Last week, The Pop Group, this week, The Specials. Sleaford Mods might be the hottest band in Britain (too cool to even enter the Mercury Music Prize), but it doesn’t stop them playing support to their heroes. This is their first time on the main stage at Rock City and they fit. Jason Williamson’s, nonchalant ‘up yours’ attitude is a direct descendent of Terry Hall’s sour persona. Andrew Fearn’s bearded, beatific presence lightens the mood. The Specials’ Too Much, Too Young could be a template for the Mods’ aggressive descriptions of modern life’s scummier side. Jason’s intense performance in which, for once, he actually introduces the songs, wins over the early crowd with numbers liked Tied Up In Nottz, Tiswas (as played on 6Music at…

The line-up convinced me. My younger siblings have been going to Green Man for years, not doing Glastonbury since I last went, in 2009 (full diary here), but I’d never investigated going. Then I saw that the two current bands I most want to see were playing (War On Drugs and their former member, Kurt Vile), not to mention Bill Callahan, Beirut and Sharon Von Etten, none of whom I’ve managed to see, and Mercury Rev, who I haven’t seen for years. I was in. Now I’m back and I can see why, if the above is your kind of music, you’d never bother with Glasto again either. For a start, it’s smaller and nearer, set in the one of the most beautiful parts of…

When I got to Rock City last night, I realised I’d dropped my pen, so had to write the review from memory, hence lack of detailed setlist or report on the artiste’s mid-set quips. Maybe the review’s the better for it. What follows is as it appears in The Nottingham Post, whose photographer was ill, so didn’t make it. But @sheldonmiller on Twitter happened to bump into the band in Wagamama, round the corner from Rock City, just before the show, so I’ve nicked his shot. That’s him in the middle. Dunno who the guy on the left is. De La Soul’s hip-hop masterpiece Three Feet High And Rising is, astonishingly, 25 years old, and still sounds fresher than most new releases. Subsequent albums sold progressively less…

My friend, the poet and novelist, Barry Cole, died at the end of last month and I wrote an obituary for The Independent. It was only in the paper this week or I’d have posted earlier. Those of you with long memories may recall that I spent a day with Barry five years ago, culminating in a visit to the BFI where there was a showing of rare films by BS Johnson, Barry’s close friend, including one that Barry appeared in. The photo above is of Barry at home, signing a first edition of his finest novel, Joseph Winter’s Patronage, which he gave to me that day (I’d just read the new Shoestring edition, which is still available). Although he was very ill for the…

  The following review adds a few extra ruminations to the one in today’s Nottingham Post. ‘It’s been a very long time but it’s good to be back,’ says Daryl Hall. He and John Oates last played the RCH back in 1990, at the end of a decade in which they’d were the quintessential AOR band in the US. But which band is back? There have been at least five Hall and Oates. A blue-eyed soul band whose second album featured a soul classic, She’s Gone (though it only become a US hit when rereleased in 1976). I bought Abandoned Luncheonette from a cut-out bin at Burnley Boots in 1974, for 69p, and was hooked. They flirted with rock in the Todd Rundgren produced War Babies, which…