It's been a long few weeks without it. Not sure how sad a being that makes me, but I've really missed the weekly fix.

Wahaay! It's back! Calloo Callay! Right, let's settle back, and, and... oh shit, they're going on about the bloody Olympics. Oh well, there's always next week's. Bollocks.

It reminds me of when I went to Graceland in 1988 with a friend of mine. Whilst inside I mentioned to him that Elvis was great n' all that, but he did make some shocking records.

My innocent comment was overheard by an elderly lady who proceeded to slap me around the face and scream "HOW DARE YOU DEFILE THE GOOD NAME OF ELVIS PRESLEY IN HIS OWN HOME!"

Good thing she never heard me doing the Spinal Tap routine by his tombstone...

Great podcast. A real return to form. The best ones are the ones where it's just you guys chatting & giggling about whatever has caught your attention that week/day/minute.

Nice to hear the Chilton anecdotes. Like Mark was at Shepherd's Bush last Thursday, my first visit there, for Big Star, and it was a fine gig apart from the interlude he described.

It's an absolute tragedy that Deadwood didn't get the forth and final season it deserved, having been abandoned by HBO and also by its creator David Milch, who instead threw his weight behind the baffling and self-indulgent - John from Cincinnati.

The three existing seasons of the show are superb. I would place them on equal footing with The Wire.

The swearing in Deadwood (and there is an abundance of it) is Shakespearian - it's vulgar poetry. Every now and then one of the characters will commit an act of such excessive violence and cruelty that it beggars belief.

I'm giving away nothing by mentioning that, late in the first season, the aptly named Gem Saloon owner, Al Swearengen, (a genuine historical figure played to perfection by Ian McShane) delivers a lengthy monologue on the subject of his horrendous childhood, while one of the whores in his employ orally pleasures him. It's one of the great moments in television and an unlikely highpoint in the acting career of the man better known in the UK for his role as the roguish antique dealer - Lovejoy.

Reasons why I love the Word podcast:

1. When you say you'll be back in September, you record the new podcast on the 1st of the month. It was like getting a present.

2. I was willing to endure 17 and a half minutes of you guys talking about sport - and, believe me, I don't do that for anyone - because I trust you that it'll all be all right in the end. And I was right. The Jerry Wexler material could easily have had an hour to itself (how about podcasts entirely dedicated to one recently departed figure? Poor old Isaac Hayes didn't get a mention, and I fondly remember the Syd Barrett podcast). The Alex Chilton story was my favourite podcast anecdote ever - more captivating than all the HORAs, and am I alone in saying I want to hear more? - and The Wirecast fills me with excitement, as does the feature in next month's edition.

Sorry to sound sycophantic. I just wasn't fully aware of how much I really enjoy these podcasts until, as William Bell would have said, my well ran dry.

PS - David, you should have a look at this. It's the story of someone else who went looking for Alex Chilton; and got taken into the Mississippi delta in search of blues country. Just after you did, by the looks of things:

http://boogiewoogieflu.blogspot.com/2008/03/paper-hat.html

I was running out the door yesterday and had just bought Teddy Thompson's new album on iTunes. My blank CD was in the drive and I was ready to burn it to listen to on my journey - I was already running slightly late. However, I happened to check the podcasts and there it was Word Podcast 66 - 02/09/2008. No, my eyes were not deceiving me. A NEW WORD PODCAST.

Sorry Teddy.

No not really, always been worth a listen but that was how I like my Word podcast to be.

'Moondust' - a fascinating book I agree. The sort of thing I like to read most. Interesting comments from DH about the sixties - I think he's right. I put it down to a kind of liberated infectious optimism (since post war frugality was over) brought on by a false sense that everything would just get better and better, economically, culturally, socially - which carried a bit into the seventies then was of course seen to be an illusion really. That's a theory anyway and part explanation for why the sixties were so remarkable.

Notebooks out, polymaths!

It's odd to me that so many of you are complaining about the Olympics preamble to the latest podcast. That was my favourite bit. The joyous thing about Word is that it has a generous door policy. All matters may be discussed. If it was all Jerry Wexler and Alex Chilton, it wouldn't be half the magazine/podcast that it is.

