The Punk Rock Tardis

Old. Old friends. Old music. Old people. Last time I was at Brixton Academy was to see Everything Everything on some NME tour. It was full of fresh smelling youngsters listening to acts like Magnetic Man whose main schtick was to announce repeatedly that his name was Magnetic Man. This is different.

For starters the smell is different. It's not fresh. It reminds me of the smell in my grandparents bedroom on some summer mornings when I used to stay there in school holidays. Already the Proustian olifactorial work is being done by the crowd. Because this is more than a gig for most of us. It's a time travelling experience taking us back to the days of being thin, having hair and the days when we smelt like those Magnetic Man fans. Not for nothing is it called Back to Front. It's a Punk Tardis.

Buzzcocks, for those of you who have occasionally read this, was my first ever gig. Actually, how presumptuous of me to say 'occasionally' reading this, when I have only been 'occasionally' writing it. A couple of weeks ago I decided to start writing it again as so many people I meet ask why I stopped. I'll talk about that another time. So back to Buzzcocks. As I said, it was my first gig - I still have the poster I tore off the wall and it's framed in my study.

I was about to turn 13 and it was 1978. At Brixton last night, Kris Needs (still looking the same after 4 million years) in the role of compere, asked the crowd "Does anyone here remember 1977?" For everyone here, aside from the handful of youngsters, (mainly the progeny of the audience) this was a rhetorical question.

The opening act was the current line-up of Buzzcocks. This seemed to me largely to be The Steve Diggle band: thrashy, hastily arranged punk pop with with modish air pointing from Diggle and occasionally flashes of shy melodic genius from Shelley. The latter were constantly undermined by Diggle's mugging to the audience while Shelley hogged his limelight. Or perhaps I was reading too much into it.  A friend said later how he thought Shelley looked embarrassed at his antics. Either way, this didn't bode well for the rest of the evening.

But when the 1977 line of the band came emerged 5 minutes later, something remarkable happened. For starters, from where I was standing, John Mayer and Steve Garvey looked fantastic. Garvey was an idol for me, I remember now; by far the most handsome member of the band and with the benefit of having seen a thousand bands since I last saw him on stage (at the Rainbow in 1979 with Joy Division supporting) I realise now that he has a natural shape throwing swagger. Mayer looks old but in a stately Charlie Watts way. He plays magnificently. I remember finding out that he had opened up a Mini dealership but that may have been a rumour. I certainly don't think he's been playing professionally for years, which is a shame because he has such a distinct style - lots of toms without being showy.

The songs come fast. It would be pointless listing them. Highlights are two questions: Why Can't I Touch It? and What Do I Get? It's lovely to hear the whole of Brixton Academy do the Woah-ohs, which appear in the backing vocals to that classic run of singles which started with What Do I Get? and continued to Everybody's Happy Nowadays. You can't help but sing along.

Despite all this glory, Diggle still manages to buffoon it up. During Moving Away From The Pulsebeat he spoils Mayer's glorious drum solo by dancing ironically in front of the kit. He Bonos his way through Autonomy as if he's singing a song with an important political message. And still he windmills and points at the crowd in his pink shirt and white trousers (the rest of the band wear Buzzcocks black with Shelley making the extra Malcolm Garrett effort with a rectangular red shape emblazoned on his shirt). Even the merchandise stall is not immune from Diggle's ego which has elbowed its way into selling shirts with his name on.

They get an encore and play Every Fallen in Love and Orgasm Addict of course. How could they top that? Well, Devoto comes on and asks us whether we have our hearing aids turned up. He performs in the effortlessly stylish way he did during his Magazine shows and it becomes apparent to me that a star was what the Shelley/Diggle Buzzcocks were missing. This was their unique offering and perhaps also the reason they never lasted creatively beyond those three classic albums. Devoto's turn is brief but great. It turns the band into a classic timeless act. And Diggle, relegated to bass, get limited opportunity to twat about.

Outside in the still warm air, gentlemen of a definite age say goodbye. We meet friends we didn't know were coming and it all feels like an old school reunion: hairline and waistline taken note of, favourite songs clocked. This time, 34 years later, I don't tear a poster down off the wall while waiting for my mum to come and pick me up. Instead I go back to the car with my wife and brother and try and get home for mum who is babysitting. My daughter is starting her Year 4 topic The 70s next week and has decided to dress up  as a punk.

"Standing on a beach with a gun in my hand..."

It was the last song they played.

They'd gone on past the curfew at the O2 and my pal who was officially filming the event feared the band would have to pay a fine and end up out of pocket. Boo and hoo. Still, it was an encore that made the event worth it for the thousands of middle aged air-punchers whose pockets would only be taxed an extra hour of babysitting fee (I'd managed to once again persuade my mum to babysit, which she does for a small fee of Guilt). But driving home, tailgating through the Blackwall Tunnel, I couldn't stop thinking about that last song...

The gig we were at was the NME Awards Big Gig - a show sponsored by Shockwaves, which for many of the fellas keeping babysitters in business that night, seemed an inappropriate product given our follicular state. It wasn't all about the headline act though - The Cure may have managed to pretty much fill the 23,000 capacity venue but it was Franz Ferdinand who gave it some NME flavour - I doubt whether many of the folk there had ever heard of Crystal Castles and you know my thoughts on White Lies already - we missed them both last night by the way, as we were more usefully spending that time patrolling the cavernous Dome looking for its Box Office, queuing up, being sent to another Gate because of a 'ticket misprint' etc etc. White Lies were about to release their follow up album by the time we got in.

What a strange audience. Perhaps its a sign of the times that a youth-branded event has to use the carrot of a vintage band to get punters through the gate but it certainly resulted in a mixed crowd. There were loads of boys who looked like the daughter's boyfriend in Jack Dee's sitcom Lead Balloon - hiding behind curtains of hair and jutting their chins out they sloped around the venue looking confused. And along with their Peaches-a-likey girl mates, they were obviously all really excited in their own special way about Franz Ferdinand. Along with Les Kids there were also many drunk people who looked like they'd accidentally walked into the show from the Salsa Night going on the Mexican restaurant outside, add to this suited businessmen making jazz hands to Just Like Heaven and all those Cure Mums and Cure Dads and you've got a Dome full of weird. It's a shame that Franz Ferdinand were so ordinary.

