Er, yeah, whatever:

(From 45 years ago, on the Dinah Shore Chevy Show.)

One of the few good things that can be said for 5.1 remixes is that they give nerds the opportunity to fiddle with the components of the original sound. You can remove vocals, as we've seen here before, and you can also invert the stereo phase.

Er, invert the what? Technically, I haven't a clue what it means either (although I'm sure someone will be along in a minute to explain the process in mind-warping detail). The result, though, is that what was originally loud becomes quiet and vice versa. Vocals and synth riffs are reduced to just the ghostly presence of the reverb, while backing vocals and rhythm guitars are in ya face.

Anyway, here come ABBA with their phases in a twist: Bjorn and Benny's BVs are way up front - "ticky-ticky chan-chance" is now the main melody - while Agnetha and Frida are reduced to a distant, rather chilling echo return.

The intro is now my Great Bit of the week. And it turns out that Bjorn was doing some quite creditable country picking throughout. Who knew?

Cute, huh? I imagine this is what pop music must sound like in one of string theory's parallel universes. Or something.

One step ahead of the crowd as ever, I’ve been researching the incredible story of **** Millican and **** Nesbitt (forenames withheld to protect miners). What I've found isn't just alarming; it's sickening — a ruthless conspiracy to erase the duo from history.

For the first stop on my journey, I applied the hardcore investigative journalist’s most incisive instrument: I had a shufti in Wikipedia. Huh? No, there must be some mistake. Nothing at all about the North East’s answer to Sam & Dave? Well, no. Not even a measly stub. (To give you an idea of how eerie this is, Flintlock vocalist Derek Pascoe gets his own entry, while Lieutenant Pigeon warrant a five-section job including footnotes and a full discography.)

After weeks of searching, scouring and snooping in the popup-riddled underbelly of the Internet, I had managed to glean just one fact. I learned that **** and **** hailed from the small Northumberland pit village of West Sleekburn. Although I had admittedly been hoping for a little more information, I was greatly encouraged by this discovery. Surely a local-heritage portal linking to the full story of West Sleekburn's most famous sons could only be a click or two away. But no. Zero. Not even a full search of the website of the local newspaper, the Blyth Valley and Wansbeck News Post Leader (presumably so called to avoid confusion with the Chicago and Wansbeck News Post Leader), yielded any results at all. The black helicopters had beaten me to it.

Even YouTube has been got at. What was presumably once an extensive M&N collection has been reduced to just one video of “I Want Our World To Be Like A Beautiful Garden” (the original B-side of “Vaya Con Dios”, as you no doubt remember) spinning plaintively on a turntable for three magical minutes.

Sadly, the sum total of my findings after many weeks of hard research can be reduced to a paltry couple of paragraphs.

After winning Opportunity Knocks for what seemed like 112 weeks running, M&N released three albums: Millican & Nesbitt and Everybody Knows Millican & Nesbitt in 1974, and Millican & Nesbitt III (an ultimately unsuccessful bid to attract the Led Zeppelin market) the following year. They had two hit singles over this 18-month period of heady fame: the anthemic “Vaya Con Dios” and the follow-up smash (well, more a blip, to be honest) “For Old Time’s Sake”. And that was it.

As for their live work, the only mentions I’ve been able to find have been a handful of variety bills from the mid-Seventies (opening for Bobby Davro in Great Yarmouth – you know, only the high-end gigs). But after the 1975 panto season and a tie-in Greatest Hits compilation, nary a word.

Fast forward 30-odd years to last September, when a TV production company was researching a documentary about old talent-show acts. They made an urgent appeal via the pages of The Stage for any information about the whereabouts (or, gulp, the fate) of our heroes, so that they could be contacted and invited to tell their incredible story on air.

I was, understandably, very excited by this development. Excited but ultimately thwarted, because the black helicopters evidently monitor The Stage too. When the programme was broadcast in January, Millican & Nesbitt weren’t even mentioned.

(Note: None of the above is made up, honest. Well, just the bit about withholding their first names. I had no choice because I couldn’t find any mention anywhere of what their first names actually were. Yes, that’s just how savage and merciless this conspiracy is.)

