Julian Cope presents Head Heritage

Wooden Shjips, they're a nondescript-looking bunch of Americans on a little label

This is presumably why their new LP has already gone - at least temporarily - out of print, despite having been released less than a month ago. Can't even get a copy for the NSA - think they're ready to jump ship (no pun intended) to a larger label with enough distribution muscle to get their albums in the shops outside of California.

Rough Trade East has plenty of the Wooden Shjips on their shelves.

Maybe a temporary glitch- I'm sure my local record shop still has the CD. I bought the vinyl and got a code to download the whole thing as MP3s- if you really can't buy it anywhere, let me know and I'll pass that on.

Yes - I suspect that what's happened is that the label didn't, or couldn't, press up enough copies to meet demand, and that there'll be another batch pressed up as soon as the costs of releasing the first pressing have been recouped. Same thing happened to Husker Du when they made "Zen Arcade" - SST only pressed 3,000 and they all sold out within a fortnight, meaning it wasn't available for several months afterwards.

I've had it on order from amazon for two weeks, and on the advice of Lonsome Cowboy Bill I'm going to try Rough Trade East as well, but if they don't come up trumps I may well take you up on your kind offer...

Interesting points, Ian. I too have no idea of what Tokio Hotel sound like, and don't really want to know- I'd rather keep my fantasy that they are, as you say, some 21st Century Manga-inspired hybrid of The New York Dolls and early Japan. Like Sigue Sigue Sputnik should have sounded. In reality, they probably make Sputnik sound like genius in comparison.

But still, isn't the phenomenon you're talking about restricted mainly to pre-teen music fans- and hasn't it always been that way, from the early Beatles to The Osmonds to Duran Duran etc? If the music wasn't secondary, how could there have been so much antipathy between Durannies and Wham fans, if it wasn't just about subscribing to a certain look?

I agree though when you say that music being free and so widely available- and so much of it, albeit mostly within a very narrow range- has devalued it to the generation who've grown up online. They still flock to live music at the big festivals, but that seems to be more about 'the experience' (the queues? the overpriced shit drinks? The crappy burgers? The rain and mud?) than the draw of any particular band.

I don't know what the pre-teenies are into these days, but I do still know a few late teenagers and they seem actually less concerned with image and more concerned with music as a functional lifestyle accompaniment- Ipod fodder- than generations past. Maybe it's because the record sleeve and to a large extent music TV is a thing of the past- even MTV is cutting back on it's actual music video coverage- but the look actually seems less important, certainly in Britain and America. In a way that's a shame.

Sometimes bands can be all image and no substance of course, but often I think if a band works on the way it looks and presents itself, then that can suggest they've put more thought into the music too, and the effect they want it to have- certainly if we're talking 'High Pop', where a band's impact can be as much sociological as purely musical. Take The Who, Bowie, Bolan, The Pistols- that's when pop can really have an impact, beyond the music- it wasn't just the Sex Pistols' songs that changed peoples' lives- and inflame passions to imagine some greater artistic vision, a whole way of life, a crack in the consensual tedium etc.

And finally, concerning The Horrors- even if I grant that you or I may have heard it all before, the same could surely be said (and was said by our elders), of the bands we listened to when we were 17. The Horrors at least seem to have good taste, and will probably lead their fans to explore their original influences- indeed, this is something they actively encourage by giving out free zines and mix CDs at gigs. I think it's great that there is a pop band, aimed at teenagers and not much older themselves, who are making contemporary chartbound sounds that reference MBV, The Shangri-Las, The Psychedelic Furs, Neu etc. To criticise them for not being The Flower-Corsano duo is missing the point.