This is my mate Dan recording our second album in my bedroom in 1982. The Silent Shout was a concept album - well, I say album, it was a tape. A concept tape, about alienation and that. Sales were sluggish; only two copies were ever produced.

By today's standards studio equipment like homemade speaker cabinets, hallucinogenic carpet, a broom handle and some sellotape must seem as retro as valve amps or rickets, but we were pretty pleased with this setup. At its heart is the Tensai Studio 5000, seen here on top of the bass amp. It had six preset rhythms - Fast Rock (bip bip tss, bip bip tss), Slow Rock (bip.... tss...), Waltz, Rhumba, Beguine and one I've forgotten. Madrigal, probably. Even better, you could record to one channel on a cassette, rewind and overdub a second track, then bounce these down and add a third, and so on. In practice this got very muddy very quickly, so we rarely did more than three tracks, then played it back through that August cabinet and added further 'live' elements for a final mix which was recorded on another cassette player. So that's drums, three pre-records, vocals, BVs, lead guitar and percussion - eight tracks, twice what The Beatles had.

Dan's hair is in a transitional period between Not Looking Much Like Brian May (1977-80) and Not Looking Much Like Marty Willson-Piper from The Church (1983-5). He's holding his Epiphone Scroll. Leaning on the pre-duvet bed is my first bass. I think that may even have been its name - My First Bass by Fisher Price or Chad Valley. It came with flat black plastic strings and sounded like a stream of wet farts.

Speaking of which, I can tell from Dan's facial expression that I've captured him right in the middle of "cutting one."

Other albums recorded in The Dan and Dave's prolific career (1980-86) included Golden Grates, You're Not Listening, The Final Conflict, A Box of Everything and FNEB. There was also the all-acoustic Songs of Love And Similar Things by our spin-off project, The Band Of The Same Name. Oh and my solo album, Politicians and People (I know, I know. I KNOW) which only sold half as well as the others.

Come September Dan and I will have been best mates for 40 years. Forty Years, bloody hell. There's talk of a reunion album - we reckon we could shift four, maybe five copies. He still does that face when he dumps his guts.

I've just got back from two fantastic weeks in Rajastan (double income, no kids - spin on that, breeders!)

I love India (this was my third visit) but however much I like to pretend I'm a deep cover traveller I've never done more than scratch the surface of its fascinating culture or made much effort to appreciate its music. I've mostly been exposed to the kind of faux-folk bands that play after dinner in the hotels. Someone in a hat will start playing a swirly intro on a harmonium with a dodgy back panel he has to keep pulling closed. Then, at some invisible and possibly random cue, eight blokes with assorted drums will drown him out with a shock-and-awe barrage of rhythm and volume which could only be matched in Western culture by a convoy of eighteen-wheelers carrying loose coal over a level crossing, or two toddlers with a Fisher Price activity centre.

A lady will start yelling at the drummers to shut up, but this will only encourage them (or most of them) to suddenly accelerate, often in the middle of a bar, and burst the beats out in all directions, like fireworks. This rolling thunder will unsettle foundations and loosen already-suspect bowels. After more yelling, a semblance of order is restored, and some other ladies will start dancing around, eventually dragging the more amenable tourists up to lope erratically about to the complex polyrhythms like camels on skis. A German lady's sari, bought that afternoon, will slowly unravel and reveal her pants. It's all part of the tradition.

Except it isn't. What I finally realised (duh!) on this trip is that this tourist folk has probably never existed in quite this form in any culture. It's most likely a mish-mash of styles, condensed to suit the nano-second attention span of half-cut oafs like me. Our equivalent would be morris dancing to sea shanties while dressed as beefeaters on Olde England Night down at the Travelodge. And I wonder if anyone in India listens to this kind of music any more than we listen to finger-in-both-ears, arran sweater, shipwrecks-and-burning-orphanages real ale folk music over here.

So I asked around a bit and started a crash course in Indian pop, which quickly led me to this; Dum Maro Dum by Asha Bhosle from Hepworth's Year Zero, 1971. I love this record, and the video's a hoot too. All together now: Hare Krishna Hare Ram!

