Tonight though, this IS the gig! Since it's reinvention as the Stock Room, the once nicotine-stained bars have been transformed into one cosy room which tonight plays host to The Crookes - who are the reason we're here.

The Crookes are thoroughly Sheffield (they are even named after the part of Sheffield where they live). Drawn here by university, they have found a spiritual home (it has a kitchen sink at one end and a view of the hills at the other). Crookes are young, faintly dashing and fresh of face. Judging by tonight's initially nervous set, they also have no fear.

At one point they even unplug their instruments and step forward into the no-man's land between the 'stage' and the audience and perform an acoustic song capable of melting steel.

They suggest, at various points, images of The Smiths and Larrikin Love, early Orange Juice and historically, as I attempt to explain to them later, long-lost Sheffield popsters Treebound Story. (Another memory: the first time I came to Sheffield in the '80s I saw TS, Richard Hawley's first band, at a place called The Limit wrapped up in quiffs and Johnny Marr guitar lines).

The Crookes are more fragile though. So much so that you'd like to cosset them away for six months in a rehearsal room before laying them before the critics. But they have ambition and flare and a singer with a beautiful voice; one of those special, poetic voices which dips and soars above their jangling guitars.

They experiment with harmonicas and banjos and toy guitars and smile the smile of an unsullied group still finding their niche with thrillingly romantic songs like Backstreet Lovers and Two Drifters.

You wouldn't want to have to follow them, which is precisely what Little Glitches point out when they start their set. Me, I didn't even know LG were on the bill till I arrived, but they present a great foil to Crookes' winsome pop jamboree.

I don't think I've seen four blokes - which is what they are - so relaxed and engaging for ages. There is no image, no agenda and no pigeonhole (even trying to squeeze them into a box with Elbow or The Bees would be fruitless). But there are some gorgeous guitar-lines and great harmonies; some shuffly drums and roving bass movements. And halfway through their set, it strikes me that I wouldn't want to be anywhere else on my week off but here in a Sheffield bar - at a FREE gig - on a Sunday evening in the company of people enjoying their music THIS much.

In the end though, we have to leave during Muscle Club's efficiently post-nu-rave indie rock onslaught and head back into the wind and the drizzle. Inspired by vodka and pop music. It feels really good.

LAMACQ'S LIVENERS

THE CROOKES - Backstreet Lovers (demo)
DEPECHE MODE - Sounds Of the Universe LP (Mute)
THE NEAT - Counteract (demo)
NEW MODEL ARMY - Vengeance (snapped up in a second hand shop in Sheffield)
IT'S A BUFFALO - Seaslide (Akoustic Anarchy single)

It is the first time that a band's debut album has ever come free with a national newspaper. Although having said that, the Mongrel project is not without its (in)famous names. Fronted by motor-mouth Jon McClure of Reverend & The Makers, the band also features an ex-member of the Artic Monkeys (bassist Andy Nicholson) and a Babyshamble (Drew McConnell) in the line-up.

All this would have seemed spectacularly radical five years ago, but apart from some theorising voices inside the industry, I suspect most people will merely nod and move on.

And that would be a shame really. This is not only a project which is obviously close to McClure's heart - it also establishes him as a man who is prepared to back up his words with actions (his off-the-cuff remark last year that he'd be retiring from the record business after a second Reverend & the Makers album was impetuous and ill-conceived, but otherwise he's been very true to his words).

A champion of British hip hop, the album features more than 15 MCs and is a rhythmically angular mix of rock and hip hop. McClure meanwhile, with his Strummer-esque combat rock mohican haircut, appears to be evolving lyrically into rock's answer to Mark Thomas. You would probably be hard pushed to agree with all his straight-down-the-line political views, but I find his determination to open lines of debate fascinating (he has also recently re-opened the discussion over the lack of black artists on the cover of NME, which has been a bone of contention since I was working there in the late 80s and early 90s).

Out drinking with him after a recent edition of Roundtable on 6 Music, it's also clear that he's a man who likes 'starting fires' - he's like a social pyromaniac. He can't help himself. We discuss the NME cover, his forthcoming trip to Venezuela, the possibility of launching a new music magazine and inevitably the Mongrel record.

"Not enough people will hear it if we just put it out normally," he says. "I want people to hear it. So just give it away. Get it out there to as many people as you can. Let them make their own minds up."

Certainly it should do something to raise the profile of some of the MCs featured (including chief rapper Low Key) but it will also put The Rev himself back in the spotlight. Some critics have described him as 'a latter-day Billy Bragg' but I think he's too much of a rock anarchist to be a New Bragg.

Plus the media is a lot different now to when Bragg was at this stage of his career (when he was either a liberal God, or part of Kinnock's Loony Left, depending on where you stood).

But listening to The Rev, for nearly two hours, enthusing away about projects and plans which didn't include conquering America or spending ten grand on a remix or hyperventilating about the prospect of being Number Three in the Midweek Charts (or any of the other acceptably dull topics which pass for most aspiring bands' 'conversation') was both exciting and exhausting.

If nothing else, both the rapid-fire conversation and the covermount left me thinking that there are alternative ways around what has been quite a stale start to the year, commercially speaking ( I was reminded of this again, as I left the BBC on Friday night to the accompanying strains of U2 playing somewhere on a roof above me).

The Mongrel album might not be the best record in the world (it is illuminating, energetic and often a little clumsy or forced) but it is certainly more of a statement than 99 per cent of the new releases you'd have to pay for this week.

