I'm not quite sure why Anthony Kiedis bothered to put on his multicoloured frock coat. It certainly wasn't to keep warm. The atmosphere in Koko was positively volcanic even before the Red Hot Chili Peppers appeared on stage at this exclusive Radio 1 showcase. Highlights are due to be broadcast during Zane Lowe's show on 12 September from 7pm to 9pm, but a radio airing will convey only a miniscule fraction of the zip of this age-defying band.

In a recent interview with theartsdesk Bombay Bicycle Club talked about jamming together in their kitchen in Covent Garden in central London, but listening to A Different Kind of Fix it sounds as if they had their sights set further afield at the time. Their third album boasts an epic ambition that was absent from their more intimate second album, Flaws. This is a set of tunes that is big but never overblown, confident but never boastful. There are some lovely, grand chunks of rhythm that should make Fix a fixture in halls of residence up and down the country this autumn and could even finally break BBC in America.

In 1989 when Lenny Kravitz released his debut Let Love Rule people complained that he had failed to quite master the Sixties influences that cut through it. They were wrong. That year it made Kravitz the most exciting black/white crossover artist since Prince. Since then, his path has been mainly a little more straightforward - maybe a little retro, but still consistently stirring. However with Black and White America Kravitz has again thumbed back through his Black-American songbook to find new styles with which to score his treatise on 21st-century race relations. Is it as good as Let Love Rule? Simple answer, no.

The title in part refers to the container ships that as well as bringing food stuffs etc, to many of the world’s ports, also bring people and their music. But this album is far from just another melting-pot fusion of all the usual styles - Balkan, reggae, ska, funk – all the usual suspects. The focus is just on the taranta (the other half of the title) - a collective term for a number of up-tempo Italian folk dances originating from the heel of Italy.

Having arrived in the Golden State via Detroit and Amarillo, Texas, John David Souther became one of the architects of the Californian soft-rock sound. It didn't hurt that he shared an apartment with future Eagle Glenn Frey and lived upstairs from Jackson Browne. Souther never became a superstar in his own right, but thanks to his high-profile collaborations with assorted luminaries, his songwriting royalty cheques must have been artefacts of many-zeroed beauty.

Some bloke called Jack mailed to say that he did indeed have two tickets to Iron Maiden (baby), and for the Friday ‘n’all. So I called shotgun, threw on my cleanest “I ♥ Justin Bieber” T-shirt,* and pitched along to Docklands to hang out with the other teenage dirtbags – only to discover that they are, on average, actually about 40 years old. A lot of them in chinos.

Variety, as they say, is the spice of life. So it’s something to both celebrate and ruminate upon, that on Tuesday night I was reviewing a gig at which the guitar was undisputed king, whereas last night I was standing before an 11-piece band that didn’t include a single guitar. But the Romanian big band Mahala Rai Banda produce such a brassily dense sound that it’s hard to imagine even the most cranked-up Strat being able to get a chord in edgeways.

The Killer B’s have been heralded as a kind of alternative supergroup (their line-up consisting of ex-members of The Screaming Blue Messiahs, Chicken Legs Weaver and The Men They Couldn’t Hang) so my expectations last night were high. But a poor sound system, in conjunction with the band’s desire to play much too loud for that poor sound system, ended up making it very hard to judge whether I was hearing the future of rock’n’roll or just another pub rock band.

I’m pleased to report that the expression “like father like son” becomes more applicable to Vieux Farka Touré with each album he makes. But perhaps I should qualify that statement. It’s not about Vieux slavishly imitating the legendary Malian blues man’s unique guitar style, or becoming in any way a tribute act. But what The Secret represents is a certain maturing of his style and a noticeable calming down of his dependence on the kind of rock clichés and histrionics that can still mar his live performances.

“Huxley! Electra!” called a plummy mummy to a couple of dawdling children. “Hurry up or you'll miss the BMX display!” Thursday night and Camp Bestival was, to a rather comical degree, looking like a playground for slightly funky middle-class families. Not that I was complaining – with an 18-month-old not so much in tow as leading the charge, I was extremely grateful for the regimented, relatively quiet campsite and the untold entertainments and comforts that CB provides. This was my first experience of a festival with said inquisitive toddler, and the experience of having to abide by his attention span and sleep patterns made for a deeply odd inversion of previous experiences of bobbing through festivals on a cloud of intoxication.