When I bought mine I got a 16GB model because I don't want to have more than a certain amount of music at a time. I'm not one of those people who has to carry their entire record collection around with them. However, I underestimated the appeal of apps and how much space some of them would take up. If I did it again I would probably go for a bigger capacity.

...."Whammer Jammer" by the J. Geils Band. That's my nomination.
I've started a Spotify Playlist.
Add your choice for a scorching opener to it and give radio producers some fresh ideas.
http://open.spotify.com/user/dhepworth/playlist/58JBBcozIjQpyhac1UYKmL

George Graham has just been on the radio commenting on the John Terry business and he said that when he was playing footballers ranked behind rock stars and film stars. Nowadays, he reckoned, footballers were, if anything, ahead of the latter two groups in earning power, in celebrity and in their ability to create headlines. What do you think? Is there a rock star who could stop traffic like, say, Wayne Rooney might if he was spotted in the middle of Manchester? Is there a rock star whose appearance in court could create as much fuss as, say, Steven Gerrard did with his nightclub altercation? Apart from Brangelina, is there a marriage between actors that is as speculated about as that between Ashley Cole and Chery Cole? Have football stars now ascended to a new level of fame, envy and notoriety? Are they the only people who don't hire PRs to keep their little local difficulties out of the papers and turn up at city centre night spots looking for fights rather than hiding away behind the red ropes of private clubs?

We had "High Wide and Handsome" by Loudon Wainwright on a recent "Now Hear This" CD. Just this last week I find myself playing it all the time - usually rather loud. One of the things I like about it is the way it boldly lays out a complete recipe for life. "High wide and handsome - they're the way life should be....Let's live it up...might as well we're all dying..." etc etc. And it's a philosophy that's meant to be declared from the highest rooftops. It's bracingly bold. Here's Loudon doing it:

Any other songs that sum up the way we should look at life?

We've got a Bee Gees Greatest Hits playing at the moment in the office. We're on to a track called "Fanny Be Tender With My Love". You wouldn't find a promotion man these days prepared to take that into Radio One. What else happened once in pop music that wouldn't happen any more?

So here's the thing. I've just found this not very pin-sharp footage of the Allman Brothers Band playing live at the Fillmore East in September 1970, presumably during the same week they recorded their famous live album. Now I know it's probably true that nobody would want to hear this kind of thing nowadays and it's certainly not the kind of thing that gets you a session on night time Radio One but, look, Duane Allman is twenty-three. Twenty-three. The average age of the band can't be much more. He's already played on "Layla" and recorded with Aretha Franklin. He's the age most people are trying to get some work experience. There are no click-tracks, no pre-recorded samples in use, you don't even get the sense that it's actually a performance. It's just a bunch of blokes playing, pretty much as they would in a rehearsal room. Now as I say I know it's ancient and dated and all that but what I want to know is this. Now that we've got Rock Schools on every corner and you can probably do a university course in Rock, is it conceivable that you could find a bunch of musicians in their early twenties nowadays who could play anything like as well as this?

The Bob Lefsetz Letter has been looking at whether Madonna's performance at the Haiti Telethon was live or mimed and has attracted some fascinating feedback from the experts in the business of on-stage chicanery. Most fascinating was this contribution from one Foster Hagey who says:

The engineer is using the mic she has in her hand to trigger a gate on the pre-recorded track. This way the pre-recorded track only plays when she sings into the mic in her hand. Check 2:06 into the video. The line is, "Life is a mystery." but all we hear is "...is a mystery." You can hear the gate pop open when she gets the mic up to her mouth. It sounded 40% live 60% pre-recorded to me.

Thoughts?

