"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 ...

"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.

"I want to be rich and I want lots of money ..."

Tell you what. An admission - for which I don't stand to gain anything other than ridicule - I haven't heard the current albums by:

The Killers
Razorlight
Kaiser Chiefs
Franz Ferdinand
Lilly Allen
Lady Gaga
White Lies
Anthony & The Johnsons
And this week's number one - the new Bruce Springsteen album

Now, maybe you haven't either, and perhaps you'd consider the quest to hear all new releases in the rock or indie genre a bit on the sad or obsessive side. But I take pride in having my own opinion about current releases, so I don't go around repeating accepted truths about the new Snow Patrol album being a bit dull. For now I'm going to estimate my opinion of these albums (rather like the Tax Office asks you, if you're self-employed, how much you expect to earn), I'll let you know at the end.

Normally I do try to buy new albums - as I documented a couple of weeks ago, I think I bought more music last year than ever before. But also, where I can, I take advantage of knowing some nice people in record companies who will occasionally slip me a promo copy. This year, however, I seem to have lost my mojo. Some of you reading this will be familiar with the Blagger's Shuffle - that distinctive linger by the record company's stock cupboard in the hope of someone from the press office finding the key- or these days the digital version thereof, involving an email starting with the line - "Hi ____, how are things?" before brutally cutting to the chase: "I hear the new album from ______ is really good - do you have a spare copy you could send me?"

I'm generally quite good at this, largely because I slip the odd request into what I hope is a much deeper and more profound relationship with my friends with record company jobs. But I have to admit that in the distant past when I worked at Warners and RCA, I was guilty of having relationships with people at other record companies based solely on their ability to furnish me with new releases. This was fine as I represented exactly the same thing to them. Now I have nothing to offer in return other than my scintillating company.

Now I write about music in other places apart from here, I have started getting the occasional thing in the post, which is lovely - I made a point of phoning Genesis' PR when I did that Phil Collins piece on Radio 4 and they sent me the fantastic box set. Hooray for them.

But as that above list testifies to, I've just not had the pluck to ask people for these releases. And why haven't I bought them? OK, OK, OK - I admit, I don't like buying albums I suspect I won't like on the off chance. I know I'll probably like the Lady Gaga, Lilly Allen and Franz albums so they are on my list, but I can't bring myself to buy Razorlight's latest despite wanting to hear it. Stupid? Or prudent?

And before you start accusing me of Limewire ignorance or that I could have checked out a number of these albums on Myspace streamed exclusives - can I point out that I am a father of two? I can't find the web hours to devote to trawling for online exclusives. OK, so I have just started using Spotify which, along with the Onion's updates on Twitter, is my new favourite thing.

And that's probably why I have single-handedly failed to hear these all-important new albums - like the rest of us, I'm spending all of my waking hours trying to make a living.

But here's a thought about time and money: on Monday - the day it snowed in Britain more than it's snowed for 18 years - an interesting report was published. The report concluded that our 'aggressive pursuit of personal success' is apparently now the greatest threat to British children. Now, I haven't read the report and by all accounts a lot of it is idealistic and/or stating the bleedin' obvious, but isn't it ironic that on the same day as it came out, all the schools closed due to the weather. And all those otherwise selfish parents were forced to spend time with their and children making snowmen, tobogganing and having fun. Did you notice how everyone just dropped their important things - largely courtesy of the UK transport network throwing a wobbly and refusing to take them to work - and for a day, and in some cases two days, the rat race was forgotten and snowball fighting was aggressively pursued. Incidentally did you know that it was Groundhog Day on Monday too?

Actually, if I'm totally honest, on Monday, my daughter went and made snowmen with her friends over the road and I stayed at home and aggressively pursued some people to give me writing jobs. Frankly, my time would have been better spent making snowmen with Maddy. Or having another bash at getting my hands on the Lady Gaga album.


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Oh yes, here's my Musebin- style one line reviews of what I expect to think of those albums:

The Killers - a pleasure while its on only to quickly slip into the background, never to be played again. Incidentally, remember glam rock bands in the 70s like The Sweet who had one very androgynous member who looked good in tinfoil whilst the three other fellas posed like reluctant builders in drag? Hmm ...