It's in her usual retro area rather than your typical bombastic 007-fest, but to judge from this demo snippet, it'll certainly be catchy enough:

(c) 2008 Pitchshiftaz Productions

Picture this. Blues-rock three-piece crosses the Irish Sea. A Strat wails, clangs, hums and rocks. People go "ho-lee shit". The self-effacing lad who's playing it can only blush, flash an embarrassed smile and mutter "thank you very much, that's very flattering" when people tell him he's a guitar god. He's just turned 20.

Easy. Rory with Taste, right? Er, nope. It's Davy Knowles with Back Door Slam from the Isle of Man.

That was last year, by the way, when he was 19. Their first American tour.

(He also plays slide, acoustic and mandolin and, hell, he even sings with soul. The only bad news here is that I get the feeling that the Taste analogy may not end there - the bass player and drummer are okay, but. . . .)

Check out their website or YouTube for lots more bits and pieces.

"My dad is planning to release a fitness DVD of his Buddhist exercises" - Jamie Perrett

AS promised in the Podcast comments, here are some more:

Phil Spector (left)

Bill Wyman

Ray Liotta

Tony Curtis

And finally, sorry lads, but. . .

Gilbert O'Sullivan

This is what's on next week in Ipswich, according to bestoftheuk.com

Shotley - Quiz night, Morris men and cream teas - 19/04/2008
Life coaching surgeries - 19/04/2008
Bike Show & Meet, Kesgrave, Ipswich - 19/04/2008
Concert, RHS, near Ipswich - 19/04/2008
Farmer's Market, Needham Market - 19/04/2008
Nearly New Sale Toys and Baby Equipment, Ipswich - 19/04/2008
Big Band Evening with Marakesh, Needham Market - 19/04/2008
Suffolk Villages Market, Henley, near Ipswich - 20/04/2008
Charity jigsaw challenge, Kesgrave, Ipswich - 20/04/2008
Mayor of Ipswich's Charity Curry Night - 20/04/2008
Positive Lifestyle Health Fair, Suffolk New College, Ipswich - 24/04/2008
Cuckoo Teapot, Ipswich - 25/04/2008
School reunion, Thurleston, Ipswich - 25/04/2008
Suffolk Soul Night, Trinity Park, Ipswich - 25/04/2008

Expect a busy night for the local police on the 20th, as hundreds of couples argue passionately about whether to go to the charity jigsaw showdown or the mayor's charity balti bash.

Britain's uncoolest town? Can your place of abode come anywhere close to this for institutionalised tedium?

He was my No. 1 male vocalist in the other thread. He's warm, he's unthreatening, not at all dark and even less edgy. His toop makes Kirk Douglas's look real. His body moves as if he's doing Tai Chi in a vat of Mazola. He's 80 years old. Yet when he opens his mouth this still comes out (wind on to about 1:40 and watch to the end if you're really pushed for time or your schmaltz tolerance is particularly low; it's worth it):

Even I, a man of great faith, was expecting him to chicken out of the end bit and bring it an octave down. But nope. Right on the money like it was 1965.

So, who else has a bus pass that's curling up at the edges yet can still perform the pants off most of today's young slips of things?

I've been trying to get my head around why a certain musician is just an also-ran instead of The Man.

Has Ry Cooder ever really put a foot wrong? Put it another way: has anybody else ever consistently managed to put so many feet right? Starting out as an anonymous session player, he turned in that slide work on "Memo from Turner" before going on to record solo efforts that managed to nail at the first attempt pretty much every genre and subgenre - white, black or Hispanic - in American roots music of the last 100 years, from ragtime, via Delta blues and country boogie, to Tex-Mex. Meanwhile, his side projects have included knocking off one of the (arguably just "the") best non-orchestral soundtracks ever done (Paris, Texas), and skirting the Cuban blockade to salvage pure son from what, even in the Hispanic world, was looking like imminent oblivion.

He's accused of being an exploiter (let me see if I've got this right: taking someone who'd been reduced to playing accompaniment for a primary-school ballet class to Carnegie Hall for a standing ovation is exploitation?), he's accused of being an awkward bugger (Little Village, anyone?). . . he's even accused of academic soullessness. Say what? Has this Sam Cooke song ever been arranged, played and sung more soulfully since the man himself died?