I wrote about Franz here a few weeks ago, how I was longing to hear their new album. I must say that I've heard the album a few times now (on Spotify, natch) and it's made absolutely no impression on me. It's done what we've identified here as 'A Killers' - pleasant while it lasts before sailing directly from memory. A shame, I was looking forward to it. They were still enjoyable but it was old songs like Michael that had the snap and verve you expect from them. They should split now and quit while they're relatively ahead. Then they could reform in five years and do a Blur. I was chatting to a friend about this this morning - as with Magazine, isn't it better to quite while you're ahead or just beginning to fall from grace then reappear fresh-faced and lean when everyone's palettes are ready again? This is rapidly turning into the most reliable music business model for bands, I think. For years Terry Hall had trouble getting arrested - now he can't move for Brixton Academys, they're coming out of his ears and all because he's got the name Specials attached to his name again. You might think I'm being cynical (and of course I am) but surely reforming without the guy who wrote all the songs, came up with the whole Two Tone idea and look, and effectively was the spirit of the band ranks is a trifle opportunistic. I don't know, I like the Specials, but I can't get that excited about the Sans Dammers reunion gigs as so many people seem to doing.

Travis should have split up just after the Invisible Band album started their downward turn. Instead they've been playing on regardless to fewer and fewer fans and you can't move for copies for their last album in Fopp where it retails at £1. I can't bring myself to buy one, it seems wrong.

The Cure have never split of course. How could they? That would be like Mick Hucknell splitting up - a tantalising thought indeed. It's all about Robert Smith, isn't it? Or Fat Bob, as I seem to remember him being called in the press in the late 80s. Twenty years later and he's no fatter or thinner, his hair is the same and so, incredibly, is that squeaky, boyish singing voice. The bulk of the show last night was from their new album. I wonder if he had split the band or just retired after, say, Disintegration, whether they would be any bigger than they are now. It's true, they're having something of a renaissance now, Goth is very much back in the air, but I suspect that if they had split up 20 years ago their show would have been leaner and more enjoyable. The crowd last night swayed politely through songs from 4:13 Dream but really got hot under the collar for 10:15 Saturday Night. Myself included.

I could wax lyrical about the Cure in a similar way to how I did over Magazine the week before last. Much of my formative pop experience is connected to them (saw them by accident supporting Siouxise & The Banshees in 1979, learned guitar by playing their songs, kissed my first girlfriend in a bedroom featuring a mural of the artwork from Boys Don't Cry, used Robert Smiths name in my English O Level...) But I'm resisting the temptation because I want to talk about that last song they played.

The second part of the set was a track per album and we were blessed with a stonking Three Imaginary Boys, A Forest , Primary, In Between Days and so on. To our right, a large florid woman flailed her hands and buttocks, in front of us a fortyish couple, who smelled of air freshener, gave each other loving looks through Boys Don't Cry, even Les Kids seemed to know the words . The encore just after the 11pm curfew featured more early stuff including the quite superb Jumping On Someone Else's Train and Grinding Halt. And then they played it, they played the song. I think you will have guessed which one by now: Killing An Arab. Or not, in fact. No, the song they actually played appeared to be called Killing Another - I wasn't going mad, my film producer friend confirmed it:"Yes, they've changed its named - too sensitive."

I don't know where to start on this - I'm still in the Blackwall Tunnel, baffled and jammed. I mean, the song is a take on Albert Camus' L'Etranger where the central image is the man on the beach who shoots an Arab. It's a song dramatising a story he's read. It may as well be him singing "I have woken up and discovered I am a giant insect!" or "My name is Holden Caulfield and I'm really pissed off".

Is this the climate of fear we live in? Must we shy away from saying anything that might risk offending other races and cultures? Is this the legacy of the Satanic Verses? Rushdie's fatwa happened exactly 20 years ago this year - have we not moved on? I can't believe that in a music world where I don't seem to be able to download a version of American Boy for my daughter without getting Kanye saying Fuck half way through, where I can't get Lily Allen's single without the same word, not to speak of her favourite Sugababes track Hole In The Head featuring 4 Shits - I cannot believe that we're still in a climate where the BBC would probably still ban Relax (25 years ago this year, pop pickers).

Apparently Smith changed it initially to Kissing An Arab in 2004 then switched that to Killing Another in 2006 for a Royal Albert Hall show. I could understand if they'd been playing Dubai Media City or the Abu Dhabi HMV Forum (made that one up) then they wouldn't want to cause offence. But really. In front of a load of middle aged fans and some NME readers? Am I missing something? Please tell me if I am.

"I am angry, I am ill and I'm as ugly as sin..."

I am still quivering with excitement. How can this be? I mean, it's only music, right? And I left the venue over 12 hours ago.

I've not written much about live music here and I know the prospect of me 'reviewing' gigs on my blog frankly fills you as well me with dread and ennui - or "On wee wee" as Robyn and I call it. But here's the thing, I went to see Magazine last night and it was the best show I've in seen in, well, years.

Now before you point out that I am, like so many 40 somethings, lowing myself into the Radox bath of nostalgia let me assure that it really wasn't about that. Sure, I loved Magazine when I was younger (although unlike the Buzzcocks, I never saw them live) and the reason I bought tickets for myself, my brother and my wife was largely fueled by nostalgic curiosity.

But by the time we got to the HMV Forum - Christ, when did HMV get into bed with the Forum? I have clearly not been paying enough attention. They are paying Mama Group, who own a whole load of venues (including Hammersmith Apollo where I saw the Buzzcocks - 31 years ago!) over £18million for a 50% stake - surely there is no greater indication of where the CD trade is going than a record shop getting into the live business...

Anyway, so we walked through snow to the HMV Forum and outside, as I expected, were many many men of a certain age. My brother met us there, he hadn't been to the venue for so long I'd had to describe it to him as the Town & Country Club and I suspect that many ticket holders last night were in the same boat. Odd then, that our means of entry were E tickets made on my printer at home - and it was fitting that the Dyson-sized scanner by the box office refused to work and they had to manually punch our ticket numbers in. Yes! Back to nature etc.

When I did a Front Row column about reunion gigs recently, I imagined what the Magazine crowd would look like and pictured the cover of the Curb Your Enthusiasm box set - a sea of shiny domed Larry Davids. That was exactly what it was like. Going to events like this should make me feel old but I felt young. Or younger than the rest of the crowd anyway. Maybe everyone feels like this and that's the reason why they go - they can look at everyone else and think - "ha! unlucky - look how badly they've aged and me, well, I've still got it. I am adorable compared to these chumps."

If it had been just myself and my brother we would have been dairnner front, I promise. Well, maybe. But I confess, we sat down upstairs, how very old of us. But we did this largely so Robyn could see; old punks in their late 40s and 50s seem to much bigger and rangier than younger music fans. I noticed this at a Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros gig years ago and my theory at the time was that they had been given free school milk when they were kids in the 60s. Even I would have struggled to see over their shoulders, so Robyn wouldn't have had a hope.

