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.

Talk of Roger Whittaker elsewhere on this site brought an old memory to the surface.

For some reason, Ralph McTell (who is not at all like Roger Whittaker, but inexplicably linked with him in the murk of my subconscious) performed a concert at my primary school in 1974. Why would this be? It pre-dated the trend for concerts in schools. Did he have a schools-based tour going on? (Unlikely, I would have thought, given that he was at the height of his Streets of London fame.) He doesn't appear to have had a connection with the school, or the area (pre-yuppification Balham).

Anyway, my recollection is that I was less than impressed with Streets of London, but I do now remember that a song called Zig Zag Line stuck in my mind. I can't find a sample of it online now, but Wikipedia has a page about the album it came from: Easy, which also featured (amongst others) Bert Jansch, two former members of Fairport Convention and Danny (not related to Richard) Thompson.

Given that there is a certain fascination with the 70s, is it time for Ralph McTell to have a resurgence? I'm certainly tempted.

As far as I can tell, just about the only popular music with a religious root is gospel. Christian rock just strikes me as derivative pap.

Have I missed something?

A comment by iamnotthebeatles reminded me of a documentary in the BBC Edwardian season: "How the Edwardians spoke". (At the time of writing, you can find it on Google Video and GUBA.)

There is an interesting sequence near the beginning (from 03'00" to 04'00") to in which a dialect coach, Joan Washington, makes a link between "the way we speak and the scenery that surrounds us. ...Landscape has something to do with the tune of an accent." She compares the flatness of East Anglian accents and the undulation of South Wales (perhaps we could get Jude to demonstrate this for us on the next podcast). (She also talks about accents being in major or minor keys -- Birmingham being an example of the latter and North Yorkshire one of the former.)

An interesting theory, but what iamnotthebeatles's comment made me wonder is this: if Creedence Clearwater Revival is the sound of the American highways, then what does that say about our landscape. Does Oxford sound like Radiohead, and Glasgow like a mix of the Blue Nile, Franz Ferdinand and Alex Harvey? And what about the countryside? What does the Peak District sound like?

I have always liked Laura Barton's writing in the Guardian (she probably writes elsewhere as well, but that is where I see it). Today I think I found out why: she is a synaesthete. Synaesthesia fascinates me, as I suspect it does anyone who does not experience it.

There is another thing that Laura refers to in her article: "People always ask which part of a song you hear first: the words or the melody." I am very poor at spotting the words -- even of songs I know well. For me, music is a complete aural experience, and I find it difficult to concentrate consistently on one aspect of it (although I can tune into different parts from time to time). What about other people -- do you latch onto lyrics, or wallow in the whole?

Here's a couple of other articles that made my heart sing when I first read them, and which are still worth re-reading: on words:

'...my favourite word in songwriting history is actually exceedingly workaday, an unassuming, half-muttered "that", the second-to-last word in Leonard Cohen's Chelsea Hotel No 2: "That's all, I don't even think of you that often." Every single time I hear this line the "that" catches me, as if someone has stepped on the hem of my skirt and dragged me backwards.'

and on the music that is all around us:

'Back in the car, I am so desperate for music that I have become the soak before the liquor cabinet. At this stage, I'll drink anything: the drizzle falling on the windscreen plays like an acoustic guitar; the wipers are a wheezy accordion.'

And she is from Wigan. How much better can it get?

I haven't been able to update this blog for a while, but the "TV is the new rock 'n' roll" comment on the Word podcast made me think. What does this cliche mean?

I think it is this. Rock 'n' roll is to music what the Renaissance is to art or Shakespeare is to drama. It took an existing art form and made it exciting, bold and new, whilst at the same time creating real lasting celebrities. On this basis, TV is not the new rock 'n' roll. However, I think (and Mark Ellen might have to suffer this) computers (or more specifically software) might be.

How so? The IT industry is basically boring, with one or two notable (Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, for example) who might be likened to Caruso or Dame Nellie Melba -- celebrities but a bit too conventional. The kind of innovation that is going on around the internet at the moment is, however, a bit more like what Elvis, the Beatles and punk did for music -- novel, popularising, paradigm-changing.

I have discovered that my favourite albums by a number of artists are not typically the ones generally rated as their top-quality work.

For example, amazon.co.uk purchasers rate Bruce Springsteen's albums Born to Run, Darkness on the Edge of Town and The Ghost of Tom Joad most highly. Allmusic.com chooses Born to Run as its "album pick". My preference is for Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.

It's the same with Leonard Cohen. Amazon purchasers prefer The Songs of Leonard Cohen, Various Positions and Songs From a Room. Allmusic.com goes for The Songs of Leonard Cohen. My favourite is New Skin for the Old Ceremony.

And Tom Waits: Amazon people go for Rain Dogs, Alice and Nighthawks at the Diner; allmusic.com, Closing Time and Rain Dogs. Me: Blue Valentine (admittedly, this is highly rated by Amazon buyers, but not by allmusic.com).

The reason for my preferences? I think it's a combination of the fact that these are the first albums I heard of these artists, especially combined with the fact that my memories of those first hearings are bound up with other sentiments.

