I am a new day rising
I’m a brand new sky
To hang the stars upon tonight
I am a little divided
Do I stay or run away
And leave it all behind?

- "Times Like These"

I recently had a chance to briefly meet a hero of mine. There is always trepidation about something like this. Sometimes you don't want your heroes to be real - afraid perhaps that pulling them from the poster on your wall, to a real live person might shatter the mythology.

The other thing you don't want to be is a pest. A celebrity's life can be a grueling one, and everyone wants a piece of you. I've discovered this more recently through a friend of mine, a senior marketer for a big music label in New York. As a lover of music, I find the behind-the-scenes stuff she tells me fascinating. Especially when she's talking about artists that I listen to.

There goes my hero
Watch him as he goes
There goes my hero
He's ordinary

- "My Hero"

The hero status of Dave Grohl (pictured) started when he was the drummer in Nirvana, the Seattle "slacker" band I first discovered at 18, and whose album Nevermind persuaded me that rock could be raw and immediate, rather than the bleach-blonde meathead music I had been used to until then.

Grohl was a linchpin to the Nirvana sound, and in the space of just two albums he became a member of the biggest rock band in the world - only to have that band destroyed by the suicide of its singer, Kurt Cobain. Initially, for many fans of Cobain and Nirvana, Grohl's new band, the Foo Fighters, seemed at first a poor imitation of Nirvana. At least that's how it seemed to me.

I was finally got turned on to the Foo Fighters' music by accident in 2002, when the music label friend visited from New York, bringing a stack of CDs of her artists for us, including the new Foo album, One By One.

In the wake of 9-11, just as U2's "Beautiful Day" had done, the Foo Fighters song "Times Like These" soon hit a chord with me and many other people, for the bittersweet optimism inherent in its lyrics. I read somewhere that Lance Armstrong used the song for inspiration during his road cycling training.

"Its times like these you learn to live again
Times like these, time and time again..

For someone who had witnessed the highs and lows of life, Grohl seemed well qualified for the role of the angry yet defiant survivor, and his reflections on tragedy seemed heart felt. As a listener, I began to take more notice.

The next time the Foo Fighters came into the frame was on a big day for me, the day I asked someone to marry me. I suppose for anyone who lives through this somewhat harrowing experience, this is always going to be a momentous day. Assuming of course you end up with a yes. I vividly recall a lot of the details of that day. The New York weather, the books I purchased, and one I looked at for a moment (Catcher in the Rye), and a poster that I got that day from my friend, of the Foo Fighters.

It was a tour poster, written in Spanish - which in rock tour poster terms made it all the more cool. Strangely enough, that day I also bought a book by the other surviving member of Nirvana.

So here I was in Singapore in June this year, dragging my well-traveled poster along to an Album Preview Event, which promised an audience with two of the Foo Fighters, including Dave Grohl. Of course it was packed - and they came out late. Such is the privilege of fame.

Amidst the free drinks, introductions to the album, and the chance to hear "Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace" in full, there was a brief unplanned window at the end - a few minutes where the two rock stars "mingled" with the 50-odd people gathered. What it ended up being was a bit of a chaotic mess. But it was my chance.

It was clear that Dave and Foo guitarist Nate weren't going to be mingling too long - fresh (maybe fresh isn't the word) from finishing the album, they had flown that day from Tokyo. It was now late in the day, and the lads were showing signs of wear and tear. Sporting a black jersey, a full beard and swollen-looking face, Grohl looked a little like French rugby giant Chagal might after a night staying up eating pizza. Yet there was something liberatingly non-airbrushed about him. Still grunge after all these years.

So I bustled in true reporter style to the front of the scrum, knowing that at best, I'd have one sentence with each of them. Rather than the throw-away lines "what was Kurt really like?" or "you guys are great, can I get a photo", I thought I'd use my poster story angle.

"Dave, would you sign my poster for me? I got it on the day my wife and I got engaged."

Truly corny indeed, but I figured it was the sort of thing that I'd be happy to entertain, if I were famous. Something with a dose of real in it. True enough, both of them were very obliging and humble, wishing the two of us congratulations in the process. And still today, my poster duly reads, "Good luck, Dave Grohl," along with a similar epithet from Nate. The rest of the words are still in Spanish.

In a recent interview I heard on Radio One, Dave (I somewhat rashly figure that we're on first-name basis now) got pretty choked up when speaking about a song on his new album, the final track called "Home". He said the song had offered him a rare chance to focus less on the fun-and-fury of the rockstar lifestyle, and more on his new family. And you could hear his voice catch even as he talked about it.

People I've loved, I have no regrets
Some I remember some I forget
Some of them living some of them dead
And all I want is to be home.