LAMACQ'S LIVENERS

KAP BAMBINO - Red Sign (terrific fuzzy-edged electro single on Because Records)
LOW ANTHEM - Oh My God, Charlie Darwin LP (Low Anthem)
MONGREL - Better Than Heavy LP (The Independent)
PARACHUTE MEN - If I Could Wear Your Jacket (1989 Fire Records single)
JO GILLOT - Little Bit Of Zen (Demo)

"Louis, we've never met. I'm Steve Lamacq."

"I know you, you used to write for the NME."

In the corridor I pass Anna Friel. who is deep in conversation with Ian McCulloch of Echo & The Bunnymen. As surreal nights go, this is turning into a humdinger.

But at least I'm not at the (dreaded) BRITS. Here at the Shepherds Bush Empire (where I'm compering the War Child gig and where I've spent most of the night loitering in a corridor by the stage trying not to provoke the ire of the Killers' roadcrew) there is no mention of Duffy! Or her three awards. THREE AWARDS!

We know what this means, don't we (apart from the fact that the Brits judging panel have finally found their new Dido). It means thousands of 'new Duffys', stretching out in front of us from now 'til Christmas! By next week, anyone who can do a passable karaoke version of Mercy will have a record deal. You have been warned!

And the great shame about this is that there are some extraordinary female singers out there who may go overlooked as a result. Not that Polly Scattergood is one of them. Polly is instantly too scary to be a pop star à la Duffy. One listen to the opening track of her debut album will have most people conjuring up visions of The Midwich Cuckoos.

Which actually isn't a bad comparison to start with. Scattergood grew up in a small town called Wivenhoe in Essex (not much bigger than a village, but it's on the main train line into London). When I meet her she displays all the symptoms of someone whose creativity was at least partly fuelled by a desperation to escape to the city.

But the claustrophobia of teen life in a small commuter belt community still rises up through her work. My BBC colleague Rob Da Bank described her as a latter-day Kate Bush, which is also a good pointer. But the characters in her songs - and the roles she plays writing out their emotions - are far more edgy than La Bush's (aforementioned opener I Hate The Way appears to cover paranoia, pills, inadequacy and jealousy, all within the first two verses). It's not easy going. Musically too, it flits between piano-led melodrama and sparse electronica.

And yet as the album unfolds, there is something pleasingly unnerving about the whole thing. It is not the sort of record you can easily get comfortable with - and at times there's so much going on, it's almost too disorientating for its own good - but through all this, she's made a record which never lacks surprises or suspense. It's like one of those films, where the star always walks into a pitch black room without turning the light on, even though it's clear that evil lurks around the very next corner (why do they do that?)

I like it. Friends who've seen her live say she's, well, a bit scatty. But God Bless Mute Records for taking the risk. She will surely be the sound of 'knife scraping plate' for lots of people, but perversely I'm quite enjoying that.

LAMACQ'S LIVENERS

DOVES - Winter Hill (Heavenly album Promo)
POLLY SCATTERGOOD - Polly Scattergood (Mute Album)
TITUS ANDRONICUS - My Time Outside The Womb (Radio 1 Session)
TARZAN 5 - Boys Game (ancient 021 Records seven-inch)
HATCHAM SOCIAL - Murder In The Dark (forthcoming Fierce Panda single)

The ghosts of Christmas Past even flitted among us in the pub beforehand, where Spizz (he of Spizz Oil, Spizz Engergi and other Spizz incarnations) thrust a flyer into my hand for the next Spizz gig (May 14th, at the 100 Club in London).

Magazine however don't disappoint. They make no concessions. In stark contrast to the contemporary bands who play here, they leave The London Forum's stage bereft of a big light show. It looks like they're recording an episode of Rock Goes To College.

They are brilliantly workmanlike - almost to the point where they could have worn boiler suits (but that would have been too gimmicky). Vocalist Howard Devoto, skips and stalks the stage in three-quarter length trousers, a diminutive sprite of a figure, while the band stir the great soup that is the Magazine sound: Formula's warming gloopy keyboards, Adamsom's chunky bass, and guitars courtesy of Noko (Devoto's former Luxuria bandmate).

And on the stark, moody stage they've set for themselves, the light really does pour out of them. This isn't as dark as their Play album - the live set they released in 1980 - it is a celebration of their best stuff from Shot By Both Sides onwards, including a wealth of songs from my own favourite record The Correct Use Of Soap (when they start A Song From Under The Floorboards I'm getting my change at the bar and nearly drop the whole round).

It was all very respectful. Very sensitively done. They were like statesmen up there.

And the drizzling snow which met us on the way out, somehow only added to the mood.

A few days later I was back in north London to see Flashguns, whose '80s references lie more in the Postcard camp. In one of those strange moments of musical synchronicity, there seems to be a rush of bands at the moment who sound - to me at least - like spikier versions of early Orange Juice or maybe like the demos Rough Trade probably got sent in 1987 (have they all been reading Simon Reynolds book Rip It Up And Start Again?).

Flashguns are certainly more ambitious than most young indie guitar bands you'll see: the song structures are all twisted and burned, welding the different parts together using the heat their energetic live shows create. If they have one problem though, it's that after four songs they seem to be trying too hard. They become a little impenetrable.

And yet, you can't help but admire their craftsmanship. The devil here, is very much in the detail.

Similarly be prepared for a multi-layered debut album by Hatcham Social. I've only managed to listen to the single so far called Murder In The Dark, but it has a likable 80s indie gravitas about it, while obviously being very of the moment. It's jerky and restless and just a little dark. Remind you of anybody?