I've just finished watching all seven series of The West Wing. It's taken me a little over three and a half years. I have watched them on odd Sundays when I'm alone in the house, partly because if my wife's here she'll want to know everything that's happened since the last episode she saw a year ago, and partly because it has the power to make me produce loud involuntary blubbing sounds which would shame an eight year old.

Of course it's ridiculous that these brilliant, committed, good-looking, wisecracking, fast-talking, fast-walking people could exist in the world, let alone serve together under the best President the US never had, and sure, it's schmaltzy as hell, but it's simply the best-written, best acted TV ever made, and I'm already feeling the void where my weekly fix should be.

Everything you need to know about TWW is in the clip below. It's the first 3 minutes 50 seconds of a 2nd season episode called Galileo. Aaron Sorkin was brilliant at these pre-title sequences and I could have picked several. The steadicam tracking shot and the by-play between the President and CJ are typically high standard, but I love Sorkin's shameless grandstanding with Sam the speechwriter. No one's that good off the cuff, except maybe Sorkin himself, who wrote 20-odd 45-minute shows a year for four years. It's a scene so brimming in confidence that you could easily dislike everyone involved if you weren't so completey in awe of it.

So now I'm done with the West Wing. I've got an unopened box set of The Wire in a cupboard somewhere, and I've never seen an episode of The Sopranos or Mad Men. Any advice on where to go next would be appreciated. I could start on one of those next Sunday. But then it's three and a half years since I saw Episode One, Season One...

Many years ago, roughly between the eras of New Wave and Baggy, I was troubled by an overwhelming biological urge to find a mate and contribute to the continuation of the human race, or more specifically to regularly practise the necessary procedure - a bit like the bi-annual office fire drill, except without some git with a yellow vest and a clipboard telling you weren’t doing it quick enough.

Music played a massive part in selecting the appropriate partner. Had she heard of Gang of Four? Did she agree that Rat Trap was NOT “the first punk Number One”? Would she punch a DJ if he tried to play Dancing on the Ceiling by Lionel Richie? Did she, in low light and at extreme close range, bear a passing resemblance to Keren from Bananarama?

If you found yourselves alone in the presence of soft furnishings, it was all about the appropriate music. A pre-prepared mix tape of slinky soul classics was too much of a statement of intent, plus there was the danger that Let’s Get it On or Sexual Healing would set expectations a bit high. LPs were fine but you had to stop what you were doing every 23 minutes and turn them over, which involved an undignified waddle across the room. While one side was plenty long enough for the actual act of union – 2 mins 4 secs of Banana Splits by The Dickies would have covered that, frankly – what you really needed was something that created the right environment, didn’t divert you into a mood-busting singalong, and built to some kind of, you know, climax.

My C90 tape of two classic Pink Floyd albums was pretty effective, although immediately after the sensual overload of The Great Gig in the Sky you had Money, which is not only a stunningly inappropriate subject to be bringing up at that point, but also rhythmically challenging. No one ever got convincingly jiggy in 7/4 time. Wish You Were Here was good too, although I doubt any woman was ever impressed by a grinning oaf intoning “welcome to the machine” as he drops his keks.

David Sylvian and Brian Ferry had a magical effect on some women that rendered your presence in the room redundant. The music of Joy Division, Bauhaus and The Cure could create an atmosphere of permissive miserablism where nothing really mattered and anything was therefore allowed. OMD’s Architecture and Morality could have been written for staring at the ceiling feeling slightly ashamed.

If you’d gone back to her place you risked something screechy by Joni, Joan or Kate, complicated songs about wrongful imprisonment, eco-destruction and damp ghosts. More often than not it’d be a side and a half of Leonard Cohen, no offer of a second coffee, a snubbed lunge and out into the night with Don’t Go Home with Your Hard-on mocking you as you left.

Of course you’d eventually discover it was a lot easier if you tried less hard. But until that realisation dawned, what was your Seduction Selection?

Chuckling my way through The Poke's Greatest Album Covers Ever I came across this one. I mean, what?

If you ran down to the refectory at Brighton Polytechnic and got your 10p in the slot first, you could spend your entire lunchtime cleaning up the universe in your conical cosmic JCB, while your cigarette burned the paint off the console’s fascia.

