Acts that wrote songs about themselves (Animals, Monkees, Manfreds, Devo, NWA, Ants etc), Lloyd Cole does handwritten lyrics to order, the welding of Bob Dylan, Des O'Connor's UK tour with Buddy Holly, the West Wing v The Thick Of It, amusingly named skat

On the menu this week - the genius of the late Geoffrey Palmer in the Kipper And The Corpse and Reginald Perrin ('rum cove, Johnny Woman' etc), four anniversary albums - Badfinger's No Dice (Nov '70), Prince's Dirty Mind ('80), the Traveling Wilburys' Vol

In which the author of 'Ready Steady Go!: the Weekend Starts Here' talks about the show that revolutionised pop TV - the people who made it, the acts that appeared, the dancers, the clothes, the James Brown shock-the-nation-special, the Troggs auditioning

In which we tell the real story of Stardust (the new Bowie biopic), lampoon Kanye West's Kardashian hologram, brace ourselves for the arrival of 'synthetic media', dream up the fictional indie band generator, name some great autumnal albums (eg the Finn B

In which we salute Jerry Jeff 'Mr Bojangles' Walker and Spencer Davis (at the ABC in Wakefield!), comedians with catchphrase singles, the marketing genius of Lily Allen and the grand tradition of pop songs about - how can we put this? - "self-love". Want

Rob Halford - still proudly "a big daft kid" - remembers old music hall acts at the Wolverhampton Grand, wearing polyester suits and kipper ties when the manager of Harry Fenton's, slogging round Europe in a Transit van, booze, drugs, bullwhips, "being he

In which we remember Peter Frampton and the second golden age of the Scream Idols (and his hard-nosed manager Dee Anthony), are weirdly gripped by the recent screening of Cliff's Summer Holiday, look at rock stars' cars, Krautrock acts and rejected album

In which we salute National Album Day by digging out some much loved '80s LPs, the Telegraph’s Neil McCormick tells us about the tyranny critics now endure from aggrieved pop fans and we invent fictitious Emo bands and live album titles. To receive this

In which we unearth NME's best albums and singles polls from the '70s (Jethro Tull? Spirit? Country Joe?), invent fictitious Calypso and Blues stars, rave about Call My Agent, remember Lennon's Aunt Mimi and Steve Strange versus Mick Jagger, wonder if it'

We look at Rolling Stone's new Best 500 Albums update and think ... where's the 80s? Where's the British stuff? Where's the jazz, country, dance music, electronic, heavy metal? Is it just the classics plus hip-hop? Is it as useful as Elvis Costello's Best