I thought that nothing would ever annoy me more than that "I like old movies" couple. Then this winsome acoustic doofus started up...

This always bothered me unduly, and I've finally worked out why. He's clearly using the technique of "The Neg". This is "discreetly undermining a woman's self-esteem by paying her a backhanded compliment in the hope that she will hang around to seek your approval."

The Neg is describe in the deeply unpleasant book "The Game", in which the writer Neil Strauss infiltrates a "Secret Society of Pick Up Artists. Basically it's about tricking women into having sex with you. Lovely.

Ideally, this advert should conclude with the girl on the platform letting off her rape alarm in his stupid kooky indie face.

On a recent edition of Mark Radcliffe and Stuart Maconie's BBC 6 Music show, they finished off with Simple Minds' I Travel and Mark asked "Has the Simple Minds reappraisal finally started?". Judging by the fact that Lauren Laverne played the same track on her show a few weeks ago, maybe it has. The song, a key track of theirs from their "we've been to Europe and it's a bit weird" 1980 album Empires & Dance, is an insistent, bleeping and rattling mutant disco stomp, and still sounds odd and edgy. However, they are best remembered for their more successful mid - late 80s work, when they were thought of as a second division U2, with lots of flouncing around in stadiums and big, semi religious bluster. For many years, listening to them has been something you just don't do.

When I first started getting interested in music, Led Zeppelin were bad. They were from the 70s (bad!), played guitar solos (bad!) and were really successful (bad bad bad!). However, since the early 90s, they became universally acknowledged as good, and now received wisdom would seem to suggest that they are pretty much the second best band ever. Later that same decade, a similar critical rehabilitation happened to Black Sabbath. Even English prog is now sort of all right. Back in 1988, to the likes of NME, Melody Maker and Q, listening to Genesis and Yes was on the same moral level as pumping radioactive sewage into an orphanage whilst punching a kitten in the face and screaming racist polemic.

ABBA, hair metal, folk music, AOR, Rick Astley... all of them have been hated and decried as ridiculous, only enjoyed by the educationally subnormal or people with terminal bad taste, yet they have all had some amount of reappraisal and critical acceptance. Does this happen to everything, eventually? Is there anything that is still waiting to be taken seriously, or at least given another chance?

And can we anticipate a time when the music that makes up the current paradigm of "bad taste" (Nickelback, Scouting For Girls, Westlife etc.) will be reconsidered as "not actually that bad"?

"Conversations with top social scientists" sounds about as thrilling as an unexpected dentist bill, but this interview with Fargo Rock City author Chuck Klosterman, which touches on such diverse topics as tribute bands, reality TV, Goths at Disneyland, and Morrissey's inexplicable hispanic fanbase, seems to be perfect for the Massive Member with an hour or so to kill

part one

http://thesocietypages.org/officehours/2010/02/07/chuck-klosterman-1-mus...

part deux

http://thesocietypages.org/officehours/2010/02/10/chuck-klosterman-2-cel...

Recently I watched the documentary Rush: Beyond The Lighted Stage. It made me reflect on a few things, firstly, the fact that Rush are awesome, and secondly, a conversation I had about 15 years ago. At the time I was firmly entrenched in the world of, for want of a better word, Indie. Everyone was, really, it was the law. British music was highly commercially and critically successful (in Britain).

On a special "Britpop" edition of Later, Damon Albarn said “Unless you were Nirvana, or a diet Nirvana, you were nothing”, referring to the early years of the decade when Blur hadn't sold many records. Presumably, now it was OK to be a diet Beatles or Kinks. Rock was a bit of a dirty word. No one was expounding the virtues of Black Sabbath and AC/DC, that's for certain.

As an awkward, contrary kind of person, it gave me great pleasure to inform my indie mates on an indie night out at an indie club that I was late because I'd been watching Alice In Chains on MTV Unplugged (Britpop never quite broke in America, unsurprisingly). I would usually bring up the most unfashionable bands I could think of, partly because it was irritating, but mostly because they were bands I really liked godddammit. Such as the aforementioned Spirit of Radio hitmakers.

I was told by one of my friends, with the absolute certainty of someone who regularly reads The NME, Melody Maker and even Select, that he's heard some Rush and they were "right wing. Really right wing. Practically Nazis!". He was referring to the fact that they were regularly decried in the British music press. Of course this was because they were a) rock (bad!), b) metal (even worse!) and c) American (actually they're Canadian but it's all the same innit?), but the story was that they were politically suspect because they had read a few books by the "Objectivist" writer Ayn Rand.

It's one of those facts that gets repeated so many times, that people use it without even questioning it, like "All prog rock lyrics are about goblins". I don't know any prog rock about goblins. I wouldn't mind hearing some. The only song in any genre I can think of that is remotely connected to goblins is Bowie's Magic Dance, and that's only because he sings it to some goblins, in the role of The Goblin King, in the goblin based fantasy movie Labyrinth.

My rather feeble argument was something along the lines of "How is The Trees right wing? It's about trees!"

After seeing the documentary, I now know, and wish I'd known back then (if only because I would have been armed with a much better comeback), that not only is Geddy Lee Jewish, but his parents were Holocaust survivors. From this we can deduce that Rush are, in all probability, not Nazis.

The other day I was listening to Alice Cooper's show on Planet Rock and heard Right Place Wrong Time by Dr John, from the Dazed & Confused soundtrack. Great record of course, but I realised I'd never heard anything else by him.

Now I'm *aware* of him as an artist - looks like a cross between Kevin Smith and Big Bird, probably goes on about "gumbo" - whatever that is - and sang "Such a poifect day" on the BBC's all star tribute to heroin a few years back. Also, like Dr Fox, Dr Feelgood and Dr Doom, he probably isn't qualified to practise medicine.