Asteroids was crack to Space Invaders’ weed. I’d tried the latter at school, of course, and thought I could handle it, but within weeks I was walking three miles every night to feed the gaping maw of the Galaxians on Eastbourne Pier. I dabbled in Defender before getting hooked on the rocks.

Essentially a Sisyphean exercise in the futility of labour, Asteroids took you to some remote galaxy where you were tasked to reduce whole belts of astral bodies to rubble, much as chain gangs were once expected to smash stones into smaller stones, for ever and ever, or until you died. At least the prisoners didn’t have the distraction of occasional aliens, who’d fly by and shoot at you – a bit unfairly, I thought, as surely they’d be beneficiaries of the Space Debris Reduction Programme too.

At the higher levels you’d feel like your tiny ship was at the centre of a black hole, sucking the entire universe towards you at warp speed; but you’d pirouette like a bullfighter and let the big rocks graze your hips as you took them on one by one. That was the trick – if you shot indiscriminately, you’d fill the screen with tiny, high-speed boulders and leave yourself nowhere to hide.

The coolest thing in the cosmos was to leave one large rock intact until last. Then you’d let it drift to within an inch of your cannons and then give it the middle finger - five light-speed taps of death to despatch it, a drag on your fag, a slurp of your Coke, a glance out of the window like a weary space contractor dreaming of home, and then punch in for the next job.

Earlier this week I was at an event that had some retro arcade games to amuse bored guests. My old addicts’ instincts told me there were rocks nearby, and there it was, my old friend and nemesis. One game can’t hurt, can it? I found that despite my old man eyes and wine-fuddled reactions, my fingers remembered what to do. I stood like a passenger and watched them recall muscle memories from thirty years ago. I lasted a few levels before getting mowed down by the tiny UFO that screams across the screen just when you think you’ve won, and walked away happy that I could walk away. And then I started smoking again.

So….arcade games, anyone?

The Bootles
The Rolling Staines
The Dorsets
The Beautiful Southend
Rick Wakefield
Amersham, Lake and Palmer

???

Parisienne Walkways*
Lyrics by Phil Lynott

I remember Paris in '49
The Champs Elysees, Saint Michel
And old Beaujolais wine**
And I recall that you were mine
In those Parisienne days

Looking back at the photographs
Those summer days spent outside corner caffs***
Oh, I could write you paragraphs****
About my old Parisienne days

*Little is known of the network of concrete and steel overpasses that spanned the boulevards of Paris, from the Champs Elysees to Montmartre, in the late Forties. Influenced by the nascent Birmingham school of architecture, les walkways were thought to be reserved for the use of Les Parisiennes, the female residents of the city. Exactly why it was felt necessary to elevate local women above street level is not known, although experts believe it was probably something to do with looking up their skirts. One theory suggests the walkways were subsequently destroyed by gangs of feral linguists furious at the Anglification of the French language, and grafitti recently discovered on a footbridge near Gare du Nord ('Ceci c'est un chemin de marche') is thought to originate from this time.

**Lynott is careful here to point out that it is Beaujolais wine that he shares with his loved one, rather than, for example, the Beaujolais ice cream which was briefly popular in that summer of '49. Eschewing the fad for nouveau and presumably unable to afford vintage, Lynott selects from the cellar marked "old".

***Historians believe these corner caffs, or cuillères grasse, were another direct influence of the brief Parisian obsession with Birmingham. Such was their popularity that people would, as Lynott points out, queue in the streets all day for their chip butty and mug of Bovril, often sheltering in the shade of an adjacent walkway. If Lynott had looked down the street to the nearby Patisserie, he could have rhymed it with reverie. But he didn't.

****Like the sonnets of Shakespeare's time and the epic poems of the Romantics, the paragraph briefly flowered as the poet's preferred format in '49. The strength of one's affection could be determined from the coquettish offset of one's indent. Lynott here boasts that he could manage two or more paragraphs, a show of youthful braggadocio which would eventually lead to a new form of romantic expression, the memo.

