Over the last few months, we've seen yet another spate of so-called "revolutionary" promotional ideas cropping up in the world of music, largely, it would seem, as attempts to either stem, or perhaps swim with, the tide of illegal downloading or simply to find new ways of getting people interested in music in an oversaturated market place. I am, of course, being charitable here, as most are simply roundabout ways to make more money from other sources.

Radiohead let us pay what we wished to pay. Nine Inch Nails are giving their new album for free. Elvis Costello is trying to pull us back to the glories of good, old-fashioned vinyl - albeit with a free download code for the iPod generation.

In light of that, I have a few questions. (Note to self: try not to make this an essay... Jeez, you do bloody go on sometimes.)

1. How does this work for artists who are, unlike the above examples, not well-known enough already for such ploys to gain attention?

2. Are these ploys working for you? Are you drawn to investigate music you wouldn't have already purchased or, *coughs* acquired?

3. Does it devalue the music, in your mind, to be given it for free? Does it seem, somehow, less important?

Actually, what I'd quite like to hear from the masses is what WOULD draw you to a new release, outside of stumbling upon it on the radio, or say, in the pages of, I don't know, The WORD?

Or to put it another way, if you were in a band, what would YOU do to set yourself apart from the pack? Other than, of course, the obvious answer, which is... write better songs.

When I first moved to England from my native Canada, *cough cough* years ago, I had been brought up in an environment where the only real musical arguments that ever ensued were over exactly HOW Canadian a given piece of music was, and whether it qualified under the content percentage laws.

When Bryan Adams released "Waking Up the Neighbours", substantially co-written by the Zambian-born, South African-raised Mutt Lange, for instance, a national debate erupted as to whether it was quite Canuck enough, although I suspect this was largely motivated by those of us who were trying to pass responsibility for Adams to ANY other country.

So I was ill-prepared to arrive in England in the middle of Round 5,734 of the Class War, with Oasis and Blur seemingly battling for ownership of the public's hearts and minds. In the working class corner, the Gallaghers and co. Representing smart-arsed middle class student-types, Damon, Graham, Alex and Dave.

Frankly, I didn't know where to look. (Happily, at the time, I preferred Pulp, which allowed me to abstain from a lot of heated pub discussions.)

Now, I am, by any definition, working class. I was the oldest of six children, we were comically poor - insert favourite we were SO poor that... joke here and I got through a lot of menial and underpaid jobs before I decided that if I was going to be broke and depressed, I might as well be a musician.

However, I take no pride in being working class. I take pride in having something approaching a work ethic. I take pride in not being afraid to get my hands dirty, but in all honesty, being poor mostly sucks. And it certainly isn't a guarantee of talent or authenticity, any more than an expensive education makes you interesting to be around.

In pure terms, though, I will almost always take any artist deemed, in that bizarre turn of phrase, "too clever for their own good" over someone who pens the immortal couplet "Get on the Bus and Cause No Fuss" any day of the week. Then again, that's just me.

It's not about class, it's about CLASS. And that's an individual thing, that's about the person, who they are and how they've drawn on where they come from, not just WHERE they happen to come from.

I'm thinking of downgrading to Economy Class anyway. You still get where you're going, but you're surrounded by fewer nuts.

One of the most mystifying elements of being involved with music, as a performer, a writer or, indeed, a listener is the concept of fandom.

Now, I admit freely that I have been a fan, with a fair degree of obsessive compulsion, of a great many things over the course of my 31 years. I'm a reader of album sleeves, a collector of rarities and the first one to point out factual flaws in any given piece of journalism. I am a geek of the highest order, out and proud.

Many people, fine, decent people, appear to be able to manage their enthusiasms without owning seventeen separate but barely distinguishable mixes of each song by their favourite artists and I envy them. I am not one of these people. The things I truly LOVE are so few and far between that I latch on to them like a nymphomaniacal limpet, usually for life.

In this modern age, however, this age of forums and Facebook, one is confronted by one's fellow fans much more frequently than may once have been the case. And, at times, it is deeply disturbing, like looking at yourself in what you pray is a particular distorted funhouse mirror.

"My God," you think to yourself, "Please tell me I'm not THAT crazy!"

(This happens in real life too, of course. I remember attending an Elvis Costello concert and hearing a woman shout out "Go, Declan!" during a guitar solo, which made me crawl under my seat in embarrassment.)