Razorlight - I honestly really liked the debut album by this lot but the memory of the cheap-suited businessman sitting opposite me on a train to Leeds listening to the last Razorlight album on his laptop, haunts me to this day.

Kaiser Chiefs - I liked approximately 5 seconds of last year's single Never Miss A Beat- the bit about wanting crisps for tea.

Franz Ferdinand - this will be another FF album and I can't wait. Actually, I can wait can't I? And I still am.

Lilly Allen - the single is magnetic. Almost as good as Foundations by Kate Nash. One of those records that you love regardless of who it is but because it's her, it's even better. A pop star to be cherished. If only her dad her suggested signing her when I ran his label.

Lady Gaga - I suspect I will enjoy this like the aforementioned Killers album.

White Lies - the bits I have enjoyed are ones reminiscent of other bands. Is this necessarily a bad thing? Or just a sign that I am old?

Anthony & The Johnsons - Like music fans everywhere I will be concentrating hard on liking this whilst secretly hankering after a few more tunes.

The new Bruce Springsteen album - the expression 'a safe pair of hands' springs to mind.

"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.

"See her picture in a thousand places, cos she's this year's girl..."

So the White Lies album is released this week. Relax, I'm not going to fall into the trap of giving it a review here. Besides, I haven't listened to yet. But those of you who've been reading this for a while will already know my thoughts on their live show and what I thought of Fear of Flying, so I won't repeat myself. Besides, you are probably sick to the teeth of reading about them on those New Bands For 2009 lists where people described as 'industry movers and shakers' (IMSs) pick their tips for the forthcoming year.

I mention White Lies because in another week of industry changes (Apple dropping its DRM, the Astoria closing, my local Asda no longer selling CDs), it's nice to cling on to good old fashioned highly-anticipated albums.

I was out with one of those IMSs last week. Tellingly, we actually went to the London Art Fair instead of seeing a band. It was fantastic, by the way, particulary the amount of Terry Frost stuff which, if I had a spare £20K, I would sooner invest in than a bank.

Afterwards over a bowl of noodles, the IMS lamented the lack of anything genuinely exciting out there. Now, this may sound like the usual jaded A&R whinge of cliche. Not so. Well, not so with this chap anyway, he's normally ludicrously positive about everything - there's generally a silver lining for him, even in acts which I can't imagine getting beyond their first single. With him, they get to the album and more often than not end up on the cover of NME. Sometimes they even sell loads of records. Not that I'm jealous of him or anything, you understand.

He actually has a lot of time for White Lies but beyond that - looking at the landscape of unsigned and newly-signed artists - he claimed that there really wasn't anything sure-fire exciting out there in the way that there is most Januarys.

But from all those IMS lists you wouldn't think that there was a dearth of new stuff, would you? How many times have you read the names Little Boots, Empire of the Sun, Florence And the Machine and La Roux? They were all present and correct on BBC's Sound of 2009 list, a list which has become such an institution since it tipped Duffy and Adele that news of Little Boots' top nomination ended up making the national TV news. They were also there in the Guardian, The Times, the NME and then were repeated ad infinitum down the chain of lesser titles who always follow suit with their 'picks'. I remember when I was an editor at AOL Music and we did our inevitable image gallery of annual music tips. Despite my loathing of many of the choices, like a coward I would always include tips from other media's lists because I didn't want to be seen missing anything. Remember when you couldn't move for accolades for The Bravery or Holly Valance? Incidentally, you really should click on that Bravery link and read it, then read this year's BBC tips - it will make you smile and nod sagely.

In yesterday's Observer Music Monthly list, there had clearly been an effort to swerve away from some of the more obvious choices and well done them for trying. The interesting thing about all the tipping this year is that with the record business in freefall, there is less and less chance of any of these tipped bands actually amounting to very much more than hot tips. Both Duffy and Adele were heavily invested in - certainly Duffy had to happen, the financial consequences would have just been too dreadful to contemplate if it hadn't worked. If the tipster's goal of 'getting it right' of being able to say at the beginning of the following year,"Yeah, we spotted Duffy ages ago" then the safest bet is to tip the artist who you know the record company is backing. Yes, that's why we all backed The Bravery in 2004.