While waiting for the automatic checkout at Sainsbury's to stop loudly accusing me of stealing (I'll give you an "unexpected item in the bagging area," you little snitch) I was able to watch a great drama unfolding in the Basket Only queue next door.

Two women arrive with a trolley. "It's Basket Only," says the checkout guy. "Yeah, but we've only got a few things, and I'm paying for half of them and she's paying for the rest," says the leading lady.

Checkout Guy thinks about this. He's probably been told that his customer facing role is all about good service. He's been told to go out of his way to accommodate the needs of the customer. There's probably a badge for it, and everything. But on the other hand, it's Basket Only and he's got a responsibility which only he among the checkout staff has been entrusted with; to use his judgement to decide whether the customer in front of him has a basket or a trolley. He glances over his shoulder. "Go on then," he says.

Fatal. Experienced shoppers in adjacent queues gasp and exchange glances. Barcode scanners fall silent as Checkout Guy's colleagues down tools and listen in for the inevitable. He doesn't know it yet, but he's just assigned himself to a month of ambient replenishment in the pet food aisle. Because no sooner have the women started to build their two little piles on his belt than one of those pantechnion-style trolleys with a payload that would feed Kent hoves into view behind them. Such is its heft that it nearly sails straight through and out of the exit, because like an oil tanker, it needs about three miles to dissipate momentum. It docks and a middle aged bloke appears from behind it.

"It's Basket Only," says Checkout Guy. Middle-Aged Bloke points out, with some justification, that the ladies in front of him are unloading a trolley. Perhaps hearing the thundering hooves of approaching apocalypse, Checkout Guy abandons the customer-comes-first approach and goes for hard line enforcement of the rules. "Basket Only," he shrugs.

Now, Middle-Aged Bloke could, at this point, reverse his battleship and reberth it about, ooh, eight feet to the left, behind the nervous pensioner who's only got pearl barley and gin in her trolley, but he's not going to do that, is he? Because there is a principle to be upheld here, and that principle is: You have given me an opportunity to act like a complete arse, and I am bloody well going to take it. So he grabs an empty basket, puts it on the conveyor belt, and starts filling it from his trolley. He's either a construction engineer or a Black Belt in Jenga, because he's soon building pizza-box cantilevers, balanced by a six-pack counterweight, to extend the perimeter of the basket. He's going to get ten times the usual capacity in there, if it takes him all day. Checkout Guy has not been briefed for this. "It's Bask-" he says, but he knows he's done for. He can already smell the Whiskas and Winalot.

As I left - the auto-checkout let me off with a caution - I could see a second middle-aged bloke with a trolleyload that should have had flashing yellow lights and a police escort pulling into the queue, and a nineteen-year-old supervisor, head already shaking sadly, hurrying over to dispatch Checkout Guy to some immediate retraining, probably involving flashcards with pictures of a basket (tick) and a trolley (cross) on them.

Thing is, I can't work out if all this is funny or terribly, terribly sad. Any thoughts?

I enjoyed Andrew Harrisons' piece about Suede in the latest issue but I had to chuckle at his description of the town I live in as 'a stultifying suburb of London'.

Stultifying it certainly is. Brett Anderson once said that when they were kids he and his friends would sit on Haywards Heath station and gaze longingly up the tracks towards the West End. That is genuinely what passes for entertainment around here, but they wouldn't have seen much, as Piccadilly Circus is 45 miles away. A 40 minute drive beyond the M25, Haywards Heath is as much a suburb of London as, say, Reading or Northampton. Unlike Balham or Brixton, it's 15 minutes from the beach.

It's often said the Southerners think the world ends at Watford, but there's a corollary to that; Northerners get as far as The Embankment, stare out across The Thames and think they're looking at France.

From our table in the corporate hospitality marquee we had a fantastic view of the VIP toilets. This is pretty much what my life has amounted to: the urine-soaked end of the red carpet, nibbling perspiring canapes amid wafts of the intoxicating musk of celebrity excrement.