The flip side to the coin, however, is that, as a performer - particularly one who is still working his way up the rickety ladder of success - hardcore fans are an essential commodity, both to one's fragile ego and to one's career. And bless them, those we have, are wonderful. I dearly wish we had 100,000 more like them.

I've never been comfortable with the idea of groupies, though. Don't get me wrong, I like the attention. Let's be honest, I CRAVE the attention. I'm not a secure person, I admit it. I require tremendous amounts of validation. Sickening amounts, in fact. And I've always said that the difference between me and my stage persona is that for 45 minutes after each show, HE knows how to talk to girls.

But there is something - and perhaps this is just a sign of my rapid descent into geriatric senility - deeply off-putting about the fact that I clearly become 1000 times more attractive simply by setting foot on a stage. The same woman (or man. This is the 21st Century afte all) who drunkenly hangs around to speak to me, would be ignoring me like a potentially cancerous mole if I were simply stood next to her in the audience.

I know for a fact, and there's no self-pity in it, that were Buster Bloodvessel on the stage and I behind, say, the bar, I'd be the one going home alone.

I feel bad when I turn anyone down under those circumstances, because as much as I am aware that it's a false attraction, I've been rejected enough times to dislike returning the favour. (I don't even like suggesting that this has ever happened, it types as vanity.)

But I digress, because that's not strictly fandom. Fandom, at its best, is people who lack that restrictive embarrassment gene that prevents the rest of us from exhibiting our passions for all to see.

When you care passionately about something you've created, there is nothing more electric than when strangers share that passion. Yet, there does appear to be a chasm between those who consider themselves rational, cool-headed commentators on the one side, and the rabid supporters who would do anything to see their team get ahead on the other.

As a(quasi)grown-up man, there are times I'd like to pretend I'm one of the former, when I long above all else to be taken seriously and to be serious. As a fan myself, I pray for the day when I can count on an army of obsessives like me, googling us in the early hours and choreographing attempted conceptions to our music.

Naked photography can still be sent to the usual address.

Last night, as is often the way with me, I found myself pondering. It's activity fraught with peril, as it is basically an internalised version of pontificating down the pub, without the benefit of a) a pub or b) a selection of increasingly bored bandmates looking at their watches every twenty seconds.

There may or may not have been a glass of wine involved, and my girlfriend may or may not have been pretending to be asleep to avoid being drawn into the argument.

What I was pondering was this: What is it that makes us write off a "genre" of music as being something we just don't like? I'm not judging anyone for doing so in any way, I swear, I'm just curious.

Country music is an excellent example. I have many friends, all of whom have demonstrated a remarkably developed taste in music, who, at the first hint of a pedal steel guitar, begin to gesticulate wildly, foam slightly about the lips and run screaming from the room, a curse on the head of George Jones zipping from their heads in a Doppleresque fashion. You may have had similar experiences. Perhaps, in your case, it was rap, reggae or the heavier varieties of metal.

Now I wouldn't suggest, for a moment, that personal taste in music is even remotely quantifiable. I accept, wholeheartedly, that a song that can leave me weeping in a soggy heap or dancing badly atop a kitchen surface may cause you, in turn, to vomit long-forgotten pies. Within the band, for instance, I have known veins to throb in barely concealed annoyance depending on whose iPod is plugged into the stereo system. That much is writ. Music either hits you where you live, or is misdirected to the central sorting office to lie untouched and browning.

But to disallow an entire subgroup of music - however arbitrarily genre umbrellas are erected - seems strange to me. I'm the kind of Elvis Costello fan, frankly, who isn't bothered whether he's making a rock record, or writing a ballet score. I listen because I find his methods, his ideas and his execution persuasive. Like all artists he will, from time to time, stumble at the gate, but I never think to blame the form. And I'm never as frustrated as when I read reviews that denigrate artists for daring to stumble blindly out from their supposed area of expertise into another. To me eclecticism is a badge of honour, not a sign of weakness.

Of course, arguments are made on behalf of the power of playing to one's strengths and against artists trying too hard to be taken seriously. Warning flags are raised to alert us to the dangers of dilettanteism. So far, so sensible.

To me, a song is a song is a song. It's either - within my own specific taste parameters, of course - a good song or a bad song, a fine piece of music or a clumsy, malformed one. This is not to say I have never found myself falling prey to my own personal prejudices - I'd put fallible on my passport if I could only spell it consistently. Nonetheless, as I've said, I've been pondering, and while no good can possibly come of it, I ask the question again.