(I had cause to phone up a very posh, small publishing house to request a review copy of a posh non-music book to review for the magazine and the man on the phone thought I was joking, as he had looked into it and discovered that Word was "a rock music magazine." How wrong he was.)

More non-music chit-chat please!

...the fact that Word has a generous door policy. I'm just not very interested in sport.

Just wanted to clear up a couple of points made by David Hepworth regarding the names of John Mellencamp's kids. Firstly, it's Teddi Jo, and not Bobby Jo. Secondly, 'Speck' is presumably named after Speck Mellencamp, John's grandfather who died in 1983 - so that one, at least, is not quite as pretentious as suggested. Can't confirm what he was thinking when naming Justice or Hud though.

Re the comment about asking Terry Reid to change his mind and agree to front Led Zeppelin. I was luck enough to live in Hong Kong during the early 90s when Terry was a regular visitor to the Hong Kong Jazz Club (in truth, a broom cupboard with a bar and room for about 30 people). He did a few shows at the club, the first of which I was fortunate to catch (leading on to all the others). He was a truly amazing performer - if you ever get chance to hear his version of You Make Me feel (Like a Natural Woman) you will know what I mean. He also did a world-changing version of Whole of the Moon by the Waterboys. Sadly, none of this talent has ever been caught on (ahem) vinyl as far as I can tell.

Terry did one gig in the colony alongside Mick Taylor (formerly of the Stones). Tel was as great as ever but Mick appeared to be sadly under the influence of something strong and at one point nodded off and fell to the floor leading to an impromptu interval during which staff tried to revive him behind the bar. Thankfully he was able to take his seat (yes, seat) for the second half and managed to strum his way through the remainder of the set. A great night out if memory serves. Even the semi-conscious Mick was brilliant.

If Percy is too tired to get out on the road, Terry will do for me...

But what happened to D Hepworth in Berlin? A bungled spy exchange on a misty bridge?

Still mulling over the podcast, and a couple more reactions:

1. Re "where would a 25 year old have that kind of responsibility nowadays"-I wondered how old Nick Leeson was during the Barings affair and, yes, he was indeed about 25 ...

Wikipedia entry on him says:

"Realising the gravity of the situation, Leeson left a note reading "I'm Sorry" and fled on February 23. Losses eventually reached £827 million (US$1.4 billion), twice the bank's available trading capital. After a failed bailout attempt, Barings was declared insolvent on February 26"

and also has this priceless piece of retrospective analysis "There were clues in Leeson's life choices off the trading floor that he was headed for trouble. In October 1994 he was bailed out of a Singaporean jail after an incident in which he exposed his buttocks in public". Though Singapore is admittedly not a place you'd want to get into trouble ...

2. Re: LBJ not having much executive experience when made VP he had, however,"served as a United States Representative from Texas from 1937–1949 and as United States Senator from 1949–1960, including six years as United States Senate Majority Leader, two as Senate Minority Leader and two as Senate Majority Whip. " [Wikipedia again]. In modern terms this would seem like, say, the Dems choosing Nancy Pelosi as Obama's running mate-quite credible I'd have thought.

Anyway, I think the best apects of Moondust are not the history-which has been done better elsewhere-but the astronaut interviews, some of which are as good as any ever done; and Smith's evocation of his own quest and of a childhood touched by the unique flavour of the 60s in which both space and rock music played such a powerful part. Marina Benjamin's Rocket Dreams has some of this quality, though seen very much from the adult's eye, as does a remarkable memoir called Space by Jesse Lee Kercheval, which Amazon.com again has on Look Inside. If anyone has read this far and can think of other books that manage this feat I'd be most interested.

Francis Spufford's The Backroom Boys - The Secret Return of the British Boffin is a great read; fascinating stories of the British space program, concorde, the human genome project and more. An Amazon reviewer has it as 'From the suburbs to the stars.' Quiet, pipe-smoking men getting on with things.