(That's Bobby King singing, by the way - another outstanding musician who, just like Terry Evans, Flaco Jimenez, Freddy Fender and, obviously, the whole Buena Vista crew, most people would probably never even have heard of if it weren't for Ry Cooder.)

So what's wrong with this picture? Around these parts it's always Richard Thompson this and John Martyn that. World-class musicians both, yes, but Ry Cooder is from another planet. Why, then, is he always Ry "Oh, Yeah, Him Too, I Suppose" Cooder whenever the names of our favourite artists are trotted out? He's absurdly talented, artistically astute, highly articulate and for going on 40 years now has displayed more musical good taste and integrity than anyone else I can think of. In these ever-dumbed-down days in which we live in, is Ry Cooder simply too damned good for his own good?

This is the best mashup I've heard since Mark Vidler turned pro. Way more than just another file-under-ha-ha-very-clever curiosity, it's just so right. With MJ's vocal de-Quincified and duly Maceoed up, it's amazing how funky he suddenly sounds.

(It's by Copycat, found by way of GYBO.)

It's Friday afternoon, so this'll probably get no response, but I don't think we've done this one and I'll probably have forgotten all about it by Monday.

Some lyrics, however hard the vocalist tries, just don't fit the metre of the tune they're set to. The best (i.e. worst) example I can think of to set the ball rolling is Adam and the Ants' "Princechar MING! Princechar MING!"

Over to youse.

Prince is always "multitalented". Amy Winehouse is forever "troubled". Regina Spektor is invariably "quirky". . . .

Can we put together a list of artists and the adjectives that journalists are apparently under contract to use when referring to them?

It struck me the other day, I recall not why, that some artists aren’t half as important as they think they are. A select few aren’t even a quarter as important as they think they are. And Lou Reed isn’t important at all. I should know. I used to flog him.

Once upon a time, towards the end of the Lower Palaeozoic, I worked in a then-’n’-happening record shop. My section was Rock R-S. My mission: to replenish the records in the racks by artists whose names began with those letters. I watched in awe as Rush and REO Speedwagon albums just flew off those shelves. I supervised the daily shifting of container-loads of Rod Stewart and the Rolling Stones. Trade was even brisk with the most minor items of back catalogue, like The Wild, The Innocent & The E-Street Shuffle or the first Al Stewart album. But Lou Reed? He sold bugger all.

This lack of sales was particularly painful to me because I was a big Lou Reed fan at the time. (Yes, I know, but I was young.) After Rock and Roll Heart came out and just sat there in the rack for months on end, apparently in need of bypass surgery, I was deeply concerned. By the time Street Hassle came out and repeated the feat, my faith in humanity was definitively shredded. What was wrong with people? What did they think they were playing at, snapping up copies of Roogalator’s Play It By Ear day after day instead of what was obviously Lou’s solo masterpiece? The answer was painful to acknowledge but the evidence was undeniable: people didn’t give a stuff about old Lou. (Apart from Transformer, that is — but I suspect that was just because of Bowie fans being completists.)

Lou Reed came into the shop once, his bony, pallid fingers slowly browsing through the sleeves like an undernourished tarantula on Quaaludes. As artists in record shops are wont, he accidentally-on-purpose checked out his own section, no doubt satisfied to find the rack bulging with several copies of every single one of his albums. Little did he know the reason: they were only there because we couldn’t shift the bloody things.

Yet from his long history of spikier-than-spiky interviews and his reputation — positioned somewhere on Van Morrison’s right flank as a Difficult Elder Statesman — you’d think Reed, Lou, was, or at least one day had been, an extremely important and relevant Major Artist, when the truth is that his fan base has only ever been a fraction of, say, Simon, Carly’s, or probably even St. Marie, Buffy’s. So who else displays an unreasonably inflated sense of their own importance? There must be quite a few others.

This has been driving me mad all weekend. Late-Seventies femme singer, a bit like a post-punk Kate Bush, sort of. Think Helena Bonham Carter as a zombie. Had a weird Polish-ish sort of name, possibly beginning with "L" (a bit like, but obviously not, Lotte Lenya).

