A long time ago when I was just a lad, I went to see The Clash for the first time at the University of Sussex, a proper life changing experience.

33 years later and the footage has surfaced. I feel a bit faint.

More in the comments...

Doug Fieger of The Knack has gone....

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/02/14/ap/celebrities/main6208243.sht...

This one snuck up on me, but the brilliant She & Him (Zooey Deschanel & M Ward) have a new album imminent.

It literally snuck up on me in fact, as I wandered up to the 6Music coffee machine this morning only to find it surrounded by Ms Deschanel & Mr Ward getting ready to do a live session.

I love my job.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00qnwjk

That's a fabulous version of the Skeeter Davis song isn't it? And in the You Learn Something New Every Day Department, Zooey's dad used to share a flat with Gram Parsons...

...never seen anything like this before!

I wouldn't cross that Meg White, me

http://thirdmanrecords.com/

This makes my head hurt.

But in a good way.

http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/timelines/

In a vain atempt to keep middle age at bay, it was off to the gym for me tonight.

What was playing over the loudspeakers when I got there? This...

Somebody at LA Fitness has a very good sense of humour. Or they're mad.

More in the comments...

...this morning, at only 65. What a great guitarist he was, and a lovely man too. You can keep your Claptons & so on; he was the legendary Brit player for me.

http://www.mickgreen.co.uk/

The last time I talked to him he told me a great story about the difficulty of getting your hair into a quiff in the days before hair dryers. It involved holding your head over a gas ring to dry your hair and...well, you can probably guess the rest.

Very sad about this, and in the week we all started getting excited about the Feelgoods again too.

...at the smaller bit of the O2 - can there be a lovelier sound at this time of year than a brass band?

Sadly they didn't do this one, the stand out for me from Sweet Bells, Kate's seasonal CD

So my question is, if I wanted a CD of brass band music, where do I start?

Just a quick heads up to let everyone know that the new Carbon/Silicon album is up for free download at their site www.carbonsiliconinc.com

Due to some top luck, I found myself at the Stax Museum in Memphis on Friday night. It's essentially a re-construction of the original building with a Brit School type music academy attached, and they have periodic evenings when the school band play a concert in the studio (a meticulous replica of the original in the original place).

Friday was one of those nights, and its no exaggeration to say that it was an absolute joy - one of the best I've ever had. It turned out to be a bit of an office reunion with a load of people who worked for the label back in the day pitching up to drink beer & reminise about old times.

So you could find yourself chatting to label head Al Bell, or head of publicity Deanie Parker or a Mad Lad or an Astor or a Bar Kay or someone who used to sell the singles out of the Satelite record shop at the front.

Over there Wayne Jackson from the Memphis Horns, over there Jody Stephens from Big Star in front of Isaac Hayes' Cadillac complete with ankle deep white shag pile carpet. I did try to get Mr Bell to explain why they signed Lena Zavaroni but no luck. Just a lovely, lovely atmosphere...

And then the music started. A dozen or so teenagers, black & white together true to the original Stax ethos, started to play a selection of Stax classics & well, if you've got all those people in a pretty small room and relaxed as hell, well...they're going to get up & sing a bit aren't they?

And they did - Eddie Floyd doing Knock On Wood, William Bell doing You Don't Miss Your Water...it just went on & on. No stage, barely any amplification, casual & throwaway & a bit of fun & deadly serious all at the same time in front of 60 or so old friends & a middle aged white boy who can't dance and constantly on the edge of tears.

But the things that really struck me & stayed with me were the sadder things. William Brown, the in-house engineer, was there in a wheel chair smiling but not really present & only occasionally able to even recognise any of those people he once spent so much time with. The awful news that the Memphis Horns will likely never play together again as Andrew Love, that great bear of a man, has Alzheimers. And the love & the shout outs to the passed, to Otis Redding & Isaac Hayes and all the rest.

Now you can call me an old reactionary, but it did make me think - when the likes of William Brown go, where does all their knowledge go? Who's going to carry it on? Then I got a bit less sentimental and looked at the 16 & 17 year olds glowing with pleasure as they cranked out "I Can't Turn You Loose" and "Shaft" and all the rest and I went outside and gave them some money.

You could do that too: http://shop.staxmuseum.com/browse.cfm/museum-memberships/2,33.html

Mick solo this past Saturday

Tour of the Library

Mention on the podcast of the likelihood of your average rock star being arrested should he ever fetch up in a suburban street on account of looking odd reminded me of the time I went to Jerry Lee Lewis' house in Ferriday, Louisiana to interview the great man.

We arrived a little early and spent some time cruising up & down the outside of the Lewis estate, which is bordered by a white picket fence on which fans of Jerry Lee had spraypainted messages of love & support like "The Killer kicks a** motherf***ers!! From your fans in Sweden"

Still having some time to spare we pottered off down the road to the local store/bar/coffee shop for a refreshing root beer. 10 m inutes later, two enormous police cars screeched into the parking lot, four equally large policemen with quite large weapons rolled out & proceeded to interrogate us about our intentions, Jerry Lee having rung them to alert them to some people acting suspiciously outside his house!

How different to the attitude of George Jones, who has an enormous boulder in his front yard with "Welcome to the home of George Jones" carved into it, just in case you should be lost...

Here's an interesting looking one...

If you're in Sussex & possessed of extraordinarily catholic taste, then you can catch the brilliant Viv Albertine (formerly of The Slits) making a return to live performance at the Crown & Anchor on Shoreham High Street.

She's on as part of the annual Bungalow Town Festival. On after her is one Mike Heron, formerly of the ISB, and not a man I would suspect of owning a copy of "Cut".

It's all free too...

More details: http://www.crownandanchor-shoreham.co.uk/Forthcoming_events.html

Fab music from Viv: www.vivalbertine.com