OK, Group Mind: now that I've almost reached the bottom of my DVD Box Sets heap, I'm looking around for other recommendations. Specifically, having had good previous experiences with HBO's drama series, favourites being The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, Deadwood, True Blood, and The Wire, I've noticed there appear to be 6 seasons of "Oz", which sounds quite promising. So what's The Massive's verdict on "Oz"? Is it any good? Am I likely to enjoy it given my previous list of enjoyed HBO series?

"I am a drystone waller,
all day I drystone wall;
of all appalling callings
drystone walling's worst of all".

Thank you Pam Ayres.

Now I'll get me coat.

Is there an archive of images/scans of the Word cover disc artwork, anywhere? I've recently started using the Bliss software, which manages the artwork for my iTunes library, and it's asking me for artwork for the huge number of Word cover discs I've ripped over the last few years. So is there a gallery of them all in one place, or is it a question of tracking them down, one by one?

I was just listening to the excellent CD by Adrian Admondson and the Bad Shepherds, whose (magnificently realised) schtick is to do folk-style arrangements of classic punk and post-punk singles. One of the side effects of this is that many of the lyrics of these songs are thrown into sharper relief. In some cases this simply reveals the lyrical gems hidden under the incoherent shouting/snarling of the originals. In others, I found myself simply paying more attention to the lyrics. As was the case with The Jam's "Down In The Tube Station At Midnight". Now, this being a straight narrative-type song, it's reasonable to expect the narrative to hang together, but I found myself unable to dismiss the following two gaping holes in the "plot" of the song:

1. Hang on, it's midnight, yet he's on his way home to his wife with a takeaway curry, and she'll be putting out the plates and cutlery in anticipation of his return. Now what sort of household is this, where a bloke returns home to his wife after midnight, and they sit down to a nice civilised meal. After midnight? Maybe different if they'd been out together and decided to have a late supper, but this situation sounds a bit unlikely to me.

2. Post-beating, chappie's final conscious thoughts are that they've got his keys and they'll use them to gain entry to his house and do unmentionable deeds to his wife's person. But how would they find his house? Isn't it really, really well known that the one thing you DON'T do is put an address tag on your key ring? And the vast majority of people don't walk around carrying anything that happens to bear their address. No, sorry Mr.Weller, this detail doesn't stack up either.

So what I thought was a really gripping narrative song turns out to be more contrived than an episode of Eastenders. Any more contenders?

I read the article in this month's Word, about the rise and rise of the modern rock show as full-on, high-cost multimedia spectacle, with a sense of deepening gloom and depression. For the first time in decades, I actually felt perhaps I was losing touch with the current rock/pop world. I actually felt the words "In my day..." rising to be spoken, like the archetypal Old Phart...

In my day, when dinosaurs (Yes, Floyd, ELP) roamed the Earth, you went to gigs first and foremost to see your favourite bands play fantastic music, in the company of a couple of thousand other fans of the band. If there was a good lightshow, or if there were a few amusing costume changes (hello, Peter Gabriel), that all added to the fun, but the major excitement was seeing your heroes playing That Music. Live.

Now, however, it seems the main reason we go to gigs is for the Barnum & Bailey, Cecil B. de Mille spectacle of it all. The choreographed lighting! The dancers! The massively architectural stage sets! And buried in it all, struggling to find a bit of legroom amongst all the props, the music. Poor little bugger, it hardly stands a chance does it? The most telling snippet in the piece was the image of poor Larry Mullen Jr, manfully striving not to stray from the click-track, so as not to throw into disarray the hidden rrom full of electronics which Edge's guitar effects require. That must be the saddest case of the tail wagging the dog I've ever read.

I blame videos, to some extent. Ever since "did you hear the new single by...?" became "did you see the new video by...?" the emphasis has been steadily moving away from the music to the spectacle of the rock band / pop performer. Don't blame Simon Cowell for this one, blame MTV. Video did indeed kill the radio star, and now, when it comes to high-profile bands, it's killing live performance, as fans want the live equivalent of a music video.

Well, they can keep it. I've not been to an enormo-gig for over a decade, and after reading that article, I have no desire whatsoever to pay huge sums of money to see a circus. I'd rather go and see a band. Playing music. In a pub or small club. That's where the REAL gigs are happening. The other stuff is more like the Teletubbies' LaLa Land than a real gig.

Well there's a great surprise for Easter weekend - the new issue of The Word landing on the doormat. Love the cover picture of Peel - don't ever go back to boring ol' photos for your cover images. May I be the first to spot your packaging blunder for the cover CD? Inside the gatefold, I was bemused to read the text:

"Mixmag loves... Crookers. Wub-heavy hip-house? Electro-dub stomp? Dancehall wonk-step?..." ...and so forth. Clearly your layouts for the cover CD got mixed up with your chums at Mixmag. Does this mean Mixmag readers will be equally baffled to read Andrew Harrison burbling on about The Avett Brothers and Black Francis, inside their gatefolds?

