Complaining that you haven't heard of half the acts on the Mercury shortlist doesn't just miss the point, it flies wide of the target altogether. If you have heard of all of the 12 albums, the judges have failed in their primary task, which is to give greater exposure to artists who fall under the mainstream media spotlight.

The Brit Awards are there to garland Lily Allen and Little Boots - both of whom have failed to make the chosen dozen. Doves and Manic Street Preacher, not on the list either, can simply re-read the kind reviews for their latest efforts and reflect that their best days are behind them. But for acts such as Led Bib, The Invisible and Lisa Hannigan - who have made the cut - a Mercury nomination is worth its proverbial weight in gold, for there is no way without it they would reach a wider audience, an audience who might be grateful for having made the acquaintance.

In recent years, the Mercury has had some pretty drab inclusions, ranging from the thumpingly obvious to the uninspiring compromise - which is the only way I can account for Elbow's win last year. But this year is a nice mix, I think, containing, seven debuts and, by my estimation, five acts who might cause a "WHO?" among your average music fan:

Bat for Lashes - Two Suns
Florence & The Machine - Lungs
Friendly Fires - Friendly Fires
Glasvegas - Glasvegas
Kasabian - West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum
La Roux - La Roux
Led Bib - Sensible Shoes
Lisa Hannigan - Sea Sew
Speech Debelle - Speech Therapy
Sweet Billy Pilgrim - Twice Born Men
The Horrors - Primary Colours
The Invisible - The Invisible

There are lots of creative females - Florence, La Roux, Bat For Lashes - but none of the irritating ones (Little Boots). There are the more interesting mainstream rock bands, such as the emotive Glasvegas and the eclectic dance act Friendly Fires, plus Kasabian and the Horrors, who have both upped the ambition on their last albums with rewarding results.

But keep an eye on the curve balls. There's not one but two token jazz albums! Led Bib make a formidable, forbidding racket centring on leader Mark Holub's drums; it will terrify many listeners but that's half the point. The Invisible, who I recently saw supporting Acoustic Ladyland, are a kind of British TV on the Radio, fashioning psychedelic art rock built on singer Dave Okumu's extrodinary guitar playing. Then there's Speech Debelle, a very talented young rapper who rhymes eloquently over an acoustic backdrop; Lisa Hannigan used to be Damien Rice's backing singer and, having stolen the show each time she supported him, forged her own folky path - Sea Saw was lovely on cursory listen, and I will dig it out again now.

Which leaves Sweet Billy Pilgrim, who I have never heard of (hurrah!), but who apparently "take the listener into a strange, dislocated and compelling musical landscape".

So it's a pretty decent list, all things considered, not that that will stop one faction complaining it's too elitist and another that it's too mainstream. Acoustic Ladyland I'd have liked to see endorsed; Madness made a fun album. And I enjoyed the Camera Obscura album. But I can't think of another British album I'd really stick my neck out for (plenty of American, Canadian, Swedish and French albums mind you). Maybe that brings up another controversy: there just aren't that many...?

What do you think?

On Pitchfork, Tom Ewing hits on an interesting question regarding the pop chart in the digital age in his Poptimist column. It is a very long article, and the type size on Pitchfork these days is idiotically small, but far as I can work out by squinting, the article weighs up two things about which Ewing is passionate: the pop charts and the internet.

On the one hand, he says, the British pop charts at their golden, Eighties best were compelling because they provided a national forum for all the trends in popular culture to rub up against each other. The question the chart asked was not '"What's good?" but rather "What gets to be pop?"'. You weren't supposed to like all the music in them, but through the chart, you might discover stuff you never would have otherwise.

On the other hand, the internet is compelling because it allows you to fashion your own little forum for all your interests to rub up against each other - your homepage, your bookmarks list; the likelihood of your coming up against something you wouldn't have otherwise is diminished. So where now can you find that old 'serendipity'?

Ewing also compares the charts to a newspaper - another institution which now struggles for significance in the digital age. In a newspaper, you also find an unruly jumble of surprising things as you turn the pages: crime, fashion show, political scandal, air disaster, banking - just as the chart throws up hip hop, manufactured pop, indie rock, reggae, etc. The question a newspaper ask is simply: "What gets to be news?" If you were to filter your news intake so you only received things you imagined you wanted, you would miss out on a lot of the world. Likewise with pop.

