...I am pant-wettingly excited about seeing them at the Electric Ballroom tonight. Here is a video, courtesy of Pitchfork TV.

Some excellent dance moves there. Via Pitchfork TV. Incidentally, I wonder how The xx's revenue from album sales compares to the royalties they receive from having their music played on current affairs programmes? They are currently the go-to guys (and gal) for any news producer in need of something moody to add atmosphere to a report on industrial decline on Teesside, or a shot of dole queues in the Wirral. I cannot now regard a bit of rust without the riff from Crystalise striking up in my head! Like lipstick manufacturers and divorce lawyers, the south London trio have profited quite nicely from the recession, I fancy.

The Sunday Times Rich List is published this weekend. Here is a sneak preview of the musicians and industry types with the highest estimated personal fortunes. Interesting browsing...

1 Edgar Bronfman and family £1,640m
2 Clive Calder £1,300m
3 Lord Lloyd-Webber £700m
4 Sir Cameron Mackintosh £635m (Up 81% from last year, apparently)
5 Sir Paul McCartney £475m
6 Simon Fuller £350m
7 Sir Mick Jagger £190m
8 Sir Elton John £185m
9 Sting £180m (canny investor, Sting)
10 Keith Richards £175

Who are the top two? Edgar Bronfmam is the American chairman and chief exec of Warner, who moved his family to Britain presumably as he knew how welcoming we are to billionaires. Clive Calder is the South African founder of Zomba group of records, which has provided home for N*Sync, Britney and the Backstreet Boys. No Simon Cowell? Actually, he comes in at 11, with less than half the fortune of his namesake Fuller:

11 Simon Cowell £165m
12 Olivia and Dhani Harrison £160m
13 Jamie Palumbo £150m
14 David and Victoria Beckham £145m 
15= Sir Tim Rice £140m
15= Ringo Starr £140m
17 Sir Tom Jones £135m
18 Eric Clapton £125m
19 Roger Ames £120m
20 Barry and Robin Gibb £110m

Do the Beckhams really qualify as music millionaires any more, I wonder? Jamie Palumbo, incidentally, founded Ministry of Sound, while Roger Ames has been chairman of Warners and of EMI and last year took over Ticketmaster's operations outside the US. Onwards:

21 Phil Collins  £108m
22 Rod Stewart £105m
23 David Bowie £100m
24 Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne £95m
25 George Michael £90m (doesn't this show how much more lucratve it is to be a solo artist?)
26= Roger Waters £85m (Money? It's a gas!)
26= Charlie Watts £85m
26= Robbie Williams £85m
29= Chris Blackwell £80
29= Judy Craymer £80m (Mamma Mia! inventor and the highest placed woman whose fortune doesn't involve spouse)
29= Robert Plant £80m

Tired yet?

32 David Gilmour £78m (less than former bandmate Waters, note...)
33= Brian May £75
33= Jimmy Page £75m (£5m less than Plant)
35 Roger Taylor £70m
36 Chris Wright £64m (chairman, Chrysalis group)
37 Mark Knopfler £62m
38= John Deacon £60m
38= Engelbert Humperdinck £60m
40 Noel and Liam Gallagher £55m (Love the way they come after Humperdinck...)

Jealous?

41= Nick Mason £50m
41= Van Morrison £50m
41= Sir Cliff Richard £50m
44= John Paul Jones £45m
44= Chris Martin and Gwyneth Paltrow  £45m (Highest placed 'modern' artist)
46= Bernie Taupin £40m
46= Pete Townshend £40m
48= Gary Barlow £35m
48= Ken Berry  £35m
48= Mick Hucknall £35m
48=Jay Kay £35m (How did he accumulate so much? Is it all tied up in cars?)

And bringing up the rear (ho ho):

48=Kylie Minogue £35m

The Ivor Novello Awards ought to be the best music prize there is. Named after the great Welsh author of We'll Gather Lilacs (you may remember his turn in Gosford Park?), the awards are supposed to commend outstanding songwriting. They are, apparently, a cry for the old fashioned values of songcraft, of melody and metre, rhyme and rhythm, qualities that may be found in the work of both the famous and the totally unknown. Alex James, in his autobiography, cites winning the prize with Blur as one of the band's proudest acheivements; the recognition from peers (it is voted for by songwriters) placed them in a lineage of which they had long aspired to be a part.

And yet, as I mentioned in today's column, the nominations are simply baffling, year after year. You could argue that it's fitting that less well known craftsmen, such as Neil Hannon (nominated for his Duckworth Lewis Method cricket album) and Nick Hemming (of Leisure Society) should be saluted - both know their way around a middle 8. But how is Dizzee Rascal's Tongue N'Cheek an album of the year from a songwriting point of view? Nothing against electronic music (you can write a brilliant song on whichever instrument you choose) or Tongue N'Cheek itself (which is quite fun)... just that its collection of riffy verses and shouty choruses hardly bears comparison with Novello, and even the words are far from Dizzee at his most eloquent. 