My guess is that others have a similar set of contrary views. Or is it just me?

I couldn't answer the "Beatles or Stones" question in the Personal Info area of my account here. I have never had an easy answer to this question. I like them both in different ways.

My first memory of hearing the Beatles knowingly (I am sure I actually heard their music before this) is a childish recollection of Yellow Submarine. I usually try to suppress this, for obvious reasons. Growing up, there was more Beatles music in the house than Rolling Stones. My acquaintance with the Stones later came when my step-mother bought me a Greatest Hits compilation - Rolled Gold - one Christmas in the mid-1970s. (For the avoidance of doubt, I was a red-headed step-child. Who knows what that might explain.)

Rolled Gold ("the very best of the Rolling Stones") was a double LP on Decca. It starts with a few covers (including a Lennon & McCartney song - I Wanna Be Your Man), and runs through the 1960s to the tension of Sympathy for the Devil, Street Fighting Man, Midnight Rambler and Gimme Shelter. I loved the first side, especially Little Red Rooster, and the last, grimmest side. These songs - dirty, gritty, heartfelt - are the Rolling Stones for me. They speak to my emotions. All the elements - vocals, melody, rhythm (even the cowbells) - work together as a team without excessive analysis. It looks so easy, and yet we know it is hard.

On the other hand, the Beatles' songs most often speak to my head, rather than my heart. They are more analytical, carefully composed, a little too cool, obviously carefully assembled. Is that George Martin's fault? I don't know. What I do know is that I still like the music. I need it in a different way. Although cerebral, I find it comforting and reliable.

The Blur/Oasis opposition that the media set up at the height of Britpop turned on "head vs heart" in a similar way. There are similar oppositions in other areas of music too. Joining Blur and the Beatles in the "head" camp I have Bach and the Decemberists, for example. The "hearts" mob contains, with the Stones and Oasis, Beethoven and the Arcade Fire.

Watching the TV coverage of The Arcade Fire at Glastonbury in the summer, I was inspired by their viscerally intoxicating performance to buy Neon Bible. It was a disappointment. On the other hand, I have played the Decemberists albums to death. They work as recordings, but I read a review of one of their live performances last week that was luke-warm at best. They play to different strengths.

So, don't make me choose between the Beatles and the Stones. I can't do it. The Monkees as a third choice? In the immortal words of Charlie Brown: oh good grief.

Earlier in the year, I spent a day in Newcastle with the children. As we walked around, we discovered Sandgate -- site of the vision that inspires the singer of the Keel Row.

Naturally, I sang the song, to the maximum embarrassment of the offspring.

Here's a version of the song played on the Northumbrian pipes (another taste of mine that is not shared by the wider family). The piper (Andy May) says that a Scottish friend of his describes the tune as the "Northumbrian way of crying." Great stuff!

For those of you who don't get it -- here is a set of images of Upper Coquetdale in the Cheviots, set to the piping of Kathryn Tickell ("What it is/Fare Well" from her album Back to the Hills).

How have Ireland and Scotland managed to export their traditions so successfully? Is Northumberland deliberately keeping its beauty to itself? Perhaps the review of Rachel Unthank and the Winterset's album in the last edition of the Word might start to change people's minds. It is a great musical treat, but some may find it off-putting at first. Give it a chance -- it's a grower.

Having listened to music in a much more concentrated way over the past three years (that being the length of time I have had an iPod), I have discovered a number of things about my likes and passions. One that I didn't know about before is the quality of the English female voice. Kathleen Ferrier and Sandy Denny both had a tone and sound that is as controlled and limpid as Miles Davis's trumpet or Sidney Bechet's clarinet. Go to the Wikipedia page for Kathleen Ferrier. There are some samples there. Despite the age of the recordings, Ferrier's voice shines through. Her renditions of English folk songs like Blow The Wind Southerly and The Keel Row are twee by today's standards, but (for me at least) essential listening. Sandy Denny's voice shines in a similar way in her recordings with Fairport Convention. Listen to Who Knows Where The Time Goes on the Unhalfbricking album. Denny's voice shines out from a fairly unprepossessing instrumental background. Currently it is my choice of music to be played at my funeral (although I hope not for many years). It has the curious effect of making we weak with sadness and simultaneously lifting my heart. How does that happen? I think this clarity of voice is an English trait. For me it isn't present in much Scottish music. I love the Delgados, but Emma Pollock's vocals were only a part of that sound (and her solo work doesn't move me at all). Very few American vocalists reach the same clarity, generally because of an excess of vibrato or melisma. It is also a female thing, and is usually rooted in the naturalistic style of the folk song. What about living singers? Certainly Kate Rusby and Eliza Carthy come close, but I have a feeling that these voices are rare, and we were lucky to have ours even for the short time that we did. Kathleen Ferrier died of breast cancer on 8 October 1953 at the age of 41. Sandy Denny of a brain haemorrhage on 21 April 1978 aged 31. Thanks to the wonders of recording we can enjoy their voices a lifetime and more later.