Mind you, it's got me curious about Mixmag, now. Might try a copy. Hey, this wasn't some "deliberate mistake" cross-marketing ploy, was it?

Yet again I'm being tormented by an inability to identify the background music in a TV trailer. This time it's the trailer for David Mitchell's "The Bubble" series. It's a rather funky bass/organ/drums riff, with lead guitar interjections, that sounds maddeningly similar to mid-70s Gentle Giant, but though I'm (very) familar with the majority of the late GG's output, I just can't place the music. So does anyone know: is this in fact Gentle Giant, and if so, which track from which album? And if it's not GG, then who is it? They sound (or at least this snippet sounds) so similar to Gentle Giant that I'd be interested in hearing more!

Whilst on the subject, does anyone know of any websites which answer the general question "What was that song used in that TV show?". With the ever-rising use of pre-existing music in TV shows, rather than commissioning new incidental music, I find myself increasingly often hearing a terrific song in the background, and wanting to get hold of a copy, but lacking any information about artist, title etc. If such a website exists, I need to bookmark it. If no such site exists, maybe it's time one did - which may be a whole new project...

I've been signed up with eMusic now for over 3 years, with one of their now-unavailable contracts giving 90 tracks per month for £14.99 per month. That usually works out the equivalent of somewhere between 8 and 11 CDs per month, since I generally stick to downloading entire albums.

I never have any difficulty finding 90 tracks-worth of stuff to download each month. Indeed, my wishlists are bursting with over 300 albums I'm interested in downloading at some point.

But here's the thing:

Never before have I felt so unfamiliar with the music I own. I still buy about 5 or 6 CDs each month, plus listening to various "new music" podcasts each week. Then there are the delights of Spotify playlists, 6Music, Radio 3's Late Junction, and various other media channels by which I get to hear lots of new music (not forgetting the estimable Word coverdisk, of course!). And in amongst all this, I reckon I probably listen to each of my eMusic downloads once. Or sometimes less. You could probably pick one of my eMusic downloads at random, play it to me, and chances are I couldn't tell you who it was, or even confirm that I owned it.

I think the problem is one the Massive have touched on before: that even if we spend most of the day with music playing in the background, we probably only LISTEN in a fully-engaged manner, to music, for an hour or two a day, at most. And given that absorbing new music requires that attention, most of the eMusic new acquisitions just float by without being absorbed.

This is probably another example of the "too much new music, too easily acquired, too quickly" phenomenon, as I say, much previously discussed. So I think it's probably time to cancel my eMusic subscription. I suspect I'll still be exposed to as much new music as ever before, given all the channels listed above. And anything that catches my ear I can explore further via Spotify (usually), or at least through the 30-second previews available at most legal download sites. Then, if I decide I really WANT an album, I can either buy the CD, or download just that one album. A bit like the old days, which may have been "restrictive" in one sense, but perhaps that very restriction meant I treasured the music I did acquire that much more.

Any thoughts from the Massive, before I pull the eMusic plug?

Plenty of terrific stuff in the latest issue (November 2009) of The Word, but in the spirit of nitpicking...

On page 22 Jude Rogers refers to Bernard Sumner, in "Synth Britannia" talking "...glowingly about how Wendy Carlos's soundtrack to A Clockwork Orange affected him as a child...". Well, given Sumner's age, if he was a child, this must have been at the time of the original release of the soundtrack, which was under the name of "Walter Carlos". Later reissues have adjusted the sleeve credit to the composer's changed name "Wendy Carlos", but to use the latter name in the context of Sumner's original encounter with the album is unwelcome revisionism.

Then on page 27, we have "Independent" editor Roger Alton waxing lyrical on the theme "God is in the detail", bemoaning the lack of accuracy in many younger journos' writing. Then, during his next point, he says "In fact if I could produce a paper a fraction as good as Manchester United I'd die happy". Well, unless the "goodness" of his paper is zero, it must be SOME fraction of the "goodness" of Manchester United, even if it's, say, a billionth as good. A billionth is still a fraction. He was doubtless trying a "smarter" variation on saying something like "...a tenth as good...". But failed, dismally.

Ah, that feels better...

I was absolutely delighted to hear that Andy Partridge won a Radio 2 Folk Award, in the Best Original Song category, for "All You Pretty Girls", performed by Jim Moray on the latter's excellent "Low Culture" album. I think I'm one of several in the Word Massive who feel that Andy Partridge is one of the greatest living English songwriters, but to my knowledge this is the first time his talents have been recognised with such a high-profile award. Jim Moray's interpretation is mighty fine, too. I recently saw him perform at Lichfield's Guild Hall (great venue, great beer, great atmosphere - yes, I do go on about it, don't I?), and "All You Pretty Girls" formed the finale of the set, with the entire audience singing along with enormous gusto. It made an old XTC fan very happy. As does this latest news. Arise, Sir Andy of Swindon!

