Warp, the Sheffield-based label that brought us Aphex Twin, Autechre, Boards of Canada, Prefuse 73, !!!, Jamie Lidell and, erm, Maximo Park and indeed much of the most interesting music of the last 20 years, is - oh, given the game away already, but it's 20 years old anyway. "Happy birthday, Warp" chorus a blank-eyed, metallic choir of devil children very slowly and distortedly.

To celebrate, Aphex Twin has hand-crochéted 20 limited edition CD pouches, and is giving them away to fans at a big love-in while the Venetian Snares give out homemade cookies. Not really. But for a label that forged its reputation by releasing the glitchy brainwrongs of the young Richard James, and pioneered user-friendliness by putting out Autechre albums without a single piece of artwork or writing on them at all, their strategy is quite chummy. At a special website, you can vote for your favourite Warp track - I immediately plumped for Roygbiv by Boards of Canada, then thought I really meant to choose the second track from that browny gold Autechre album only I've no idea what it's called. Once the votes are in, they'll compile a top ten, combine it with a Warp staff top ten, and release a Warp 20 compilation in the summer.

What defines Warp releases used to be a certain aloof, urban relish for electronic harshness leavened with a sardonic humour (exemplified by the fact that the label put out Chris Morris's anbient nightmare comedy Blue Jam - "shit your leg off", etc - on CD). With the expansion into the more obvious party music of !!!, the transformation of one-time electronic twiddler Jamie Lidell into blue-eyed soul singer, or the literate indie of Maximo Park - not to mention the incredible success of the Warp Films division - you see that what really marks out the label is single-minded commitment to quality. I don't think there's any British label more worthy celebration.

Ah Woodstock. I remember it well! Only not that well because I was obviously off my tits on acid and making daisy chains with a Piscean chick called Aurora. But I was there when Hendrix played the Star Spangled Banner! When we all burned our draft cards and played bongos! When all the sensible world seemed to be gathered here and peace and love, you could just pluck it out the air, and Vietnam and Janis Joplin and stuff. Ah Woodstock. I remember it well...

...My memories are naturally as hazy as you would expect from a minus 12 year old. But I'm not going to come over all cynical about this. I spend long enough mocking the betrayals and hypocrisies of the baby boomer generation, the revised memories and the false claims. Some of my parents friends were lucky enough to be at the Isle of Wight festival, the really legendary one, and only after waxing lyrical for a long time did they admit that they slept through Hendrix and The Doors.

But dammit, who am I kidding, I'd have loved to have been there, at Woodstock. Can you imagine how everything must have come together at that point? How powerful? I am pathetically weak when put in front of a few grainy colour images of zonked out hippies, flickering to a few bars of San Francisco or Get Together. Find it totally intoxicating. I think a lot of my generation are the same, grew up with our parents' generation yakking on about rebellion and free love, listening to acid rock and wondering when our teenage years would get interesting. Never mind that the reality for most Woodstock attendees must have been hunger, sunburn and sleeping through Crosby Stills Nash and Young.

Is all this any excuse, however, for promoter Michael Lang to attempt to bring the festival back? If he can raise $10 million in three weeks, "The chances that something will happen are probable". The sponsorship is needed if it is to be free and green, as Lang desires - thus in tune with the original spirit.

Only the picture above left shows what happened when Lang revived Woodstock in 1999. The headliners were Limp Bizkit and Korn - very peace and love - and the festival ended clouded in rape allegations and violence. Lang claims they have learned from these mistakes, but can the 40th anniversary event really be much more than an empty exercise? The rumoured headliners are The Who, veterans of 1969. Surely that's in the proper spirit? Back then, Pete Townshend, according to witnesses, spent his time feeling uptight in a hotel room, complaining about the hippies. Only, speak to him today, and that's not how he remembers it.

You can’t give away opera tickets in Hackney. Lord knows I tried.

My friend Lois had proposed a trip to the Empire. to catch the English Touring Opera’s production of The Magic Flute. “What could be more delightful!” I said, being of the small but fervent demographic who live in Hackney who do not despise this peculiar art form. I had never seen The Magic Flute before — and how very 2009 to see it in budget form, close to home, at the magnificent Empire.

However, somewhere in the exchanging of text messages, Lois and I both got the wrong end of the enchanted instrument, for when we met in the theatre bar, we were both clutching a pair of tickets. Having said I approve of the opera coming to my home borough, I am not so devoted that I need to secure multiple seating options, just in case one is next to a fatso eating crisps.

Nor, when it came down to it, were either of us beyond indulging in a bit of “secondary ticketing”. Naturally, the box office would not take our spares back and there was nothing for it but to tout them to the general public, subverting the theatre’s pricing policy by giving them away for free.