Waiting for a friend outside the Gents was a familiar figure - a former Wimbledon champion, still athletic in early middle age, still sporting his trademark single earring, although the chequered headband had been wisely abandoned. He was waiting a long time, too; whoever was in there was obviously doing something heavier and more ponderous than your average widdle. Eventually he emerged - black leather trousers, black shirt barely buttoned, black goatee, black glasses, blackened hair - and the two of them walked past us and on to whatever inner circle of celebrity heaven lay beyond the security guards at the far end of the tent.

"Ooh Look," said everyone at my table. "It's Pat Cash from Wimbledon '87"
"F*ckin' ell," said I, "It's Tony Iommi from Black Sabbath"

Meanwhile, in the royal box, Andrew Strauss was sitting next to Diana Ross. Imagine THAT conversation.

My wife knows better than to expect a present from me on her birthday. Years of disappointment have worn down her expectations, and nowadays we both agree that "So - no present again this year?" followed by a ten-minute cold shoulder is better than the old days when I'd be frantically searching my pockets for the receipt while she sobbed "You don't know me AT ALL!" and blew her nose on the wrapping paper.

We've also agreed to shelve the spontaneous gestures. We know from bitter experience that if I were to leave her a note saying Meet me at Victoria at 6.30pm. Wear your best frock it would produce the following email in reply:

RE: Tonight
- Do I need my glasses?
- Do I need my wellies (like last time)?
- Will any of my friends be there?
- If so, what will they be wearing?
- Have you booked the theatre / restaurant / Orient Express or are you "holding out for a last minute deal" again? Because we've talked about this.
- Is this an 'ironic' treat where you turn up in a tuxedo and take me to McDonald's? Because we've talked about this too.
- If it's Go Karts, Paintball or Bowling I will run you down / shoot you in the knackers / stick your head in the ball return
- Have you remembered your wallet this time?

The problem is that her suspicion is completely justified. I'm rubbish at romance. I love her to bits and she knows it, but I struggle to show it in any conventional manner. With a couple of very special occasions on the horizon, I need to raise my game.

There must be some great romantics out there who can give me tips - but I don't know any of them so you, Massive, will have to do. What's worked for you?

Last night I watched Part One of the Queen: Days Of Our Lives documentary and it was a bit like walking past an old girlfriend in the street. I realised that however much I had once loved them I hadn't given them a second thought in thirty years.

Between A Night At The Opera (age 11) and The Game (age 16) I was held spellbound by this band and if you consider the years, '75-'80, you can appreciate what I gave up in my devotion to Freddie and the boys. Being too young for Prog and too parochial for Punk, I thought they were the coolest thing in the world (I'm from Eastbourne; you couldn't smell the zeitgeist over the salt and the seagull shit). They had satin tour jackets, and their own crest, and girls on bikes in the nuddy. They were the first proper band I saw live - Wembley, 7 December 1980 - the night Lennon died.

Their first seven albums were the aural wallpaper in my bedroom, and for a while the actual wallpaper too - I Blu-Tacked the sleeves above my bed. One night A Day At The Races fell down and I woke up with my face in its gatefold embrace. If you'd asked me, before yesterday, what was on my turntable the night the Seventies ended I'd probably say it was London Calling or Armed Forces, but actually that came later. I think it was probably Live Killers.

I would have popped with pubescent ecstacy when Another One Bites The Dust went to No.1 in America but then they brought out Hot Space with all its dreadful cash-in disco funk, and I played it once and that was it. I was seventeen by then and I knew shite when I heard it. Fred's moustache and Brian's hair made me want to punch them for deceiving me all those years, and I stopped trying to be Roger Taylor and decided to be Steve Jansen from Japan instead. I traded in the satin jacket and Aviators for a greatcoat and Ray-Bans. Queen shrugged off my contempt and went on to world-rogering success. I went off to college, left the Queen albums in a cupboard at home, and never listened to them again.

So that was the Band I Grew Out Of. What was your BIGOO?

My official job title on this, my first rock'n'roll tour of the United States, is 'Stashmule.' No one's really explained what my duties are yet - I think it might be something to do with making sure all the equipment is accounted for at the end of the show - but it certainly seems to be a fairly senior position in the crew hierarchy, as I didn't even have to pack my own bags for the flight from London! The roadies insisted on coming round and doing it for me.