I spent yesterday afternoon listening to the Word One-Hit Wonders Playlist on Spotify. Thanks to everyone who added to it. It was, by the common consent of everybody in the office, the best Spotify Playlist there has ever been or is ever likely to be. Every time a new track came on somebody would look up, smile and go "Ah. Who's this again?" and others would mutter "Horst Jankowski" or "Barry Ryan" or "Brian Protheroe" or "Till Tuesday". Looked at the list again this morning and it's grown to 305 tracks, which would run for the next twenty hours. By the time I've finished this somebody will have added to it further. Listening to it has made me wonder whether one-hit wonders, as we disrespectfully term them, carry the true DNA of pop.
1. Unlike every other Spotify list, this has nothing boring on it. It's been compiled according to entertainment value and not reputation. This is *everybody's* music.
2. All one-hit wonders sound poignant. Even if you didn't like them at the time they take you back and everybody likes being taken back.
3. One-hit wonders float free of the heavy hand of genre. You don't have to be "into" hip hop to like Grandmaster Flash doing "White Lines".
4. Listening to them you realise that sentiment aces edginess every time.
5. There's a whole lot of huge hits that wouldn't be hits today because no radio station would play them. Who today would programme Eric Carmen's "All By Myself"?
6. "Take My Breath Away" by Berlin is a great, great record.
7. A lot of them are gauche and way less than perfect. That doesn't matter. In fact, it probably helps. I'm listening to Martha & the Muffins doing "Echo Beach" as I'm writing this.
8. What must it be like to know that you once had your name on a brilliant, brilliant, inspiring record and no matter how hard you try it's never going to happen again? I'm thinking of you, Cornershop and you, Warren G. It must be frustrating. They should take comfort from the fact that most artists don't get to figure in this list even once.
9. There should be a special sub-category for people who were a one-hit wonder more than once, if you follow me. I'm thinking here about people like Chris Montez, who had a big hit with "Let's Dance" and then, many years later, had another hit, "The More I See You", that didn't sound anything like the first hit.
10. I've just added Harry Chapin's "W*O*L*D" and I don't intend to check whether it actually was a hit or not. In my memory it was.

Somebody just sent me a link to an open letter where OK Go explain how fed up they are that EMI (their record company) won't let people embed their video in any old site. The reason, which OK Go, being intelligent human beings, understand, is that EMI don't stand a chance of making any money out of it and the old "it's for promotion" explanation won't wash any more. OK Go have to use expressions like "bummed out" to make it clear that they're sympathetic to the fans and expressions like "kinda" to simultaneously stress that they understand where their record company are "coming from".

On one site this led to the usual torrent of reaction, some of which displays a touching belief that OK Go, like any up and coming group, must be trying to pull the wool over the fans' eyes because they're clearly having a terrific time and "they cruise around in a big ass, cushy tour bus all year long". This view of the economics of the music business, which seems to owe a lot to great thinkers like neil out of The Young Ones and Wolfie in Citizen Smith, is grounded in the belief that all bands must be living the life of Riley because they're not living the same life as the fans. This point of view takes root in ignorance and is allowed to blossom by the wide gulf between the life that is lived by the bands (even the up and coming, mortgaged up to the hilt, living on KFC bands) and the people who buy their tickets and records (if they're very very lucky.)

I have a suggestion which I think could bridge this gulf of misunderstanding. It involves public transport. Back in the day when professional footballers earned not much more than the average skilled man, they used to go to the games on the same buses and trains as the fans. This communicated the important truth that they were men as other men and not the members of some distant, exotic species. I think musicians should do the same thing. They should use the same transport, bars, restaurants and facilities as their customers do. You should not be surprised if you look up on the Jubilee Line and see that a member of the band you're going to see is on the same train as you are. This would not be a pose. Because the fact is that no matter how parlous your finances might be, they are nothing like as parlous as those of most people you're going to see.

The average musician - and I include the members of OK Go in this - is potless. They're trying to make a living against massive odds. They don't expect any special treatment. But they must resent the assumption on the part of many of their fans that they're somehow living high on the hog on the tab of some record company or manager. They assume this because the members of Ok Go live, breathe and have their being behind the red rope of celebrity, even minor celebrity. What they have to do is come out from behind that rope and show themselves to be as other men. If they were sitting next to you on the tube on the way home from the gig you'd feel bad about not buying their record, wouldn't you?

Stevie Nicks singing along with a demo of "Wild Heart" in 1981 while having her make-up done. Don't look for this kind of thing in the future because everybody today is far too savvy to let anyone film them putting their make-up on.

British actress Eve Best plays Doctor Eleanor O'Hara in "Nurse Jackie". She speaks in a creamy, upper-class drawl, saves lives when she can (but is mainly interested in cutting people open to see what's inside them) and likes to lunch at expensive places before going handbag shopping. She sidles through the hospital in tight skirts and high heels and only says hello to people when she's wearing something new and wants them to notice.

I know it's all made-up but still.....

To mark the 20th anniversary of the first series of The Simpsons, let's pay tribute to the great thinker who is Homer Simpson, the man that we all wish to be and sometimes suspect that we already are, by nominating our favourite examples of The Wisdom of Homer. I shall begin:
"Kids, you tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is, never try."
Over to you...

Joining us in the pod tomorrow, with a packet of crisps and a pint of cider, is Steve Lamacq, the man without whom no guest list is complete. If you have any lines of enquiry, please post them here.

Upside down. With no kecks. That's got to smart.