We scoured the Empire bar, looking for a pair who would be delighted to be offered free Mozart, and alighted on two young women polishing off glasses of white wine. No, thank you, they chirped, and as we moved on, one of them whispered: “Do you think they’ve heard?”

This did not fill me with confidence as we spilled out on to Mare Street. “Opera! Free opera!” I cried. An old Jamaican lady pushed her shopping out of my way, clearly taking me for a cult leader.

“Please take our tickets!” hawked Lois, up and down the box-office queue. The front of house staff took us for stooges from a rival operatic company and moved us on. I dived into the kebab shop next door. “Do you want to see some opera for free?” I asked a pair of youths. “Get out of my shop,” advised the Turk behind the counter, sharpening his doner knife.

There was nothing for it but to pocket the superior pair, secure the problem tickets to the frame of a playbill outside and let fate take care of it: if anyone finds them and feels emboldened to enter, so much the better.

When we emerged, the tickets were gone. Who had taken them? A tramp and his dog? A pair of rude girls? Most likely the wind but, still, I would like to think our small cult has a new member.

Eurovision is, of course, a laughable institution - but as with Prince Charles, that does not necessarily mean we should put it out of its misery.

Still, the furore currently breaking out in current-champions Russia does beg the question. Anastasia Prikhodko will represent the hosts with the song Mamo - and any student of Slavic languages will recognise those "o" endings as Ukrainian, not Russian. Kiev-born Prikhodko, a past winner of Russia's version of X Factor, has won a TV vote just as the Russo-Ukranian diplomatic spat over natural resources worsens. The losing finalist, Valeria, a full-blooded Russian who Simply Red fans can look forward to seeing in London as support to Mick Hucknall, ran off stage, crying. Funny - Valeria's song was in English and no one made a fuss about that.

But first: a defence of Eurovision. I confess, as a child, I was fascinated by all that awkward international back and forth ("This is Luxembourg calling", etc), which, in that well-meaning, pre-Ryanair age, seemed the height of sophistication. I think this hopeful aspect appealed to Terry Wogan more than the songs ever did.

However, the new, post-Soviet era of Eurovision, signalled when the wonderful t.A.T.u. performed (in Russian) at the 2003 competition, is more contentious. Now, there are double the amount of entrants, a qualifying system and a contest that is dominated by the tactical voting of the former Eastern Bloc. Macedonia scratches Bosnia's back, Georgia high fives Azerbaijan, while the traditional superpowers of the UK, Ireland, France, Germany and Sweden all get a nice nil points.

Wogan hates this! I don't mind at all. If Moldova can muster a bit of fun at the UK's expense, well who cares? There are not many contests where they start with an advantage - and at least they look like they're enjoying themselves. Meanwhile, those countries used to dominating the competition - with the exception of the Royaume-Uni, have adjusted to their new second-class status in deliciously ironic fashion. Last year, France decided to out-weird everyone with a truly great performance from Sebastien Tellier, while Spain's entry - which Wogan nearly choked on - would have made Salvador Dali proud.

But what's the point of any of it if the songwriter, singer and musicians are not all from the country they're representing? Our own entry this year, as earnest, irony-free and nil-points worthy as ever, is co-authored by a Californian, Diane Warren. Shouldn't the rules be pretty transparent on this issue, if we, the European public, are to enjoy the contest on its own terms?

As is, the Russo-Ukranian spat only serves to underline my consistent point that when pop is used for nationalistic purposes, things soon turn ugly. I'd also note that Russians are generally pretty relaxed about claiming Gogol and Bulgakov as their own. Still, it does serves to make the diplomatic minefield of the voting process that bit more delectable when May comes around in Moscow.

The weird pop star Michael Jackson - disgraced but not convicted, remember - will play a residency at the O2 Arena in Greenwich in June, earning him as much as £100 million which is coincidentally the precise figue at which his debt has been estimated. In further proof that The O2, owned by AEG, is becoming the biggest player in international music, Jackson will perform at least 10 shows, and possibly as many as 50, if he's up to it - which is subject to some doubt, given his reported chest problems and general fragility. His last performance in London in 2006 saw him mime along to a bit of We Are The World, and exit stage left, accompanied by boos, and his last original material turned up in 2001, so he ought to get practising now.

