Rock n roll never did die...

It just moved to Japan and put on a dress.

The pandemic has really been tough on everyone. So I don’t think I am alone in feeling pretty down during the first twelve months (kind of got used to it now). The thing that helped greatly in getting me out of that funk is stumbling on Japanese female fronted rock and metal bands.

There is some great music still around in the west. But I did feel like I wasn’t finding anything new. Anything that would light a fire under me. Don’t get me wrong; there is new music that I adore; Gorillaz, Lana Del Rey, Arctic Monkeys (ok, newish) but these are all established artists. Sometimes you just want to find something new, you know? That was me. Hankering after the new. New to me I mean, not necessarily new new. And then something popped up on my YouTube recommendations. A strange little thumbnail of three young Japanese women in dresses fronting a heavy metal band. Babymetal you say? The scepticism was strong. And yet, it turned out to be just the tip of an incredible iceberg.

The UK and the US are usually where I find my favourite music. Historically, they are the two places we think of when we consider what we assume is the best (right or wrong – you know what they say about assuming) – Cool Britannia has the edge over America for me – the Beatles, Muse and Led Zep over Motley Crue, Pearl Jam and Nirvana. The Clash over the Ramones.

But now? I honestly think Japan may have eclipsed them both. May I present exhibits A through C m’lud?

Exhibit A: Lovebites

A five piece full on metal band where every last member is a god damn virtuoso. Backbone of the band are founding members Haruna (drums) and Miho (bass – unfortunately recently left), both absolutely flawless beasts on their instruments. Guitarists Midori and Miyako are both jaw-droppingly good, trading solos and playing the chunkiest riffs, and I love the way most of the time Midori has a huge grin and Miyako looks like she’s about to murder you. And then there is singer Asami. My goodness. I think the thing that I like least about most heavy metal is the shouty, growly, screamy vocals most bands have. There are exceptions (hello Jinjer), but it frequently puts me off. So when these four women put out the heavy technical metal and this petite lady stands out front and belts these operatic vocals over the top of it, it’s like a revelation.

If you want to give them a try, I started with Holy War. It’s astonishing. Long intricate solos, powerful vocals and relentless drumming. Maybe try Don’t Bite the Dust after that. They’re clearly having fun with a lighter tone, but it’s no less astonishing, particularly Asami nearly blowing the roof off with the strength of her voice. The closing argument for exhibit A m’lud, would be Swan Song, in which we find out that Miyako is every bit as good on the piano as she is on the guitar.

Exhibit B: Band-Maid

Now I appreciate that the full on power metal stylings of Lovebites ain’t gonna be for everyone. As amazing as those women are, heavy metal simply makes some people’s ears bleed. Band-Maid are not metal. Band-Maid are rock. Hard rock, true, but rock nonetheless.

The thing that hits you first about Band-Maid is the look. The gimmick, if you will. The women are dressed in maid outfits. All five did at the beginning, but now it’s most obvious on the two guitarists and the rest of the band look a bit more subdued. It’s kind of unusual, but having a look to make you stand out isn’t new in rock ‘n’ roll. Consider the man in black himself, Johnny Cash. Slash’s top hat, or Axl Rose’s weird drainpipes and bandana combo. Angus Young in his naughty schoolboy outfit. Hell, one of the greatest live bands ever, Kiss. Dressing up is nothing new in rock. The look is the brainchild of the guitarist, singer and band founder Miku, who prior to being a rock goddess, worked in a maid café wearing an outfit much like the one she wears in the band. It doesn’t take long for the outfits to become the least interesting thing about them.

Miku writes the majority of the songs and really feels like the heart of the band to me. Drummer Akane and bassist Misa form the disgustingly precise rhythm section and lead guitarist Kanami is, well, phenomenal. Lead singer Saiki isn’t verging on operatic like Asami of Lovebites, but still has a voice that fits the band and the music like a glove.

If you want to sample them, you might want to start with Domination. The guitar and bass tones, the literally perfect drumming. It’s to die for. Latest single Sense boggles the mind with its layers and intricacy while still being nothing but hook. The only thing better than playing that song is playing it twice. Closing argument for exhibit B m’lud is my favourite of theirs; Dice. That rhythm section opening up, followed by the riffage. Can’t beat it. Don’t get me wrong; Sleaford Mods are great an all, but I know what I’d rather have in my ears.

