The generation gap at work, methinks. Frustrating, at times even amusing (when you think that we had hoped to avoid it between us and our kids, after all we would be their "best friends"), but there you have it. And just like any ideological gap, it cannot be bridged by people shouting their preferences or slating each other's preferences across the gap. The fault (if it is indeed a fault) is not JB's of course but his audience's for being sheep and the music corporations for herding them their way. They like what they like, for reasons we will not easily fathom (except some of them - for instance, they like their heroes to be of their generation, now what's wrong with that?).

All we can ever do is find little ways of exposing the following generations to what we think is good, and hope they get some of it. It's like spooning earth into the gap to fill it, and not very likely to make much impact, but now and then we can claim little local "wins". I am proud of my daughter's tastes in music, as a result of such efforts (she is 25 now, but at 17 already she was singing Eric Bogle and Robb Johnson, Dave Webber and Stan Rogers - atta girl!). And outside folk - she is very eclectic - the trend continues towards the better examples of music, in all genres.

Other than that, we have to live with the celebrity culture, the teenage fads and the exploitation. We shouldn't complain, because it was our generation that we started them, in the 60s (read John Marr's History of Modern Britain, he has a few choice words about America's role in this too).

It's the granddaughters of the girls that were crying and shouting in Beatle's concerts that are fawning over JB now. Sure, I'd take the Beatles over JB any day, but that is not the point. These girls, like their grandmothers, don't really care about the music anyway, but about the celebrity effects surrounding it.

Not necessarily that they are the sheep and we are the clever ones. We're just different kind of sheep. Hey, I danced to the Monkees too, and I know all the words to "Daydream Believer"!