Placed on each seat upstairs was the first indication that this reunion show was decidedly not a run of the mill affair: a beautifully presented Malcolm Garrett-designed flyer illustrating the merchandise available in the venue and online. OK, so you could argue that the £50 man is being exploited - and indeed the posters cost exactly that amount of money. But the fact is, this merchandise was incredibly well thought-out and had no whiff of tack or tat about it. Being more of a 50p man these days, I bought a mug for a fiver with "I know the meaning of life" on one side and "it doesn't help me a bit" on the other in a Malcolm Garrett font. Genius. I'm drinking coffee out of it as I write this.

I won't give you a blow by blow account of the show - you'll be able to get those from the proper grown-up reviews. I'll put a link to Pete Paphides' review in The Times when it comes through, as he made use of my Devoto anal retention plus I suggested a little tweak for his final line which he was gracious enough to accept. Incidentally, earlier this week he asked me to write a piece in tomorrow's Saturday Review about the BRITs and the British music industry - I foolishly wrote it in the voice and style I use here so it needed some serious tweakage, which he did for me and still let me take the lion's share of the credit. What a chap.

What I will say about the Magazine show is this: Howard Devoto where have you been? For someone who has apparently been working in a picture library for the last 20 years or so, there is absolutely no rust on his performance and he moves like a dancer.

Before they come onstage, the lights go down and we hear his disembodied voice - serious and yet with an ironic lilt to it as if to say "I know this is a bit of fun but let's pretend it's really sombre and see what happens" - he explains Dave Formula's phone call which snowballed the reunion.

Then out of darkness we see a youthful skinny-tied John Doyle who picks up his sticks and begins the military tattoo of The Light Pours Out Of Me. Then more light on... fuck me Barry Adamson looks amazing! Rake thin, top hat, shades! Then another spotlight on Noko who manages to be dressed entirely in red and not look like a twat. "If I was his partner and he told me he planned to dress all in red" says Robyn, "I would have said, 'honey, don't do it to yourself' but he's rocking that look!" He also manages to completely nail every John McGeoch nuance. Then Formula - the man who put it all together - mounts his podium-full of analogue keyboards, wearing a trilby at a rakish angle, by which time we've noticed the amazing Linder-designed backdrop which recreates the Real Life artwork but adds many more faces. And then finally in three quarter-length black peddle pushers, sailing shoes and an enormous Bond villain white dinner jacket comes Devoto to deafening applause: "Time flies..." Indeed it does, Howard, 28 years.

The rest of the set is a proper selection of all the songs any fan would want bar an inexplicably missing Give Me Everything. They do a smattering of B sides (Twenty Years Ago, I Love You You Big Dummy) and Devoto is balletic and graceful visually and throws in several of his trademark asides ("Here's a song about anger, duplicity and frozen desserts").They get a standing ovation and bow with arms around one another like they've just played Madison Square Garden.

I never realised I knew every word of Model Worker, Song From Under The Floorboards or even the spoken word Kafka-lite b-side The Book off by heart. But I did and I sang along and whooped and realised a million things about Magazine and myself and the world. I never realised quite how funky they were, what good musical taste (the choices of cover - Sly Stone, Captain Beefheart...) how timeless, how timely, how many female backing vocals they used (and how perfect the Ipso Facto singer was for them), how great it is to see a bald man be so cool, and just how huge Morrissey's debt to them is.

Not Joy Division, not the Smiths, not the Stone Roses - beyond Manchester: it all starts and ends here.

"Back in the garage with my bullshit detector."

I'm standing in the Purple Turtle in Camden. Outside it's raining and the wind is blowing copies of London Lite across the streets. Inside there is a small audience, most of whom seem to be industry types - I see a ageing manager I recognise from the early 90s, an A&R man whose name escapes me, a dusty old radio promotions guy who I see at every gig I go to... There is an atmosphere of treadmillery in the room. Or maybe it's just me. I'm here, as ever, as a spectator. I'm sitting in the A&Rmchair, commenting from the sidelines, not having to invest money or time in whoever it is on stage. Phew.

Tonight's support band plug in and almost the moment the singer opens his mouth I know it's time to leave. It's not that he's got a bad voice, or that the band are exceptionally awful either. In fact, if they were exceptionally awful I'd be more inclined to stay. They are young and clean and play with energy and determination but it's a heart-sinking spectacle - imagine all the rehearsals, all the intense discussions about the name, the lyrics and the 'look'. As it is I can't tell you what they sounded like or even what they looked like - apart from the fact that they are a three piece and the bassist has nice hair. At one point the guitarist/singer plays a clanging Wellerish riff and my 40-something synapses liven up. But then he starts singing in his dreary voice and the band lose me again.

Me and my gig mate leave after 3 songs and return to the pub over the road. We've both done this many many times. He still does A&R for his own label. Over drinks we have a conversation that maybe everyone in the music business is having this January:

-- Where are the exciting new bands?
-- Is trying to get a major record deal as an indie band now a pointless exercise?
-- Are we too old to be going to gigs?
-- What else could we do instead?
-- Just a half? Why not a pint? I'm having a pint!
-- Will the White Lies album keep its midweek of 1? (It did)
-- Are they any good?
-- Preferred Fear of Flying (WL's previous incarnation)
-- Me too
-- Is that why we're in this pub and not drinking fine wine at The Ivy?

OK, so maybe some of the topics covered aren't entirely universal, but I'm not going to relay the whole thing because it would be an episode of Last Of The Britpop Wine. Compo and whatever the others were called.

Talking of age - and let's face it, that's what I talk about here - one interesting development in music seems to be happening in the life of the older music fan: Playing it.

You may recall that a few weeks before Christmas I went into a studio with my brother to record a demo. Well, since then me and Russell - the Guardian-reading Sly 'n' Robbie, the riddim section with the mostest ear hair etc - we've been lending our 'talents' to another singer.

So far we've had two rehearsals with our new singer, Jess. She's got a proper bluesy voice, writes a robust song and miraculously hasn't fallen down in hysterics the moment we get our groove 'on'. Frankly, I've not had as much fun in a small room with two other people since well, the days of hanging out in the loos at Smashing. The weird thing is, I can't understand why I've not played music for fun for such a long time. It's not as if I'm a particularly adept bass player, but pulling a tune together in 20 minutes, experimenting a bit with arrangments (obviously Russell and I go for a reggae beat every single time then usually end up admitting that it doesn't quite gel with songs that sound like early Van Morrison and slip into a shufflely skiffle thing) well, that's all you need to have a good time.

