Guilty as charged. But with me it's also talking about. it wasn't until recently that I caught myself on that I spend more time reading more books about the Beatles than listening to the remasters' series I bought.

But, when I think about, my Da used to be a big Joan Baez fan, and when he was my age he was still buying the LPs, but they never came out of their sleeves. My parents racks are full of Andy Williams, Jim Reeves - all those K-Tel compos from the 70s - they got played once on a rainy Sunday afternoon and then put away. A lot of them were purchased for the sole reason that they didn't want to leave Woolworth's empty-handed.

Funny, it was only when we were talking about the Flaming Lips the other day that I listened to the Soft Bulletin for the first time in a very long time, and I found it uplifting, it really cheered me up.

..then I wouldn't worry too much.

Music is what brings us all here. Via a magazine which is, predominantly, about music.

And which is not called The Note.

Which might suggest that you're amongst friends.

bit's also that thing that when men get to a certain age they become talkers and not doers. It's like those old vikings who told tales in the taverns, they couldn't be part of the fight anymore, so they'd regale the younger warriors with their tales of derring-do. I love Radiohead and some really loud goth stuff, but I couldn't hack a live gig. Not anymore. Glastonbury is right out. I'd have to stand near the portaloos and watch everything on the big screen.

The last concert I went to was in 2000, REM in Dublin, and I only went cuz my girlfriend was 7 years younger and she didn't want to travel on her own. "Sure we've got 2 DVDs and that live concert we taped off the radio!" said I.

She gave me one of them looks - like she was picturing me in slacks and slippers. I put my teeth in and got my coat...

I to, from time to time, spend more time reading about music than listening to it, and consume an inordinate amount of reviews in print, full in the knowledge that i'll probably never even hear them never mind purchase. It keeps me off the streets

skirts very much around the edge of a lot of the articles, threads and opinions of others round here. Many music threads I just can't get involved in but that doesn't stop me reading virtually every word that's written hear and in the magazine. I listen to my Ipod on shuffle mode in the car to and from work, I buy cd's load them up and only very rarely listen to them all the way through. I almost never listen to anything at home. Right now I'm off to bed with the last half of Kronenberg and a good book.

I noticed this years ago. At that time I went the boozer at least once a week and fed the jukey with a pile of money and just chatted about music with mates. Subconsciously, I usually fed the bugger with tunes related to books I had recently read.
It was brought home ever more clearly late last year when I went to HMV at Crimbo to spend my father in law's £25 gift token prezzie (why do people not just give me gift tokens rather than clothes I'll never wear?) and I came out with nowt but books - on music.
Paolo Hewitt's Weller book was terribly interesting in a tiny wee score settling way. No?

Art, I think you've voiced something which speaks of a common truth! With me it's the Beatles: I think if I totalled up all the hours I've spent reading about the Beatles and compared it to all the hours actually just listening... well, it wouldn't really bear comparison.

But I think there's nothing wrong with that. It's just pop music, isn't it? I remember distinctly the very moment I first heard Tomorrow Never Knows: it's that instant that's sent a shockwave through the rest of my life, and no amount of re-listening to the song is going to recapture that. But so what? I read about the band and their songs instead. Is it a displacement activity? I don't know.

A good song lasts two minutes and the after effects last a lifetime.

I don't do much reading about music. That which I do, I mostly disagree with.

Writers write because they're good at writing. Musicians make music because they're good at making music. Rarely do the sets intersect.

Have any of the scurvy lot ever written a book? Apart from that Maconie chap that is. Oh, and the blinking Collins feller. I mean yer actual Captain Mark Pugwash and Long John Hepworth. Anything to extend the monthly fix of Word japes and juxtapositions.

Could it be the older you are there is just too much music. It just accumulates on the beach like oil from a stricken oil tanker, threatening enthusiasm like a bedraggled seabird.

(You really must stop reading Pete Sinfield lyrics - Ed.)

I bloody miss the early '70's Melody Maker I do. They even put the best interviews out in an annual at Christmas. NME too. I have a few. These days they would come with an accompanying CD, a soundtrack to the times, or a flippin iTunes podcast thingy. Gone is the age of innocence and imagination.

see - I wrote their instead of they're!! What a tit.

is a podcast discussion, surely?

but music I know. It doesn't have to be music I like that much - as long as I am familiar with the act, have heard some of their stuff, and especially if it's a good story, eventful lives, extremes of ups and downs, that kind of thing. If I read about music I like I generally then want to go and play those tunes all over again. The best books make me go back and listen afresh. I might even be persuaded to have another listen where I was previously lukewarm.

Without having ever listened to a note by Motley Crue, before or since.

although I've recently come out of a phase in which I, too, read books and listened to podcasts at the expense of music. So far this week, I've revisited Cockney Rebel's "Psychomodo" (gulp, I even remembered large chunks of the lyrics); "White Blood Cells" by The White Stripes; "Marquee Moon" by Television (possibly my all time favourite album); and "The Eternal" by Sonic Youth. Then I've had first listening to the new ones by Massive Attack, Hot Chip and Laura Veirs. And there's a new Peter Gabriel record next week! It's blooming wonderful, although the problem now is I haven't read much recently and haven't listened to the last Word podcast.

or even download if for free.

Like Art, I listen to music radio most the time, (R2 in my case), because I'm more interested in hearing songs than I am in Buying and Accumulating - think lots of men who call themselves serious music fans are really just shopaholics and collectors. Could just as well be stamps but happens to be Blue Note records (or whatever.)