What is it about certain "types" of music - and I'm going to stubbornly contend that musical "genres" ought to be abolished - that make you turn off before you've really given them a chance?

I raised another question to myself in the course of this argument as well. Where is the dividing line between passion towards a subject and blind polemic? Very often, these days, I find myself tacking "of course, that's just my opinion" on to the end of every conversation, for fear of being branded intolerant, inflexible and, let's face it, insane.

There are times, however, when I despair of the phrase, "not my cup of tea" or "just not my kind of thing". It's polite, it's sociable and it shows an agreeable willingness to compromise.

Sometimes, however, just sometimes I would like to say and hear the sentence, "I hate that in its face, and I'll tell you why" a little more often, or, indeed, "I adore this like a newborn child, or well-groomed puppy and I can barely contain myself from sharing my joy."

Passion isn't reasonable. Love isn't reasonable, whether it's for a woman whom we worship yet who appears to our friends as a shrieking haridan who has been beated soundly around the chops with a claw hammer, or for a piece of music that has made our spirits soar but our listening companions gnaw off their own arms just to have something to throw at the CD player.

Do we pretend to be grown-up a little too often, to survive within ordinary social circles? Has "High Fidelity" given us a fear of becoming cliches when we wax lyrical about, er, lyrics?

I fear I have dropkicked myself into the middle of a tangent, so I shall depart. But please, feel free, in your replies, to rant and reign in said rants in equal measure. As the spirit takes you.

There appears to be an unwritten rule that demands, when one is expecting children, that all one's friends and relations must gather to tell horror stories regarding their own and others' bouts of birthing and parenthood.

Pregnant woman, of course, get the worst of it - gleeful retellings of various tearings, stitchings and clampings, described in vivid Technicolour detail, and qualified with an insincere "But I'm sure YOU'LL be alright."

Fathers, on the other hand, are offered a friendly slap on the shoulder and the knowledge that "Your life will never be the same again."

I recall one well-meaning friend, when my daughters were near birth, saying, with all seriousness, that I was "obviously going to give up this music lark, now that I had responsibilities."

I didn't - and I can't even begin to pretend that being a father has prevented me from doing anything I wanted to do, other than have a bed containing only adults for more than 15 minutes at a time. It is true, however, that my life changed forever.

For instance, when I slipped my brand new copy of Elvis Costello's Momofuku on to my regrettably dusty turntable this morning, the song that leapt out at me first was "My Three Sons", a classy and catchy paean to fatherhood that I dearly wish I had written. Of course, my two daughters might take rather badly to be referred to as three sons, but my point stands.

I have had children as long as I have been a professional musician, and they have been, perhaps, the single greatest influence on how I work, yet I have never written a song about them. I've thought about it, often, but every time I do so, I find myself terrified of venturing down a maudlin, saccharine road, from which I would then have to beat a hasty retreat, derisive hollers echoing in my ears.

Then again, I find uncomplicated love songs difficult to stomach for the same reason. Thankfully, my love life has never been simple, so I've always been able to throw in a twist without reaching too strenuously. But my children... well, that's a far less complicated love.

They're six now, and, having been exposed to music all their lives, are starting to form their own opinions, and exhibit their own sense of style and taste, and it's the first time I've ever found being a parent and being a musician to be a difficult combination.

Do you know how hard it is to listen to a six-year-old warbling a Westlife song she's heard on the radio and reply, as one should, "That's beautiful, darling!" instead of what I'm really thinking, which is, "Out Demon! In the name of Jesus, I thee expel!"?

Mind you, I remember when my daughters were three and we were working on our second album. I used to play them the mixes to see if they'd dance, because the automatic response of a toddler is pretty much identical to that of your average Radio One listener, so it's a good commercial testing ground, if not an artistic one.

One particular song came on, of which I was, and am, very proud. It moved nicely, the band played exceptionally, I didn't want to rewrite more than 1/4 of it after it was finished... it was a good one.

My marginally older daughter (by minutes), however, stopped dancing and tapped me on the shoulder.

"That one's crap," she said, "Don't play that one when you go to work."

I laughed on the outside, but on the inside I was thinking, "What the hell do you know? YOU like High School Musical!"

Do you see what I mean? They think I'm mental because I throw things at the television when yet another haircut and testicle-strangling-trouser band appears on the screen, or another vapid, soul-destroying talent show. They honestly don't understand why I, like them, can't enjoy Elvis Costello AND watch the mentally challenged audition for parts in Oliver!. Why, they ask, am I so vocal about the need for someone to punch Andrew Lloyd Hobbit very hard in the face?

