As a youngster, I was never afforded a great musical education; I was brought up on a diet of Dire Straits and The Eagles. So when I got really into music (It was joining 6th form for me) I tried my best to listen to everything everyone else was talking about a 'great' 'amazing' or 'rad' (actuallu, 'rad' was a bit before 6th form). Do youknow what I found? I didn;t like much of it. Some of it just seemed bad. out of tune. Nonsense. But if I happened to mention that I didn;t think they were very good i was fixed with a glare that was the crusty 6th form equivalent of the look my missus now gives me when i have just said something to embarass her in public.
As I have got older I now realise that I don't care if people don;t agree with me, but I wonder how widespread the phenomenon is - is there actually an artist/band out there that is held in such high esteem that we dare not dislike them, but in actually fact, no one likes them; their musicality just beinga rumour that spread really, really well.

Don't get me wrong, there's quite a few bands that have taken me a while to mature into; Happy Mondays and Portishead to name but two, but there are some that continue to disappoint - and actually, I find then all the more disappointing because other people think they are so great!

So, I shall name some of the bands/artists that I just don't 'get'. Here they come:

The Wedding Present
Bob Dylan
The Stone Roses
Snoop Dogg

And there are more, but I'd like to hear of yours....

I have just listened to Living Room by Basement Jaxx and I think it maybe the most rounded pop-song ever...let me explain

It's 2 1/2 minutes long
It has guitars
It has shouty vocal
It has harmonized vocals
It has a breaks/dub beat
It has a dance beat
The best is obviously on real drums
It has electro bits in it
It has simply lyrics, with a bit that the audience can just shout
It has punky 'hey, hey' lyrics in it
It has some scratching
It has a quiet bit that then builds up into the outro
It fades out

Can you think of a song with a more broad appeal (surely the definition of a pop song?)

I'm moving at the moment and whilst stacking my Word Magazines ready to be packed, I remembered that back in my childhood some magazines had slices of picturs on the spine, that created a whole picture when you had the whole collection.

As Word isn't the type of mag that you throw out, I wondered if there was any thoughs to doing something similar?

What would people have as te picture?

I literally have no ideas!