We’re constantly told that the credit crunch has now crossed over into the real economy so how is it crossing over into the music business? And what’s going to happen longer term now it’s fairly clear that the current unpleasantness is going to be deep, long and possibly generation defining.

Can’t see artists at the top end being much affected but it’s impossible not to worry about the end of the music business covered by the Word, what could be called the subsistence end. Just like the crunch came at the worst possible time for the housing market (depending on your point of view of course) the music business seems equally blessed with bad timing – record sales had already fallen off a cliff and now everyone is surviving on playing live. I’m no gig goer but going by adverts, everyone is on tour all the time now and charging quite a lot for it. But can that really carry on? – gig going is surely one of the first things to be cut back on when feeling the pinch and now that noone splits up and everyone reforms the audience must be pretty thinly spread already.

So, bands going to the wall, bankrupt musicians, less music released, live circuit going bottom up?

What do we think is going to happen? All bad, or any positives to be drawn?

I know you’re all now focused on the new issue, but I’ve only just got the Jarvis one, so bear with me, and try and think back…

The CD contains a truly wonderful song – Joseph Arthur’s Heart’s a Hunter. A great shame I didn’t have this in time for my Festive fifty vote because this is my song of the year no problem. It is beyond brilliant.

Imagine my surprise to discover that the chap behind it is on to his 9th album and I've never noticed him before. Imagine my further surprise to find hidden in a lonely corner of my ipod, another song, Wasted, by a certain Joseph Arthur, from a Word CD a few years back. A song so bland it’s barely there.

So Word massive, my question is this: I want lots more of the Joseph Arthur of Heart’s a Hunter but nothing whatsoever of the Joseph Arthur of Wasted. Where should I look?

Archie’s inspired posts about Elvis and chums’ Parisian opera debacle set me off wondering why on earth so many rich, talented, successful pop stars are not content with their status as rich, talented, successful pop stars. Most of us in more humdrum and less well remunerated professions carry on carrying on with what we do best, as long as our employers and the credit crunch allow us. And offer us the chance of pop stardom for just one day and we’d jump at the chance and be more than happy with our lot.

But pop stars no. Elvis is clearly a serial offender: Brodsky Quartet, Bacharach, Allen Toussaint, Anne Sofie Von Otter, etc. His opera mucker Sting is far from blameless: lute music, acting, etc. Then of course there’s McCartney. Clearly inventing popular culture as we know it is not enough when there’s a Liverpool Oratorio to be written or a Fireman alter ego to be indulged. Nothing is too much for their rich and varied talents, despite the fact that the results are generally viewed as little short of catastrophic.

So why do they do it? Is rock and pop just not a high enough art? Do we not take said talents seriously enough? Why is a Keith Richard happy enough to rock til he drops without a sideways glance while others are continuously searching, man?

And is there a worse offender than dear old Elvis Costello?

OK, it worked for music and books. So surely it’s time to see if the brand is flexible enough to allow for a touch more variation.

Last three films you saw. Me first.

A Cock and Bull Story - Michael Winterbottom. Strange one this. Post-post-post-modern, film within a film within a film, real characters playing real characters playing fictional characters, etc. Still, it made me laugh quite a lot and might make more sense if you’ve read Tristram Shandy, but I doubt it.

Indiana Jones and the kingdom of etc. – Spielberg. Execrable, CGI-infested, car crash of a film. Nuff said.

Burn After Reading - Hermanos Coen. Unfairly slagged methinks. Not their finest hour by any means but never less than entertaining and funny. Not everything has to be poetic and profound after all. And one of the all-time great cameos from J K Simmons as CIA Superior.

Any more?

I had the misfortune to sit through the abomination that was the new Indiana Jones film this weekend, a genuine full-on catastrophe. Lazy, poorly written, CGI saturated drivel. Comparable in its awfulness to the Phantom Menace Star Wars prequel, the only one of them I could bear to see.

But here’s the thing. Are these new films actually any worse than the originals? It’s par for the course for people my age and above to criticize them for desecrating the originals but is that right? After all they’re not really for us age-wise, while the originals were. Can we watch them objectively?
I saw the originals at exactly the right age, 9 or ten or so, and it’s impossible for me to be objective about them. They were almost unbearably exciting then and even if they’ve inevitably lost something with the years I can’t disassociate them from that initial thrill so I still love them.

