One of the problems with having virtually all the world's recorded music history available at the click of a mouse is that it is a bit disorientating. Does this band that I really like still exist other than in my iPod. (It's an almost Heisenbergian uncertainty.)

A couple of examples:

One of the tracks John Peel played on his last World Service show (broadcast posthumously) was "Park Lane Speakers" by Ella Guru. The band also featured on the third Word CD (back in the days when it wasn't on every month's magazine and went by the name Word of Mouth). The Guardian loved them: "...a delicate, subtle sound of immense poise...". Their album's very title, The First Album, promised more. But now, their website is dated 2005, the forum is gone, the band is frozen in that time. But has it gone? Is there a second album in the offing? Who knows?

A good way of discovering new acts from the comfort of one's armchair is to wade through the SxSW bundle of 700 or so tracks every year, or (more locally) to browse the contents of the annual In The City Unsigned album. Last year, I found a track I liked enough to find out more about the band. Cheap Dates are a splendidly poppy amalgam of London and Lousiana. I bagged some more tracks from their MySpace page, and hoped they would get a record deal so that we might hear more. It doesn't appear to have happened. Everything has gone quiet (apart from the spam), so I have to assume that Cheap Dates have moved on. But have they?

Uncertainty. It's a bugger (as Werner probably didn't say).