I love Ben Goldacre, am a regular reader of his website and Guardian column, and even seek mental sustenance at his delicious.com fountain. But Jude was very restrained in her treatment of him (although I suppose it doesn't do for interviewers to give their subjects a slap). He really doesn't do himself or his just cause any favours does he?

A number of people played a part in defining 20th century Britain. Troy Kennedy Martin, who wrote Z Cars, the Italian Job, and Edge of Darkness amongst others can fairly be said to have made a significant contribution to that process. Sadly, he died yesterday.

(Interesting that his brother was responsible for Juliet Bravo and the Sweeney.)

kashmir from Steve Scott on Vimeo.

I thought someone would have posted this already, but a search didn't divulge it. Monday's Guardian had its usual Charlie Brooker article. This week he discloses how he has discovered Spotify and put it to service in the pursuit of Brookerian evil. There are playlists, but context is everything, so here's the link to the article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/08/charlie-brooker-spot...

More from the "There's nothing new under the sun" department:

Genius.

Back in the 70s, I was very fond of the eponymous Suicide album. I played it frequently (and probably as loud as the old Hitachi music centre would allow). Over the years it was lost. Thanks to the magic of Spotify I have found it again.

What was I thinking? No wonder I moved on to Joy Division -- they must have been light relief. I now suspect my mother disposed of the record when I wasn't looking.

I thought it was a sign of age when I started shaking my head and muttering about my children's taste in music. Nothing they listen to compares to Frankie Teardrop: 10'26" of concentrated angst. (I just listened to it again...)

Anyone else have any old faves that now make their skin crawl?

In the Mamma Mia thread, Kitson declares that he (she?) doesn't like musicals, and David H responds that the aforementioned songfest is not really a musical strictu sensu.

Mr H is right (of course), and I also agree with Kitson in that I find MM unbearable. My problem is that all of these jukebox musicals fit into a category with opera singers singing pop (with full operatic power): they just don't fit together.

Some time ago, as a committed John Peel listener, I went to the National Theatre production of Guys and Dolls (what a cast: Bob Hoskins, Julia McKenzie, Julie Covington, Ian Charleson, Bill Paterson, David Healey, Imelda Staunton, Barry Rutter and Jim Carter). Despite my rockular sympathies, I loved it. Since then, I have enjoyed a range of others. The defining feature of these (proper) musicals (or even operas) is that the songs follow the story, even when they become as popular later as "La donna è mobile" or "Sit Down, You're Rockin' the Boat". A jukebox musical cannot do this. By definition, the audience is likely to be familiar with all the songs before they enter the auditorium.

But the jukebox musical isn't just a concert of cover versions with a sketchy storyline. We are supposed to pretend that it is a real musical. In the same way, G4 singing "Creep" drags Radiohead's song into a place where we have to pretend that it is mild and comfortable. The two idioms just don't belong together.

So I am really going to struggle when Daughter No. 1 starts her school production of "We Will Rock You" next term. Damn. (At least she didn't get a lead role. Does that make me a bad parent?)

Following up on the comments on the podcast about Michelle and Yesterday, I wondered what other timeless classics from major artists have lost their charm. For me it is, and always was Bridge Over Troubled Water. Just like the aforementioned Fabs platters, this Simon and Garfunkel grannies' favourite just brings me out in a rash, and always has done.

Any other suggestions?

Here is an antidote:

It beggars belief that the writer of this could tolerate Macca's schmaltzy warbings.

Given the content of the last few podcasts, I thought the Dean and Chapter of the Word diocese might be interested in this:

in which Mr Clay Shirky, a noted commentator on internet activities, comes to the striking conclusions that:

Americans spend 100 million hours a weekend watching advertisements on TV, which is the amount of time the whole internet has invested in getting Wikipedia to the state it is in now.

That:

It's better to do something than to do nothing. Even lolcats, even cute pictures of kittens made even cuter with the addition of cute captions, hold out an invitation to participation. When you see a lolcat, one of the things it says to the viewer is, "If you have some sans-serif fonts on your computer, you can play this game, too." And that's message--I can do that, too--is a big change.

That:

This is something that people in the media world don't understand. Media in the 20th century was run as a single race--consumption. How much can we produce? How much can you consume? Can we produce more and you'll consume more? And the answer to that question has generally been yes. But media is actually a triathlon, it 's three different events. People like to consume, but they also like to produce, and they like to share.