I suppose it must be like going for a kickabout on a Sunday, or fishing, or playing golf. I don't know, I've never been interested in sport so I may be wrong. The one big difference is that there is normally a competitive edge with sport - it's all maths and size and who's better than who. With us at the moment, the only competition is who out of me or Russell can get away with saying the filthiest thing in front of Jess. How mature. Of course it turns out that Jess can outfilth us both without batting an eyelid. She even suggested we should call our band the Japanese word for getting an erection on public transport. I can't remember it, I'm afraid, perhaps you know. I want us to be called Younger Model.

At the last rehearsal there was a proper band in the room adjacent to ours. When I say proper, I mean young and taking it seriously. It's a great place where we rehearse (I'm not going to tell you where it is otherwise you'll all go and book it) but the one downside is that that you hear others rehearsing when you stop playing. You can see them too. From where I was standing with my wife's bass, slung sexy Simonon-style over me, I could see through the window in our door over to the adjacent room where a bass player half my age and with four times as much hair was giving it the full-on Kasabian. In a flash it became apparent that other bands were at it and could arguably be better. "We'll have their guitarist by spring" I told Jess with mock bravado,
"Are we going to play live?" asked Russell
"Of course, when we've got a name and six songs rehearsed," Jess said confidently.
Russell and I looked at each other - this woman really means it. So we do actually have to take this seriously. Bollocks.

Back at the pub opposite the Purple Turtle, my gig mate and I decide not to bother going back to the venue. We call it a night and walk back to his car. The headliners are on now and we can hear them through the wall as we walk past the venue. I can tell that I don't like them even through the wall. And that's probably what the lustrous-haired bass player in the adjacent rehearsal room said about us.

"You say you want a resolution..."

We're seven miles up in the air somewhere over the Atlantic when Maddy asks me, "Daddy, what's 'meaning'?"

I've just read her the synopsis of the film Wall-E from the tiny screen in front of us and the final line says words to the effect of: '... and at last the lonely robot finds some meaning in life.' As questions go from five-year olds go - or indeed from anyone at all, "What is meaning?" is the big one. And to get it at 35 thousand feet up in the air on New Year's Day makes it seem all the more poignant. How do I answer a question like that?

We're coming back from a ten day trip to the US to visit Robyn's folks in Virginia. Yes, for those of you wondering what had happened to me since the last blog entry three weeks ago, that's where I've been. And now the holiday and indeed the Holidays are over. Interesting that the American catch-all term for Christmas is being increasingly used over here - I got a number of heartfelt corporate festive greeting texts from friends on my return, none of them mentioning the word Christmas. No doubt if any clients of a non-Christian faith received a greeting containing the word Christ during their hard-won Holiday, they would immediately declare a business fatwa on the offending well-wisher.

Yes, Holiday is over and I didn't even get the chance to wish everyone a Merry Christmas or a Happy New Year but I do hope you all had a good one and didn't spend the time between crackers and Auld Lang Syne worrying about what how terrible 2009 is going to be financially, ecologically and of course for the record business. I spent the time in Virginia in the middle of what they call 'The Boondocks' (trans. 'the back and beyond') not once looking at the Internet, the news on TV, a newspaper or even turning on my mobile phone. Instead I cooked, helped my daughters invent games with the dolls and dug deep into the iPod shuffle for Christmas greats (Hark The Herald Angels Swing by The World's Greatest Jazzband Of Yank Lawson & Bob Haggart got a lot of love) as well as returning to my favourite CDs of the year and of course plenty of Maddy's - incidentally, if you have kids under 10 and haven't heard the Carrie and David's Pop Shop album yet you're in for a treat - it keeps your children off the streets, gives an ex member of Linx some well-deserved earnings and you get the fun of spotting the musical references as they plunder every genre to bring pop alive for kids. More fun than listening to Bon Iver, I Grant you.

I must stop going on about Bon Iver, I'm sure he's a very talented and likable guy. I actually did try and have another go at the album over Christmas. I figured I was in the middle of a forest, in a log cabin-style house, it was frosty outside with the nearest town, Scottsville, a twenty-minute drive away; aside from the fact that I wasn't on my own with only my beard for company, surely the atmosphere was identical to the one allegedly endured by broken hearted Justin Vernon when he made For Emma? But no, the thing passed me by again. I love simple voice and guitar music, from Iron and Wine and Elliot Smith to Jake Thackray and Bert Jansch but, for me, there is something missing about For Emma, Ever Ago. I just don't like the fella's singing, it sounds like he's putting on mannerisms, as if his voice isn't his own. And it's double tracked a lot too (e.g on The Wolves) which is always suspicious. And of course, my hackles are always raised when something is universally praised by music critics - every one of them falling for the dubious mythology of the tortured artist doing it for love and making it all my himself in a shed. I'm sure he did, but that doesn't automatically make it 'haunting' and 'beautiful'. I'll give it this though, I do quite like the final track Re: Stacks. But what an annoying indie song-title...

Consensus terrorism as Douglas Coupland calls it, is always rife in the press. I've mentioned it here before, it's when a couple of leading critics set an opinion , which is then followed by all the lesser journalists out of laziness or fear of getting it wrong, then the public follows suit and before you know it, people are either afraid to admit to liking Coldplay or fearful of saying they don't think Pet Sounds is the greatest album ever made. Given that I had time to reflect over things during my holiday in Les Boondocks, I concluded that this is one of the things that obsessess me and is perhaps the underlying motivation in everything I write.

I was angry about consensus terrorism as an A&R man, finding myself quite often very against whatever artists who were getting other A&R folk in a lather, and looking for inspiration elsewhere. Often I was wrong, and whoever it was I didn't care for (e.g. recently The Klaxons, or years ago, Suede) became huge and I actually ended up quite liking their stuff but just as often I was right (Where are The Twang now? And I'll be surprised if we'll hear much more of the Courteeners in 2009).

But why should I care about what 15-year olds listen to? I feel like I'm already father to a teenager as Maddy now wanders round the house singing Fabulous like Sharpay in High School Musical 2. When I started this blog a year ago (yes, amazingly it's been 12 months! I would hold some sort of event for its birthday, invite all of you and bathe in glory if I was the sort of person I dislike . Incidentally, I have to admit the popularity of A&Rmchair is one of the most pleasing things about 2008 for me and, as the risk of sounding like Halle Berry at the Oscars thank you all for reading it in such numbers with such regularity.

