We went to a small craft fayre the other day. Little homemade indie stuff. Bit twee for me, for the most part. But in one of the rooms they were listening to The Cooper Temple Clause's obscenely-underrated Kick Up The Fire, And Let the Flames Break Loose and, if anyone noticed, they might have wondered why a guy fitting my description was just standing there and listening to the music at the craft fayre.

I love that record, though. In general, The Cooper Temple Clause were perfectly placed alongside the manufactured garage rock revolution of the early-mid 2000s in the UK, with Arctic Monkeys, Franz Ferdinand et al (don't you hate people who say "et al"? Pretentious). There's real depth and soul to their songs, which is severely lacking in the simple, cynical, radio-friendly dreck that their peers were spewing out into the scene. For some reason I have a real affinity with anyone who's willing to sacrifice all classical notions of success in the pursuit of doing what they want.

The Hives and The Strokes were good as well. In many ways I credit/blame The Strokes and their success for flooding the UK music scene with so much samey trash - but you can hardly blame them for their success. That's kinda the point.