- "Home"

From a very brief encounter and a music collection which now numbers all of their albums, I'm increasingly impressed by the Foo Fighters, essentially because despite their rock royalty status they've also maintained their uncompromising normalness, their passion for living a life that appears mostly to be pretty similar to ours, and their determination not to dwell on things, but instead pick it all up, face forwards - and rock on.

Alvin says: One of the most successful and multi-talented dance acts in the UK, Groove Armada return with an eagerly awaited new studio album.

"Soundboy Rock features a wealth of collaborators across the musical spectrum and is easily Groove Armada's most diverse record to date. Contributions from Mutya (ex-Sugababes), Candi Staton, Alan Donohoe (The Rakes), Simian Mobile Disco, Richard Hard-Fi, Jeb Loy Nichol, Jack Splash (Plant Life), Tony Allen, Rhymfest, Stush, Angie Stone, and MAD complete the record in fine style.

"A wonderfully uplifting album and a celebration of dance music's vibrant versatility. Soundboy Rock is a major return for the British duo who celebrates the 10th Anniversary of Groove Armada in 2007."

- ?uestlove, The Roots, Rollingstone.com

I Like New Years because of the chance to clear psychic clutter.

I like the idea of beginning something, not finishing it.

I appreciate the fact that people may forget last year's mistakes that I made.

It's good to have an excuse to see friends again... and to have a whole year before worrying about Christmas.

New Year means another year closer to President Bush leaving office.

I love "Best Ofs" from the previous year. They make much more sense of the world than watching the news as it happens.

I love Summer Festivals. If Singapore actually had a Summer.

Three different public holidays in one month. What's not to love?

As my memory rests
But never forgets what I lost
Wake me up when September ends.

It always surprises me the impact music can have during a painful time. It was sobering last night to hear a song that I hadn't especially liked previously, suddenly ring true in a way I didn't expect. Such was the case with the Green Day song above.

I guess this defines the promise of art – the way it can rise at the right time and stick to a situation with such precision. Articulating what words alone cannot.

I recall it was the same immediately after September 11 2001, when so many people felt compelled to pump up U2's "Beautiful Day" on their car stereo, simply because they needed a purging blast of "ride-the-rails" music to give them a lift.

Amid all the America-bashing that many of us may have done over the last few years, it pays to remind ourselves too of the rough times ordinary Americans – those not dripping with diamonds or running oil corporations – have seen in this decade.

I'm no great fan of America's current government. But as someone who spent a happy three years as a child in the US, I do know that there is a vast difference between "America" as a symbol and ordinary Americans.

September 11, the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars and now Hurricane Katrina have torn into the confidence of middle America. For the nation's biggest-ever terrorist attack to be followed by its biggest natural disaster in less than five years is soul-destroying for a lot of people. And in between, for so many young soldiers to be sent off to a war, about which most Americans are at best uncertain, makes the going even tougher.

We should remember that individual people are not super-powers. And for many of us in Asia who have lived through our own tumultuous times, we should feel empathy right now, rather than a wrongly placed sense of justice – which I've overheard from a few, and admittedly felt a few times myself.

Human nature isn't always pretty or well considered. But then, that's what makes us so interesting.

What has occured to me over the past two weeks is the way in which New Orleans shaped the cultural psyche of many Americans, despite their present day differences. The New Orleans of writers from Mark Twain to Jack Kerouac – and musicians from Leadbelly and Charlie Parker to Wynton Marsalis, Credence and Paul Simon – infused the country with its rich vein of cultural diversity and creative expression.

For those of us who love to travel to beautiful and vibrant places, the loss of the Mississippi Delta region, for however long, is a tragedy. Politics comes and goes like the rain – but soulful places stay with you forever.

As my memory rests
But never forgets what I lost
Wake me up when September ends.

The World of Music and Dance phenomenon known as WOMAD is something of a musical freak, and a loveable freak at that.

It's a hybrid catch-all semi-corporate organisation based almost entirely on "vibe". I mean, how many other concerts do you go to every year, despite the fact you've never heard of any of the artists and none of the music is in your language?

It's a very odd phenomenon, and it seems to work extremely well. And to me, what it shows is that if you work hard enough at it, people will come, and keep coming back.

What saddens me a little in a place like Singapore is the same feeling I get following a great Film Festival. Where is this sort of content year-round?

When you go seeking funds, corporate stiffs with their tight collars and power suits invariably tell you that "this sort of thing is just too niche". Yet the evidence shows that this sort of thing repeatedly sells out when its on. Go figure.

Whatever the case, all credit to WOMAD. The sight on Sunday of 71-year old maestro drummer Bill Cobham banging the drums with ferocity and exactness, as he backed young Cuban new-breeds, Asere, was fantastic to behold.