But I am digressing again. What I was about to say was that a year ago one of the first entries here was about me getting stopped by a beautiful girl who was collecting for The Samaritans outside Farringdon station. After having done the usual bloke thing of assuming that she had collared me because she found my rather splendid looks beguiling, was told that I reminded her of one of her dad's mates. Since then, I have rebuilt my confidence back to being convinced of my adorability. I've done this by means of growing a beard (see, me and that Bon Iver, we've got more in common than you might think).

The beard happened over the summer by accident really; we were on holiday and I just didn't shave for a week. Then, on being complemented by my wife, I kept growing it until, in her words, it 'got a bit Mick Fleetwood' whereupon I trimmed it rather than the usual post-holiday clean shave. Now six months on and I have embraced being a beardy. I never thought I'd be one - my dad has always had a beard and I whilst I always thought it looked good on him, I was on the side of Roald Dahl who disliked them so much he included a whole chapter on them in The Twits. I wear the beard now with pride. But with it come all sorts of new responsibilities - like the wiping away of toothpaste after brushing, or the disentangling of toasty crumbs. Also, I now have to think about the way I dress because it makes me look grown up. I've been to the Old Blue Last many times and stood at the bar next to lots of bearded-up Hoxtonites, but I am aware that if I went now, I could not pass for one of the Mystery Jets unless I was the dad. The beard is not some facial equivalent of a leather jacket and girlfriend 20 years my junior.

This notion crystallised while we were in America. We were doing a shop for kids' clothes at a store called Old Navy which is like a kind of low rent Gap. I wandered off to have a look at the Men's section and found a whole load of T-shirts for $7 each (American T-shirts are always a bargain, it's almost as if they are subsidised along with the petrol). These shirts were individually designed, some had messages, others hand drawn Mo-Wax-style creatures or line drawings, here's one I really liked and tried on. It was then that it hit me: I realised that while I am still fortunate enough to have a waist and reasonably broad shoulders, I just can't pull off the logo T-shirt anymore with the beard (PB). In fact, I'm now not sure if I could even pre-beard (BB) It was a big revelation, to be honest, as I am a huge fan of graphic design on T-shirts, but right there and then I made the decision that I was no longer going to wear shirts like that anymore. I may not be mutton, but I'm damn sure not going to sink into some ignoble middle youth. So there's a New Year's resolution - along with all the others that I'm not going to share here. If you do see me out in a T-shirt, it won't have a graphic design on it. If it does, I hereby give you the right to say, "Oi, grandad! Get yourself something nice from Marks & Spencers instead!"

So what about meaning in life? What did I say to Maddy, who wanted to know about meaning all those feet up in the air? I said this: meaning is your friends, it's knowing that you're not alone - just like Wall-E in the film, which we watched about five minutes of before Maddy got too scared. I told her we were finally going to see her friend Katie who lives next door to us in Walthamstow. Katie, whose name Maddy had mentioned almost every day of the trip, normally in the sentence: "I'm bored, I want to go home, I want to see Katie!" It's about me going out with for the annual Scared Hitless Christmas lunch with two of my oldest mates both of whom are now hugely successful in the music business and being able to talk and laugh as equals for three hours and not notice the time pass or indeed the time that has passed between us - we realised that we'd been having these Christmas lunches for 14 years. So if meaning in life equals friendship, there's another resolution for all of us in 2009: think less about your office desk, your inbox and making money, and see more of your friends. Happy new year!

We're shit-hot because we've got the combined age of 150

"Can either of you sing?"
"No, not me" says Russell.
"Yeah, I can do backing vocals," I pipe up.
"Ok, let's try it," says the engineer.

So there I am in the booth, with a pair of what we are now calling 'cans' on my head. And if they weren't slipping about on my balding head, I could kid myself that I was in a proper band with a record deal, a manager, and a big future.

In reality I'm in a studio in Willesden that my brother has booked to record some of his songs. He's doing it for fun. OK, so maybe like everyone who loves pop music, he's harbouring some delusion about suddenly being discovered, despite being in his late thirties - like those guys in Fever Pitch saying they could have played for the England squad if they had the breaks - and, as they later point out, "if it wasn't for the crapness."

Me, my brother and my rhythm buddy Russell (he's on drums, I'm on bass - like a Guardian-reading Sly and Robbie, or, if you like, a younger, slicker Bruce and Rick) - we're here to have fun and the studio engineer seems to understand this. What's strange about this for me is that it feels massively unfamiliar - I've been to studios hundreds of times in the past twenty years, demo studios in old warehouses, which gradually found themselves in upmarket areas, rehearsal rooms in worrying backstreets in Liverpool and Manchester, home studios and pre-production suites, top flight studios like Olympic and Townhouse (RIP) and Metropolis with plush loos that you could imagine Madonna or Clapton having a poo in, residential studios all over the country (many of which no longer exist), studios high up in skyscrapers in New York, and studios tucked away in the most unexpected places (did you know there was one round the back of Hammersmith Apollo?) and studios I have idealised for years like Eden (RIP) where Elvis Costello and Nick Lowe recorded This Years Model and of course, Abbey Road.

But for all this experience of being the organiser, the one who was either paying for the session or visiting the artist at work to hear their stuff, the feeling of going to the studio to play something myself is completely different. This is the first time I've done this since, well, blimey it must be late mid to late 80s. Scary. And equally, I haven't played bass for a lifetime. I've borrowed my wife's bass guitar for the day - a beautiful white Fender Precision that she used to play in her alt-country bands in New York. I remember when I met her for the first time in the Luna Lounge on Ludlow St and she told me she played bass. It was precisely then I knew I had to marry her.

Actually, judging its immaculate condition I'd say that she spent less time playing the bass and more time using various snazzy cleaning fluids on it. There is not a scratch or blemish - like our house before we had children. Most bloke's guitars get that lived-in look that our home has taken on since Esther arrived and Maddy started practicing her murals - our front room, for example, looks like Joe Strummer's guitar.

Recently I've been playing a bit of guitar again myself. I bought some new strings for my old Sigma and cracked open some old songbooks, you know, the usual ones, Bowie, Beatles, Dylan, Costello. It's been lovely. I've never noticed how adaptable John Lennon makes Dm7 - it's in both Girl and Strawberry Fields, but sounding completely different in each. When I used to write songs, using a minor chord was essential but I couldn't stretch to anything more complex. Those Beatles guys, they made it look easy.

I wish I'd played more of other people's songs when I was in my teens and 20s. Instead, I would strum chords whilst singing and come up with 'songs' that we would play in my bands. I never had the discipline to play other people's songs apart from the Clash or course, whose songs it was really easy to play and whose chords patterns I now realise I copied for all my 'own' tunes.