But if I’d seen the first Indiana Jones film or the first Star Wars at 36, would it have seemed as silly and awful as this latest just did to me? Are there any members of the Word massive with sprogs who’ve seen these new films at the ‘right’ age (or who saw the originals at a more advanced age than me)? What did they think – brilliant or crap? Did they become Indiana Jones/Stars Wars/whatever obsessives like so many of us surely did? Or were they just A.N.other disposable movie to keep the popcorn company and then forget?

For what it’s worth, I reckon the new ones truly are infinitely worse than the originals and Spielberg and Lucas long, long ago in a galaxy, far , etc. …. lost whatever it was they once had.

Just added to emusic are the last couple of Julian Cope albums, You Gotta Problem Wth Me and Black Sheep. Anyone who’s given up on the man musically over the last ‘challenging’ decade should get back on board.
He seems to have reined himself in a touch and is back treading that fine line between bonkers self-indulgence and skewed pop that made his early 90s so fine. Not quite Peggy Suicide or Jehovahkill but close. Really very good, particularly Black Sheep. Good to have him back.

(if The Word don’t mind…)

Only recently started listening to the Word podcast which I think is wonderful, even better than the magazine, so much so that I’ve listened to 40 odd in the last month (my excuse is it's pretty much all the English I get to hear...). Still 30 to go before I’ll be reduced to waiting a week for it to come out, but I want to be prepared so I can fill that gap when it arrives.

So what else is worth listening to? Books, music, film, popular culture, a bit of current affairs are what I’m after (not necessarily at the same time). A touch of humour would do nicely too (but please, no Russell B****).

Teenage Fanclub announce on their website they’re recording a new album (back in August apparently, I’m a bit slow). A good moment therefore for us to get down on our knees and thank whoever we believe in for small mercies, and while we’re at it pray that it’ll be better than the half-hearted muddle that was Man-Made.

Because let’s face it, is there a more purely enjoyable sound than Teenage Fanclub when on song? I’ll go further, how many other groups can honestly boast a sequence of albums as fine as their 5 from Bandwagonesque through to Howdy? I’ll go even further, but is Gerry Love, or is Gerry Love not, the greatest tunesmith as opposed to songwriter of his generation?

Forgive the over excitement and hyperbole, but this news has put a genuine spring in my step and they’ve been on ipod repeat all day. Simply can't get bored of this bunch however hard I try.

My Life in the Bush of Ghosts – Eno & Byrne. Bought this a few years back, listened to it a couple of times, thought it was crap, put it away and forgot I even owned it. Just been inspired to dig it out again after enjoying their new one.
What a silly bugger I was. It’s bloody marvellous. Can’t stop listening.

Anybody else got an album so wrong? Or just want to sing this wonderful thing’s praises?

Here’s an experiment. These similar-music type recommendations are generally crap on things like Amazon or emusic or whatever, but I wonder with the combined knowledge of the Word massive if it might actually work.

I’ve recently discovered a couple of singer-songwriters from the 80s who I’ve spent the previous 20 years assuming were crap – Lloyd Cole and Billy Bragg. I was wrong, they are bloody great and I’ve spent a highly enjoyable three months wallowing around in their extensive back catalogues. Now I want more similar stuff.

So my question is this. If I like them, who else might I like?

Soon to be with us, at least for UK subscribers, so who's it going to be?

Lots of oldies recently, so perhaps a youngster? The fat bloke from Keane? Got a new album out I see. Or fat bloke from Elbow? Has a beard if I’m not mistaken, which might help.
Out of left field, or indeed the far right, maybe Sarah Palin? Lots of mentions round here lately.
Paul Newman? That'd be good.

I'm thinking Elbow.

And you?

And I’m not talking here about yer Ed Woods or straight to video zombie/brit coms/brit gangsters/potato men etc. Films which were always going to be crap and were probably meant to be. I’m talking about when hitherto talented and successful people take something very seriously, spend a lot of money and time and then screw up monumentally. Some personal non favourites.

Meet Joe Black: Martin Brest, director of the never less than enjoyable, though of its time Beverly Hills Cop, and the frankly brilliant Midnight Run, rounds up Brad Pitt and Anthony Hopkins and produces the worst film I have ever seen. Every scene starts 30 seconds before it needs to and ends 30 seconds after it should. This is clearly because we are in the presence of art and high emotion. And Brad Pitt moons at his girl soulfully, or rather soullessly, for three flipping hours. Endless, endless, endless and unthinkably poor and sentimental.

