Reading this month's Word on "Whatever happened to singing" brought Adele to mind. Everyone seems to like her but I find her endless bellowing tedious. There's no light and shade, no light touch to anything she does. Everything is full on, belted out at maximum volume - the X-factor approach to emoting. Any one agree?

... when you rediscover a old favourite album you haven't heard in years. In my case it's the debut album by The Pretenders, which I hadn't heard for about 20 years until a week ago. Great songs, excellent guitar by James Honeyman-Scott (cited as an influence by Johnny Marr, no less), and if there was a better female voice in rock than Chrissie Hynde at that time, I'd like to know who it was.

Anyone else dug up an old treasure lately? (I guess there's some comedy potential in that question)

A good piece of drama starring Timothy Spall, much of it set among drug dealing street gangs in South London. The thing that struck me was how much of the street scenes seemed to be inspired by or borrowed from The Wire, even to the extent of showing the neighbourhood crack dealer and his cronies lounging on a beat up old sofa outside a decaying set of flats, in the style of the Barksdale crew.

Keith James is a guitarist and singer/songwriter, who as well as his own work, has been very busy touring The Songs of Nick Drake for a few years now. I saw him for the second time last night at Bush Hall in Shepherd's Bush. Definitely not a tribute act, but someone who plays and interprets Nick Drake's work sensitively, is a fine guitarist, and is accompanied by an equally excellent double bass player, Rick Foot.

If you get the chance to see him, I recommend you do, although his current tour ends fairly soon.

Anyone else familiar with the man?

I've just picked up in a charity shop a biography of Hank Williams called Lovesick Blues, by Paul Hemphill.I haven't read many music bios, and usually find them disappointing. Hank seems like a character worth finding out about, so if anyone knows this one, please tell me; is it worth reading?

I'm sorry if I've missed it, as I haven't been through all the recent entries, but I can't believe that this month's best/worst opening lines didn't include (in the best!) "Pretty women out walking with gorillas down my street" from Joe Jackson's It's Different for Girls. The whole jealous/angry/nerdy view of relationships in 9 words.

P.S. for all you techie people, why are my posts always dated 1/1/1970?

As I recall his show was on sunday evening in the early days of Radio 1. It was Mike Raven's R & B show, and he played the blues, R & B and also played ska & bluebeat long before anyone else that I'm aware of in British broadcasting. Along with John Peel's Top Gear show it shaped my musical taste for life. Is he still alive and if so what is he doing?

Oh sorry, we've done that one.

Happy New Year everybody.

The above phrase was used in a previous post talking about bad clapping at gigs. It reminded me of seeing Ray Davies a couple of years back, and being amused as everyone bellowed out with one voice "I'm not like everybody else". A bit of a Life of Brian (crowd: we're all individuals! - lone voice: I'm not!) moment that.

In the words of the Stones "it's only rock and roll but I like it". Stop picking it to pieces, chaps. We all know they were brilliant, and I grew up buying their singles in the 60's. However there's no Beatles song in my top 10 (or 20 for that matter) favourite tracks. It's more to do with what strikes an emotional chord than the musical accomplishment.

Looking back to punk and post punk days, I find it hard to understand why it made me feel old at first. I had grown up on Zeppelin, Hendrix, Dylan, Clapton, Bowie and all the usual suspects. The vanguard of punk tried to blow all the old farts away, but looking back I realise that most of them (Lydon, Devoto, Shelley, even Ian Curtis) were the same age as me give or take a year (I'm 52 now), Strummer even older, so why did I suddenly feel that I belonged to an earlier generation? What had they grown up listening to?