Exhibit C: Babymetal

Here’s where it gets weirder. Back to the first of these bands I found. And the one I still love the most. I feel like I’d get into a right argument with my younger self about this. When I always used to talk to people about music I would put great store in the fact that the bands I loved were all self-made. Not assembled by a record company, but formed from practising in garages and a name made by playing gigs in tiny venues, working their way up to signing that elusive record contract. If you didn’t come up that way, you weren’t worth my time. I’m a bit older now (who am I kidding; a lot older), and I can see that I was a little young and stupid back then. I still have respect for that way to come up; hell all my old favourites did it that way – Oasis, Blur, Muse, Arctic Monkeys (with help from MySpace), but I am now aware that it’s not the only way to get legitimacy.

Pop music in Japan is quite different. In Japan there are idols. Performers that are picked and trained from a young age, every aspect of their act planned meticulously. It’s a way that doesn’t necessarily appeal to me, but just over 10 years ago Key Kobayashi, a producer working at Amuse talent agency and long time metal fan frustrated with the staleness of the metal scene, had a brain wave. Take the J-pop that was his and Amuse’s stock in trade, and back it up with heavy metal instrumentation. He had the brainwave, he assembled the group, he produced them and took responsibility for their direction.

So Babymetal. Three young women singing pop melodies over heavy metal. They don’t play instruments. They don’t write their songs. Anathema to what my teenage self thought mattered most in music. Sounds weird, right? Turns out it’s actually amazing. I get all the things I love about my favourite music – thundering drums and bass, overdriven guitars, and then it gets made catchy. I mean ridiculously catchy. You don’t know what the words are, but the melodies are jammed into your head.

Somehow it’s more than that though. It’s more than the music. It’s hard to truly see how effective Babymetal is until you see them live. It’s a spectacle. Backed by a live band of session musicians that are the very best Japan has to offer (a few different members rotate in and out, but largely it’s the same relatively small group of people), their songs come alive. Choreography; that’s another thing my teenage self would set no store by; who cares if you dance? Just meant you weren’t a serious artist to me. Man I was dumb. The three members of this band have specific choreography for every song, meticulously planned and performed. To manage that level of cardio and then to sing in key is frankly inconceivable to me. I think one way for me to illustrate it is this: the difference between hearing the studio version of a Babymetal song and seeing it performed live is the difference between listening to a song from the Rocky Horror Picture Show soundtrack and being at a live performance of the show surrounded by devoted cosplaying fans. The first one is fine, but the second one is on another level entirely.

I’ve written all these words and haven’t even got to what sets Babymetal apart from literally everyone, and that is one Suzuka Nakamoto (stage name Su-Metal), their lead singer. I do not really know how she has the effect she has on me, I just know that there is no other performer that comes close. She’s not the most technically gifted singer out there. She’s a soprano with a range of just over 2 octaves (G3-G#5 for the musical among you). Compared to the more than 3 octave range of Floor Jansen for example, or the possibly greatest ever Freddy Mercury with his almost four octave range, it doesn’t sound much, but it’s worth remembering that Su is only 24, and singers don’t come in to the full range of their abilities until 30 or older. But it’s not range, it’s power, it’s tone, it’s warmth, it’s emotion. Put simply, on my least favourite Babymetal songs, Su’s voice makes me grin. On my favourite Babymetal songs, Su’s voice melts me.

She might not have the same effect on you and that’s fine. But if I may be permitted to present my three pieces of evidence m’lud.

First off, Road of Resistance. This is Babymetal’s call to arms, and is an absolute masterclass in crowd control and interaction. Su just turned 17 the month before this and she is already world class, able to lead a packed crowd of 20,000 through an extended singalong like she’d been performing it for years, when in truth I think it was only the third time they’d played this live. The part near the start where she parts the crowd with nothing more than a silent gesture accompanied by a death stare like a little Asian Moses is bonkers yet amazing.

Next, Rondo of Nightmare. Rondo is a musical term for a repeated refrain that changes as it repeats, forming part of a larger piece. Su is singing about being chased by an unseen monster in a repeating nightmare that she is unable to wake from, making both the song and the subject matter a rondo. The intro gives you some idea of just how good the live musicians behind them are – I have some new guitar heroes – in order of their moments in the spotlight, Leda Cygnus (blue guitar), Takayoshi Ohmura (gold guitar), Boh (bass) and Hideki Aoyama (drums). Raise a glass to Boh, mind-blowingly talented bassist – you can tell he’s usually a jazz musician, yes? And then the song starts, with Su (16 at the time) on a platform fully 8 feet in the air with no barrier, almost certainly unable to see anything with the lights on her. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen this and I don’t think I’ll ever get over it.

