The first time I saw Queens Of The Stone Age, if memory serves, they were playing London's Garage venue just after their debut was released. It's strange, then, that nearly a decade later, they're in front of me at an even smaller venue, the historically sticky 100 Club. In fact, Troy Van Leeuwen is directly in front of me, flicking nonchalantly at his pedals with white strappy shoes.

So this lunchtime we tried being responsible and put on a bit of the Crowded House album in the Uncut office, but quite soon we just had to listen to the new Pissed Jeans record instead. It seemed logical, at the time.

Corny fool that I am, today the hot weather's driven me to put on a forthcoming Beach Boys comp. "Compiled and sequenced by Al Jardine, Bruce Johnston, Mike Love and Brian Wilson," claims the press release, and while I'm morbidly suspicious of anything sanctioned by Love, this is a cracking selection.

Since I blogged about the Espers live gig last Friday, I've been playing the Meg Baird solo album to death.

I've always been resistant to the notion that horror movies can in some way function as biting social comment.

I wasn't planning to blog today, since I expected Steve's third report from Coachella to turn up here. But thanks to his fairly quixotic posting strategy, he appears to have turned up on Allan's blog. He's right, of course: I do like Grizzly Bear.

Stumbling onto site today someone told me that it was 107 degrees yesterday but it’s only 105 today. So that’s alright then. What’s that sound, floating across the polo grounds? Lush, harmonised, laid back, Californian… yes, it must be The Feeling from, er, Lowestoft or wherever the heck. Anyway, they do Buggles’ ‘Video Killed The Radio Star’ as I order my first beer of the day so it can’t all be bad.

Seems my blog has been hijacked over the weekend by Steve Sutherland, who's clearly having the time of his life out at Coachella. Here's his second report, involving The Arcade Fire, Kings Of Leon, the mighty Roky Erickson and a few random Hollywood A-listers. God, it sounds great. . .

Hi, I’m Steve Sutherland and I’ve gatecrashed John's Blog because I’m out in California covering the Coachella Music & Arts Festival for Uncut.Coachella is just over two hours’ drive inland from LA and the Festival, now in its eighth year, has become a favourite with Brit music fans for four good reasons.

Still waiting for that Phil Collins fan to post a defence of his hero. But in the meantime, Paul Holmes has joined in bashing "Tory Frog Prince Collins". "One half-decent Genesis tune, some so-so work on a John Martyn record and a clutch of Sunny D Motown rip-offs doth not a canon make," he writes. Fair point. Thanks also to Chads, who responded to our talk of Bill Fay the other day by mentioning Simon Finn, another neglected, quasi-mystic British singer-songwriter from the early '70s who, like Fay, was redicovered by Current 93's David Tibet. I must dig out his "Pass The Distance" album, which I haven't played in ages, though I seem to remember some of it being a bit quirky for my taste.