In a week when all kinds of people were going bonkers over an octogenarian playing songs from over 50 years ago to tens of thousands of people in a field in Somerset, it’s nice to know that rock’n’roll has not yet rolled over completely to become family friendly entertainment. In fact, if an evening with the Bobby Lees is anything to go by, it’s positively thriving – as long as you know where to look.

“What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” That’s the rule, right? Unless, of course, what happens is that you form a pop-rock act with a remarkable ear for a route-one hook and a direct line to the emotional core of teenagers everywhere. In that case, you definitely don’t stay in Vegas. You take the world by storm while leaving critics largely scratching their heads and saying, “I don’t get it”.

Last days of June 2022, I sit in my writing hut. My liver is radioactive jelly, my nose reinforced concrete, my leg muscles marathon-cramped, and poisoned perspiration rolls down my forehead, stinging my eyeballs.

“The historic, the prehistoric, the natural, architectural, geological, ornithological, or on the side of its folklore, Christian or heathen – the place teems with subject matter that is as curious as it is interesting.” So the Gothic Revival architect John Dando Sedding wrote of Cornwall in 1887.

The last time that Paolo Nutini was on the public stage, he was knocking out fine blue-eyed soul and having substantial hits like “Scream (Funk my Life Up)”. That was eight years ago though.

A few spots of rain greeted the arrival of the Rolling Stones on BST Hyde Park’s stage on Saturday night, and after “Street Fighting Man”, as Mick Jagger dedicated the show to the much-loved and lamented drummer Charlie Watts, a rainbow appeared over the stage. 

American singer-songwriter Damien Jurado is both prolific and enigmatic. His latest album follows too many to count (OK, not really, I think this is his 20^th). On his own label, it's as opaque as anything he’s done, and that’s saying something.

In 1965, Bob Crewe was living alongside Central Park in New York’s Dakota building. At various times, the block’s other residents included Lauren Bacall, Judy Garland, John Lennon and Yoko Ono. For work, Crewe’s 6th-floor offices on West 60th Street were in a complex overlooking Columbia Circle and South Central Park. Atlantic Records was also based there, as was Roulette Records. He was flying high.

An artist with a myriad of strings to his bow – gifted wordsmith, multi-instrumentalist, captivating storyteller – what enables James Vincent McMorrow’s singularly personal songs to take flight is the fact that he’s also a supreme melodist.

When did life become so theoretical? In the penultimate track of her new album, Home, before and after, Regina Spektor plays the role of classroom teacher to list all of the -ologies, from porcupineology through pleaseology to sorryology and loveology.