Final submission m’lud, is No Rain No Rainbow from Su’s birthday concert – she’d turned 20. This is much less metal, and more power ballad, in truth an homage to 80s Japanese rock gods X Japan’s mega hit Endless Rain. A couple of things about this performance. It was in Su’s hometown of Hiroshima (yes, that Hiroshima; I have heard that Su’s grandparents were survivors of the bomb). It was the first performance without one of the original two backups Yui Mizuno (stage name Yuimetal), who couldn’t perform that night for health reasons. I think the song is in part about realising that the bad times make the good times all the more meaningful – without the rain, you don’t get the rainbow you know? About loss in a way. With it being her birthday, in her hometown, and missing a one of the members that she’d toured the world with for the last half a decade or more, you can see Su felt every moment of this performance deep in her bones. To make it hit even harder for me, one the guitarists, Mikio Fujioka, an absolute wizard on the guitar and my favourite of all of Babymetal’s backing band members would die a few weeks after this age 36, falling from a viewing platform while stargazing on New Year’s Eve. One of the things I love about Su is her complete lack of vibrato. None of that Mariah Carey-type warbling for her – she hits the note and she blasts it out consistently, powerful enough to cut straight through the metal instrumentation. However, during the second verse there is a little bit of vibrato added where Su’s voice cracks just a little and her eyes fill with unshed tears. Through sheer force of will she brings herself back under control and delivers the rest of the song. It’s a performance that leaves me a wreck without fail, but in the best way. All the endorphins.

So I’ve rattled on for a long time and probably not explained to anyone adequately how these bands have re-energised me and re-invigorated my lifelong love of music, but I felt I needed to write about it.

Cry songs.

I’ve mentioned before on here about how since having kids I cry much more easily now, usually at films. Along with a lot of other people, I think sometimes I feel like crying in general. But I've noticed recently that certain types of songs will also make me cry. They all seem to have something in common as well: regret. That’s what gets me about, for example, Magnolia. Man, that hits hard.

I think that’s my emotional Achilles’ Heel. Looking back on a life of promise unfulfilled. I don’t really feel that about my own life. I have a lot to be grateful for, not least a house I love, a wife I love even more, job, family – all the stuff that’s supposed to show you’re doing ok. Of course, I think generally using a metric like that to measure success is bullshit – it’s perfectly easy to be content without any of that. But my point, I think, is I’m not sure why this theme of regret hits me so hard. I think it’s also a wider theme – now I’m getting older it feels like the idea of looking back over a life evoked by music and film strikes a strong chord.

There’s something quite satisfying about being induced to have a proper cry as well, a kind of emotional release, so I do find myself fairly frequently revisiting the songs that trigger that reaction in me. Is that weird? I dunno, maybe.

The current crop of cry songs I keep going back to then:

The Kinks, Come Dancing. An ode to a long-demolished dancehall that was the centrepiece of an older sister’s happiest memories. “The day they knocked down the palais, my sister stood and cried. The day they knocked down the palais, part of my childhood died.”

Bruce Springsteen, The River. A life lived in a poor conservative working class America that went from few prospects to none at all for the sake of a fleeting moment of love and happiness. “All them things that seemed so important? Well mister they vanished right into the air. Now I just act like I don’t remember, and Mary acts like she don’t care.”

Joni Mitchell, Come in from the Cold. Feels like a cry from everyone who ever felt isolated and without love. Genuinely a wreck before the end of the first chorus. “We really thought we had a purpose, we were so anxious to achieve. We had hope, the world held promise, for a slave to liberty.”

Lana Del Ray, Gods and Monsters. Feels like a life deliberately thrown away just because of an inability to conceive of anything better. “You got that medicine I need, dope shoot it up, straight to the heart please. I don’t really wanna know what’s good for me, god’s dead? I say: ‘Baby that’s alright with me’.”

Catching up.

There is so much out there that I want to hear, watch, play and read that I’d need multiple lifetimes to get through it all, but one of the greatest joys in life is spending time getting through some if it. Sometimes it’s hard to know where to go next. Recommendations don’t always work, because they’re often someone else’s idea of what they think you would or should like.

I remember when Rach and I were at college together just getting to know each other, and in between stealing glances at her over our time in the college library revising together, I was getting her caught up on my music tastes, which I thought were eclectic at the time. I was 18, so you can’t blame me too much for thinking listening to both Manic Street Preachers and Prodigy meant I was eclectic. Turns out most 18-year-olds are pretty silly like that, on account of, you know, only being 18. It generally went quite well – Oasis, Manics, Suede etc. all good. Radiohead took a little longer, but eventually became a favourite. Then there was Nirvana. She just didn’t get them, didn’t like them much. I’d built them up a fair bit to be honest, and she didn’t really get what the fuss was about. She was wrong – she still is, because she still isn’t a fan, but it illustrates that sometimes other people who think they know what you’re going to like don’t always get it right. It’s often so much better if you come to discover new stuff yourself.

