irrelevant piece of information but which still makes me throw my hands in the air with amazement - I can walk for the half hour it takes to get from the remote house where we're staying to the tiny village of Prayssac, find a little cafe opposite the town square and suddenly I'm back managing the band, talking to friends and writing the blog. Please forgive me if I sound like someone who's just discovered the mobile phone but this is the first time I've actually used an Internet café and I still full of the excitement of a new convert. Although it must be said that le French keyboard is exceptionally annoyment for the touch typist; I mean, if I was to type this sentence without taking into account that some Frenchman has rearranged half the letters it would look like this: if I aqs to type this sentence zithouth tqkingh into qcctount thqt so,e Frech,eqn hqs reqrrqnged qll the letters it zoulg look like this. Qnnoying eh§,

Anyway where was I? Yes, all that stuff to do before I came here. Plus I had to decide on what music to take in the car. Actually, that's the bit of going on holiday I always enjoy the most. Of course, I always take the iPod which has all the newest stuff I'm listening to on it but the car is still in the dark ages, having a CD player without the seemingly now ubiquitous iPod socket, I notice in all my A&R friends cars. Actually, this is quite ironic really, I can remember the days not so long ago when record company people used to covert DAT players in their cars in order to listen to mixes in perfect studio quality. Now all anyone wants is the convenience of the Pod, and to hell with perfect sound - everything is so compressed these anyway you may as well listen in the same way as everyone else.

But actually I quite enjoy the old school aspect of having a CD player in the car as it means I can select the holiday listening; I have to decide in advance which is half the fun. For those of you who are interested in this (and having just listened to another Word podcast where this sort of thing is discussed every week, I know there are lots of you out there) here's some of what I brought with me:

-- The latest Bruce Springsteen
There are actually some open, winding roads in The Lot region, which will finally do this widescreen album more justice than playing it in Walthamstow.

-- Five Leaves Left
Very obvious but I always pack a Nick Drake with me along with the suncream and hayfever pills.

-- Otis Blue
Not, I stress, the recently reissued, unnecessarily double CD of this album, just the original in all its unadorned glory.

-- The new Mystery Jets album
Really enjoying this at the moment. Are they the heirs to the Cure's accessible altpop crown? Sounded great driving back from Saint Cirque La Popie yesterday. And a hidden Aztec Camera cover as a final treat!

-- The new Coldplay album
Say what you want about him, Chris Martin has the songwriting chops; just when you think he's lost the tune and gone onto autopilot, he twists the song in such a clever and deft way that you have to try really hard to resist.

-- Kraftwerk's Man Machine
Along with all the other penetrating and salient stuff he says, LCD's James Murphy pointed out that kids love Kraftwerk and he is not wrong. This one from pop's finest year (1978 of course!) has The Model on it as well as We Are The Robots, which sounds great when sung by Maddy from the back of the car and makes a refreshing change from Valerie by The Monkees which we had to listen to five times in a row on the way to Dover.

-- Best of the Monkees
Which I now never want to hear again (see above)

-- Consolers of The Lonely by The Raconteurs
Time will tell whether releasing this album without submitting it to the press was a good idea, you don't get the feeling that many people have realised just how fantastic a record it is. It's the thinking man's White Stripes - with bass guitar (at last!), added Benson melody, and a whole Zeppelinesque stature to Jack White. It's pretty good at 120 kmh round bends too.

-- In A Silent Way by Miles Davies
It's the one with only two tracks on it, the first of which, Shhh Peaceful, is a beautiful end of afternoon driving home groove. Robyn finds it a bit annoying and Maddy is still shouting for Valerie but quite frankly, I'm the daddy, OK? Actually, Maddy hasn't got a leg to stand on as far as in-car music taste is concerned: the last time we were here two years ago, when she was two and a half, she insisted on hearing Monster by The Automatic the whole time. "And look where they are now!" I say triumphantly, "people are still listening to Miles Davies though!" She doesn't understand though, and in the end I relent and let her have The Monkees again.

-- The Seldom Seen Kid by Elbow
I still can't get over how bad the band name is compared to how good the group are. One Day Like This is on all my compilations at the moment - I put it on the one for the famous eighties pop star who I am trying to impress - I hope he gets over the name Elbow and realises the transcendental nature of this song. It manages to do all the things they promise great music does like make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up and the blood flood into your brain. I think I also put it on a CD for the Scottish band for their trip to Glastonbury in their new van. But it turns out that the van doesn't have a CD player, surprising since one of the things that recommended it to me (of course I, as manager, was the one required to part with the cash for it) was that it had a PC on board. A PC but no CD! I assume that this meant a personal computer as opposed to a police constable although given that the van is an ex-police vehicle perhaps the law requires that it does have one last remaining officer on board. Anyway, Elbow: a good album, although the opening track is a bastard for getting the volume right on - starts really quietly then explodes, then gets quiet again. Bit like Maddy after 8 hours in the car. I tell you, washing sick off the car seat whilst on the hard shoulder was not a high point.

-- Quite a lot of other stuff that I can't remember...
Give me a break, I'm sitting in a Café D'Internet! I can't be expected to remember everything - there's a bloody family in the booth next to me conducting a joint exploration of the Web in extremely audible French. I've had to retaliate by sticking on Olafur Arnalds to drown them out. Actually I wish I had brought Olafur's stuff with me for the car. He's a twenty-something Icelandic pianist with a hardcore rock background who now tours the world with a four piece female string section, playing beautiful, melancholy, orchestrated instrumentals, comparable with Eno's 70's stuff, Michael Nyman and of course Sigor Ros. I saw him headlining the Barbican last week and it was quite wonderful. And the audience was the sort of crowd you kind of want to see at all gigs - from really young to really quite old. All of them presumably having discovered Oli via the BBC's eclectic Late Junction. Here I have to come clean and confess that I actually publish Oli's first two releases - it's the first time I've been a music publisher and frankly if I can find a more talented, more amenable person to be the publisher of then I'll be surprised. Let's hope he's reading this, eh?

If the Scottish band are reading this they'll know of course that I did make it to the soundcheck of the London Glastonbury warm-up show in time. The London Underground guard grasped the concept that what was in the box was not going to endanger anyone's life unless they had a deepset trianglephobia (there must be a word for this, I'll look it up when I don't have the clock against me.)

"What triangles, like the ones you play at school?"he said, his face softening a bit.
"Yes; exactly like the ones you play at school," I quickly agreed.
"Oh go on then, I'll look after your box"
So I rush home, grab my phone and return to my guard, who hands me back the box. He's obviously been burning to ask me the question ever since I left.
"What are you doing with all them triangles, anyway, you a teacher?"
"No, I manage a band - we're selling them to the fans."
"Oh right, what are they called your band?"
I tell him.
"Oh right. Funny name for a band."
"Well, we like it. Thanks for looking after the box."
I ran off, got my train, drop off the compilation and package for the famous eighties pop star, sort out the guest list that the venue, after several years of emails and phone calls, have finally confirmed with me, buy some guitar strings and plectrums for the band in Denmark St, have dinner at a posh London club with a handful of A&R men who still have jobs and then escort some of those to the gig.
And the triangles? Yes, I deliver them safely to the guys. I later hear how they got used at Glastonbury a couple of days later, but that's another story ...