Watching with mutha
As the NFT launches its history of pop on tv our critic recalls some highlights and disasters

Ask not for whom the Brel tolls
A revisit of the life of Belgium's glummest son in all its soul-shredding glory

You'll do it my way, or else
As a new life of Rolling Stone Brian Jones is published, this critic analyses the fine old pop tradition of control freakery

Sunshine superman
Beatnik, British Bob Dylan and wide-eyed hippy - Donovan is back on the road

So we'll go no more a roving
The death of the creator of his boyhood hero Roy of the Rovers prompts a fan to take a nostalgic trip back to Melchester

Red hot blast at history
Noisy and provocative, our Vorticists deserve their shot at goal

I was so much older then...
There's something horribly bogus when young singers adopt an air of world-weary cynicism. Oh, just act your age

The happy hippy Sheikh
Roy Harper, musician and cult hero, has written his life story

Now it's just a game of 38 halves
Stitch-ups, shenanigans and skulduggery - now Eurovision is just like football

Building society
The thirties plotlands DIY housing deserves to be remembered

Illegal, immoral and flattering
A leaf through the raffish history of bootleg albums

Way on down in New Orleans
Why has veteran rock writer Nik Cohn become hip-hop Svengali?

Forged in the city of steel
Sheffield was an unlikely birth place for electronic pop. Our writer salutes a phenomenon

Heartache spoken here
A new film poses the question, what is the saddest music in the world? Our critics answer it

Vamp next door
Twenty years after her death, it's time to remember Diana Dors and her films

The quiet life
Klang are trying to pare their sound down to the bare bones. Our correspondent comes face to face with a musical experiment

So damn angry
He has embraced politics and knows all about MP3. What on Earth happened to Loudon Wainwright III?

Talkin' about my generator
Sparks are back again, but it's a long time since 1974

From Strat to finish
Tonight the Shadows play their final gig. Our correspondent celebrates Britain's original rockers

Pop's celluloid zeroes
The Go-Betweens have made a tribute to themselves. Pray they've learnt from history

Chicks with licks
What causes a band to break up? Well, it's not the music

Always on my mind
50 years after Elvis recorded his first single, our correspondent digs up a dozen of the King's forgotten gems

When two's a crowd
As Simon and Garfunkel embark on a new tour, our reporter looks at troubled musical pairings

...So stop faking it
Admit it, you're white-bread munching trash who prefers Slade to Ray Charles. Do you wanna be in my gang?

Sound man of the sixties
A hip new generation is celebrating the work of pop maverick Lee Hazlewood

Anthems for champions
Music and sport make uneasy bedfellows when it comes to the harmony of nations

Taking a walk in the clouds
A plan to build a pedestrian way for the City of London ended up going nowhere

It's all the fault of a Belgian rocker
BLAME it all on Johnny Hallyday, often called the biggest rock star in the world you've never heard. That's a blessing.

Various Artists ... we love all those albums, don't we?
Yes: As well as making the latest hits affordable, compilations can throw light on something rare, precious and beautiful, says Bob Stanley
Co-Written with Steve Jelbert

Red card for a kickabout in the park
Liverpool FC were allowed to grab a piece of public land and this correspondent is appalled

Britain's love affair with parklands
UNTIL the 18th century the great parks of London belonged to the Crown and were closed to the public. Once opened by Queen Caroline and beautified by John Nash, they became a cross between a playground and a social club - Beau Brummel and his dandy acolytes used to promenade daily along Rotten Row in Hyde Park.

Our rocker of ages
Despite his 36th LP going Top Ten, Cliff remains a joke to many, but not to our writer, his advocate on C4's UK Hall of Fame

Countdown to a thousand hits
Only three to go . . . we've had 997 No 1 singles and to celebrate the chart's musical milestone, our correspondent goes pop picking

Brian Wilson
A documentary on the saga of Brian Wilson's album is a labour of love

Poster boy for history lessons
The work of Abram Games encapsulates postwar Britain

Rise of the Superswedes
THE best new bands to have come through in 2004 have been gangs, real teams, with the kind of camaraderie that the Strokes feigned in photos three years back and studious types such as Keane can only dream of. The Futureheads were disaffected Sunderland supermarket employees, united by a love of Kate Bush and XTC, while Brighton's Go! Team have a great line in co-ordinated knitwear that spells out their name.