Blip.fm was pretty good for that, but since they allowed video streaming as well as audio streaming it seemed to lose something. Going to the Green Man festival for the past couple of years has turned me on to some music I probably wouldn’t have found otherwise, like Michael Kiwanuka, Curtis Harding and Anna Calvi.

Reading is another one. When you have a type or collection of authors you like, you find yourself sometimes sticking quite closely to them or authors like them, inevitably missing out on others. And this is where being married to a librarian pays dividends. Rach isn’t making recommendations based on her knowledge of what/who I like to read, she just picks a few up now and again from a genre she knows I like, and that’s how she brought home Flowers for Algernon. Technically sci-fi, it does what all great sci-fi does and is actually about something else entirely. Ostensibly it is about a man with extremely low intelligence becoming a subject in an experiment to increase human intelligence which turns him into a genius but in reality it is actually about so many things; the human need for love, empathy and understanding, the nature of humanity, intelligence and science. The nature of time and its vexing insistence on waiting for no-one. The fear of losing the ability to think for yourself and to remember. As the main character begins to understand more about his past, his ‘friends’ and himself, it is at once illuminating and desperately sad. It hit such a nerve with me that although it brought tears to my eyes I am so glad I found it and was able to ponder the questions it raised. At the same time Rach brought home Day of the Triffids, which, along with The War of the Worlds and The Time Machine was one of those cheesy film adaptations that I adored as a kid. I wasn’t quite prepared for how chilling the novel was – it was genuinely uncomfortable to read at times.

Then there’s TV. So much TV. The thing about TV is, there’s so much of it nowadays, and so much of it is supposed to be first rate, I often find I start something but take ages to get through it. I’m not a binge watcher – sitting through 4 or more episodes a night isn’t something I can seem to manage. I’m watching a load of good shows, just slowly. One of the shows I’m slowly getting through with Rach is Black Mirror. It you know anything about Charlie Brooker, you’ll know he’s not often one for cheery dispositions. I’ve heard there is an episode, San Junipero, that supposedly has a happy ending. I haven’t got there yet, but I did actually get quite a positive feeling from the ending to an episode I watched recently, Nosedive. Set in a possible future where everything from social status to what type of house or medical care you’re entitled to depends on the approval of others to your social media habits. Everyone and everything exists in an environment of enforced jollity, where expressions of negativity are met with negative feedback, putting your whole social position at risk. By the end of the episode the main character has gone as low as it is possible to go and has her connection to that world severed. The episode ends with her cheerfully exchanging insults with another person in the same situation and oddly, it feels really positive. The visceral relief at finally being free of the fake happiness that binds everyone else and being able to say what you want without fear of peer disapproval comes across brilliantly.

So without further ado I’m off to read/play/watch/listen to something.

Newish occasional feature: Ending with a song relating to the post:

Anna Calvi – Don’t Beat the Girl Out of My Boy

Weeks without wi-fi.

I recently spent a week with family and friends in the Brecon Beacons at the 2018 Green Man festival. It’s a relatively small independently-run music festival that is a bit different to the behemoths like Reading or Glastonbury. We spent the first three days walking, playing tig in the dark and making tie-dye t-shirts. The last four days are generally spent camped out in front of a big stage listening to whomever turns up. Usually it’s people I’ve barely heard of but am usually pleasantly surprised by – Baxter Drury, Anna Calvi and War on Drugs were probably favourites this year.

The kids love it – this is the second year we’ve been and towards the end of it Katie noted that she’s looking forward to going home to the wi-fi, but she hasn’t missed it as much as she thought she would. I think to have this time away from constant access to the online world (I know other people’s fancy mobiles still allow them access, but none of that for me or Katie – at least until she’s older) is crucial. I embrace the possibilities and the promise of the Internet as much as the next person, but to be away from it all is so refreshing. Even if I do enter modern times and eventually get a posh phone I still want to make a point of disconnecting when away on holiday, because there is a positive mental, emotional and physical effect of leaving all that behind, especially at the moment with so much of it being toxic.

Multiple people shared a story on various social media platforms recently about how those making their fortunes in tech that we all consume so avidly strictly limit their own children’s access to that same tech, ensuring their childhoods are spent in the physical world. One of the most sought-after schools in Silicon Valley has a total technology ban for under 11s. I don’t know how much of that is true (after all, how far can you trust something shared over social media?), but it isn’t something that would surprise me.