PS because one or two people have been asking what I'm listening to at the moment, I thought it might be worth including a playlist at the end of these pieces a la Sounds music paper circa my youth. So here it is, just in case you're interested (in no particular order)

GOLDHEART ASSEMBLY - Oh Really (BBC session version)

FIGHT LIKE APES - And The Mystery Of The Golden Medallion (Model Citizen album)

BUSINESS CASUAL - Time To Pretend (freebie track from their album which also includes a Hip Hop reworking of Vampire Weekend's Oxford Comma)

THE PSYCHEDELIC FURS - Forever Now (Epic album, on many levels)

THE LOW ANTHEM - Oh My God, Charlie Darwin (US album, but due for release here later this year)

Described by one paper at the time as "West London's answer to The Ramones", I'd first heard them on Radio 1 when, bizarrely, Kid Jensen had made their single Ain't Got A Clue his record of the week. What on earth was this record? It was two and half minutes long, but it seemed to describe every single awkward emotion that my adolescent head boiled up on a daily basis.

I saw them on TV a while later - on the must-stay-up-for Revolver programme - but more importantly (to me anyway) they were the first group I ever saw live. Well, that's not technically true - local Epping band The Sods, who supported them, were the first band. But after standing at the front of the stage for hours, marvelling at the array of bin bags and safety pins around me, they finally ambled on. And BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM! The crowd at the front went mad. I lost my footing and nearly choked when I was flung forward against the stage, but then scrambled back to my feet in time to see singer Howard Wall looming above in a bright pink jacket and what looked like massive brothel creepers.

And I've said this before, but it was simply the most exciting thing that had happened to me in my life at that point. Later, as I squeezed to the side of the stage, they rampaged through most of the tracks on their Fulham Fallout LP, a record which I can still cheerfully listen to today. It is fast and dark and simple. It's a bible of the misunderstood.

30 January 2009 - Shepherds Bush Empire: I'm not quite down the front for The Lurkers this time. Although 30 years on, neither is Howard Wall. In fact none of The Lurkers I saw in '78 are on stage.

This is the new Lurkers, the one being kept alive by original bassist Arturo 'Arthur' Bassick (who featured on the group's first two seminal singles Shadow and Freak Show, before quitting and forming his own band Pinpoint).

Bassick picked up the name years later, after it was left unused on a shelf. Although when I bump into him later by the merch stall, he seems a little deflated - possibly hurt by suggestions that he's run off with someone else's toy.

"I didn't sack anyone," he opines. "It's just that the others don't want to do it anymore."

Thus we have Arthur's Lurkers: at pains to celebrate the work of the original lineup (he name checks virtually all of them, applauding the intuitive genius of founding guitarist and songwriter Pete Stride). But at the same time we get the latter-day Lurkers, which Arthur has refined using the original blueprints and the influence of The Ramones. One of the new-ish songs is even a cheeky attack on the punks who are stuck in the past, brilliantly titled Come And Have A Go If You Think You're Old Enough.

They start though with I'm On Heat and I Don't Need To Tell Her from Fulham Fallout and finish with two songs which featured in the earlier career of the band - the Jensen-endorsed Clue and their ballsy cover of Little Ol' Wine Drinker Me, before leaving the stage to tonight's headliners (in a nice moment of synchronicity, the Buzzcocks).

And it was good. Arthur has a big heart. I smiled and 'sang' like a loon, while wondering what it must have been like watching The Lurkers at 13 without a pint in my hand.

And it was never going to be the same, but oddly the essence of the older songs still rings bells with me. And I have to admit, as I handed over my tenner for a T-shirt, I was thinking 'once a Lurker, always a Lurker.'

PS There is a great book by The Lurkers' drummer Pete Haynes about his time in the band and the ethos of the group and those involved. A really thoughtful and (at times) funny read, it's called God's Lonely Men. More information on that and his other writing on his website.

No amount of pleading and threatening and hitting it with a tree branch à la Basil Fawlty worked either. Mulrenan The Computer (named after my old English teacher, who I suspect Microsoft modelled their grammar checker on) was dead. It was an ex-PC.

So that was Sunday morning. Still gingerly recovering from Man Cold. And now a nervous tech wreck. Disconsolately I picked up a pile of demos from the floor, found The Neat's CD (see last post) and in the last act of a desperate man slung it into the player, prepared for yet more misery.

To recap: a member of The Neat produced a copy of their demo CD from down the front of his trousers at last week's Favours For Sailors gig. It then haunted the pocket of my coat for a couple of days, dressed in its rubbish Xerox and biro sleeve, and finally ended up in the demo mountain by my desk.

And all the time it was hiding three tracks (well, two and a half really, because one is a remix of track two) which conjure up comparisons with a latter-day Fall jousting with the XX Teens. The drums pound along mercilessly, while the sinewy guitar sounds like it's been exhumed from 1979 and the dry staccato vocals stab mantras through the flailing body. Track one Carmex is good, but track two Counteract is even better (with its Mr Beaseley remix to follow).

And if that wasn't enough, come Tuesday, still Cold and Blue, I fall hopelessly head over heels for Goldheart Assembly. This is even more disturbing. Four of the five of them have beards.

First on at your standard Tuesday night pub gig in Camden, GHA - like The Neat - have a retro engine, but - like The Neat - they're not simply content to recreate someone else's blueprint. They take a joyous acoustic beardy bunch of ideas and mess around with them like a cat playing with a ball of string.