Particularly when you do the maths: 10 shows at £50 million, according to the Mirror, surely not right? At £5 million a show in a 20,000 capacity venue, you would have to charge an average of £250 per seat. The Telegraph's more conservative estimate suggests £1.5 million earnings per show, but even then, you suspect fans should not hold their breath for the £31.21-per-ticket bonanza that attended Prince's residency here. Perhaps something closer to the £500 Barbra Streisand charged. Promoter Harvey Goldsmith has suggested a bottom price of £75, and given the brilliance of The O2's coup - Jackson will not perform anywhere else in the world this year - international demand will meet that easily and bring a boost to London's tourism industry to boot. Just watch out for the touts selling on tickets for ludicrous sums, as happened with the Prince concerts.

But what price an evening that, let's speculate, features Eddie Van Halen airdropped in for Beat It, a full re-creation of the Thriller dance, a child from every nation on earth parading around for They Don't Really Care About Us and the roof of the O2 retracted and the Earth's satellite hauled in so Jackson can perform his signature Moonwalk on the very body that inspired it? As I say, he better get practising.

A couple are bickering in a poky room. She is trying to assemble an Ikea shelving unit with a spoon and is having little success. He is pacing up and down, ranting about bombing Uzbekistan. She mutters something about Colombian drug lords; they kiss tenderly, inches from my nose; I burst out laughing.

No, I am not describing a night of marital back-and-forth chez Godwin, but an evening at the most intimate theatre in London. With no ceremony, Arch 468 on Coldharbour Lane, SW9, has just opened its doors to the public: three of them, on the night I went. That’s half the total capacity, which, to spare you the maths, is six.

When you consider the fact that Arch 468 has launched with a play - Drunk Enough to Say I Love You, by Caryl Churchill - that was seen little more than a year ago at the Royal Court and universally rubbished (almost), and the play concerns itself with that most timely of subjects, Bush and Blair’s special relationship, you might suspect that the venture is not best positioned to ride out the credit crunch.

Which makes it all the more perversely delightful that this was such a thrilling experience. Churchill’s play re-imagined the US-UK “special relationship” as a dysfunctional domestic partnership in which two men exchange unfinished, meaningless sentences about foreign policy, reduced to a kind of nonsense poetry. “What about Israel?“ says one, as if casually asking the other to pass the salt.

Young avant-garde director Hester Chillingworth has reworked here it for a cast of four as a mini-promenade - meaning you are allowed to wander round the set at whim. It’s fresh, intense and immensely liberating. At least a third of the audience (well, me) found it hilarious, too, but since the remaining 66.66% didn’t seem to be laughing, I wondered if I ought.

What Arch 468 provides is a laboratory for eccentrics to incubate the theatre of the future - and it’s not so ludicrously uncommercial as it first appears. By day, the space is a rehearsal space for the likes of the Bush Theatre and Trafalgar Studios, which makes enough money for its artistic directors, Rebecca Atkinson-Lord and Roland Smith, to fund anyone with a glint in their eye.

There’s a glut of interactive theatre at the moment: Stovepipe is shortly to open in the abandoned West 12 shopping centre, while Shunt Vaults in London Bridge continues to host strange happenings. This breaking down of barriers between performers and actors is just the thing for a disconnected, credit-crunched London - and being outnumbered by the actors stretches intimacy to its most thrilling conclusion. I only wish I dared to hand the actress a screwdriver.

Superstar DJS: Here We Go! is an account by former Mixmag editor Dom Phillips of the superclub boom of the 1990's, published this week. A glance at any page proves clubs such as Ministry and Manumission were the frontier of overpaid rock'n'roll excess of the era. But browsing the list of protagonists, it hard to surpress a wry cackle at the thought that the frontiersmen were such as Judge Jules (who, the book reveals, was not even a real judge!). A cheeky half pill here, a line of coke snorted off a railway line there, an ounce of ket snorted with a magazine crew to follow - and they still had the wherewithal to impress the tits off Cream. Talent!

Can't say I was there in the thick of it myself. I was a little young and southern, and no consumer of escstasy in my teenage years. All those chart house anthems that Paul Oakenfold and his friends span so dextrously made very little sense; most of them struck me as rather fascistic in their bosh-bosh-bosh-bosh. My enduring memory of the epoch centres on a Yorkshireman called Dangerous Dave I once met, who, having stuck a pill up his bum, proceeded to chew a hole in his own cheek and clasp sober strangers to his skinny frame in a terse, clammy embrace. It's hard to credit how pervasive this culture felt in those days, how it dominated the charts and the clubs, gained a dumb monopoly on the concept of optimism and made even Oasis seem a subversive and witty alternative.

I think my 15 year old self would delight that the most famous name of all those superstar DJs - Norman Cook - has, in a nice piece of timing, released a new album this very week, and has considered it a wise move not to go under the name of Fatboy Slim which brought him such wealth and adulation in those heady days.