Unplug. Go to a gig. Get lost up a mountain or in a forest for a day. Spend a week away. The circus of fools will still be here when you get back.

Newish occasional feature: Ending with a song relating to the post:

Animals: We Gotta Get Out of This Place. “There's a better life for me and you.”

The value in repetition.

I’m a repeater. My favourite records are played again and again until they wear out and must be bought again (Definitely Maybe, Parklife, Grace, Is This It?, Different Class, Songs for the Deaf and Appetite for Destruction amongst dozens of others, if you care). Throughout my childhood I re-watched my favourite films to death (The Time Machine (1960), War of the Worlds (1953), Goonies, Gremlins, Ghostbusters and Indiana Jones) and that hasn’t changed much since I’ve got older apart from the addition of a few others – Pulp Fiction, Lord of the Rings, and Fight Club along with many more. The hours I sunk into playing through Sonic the Hedgehog, James Pond, Alex Kidd, Road Rash, Flashback and Street Fighter II and more over and over again in my teens I have no doubt would be terrifying were they ever to be added up, and more recently, I’ve been through the Gears of War campaign more than once and can see myself playing though GTA V again before too long.

There are, I don’t doubt, many people who have quite the opposite point of view; when you’ve seen a film once, you’ve seen it, so what’s the point of seeing it again? But if I love it, why would I not want to see it again? Those records, those films and those games became a support system for me while negotiating the difficulties of adolescence. They were friends, they were retreats – they were my happy place. They still are, in a way.

Books also had their place. I’d like to be able to tell you that I loved books above all those other things; that I used to spend hours, days even, lost in them. Alas, I wasn’t that bright. I did like books – I would read Roald Dahl, comics and adaptations of my favourite films. As with films, music and games, I would re-read my favourites – Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, George’s Marvellous Medicine and a junior version of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade – that would all become dog-eared and well thumbed, and later To Kill a Mockingbird would become my favourite. This recent article about books written for children kicked off this whole train of thought. It makes a good point about the validity of children’s books, as they have to be written with repetition in mind. They have to be robust enough to stand up to kids reading and re-reading them over and over again. While as adults we certainly do re-read our favourites, they are never tested to the extremes kid’s books are – I particularly like the Neil Gaiman quote in the article about how while he can’t justify every word of American Gods, he can of Coraline. Does that mean he thinks Coraline is a better book? I doubt it, but it does sound as though he takes special care over his children’s books compared to his adult books, and it’s probably because of the retellings the children’s books are subjected to.

But I didn’t really get into reading until I got into my teens, when I found Robert Jordan, Professor Tolkien and Terry’s Brooks and Pratchett. I am in fact re-reading Pratchett’s Discworld series at the moment. I wrote this this ages ago about how you generally have differing points of view when coming back to something like a book series or TV show later in life, and a similar thing has happened with Discworld. My favourite hasn’t changed – previously it was Small Gods and so it proves to be the case still – the conceit that gods are only as real as they are believed to be and their power diminishes with their belief, leaving them to essentially die along with their last believer is such a stroke of inspired genius that I doubt Pratchett will ever top it (although he’s come close a few times). Taking the series in more general terms, however, my favoured stories were always the ones that involved the wizards of Unseen University, or Death. While they are certainly the funniest ones still, I’m much happier this time round in the company of Watch Commander Sam Vimes and witch Granny Weatherwax. I could be well off the mark here, but they feel somehow truer, as if their righteous fury at the injustices of the world is closer to Pratchett’s true view of the world and echo the points he’s really trying make under the funny. This piece written by Neil Gaiman about Pratchett and his anger being the ‘engine that powered Good Omens’ might suggest I’m not that far off the mark, after all.

As usual, I don’t really have much of a point, but I suppose what I’m getting at is you should spend time in the company of the things you love.

People: not all bad.

I’m not unaware that this blog will often contain rants about the stupid and ridiculous things people do for the most stupid and ridiculous reasons, which, frankly, can sometimes get a little depressing. Sometimes it’s worth making a conscious effort to remember that we are responsible for brilliance.

There is a lump of matter in our skulls that can think its way beyond primal survival instincts and contemplate its own mortality and place within the cosmos. It can ask and answer questions about not only its origins, but the origins of the universe within which it finds itself. We can place ourselves in the shoes of those who are less fortunate and help them.