Already you could easily put them out on tour supporting Fleet Foxes or The Low Anthem (now there's an idea). And they smile at each other on stage - which is so out of character for new bands these days (unless it's a nervous tick) that it's actually quite infectious. A Friend I Trust, who's standing next to me, points out that, although they've mastered the loud-quiet axis of their set, they don't have the fast-slow dynamic quite right yet (which is true, but really we're just looking for holes to pick in them to stop ourselves getting carried away and proposing to them at the bar later).

They really are very good. Which makes it doubly annoying the following morning when I log on to their website to listen to their demos, which simply - as yet - don't convey the exuberance and sorrow of the songs. They're still worth a listen though - maybe start with Going Down Well, which gets them close.

But better still they tour in March. I'm imagining in a camper van. So that's both Neat and tidy.

Having been at the recording, it's not hard to see why they've been dubbed 'the people's band'. They look like a darts team. But at the same time they're suave enough on stage to be wine tasters. There is a little bit of the "all things to all men" about them. They are gregarious but humble.

Backed by the BBC Concert Orchestra and Radio 3's Choir Of the Year, they deliver the Mercury winning album Seldom Seen Kid in full and with a flourish. You can hear the set on Radio 2, or watch highlights online or on BBC Digital Telly on that Red Button thing. You may even catch me nearly walking into a camera while trying to introduce them.

There was no filming at White Heat a couple of days later, mind you. Having been to see Bleech again in north London - the east end grunge-pop trio who are improving with each gig - I dashed down to Soho to see a group called Favours For Sailors.

White Heat is the sort of club night where the capital's young hipsters go if there isn't a party that night in Hoxton. But its booking policy has been really pretty impressive over the past two years, which makes me all the more embarrassed that I hadn't been there in months. (Is it because it's based at Madame JoJo's, one of these establishments that insist on having a man who sits in the gents' toilet all night, offering you soap and reading The Sun?)

Favours For Sailors, on the other hand, don't look like hipsters. Two of them remind me of suburban Ed O'Briens while the other two wear big-check shirts - a subtle pointer to the Americanisms in some of their songs (not least a tune called Erode My Empire which kicks in like a jolly version of Pavement).

The reason I'm here is that FFS's forthcoming mini-album really is the sort of record it's easy to fall for. It is one part 80s indie, one part American lo-fi jangle: a record which sounds surprisingly out of time. Produced by one of the former members of the Test Icicles, it's a bright sounding, unpretentious six-tracker full of pretty hooks and colourful dreams. It speaks for itself really, so I'll leave it there.

Although on the way to see the man with the soap I bump into John Andrew - former drummer with Kingmaker who is with a band called The Neat who played earlier (I presume Andrew has been producing their demos). On cue, one of the group hands me a CD. "Are you sure? It's not the last one is it?"

"No. I've got some more," he says, lifting up his T-shirt to reveal a stash of demos, tucked down the front of his trousers. I bet that raised a few eyebrows in the gents.

Haines, former frontman with 90s starlets The Auteurs, is a man with stories to tell. But little did we know how well he could tell them until his book turned up over Christmas.

As a rule of thumb there's maybe one, at best two, decent tomes a year (a Lemmy or a Motley Crue, or last year The Fall's Mark E Smith). If that rings true again, then look no further. Haines has already published the one autobiography you'll need in 2009.

Bad Vibes: Britpop And My Part In Its Downfall is a savage book about the rise and fall of The Auteurs, seen through the ideas of their often obtuse singer/guitarist who seems intent on achieving success merely so that he can then shoot himself continually in both feet.

You don't even have to be a fan of the band to enjoy it. Many of the situations which the fledgling Auteurs find themselves in apply to 99 per cent of new bands in Britain (although admittedly most of them won't find themselves on the front page of the music press within weeks of their first live review).

Haines' story, of trying to return pop music to some kind of art form while constantly railing against the rise of Britpop, and drinking a lot of beer, is both caustic and funny. Even your humble DJ, a tortoise-speed reader at the best of times, was through it in three days.

To put this whole tale into some context though, we have to go back to the prehistoric age (a dark time around time 1992, with grunge already on course for extinction and British indie-rock in a state of flux). The Auteurs were the Steve Harley to Suede's Bowie. There was a glamour in Haines' thinking, but it was a glam redolent of New York art-punk and Mike Leigh films. It had a darker side.

And for a while this made them very popular. Bad Vibes charts the group's story from their early demos and glowing reviews, through a brilliantly awkward night at the Mercury Music Prize ceremony and onto the road, where Haines' mettle is tested to the full.

But as The Auteurs - with their gritty songs and their cello - go one way, the rest of indie rock is going through another watershed: it is the birth of Britpop. Haines is right when he tells me that he's harder on himself in the book than anyone else, but don't think that that lets the opposition off the hook. He has a pop at Blur, the Boo Radleys and Oasis (among others), like a kid in his back garden with an air gun.

It is both hilarious and honest and as reasoned as anything you might hear in a court of law - providing the prosecution had just arrived on a flight from LA and had been taking a cocktail of booze and valium for the past 12 hours.

Without giving the whole game away, you're delivered into a world of record company politics and insane marketing ideas; weird American tour managers and chance meetings with Metallica. Meanwhile Luke's writing is quick-witted and colourful. He is both a would-be superhero and a Grumpy Young Man.

I can't wait for the talking book.