AI: long cherished project of Kubrick, finally developed by Spielberg. Two not untalented filmmakers. What they’re striving for here is a profound film about the enduring power of love, what they give us is a steeming pile of manure and the second worst film I have ever seen. Without a doubt the creepiest mother/son relationship ever committed to screen – Spielberg’s psychiatrist must enjoy himself – Jude Law in his worst ever screen performance and stupid watery aliens. And it’s endless. And sentimental

Now the film that inspired this brief rant. Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona. I like(d) Woody Allen and have seen far too many of his films than is good for me. Even his poorer efforts are usually entertaining enough and when he’s good, he’s very very good. I’ve even got a soft spot for the much derided Match Point, which despite its absurdities worked pretty well as a thriller for me. But this is unspeakably poor. Pathetic. The kind of film an artistic, sensitive teenager would write to express his feelings about the interaction of love and art. But Woody Allen is 72. And to see him projecting all his fantasies of the sexually dominant artistic male who is simply irresistible onto Javier Bardem was one of the most uncomfortable things I have ever seen. Just terrible. Don't know if it's out in the UK yet but please, avoid at all costs.

Any more for any more? Any examples of similar catastrophes from the world of music?

I'm off to the beach for my last week of summer hols, after two rain-swept weeks in the UK (how the hell do you all put up with it?) and I want some crime fiction to read.
Have read very extensively through the classic americans and brits but the contemporary stuff is a foreign country, apart from the brilliantly grumpy and grumpily brilliant Ian Rankin and Henning Mankell. If those two are anything to go by there must be some good stuff out there. But the last couple of days of browsing in Oxford through endless identically packaged and titled stuff has got me nowhere.
Who should I read?

Blog below about unsung 80s albums set me off thinking about unsung careers in general, or rather unfair or unjust careers - careers which simply don't represent the real possibilities.

My choice, Kirsty Maccoll.
Here's the evidence:

Quite apart from the tragic early death, here was a 20 year career, from one of the finest british pop songwriters ever, for which she's known for 3 top 20 hits, one of which was a novelty song - Chipshop - and two of which were (brilliant) covers - New England and Days.

If See That Girl, They Don't Know or Other Pople's Hearts to take just three examples, had been written by Phil Spector and sung by one of his girl groups in the 60s they'd have been number 1 and now be all time pop classics. They weren't, so noone has ever heard of them, or thinks one is a Tracy Ullman song. And let's not even start with Soho Square, four minutes of the finest pop music ever committed to tape...

Rock snobs are obsessed with albums. She only released five in 20 years, none of which are classics. But the best bits of them are better than pretty much anything else. Pop music is best appreciated in short bursts and noone produced finer short bursts than she did.

Artists are supposed to sacrifice everything for their art. She spent years off sacrificing her art/career for family, which is far cooler.

The voice!

The hair!

She was one of the best ever. Any other unfairly neglected, or unrepresentative, careers?

I’ve had a bit of a crisis with this chap recently. Of all the greats he’s the one I’ve loved most and own a good 40 odd of his albums. But itunes tells me that of all the greats, apart from 3 or 4 of his magnificent 70s albums, he’s the one I now listen to least. I came across him in the early 90s with Ragged Glory and in a jiffy I’d bought the entire backlist and I’ve religiously bought everything new since. Until Chrome Dreams II, the first album of his I’ve not bought. A concept which once seemed unthinkable…

Basically, despite every album being hailed as his best since (insert name here), not one since Sleeps With Angels has really been much cop – at least for me. OK, couple of excellent tracks per album but much of a muchness, whether loud neil or country Neil. Most of them I probably didn’t listen to more than half a dozen times.

The idea of Neil Young is still great, in theory he’s still as all over the place as he ever was, but the results don’t excite: weird, green-themed concept album plus added film – result, a bit dull; pro-war post 9/11 album – result, a bit dull; anti-war, post Iraq album – result, a bit dull etc. etc.

So, have I missed out on Chrome Dreams II? Was this really, finally, the return to form everyone claimed? Can anyone convince me to revisit any of his recent albums? And anyone know anything about Archives? Because that’s one Neil Young album I definitely will be buying – as long as it doesn’t focus too much on the humdrum 90s and 00s…