Complex and sophisticated languages, music, architecture, storytelling and many other forms of creation and expression. Not only the ability some have to create, but the ability of others to appreciate it. To respond on a deep emotional level to another person’s creation and either understand what it was they wanted to say, or take an entirely new interpretation of it beyond the creator’s original intention.

People you wouldn’t look at twice on the street are transformed into desirable, sweaty sex gods/goddesses if they’re standing in front of you playing music that fills your head with noise and your bones with vibrations. Moving pictures or written words become real and important because we have an imagination within which they become tangible things.

I know there are a many people in the world who aren’t in any kind of position to appreciate these things the way I can, and I know there are many things that aren’t right in our world – hell I usually moan about most of them right here, but we still have potential. Maybe we’ll realise it before we go under.

Growing up, guitars and good friends.

When I was in my teens, the big musical thing was Britpop. Now, that isn’t my fault, so don’t be too hard on me. The thing about music is it isn’t necessarily what’s best in a technical sense that becomes your favourite. Sure, everyone can appreciate decent lyrics and great playing. But your favourite music often becomes your favourite because of how you felt, or what you were doing, or even how old you were when you heard it. So when I first really got into music, following a brief flirtation with the mighty Jovi, it was to the strains of the Britpop movement. Blur’s Parklife was the first record I truly fell in love with (and to this day I remain so), but Oasis slowly eclipsed Blur as my favourite. As with so many of today’s leading guitar acts, Definitely Maybe inspired me to buy a guitar. I lacked both the talent and the will for it to go any further than a hobby, but being able to play first Oasis, and later Stereophonics, Blur and Weller was among the greatest joys of my teenage life.

One of my childhood friends, Ian, loved Oasis as much as I did, and there is no doubt that we bonded tremendously over this mutual love. Entire weekends would disappear learning Slide Away or Champagne Supernova; Ian singing, me playing guitar. Our friends were probably bored half to death listening to us, but we didn’t care. Then we got older, and things change as they always do. Girlfriends, jobs, moving all conspired to move my guitars to a cupboard under the stairs. Late last year Ian died of a rare form of Leukaemia, and now I find myself remembering all those weekends spent playing guitar. Turns out I can’t listen to Live Forever all the way through without crying anymore.

We never did get a band together. But in the end that isn’t what matters. What matters is the comfort of the memories I have of those years. There has been much talk of Ian looking down on us and the things we’re doing with approval and love. If you’ve read enough of these you’ll know that in my heart that’s a belief I can’t share, but at times like these I feel and understand the need people have for it, and I cannot give enough kudos to the vicar who spoke at Ian’s funeral, who happily admitted that he had been tasked with giving the ceremony just enough religion ‘to get him in’, and the good grace with which he managed this.

Thoughts now turn to those guitars, gathering dust under the stairs. I think maybe I’ll bring them out again into the light of day and give Don’t Look Back in Anger a whirl. It feels like a modest tribute, but somehow the most heartfelt.

The horror, the horror...

It’s begun. My eldest daughter is five, and the bollocky, over-sexed, unoriginal pit of fecal aural matter that is our current pop scene is now starting to exert influence on her. She was jumping on our bed, the words “I am Jessie Jay Jay” coming from her mouth. She’s a big Toy Story watcher, so I hoped she might be referring to the cowgirl doll voiced by Joan Cusack in the films. Alas, when I asked her who, she said “Jessie J daddy, she’s a dancer and she dances every day”.

Hearing that sparked an odd kind of horror inside me, in which my mind’s eye showed me my daughter in a ridiculously tight outfit thrusting her crotch in the direction of Brian May’s guitar. Clearly, things are unlikely to ever get that bad, but I suspect I’m not far away from the JLS or One Direction phase, or whatever unshaven ken dolls styled and auto-tuned for the screaming masses they have by then. A band once cleverly prophesied that Pop Will Eat Itself. Pop is no longer eating itself, but is now feasting on its own cannibalised regurgitated vomit and calling it X-Factor.

Is it odd that I’m feeling more confident about handling the drink, sex and drugs phase than I am about the incoming being-fed-this-putrid-ear-shit-and-brainwashed-into-thinking-it-has-any-fucking-value-whatsoever phase? Wish me luck.

An early sign of middle age.

"I used to be 'with it'. Then they changed what 'it' was. Now 'it' seems weird and scary to me. It'll happen to you too." - Abe Simpson.

I'm 32 next month. This feels old. I know to a 50 year old it's nothing - still a shining beacon of youth. I also know to a 20 year old it sounds like the best years of my life are behind me. Being or feeling young or old is relative - there is some truth to that 'only as old as you feel' spiel. Maybe 32 feels old to me because I can remember how it felt to be 17, when the thirties seemed another life away.