Still more perplexing is the presence Lily Allen's number one single, The Fear. There are admittedly some cleverish Allenisms in the verse - though it always irritates me that she rhymes: "I want lots of clothes and I want lots of diamonds" with "I know people die when they're trying to find them", when "trying to mine them" would patently have been the better choice, both for scansion and sense. The main problem, though, occurs when that chorus comes in - it's so lame! No way Ivor would have let that pass! Try singing it - there's almost nothing there. So why is this nominated for "best song musically and lyrically", while Bat For Lashes' Daniel - superior musically and lyrically - is nominated for the seemingly less prestigious "best contemporary song"? Why should such a wonderful British songwriter as Laura Marling be overlooked, to pluck one example at random? 

As I say, I really like the idea of this award, but a slightly clearer sense of its objectives would make it count a lot more. Is the aim to seek great lyrics? Clever hooks? Commercial breakthroughs? Songs that capture a moment in time? At least, with its weary resignation, The Fear does that I suppose.

As for the unknown Patch William (nom'd for best song musically and lyrically), I will be interviewing them next week, and look forward to asking them.

IT’S Record Store Day on Saturday, a laudable initiative which sees 155 record shops offering a series of in-store gigs. Blur are to release a limited-edition 7-inch vinyl single to mark the occasion.

There were 734 independent records shops in 2005 - only 269 in 2009. According to the Entertainment Retailers’ Association, however, there are signs of encouragement. After years of rapid decline, overall music sales were down just 0.8 per cent from 2008 to 2009, while 18 new independent record shops opened last year against the odds.

With a bit of imagination, and the help of major stars such as Blur, there is no reason serious record stores shouldn’t thrive. In other areas of retail, there has been a move to more personalised, local, boutique stores to counter the blandness of supermarkets and online stores. The idle pleasure of rifling through the racks, the on-hand experts, the chance you might hear something life-changing on the store stereo, the deep joy the follows should the assistant approve your selection... these are rare forms of bliss that iTunes and Spotify can’t hope to replicate.

Malcolm McLaren, who has died aged 64, will be remembered as the inspired manager of the Sex Pistols and the pied-piper of punk, the ginger power movement (McLaren, Westwood, Lydon, Vyvyan off the Young Ones...) that had quite a profound impact on Britain in the late 70s. But you should take a look at this too, from McLaren's own rather odd pop career. His debut single from 1982, it is a hip hop reworking of a square dancing song, popularised by blackface minstrels in 19th century America. Check out those breakdancing moves! The first time British audiences had seen such a thing.

 

 

A little late with this one, but was reminded of the brilliance of Seb Rochford's modern jazz quintet when their terrific tune Beartown popped up on my iPod A-Z the other day - which sounds like a spastic train of three-legged camels carrying an Assyrian king across the desert. I have just been delving into their stunning new album, Peepers, and watching this, the first video they've made. It's jazz, but don't be scared.

Polar Bear - A New Morning Will Come from Leaf Label on Vimeo.

PETE Doherty and Carl Barat were the Lennon and McCartney of my generation. Which is not to say The Libertines were an iota as good as The Beatles - merely that the pair’s joint brilliance was no indication of the dreadfulness that followed when they pursued their careers apart. Barat never mustered much interest alone, while Doherty’s public problems always seemed a ready-made excuse for the fact he wasn’t as good a songwriter as his legend suggested he should be.

Now the pair have reformed their old band for a few festival dates this summer. Their tunes may be a footnote in the history recorded music. But when I saw them, one mad night at the Kentish Town Forum, I was blown away by their energy. You can see now how their ramshackle approach (performing gigs in fan’s front rooms was a speciality) helped inspire a new generation to improvise their own culture. And how we could do with a dash of their romanticism for our beleagured Albion right now! Have they left it too late?

Recently, I spent a Sunday dawn exploring a disused mental asylum with the young photographer Scott Cadman and his father, Simon. The piece I wrote about this highly enjoyable experience was, to my gratification, generally well-received by an Urban Exploration community used to negative coverage - and has now provoked another Urban Explorer to get in touch. His name is John Godwin (no relation, though I did assume he was my uncle at first) and he has made a few missions to the very same site, just off thee bottom end of the Northern Line. In contrast to Scott, he shoots in a grainy black and white, giving his pictures a sort of bruised, brooding melancholy. I just love this kind of stuff - and, if you read and enjoyed the first piece, would advise you to head in the direction of his gallery. Worth a good few minutes! Mr Godwin tells me his next mission will take him to a disused military engine testing ground in Farnborough - look forward to seeing the results of that one too.

Time to Pretend by MGMT... few songs capture the melancholy side of young hedonism so well. (Head Over Heels by Tears For Fears, played at 4am, has a similar effect). Here is a yearning cover from Sigur Ros's Jonsi, who recorded it on Jo Whiley's Radio One show today; the tension between doubt and euphoria is pulled very taut. Coming shortly before MGMT's sophomore album, Congratulations, it's a reminder of the strong songwriting that underpinned the American duo's debut - and a showcase for the singular Icelander Jonsi.