Ewing finds solace in the randomness of Twitter and shared playlists on Spotify - lots of small forums, replacing the one big one we all used to share in the days of Top of the Pops and Smash Hits. But I would say these are still private forums - we miss out on something bigger, that might connect us to stranger strangers.

I think those writers who emerged from the web like Ewing are too taken with the internet as a message in itself. The influential blogger Seth Godin, for example, gleefully predicts a future of free content and the demise of newspapers, replaced by a vast amateur army of people like himself.

What this overlooks, though, is our desire for a communal, national, even global narrative - something that, even as newspaper circulations decline, we are more hungry for than ever.

(As regards newspapers, my friend Seb and I came up with this: imagine if newspapers did not exist, only the internet. And someone (someone bright spark like Godin, perhaps) said: "Why don't we take a cross section of the most interesting stories from this crude soup of stuff on the internet, get some decent writers, you know, ones with knowledge and craft and expertise, to pursue and research them - and package them up in an attractive, easy to use format. No screens - we're sick of screens. We'll print it on something old school, like paper. Nothing obsolete in there. It'll be a premium product. We'll charge less than a pound for it". What a business idea! Well, it beats bottled water - the classic example of making people pay for something should be free - and look how well that's done.)

A leaner, meaner Acoustic Ladyland delivered a pummeling at Cargo last night. Launching their new album, Living With a Tiger - their harshest outing yet - the quartet played a brutally entertaining set. New guitarist Chris Sharkey (a leaner Charles Bronson) and new bassist Ruth Goller (Tank Girl's sister) added greatly to the group's menace and Pete Wareham drew from his tenor sax an array of guttural, emotional expressions that verged on the midnight confessional. Seb Rochford's drums were extraordinary as ever - notably on Not So and the Mighty Q. I missed departed member Tom Cawley's keyboards - but Sharkey's inventive use of effects pedals added their own texture, and the guitar made sense in this punkier context. This was music to be inflicted rather than merely performed - and the crowd were gluttons for punishment.

Wareham launched his quartet some years ago as a Jimi Hendrix-inspired interpetive jazz act, and have gradually edged closer to Wareham's punk ideal over the years. With Last Chance Disco (2005), they earned an unprecedented amount of press for a jazz act, a Jools Holland appearance and a place on V2 records - who put out their last album, Skinny Grin, in 2007. But that collection did not capture the imagination of the record-buying public and, despite some magnificent moments, pulled in too many directions at once; V2 was sold to Universal and AL did not make the move.

The awkward flirtation with the rock mainstream clearly took its toll on Wareham: "This tune's about the music industry; it's called Promises Promises", he announced before leading his troupe through a sarky, snarly and rather blistering new number. But the older and wiser AL make more sense on their own terms. The new album - recorded, through financial necessity, in three days with no guest appearances or vocals and put out on their own label - is their most coherent yet, the one that best captures their live energy. Why don't more bands record in this way, it prompts the listener to wonder - mood and focus prioritised over gloss and sheen.

Speaking to Wareham after the show, I was left in no doubt that it's been a hard slog - his single-mindedness is admirable - and that he greatly appreciated the crowd's reaction. A place on the Mercury Prize shortlist would be fitting reward. And, hopefully, some lucrative action movie soundtrack contracts - this stuff would sound awesome over a few explosions.

A quirky British singer-songwriter, Charlie Winston, has become a superstar in France despite being a nobody in this, his native land. The 30-year-old performer, named after Charlie Chaplin and Winston Churchill, has topped the French album and singles chart, shifting more than 200,000 copies of his debut, Hobo - which is tipped to become the frogs' best-selling album of the year.

Lucky him, I say - the cad is no Jacques Brel (by which I mean to say he's untouched by genius) and he doesn't even speak French. Lucky because, having broken the French market, not only has he won the admiration of many demure French girls, he can expect a far more rewarding career than those who have enjoyed equivalent success in Britain. Explaining why he tried his luck in France, he says: “I wanted to get out of London after 12 years because the music scene there is driven so much by the latest trends, and I’ve never been interested in following fashion”. He found the French value different things in music - showmanship, originality and lyrical depth - and find our constantly revolving popstar roundabout rather baffling. If he follows up his debut, he will find they also value longevity and loyalty - quite often in France, artists sustain interest over two and even three or more albums.

I don't love Charlie Winston's music by any means - poor man's Ennio Morricone whistling and open mic lyrics. Stupid hat too. In fact, there's something rather hapless about his success. But still, lucky him. His career model comes close to the ideal. If I had a choice, I would rather be a star there - France is a great place to be a star: respect, intelligent chat shows, good food, nice theatres to play in, no London Lite... - and a nobody here. We're quite accommodating to nobodies.