And that

Let's say that everything stays 99 percent the same, that people watch 99 percent as much television as they used to, but 1 percent of that is carved out for producing and for sharing. The Internet-connected population watches roughly a trillion hours of TV a year. That's about five times the size of the annual U.S. consumption. One per cent of that is 10,000 Wikipedia projects per year worth of participation.

In case anyone fears that I transcribed this myself, there is a readable version. There is even a story about a four-year-old and a DVD that Mark Ellen can raise his eyebrows at.

Never mind Auto-Tune, here's a beardy German who has invented a way of changing individual notes within chords.

This is most definitely not your father's music.

Anthony Minghella's first feature film as a director was called "Cello" whilst in production. Anyone who has seen "Truly, Madly, Deeply" will understand why. I don't know which is the better title. It is not a great film, but it is a good one, and one that I have fond memories of, as I was living in Bristol when it was filmed. (Only the most obviously metropolitan sequences were filmed in London.)

It is also ten times better than Ghost. Here's the evidence:

• Alan Rickman vs Patrick Swayze: victory to Rickman
• Juliet Stevenson vs Demi Moore: Ms Stevenson wins by a length
• Cello vs pottery: the instrument beats the pot
• "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore" vs "Unchained Melody": a tricky one, but the Walker Brothers (even imitated by Rickman and Stevenson) must beat the Righteous Brothers, no?

RIP Anthony, from one Vectis-born to another.

I am surprised nobody has pointed to this: Seth Godin on the future of the music business. Bob Lefsetz highlighted it in his regular e-mail, and it pinpoints all that is wrong with the music industry and the assumptions that they continue to make about their product and its consumers. Best of all, it is a presentation that Seth gave to people in the business. I wonder how well it went down.

I love the internets!

While reading the Edith Piaf/Specsavers comments, I popped along to Youtube to listen to the sparrow herself. There are some truly stirring gems there, mixed in with some oddities. And this:

Which is a sample of the vast amount of material available as a video podcast and various types of download from La Blogothèque in French (Concerts à emporter) or English (Take Away Shows).

As they say: "The Take Away Shows are a Video Podcast produced by the french weblog La Blogothèque. Every week, we give away a session, shot with a band, in an unusual, urban environment. Sessions are always filmed as a unique shot, without any cut, recorded live. We usually haven't much time to record them, so the groups have to be spontaneous, to improvise, play with what they have with them, and with their environment, whether there's a public or not."

There is a vast array of Word-friendly material. How about Keren Ann, The Divine Comedy, Taraf de Haidouks, Arcade Fire and many more...

The one I found on Youtube is My Brightest Diamond, who is known to her family as Shara Worden. Although she isn't French, I think she may appeal to David Hepworth's tastes.

All these riches, downloadable for your viewing pleasure. I love the internets.

One of the problems with having virtually all the world's recorded music history available at the click of a mouse is that it is a bit disorientating. Does this band that I really like still exist other than in my iPod. (It's an almost Heisenbergian uncertainty.)

A couple of examples:

One of the tracks John Peel played on his last World Service show (broadcast posthumously) was "Park Lane Speakers" by Ella Guru. The band also featured on the third Word CD (back in the days when it wasn't on every month's magazine and went by the name Word of Mouth). The Guardian loved them: "...a delicate, subtle sound of immense poise...". Their album's very title, The First Album, promised more. But now, their website is dated 2005, the forum is gone, the band is frozen in that time. But has it gone? Is there a second album in the offing? Who knows?

A good way of discovering new acts from the comfort of one's armchair is to wade through the SxSW bundle of 700 or so tracks every year, or (more locally) to browse the contents of the annual In The City Unsigned album. Last year, I found a track I liked enough to find out more about the band. Cheap Dates are a splendidly poppy amalgam of London and Lousiana. I bagged some more tracks from their MySpace page, and hoped they would get a record deal so that we might hear more. It doesn't appear to have happened. Everything has gone quiet (apart from the spam), so I have to assume that Cheap Dates have moved on. But have they?

Uncertainty. It's a bugger (as Werner probably didn't say).

In anticipation of Melvyn Bragg's interview with Eric Clapton on the South Bank Show, there is a curt rejection of the guitarist in today's Guardian Guide: The Borrower (subtitled "Eric Clapton is not God - he's not even original"). It concludes: "Clapton's popularity is a mystery - there's no fire, no abandon, no musical identity. Given a platform, Clapton will either send you to sleep or offend your musical sensibilities with pap."

All of this rang true with me. I have never understood the Clapton-philes. As far as I could see, there was always something more interesting on. Tomorrow's South Bank Show is no exception. I see there is a repeat of Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps on BBC3.