Aside from dance music, world music is very well served in Singapore thanks to WOMAD – we see artists and DJs at the peak of their powers – not sad greying rockers like The Eagles, dragging you down yet yet another dark desert highway.... cool wind in whatever hair they still have left.

Long live the bands I've never heard of, in the languages I can't speak. I'm missing them already.

The news has it that rock is definitely back in the black. According to the Guardian, rock concerts over summer in Britain have been hitting the roof in terms of attendance, and everyone who once proclaimed rock as dead has been forced to eat humble meat pie.

I'm quite glad, but for the fact that no matter how much their newest record sounds like the last, every young spotty teenager deserves to come of age at an Oasis concert.

People may rightfully point out that the summer lineup is heavy with hip hop acts as well, but the truth is that rap rarely works as well live, simply due to the need for MCs to shout rather than speak when they're on stage. With festivals like Reading and Glastonbury in particular, the ones who get the turnstyles pumping are usually the guitar bands – rock is a dish best serves to thousands.

Where does the recent reprise of the live guitar sound fit in? In many ways, rock only "went away" because the dance revolution dwarfed it briefly. No matter how many producers from the dance scene there were crossing over at the time, there really isn't a time in recent history that British rock hasn't been vital and banging forth. The real movement, the lack of cutting edge dance music for the masses, only highlights the fact that rock is, well, dead good.

Thanks ironically in part to dance artists. The biggest dance smash of the past 12 months was that Deep Dish slab of niceness, FlashDance, which boasted one of the juiciest rock riffs this side of Norway. Deep Dish goes on and pays homage to rock on its latest album, with a fantastic mash-up of Flashdance with Money for Nothing by Dire Straits. You can bet the Dire boys were not unhappy about that one. And neither the White Stripes nor Coldplay are strangers to using a dance-friedly beat on their tracks – making their songs infinitely remixable.

And two of the most enduring dance acts, the Chemical Brothers and UNKLE, were always pulling up guitar heroes including the likes of Noel Gallagher and The Verve's Richard Ashcroft to appear on tracks. To these people, the recent talk of a "merging of sounds" or "death of dance" is not only old news, it's irrelevant. 'We was always on the same bus and still are' they may well say. Speaking well is seldom their strongest point.

The truth is, putting rock back on stage may well expose many of the more sheister-ish DJs out there, the ones who it appeared had a monopoly on style so big they didn't need to smile, let alone add any innovations to their stage act. Sasha, shake with fear, I hope you do.

And to all the kids? Rock on. As you know you must.

Loser by Beck

In the time of chimpanzees, I was a monkey
Butane in my veins and I'm out to cut the junkie
With the plastic eyeballs, spray-paint the vegetables
Dog food skulls with the beefcake pantyhose
Kill the headlights and put it in neutral
Stock car flaming with a loser in the cruise control
Baby's in Reno with the vitamin-D
Got a couple of couches, sleep on the loveseat
Someone keeps sayin' I'm insane to complain about
A shotgun wedding and a stain on my shirt
Don't believe everything that you breathe
You get a parking violation and a maggot on your sleeve
So shave your face with some mace in the dark
Saving all your food stamps and burnin' down the trailer park

Yo cut it!
Soy un perdidor, I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me?
Double-barrel buckshot. . .
Soy un perdidor, I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me?

The forces of evil on a bozo nightmare
Ban all the music with a phony gas chamber
'Cause one's got a weasel and other's got a flag
One's on the pole, shove the other in a bag
With the re-run shows and the cocaine nosejob
The daytime crap of a folksinger slob
He hung himself with a guitar string
A slab of turkey neck and it's hanging from a pigeon wing
And you can't write if you can't relate
Trade the cash for the beat and body for the hate
And my time is a piece of wax falling on a termite
And it's choking on the splinters

Soy un perdidor, I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me?
Get crazy with the Cheez-Whiz. . .
Soy un perdidor, I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me?

Drive-by body pierce. . .yo bring it on down
I'm a driver, I'm a winner . . . things are gonna change, I can feel it
Soy un perdidor, I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me?

I can't believe you!
Soy un perdidor, I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me?
Sprechen sie deutsche, baby... know what I'm saying?

On New Year's Eve 1998 at Bondi Pavilion, a skinny kid wearing a zebra head rocked my world.

If people one day ask me who the most important artist of my generation was, I'd give pause. Names like Kurt Cobain, Prince and David Byrne might creep through my head. In terms of talent and impact, I might stick for some time on a person like Chuck D – perhaps the only artist to display equal measures of cold gutted-power and eloquance, while still sounding damn funky.

But for me, I'd have to settle on a guy like Beck. Few statements to burst onto and define a scene worked for me in the way that Beck's immortal chorus line of 1994 did...

Soy un perdidor, I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me?