A strange thing has happened to Michael Jackson in death. In life, he metamorphosed before our very eyes, from a cute black kid into a strange, pallid man with a sharp, brittle nose. Blame an obscure pigmentation problem, insecurities inspired by a very odd childhood or just a particularly malevolent plastic surgeon - but there it is. To compare his five year old face with his 50 year old face still makes you go "wha?"

However, to judge by last night's memorial show in LA, it would seem Jackson has become a black man once more. Rev. Al Sharpton was pretty adamant on this point in his address. The combined effect of the celebrities who paid tribute to him - Stevie Wonder, Spike Lee, Smokey Robinson, Sean Combs among them - plus Jackson's gathered family (most of whom are unafflicted by pigmentation problems) put the late singer back into a context that Jackson seemed to spent his life Moonwalking away from. Even Jackson's own children now look more obviously the product of a mixed-race marriage - didn't they used to be blonde?

Sharpton said: "He brought down the color curtain. It was Michael Jackson who brought blacks and whites and Asians and Latinos together". Musically, he certainly did - was already doing it when he still looked like the kid in the picture.In his videos and live performances, he aspired to too - one of his last requests for the O2 shows was a reportedly of choir of schoolchildren who, he stipulated, had to represent each race on earth. Perhaps his weird appearance appealed to many of his fans, his face representing to them a racial panopoly as much as his songs did - as if he were a mid-morph screen grab from the Black or White video? Perhaps it took a white black man to open the door for black black men, as Sharpton suggested? Or perhaps he committed the ultimate betrayal and his subsequent actions are the product of racial guilt? Awkward questions - and I don't feel it's my place to tackle them all.

However, I do feel that any narrative the paints Michael Jackson as a straightforward black role model, on a level with Muhammad Ali and Barack Obama, is, at best, wishful thinking - and at worst a whitewash. A comment by the British rapper Roots Manuva sticks in my mind from a few years ago in this regard. A magazine Q&A asked: "What one present would you give to anyone in the world?". He answered: "I'd give Michael Jackson the face he had when he was a little boy". Don't think this is quite what he meant.

In the paper today is an interview I conducted with Patrick Hennessey, 27, a former captain in the Grenadier Guards who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan and has now written a fascinating account of his experiences called The Junior Officers' Reading Club. What fascinated me about the book was learning the extent to which the modern soldier views war through the prism of popular culture, constantly comparing their experience to films and books and devising soundtracks to their own action. As Patrick noted of his time in Iraq, picking up a discussing from the movie Jarhead: “As we were driving around the desert, we were thinking - ‘Surely we shouldn’t be listening to Vietnam rock any more - it has to be hip hop. We’re fighting a war to keep people in LA in their Hum Vee’s so it has to be Busta Rimes.’”

Creating your own movie soundtrack is something I think most members of my and Patrick's generation are guilty of to greater or lesser degrees - doesn't Dizzee Rascal's Fix Up Look Sharp sound great on headphones walking down dark London streets, after all? But the trait is especially interesting where it comes to war. Indeed, academic papers are being written on the subject - see this interesting New Yorker article - wondering whether it is quite right that American GIs psych themselves up by listening to Eminem rapping "Die, motherf**ker, die", or Slayer (particularly popular in the US Army) singing “Fuck your God erase his name /A lady weeps insane with sorrow” on their song Jihad.

Does this suggest an alarming detachment from the realities of war? I'm conflicted - my instinct is 'yes', but, in all honesty, flung into an alien and unsettling environment, I know I would use music in the same way. Either way, as we parted, I asked Patrick to provide me with a playlist that captures his time at war, and the result, I think, is as insightful a look into the modern soldier's mind as you're likely to find. Perhaps we could call his school of soldiering the iRaq generation.