Attitudes to certain things change as age increases - I mentioned that already here, but I noticed something this week that is beginning to happen with increasing frequency and is an indication that I'm getting older: I am getting annoyed at the NME.

I've read the NME for years. Loved it for years. For years, it's told me where to find some of the best music on the planet. I always loved the writing; how the writers would describe the music. It's becoming increasingly undeniable to me that the writing is a little youth oriented, and is starting to sound stupid to me. I don't think it's anything to do with the magazine changing, I think it's me. I think I'm getting older, and 'it' is making less and less sense to me, just as Abe Simpson predicted. Take this week's issue. Here are three examples of what I think are supposed to be descriptions of music. "For a man who sings like a dismal hippo, he makes rather a lovely racket." How, pray, is a dismal hippo supposed to sound when he sings? "Like trying to beat out loneliness with a dustbin lid." Um, pardon? Is that anything like The Beatles? "Akin to someone dripping poison in your ear." This is actually supposed to be a recommendation. It is nonsense, and it annoys me because it doesn't tell me how those three songs are supposed to sound. Were I barely five years younger, I don't doubt I'd have loved reading such descriptions of music.

It's not the NME's fault. It just doesn't make sense to me anymore. Guess I'll have to start reading Mojo instead.

Sometimes technology is awesome.

Much of the time I'm a right old bastard when it comes to embracing the new. The prime example of this would be mobile phones, or mobile devices as they should be called nowadays, having evolved so far beyond simple phones as to be only one step away from taking over the world in an horrific trapper-keeper calamity. I still hate mobile phones, no matter how brilliant they undoubtedly are.

However, where I very much make an exception is in the way I'm beginning to consume music. For the longest time, online was anathema to how I thought music should be collected. I would always argue (rightly, I still think, in many cases) that there was no substitute for discovering music than spending an afternoon in a music store, browsing endless shelves of CDs. I arrived too late for LPs and I'm very glad of that fact, for they are shit. I like my noise crystal clear, thanks all the same. You know the 'warmth' those aficionados go on about? It's known by another name: poor quality. This attitude towards the humble LP would offer clues as to how I would come to embrace new technology in the future, but for the longest time I would not join the download bandwagon. In a way, I still haven't; I don't download music, I still buy CDs, but I no longer use music shops and NME (at least not exclusively, but I will forever be in debt to NME for turning me on to Polly Scattergood) to discover music I've never heard before.

Most bands still release music the old-fashioned way, but there are a few who've experimented with new ways of releasing music. Arctic Monkeys made a name for themselves largely through MySpace. Radiohead released the phenomenal In Rainbows online, allowing the buyer to choose their own purchase price. Ash have abandoned the old 'new record every two years, release a few singles, tour relentlessly, repeat' rut they had become stuck in, and are now almost at the end of their A-Z project, where they've released a new single online every month for 26 months.

But where the whole thing really came alive for me is upon the discovery of Blip (http://www.blip.fm/) via Twitter, and upon the receipt of an invite to join Spotify. Blip allows me to listen to other people's favourite music from around the world, and it's where I've discovered many previously unknown artists from The Veils to Mazzy Star, and countless weird and wonderful cover versions, like Blondie's amazing version of We Three Kings. It also allows me to interact with people the world over with similar tastes to mine (who would've thought there'd be an American who liked Echobelly as much as I do?) Spotify allows me to do similar things - I can tailor a radio station to my own tastes, I can share playlists with friends, and I can road-test albums before buying them (thank goodness I listened to the second Elastica album before wasting my money). I can see Spotify leading the way to future technology where CDs are extinct, and people listen to music by streaming it directly out of the ether, and when you find that rare gem of an album or song so good it changes your whole life for the better, you can share it with others who'll understand instantly, instead of just going on and on about it down the pub to people who aren't really that bothered. I would, of course, be sad to see my CD collection go, but I can honestly say I think it would be much better that way. Bring on the future!

