Kanye West delivers the most expensive four-minute performance I've ever seen in my life, with 77 women mostly wearing gold paint. He then exits vertically in a hydraulic cage
To the Brit Awards, the annual pop bun fight, but first - by way of contrast - to my local in Barnes to see Humphrey Lyttelton. My cousin Julie is along for the ride in a vintage velvet Beatles cap from 1965, worn at a rakish tilt. The trumpet-blowing broadcaster and his seven-piece jazz band are in stupendous form. We're sitting so close we can smell the valve oil and hear the click of their keys. When he hits a top note his brow furrows into a matrix of lines, like a Tube map of physical exertion. Which is more astonishing: that you can see two sets of their romping standards for little more than the price of a sandwich in Shaftesbury Avenue, or that their laconic leader is still touring this outfit - occasionally even driving the van - at the age of 84?
At the Brits the following night, TV cameras dodge between the dinner tables and 8,000 people put away the house red and lamb en croute, while a succession of pop performers spend ever more staggering sums of money to attract their attention. The difference between American and British acts couldn't be more pronounced at these events. American artists deliver dazzling sets full of polish, danger, edge and attitude, and then burst the balloon by thanking God, their parents and nine people from the marketing department whose names they've written on a piece of paper. British acts tend to stumble around self-consciously trying to fill the space and then deliver a searing monologue stuffed with expletives to get them in the papers.
The Awards host, Chris Evans, jokes about Boy George's legal problems in New York, where the former Culture Club frontman denies charges of drug possession. Punk-rock storm-trooper Paul Weller reveals he would "rather eat my own excrement" than perform a duet with the 21st-century Cat Stevens, James Blunt. Lovely. More Camembert, anyone?
The Scottish singer-songwriter K T Tunstall raises the bar for the host country by appearing with 30 burlesque dancers in high heels and wielding canes, and wearing a pair of striped trousers that recall a phrase once used by Clive James about Rod Stewart, whom he declared to be "hopping about like a bifurcated marrow".
The Americans fight back with all guns blazing: rock legend Prince appears, like Charlie Chaplin in ornamental pyjamas, backed by girls in green chiffon with legs nearly nine foot long. But the US has an even deadlier weapon in its arsenal: flamboyant hip-hop messiah Kanye West, who delivers the most expensive four-minute performance I've ever seen in my life, involving an entire "platoon" of women - 77 to be exact, 29 of them in crimson satin ballgowns pretending to play the cello, the balance prancing rhythmically round a circular catwalk apparently wearing nothing but a coat of gold paint. Then there's fireworks. Then he exits vertically in a hydraulic cage.
Sitting to my left, sending photos of Coldplay from his mobile phone, is the member of parliament for Cardiff West, Kevin Brennan, more famously 25 per cent of the cross-party House of Commons rock-and-roll ensemble, MP4. He introduces the other three to me not as "East Yorkshire, Conservative" or "the right honourable member for North Tayside" etc, but simply as "bass, drums and keyboards".
And so to Manchester, where I'm a guest on Mark Radcliffe's Radio 2 programme. Radio has changed beyond recognition in the past 20 years, its human element ever lower in the mix (a recent two-hour national show went out as the same 60 minutes played twice; I'm quite inured to the notion of pre-recorded radio, but less so to the idea that no one - not even on the station itself - appeared to notice). So it's reassuring to watch Radcliffe in action.
He couldn't be more "live" or reactive. Or unfazed by opening up a fader at 10.33 at night to address an audience of a million and a half. At 10.25 he's overdubbing mandolin parts on to an album he's making on the studio computer with his folk band the Family Mahone. At 10.32 he's knocking out a series of trails for Tom Robinson, who's sitting in for him the following week, adding three-part harmonies to the chorus - "Tom Robinsohhhn! Bee-Bee-Cee . . . Radio-TWO!"
Armed only with a warm selection of tracks and a cascade of e-mails, he pretty much improvises the entire 90 minutes for a late-night nation of record lovers, lorry drivers, freaks and insomniacs. Shouldn't all music radio be this loose and inviting?
Mark Ellen is editor of The Word magazine
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