Because of my great age, I no longer find it easy to access Young People's Things like new bands and stuff. I try listening to popular music combos on the wireless but am more-than-somewhat offoput by the enormous amounts of inter-song wittering that seems to pass for entertainment these days. I mean, John Peel, taciturn though he may sometimes have sounded, was never really a man of few words but he knew when to shut up and play the record, unlike today's mindless yahoos who seem to believe we have tickled our cat's whiskers for hours just to hear their mindless babblings (and, yes, I do number Stuart Maconie and his oppo whose name I forget, for all their often excellent taste in music, among the number of the babblers).

So [pausing to draw breath] ...

... where does an ageing listener turn for her fix of new beat-musique when the trusty transistor lets her down. Well, lately, I've been doing rather well with cover discs from The Word. Most of the stuff I find pleasantly entertaining (though some is pretty unlistenable), but occasionally there's an absolute gem - like the mighty Decemberists, who've featured twice, and my current keep-playing-track-over-and-over-til-Husband-wants-to-throw-cd-out-of-car-window favourite The Mountain Goats, whom I now like so much I've bunged a YouTube thingy on my Facebook wossname, so my friends can all like them too ('cept they've probably known about them for y' know, like, years! and now think I'm hopelessly jejune for even mentioning them.