The Count's series one is currently on Radio 7 and the third series is on Radio 4. This fact has forced me to shell out the 20 squid odd on Audio Highjack.

I seem to remember there were some complaints from Radio 4 listeners saying that this programme was not very funny, so is it just me who thinks that Steve Delaney is a genius? In my opinion The Word should be being giving The Count some Face Time asap....

This has probably be done before.If so, mea culpa.

Now that even CDS are rapidly becoming passe, the art of the album cover seems to be heading for extinction. However, I still remember poring over full size LP covers in fascination (sometimes I must admit I was in a slightly chemically enhanced state).

My nomination for the best album cover ever is The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter by the Incredible Strings Band, which is also my nomination for the best Title too. For those of you not into pyschedelic folk world music this is what it looks like:

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1364/1468658862_2723be6964.jpg?v=0

Any other suggestions for Best In Show?

I am a little confused. According to this month's letter column, it is morally incorrect to judge rock stars making wads of cash from advertising, but - according to previous editions of WORD and this week's podcast - aid workers (and various arty types at Hay festival) who dance to African groups CAN be judged and found morally smug. Indeed, we can laugh at them because they haven't got "Natural African Rhythm"...or something. Maybe they were enjoying themselves so much they forgot to just do the obligatory Indie Boy head jerk and shoulder sway?

Well spring and summer are coming and I have bought tickets to see Elbow and Jose Gonzalez in the next few weeks and (so far) the only festival I am definitely going to is Womad, where I'm really looking forward to Toumani Diabate. I reckon they'll all be great.

But, as a public service announcement, can all you experts out there share your experience and tell us who who are the not-to-be-missed artistes tearing up the stages at the moment or through the summer festival season.

Okay here is the rules: not including the usual suspects such as novelty hits and tat such as Westlife, Steps and their ilk. what are your suggestion for the worst three really big hits.

First of all:

(Dis)honourable mention: We Built This City - Jefferson Starship

How the mighty fall: in a decade or two, Grace Slick goes from being the scary, drug Shirley Bassy of White Rabbit or the decadent intellectual babe suggesting a Menage a Trois on Triad to this piece of annoying self-congratulatory tat.

But Grace and co and not as bad as what follows. Here in full and in traditional reverse order, are my suggestions of the worst of the worst:

(3) You're Beautiful - James Blunt

This will probably get a play on every radio station in the Western World today, it being Valentines an' all. But sorry JB: going nowhere melody + whine of a voice = BIG turnoff. Plus, is it just me, but aren't the lyrics subtly more sexist than any "Bitches on the Floor put it out right now" rap song?

(2)Africa - Toto.

Pass the sick bag. The apotheosis of AOR with a lyric that should have won the recent "rubbish lyric" thread - just look it up it; is amazingly hideous and hackneyed. Also, technically, listen while the singer tries to make the lines:"I know that I must do what's right. Sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengetti" scan with the non-existent melody. AND NOT SUCCEED.

(1) I will always love you - Whitney Houston

Listen as our Whitney squeezes out any genuine emotion from Dolly's original choon and turns it into an antiseptic "Hey people, look at what I can do with my tonsils" exercise. When she hits that final key change like a learner driver clunking though the gear box I am always close to retching. In one song, she spawned the entire Maria Carey and Celine Dion School of Emotionally Empty Torch Singing.

phew glad I got that off my chest.

you might not like the track (of course I do), but isn't this video brilliantly appropriate and the best evocation of its spirit:

Or have you got a better suggestion?

Here is something that I think ties in with a recent Podcast conversion concerning play-lists.

While listening to Crown of Creation by Jefferson Airplane it struck me that the average indie loving punter would only really know two tracks by this group: White Rabbit and Someone to Love. During the sixties and seventies, particularly in the USA, they were gods (and a Godess) of all they surveyed. Certainly, their first four or five albums are brilliant and, in our retro-obsessed times, Crown of Creation would stand up for release tomorrow. And yet, while contemporaries like The Byrds, Crosby Stills Nash (and Young), and Captain Beefheart are always tipped as influences by the latest skinny 20-something gang touting for custom, the Airplane have all but disappeared from rock's rich tapestry.

Any other suggestions for Big Groups at the Time who are now ignored or never listened too? ELP are in the same boat I reckon.

Mind you, having said nice things about JA, a Stalinist removal of the whole Jefferson Starship period who be appropriate in my eyes

While watching the last two episodes of BBC4's excellent Pop on Trial series, a terrible revelation crept up on me. Previously I always remembered the eighties with a shudder: Thatcher, Reagan, Greed is Good, recurring nightmares about nuclear armageddon, music with compressed production and tinny electronic percussion. And yet...by the end of last night's episode, as Stuart McC and friends trawled through the evidence, it became obvious that everything I knew was wrong.

All the truly original stuff happened in the eighties. Just look at the facts: as the decade began, Liverpool, Manchester, and Sheffield, were spewing out original groups like Echo and the Bunnymen, The Teardrop explodes, New Order, the reconfigured Human League, and ABC. By the mid-eighties, The Smiths were unstoppable and Prince and Michael Jackson were pushing out classic albums. Then, as the decade closed, while rave took off and the first and best rap tracks were produced, The Stone Roses fired up the celebratory rocket that was their first album.

In contrast, the main music story of the nineties was an argument between two regressive bands presenting warmed up left overs from the 1960s. Rap drifted into cartoon violence and misogyny. And Pop Idol and its spawn began the slow destruction of the singles market. Only Pulp and the Blessed Jarvis were offering some original insight.

My conclusion: the nineties was an ecstasy and coke fueled hallucination summoned up by a, largely London based, clique of usual media suspects.

As usual while pushing pens I have itunes on shuffle in the background. In the last few minutes, The Same Deep Waters as Me by I am Kloot popped up. It is so gorgeous I had to switch off the shuffle and go straight to the albums. To me, every track on I am Kloot is a polished jewel. I couldn't help thinking why aren't they massive? After all other groups plough a similar emotional furrow - say the ubiquitous Coldplay and Keene - but not with that added laconic acerbity. Maybe that's why they haven't broken out of the indie box?

Can anyone suggest artistes that, from their viewpoint, really should be flirting with Gwyn and Bono while swanning round LA and Davos, but are grubbing around in Dole Town, or playing Wembley but are still playing the basement of a pub in the local city centre..and more interstingly maybe suggest reasons why it never happened.