Maybe they're right. Maybe I'm crazy. But I just may be the lunatic they're... Damn it! How did Billy Joel creep in there?

All I know is, they're my real audience, and I think that 98% of my drive to succeed has shifted, over the last six years, from my belt-stretching bloat of my ego to my desire to please them, to make them proud. And if that's not a good enough reason to put up with the slings and arrows inherent in chasing a dream, I don't know what is.

They're still not getting Leona Lewis for Christmas, though. They can have Joni Mitchell and like it.

There are times when I wonder if, by the time I became a musician, the rock and roll dream about which I had read so much had long been buried under an unmarked stone in a hitherto unmapped stretch of desert. On the bookshelf behind me sit countless biographies detailing the mythic feats of musical heroes and villains. Handbags are defiled by mischievous imps, cars driven into swimming pools, Marshall stacks used for far more primal acts than the simple amplification of guitars.

There are other times when I wonder if it has always been thus. We're just coming to the end of the long recording process for ist's new album and while it has been an incredible journey creatively, I feel as though - in rock and roll terms - I might as well have spent the last year locked in a crate with only my own increasingly unruly hair for company.

Half my time in a band is spent writing emails, which concerns me no end. The other half, showing up to fulfill the responsibilities planned IN those emails.

This weekend has been a prime example. Freed from any other responsibilities to family or friends, I spent the entire three days working on the music. O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!

However, not one iota of this time was spent frolicking with dancing girls, injecting vodka into my perineum, or shoving a tire iron into the mixing console just to see what might happen.

Two days were spent locked in a room, mixing - a procedure which, especially initially, consists of listening to 30 seconds of our drummer's snare work repeated ad infinitum until I want to either leap out of a window screaming, or take up the zither and move to the Swiss Alps. In between, I mostly sit nervously on the couch as our producer, Jay Burnett ably assisted by Marco Perry, twiddles at dials and knobs in a purposeful manner.

Somewhere in the middle of each day, you are presented with a finished song, all its component pieces in place and I will admit to a swell of parental pride as our compositions pop newly born from the bakelite loins of the mixing desk. And yes, it is at that moment that I would glad leap on to a passing groupie, grubby syringe and Rolls Royce keys clutched in either hand. But I don't. I look at the clock and shout "NEXT!"

We did have a short break on Sunday to attend a charity event, put on by Chris Difford at The Albany in Deptford, raising money for the Magdi Yacoub Institute, in memory of his brother who sadly passed away last year. Boo Hewerdine, Chris (from whom we have been slyly borrowing guest musicians over the last few months, shout out to Dorie Jackson and Melvin Duffy), The Overtures, and, in a beautiful surprise appearance, the reformed Squeeze all made for a very moving evening, which made up, at least a little, for my two day confinement.

But again, there were no backstage shenanigans to speak of. I had a can of Red Stripe at the aftershow, I hugged the two members of Squeeze I know well enough not to be maced by, and I kissed a female friend on the cheek. This is life in rock and roll? I'm growing concerned.

Still, on Monday, I had a reunion with my bandmates to look forward to, for a brief television appearance in the wilds of the digital universe. Surely, the four of us, this rock and roll force would be able to do some damage?

We mostly drank beer, tuned guitars, discussed the album progress and tried to determine if smoking was still allowed OUTSIDE, or whether that too had been taken away from us. (I used to use a trick I picked up from reading about Noel Coward - who wrote cigarettes into his characters' hands when performing in a play, so that he could nicotine up at the necessary moment, and always put a song on which I didn't need to play the guitar in the middle of the set so that I could smoke and sing at the same time. But no more.)

Yes, those are the filthy habits we have left to us: cans of Stella, B&H gold and the occasional filth-ridden discussion designed to alarm passing members of other groups.

I don't feel, particularly, grown-up. I have two kids - both 6 - and we're pretty much on a par emotionally speaking, so much so that when their mother arrives in a room, we all three look up with a guilty start, no matter what we've been doing. Nonetheless, sometimes I feel that being at the front of a band has matured me, and I'm sure that can't be right.

Maybe it's just the overwhelming desire to get this album that's doing it. Perhaps when it's all over and we return to the road, you will find me one morning running naked down the motorway screaming about invisible bees, an accordion strapped to either leg.

God knows, I need to screw my life up in some new way. The swines will be wanting a new set of songs out of me soon.