It's late, I can't sleep, and when this happens I often find myself trawling YouTube for footage of people doing cover versions - mainly on acoustic guitar. Sometimes on piano or ukulele or whatever else, but generally it's acoustic guitar (for reasons which I'll come to...). And some of them are pretty good. But that's boring, and anyway, even if they *are* good, I'm usually left thinking about just how much of an arse you have to be, or how much time you have to have on your hands to be going around video recording yourself singing INSERT SONG TITLE HERE and then sharing the footage for all the world to see. So really, the cover versions being good is not generally the thing that interests me. Nor is whether they are bad.

No! What I'm looking for is something in the performance; whether that be a degree of over-earnestness, an underlying tone of self-satisfaction, or just a total balls-out sense of unbridled verve. A combination of all three of these combined with an acoustic guitar is, basically, GOLD to me. I don't really know why, but there's something about the acoustic guitar which lends itself to this genre; something in the emotive half-strummed-half-picked moments, especially when heading into middle eights.

Check this guy out - for me it's all about the cigar:

If you have anything similar, please post them here for me. I might go mad and bookmark the page.

So Lee Mavers is hanging around with Pete Doherty, then:

The La's were absolutely fantastic...and that album is similarly *absolutely fantastic*; proof positive that Lee Mavers is absolutely one of our greatest songwriters. He hates it, of course, *that* album, believing its production not up to the quality of the songs. I dare say that in some instances he has a point, but for me, it's about the quality of the songs... not the quality of the production. And besides, great music, like Mavers', will survive almost any treatment.

As a fan, I am on the one hand encouraged by this latest foray into the limelight. I held high hopes for the 2005 resurfacing, but it wasn't to be; if this showing means he's recording new material, and is maybe getting back in the game, then I'll be delighted. On the other, though, if all he's going to do is waste his time with *that* hopeless twat, reducing himself to nothing more than a cultural rock 'n' roll signifier ... well the notion is so depressing that I can't even bring myself to contemplate it.

(I suspect I know where this is going, by the way, but would welcome opinions...)