So the question I'm sure you can tell I'm lumbering towards is does any of The Massive have any recommendations, from The Doctor's evidently expansive back catalogue?

I don’t know anything about Phish. I think they may be the heirs to the legacy of The Grateful Dead, eternally jammin’ their way across America. They’re ubiquitous enough over there to have been mentioned on an episode of The Simpsons, but I don’t know a single person who listens to them. I imagine they sound like Blues Traveler or The Dave Matthews Band, and I bet they probably played at Woodstock 2.

Of course this could be solved by a quick look at Wikipedia but where’s the fun in that? I like the idea of going off on one, completely misinformed.

However, Phish have come onto my radar as they recently appeared at The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in order to induct the least Rock & Roll band ever, Genesis. They did an OK version of Watcher of The Skies, and a pretty ropey No Reply At All, but this speech from frontman Trey Anastasio is a heartfelt tribute to the I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe) Hitmakers and proves what a fan he is. You don’t get this sort of thing at the Brits when someone lobs Robbie Williams his 47th gong…

David "Dave" Cameron tells us (unconvincingly) how much he likes Florence & The Machine in blokey rag Shortlist

Meanwhile The Sun has asked various religious leaders what they listen to. Turns out Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury likes a bit of The Incredible String Band. Which of these men is trying to appear "cool"?

Right I'm slightly going out of my mind with this, and hopefully someone can assist. Twice in the last week I have switched on Alice Cooper's show and Planet Rock and caught then end of a particular track, and it's gone directly into the next song - so no indication of what the track was.

It's a sort of funky, seventiesish (I guess) track that sounds for all the world like Roger Chapman out of Family, but, y'know, doesn't sound like Family to me (granted I've only heard three or four of their albums, but it sounds too expensive, if that makes any sense). At the end it sounds like he repeats the phrase "Got to get the workers out the way of the train" over and over. Tried googling that, and it seems to be from a much covered Chuck Berry song called Let It Rock, but unless it's an insanely radical reworking, it isn't that.

Anyway, surely no one on Earth sounds like Roger Chapman (except maybe that bloke from Comus).

So does anyone know what I'm talking about? Surely someone in The Massive can work it out from my (admittedly hopeless) description.

With the release of The Beatles Rock Band, giving you the chance to play along with the seminal lovable scouse moptops' synergistically released back catalogue (although sadly not The Inner Light), the Rock Band (and Guitar Hero) franchises are becoming a talking point among many that would never normally have in interest in video games.

Ex Stone Bill Wyman and Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason have both slammed the franchise, much like Jimmy Page did a few months back, and it's easy to see why someone who grew up in that generation (and came up through a period in which rock and pop were the most exciting countercultural forces in the world) would be dismissive and suspicious of something which purports to let you "be" your rock heroes, without you having to learn to play a note. When Jimmy Page was a kid computers were the size of a house and had the processing power of a lamp post!

I'm not sure that playing Guitar Hero would stop someone learning an instrument. If you have the drive to do it, you're gonna do it. When I was a teenager my greatest achievement was learning to play Misplaced Childhood all the way through on a little Yamaha home keyboard (the one with the bright blue drum pads at the bottom) but I certainly wasn't in danger of becoming a musician. Surely if you are really into Guitar Hero you are more likely to take up playing a real guitar. And when you play the drums in those games it's pretty much playing the drums!

Although, on the other hand, there are way too many bands out there, and most of them are shit, so we could do with a few less.

* Well, The Metro had already used "While My Guitar Hero Gently Weeps"

I have come to the realisation that all of my favourite music is immature. Prog, metal, glam and folk all have an inexorable appeal to dopey fourteen year old boys.

Prog is all explosive time signature changes and wonky surrealism, songs about cyborg armadillos and severed heads on croquet lawns. Metal is men with long hair and spiky guitars shrieking angrily about the devil, war, and psychopaths (or preferably all three). Glam rock falls broadly into blokes in make up a) being all weird and arty, b) being intentionally daft (both of which are British bands in the 70s), and c) singing about shagging strippers while riding Harleys up Sunset Boulevard (American bands in the 80s).

Folk music aficionados will object that it's a genre characterised by its lack of pretension and image, therefore being sufficiently "grown up", but I only listen to folk music because 85% of it is songs about witches.

Even indieish types, hailed as brilliant songwriters, like Jarvis Cocker and Ben Folds have written a lot of songs about not growing up and feeling awkward in the face of responsibility.

We live in a world where it's perfectly acceptable for a grown man to buy himself toys (uh... collectables) and video games (er... they're a rapidly developing media), and gigs and music festivals the world over are crammed with people in their 30s and 40s who are desperate to prove they are still "down" with Little Boots and Black Kids (delete/replace with more current talking point as applicable).

So what is "mature" music? I actually think the most mature music I listen to is Marillion. Now, those that actually remember them will no doubt sneer, scoff and guffaw, pointing out that they are the most emotionally retarded of bands, with their album covers featuring sad jesters, clunky version of the standard prog rock widdly widdly instrumental style, ridiculously verbose lyrics and murky concepts (1982's Grendel was an 18 minute "epic" that would at least have found favour with Otto the bus driver, as it was from the monster's point of view).

However, there's the rub. Most people haven't heard the If My Heart Were A Ball It Would Roll Uphill hitmakers since the 80s. Their more recent stuff rejects the histrionic and is sombre, melodic and heart on sleeve emotional. To me it sounds, I dunno, mature.

So what is unequivacably mature in the field of rock and/or roll?