I'm in New York with the David Ford Relative Luxury tour. It's called that partly because thanks to a Texan fan who's big in hotels, our 7th Avenue accommodation with its view of Times Square is a cut above the usual Travel Hovels and Off-Ramp Motels; and partly because Ford's mother is here with us. For the next 16 days and 3000 miles David will be promoting the US launch of his third album Let The Hard Times Roll, and his autobiographical handbook for young musicians wishing to dodge the slings and arrows of outrageous fame and wealth, I Choose This: How Not To Make It in the Music Business. I will be carrying things.

For last night's gig in Brooklyn I'd been told to stay out out the way, not touch anything, and stop insisting that Song For The Road would benefit from the additional of a ham-fisted amateur guitarist. HORA fans will be pleased to hear that yes, I do have access to the harmonicas. Not much chance of diva-ish behaviour from the boss, though, as Ford prepares for the show with a camomile tea with a lemon and honey chaser. Trust me to go on tour with the only clean living boy in New York. And his mum.

Jogging by the East River yesterday morning I passed lone musicians scattered between the Generating Station and the Brooklyn Bridge. A drummer, then an oboeist, then a saxophonist, and so on. It's a crap spot for busking, I thought, especially at 7.30am. Then I realised - these were all instruments you can't play quietly. When you live in a hi-rise, you go down to the river to practise.

By the way, New Yorkers are pretty sure the World's going to end next Saturday. Well, nearly - it'll be Judgement Day, the papers here say, when the process begins of choosing the Few who will ascend to heaven. Sounds like a logistical nightmare to me. Imagine the paperwork.

Anyhoo, I won't bore you with the What I Did On My Holiday journal. I do need some playlist help though. Finding New York-themed songs for the journey was easy, and the drive to Thursday's show in Asbury Park NJ will be Bruce all the way, but until then we're in Massachusetts and I've only got one song by the BeeGees and Roadrunner ("The modern sounds of modern Massachusetts"). There's only so many times you can listen to More Than a Feeling by Boston, ie none. I'm struggling with Philadelphia and Washington too.

See you in three weeks, if we're still here.

Apart from I’m afraid it’s spread to your liver and We’re going to have to let you go, there can be few phrases that strike dread into the heart more than the words Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr Rick Parfitt Junior.

It’s particularly dangerous and irresponsible to suddenly make an announcement like that when there are 1600 people in a room with only one exit. I like to think I conduct myself with dignity and honour at all times, but had there been any young children present last night at this big corporate awards shindig at the Telford International Centre (it’s ‘International’, as far as I can make out, because it’s near Wales) I would gladly have elbowed them in the face if it had got me out of there quicker. People were going over the tables rather than round them. I’m pretty sure I saw a string quartet stoically playing on until they were engulfed in the deluge.

We’d been kettled under hot lights for about four hours and I’d been downing Bendicks After Dinner Mints like popcorn to mask the taste of the warm South African Merlot. Some bands must get used to coming on stage to the sound of a screaming crowd, but the audience is not usually running in the opposite direction. Rick Jr and the boys arrived to the sight of chairs being hurled aside and grown men scrambling over each other in a desperate bid for freedom.

About 90 minutes later, wandering back to the bar from the bogs, I heard a familiar noise and put my head around the door of the hall. The 500 or so people who hadn’t made it to the lifeboats were not only by the stage, they were on it. Posh frocks twirled on sweaty calves and ties were worn bandana-style round the head for the first time since the last day of school. They were leaping about like spring lambs. Somewhere in the mob the band were playing Rocking All Over the World and it sounded brilliant. It was a stupidly great party and I, stupidly, had missed it because I’d been talking about football with a bloke from Bristol.

So if there’s a lesson in this it’s probably that judging bands by their credibility or cool means that you’ll miss out on a lot of joyful dancing and uncontrollable grinning; and that even if it’s a dodgy chancer cranking out his dad’s greatest hits, and even if the audience are nearer their sixties than their twenties, there’s absolutely nothing better on a hot night than a rocking band and a heaving crowd.

Even, so it seems, in Telford.