A white guy who thinks he's black, a folk singer with hip hop beats, a versatile performer who's never bothered changing his hair style. Beck is the Tarantino of music, the kid in raggy jeans and Chuck Taylor sneakers who lingered so long in his youth in dusty record stores that he somehow breathed in every emotion from each slab of vinyl.

Beck sings sad like he's been dumped each year for a decade. He steps into genre-bending as though he were stepping into his favourite bar.

There is an ease with Beck that must give other musicians the heebees. For some reason, like Jack White, this kid somehow just has The Knowledge. No marketing spin required, thank you.

Like every Beck record, Guero has started sinking in with me. It will become a favourite of my year. When Beck sounds optimistic, you believe him. In fact, considering how down he can sound too, you're actually relieved for him.

Dylanesque? Defininately, but only in the way Dylan was Elvis-esque or Little Richard-esque or Mozart-esque. Stealing with sincerity is an art form, and those masters of it make their results sound like nobody else's.

Viva Beck. Rock on, dude.

See Loser lyrics

"A rock band with a DJ? Who are you kidding."

With their recent "mashed" collaborations with Jay Z, LP gained not only a stamp of credibility from Hop Hop royalty but a page of music history in a book highlighted by the likes of David Bowie, Run DMC and Beck.

Now they've taken on the mouth that feeds them. Viva LP.

A Band Makes its Case Against Record Label

By JEFF LEEDS
New York Times
Published: May 9, 2005

LOS ANGELES, May 8 - In six years together, the musicians in the rap-rock band Linkin Park have written song after song about angst, rage and self-reliance. So perhaps it is not hard to imagine their shock at being asked by the Warner Music Group, their record company, to play a gig at the New York Stock Exchange to celebrate Warner's planned $750 million initial public stock offering.

The request, members of the band say, galvanized their anger at the corporation, which has cut roughly $250 million in costs as part of a reorganization before its offering, mainly with layoffs and consolidation. The group says concerns that the public offering would reward investors while shortchanging the company and its artists led the band to ask to be released from its record contract last week.

The invitation to play at the stock exchange "just exemplifies how out of touch the ownership of the Warner Music Group is with our band," said Brad Delson, the group's guitarist and primary spokesman, in his first interview since the Grammy-winning band issued its demand in a written statement that criticized the company. "It doesn't make any sense to us why we would play a show at the New York Stock Exchange. I don't know what was going through their minds."

Linkin Park, which Edgar Bronfman Jr., the chairman of Warner Music, has described as "the biggest rock band in the world," says it is researching how it might legally sever its contract with Warner, which calls for the band to deliver four more albums. The band has released two full-length albums and three additional recordings through Warner, selling an estimated 17.9 million copies in the United States alone, according to Nielsen SoundScan. But the musicians say cutbacks at Warner have hurt the company's ability to market future Linkin Park recordings.

"This first trilogy is really about the father, the struggles of a father, or a man, basically, to find himself, and at the same time fall into a trap of wanting certain powers, making a pact with the devil and basically spending the rest of his life regretting it." – George Lucas, April 2005.

The year was 1977, I was five. It was 28 years ago, in a galaxy far, far away.

Actually, the place was America. Fort Collins, Colorado. Not that unlike Tatooine. Times were different – Jimmy Carter was president, George Lucas still had a neck. It was the year that I saw Star Wars, a film that would completely screw up my life.

I thought I was already an experienced movie-goer by this time. That I was hip, ready for anything. This after all was my third-ever film, and Casey's Shadow and Pete's Dragon had surely prepared me for the highs and lows of the big screen. I was wrong. I wasn't prepared for this.

I'm certain that I'd have turned out to become something safe and steady like an accounts director or policy analyst, had I not stepped into that darkened movie theatre on that fateful day – and been utterly petrified by the sight of an enormous steel creature in black, choking a man to death by merely raising his hand.

The trouble was, the fear was addictive.

With his menacing metallic breathing and haunting baratone drawl, Darth Vader defined for me there and then what the archetypal scary bastard would look like. Who could forget that terrfying statement the Dark Lord later made, ushering in an age of gloom to the galaxy, and a death-knell to all things good and rebellious:

"This... is CNN."

No, but really. Back in 1977, nobody could have told me that I'd spend nearly three decades locked in the hold of this double-trilogy monster, like an X-Wing fighter pulled hopelessly into the Death Star's tractor beam.

My father's generation had the Vietnam War. Mine had Star Wars. Our torment has lasted so much longer.

So, come May 19 or thereabouts, as I step out of that darkened theatre for the sixth time – this time a little more certain than I was the first time that Vader wouldn't soon jump out at me from behind the toilet door – spare a thought for me and many like me.

Our Wars may be over, but our years of therapy are just beginning.