It's been a funny couple of months. We spoilt ourselves in May with far too many gigs (over 2 a week) and I really could'nt find the time to update this blog. And then June had the world cup and we had a server failure at home and house guests, so again no updates.

But after a few weeks off of live music we jumped back in again last week with The Spinto Band, whi reaffarmed my love of live music. Everyone should see this band live at least once - they have so much fun and it's truely infectious.

Anyway, I feel compelled to speak out about the Razorlight album. Have you heard it ? It's a bit (whisper it) weak isn't it ? Have we listened to mouth almighty Borrel and wait for 2 years for this ?

My first gripe, there isn't much of it - 35 minutes / 10 tracks. And if you take away Kirby's House, which was on the Help album, then that's just 9 tracks. Oh, andthe version of Kirby's House on the Help album was much better IMO.

So I know you should judge by Quality rather than Quantity, so on to my second gripe, it's a bit MOR isn't it ? I'd say it plodded along, but can an ablum of 35 mnutes plod ? Have Razorlight written an album to appeal to the US radio format ? I suspect this is the album they will use to try an break America, but really it's not the band that wrote Up All Night.

Now, if you're looking for the album of this week, possibly of the summer then look no further than Lily Allen, who like Johnny, could be called mouthy. Her album is everything that the Razorlight record should be - it's fun, its witty, it's full of catchy songs. Most importantly it doesn't strive to be "a classic", but then anyone who strives to create a classic is surely setting themselves up for failure. Just ask Johnny B.

It wasn't that last nights show by Hard-Fi at Brixton was bad, it's just we know they can do better. My main complaint was the sound - everything sounded tiney especially Richard's mic, making him sound as though he had been breathing Helium in between delivering lyrics. Not good at all.

I suppose the sight and sound of Hard-fi hammering ham-fistedly through Town Called Malice with Paul Weller (looking more like Mani with every year that goes by).

Possibly the best part of the evening was the support set from Billy Bragg, who appeals to men of a certain age. I'm pleased to say that after 30 years of being angry Billy is still angry, so everything is OK with the world.

It would now appear that Domonic Masters, frontman of The Others (who I believe are still without a record deal after being dropped last year) has taken to riding around on late night buses trying to get noticed. We spotted him on an N7 from Ealing to Holborn in the wee hours of last Friday night and bless him he was so suprised to get noticed he almost jumped out of his skin.

Ancient, granny pleasing rocker, Cliff Richard, made the BBC news yesterday with his continuing whinge about copyright expiry. Apparently 50 years of royalties are insufficient for Sir Cliff, and he wants more. Whilst the USA has gone crazy and now grants stupidly long copyright periods, we in the UK have retained a sensible, pragmatic approach and granted a limited period of exclusive profits to the copyright holder.

Lets move this away from music for a moment and imagine if drug companies were given 50 or 100 years on patents rather than the 15 to 25 years they get at the moment. Whilst this would make shareholders happy in the short term it wouldn’t drive innovation – why innovate when you have a long monopoly. Well for me the copyright argument is the same; a copyright should reward the artist for their work, but shouldn’t make them lazy and stop them innovating.

So Sir Cliff, if you want future royalties you need to keep writing new songs rather than worrying about songs you wrote 50 years ago and that have paid you handsomely over this time.

Apparently, this is what I was listening to last week.

Patrick Walden has been arrested:

http://www.nme.com/news/babyshambles/22742

Due to crap buses and friends who had to work late we just made the unusually early stage time of 8:30. So we arrive just in time for the first run through of the new single Country Girl, which is Primal Scream going gospal. In fact, most of the new stuff has a gospal feel, which is a relief as I'd heard the new sound was Give Up But Don't Give Up style blues.

Another change is to the line up - Throb has gone, but this is a case of less is more. With just two guitarists, the blitzkreig from the stage is cut and the songs all have room to breath. Of course, Kill All Hippies and Swastika Eyes are still massive blasts of noise, but you can now hear everything without your ears hurting.

Crowd favourties, as always, are Rocks, Kowalski and Moving On Up, but for me Kill All Hippies is the definative Scream track.