Mick Middles

One recalls, and in considerable horror, the days when the BBC truly held the radio monopoly. Oh it was horrible. People across the country were strapped to chairs and forced to listen to Tony Blackburn stating, "...and at the top of the hour its Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep from Middle of the Road. It was no wonder that people started to grow their hair, develop an unhealthy musical snobbery and start listening to tedious prog concept albums made by drab people from Cambridge. The music aware world was split by the two extremes of pop and rock. Both factions equally lost in the blind acceptance of anything directed towards their tastes. Hence we had deadening music on both sides of the divide, from those irksome tartan-clad terrors from Edinburgh who ignited 13-year-old female mass lust - and , if you do that, you can generally retire on the proceeds ... although those guys, Bay City Rollers by name, were too lame-brained to gather in the cash - to, well, have you ever sat through a King Crimson album?

Sometimes however, the little girls were right. I was reminded of this, this weekend, as I found myself locked in a room with two new DVD releases, both of which are riding high on a new wave of unlikely interest. My task was to watch both to the end without being reduced to a blubbering wreck. Had the DVDs been any of the aforementioned artists, I would have been lost within minutes. However, these were two examples of how music can transcend its own genre and return, 30 years later, sounding curiously relevant.

The first was Ride On The Marc Bolan story, and I accepted this with good grace. It was John Peel who, for once, completely mis-read the genius of Bolan. Peel had championed the elfin one throughout the days of Tyrannosaurus Rex, when Bolan sat crossed-legged and sang songs about elves, forests and silvery moons. At the precise moment that Bolan finally found his true calling, and launched into a string of the most perfectly formed pop records ever to crackle from a brown Dansette, Peel had wandered off, muttering stupid phrases such as "sell out" and "Commercial". Talk about missing the point. But, then again, many of us did, believing T-Rex to be little more than shallow popsters.

Thirty years later and still, nothing on Earth compares to the brilliance of Marc Bolan. A man so skilled in placing words within the context of a lyric, not because of meaning ... but because of sound. "She aint no witch and I love the way she twitch ... ah hah ha ..." Or "You're dirty sweet you've got a hub cap diamond star halo...".

Oh McFly, you have so much to learn

On the other side of the divide - indeed, the complete antithesis of T-Rex- came the next DVD. Utterly cool in pre-punk mud seventies, wholly derided thereafter. A tale of insane excess, of extreme rock star lunacy and delusion. A tale that, strangely, is now little short of absolutely fascinating. Their name was often shortened to ELP. Nothing else about Emerson, Lake and Palmer was remotely short. Three extraordinary musicians, driven by the deranged vision of Keith Emerson, from Todmorden. Pulling classical music into the rock arena via a series of absurd albums rescued by Emerson's idiosyncratic vision. I watched this man attacking his Moog synthesiser (which looked more like a small town telephone exchange than a digital musical instrument) with a Bowie knife and I realised that things just don't reach such a level of entertainment anymore. This was Liberace in loon pants. I am informed that ELP are set to make a triumphant return? But is the world ready for lavishly packaged triple-albums based on Wagner variations? I am not sure but, even that would be significantly less tedious than Peter Kay's irksome, brain-rotting Amarillo ... on Sunday, caught sight a football stand full of Evertonians singing vacantly along to said ditty. Reached for the comfort of a Garibaldi.