Its inner-city location may not suggest wellies, but numerous downpours over east London have left Victoria Park resembling something of a mudbath. It certainly makes Lovebox feel like more of a traditional festival, although the event – now in its eighth year – has been a summer fixture for a while now.

The audience for tonight's gig includes many who were not even born when the New York band adopted their Blondie moniker in 1975, but everyone knows all of the words anyway.

A musical myth was put forward at the start of this year – someone, somewhere proclaimed that guitar rock was dead. Clearly, whoever revved up that particular bandwagon had never heard Welsh trio The Joy Formidable play live.

Debbie Harry was "absolutely" a drug addict for "a couple of years".

Stuck on punk's West Coast outpost, The Nerves' fame barely made it out of California. The trio recorded a solitary, self-titled EP in 1976 before breaking up.

On a sunny afternoon, in the rolling grounds of Kenwood House, picnickers amass. It's all terribly civilised – there's probably been a run on Hampstead's houmous stocks – but as my friend mutters as we pick our way through the hampers, "CBGBs it ain't".

How the wheel of television has turned. Twentynine years ago an exciting new channel called MTV was launched in New York, aimed specifically at young music fans. And later this year an exciting new channel called Vintage TV will begin broadcasting in Britain, designed to appeal specifically to the tastes of the over-50s.

It is the generation that has had it all: five decades of peace and prosperity, technological and social revolution bringing longer and more fulfilled lives, followed by fat pensions. Now, when they are tired of roaring about on their new motorbikes, working out at the gym or renovating their Umbrian farmhouses, the baby-boomer generation will be able to relax with its own television channel.