I get very grumpy about these things now (even, I hate to admit it, the BBC Sound Of poll makes me want to stuff cotton wool in my ears and sleep for a fortnight). But this year it's particularly irksome because, actually, no-one really has a clue what's going to happen in music in 2009.

Why the denial when the reality is actually more exciting? The scene is so wide open that anything could happen this year, but trying to predict the unpredictable is a bit of a waste of time.

Fact: the music business was already in a state of confusion and change before the credit crunch arrived, so surely it'll only be more volatile in 2009. We can probably surmise that the big labels will sign fewer acts and be quicker to drop bands who are failing commercially, but everything else is just speculation. Just so many what ifs?

And the sound of old blueprints being ripped up.

It makes my head hurt to the point where I can't form proper sentences anymore. Instead here's some notes I made in the pub where I went to hide after cowering in the loft. Do I get marks for showing the workings out?

After that I decided not to bother with tips at all apart from the fact that there'll be a shoegazing revival this year (Really! It's coming!) and that British guitar-pop music will once again be pronounced dead in favour of pouting hipsters with computers and DJs adorned with preposterous shades. So instead can I just wish these people good luck and godspeed.

THE XX: Please someone, just give them the keys to the album chart or a lottery grant or whatever they need. If the demos are anything to go by, they deserve it.

THE LOW ANTHEM: Like fellow Americans The Delta Spirit, they could be this year's Fleet Foxes given the right circumstances, but so far - even after two marvellous albums - they're relatively unnoticed.

CHEW LIPS: Eschewing the majors - or at least that's what they said the last time we met - and going it alone, which will make things more difficult for them (anyone notice them in the tips lists? Exactly!). But refreshingly great keyboard-driven pop music with attitude.

VIOLENT SOHO: Nu-grunge. It had to happen.

FIGHT LIKE APES: Album finally out properly this month. Idiosyncratic and shouty; surreal and beguiling. Much as I'd love to picture them in the Big League, I think they are too creatively unruly for a lot people to get a handle on. Maybe if they were less likeable and more enigmatic that would help?

Still, we can look on the bright side. However much the chart reverts to formula, there is now more possibility than ever that you'll wake up tomorrow and find something you like hidden amidst the mush. And if you really want my one prediction for 2009, then it's this.

The new band who will be the story of the year haven't even surfaced yet. They won't be on a list. They'll still be in rehearsal. But they're out there somewhere.

It might even be you.

That's just the record industry dueling with a couple of wet fish.

But not this year. This year it is all out war. Not only are the major corporations haunted by another 12 months of falling sales, but there is a new battleground they're desperate for success on: market share.

The consequence of all this has been a pre-Christmas release schedule to make your eyes water. It's insane. Last year in the months between October and December - when traditionally the business gets by on some big reissues or Best Of compilations - you'd have been hard pressed to find four or five major new releases from the Top Ten acts. In fact retailers were up in arms at the lack of big pullers.

This year though, there's been about four or five major albums hitting the shops in the last ten minutes. Already we've had, among the big alternative acts, Snow Patrol, Kaiser Chiefs, Razorlight and Keane. While the pop market has been swamped with Girls Aloud, Beyonce, Leona Lewis and Dido to name but a few - and that's without getting too deeply into the soul and R&B markets.

To say the market is saturated would be an understatement.

Which throws up an interesting question. In their efforts to send in all the big guns this side of Christmas, are the big labels starting to eat themselves?

Whether you like the music or not, isn't there something odd about the Sony BMG group overseeing the release of the deluxe edition of Leona Lewis' LP - complete with her cover version of Run - in the same week as their new Dido record? Thus depriving one of their own artists of the Number One spot (Lewis, benefiting from a return appearance on X Factor pipped Dido into second place, while Beyonce, another Sony BMG act, trailed in at Number 10 in the SAME week). Could the hand of Simon Cowell - whose own Syco label goes through BMG and whose pet project is Leona - be at work here?

Interestingly, in its latest edition, the trade bible Music Week describes both the Razorlight and Keane albums as "underperforming" at retail (colloquial parlance for "they've stiffed"). And while there's one argument that both bands are possibly past their career peak, they were both perceived as being pivotal records in the lives of these groups. So why were they both pitched by the Universal group into the pre-Christmas melee (alongside a dozen other big albums from the same group of labels)?

If there are a finite number of fans buying this type of crossover rock record, then isn't that just splitting the vote? You would think even a bad Razorlight record would hang around the Top 20 for a couple of months, but after three weeks on sale Slipway Fires is at 33, while the Keane album (which I rather like, as you know) is down to 39, just one place ahead of Oasis, who also seem to be suffering from the glut of albums out there at the moment.

And that's before this week's batch of incoming releases, including The Killers' album and Guns N' Roses (you take a million years to make an album which costs trillions of pounds and then you put it out at the busiest time in release history for a decade!).

No wonder U2 - long tipped to return this autumn - took one look at this bunfight and backed off 'til next year. If you're going to work intensely hard on a record - and I'm not criticizing the A&R of this season's albums - then surely you'd like it to have some time to breathe on the shelves.

To add to the competition in the high street shops, iTunes have pitched in and been selling albums by Oasis, The Verve and MGMT for under a fiver (which is terrific as a consumer but I imagine pretty lousy if you're the one waiting for the royalty cheque).

I know that the music business has always been about the survival of the fittest. And for some of us the major labels work like the stock market (they make money, they lose money, they come crying to us for help) and we have a wry smile on our faces when it all goes wrong. But I've become increasingly fascinated by this little playground bundle. And the knock-on effects it may have on the rest of us.

