Ready to blow
In 2001, So Solid Crew were on top of the world and the charts. Now, after hard knocks and trials, their legacy rests not on music but on the infamy of a tabloid frenzy. Jamie Jackson learns the truth about the UK garage stars.

Vision on
It is time to adjust history: the golden age of British pop lies in the late Seventies and early Eighties, not in the Sixties. From Adam Ant to ZTT, a bizarre assortment of radicals, artists, chancers and unclassifiable oddballs took over the mainstream, and for once we had the best of both worlds. Simon Reynolds, leading pop historian of the period, makes the case that we never had it so good.

When will I be famous?
Meet Baz. He's spent six years in the pursuit of fame and fortune - and he hasn't got there yet. Peter Robinson reports on the twilight world of those unsigned stars for whom the peaks of pop life - despite a heavy investment of time and money - remain just out of reach

Glum's the word
Polly Vernon: do we really need a whole musical sub-genre of earnest, angst-ridden young men who only sing when they're whining?

You dancing? God's asking
For Liz Hoggard, disco's debauched birthplace was not New York, but Lichfield. There, drinking dandelion and burdock in a community hall under the watchful eyes of Mormons trying to reach out to the local youth, she found her soul

Flash-forward
French techno whizz Vitalic has taken four years to make his first proper album. And now he's going to clean up, writes Kitty Empire

Flash-back
Screaming Lord Sutch livens up a 1990 by-election campaign, as recalled by friend and biographer Graham Sharpe.

Download of the month
'Tatters' by Netsayi

This month's 10 best cds

This month's reviews in full

It's never too late to be Earlies
Luke Bainbridge hitches a long, strange ride through the L state with mighty psychedelic country collective the Earlies - the only band that can lay claim to both Lancashire and Texas as home.

Who's who in pop's Tardis
Christopher Eccleston's replacements are already auditioning on ITV. Paul Morley squirms as the has-beens try one more time.

The 10 great muses
You - yes, you rock star! Don't count her as just another notch on the bedpost... some of popular music's most memorable recordings have been inspired by a deeper kind of love
Last Month's 10

Lucie Silvas
Film-maker and writer David Furnish quizzes the singer-songwriter sensation about her first solo UK tour, her passion for fashion and having her credit cards cut up in front of her - and a new trend in rugby-playing boyfriends...

Charlie Higson
The Fast Show comic and writer of the successful young James Bond book needs to be stirred by something new. Except, Peter Paphides learns, 'fiddle-dee-dee' music

Virgin gigger
Margot worries that her T-shirt isn't cool and can't see why Babyshambles have to play so loud. Tom Cox watches as she learns the ropes

Barometer
Up

Soundtrack of their lives
We know what's on George Bush's iPod. Now here's a sneak preview of British party leaders' playlists

What I'm Listening to
John Motson, Match Of The Day commentator

What I'm Listening to
Robert R Crumb, cartoonist

Editor's letter

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