[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjwfNAYdBVQ] Aimee Mann was in superb form at Sheffield’s Leadmill on Thursday night. A mesmerising set. For the encore, she played the first four songs that the audience called out for. My shouted request was for the title track of her second solo album, a song that she wrote out of her friendship with the Labour MP Tony Banks. It’s about, broadly speaking, what it was like to be a member of the shadow cabinet in the mid-90’s – not exactly your usual fare for a pop song. Banks was a Mann fan. At a gig fifteen years ago, she told the Sheffield audience (I think it was the Leadmill again) that she’d been invited to tea at the House of Commons. Should she go?…

On Tuesday, out of the blue, I got an email asking whether I’d like to interview one of my favourite singer/songwriters, Aimee Mann, for the Star in Sheffield (city of my birth, where half my family live). It’s more than thirty years since I last did a music interview so I must have thought about it for – oh, at least half a second. A few hours later I found myself talking to Aimee in LA. Here’s the story as it appears in today’s paper. I’ve seen Aimee Mann’s three previous visits to the city, but it’s been a thirteen year wait since the last of these. On the phone from LA, she blames the long delay on promoters and looks forward to playing the…

I’m about to publish a novel which is partly set at one of the UK’s oldest (fictional) literary magazines, so it seems particularly appropriate to welcome a new incarnation of one of the last century’s best known little magazines, Horizon. The wide ranging magazine, out today, is edited by Jane Holland and published (online only) by Salt. There’s loads of interesting fiction, poetry, reviews and articles there, including a good article on how to get an agent and a new short story by yours truly. Check it out. Now I’m off to Stratford to see Dr Who and Jean Luc Picard in some play called Hamlet.

Last week, reviewing a book in the Guardian Review, Tibor Fischer credited the famous ‘quip’ that ‘writing about music is like dancing about architecture’ to Elvis Costello. I knew this was wrong because I’d first heard the phrase credited to Frank Zappa (who I believe Elvis also credited it to, in an interview with Timothy White), later hearing it attributed to both Thelonious Monk (my favourite candidate, pictured) and Charlie Mingus. I was sitting in a hotel room opposite Exeter Cathedral last Saturday night, half watching a Sigur Ros DVD, so I googled the phrase and came up with an interesting article here that I cited in a short letter detailing some of the many candidates for the quote, including the US comedian Martin Mull.…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3CmXGKXOmk] Just back from Cornwall, where we did a lot of walking and rather less reading than anticipated, but I did enjoy Anthony Cartwright’s powerful, affecting debut, The Afterglow, set in the Black Country and finally got round to David Mitchell’s excellent ‘Number 9 Dream’. I’m now well into Stanley Middleton’s absorbing new novel, Her Three Wise Men where a production of ‘Twelth Night’ in a fictional North Midlands town draws out all sorts of rivalries and secret histories. I’m not sure if my favourite band, REM, have sanctioned this new version of ‘It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (and I feel fine) by the current US president, but it’s a lot of fun. Catch the vid before some bugger bans…