At the Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds show this week, having finished giggling as a hapless roadie rushed on to replace the singer's malfunctioning microphone only to become coiled up in a nightmarish jungle of wires, my thoughts turned to high-minded subjects. Watching Cave dally around the stage, bellowing biblical imagery, I turned to David Smyth and wondered: "do you think it bothers Nick Cave that he's not quite a great?" And my implied answer, which David refuted, was: yes, it does.

Of course, it was a silly question, churlish in the face of the raucously entertaining show we were witnessing and the consistent high calibre of Cave's last decade of work. But even so: I have always sensed that the Australian, one of the cleverest and self-aware men in rock, with his high-minded references to Leviticus and Orpheus and low-minded references to "New York City, man" and everything, is struggling for great status that bit too hard. I admire him hugely, from the lovely Murder Ballads to the lovelorn And No More Shall We Part to the rude Grinderman album; I want him to be great. However, put it this way: if he wants to be mentioned in the same breath as Tom Waits, Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, he's trying a bit too hard to convince.

What is greatness and who cares? A status in rock that's really of interest only to geeks; but as its discussion is the whole raison d'etre of the main rock monthly mags and some kind of key to posterirty, it's worth something (Q, for example, revolves around the issue of conferring greatness, constantly seeking to turn "popular" into "great", Keane and Coldplay being the latest laughable candidates). There are certain names in the canon that most people could agree on as greats - from Elvis and the Beatles to the likes of Led Zep, Radiohead and Madonna, influence, importance and trancendence the defining qualities. In Cave's particular field of clever white males, we might identify Dylan, Waits and Cohen, and perhaps Neil Young and Lou Reed. All still alive, incidentally. And its their dominance that Cave hasn't quite found a way past.

"Only Dylan and Tom Waits people their music with such a rich cast of characters", said the Guardian of Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!, Cave's latest. "Like Johnny Cash, Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen, artists with whom he can be seriously compared, Cave has nothing to fear from old age", opined our own John Aizlewood. Hard to argue with Aizlewood's last point - he's certainly at the peak of his powers at 50 - but more generally, I think his music lacks the warmth and integrity of Cash, the weirdness and sentiment of Waits and the poetry and intensity of Cohen. It is true his rich casts of biblical, classical and trailer-park characters are comparable to those of Dylan - and this is largely because that's where they are derived from, with a few refugees from Waits and Reed. In short, Cave has never really astonished me; I can imagine the thought process that leads to the songs; his world is a fascinating place of reflections and revisions rather than the truly terrifying vistas of, say Dylan's It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding) or Waits's What's He Building In There?

But then, watching the gig I felt mean for making this point, and compelled to explain that this is only the difference between Cave making that top 25 greatest artists ever or merely the top 50. And then the Bad Seeds (no one could ask for a better backing band, incidentally) struck up We Call Upon the Author and I had to concede - no, concede is to negative; I had to affirm that damn, he's good and yes, no one else could have come up with a song like that. It turns his pretensions in on themselves, making a kind of hyper-literary meta-song, burlesquing authorial responsibility and mis-readings, in a lyrical groove that allows his word play to work at its best.

Perhaps the greatest curse is coming after all these greats, who have farmed off the most fertile areas of words and melody, so the only thing left to do is re-plough the same furrows. Of course, it is increasingly hard to do something suprising and effective with a rock set-up. Ultimately, though, I think it's the public who are the best barometer of greatness - and it's no coincidence that Cave doesn't really make those Q polls, has never had a great hit (excluding for a minute that duet with Kylie Minogue) and, come the encore, didn't really have that one unifying song. He does manage to be intelligent, inspiring and entertaining which is more than most. I'd give him another five years.

As views go, it probably wouldn't have stopped Constable in his tracks.

Soggy old newspapers are strewn in the scrub, which stretches out towards the factories, substations and warehouses of Tottenham. A thin drizzle falls on a field of half-built houses. There's a low hum of electricity overhead. A child's push-along car is half-immersed, nose down in the filth of the river, as if Noddy was driving along the riverbank one day and decided to commit suicide here.

This is the point where the River Lea Navigation meets the A104, in a backwater of Hackney. It would be eccentric to call it beautiful, but it is undeniably poignant, rich in detail and suggestion.

You can imagine a perverse sort of father climbing the bridge with his son, pointing out the landmarks on the horizon. "That, son, is the High Maynard Reservoir. And if look yonder, you just might make out the regional distribution depot for Safeways".

Or you could map out the social history of east London, take a glimpse into the future. This is one of the sites currently being redeveloped for the London Games in 2012. Almost £10 billion is being spent on reclaiming this polluted land, building new homes and facilities. But some people seem to be happy with things as they are. "F**k the Olympics", someone has written on the construction hoardings.

I was inspired to explore this patch - which I had not realised was so close to my doorstep - by the marvellous book, Derelict London, the springboard for hundreds of urban walks.

It's the work of the amateur photgrapher Paul Talling, who was inspired to keep an archive of ruin when he witnessed the demolition of a once-glorious candle factory down his road in 2003. He began to snap crumbling buildings all over London and filed them on his wonderful website, which now forms a wonderful catalogue of the capital's social history. Shots of the old Crystal Palace, the ill-fated Tobacco Docks development and Victorian pubs giving way to Starbucks are richly evocative.

The website devotes a whole section to the Lower Lea Valley regeneration - and exploring the area, it's not hard to see why Talling is in two minds about it. These waterways were labelled a "corridor of dereliction" by the Olympics developers; however, the GLA designated them as a vital area of urban conservation. Indeed, as you turn the corner from the scene described above, you come across a haven of water birds and plants and a quiet you do not often encounter in London. A Haywain for the 21st century, perhaps.