Whatever it was meant to be, it wasn’t fun. In the closing years of the 1960s, the Kinks’ managers Robert Wace and Grenville Collins cajoled Dave Davies into recording material for a putative solo album - long known to fans as A Hole In The Sock Of Dave Davies. Hard-pressed and still heartbroken from being parted from his school sweetheart, what the Kinks guitarist delivered was too gloomy for anyone to handle.

It’s 1978 and the Rolling Stones have just left the soggy vagueness of their mid-70s career behind, only to come across punk and new wave.

As I mentioned the other day, after a grim 2011 it looks like 2012 has the makings of a good year for film. Later this week, I’ll be posting Jonathan Romney’s review of Alexander Payne’s tremendous The Descendants. But meantime, I hope you’ll indulge me while I throw forward to one of February’s best releases, Young Adult – a terrific sort-of-comedy from the Juno team of director Ivan Reitman and screenwriter Diablo Cody.

Neil Young is set to release a new album with his band Crazy Horse.

Radiohead have contributed 14 songs from their back catalogue to the soundtrack of new documentary The Island President.

The 2012 Academy Award nominations have been announced today (January 24) in Los Angeles. Martin Scorsese's 3D children's film, Hugo, leads the way with 11 nominations, closely followed by Michel Hazanavicius' black and white silent movie, The Artist with 10. Here's the nominations in the key six categories: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor and Actress.

The official Disney website has revealed that it has begun selling a T-shirt "inspired" by Joy Division.

The Gaslight Anthem have started work on their fourth album.

Beady Eye scored the biggest selling vinyl singles of 2011, with three of their singles featuring in the top five of the year's best sellers.

It would be nice to pretend otherwise, but I’m far from an expert on medieval lute music. A few years ago, however, a strong enthusiasm for the British guitarist James Blackshaw lead me to an album he’d made with a Dutch lute player – lutenist, apparently – called Jozef Van Wissem.