The best example I have yet seen of how this technology can work happened recently, thanks to Twitter. Amanda Palmer, that most amazing woman from The Dresden Dolls, who is married to Neil Gaiman, that most amazing man who writes the most amazingly beautiful stories, was accosted by a young music student outside the Berklee College of Music. That's in Boston. The other side of the world from me. The young man was named Tristan Allen, and when he sat down in front of a piano in Amanda's house, proceeded to blow her away. She tweeted about it. She then went on to showcase Tristan's talent to the world via the live video streaming website UStream. The kid was genuinely incredible. He would take well known pieces like the Halloween theme or a Philip Glass song, and just improvise the hell out of them. Thanks to this technology, I was (via a computer monitor, obviously), in Amanda Fucking Palmer's house on the other side of the planet to the sofa I was sitting on, listening to an impromptu performance of genuine excellence by a teenage music student in real time. To be able to share in the goosebump moment with Amanda as she discovers something amazing for the first time is incredibly exciting. It's so far removed from meetings with record company executives and the suicide-inducing X-Factor that it was like a ray of perfect sunshine in the midst of a miserable day. See Amanda Palmer's blog about it, including the entire streamed performance, here: http://blog.amandapalmer.net/post/962861244/my-answer-to-grayson-chance-presenting-tristan. It's over an hour and a half long, so if you haven't got time to watch it all (although it is highly recommended), go to the duet at one hour twenty seconds and be as amazed as I was at the 10 minutes that follow.

This is the potential of this technology. This is the benefit of making everyone and everything connectable. This, hopefully, is the future of music.

A further attempt to understand why people like shite.

So, a friend of mine (who happens to be a gentleman somewhat older than myself) is a big fan of pop music, and I've taken it upon myself to try to find out why. At some point during a conversation, X-Factor came up. That's right - it's not just regular pop music he likes, like say, Lady Gaga who, previously in this blog I've confessed to and attempted to defend a liking of, but it's the empty headed, personality-less talent-holes who enter this glorified karaoke contest he calls himself a fan of.

"You can't deny that Leona Lewis has a great voice," he tells me, all knowing. Well, friend, just watch me. So she's technically proficient, but is that all it takes nowadays? If I close my eyes, I can hear all of them - Lewis, Alexandra Burke, um, erm. Ah. I was going to list others but I've forgotten them all. They're all clones of the standard wobbly-voiced diva. The originals - Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, Celene Dion and similar are also horrific, but at least they're professionals. Leona Lewis just copied the template and managed to fool the morons who take the time to vote for these empty vessels.

Doesn't anyone want a bit of substance, a bit of feeling, or something more original? The breathless Polly Scattergood, the unique and astonishing Neko Case? Case's Deep Red Bells has a vocal that frankly shits all over Bleeding Love from a great height. You want a bigger range? The magnificent Florence Welch has a voice which is practically operatic. Unfortunately, my friend had not heard of any of these. Although, I'd wager he's probably heard of Florence and the Machine by now. OK, we'll go with someone well known then - Kate Bush. "Nah," he says. "She's weird."

It's at this point I give up. He, like so many others, prefers to wallow in the dull, repetitive world of mainstream pop, listening to music that was recorded to make money as opposed to being a timeless piece of art, dismissing anything with a hint of feeling or originality as 'weird'. Well, balls to him and all others like him.

Gaga is good. Sort of.

It may be because I'm a touch pissed at the time of writing this and it was playing in the bar I was in earlier, but I've been thinking about Lady Gaga. I'm kind of surprised that more people haven't seemed to have got the point of her. There are a lot of people that love her to ridiculous extremes, there are people that consider her another pop clone showing tits and ass to get records sold, and there are people that consider her to be a dude. All of these viewpoints (except possibly the last one) miss the whole point of Gaga.

First off, she's a writer, and regardless of whether you like the singles or not (I for one could frankly do without them, but can't seem to get them out of my head for ages after hearing them), the fact that she penned them immediately puts her in a category above Britney et al. Infuriatingly catchy choruses married to the smoothest production possible, they are shining examples of everything great or hideous about pop, depending on your point of view.

But the point is, Gaga herself knows this. There are many insidious touches that hint of the skewed double meaning, not least of which is the way she goes completely out of her way to make herself look as hideously freakish as possible, while being a genuinely beautiful woman. The point is that pop music is so driven by image and sex that most 'artists' in the genre are ugly talentless caricatures of beauty and sex appeal - the difference is Gaga chooses to be this way. The concept is never clearer than in the video for 'Bad Romance' - the single that cemented her place as world leading pop icon, with a chorus so catchy the only way it will ever leave your head is if you skewer it out with a screwdriver. She appears freakishly distorted to the point where she is so skinny she would be dead from starvation, and is shown being pretty much whored out to an emotionless onlooker. There was the MTV performance in which she essentially died in a pool of her own blood to attempt to sate the appetite of the ravenous masses.

She is clearly much, much more intelligent than she is often given credit for, using her not inconsiderable talent to subvert the very genre she has conquered so effortlessly. For that, she deserves more than to be written off as another soulless pop bimbo - whether you like her records or not, she deserves your respect, however grudgingly given it may be.