Help! (No particular reason, just one of those can't-get-no-peace bits of trivia I need to remember in order to resume my life. Ta.)

After watching four seasons of The Wire, I've come to associate the actors so much with their roles that seeing them in anything else is - to put it mildly - a bit strange.

Morris Levy - from sleazebag lawyer to sex symbol:

Bill Rawls gets one bill too many:

Cedric Daniels talks up some R&B:

It's O.M.A.R. Blue (and for a dash of extra weirdness, check out who his partner is):

Ola Brunkert (62), ABBA's long-term sticksman, was found dead at his villa in Majorca on Sunday, apparently having bled to death after somehow falling onto his greenhouse, Spanish police said.

I might be some time.

Time was when you'd see an artist's name for the first time and have a pretty good idea of what they'd sound like: Blind Willie McTell, Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, Black Sabbath, Funkadelic. . . you got what it said on the tin. But somewhere along the line branding strategy went all postmodern on us and any name could indicate any genre.

So - for your amusement and my embarrassment - I thought I'd share some of the ones I've encountered over the years where my seemingly quite reasonable first assumption turned out to be just, ahem, a smidgin off the mark.

Nirvana - jazz-prog fusion
Massive Attack - thrash metal
Portishead - laddy folk-rock, a la Lindisfarne
Regina Spektor - big, ballsy R&B, like a black Pink.
M.I.A. - gangsta rap.

Have you ever heard an artist for the first time and hurriedly had to dump all the baggage that you confidently believed came with their name?

Clive James, in his telly column in the Obbo back in the day, would very, very occasionally award the Tin Bum of Rangoon for a programme that managed to be so breathtakingly bad that its achievement was unlikely to be surpassed for several months, if not years.

I propose we do the same with music journalism. What follows - also from the Obbo, which says it all, really - is the beginning of an impossibly long piece that's supposed (I think) to make us want to rush to pre-order the new Portishead album, to be released in April.

A friendly voice says something vaguely introductory in Brazilian-Portuguese.

Brilliant! Never heard that before, ever.

There's a bit of subdued chatter in the background, and the reassuring plink of a distant piano, as if you're arriving at a half-empty Latin nightclub.

Hey, come on, look on the bright side - call it "half-full".

Then a huge pummelling beat comes in (Geoff Barrow insists that he was 'massively unhappy' with this rhythm for many long months, but it sounds pretty unstoppable now).

For most of us many long months of massive unhappiness would be our cue to bin it and try something else, but let's be charitable and give the lad some credit for his tenacity.

Sawing strings summon up a demonic echoing cowbell,

Gulp. Be afraid.

before this in turn gives way to ominous slashes of spaghetti western guitar

Be very afraid.

- the sort of thing you'd expect to hear just before a hired gun played by Lee Van Cleef accidentally shoots an innocent child.

Ah, so that's what ominous slashes of spaghetti western guitar are. All's clear now.

Two minutes and 10 seconds in, the scene is finally set for Beth Gibbons's vocal to make its entrance.

Two minutes and 10 seconds in, "Be My Baby" was already fading out and making its exit.

But however effectively the listener has been softened up for this momentous event,

Softened up is putting it mildly, matey. We've been reassuringly plinked, hugely pummelled, stringily sawn, ominously slashed and accidentally shot, and we're still only in the intro.

no one will quite be prepared for the pitch of ecstatic anguish at which her voice announces itself.

Ecstatic anguish, eh? Sorry, but I'm more of an anguished ecstasy man myself.

'Wounded and afraid inside my head,' Beth flails poignantly, as a Tardis seems to take off in the background, 'falling through changes ... Did you know what I lost? Do you know what I wanted?'

Er, a lie down?

But, hey, perhaps the writer's being, you know, all postmodern and ironic. Perhaps he's actually slating it very cleverly.

It's stunning stuff.

Oh. He's not slating it very cleverly.

Doesn't this just prove rather painfully that music should be described to exactly the same extent that architecture should be danced?

And has anybody actually been spurred to listen to something solely on the strength (for want of a better word) of written descriptions like the above?