You and I have appeared together in print once: in Everett True's '101 Albums You Should Die Before You Hear'. My contribution was a chapter on Oasis, and I wondered if I was being needlessly petty and negative. Apparently not!

I never liked Glastonbury anyway, but if I want a rock festival, there's still Bloodstock and Download.

Rock music, like any music, depends on constant reinvigoration through inspiration from other musical forms. I'm enjoying Sumo Cyo's album, which nicks from pop, ska and R&B. Even trap is seeping into metal, and that's how metal stays alive.

At least one line of the Hapsburg Dynasty became so inbred that it could no longer function or reproduce: "purity" = stagnation and destruction.