Music
As any music journalist will tell you, there are always two distinct responses to rock. The first is the primal scream of the obsessive fan, heard all over Oxford the minute Neil Tennant's impossibly beautiful voice glides from the stereo. "I'm in love with Neil", wails your anguished editor. "Why does he have to be gay?" The second, meanwhile, takes the form of informed, coherent thought, and in this case is also undisputed scientific fact: the Pet Shop Boys are back, and pop will never be rubbish again....
Music: Live
It's always slightly embarrassing when the headliners get blown off-stage by their support act, but that was in serious danger of happening on Tuesday night. I can't remember aforementioned support band's name, but I do know that they managed to make a sterling recovery from their first song sounding like 'Heaven Is A Half-pipe'. Perhaps by implication you can tell that they weren't amazing, their Beasties-like rapping playing second fiddle to their concerted efforts to kick the living crap out of each other, but they did have the frankly brilliant idea of taking the music to the people. Two of their number took a drum each into the audience to pound out their beats; the crowd grouped round them, caught up in an almost atavistic fascination. These guys had far too much energy for their own good....
Music: Classical
After several false dawns, a truly great tenor has arrived. Juan Diego Florez was born in Lima in 1973 and now, at the precocious age of 28, he is beginning to take the operatic world by storm, and even more impressively, performing a repertoire which has tended to be sidelined by Verdi and Puccini. His solo debut recording for Decca is a recital of Rossini arias whose virtuosity would be virtually prohibitive to most opera stars of today.