This was all happening before I got my first scouting job and I remember my mindset at the time: out there, in the music business, there were all the successful artists and there was me. I never thought that there would have been thousands of me's all over the world, all writing their three chord plodders and playing in rehearsal rooms. The moment I started scouting and took a look at the mounting pile of demos which I had to trawl through, I gave up making my own music. Clearly I was in it for the glory and not for the pleasure of playing. Now it's different.

The only time I let my former hobby of playing guitar cross over into A&R, was when I once lent my Sigma to the guitarist from Sleeper - an exceptional player called Jon Stewart, who like the rest of the guys in the band had to suffer the ignominy of being known as a Sleeperbloke. Anyway, he was quite fond of the rock and roll lifestyle at the time and when he returned my guitar, it was in two pieces. He eventually repaired it for me but I'm still not convinced that supergluing the headstock ever brought it back to its former glory. That'll teach me to mix pleasure and business.

And this separation of private and professional mindset was still in evidence as we travelled to Willesden to record the tracks.

"We've got five hours," said my brother,"That's way too much time to record three songs. I mean, each song is only about 3 minutes so we should have loads of time..."
"Yes," I absent mindedly said, "We should probably record ourselves live - you know, get a live feel, so it sounds like a real band playing together - don't want to do too many overdubs."

I think what my brain was attempting to rationalise was the fact that five hours is nowhere near enough time to do even one song properly - particularly if, like us, you had never played together before and in Russell and my cases, barely knew the songs. OK, there are all those stories about 60s bands recording their records in three mnutes - like the Animals recording their entire debut album in one night off during a tour - but that was then; a different planet. In all my experience of putting bands in studios to record, it's been a two to three day booking for two to three songs, with sometimes a further day added on to look at mixes which invariably always need a recall.

So there we were, four and a half hours later. The incredibly patient and gracious engineer Sean, had gently suggested we try two instead of three songs and we'd just about managed it. Russell and I had pulled a couple of good grooves out of the bag and only ballsed it up about eight times before we got a decent take.
"For never having played together before, you guys are good," Sean said generously.
"We'll we've got a combined age of a hundred and fifty so we know our shit." suggested Russell.

I then managed some backing vocals and they came out pretty well - my voice not sounding too strangled and just about working alongside my brother's. It was certainly a highlight for me. As Sean attempted a mixdown in - I kid you not - the last 20 minutes, I found myself slipping into musicianly, rather than A&R mode. Sure, I coudn't break a lifetime's habits so like an A&R man I stood directly between the monitors and nodded along sagely. But it took all the self control I could muster not to sally forth with, "I can't hear the bass, can you turn the bass up?! - and the backing vocals are too quiet! - more of me Me ME!!"

You can get out anytime you want, but you can never leave

A friend of mine just ran into Pete Shelley and Steve Diggle of The Buzzcocks outside his local pub off the Camden Road. "Hello guys, " he said - he's quite forward, my friend, he's a hairdresser and hugely adept at making people feel at ease, even when, like me, they don't have a lot of hair to cut, "Hello guys," he said,"just wanted to say that I've always been a big fan of your stuff, ever since I saw you at Eric's in Liverpool in 1977..."

Diggle looked at him and supped his pint,"Thanks mate," he said, then he gestured over to Shelley who was in conversation with someone else; he shook his head disbelievingly and slightly regretfully, "thirty two fucking years..."

We've all been at it years though haven't we? Well, I have. And it's funny, after a while it feels like I've been in it as long as people I used to look up to or buy records by. I just had another meeting with the 80s pop star and he just seemed the same age as me. Possibly younger. And yesterday I had a meeting with the guy who was my first boss. He's been in the music business, he said "for over 20 years..." Actually, I felt like saying to him - it's me that's been in it for about 20 years (20 years this autumn to be precise) you, sir, have been in it almost 30. But there he is still looking like I remember him 20 years before, a few more 'laughter lines' (on second thoughts, to paraphrase George Melly's remark to Mick Jagger, nothing's that funny) but he's looks young. Younger than me, I'd wager. And he's sitting in an office surrounded by tight-trousered boys and girls, a man in his fifth decade, still wearing Converse and having an opinion about Foals and Jo Lean And The Jing Jang Jong. Which is what you do in the music business - what else are you going to do?

I say this because I've always thought this way: what else am I going to do? What do musicians do who used to be in bands who have to go off and do something else? Well, increasingly, they reform the same bands and go off and make more money than they made first time round by carefully planned nostalgia shows - whether you're Shed Seven or The Love Affair, you can be your own tribute band at the drop of a hat these days and no one cares how old you are. In fact it's probably reassuring for the stooping, bespectacled audience to see how ancient everyone is on stage while the music makes them feel young again. When the Sex Pistols reformed in the mid-nineties, there was a purists' outcry at the terrible sacrilege and you know what? that Finsbury Park show was fucking amazing - it was, and you can tell I really mean it man, because I'm using a swear word. After Lydon came on and announced, "Fat, Forty and Back!" the context was set, every song was played pitch perfect and it was hugely entertaining. Alan McGee agreed, I remember, and published a full page NME advert declaring how great it was to gainsay the critical consensus. At the time I was running Indolent - a much smaller operation than Creation - and we published a quarter page ad saying how we felt the same way but didn't have as much cash as McGee.

The point is that now, no one cares and indeed, the Pistols are considered one of the more reliable nights out in a growing genre. Soon, we'll have bands performing the work of the greats with no attendant tribute-band irony - it's already happening with Ron Geesin having performed the Atom Heart Mother suite a couple of weeks ago and joined onstage by Dave Gilmour. My prediction is that pop records will become like classical pieces and be performed in various ways either in musicals with Meryl Streep and Pierce Brosnan upping the ante or increasingly in much more highbrow productions, involving new musicians interpreting them .

But what else do ex-music business people do if they give it up altogether? Of course, if they've earned a lot of money then clearly they don't have to do anything - they can go the way of the Ridgely, who must be the luckiest man in pop - a parting gift from George of half the publishing on his best song and bingo, he can surf the rest of his life or John Deacon, who lives in Putney, enjoys a round of golf, and is the proud owner of 65 million pounds. But the rest of them... us, what do we do? Here are some examples from the past:

Press PR person - Opened a cattery in Cornwall.
Record Producer - Took a new media job and never again produced a record by Bryan Ferry
A&R man - Signed James then did a joinery degree and became a carpenter
A&R woman - Left after signing the Charlatans and studied psychology
Guitarist of Haircut 100 - Became a tree surgeon
Founder of Deceptive Records - Became a secondary school teacher
Guitarist of Echobelly - Got a job in second hand record shop (OK, so she stayed in the music business...)