Press expectation and the marketing budgets for White Lies are of a level that we now see less and less of; there simply isn't enough cash to do it on every new act. So aside from their Joy Division-meets-Duran Duran sound, there is something heart-warmingly old-fashioned about the whole White Lies vehicle, with its press ubiquity, its TV advertising and universal approval. That's with a small 'u' by the way. Even reviews where quite clearly the critic does not get it have been positive. Let's be honest, it is noveau goth music of the sort that teeenage boys can't get enough of; it's not made for 30-something critics who would rather be listening to Bon Iver (there, got a reference in this week, high five!). So critics have to judge it whilst wearing short trousers to avoid sounding dad-like.

In a similar way, I reviewed Graham Norton's debut in La Cage Aux Folles last night - except instead of short trousers, I had to review it in drag. I don't find camp funny of itself and most of the humour in La Cage is derived out of the assumption that men in glittery dresses and wigs is hilarious. But once I got into the spirit - and Norton, despite a limited vocal range, does a fairly good job - I found myself humming along to I Am What I Am along with the middle aged ladies and male couples sharing M&Ms.

Damn, this week, I wanted to go through the critics' picks of acts for 2009 and give you my informed and unbiased opinion on all of them. Instead, I've told you I like Sir Terry Frost and caberet. But would you really be interested to know what I think of Little Boots? Perhaps if I'd seen her live I would tell you but you don't need me to tell you what I think of her recordings - go and listen yourself. My one thought on her is this - and it probably applies to all the other lucky tipped artists too: in her Guardian Magazine feature two weeks ago, the interview ended with the usual bold copy where tradtionally, information pertaining to the release date of her record would be. But instead of these details it merely stated that we could hear her music on Myspace. Let's hope Atlantic are saving up a White Lies-sized budget for her campaign.

"Oh, I bet you wonder how I knew..."

Ah, Motown. Fifty years ago. And doesn't it feel like it? It was a label made on singles and truly we are in a place where no such label could exist today - I mean, who makes money out of singles? Where do you buy singles? Frankly, where do you buy music?

I went to Zavvi last Friday, tempted like thousands of other vultures by the announcement of the closure of 22 of its shops. There were of course no real bargains to be had; 20% off a full price album in a world where no one dreams of paying more than £8 a CD, is hardly boomtime. So what next for those of us who still enjoy buying music?

I went through my accounts over the weekend and discovered I'd bought more music last year than ever before, admittedly of a back catalogue nature. This was largely due to the fact that it all appears to be £5. So albums I'd always been curious about but had seemed too much of a punt at £15, were now worth grabbing. I didn't have too many disappointments either (apart from perhaps The Pop Group). And despite the trips to Fopp that I have written about here before, where did I pick up my Soft Machine, Rich Kids, Supertramp, Peter Gabriel, DJ Shadow, Kevin Ayers, Rory Gallagher etc? You already know the answer. Must buy less this year. And that's why Zavvi has gone. And why Pinnacle has gone, EUK and Sister Ray. And who knows where HMV is going to end up.

Part of me is sad and wants to support the high street. As well as the reason above, I went into Zavvi on Friday because when I'm in Oxford Street I always go into The Megastore, it's been part of my life. I used to go when it was Virgin. My brother used to steal vinyl there regularly on Saturdays, which is how we discovered the complete Bob Dylan, Doors and David Bowie catalogues without any financial strain. And before that, when Virgin was over the other side in New Oxford Street (where Argos is now), we used to go to the really exciting Our Price just down from the Astoria (where Boots is now). That's where I bought Another Music In a Different Kitchen when I was 13 - my second punk album and my first ever solo trip up to "London" from Blackheath.

This year is also the 50th anniversary of Warner Brothers records, a celebration that I suspect will not have the same timbre as that of Motown. Having said that, I really do think we should give Berry Gordy's baby a rest for a moment - I mean, haven't we all heard Dancing In The Street, I Can't Help Myself and I Heard It Through The Grapevine etc enough for now?

