Today's lesson

Never buy significant pieces of machinery from someone you know. When it all goes wrong - say, the second-hand lawnmower breaks down the first time you use it - the relationship becomes decidedly awkward.

The queen and the princess of pop

You know what truly impresses me in music? A performer who can get me to like a genre I don't naturally warm to.

Sometimes I get a bit worried about people's musical diets (including my own). There's a tendency to stick to one kind of music, as if all of the music of that kind will be good and that everything else won't be as good. Funnily enough, this is the kind of reasoning that music companies seem to rely on - if someone has a huge hit, the airwaves are soon full of imitators because it's assumed that because they sound the same their success will be the same.

It's an almost complete fallacy of course. The external style of music is one of the least important things about it. The quality of the structure inside is what matters, just like in architecture. Putting a girl in front of a piano and getting her to write 'confessional' lyrics does not make her Tori Amos. Ravel is not at all like Debussy (dear God, I've seen that version of the fallacy more times than I can count).

Nevertheless, we do all tend to gravitate to certain styles. The chances of a singer-songwriter with an acoustic sound getting my attention are reasonably high. The chances of slickly produced pop music getting my attention are a lot lower.

Madonna has been succeeding in getting my attention for around two decades now, although realistically she got more of my attention and respect during the 1990s than before or since. Do I like all her stuff? By no means: I only own two albums (Ray of Light and I'm Breathless) and even those are a bit uneven. But she has succeeded in remaining at the forefront of popular music for all that time. Her instincts for music as a business as well as an art form are second to none.

I had initially dismissed Hung Up as a fairly poor pilfering of one ABBA's hits, and one of Madonna's weakest singles for some time. The lyrics and music are limited and repetitive.

Just like all dance music. I don't like almost all dance music.

Friday night, though, I saw the video for Hung Up and heard the song for about the 4th or 5th time and... really, really enjoyed it. The beat crawled under my skin. Yes, it's dance music. But as far as dance music goes, it's well judged. It holds together. I'm not likely to rush out and buy an album because of it, but if I'm out somewhere and it comes on I'm not going to wince.

Straight after the Madonna clip was the latest one for Gwen Stefani. It seems reasonably obvious that GS is intent on inheriting Madonna's mantle for the next generation. And guess what - I think she's succeeding.

As lead singer of No Doubt she already succeeded on getting me hooked on punk/ska stylings I have no business in liking (trust me, you would never pick me out of a line-up as the guy who thinks Excuse Me Mr. is a thrill). The Greatest Hits package that came out a couple of years ago is quite simply the best collection of pop singles I've ever come across. It also illustrates quite forcefully that each of the three albums (not counting the band's obscure debut, which is only represented by one song) was markedly different.

Now she's headed for a weird mix of Japanese pop and mid-80s keyboards. I'm not sure I even liked mid-80s keyboards back in the mid-80s. And yet...

I've now heard five singles from Love Angel Music Baby. I thought the first was completely brilliant, which led me to sample the rest of the album in a store, whereupon I hated it. I thought Hollaback Girl was particularly stupid. Despite that, every one of those songs has gradually been burrowing into my consciousness, to the point where I find myself saying "you know, I don't actually mind that..."

That's an impressive trick.

We don't do things that way anymore

I heard a story at church this morning which I want to pass on as best I can. It's a true and fairly recent story

A herd of cattle were travelling through southern Sudan (an aside already! - cattle are very important in that region and a measure of wealth). At some point seven of the cows peeled off from the rest of the herd and wandered into the fields of a local farmer, where they stripped his crops. The farmer caught the cows and placed them in a pen.

An old herdsman travelling with the cattle came looking for the cows. When he found them he talked to the farmer, who explained that the cows had eaten his livelihood. The two men negotiated for a while, and it was agreed that the old herdsman could take two milking cows back with him to ensure that the calves in the herd would receive milk, but that the farmer could hold the remaining five cows until reasonable compensation was negotiated for the loss of his crops.

On hearing about this, some younger herdsmen became angry, flatly told the old herdsman that 'we don't do things that way anymore', and got their guns.

When the fighting between the locals and the travelling herdsmen finished, 17 people were dead. And they still hadn't got back the five cows.

It seems quite obvious to me that progress is not always a good thing, especially not when it makes you think that you are self-sufficient to the point that you can ignore your relationship with your neighbour.

Give me some credit

It's official. We're not expected to have an attention span any more.

I just about coped when all the television stations around here decided they needed to have their logos on screen all the time. Well, I coped with 4 out of 5: the first station to do it was the most popular (yes, Channel 9/WIN, I'm talking about you) which has always been my least favourite. It also decided it needed a really noticeable bright logo, that even flashed and sparkled when returning from an ad break. The other stations went for something a lot more subtle, thank God.

But now they've gone too far.

There was a time when the end credits of a show/movie involved a voiceover ad for some other show on the station - possibly the next one coming up. NOW, though, on the 3 commerical stations the credits roll in just one half of the screen (or even one quarter) while the sound switches to whatever other show they're advertising in the other half of the screen (or quarter, while some whopping great big logo sparkles in the lower half).

Excuse me, but can you just not wait? I mean, these are the same shows you've advertised once every 5-7 minutes throughout the movie I just watched. It was rather good (the movie, not the mindless advertising) and I'd rather like a chance to reflect on it - to swirl it around my mind like a fine wine - and maybe to acknowledge the efforts of the many, many people who had to work rather hard to bring it to the screen.

I realise there is a bunch of tyre-squealing impatient morons out there who might not be able to deal with the situation other than by shouting "boooooriiiiiing" and changing the channel. That's what you're frightened of, I can tell. But do we really have to live by the lowest common denominator all the time? And would you even HAVE this problem if you hadn't tried to pretend that life moves a mile a minute? How do you think they grew up without being able to concentrate in the first place?

This has being going on for well over a year, but tonight was one of those times I just couldn't cope. I haven't the faintest idea of the names of any of the people involved in bringing About A Boy to the screen except the few main stars, and I rather wanted to know their names if only for a second or two.

But then of course, I'm the only person I know who insists on staying in the cinema until the credits are over.