But you know what, writing that list took a while - and I had help. There must be loads more ex-music industry folk who jumped ship but most of them, well, they're still there as far as I know. I left music and worked for six years in new media, but on my return, I was astonished at how little had changed - I mean, the same producer managers, the same studio managers, the same mastering engineers, and so many of the same faces in publishing and record companies, albeit many of those faces jowlier and more florid. Despite the massive changes brought about by the Internet nothing, it seemed, had changed - indeed, the top studios were still charging the same daily rate that they had been charging in the mid-90s. But strangely enough, within a few months of my return, quite possibly because of my return, things began to unravel. First, the singles chart started accepting downloads without a physical format which recognised how little meaning was left in it. Then as if to concur with this, Top Of The Pops got axed, after which the legendary Townhouse Studios closed down, followed by a whole load of residential studios (including the fantastic Jacobs in Farnham) Even Eden, where I managed to record some of the second Rakes album, closed down shortly after I used it. I found this particularly sad as my favourite album of all time was recorded there. Tales of Bay City Rollers fans camping outside in the 70s will make a nice story for whichever property developer turns it into luxury flats.

Eventually, as we all know, the very record company where I was working became a victim too and everyone was made redundant. I recently went to a reunion of sorts and many of the old V2 staff were there. I didn't do an actual straw poll of which of them was still working in music but I'm fairly sure most of them are. Unless their Facebooks are fiction, they've all gone on to work in what remains of the record industry - Domino, XL, Universal, SonyBMG... So still nothing really has changed. And maybe nothing will. Just like the Buzzcocks still going steady, in twenty more years we'll all be supping pints, raising our eyebrows and shaking our heads in disbelief at where all the time went.

Camden Leisure Pirates

Blimey, a whole week has gone since the last entry. That's how time goes when you leave your thirties behind. And as you know I left mine behind years ago. It's what everyone talks about when they get old - how the time flies. Strangely, you never hear about this when you're young, no one ever mentions it. Maybe they do talk about it but you just don't ever listen, it's just a noise in the background like classical music, advice about pensions and invigorating walks in the country. No, the only occasion time flies when you're young is when you're having fun - which clearly, you never are as much as they tell you.

Anyway I've been thinking about age a lot this week. It's to do with Esther turning a month old last Friday, I think - my years are beginning to weigh. It started on Tuesday as I was getting off the tube. I'd been catching up on the weekend paper - the curse of the slow-reader/father combo - and had just finished a really interesting Hilary Mantel review of two books about depresssion. As I got out of the tube station I was thinking about what the article had said - largely semi-praise of the first book, a study of how people too often get fobbed off with anti-depressants instead of dealing with route causes; and a pithy put-down of the second, some fashion jounalist's navel-gazing study of how she dealt with her own depression. She read every book she could get her hands on, she claims, citing Kierkegaard (died 1855) 'who lived a few hundred years ago" as inspiration and having a go at her therapist's dress sense.

So, out of the station I come and bounding towards me comes a really attractive young girl in a Samaritans T-shirt. "Hello, have you got a couple of minutes?" comes the gambit. It is, of course, a charity rep who wants my sort code and bank account details, I believe the common term is Chugger (charity mugger). Normally I would have smiled apologetically and muttered "terribly late, sorry ..." in Guardian reader style. But this time, partly down to her attractiveness but also because I was thinking about depression, I stopped. She was elated and smoothered me with gratefulness. I later learnt that it was her first day as a Samaritans rep and I was the first person who'd stopped for her. In her excitement about this she said, "You know, you really remind me ..." and here, time stood still as I imagined what would come next; who would I remind her of? A mystery guy she'd met on holiday who she'd never seen again, a celebrity? an ex-boyfriend? No. "You really remind me of my best mate's dad!" she squealed. My face must have said it all. "Oh not in a bad way or anything! ... he wasn't old," she back-peddled furiously, fearing the loss of a potential customer, "he was good looking and everything ..."

So this is what the Samaritans have come to, I thought, actively going out and randomly depressing strangers on the street in an attempt to drum up business. The thing is, I do look older than I did. I think I was blessed for quite a while with looking younger than I was and now suddenly age has caught up with me. It doesn't help managing such young, attractive musicians. When we were out with the girl band before Christmas, for example, the digital photography was coming thick and fast and I inevitably ended up with a bunch of pictures on my phone, full of the sort of drunken revelry you'd expect when you go to Christmas parties and the booze is free and you happen to be in your twenties. I showed them to my wife and it was all going well until we reached one featuring me. I am looming up towards the camera, clearly thinking the 22 year-old female guitarist's prettiness is reflecting well on me. This is not the case: I look like a fat, balding regional DJ. "Christ, do I really look like that?" I asked. My wife, who is from the Bronx and doesn't really muck about when it comes to straight-talking, was uncharacteristically reassuring, "You just look a bit drunk, that's all."

"But… but … it's worse than that! All my features have been moved around - I look like a Picasso picture!" Etc etc. In my defence, I was very hungover and beginning to get The Fear.

"Honeybaby," said my wife, upping the longsuffering tone, "you've taken photgraphs of me which are much worse and I AM good-looking."

Incidentally, my wife is not arrogant or an airhead and doesn't have any of the negative traits that you would normally associate with people who proclaim themselves attractive. No, she just knows that she is good looking – and she is. How brilliant must that be! To KNOW you are attractive? I have good days and bad days and I bet that's pretty much the same for most people. I still have days when, to quote Joe Jackson, "I kid myself I look real cool" And as you get older you have more bad than good days, until, I suppose you just don't think about it anymore. It stops bothering you because you become invisible to the opposite sex.

My friend Andy, whose office I share, admits to having been through his midlife crisis already. Last week he told me that he had sat on the sofa the Saturday before, flanked by his wife on one side and his 5 year old daughter on the other, eating apple crumble and watching The One And Only. It crossed his mind that his younger self (the one which once shouted to me at the Reading Festival "Let's do all the speed we've got left and pretend we're the Clash!") would have pointed and laughed. Now the crumble/sofa interface is the height of sensual pleasure for him. Me, I'm still undecided.

At least the age thing hasn't hit the heights of my mate Russell, who whilst always having been the most eccentric man I've ever known managed to top even himself when I saw him on Thursday. I was talking about booking a recording studio for our Scottish band and how much it would cost per day (about £200 if you're interested, A&R-spotters). Russell said to me, "Imagine the peace you'd get in there - no noise from neighbours, no phones ringing, perfect air-conditioned silence - I'd pay 200 quid for that."