Don't get me wrong, I love Motown as much as the next man - not more than him, just as much as that next man - but I could do with a break from my life being 'soundtracked' by it. It was a friend of mine who suggested what I think it is a brilliant idea: a Motown Amnesty. He suggested this last year but it would work perfectly in 2009 to mark the anniversary. Basically, what should happen is this: the ban of all Motown singles from being played in public places like for example Starbucks, shoe shops, hold music, lift musak, supermarkets. We would allow album tracks, B sides and obscurities, the ban is limited to the songs that that have been sullied by overplay. The ones that our lives are being forcibly 'soundtracked' by. If we kept this ban up for a year, then we could return to Motown in 2010 with our ears refreshed and enjoy these brilliant recordings once again. Surely that's a better way to celebrate this wonderful music than using it to accompany commerce?

Incidentally, don't you hate that expression 'the soundtrack of my life'? Since we moved into the iPod shuffle age it's become one of the great cliches' of our time. I love giving myself private musical treats on the Pod as I'm walking to the shops, or doing the washing up but 'soundtracking my life'? Come on! That's just adding to the cult of self-glorification (OK, I freely admit that writing a blog is part of this cult too). Is listening to How Soon Is Now? when you reverse your car into a bollard going to sweeten that memory? Will you look back on Smells Like Teen Spirit as the song that you listened whilst watching your socks dry? Will Wonderwall be the song that you lovingly remember buying vegetables to?

Talking of soundtracks to my life, when we arrived back from the US we were greeted with two bits of bad news, firstly the situation in Gaza, about which I have nothing to say other than that it might be useful to reflect on it or indeed any localised violent feud currently happening (hello Ukraine and Russia) when we are whinging about our economy, getting parking tickets, the price of a pint of lager etc. The other bit of bad news, which I'm ashamed to say I felt more keenly was the death of Harold Pinter on Christmas Eve. Joe Strummer died while we were in Virginia at Christmas 2002 - the good ones always go at Christmas. James Brown went on the 25th two years ago. I can't really say I have heroes but I think Pinter and Strummer came pretty close.

Because my dad wrote about theatre, I was lucky enough to meet Pinter a few years ago. We went to a screening of the 1963 film of The Caretaker at the Barbican in honour of the man himself, who was by then suffering from the cancer which eventually took him. After the screening, there was a small reception for friends and acquaintances in one of the function rooms, so my dad and I duly got into the lift to the floor we thought it was on. When we got out, no sign of anybody - just an empty room. Silence. We got back back into the lift and took it to the next floor up. This time, we found a floor full of people but all of them dining in the restaurant, blissfully unaware of the presence in the building of Britain's greatest living playwright.

In the end we found the reception on another floor in another room - it really is all about rooms with Pinter isn't it? Dad, who used to be relatively chummy with Pinter in the 60s, introduced me and I shook the great man's reassuringly large hand - it was slightly cold and the shake was loose. I think, in a feeble attempt for him to like and remember me, I told him I lived near Thistlethwaite Road, the road where he grew up in Clapton. He muttered something about it and, I think, Michael Billington piped in with some useful biographical background - clearly the Guardian's theatre critic knows more about HP than the man knew himself.

By the way, if you are daunted by Pinter and find the cliche of his plays being full of boring, confusing pauses and silences off-putting, I would recommend you see 1973 film of Peter Hall's production of The Homecoming. It's as funny, frightening and frankly confusing as all of Pinter's best stuff, but has enough semblance of conventional drama to keep you transfixed. I saw it in November 1982, the week that Channel 4 launched and it was as revelatory as hearing Anarchy In the UK or kissing a girl. It also helped that we never had Pinter as an A Level set text so reading his entire works felt rebellious and exciting. Another thing about Pinter is his swearing - like the Derek and Clive sketch ("a prick in Pinter's hands is pure gold") he has a knack of a well-placed expletive that has only recently been equalled by The Thick of It. No one else could have come up with the insult "Minge juice bottler".

So, Motown and Pinter - two institutions that we'll probably never see the like of again. I've got another Pinter anecdote which I'll tell you another time but right now I've got to grab Esther and find out what's happening with the Wattingers and the Pontipines.

"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!