"The Perfect iPod Tour"
by Patrick Hennessey

Gimme Shelter - The Rolling Stones (the chopper ride in)
Prodigy vs Enya Smack My Bitch Up Orinocco Flow - 2 Many DJs (psych up for patrol)
Thunderstruck - AC/DC (airborne assault)
Higher State of Consciousness - Josh Wink (in the ambush)
Where the Streets Have No Name - U2 (driving back to camp)
All These Things That I Have Done - The Killers (safely back in)
Clubbed to Death - Rob Dougan (post-Op come-down)
Time to Pretend - MGMT (day dreams in the desert)
You’ve Got the Love - The Source feat. Candy Staton (dream of home)
Great Gig in the Sky - Pink Floyd (reflections on the flight out)

The piece I wrote in the paper Evening Standard yesterday prompted a bit of a debate in these quarters - how very gratifying. Blur were the (British) band of the Nineties, I contended, judging by their triumphant Glasto performance. Not necessarily my personal favourite, but the band who best sum up that decade, who most captured its essence. My arguments, broadly, were threefold:

a) Damon Albarn's songwriting, coupled with the input of Coxon (who prompted that mid-career change of direction) and Alex James (try and imagine Girls and Boys without his bassline), spanned a huge melodic and thematic range.
b) The anticipated the national mood better than any other band of the age, pre-empting Cool Britannia, then ditching it just as it was getting a bit nauseating, and transected with art, fashion and politics.
c) Their first single, She's So High, came out in 1990, and their last before Graham Coxon was ejected was Music in My Radar in 2000, which gives them a decade-long hit-making presence that please the pedant in me.

Who makes a credible alternative? Radiohead have the greater emotional pull, sold more records and were still more envelope-pushing - but did they capture the public imagination in the same way? Oasis did get the national mood - but I'm not sure anything post Definitely Maybe is still worth listening to. Massive Attack pretty much created a whole new genre. Or Take That? The Spice Girls?

Over to you...

THERE are an estimated 50,000 bands operating within London. 50,000! Frankly, I find that terrifying. It means you’re never less than five feet from a bassist. It conjures a scene similar to that David Attenborough documentary with all the crabs on the beach in, only with mediocre mope-alongs in skinny jeans swarming as opposed to small red crustaceans.

“And tonight”, says the voice-over, “like every night we see the indie singers emerge, lank-haired and bleary-eyed to begin their long and fruitless search for an A&R man”.
As I said, terrifying - but mostly, the advantages to the consumer outweigh the existential horror. London is pretty much the global capital of rock’n’roll. At the top end, we receive the metaphorical lap dance of Prince and Michael Jackson choosing to wiggle themselves in our direction; and at the lower end, we have approximately 200 gigs a night to choose from. Tonight, if you felt so inclined, you could see Icelandic folk off Oxford Street, slick country ballads in Islington, ukelele covers of punk songs in Chelsea.

But is this musical smorgasbord actually good for us? Does it make us the best audience in the world? We are among the most discerning, certainly, but last week in Barden’s Boudoir in fashionable Dalston, I began to think we are also the most frustrating.
My old friend Jasmine, who lives in New York, was over in London for her band’s European tour. Her trio, Sea Sick - who sound a little like the Doors fronted by Siouxsie Sioux, caught in a violent South Sea squall - are loud and original, have a devoted following in the States, had their debut EP mixed by PJ Harvey’s producer and are attracting interest from Mute and Warp record labels over here.

The Bardens show was a support slot, it is true, and really a warm-up to the following night’s gig in Hoxton, but even so the head-nodding, arms-folded attitude of the audience was pretty dispiriting. Nothing wrong with the performance - it sounded amazing, made me itch to fling myself about - but the Bardens crowd offered no energy, no effort in return.

Such insouciance is too often the way in London. Go to any provincial town and the kids go wild simply to hear a bit of feedback - and even in New York, the attitude is a lot more open and encouraging, with venues that attract their own audiences regardless of who’s playing and proper communities of musicians.

So while every band tries their luck here, and every promoter wants to make a quick buck out of them, cities like Manchester, Sheffield and Glasgow are better at producing and nurturing groups that last.

If we’re the crown of rock’n’roll capital is to fit well, we should take that up as a challenge.

“My first pop concert” is a rite of passage that, to judge by our fellow Jubilee line passengers on Sunday night, all crop tops and Hula Hoops, generally takes place between “my first grown-up tooth” and “my first kiss”.

For my wife and I, and our friends Jack and Lucinda, this educational step took place somewhere between “my first dinner party” and “my first intimation of mortality” — for somehow the full-on pop spectacle had passed us by until now.

Why renege on a lifetime of musical discernment? Simple. The destination was the O2 and Girls Aloud — and the exacting rock fan makes an exception for Girls Aloud, paragons of popular music and beacons of 21st-century womanhood that they are.

I began to suspect that Kimberley, Cheryl, Sarah, Nadine and Nicola were worthy of non-ironic consideration on hearing their 2005 single Biology, which, for spirit, honesty and inventiveness puts 99 per cent of modern rock music to shame.

