Editing the Word Inbox, I do so love to read The Massive's tales of Who I Saw Before They Got Big. Pink Floyd at Cleethorpes; Colosseum at the Redcar Jazz Club; Queen at Truro City Call. As a child of the ’80s I never saw a legend in the making because, by the time I came to fruition, all the ledges had already been made. However last night, I managed to squeeze in to the tiny Hoxton Bar and Grill to see Janelle Monae – the broadway-trained, Fritz-Lang inspired, bowel-shatteringly talented Outkast discovery from Kansas – playing on a piece of staging no larger than a bus stop.

Monae is a tight theatrical concept years in the making: an R & B Master of Ceremonies in a top hat and white gloves prepared the audience for an "Emotion picture" while two dancers in cowls and Venetian plague doctor masks glided on stage. Monae – looking a bit like a gimlet in her Victorian high-neck blouse – burst on and hammered out the opening rap, Dance Or Die, from her forthcoming record The ArchAndroid (a visionary concept album far too complicated for me to understand). Drummer played like he was in a metal band; guitarist did warm, fat Santana-style riffs. Some of Monae's vocal lines sound like Gloria Estefan and others like James Brown. This is an unclassifiable act – they don't just pick and choose from the familiar bits of pop history, they seem to break it down and raise up something dark and new. If pop music was New York, this would be Gotham City. And Monae is a new performer in the Michael Jackson mould. While she never lost the audience, still she gave nothing away – didn't speak a word, never let the mask slip even as the foot-high quiff came loose from its lacquer and drooped like a bunch of palm fronds. Amazoid.

Man alive, this may just be the most sickeningly brilliant video / song / dance-off I've ever seen. Can't stop watching it!

On Saturday 24th May I joined a select group of fans, popular musicians and journalists in an undisclosed location on the south coast for the fifth annual BOB DAY. Bob Day is a group celebration of the birthday of Bob Dylan, and a practical workshop in Dylan appreciation. A large crowd kneels on the floor, straining their necks around a compendium of Dylan songs, and attempts to fit the words of - say - Tangled Up In Blue to the accompaniment of several guitars. Group fervour reaches religious pitch and anyone who's not "feeling it" is ejected and told to go and buy takeaway.

This year we piloted a new kind of "tribute songwriting". Each attendee was given a scrap of paper, asked to write down a word that came to mind when they thought of Bob and a single chord that Bob might use. The results were then placed in a large "beanie", shaken vigorously and read out in random order. Conjunctions were added where necessary and the following group composition was born. (The first two words to come out of the hat, incidentally, were "Bob").

Bob / Bob / on a harmonica
D / G / E / Am

Blue / paunchy / despair
Am / G / D minor7

Music / rolling / memories
D / G / A

I wish I was there
F / Am

But I was sorta there...
F / Am

The results were interesting. Some had chosen words from their favourite Dylan lyrics, while others had gone for less reverential observations based on his outward state or appearance. And no matter what was done to try and improve the chord sequence, it came out sounding like The Eagles.

Is this a new genre of music? The Fan Song - characterised by a haphazard combination of an artists's lyrical thumbprints, a fan's mildly drunken observations and an Eagles chord progression. The procedure might be repeated, with equally unsatisfactory results, for all major bands and musical icons.

Other events celebrated on he 24th included International Talk Like Bob Dylan Day. What did you do?