My house price might not start falling if this fight ends in tears, but I suspect it doesn't do much for the development of new acts or our trust in the industry machine.

Frank Turner looks nine feet tall, with a grin that must measure a foot wide. Looking out from a cramped stage, the former punk rock drummer turned Bragg-style troubadour beams a 200 Watt smile as the assembled rowdy audience underpin a rousing chorus of his song Reasons Not To Be An Idiot.

This is one of my favourite memories of this year's Reading Festival - watching Turner in the Radio 1 Punk Tent. But what a year he's had. Looking at his live itinerary you start to suspect his agent has been playing some sort of join the dots type game with him and his touring schedule. He's been all over Europe, through America - and even made his debut at the Cambridge Folk Festival.

"No, I've totally sold out these days. I'm all about Travelodge," he told me on Monday. "Seriously, I've gone over to the dark side. Admittedly we sleep about 19 of us per room but we're not sleeping on student hall floors anymore...mostly because I don't know anyone at uni anymore!"

Turner studied History at the LSE in London before some years drumming in the band Million Dead (who also toured 'enthusiastically' before finally calling it a day).

I only chanced upon him through his first solo EP Campfire Punkrock a couple of years ago but have followed him ever since. This I can prove, because when he recorded one of his London gigs, he took the names of everyone in the crowd and namechecked the entire audience on the sleeve of the CD.

There is a real 'everyman' quality about him: an instinctive inclusiveness which gives his work an empathy and tenderness sometimes missing in angry young men who would cheerfully bring down the government if they had the chance (made more sinister in Turner's case because in a pointy hat he'd be the dead spit of Guy Fawkes).

"Sometimes people come up and giggle and say they've brought their mum and dad down with them to the gigs, but I think that's great. I don't want to be just making music for hip 20-somethings who live in Dalston."

For the most part this year, Turner has been playing songs from his terrific punk-folk album Love Ire & Song, but there have been numerous EP appearances and live sessions along the way - which will be rounded up in a new 23-track compilation The First Three Years released by the Xtra Mile Recordings label on December 1.

And despite a recent bout of gastroenteritis, he is back out on tour, first in Europe supporting his boyhood heroes The Levellers and then back in Blighty. I've got the London show in my diary because I really want to see how he fits all those dates on the back of a T-shirt.

Talking of which, we are on something of a mission on the 6Music show - to celebrate the importance of the good old fashioned 'band' T-shirt. For too long we have stood aside and watched in silence as hobby-horses like Peaches Geldof and Sienna Miller have paraded around LA in Led Zeppelin and Ramones T-shirts - attempting to purchase some credibility but in turn suggesting that the band shirt is nothing more than a fashion accessory.

But no longer! We say dig out your T-shirts and be proud! Show them we care who we wear on our chests; and that we are not going to stand idly by as they undermine the lost art of showing people "we were there at the Brixton Academy in 1998" or "we travelled all the way to Wolverhampton on a Tuesday in November and still have the shirt to prove it."

It is a very silly piece of righteousness I know, but seriously I grew up among a generation of teenagers who could only start conversations with people who wore the right shirts. A time when there was no greater high in life than when someone nodded almost imperceptibly at your T-shirt as you waded to the bar - or spoke to you on a train because you'd identified yourself by your Teenage Fanclub hoodie.

So thanks to the listeners who have already e-mailed in shots of their favourite shirts. Please feel free to join in.

I think I might slope off now and try and find that pale blue Pavement shirt I bought when they supported My Bloody Valentine in New York. How horrifyingly smug is that? I doubt I'll sleep tonight.

But the name change is interesting - suggested to them by Andy Ross, their new manager and one time kingpin of Food Records. Ross, I like to think of as an old-school A&R man who, rather than worrying about the numbers of hits the group are receiving on MySpace, worries about things like songs and perception. The nitty-gritty.

Our relationship with band's names is weird though, don't you think? Would Travis have been so easy to swallow if they'd still been known as Glass Onion...and would Kelly Jones have got to hang out, sipping cocktails with the World's Rock Elite (which, judging by the papers he's quite good at) if The Stereophonics had forged on under their original, and terrifically cumbersome, name Tragic Love Company?

On long trips back to London after DJing at places like Treforest Poly or the Frog & Whippet in Stoke myself and my friend Liam used to stay awake on the motorway by playing the John Peel band name game. All you have to do is come up with names of groups who would have - in the glory days - been granted a session on the Peel show (particular favourites included the fictional American lo-fi peddlers Tiny Desk Unit, Belgium dance terrorists AXE... and on one especially dark night near Leicester Forrest services, the splendid sounding Hexagonal Pensioner. Feel free to add your own below).

All of which brings us to George Pringle. The name sounds like it should be attached to someone who's served at Bradford & Bingley for 30 long years before being eased out by the Credit Crunch. Or possibly a respectably dressed football hooligan whose main aim in life is summoning up his troops for an afternoon of opposition-baiting.

But no. Not only is George of the opposite sex, she's also responsible for this week's Single Of The Week (or rather next week's as it's released on the 17th).

Pringle describes herself as a 'diseuse', a female entertainer who performs monologues, which is a decent start, but it barely scratches at the surface of the new record LCD I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down. Built over a dry-sounding drum machine rhythm and gorgeously flighty keyboards, Pringle sounds unnervingly like an annoyed version of the girl from Flying Lizards on their long-forgotten TV single.