My admiration only increased when I happened to meet the band’s main songwriter, Miranda Cooper, at a gig in Shoreditch a month ago (not for Girls Aloud the shallow protest that they write their own songs — they entrust them to true craftsmen). I complimented her on the clever rhyme scheme in the delightfully seedy song Watch Me Go. She was delighted I had noticed this quirk, and revealed she is a stickler for proper versification: “Like ‘friend’ does not rhyme with ‘when’,” she maintained. This is not the sort of thing that keeps Kings of Leon up at night, I daresay.

Leaving it to the experts has further advantages. If you go to see Kings of Leon, chances are they will have scribbled together their set list on the tour bus. There will not be even the most rudimentary dance routine.

At a Girls Aloud gig, hundreds of skilled pros — choreographers, costume designers, pyrotechnicians — have crafted each aspect of the show so you are at all times entertained. This is a supremely pleasurable experience. When it goes wrong — poor Cheryl experienced hydraulic platform malfunction during The Promise — it is hilarious. When it goes to plan — the video backdrop to Love Machine proved amazingly phallic — it is also hilarious.

And yet for all the artfulness of the show itself, the band, who worked like dogs, never come across as anything less than their unpretentious selves.
On top of all this, it is a bonus that the girls are quite nice to look at. As Jack and I tried to place the quintet in order of comeliness, we did not know whether to be delighted or dismayed that our partners joined in.

A LONDON LIFE
31st March

"WHOSE STREETS?" "OUR STREETS!" They didn't feel like our streets just then. My wife and I had travelled to Hyde Park to witness Saturday's Put People First march, the peaceful demonstration before the more controversial G20 protests planned for tomorrow. Only there was not much marching to be had.

Just Tony Robinson on a stage, a smattering of banners and, up near Speakers' Corner, a group of 100 or so black-clad anarchists, circled by the police.

"The march has finished, nothing more to see," one of those coppers warily informed us.

That's funny, there were supposed to be three hours of it left — and we doubted justice for all had been wrapped up by lunchtime and everyone had quietly gone home. But our further questions were ignored, for police eyes were now on the anarchists, who were gearing up to hold a mini-rally. We stayed to watch.

"Comrades!" said a crude sketch of an angry man, climbing a stepladder. "Don't think this is over. Today is a just a curtainraiser for Wednesday! We're not even in our f***ing seats yet! This is going to be a three-hour f***ing epic with a f***ing toilet break in the middle of it!" "I'm going to get a cup of tea," whispered my wife. "WHOSE STREETS?" "OUR STREETS!" yelled the anarchists.

As we walked off through Marble Arch, it was hard to shake the memory of the last time the streets really did feel they belonged to us, on the million-strong Iraq War demonstration of February 2003.

My wife and I had split up the year before but we agreed to a truce that day and marched together from Camden Town with carefully orchestrated groups of friends. In the multitude, breathtaking in its diversity and unity of aim, something was renewed. We felt part of something larger than ourselves. We got back together soon after; war began regardless.

On Saturday, the weather — blazing sun one minute, hail the next — seemed to reflect changeable hopes. The themes of the protest were too various, too vast and vague. Feeling despondent, we decided to call it a day.

Then we heard music. We watched as a vast column of protesters came up Park Lane — charities, workers, families, students, striding forwards to a glorious soul anthem. The police had seen fit to separate this group from the main march but only the very paranoid could have perceived a threat among them. Will they make any mark on the G20 leaders? Some hope. But sharing our umbrella with strangers in the crowd as it began to rain, at least, for a moment, it felt like our street after all.

* * * * * * * *

Post-script:
ON THE day this was published on the Standard website, I received a comment criticising me for criticising the police tactics. This is my reply (the original comment was deemed offensive and removed by the moderators)... I only publish it as it makes more explicit what I was hinting at in the original piece, and it seems quite relevant now in retrospect.

"I have nothing but respect for the police - I think it's our duty to respect our public servants - and, as you will gather from above, deep scepticism towards the anarchists. But with these protests, all police communications have talked up the possibility of violence - and on Saturday, the tactic appeared to be to keep the peaceful, family-oriented march from gathering any momentum.

What do these tactics achieve except make the rogue fringes spoil even more for a fight and keep ordinary, peaceful protesters away? In a democracy, it is the police's job to enable peaceful protest, not make it harder."

And look how that one turned out...