On why living in Wiltshire makes a person musically uncultured.

I used to be quite good at finding new bands I liked, hearing new music. Obviously not as good as my sister who has the excellent and enviable knack of discovering new bands long before anyone else does, bands which then become huge and she is able to smugly say, "I've been listening to then for ages." But I was still quite good. I could hold my own in a music conversation as long as I wasn't asked to name lead singers, and I sometimes surprised my musical friends by giving them something they hadn't heard.

But I have just discovered that this is no longer the case.

A friend of mine is giving me a compilation CD in order that I have something groovy and new to play in my groovy and new car, and he sent me the playlist to see if I liked it, or had any of the songs.

A/I hadn't got any of the songs.
B/I had only heard of three bands on the list.

Now this is good in one way because it means I get to hear completely new stuff, but it's also slightly embarrassing to admit to. Me: Thanks for the CD list, I haven't got a clue if I will like any of it because I have never heard of most of the bands on the list. Love, your friend who used to know a bit about music, but now clearly doesn't.

How can this be?

I know the older you get the more frequently you comment on the fact that you've never heard of most of the bands in the charts, but my personal opinion on that is that there are a lot more crap bands around these days and it's much easier to get a one hit wonder record in the charts, especially if your band's name is something like Charles Charlie Charles featuring E Z J. Or whatever.

So this musical unculturedness can't be my age.

I can only put it down to the fact that because I don't live any where near London anymore I can't get XFM on the radio.

Instead I am forced to listen to stations like the lovely local 3TRFM which doesn't really cut the mustard on the new songs front, and indeed is SO local that when my dog went missing they announced it for us and people were ringing up with sightings of him. "Hello? Is that t'radio? It is? Am I live on t'radio? I am? It's about that missing darg, see, Pickles, aye. Only I've just been down Safeway car park and I see 'im running acrass it. Little thing 'e is. Aye."

In fact the only good thing about 3TRFM is that it serves to remind me that I live in provincial England, and it's funny when the headline news story is about Mrs Jones' dead budgie.

Having access to XFM on my computer doesn't really help because the place that I listen to music is either in my front room, where my computer isn't, or in my car, where my computer isn't either.

I think I need to face up to the fact that listening to local radio is doing my street cred no good whatsover. And even though they're expensive I think the time has come to buy a digital radio; then I could get XFM and I would be less of a musical know-nothing-at-all-anymore, my friends could stop laughing at me and all would be right with the world again.

Either that or rely on everyone to keep me updated with compilation CD's.