It's a good example, musically, of less is more - the sparse electro-backing leaving Pringle to wrestle with the untimely death of her social life while apportioning blame where necessary (and trust me, she has an unnervingly savage tongue near the end). It is the type of record the Mute label would have been thrilled by at the start of the 80s, but at the same time it is very now.

It feels like there's a whole wave of female DIY electro stars waiting to break in 2009, not least Blackpool's Little Boots (a guest on my 6Music show this week) and south London's La Roux. But having said that Pringle is less disco driven than LB and less polished than LR. The Pringle single is probably truer to the slightly awkward sounds of the New York scene and likeably rough around the edges.

I've played it five times already this morning and it's as mysterious and unapproachable as it was the first time I heard it. A truly great, risky and infectious pop record.

But I've also been involved in the judging for this year's Student Radio Awards which take place on Thursday night; been out on the road doing some DJing; and promoted a BBC Introducing gig as part of the Electric Proms (of which more later).

I make little lists of new releases as I'm working my way through the sacks of mail I listen to, just to remind myself when records are coming out. Usually I'd have about 15-20 singles which are in the running each week. But I've just checked and last week - even having wheedled out the ones which fell short - there were 31 which merited a spin on my various shows. This week - after some ruthless whittling down there's 25. And that's without the demos or album tracks.

To compensate for this - and before I go mad - we're trying out an experiment on my Radio 1 shows for the next couple of weeks. And I don't usually use this blog to plug my own wares, but if you're a fan of new music then do have a listen. We'll be playing 30 tracks in a hour. Two minutes of each song, plus a very (very) quick appraisal of it, and then onto the next one.

The first installment features everyone from Skint & Demoralised and Fight Like Apes through to the ABC Club and Little Boots and airs on Wednesday night at 9pm. The following show is on Monday November 10, which I'm working on at the moment.

Well, not right at the moment, because I'm writing this and listening to the new Pete & The Pirates single. Regular listeners will know all about my Pirates obsession. Some, I suspect, would suggest I seek medical help.

But in a world of narcissistic indie-rockstars who won't get out of bed until their PR tells them it's a good idea, the Pirates really are a great understated, unaffected guitar band. They lack 'an angle' for overnight success (no big hair, loudmouth manifesto, celebrity girlfriend or geographical hook). But since first seeing them a couple of years ago, they've been slowing building an ardent following for their sublime and erudite new-wave pop. They also headlined the Introducing night at Proud Galleries which I was involved with but rather than blather on about it, you can see a couple of songs from their set online. And if you like that, then I thoroughly recommend investing in their debut album Little Death.

I think I also managed to plug them to Glenn Tilbrook from Squeeze when we were in the pub after last week's Roundtable on 6Music. Tilbrook, still reassuringly sporting the tousled hair of a schoolboy who hasn't showered after a games lesson, is excellent company. Especially as he'd been up till 5am because his tourbus had broken down on the way home from a gig.

In some ways Tilbrook's Squeeze and Pete's Pirates aren't that dissimilar. They paint enigmatically descriptive lyrical pictures, peppered with some lines which are hugely quotable. Tilbrook looked quite taken aback when I reeled off the words of an old Squeeze song called Wrong Way which was released on a flexidisc with Smash Hits some time at the end of the 70s or start of the 80s. Neither of us could remember which, but then I lost my copy a while ago (hence the conversation in the pub... it turns out Glenn hasn't got one either).

He does however have a single out called Binga Bong. And bless me if his voice hasn't changed at all over the years. He still sounds like a cherubic scamp, while the song itself is another cleanly delivered piece of double-edged craftsmanship. I'm just adding it to my list now.

They can see us, but we can't see them. Is it supposed to make us mere mortals more inquisitive? Are we supposed to ask who's really inside?

And is 24-hour shade-wearing, anyway, just one of rock and roll's last great affectations? Like wearing leather trousers in the desert? Or sulking in your dressing room if you get the wrong colour towel?

So Kings Of Leon's arrival for our interview fills me with dread. They have the part swagger, part slouching gait of men who walk like a rock band. They barely utter a word before we go live on air. They both - brothers Caleb and Nathan - wear shades.

I can see this interview screaming disaster back at me, but what we get is (ironically) quite revealing. The old Leon, who used to write songs by the lake back home and reply to your questions with a southern-drawled "yes sir" are still here. They might be falling over rave notices for their new record wherever they go, but they're still disarmingly humble in front of a microphone.

Could this partly be because the UK has been so good to them? And because - despite their massive success in Britain - they've still to date failed to really make a breakthrough in the States (their last album Because Of The Times topped the chart here and peaked at 25 in America)?

Caleb says that the UK "feels like home" with the same emotion that a passing hobo uses to thank his hosts for their hospitality on The Waltons. But don't be deceived (not even by the shades). It would have been very easy for the Leon to lose their way over the past couple of years. Beckoned into a world of free booze and supermodels on tap, the group have become part of that alt-rock royalty that people invite to parties and the press pore over on a daily basis. America might not have bought their records, but it's been quick to try and assimilate them into the cult of the celebrity.

Yet amid all this they disappeared back home to make a new album, which arrives this week and will by rights be Number One on Sunday.

Only By The Night is a good, sometimes confusing, album. It sounds in some ways like a back to basics record; as if they've escaped the limelight for a while and reminded themselves why they started a band in the first place.

While a number of British groups have had their first identity crisis on album four, the Leon seem to be more assured about where they're heading now than ever before. There is some characteristic insecurity in the lyrics, but it feels like they've come to terms with who they are. It's very balanced I think.