There's been much talk recently of how The X Factor has poisoned the hallowed grail of The Christmas Number One. This suggests that there was once a Golden Age of Christmas Number Ones, where each successive Christmas revealed a new delight, a classic that would instantly find its way onto all future "Best Christmas Ever" compilations. But was this ever really the case? And is the predictability of X Factor Christmas Number Ones really a new phenomenon? I think the answer to both questions is "No!".

First, the domination by a single source over several years: Well, going back only as far as the 90s, we find the Spice Girls holding the Number One spot in three successive Christmases, 1996-1998. But back in the 60s, from 1963 to 1967, four of the five Christmas Number Ones were by The Beatles. So the X Factor effect isn't the end of civilization as we know it, it's just a short-term domination that's happened at least twice before.

Second, all those allegedly classic Christmas Number Ones. Well, OK, twice we had "Bohemian Rhapsody". Then there were the aforementioned moptops, plus honourable mentions for Pink Floyd and Pet Shop Boys. But the only Christmas Number Ones I could find that appear on any half-decent "Best Christmas" compilation were surprisingly few. Taking as a benchmark the perennial "The Best Christmas Album In The World... Ever", I found:

1957 - Harry Belafonte - Mary's Boy Child
1973 - Slade - Merry Christmas Everybody
1976 - Johnny Mathis - When A Child Is Born
1984 - Band Aid - Do They Know It's Christmas
1985 - Shakin' Stevens - Merry Christmas Everyone
1988 - Cliff Richard - Mistletoe and Wine

...and that's all, folks. All those other "classic" Christmas hits were around the Top 20 somewhere (but not even that high, in some cases), but not Number One. If there ever was a "Golden Age" it appears to have been around the 70s and 80s. Certainly there was a vogue started around the Glam Rock era for pop-rock Christmas songs. Only 13 Christmas Number Ones in 55 years even made any reference to Christmas. And three of those were Band Aid.

Even from the more subjective viewpoint of "were they any good", I can only see a handful of Christmas Number Ones that I'd give house space to, even in generous mood. For every "Reet Petite" there are hordes of Blobbies, Bob The Builders, Little Jimmy Osmonds, and the massed School Choir of St. Winifred's.

Christmas Number Ones are rubbish now, but they always were.

The latest "In The Groove - Jazz and Beyond" podcast is a tribute to George Carlin, who died on 22nd June. I'd never heard any of his stuff before, but after hearing this, which leads off the podcast, I think I'll be looking for more. Now that's what I call a rap!

One thing about going to small local venues, rather than enormodromes, for gigs, is that you see the same faces time after time. And sometimes the venue has one or more local "characters" who turn up at most of the gigs played there. Sometimes one finds these characters amusing, sometimes they're a pain in the arse.

Case in point: Lichfield Guildhall, the home of Lichfield Arts, puts on about 40 gigs each year, as I may have mentioned before. Some of you, I know, even attend some of these. Janet and I attend probably about 12 each year. And there's one guy who shows up at most of the more folk-oriented shows (John Tams, Demon Barbers, Shooglenifty, Waterson-Carthy and so forth) to whom I attach the nom-de-haemorrhoid "The Twat In The Hat". This guy just LOOKS like one of the classic Folkie stereotypes: silvery whiskers, granny glasses, and a Terry-Pratchett-style hat permanently attached to his head. (And, no, he isn't actually Terry Pratchett). He seems to know all the bands, until you realise it's always him that approaches them like an old friend, rather than vice versa. At the drop of a hat (but not his) he'll jump to his feet, drag his wife to the front of the room, in front of the band, and proceed to treat us all to a display of remarkably inept folk-dancing, beaming at the audience from time to time as if acknowledging the fact that, for a few brief minutes, he is the focus of our attention, not the band. (In fact we are all thinking "sit down, Twat-In-The_hat, for we cannot see the band"). The most annoying aspect of Mr.TITH is that Lichfield Arts, like all such clubs, is entirely staffed by volunteers who run the bar, take your tickets, set up and dismantle the stage, perform stewardly duties, and so forth. And this guy is such a fixture, yet has never been seen to do anything to actually contribute to the running of the club. Except, I'll grant, to buy a lot of tickets for the shows.

Any other venues have annoying resident "characters"?

OK, we've done "Best Songs by Bad Bands", "Worst Songs by Great Bands", and several other permutations, but what about those songs which crawl out into the light of day but are subsequently disowned by their creators? These unloved, mutant bastard offspring return to haunt their progenitors long into their careers, mere mention enough to send them storming out of interviews.

The classic example was Bowie's "Laughing Gnome". In 1990, his bright idea was that each country included in his tour would have a phone poll, in which fans would vote for their favourite Bowie songs, and he would base his setlist around the results. This notion was swiftly abandoned in the UK when, at the NME's instigation, "Laughing Gnome" topped the poll by a landslide. No way was The Dame willing to revisit that particular old favourite.

More recently, Michael Stipe has gone on record many times expressing regret that "Shiny Happy People" ever saw daylight. Myself, I love it - but as a B-52s song, not an REM song.

Those are the only two I can think of. Anyone know of any others?