On the other end of the scale, I got a call from David, the man who cuts the remainder of my hair. He's a very well adjusted 40 something who after having given his flat to an ex-girlfriend finds himself flat-sharing in Camden with another guy his age. He's loving it and leading the life most of my generation only witness vicariously on Skins, Mistresses or sometimes it must be said, Scarface ... His flatmate phoned him up last week and asked if he could borrow his camera. "Sure," said David, "it's in my room - but why do you need it, you never take pictures?" "I'll show you when I get back!" he replied. When David did get back, his flatmate, who'd been up for two days with no sleep and, as we dads say, watching a bit too much Charlie And Lola, presented David with his camera. It contained a large collection of images of his girlfriend in various states of undress on David's pool table. After having phoned me up to tell me this story, he later texted me asking me if he should keep the images on his camera as his flatmate hadn't erased them ...

I was in Camden myself earlier in the week (not far from the Hawley Arms as it goes, which I have to admit, I never knew was a celeb hangout until the news reports about the fire started describing it as such; I'd always assumed it was a no-go tourist trap on the one way system, but that's what eulogy does, eh?) Anyway, I was in the Lock Tavern meeting a friend of mine, Phil, who manages bands too. He's been managing bands successfully for several years and I was hoping a bit of his luck would rub off on me. Anyway, we drank pints and talked about the changes in the music business - a typical Camden conversation - and then he went for a wee. I sat by the bar and having just had a pint was feeling expansive so started a conversation with the twenty-something guy behind the bar who was wearing a Joy Division T-shirt. Here's how it went:
Me: I saw them live when I was 13
Him (Seriously unimpressed) Yeah?
Me: Yeah, it was by accident, supporting the Buzzcocks - I didn't think they were that good to be honest - all that elbow-waggling and stuff ...
Him: (laughing out of politeness) Right
Me: (Now almost without the will to live) Funny, how they're seen as so brilliant isn't it ...

I realised half way through this that I was this old bloke sitting at the bar recounting war stories that the dudes still fighting don't really want to hear. I felt a fool - like Howard Moon talking to Vince Noir about jazz when all Vince wants to hear about is the Human League.

Still, at least I'm still trying. I'm not - in the words of The Mighty Boosh's Howard Moon again - dressing like a "Camden leisure pirate", or pretending to like bands that do nothing for me. But you know what, I can't help liking a lot of stuff that only young people are supposed to like and if that makes me look like someone's best friend's dad then so be it.

So anyway, the questions still remains, did I sign up for the Samaritans? The answer, I'm sure you'll be glad to hear, is yes. And strangely, just as I was putting pen to paper I heard a voice say, "Hello Ben!" and it turned out to be my old school friend Luke, whom I hadn't seen for ages. And that, I suppose, is one of the benefits of getting old, you amass friends who turn up at moments when you need them most. The girl tried to get Luke to sign up too but I don't think she was his type ...

The Who, the What and the Why

Who

My name is Ben Wardle and I’ve worked in music for most of my life without being a musician. I've been an A&R man for record companies, you see. A&R, for those of you that don’t know, stands for Artists & Repertoire: the job of finding and developing new talent.

I’ve signed and worked with a few artists you may have heard of and quite a lot you've definitely never heard of. It's a brilliant job if you're being successful and the worst job in the world when no one is buying your records. Watching a band I looked after supporting REM at Milton Keynes was a treat; having to tell one of favourite artists that he was dropped, was not. I once signed a band, whose drummer tried to flush the freshly drawn-up contract down the loo, and I once sat in the living room of the drunken singer from one of the UK's biggest bands as he played me his songs and the songs of one of a rival band on his piano and ranted about how they had ripped him off.

Eventually I got fed up with it all and tried to escape the music business. The first thing I did was help compile a dictionary of quotations for a big publisher but my natural tendency for making things up won out: one of the quotations I invented (from Ernest Hemingway) made it into the finished book. I decided to carry on writing and went on to co-author the Virgin Guide to Music on the Web, which now probably reads like an pictogram on a cave wall. After that, I became an online entertainment editor for six years. But, despite trying to focus on Film and Books and Theatre, I found myself eventually dealing exclusively in music-related features and in the end I gave it up and came back to A&R. I'm still writing though, and I'm hoping my latest, Pink Flag, will get a 3 For 2 in Waterstones any day now ...


Where

I live in Walthamstow, London with my wife, our four-year-old daughter Madeleine, my brand new daughter, Esther (born on January 8th!) and our one-eared cat, Tigger. I’m sure there must be some conclusion to be drawn from my cat’s auditory want and my career but I’ll leave you to draw it.


What

I’m starting again. You've probably read about the demise of the record-selling business recently - Radiohead letting people pay what they want for their album, Madonna signing to a ticketing business, Robbie going on strike etc. But of course there are other casualties - the people who work for the companies. My last employer, V2, was bought in October by Universal and myself and the rest of the staff were made redundant. Soon a similar thing will happen to EMI and there are rumours about Sony/BMG and Universal.

So am I leaving the music biz? Am I going to try and get a job in a more robust industry than the fickle world of rock and pop? Maybe British Rail or the NHS? Hell, no! To paraphrase Village People, I can't stop the music, I can't leave it alone. And as I hit my 44th year on the planet, I've decided to set up my own music business, to become - or attempt to become - self-employed in rock.

As 50 begins to raise its wrinkly forehead over the horizon, I've decided to manage a band of five 20-something girls from Swindon as well as four art-school boys from Glasgow. Yes, I'm very aware, given the current climate in the music industry, of the idiocy of this- but despite it all, I feel hugely optimistic.

Why?

Why do I feel optimistic? I have no idea. I'm normally a devout glass-half-empty merchant. Perhaps I"m having some sort of manic episode ... No, the truth is, A&R people, contrary to the common perception, are mainly naive fools who have an almost religious faith in the power of music. And you know what? I think the bands we're working with are really good and stand every chance of being successful.

So why write a blog? "I’ll never write a blog," I said about four months ago," they’re invariably written by self-obsessed pub bores, who assume that everyone is interested in their tedious opinions.” I don’t necessarily feel any different now; a lot of blogs do seem to be terribly narcissistic, but I now see the point of them: if you have something meaningful going on, then it helps to write about what happens just to make sense of it all. So rather than writing in a diary that goes under my pillow never to be seen by anyone until I die, at which point some indifferent grandchild reads a paragraph from it before putting it straight in the recycling bin – rather than this, why not do it online so others can read about all the mistakes I’m making and maybe give me some advice?

So there it is, the who, the what and the why. And when, what about when?

Ah, that'd be now