It is a hard-working record which has a hedonistic side; a lonely record which enjoys being close to people; and a big gesturing rock album which also sounds very human. It is the old Leon meets the new Leon.

"As a band we're definitely more balanced," admits Caleb. "We get along much better. I think you eventually get to see the picture of what you wanted [originally]. And I know, for us, we always wanted the opportunity to do this. And it's been a slow build for us but we never wanted immediate success in a way that kills a band. We wanted to have a box set career."

Certainly the ambition is there - and the reference points. By turns the album sounds like they've been listening to Led Zeppelin, Bob Seger and Radiohead (the latter two they admit to being fans of) without stooping to pastiche.

"For this album," Caleb adds, "we all went in there and we did it really quickly, but it felt like we were taking our time. We went in and said let's try whatever we want to try. If you have a crazy idea then we're not going to shoot it down straight away."

So you get the anthemic, slightly ambiguous, Use Somebody ("a really sad lonesome song....we'd been fighting the night before"); Crawl, which could end up being their ultimate Neil Young rock-out; the late-night, self-destructive Revelry; a terrific slow-burning I Want You; and the crazy-drum-delivery of Be Somebody and Manhattan, which hint at their experiments mixing rhythm with riffing (yet more balance!).

Some of the beats, Nathan explains, were him mucking around in the studio, but they stuck. It sounds like they had fun. By this stage in our chat Nathan has even removed his shades. And it's at this point that I realize why he's been wearing them.It is not affectation. It looks like he's been up all night.

There must be a song in that, surely?

And yes you're right. Your humble DJ didn't get an invite (can't think why?).

In some ways it's a very timely award, because determination and reinvention are two of the keys to music in 2008. As the gap between being The Next Big Thing and Last Year's Thing gets shorter all the time, the casualty list of short-term bands grows by the week - with the knock-on effect that groups are resorting to new disguises to warrant a second crack at success. It's like Rock's equivalent of the old bouncer trick (get turned away, swap jackets round the corner and then have a second try).

Elbow themselves have seen the door slammed in their faces before. They were dropped by Island Records before their first (unreleased) album ever saw the light of day. And they split from V2 more recently to join Fiction. But at least they retained their identity.

Other groups are subtly and stylistically changing, and at the same time taking on new mantles. Much-tipped XL Recordings signings, the Essex band Magistrates, were - give or take a member or two - formerly a group called Echelon who recorded a couple of interesting singles for the Poptones label before disappearing and re-evaluating their schtick. Meanwhile White Lies, who penned a substantial deal with Universal earlier this year, previously traded as the flawed but OK indie band Fear Of Flying.

This phenomenon isn't new, of course. The Kaiser Chiefs had their own Elbow moment, making a record under their old moniker Parva for a label called Mantra Records (but Mantra folded and the band were sent on their way while copies of the CD were destroyed before they made the shops). What this shows however is that, either some of these people are royally masochistic, or they're tenacious enough to hang around until they get their music heard.

Enter Chew Lips! I'm very excited by this. Chew Lips is the new band fronted by a singer called Tigs who by rights would probably already be a bit of a star if her last band hadn't come off the rails early last year (though not before releasing a couple of spirited and edgy indie singles).

With no news forthcoming, I honestly thought she'd disappeared for good. But then she turned up duetting on a track with The Brute Chorus which featured on their debut single - and through a throng of people at the front of one of their gigs reintroduced herself with tantalising news of a new band.

Six months later and the second-coming trio CL are already being spoken about in hushed tones by the nation's talent scouts (quick, I'd imagine, to try and find someone - anyone? - who could embrace the edges of the electro-pop market). It's a shame in a way because it's still early days for CL. They could do with another three months before being swamped with critics, but what the heck. The demos sound terrific.

Which is why I ended up in east London (the Beirut of fashion) on Friday night standing in the crowd at 93 Feet East, which throws open its doors for free on Fridays and lets bands romp on stage in front of a gregarious, drunken rabble who, for the most part I suspect, won't remember a single group's name by the following morning.

It is a testing setting, but CL's set builds really well. Tigs herself arrives on stage looking a little mumsy; a short busy figure, with a neat haircut, all of which hides the dervish within! Behind her two boys play keyboards and bass, one of them sporting an almost Vince Clarke style haircut, which makes me think of Depeche Mode in the days when they did press shots in their back gardens in Basildon.

The songs are much deeper than your average 80s pop though; they're deceptively infectious but with a crunch. Tigs takes time to settle, but when she grows in confidence -once she has the measure of the crowd - she's all round compelling. A passing Lukas Wooller, he of Maximo Park keyboard fame, nails it well when he says she reminds him of Karen O from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (the big voice, the bowl hair - he's right. He could probably do my job if truth be told).

But this is more European, more of a London slant on the yelping art-punk of NYC. There are shades of the YYYs but only if you can imagine something like their Gold Lion tune, mixed with a Casio discobeat and tethered to a pushy sped-up bassline. And there in the centre, there's Tigs, toying with the audience, while dissecting an array of at odds emotions.

Her voice has an edge of danger about it; I'm not sure why. And you sense that there is something just a little mysterious about her (if you told me she trained as a spy in Russia, won a fashion design grant in New York and only ended up in London because she fell in love with a man on a Greyhound bus heading for LAX airport, I'd probably believe you).

She did, I know for a fact though, once say: "I want to make smart, literate music".

And weirdly, in this Mercury week, though musically miles apart, I can imagine Guy Garvey from Elbow saying the same thing.