Will the resurgence of the Tories prompt any decent protest music? DJ and journalist Ian McCann certainly hopes so

After two decades squandering his pop legacy, Paul Weller finally returns to his edgy prime

Wake up to a brand new Modfather

Soundchecks can be tedious affairs – stop-start sessions in empty venues where singers save their voices and musicians go through the motions. Big acts even have roadies do it for them. But it's a good job fast-rising folk-popper Lisbee Stainton does her own – it's just landed her a prime spot on the BBC's prestigious In Concert next week.

Bill Hicks is a byword for acerbic brilliance in the UK – but he couldn't buy a laugh in his native America. On the eve of a new documentary about the maverick comedian, Peter Watts asks: what makes us love him so?

Thirty years ago he was The Jam's angry young frontman. But if Paul Weller has mellowed with age, he's lost none of his edge. On the eve of a general election, the singer talks pop, politics and why he hates MySpace

Cut in half to a more succinct eight songs, "Wake Up The Nation" could possibly have found itself heralded as Weller's most impressive body of work in decades. Unfortunately, the ambitious segments find themselves weighed down by the pedestrian. - drownedinsound.com

Rock cliché alert! It's Weller's stunning return to form

Chart veteran Paul Weller is to receive a top honorary prize at this year's NME Awards, the annual Godlike Genius title, it was announced today.

The Imagined Village's first album was more like a sprawling musical metropolis. A group of musicians took traditional folk songs, rewrote and re-arranged them, mixing in modern references plus electronic and world-music influences. The aim was that this musical village would reflect the multiculturalism of modern-day Britain. The core of this collective was father-daughter duo and folk favourites Martin and Eliza Carthy, with Simon Emmerson (of other folk-fusion success Afro Celt Sound System) and Chris Wood, but the album was laden with guest appearances by everyone from Benjamin Zephaniah to Paul Weller too.

"It has a 1980s feel to it," an experienced MP said yesterday. He meant the quietly triumphal sense pervading Manchester that the Tories are masters again. More than 12,000 people have passes, compared with 10,500 at last week's Labour bash in Brighton. Firms and charities with exhibition stands number 118, up from 80.

It’s more than 18 years since Steve Marriott died after fire swept through his 16th century Essex home and yet, with the help of Facebook, the greatest of mod icons has become a hero to a fanbase more international than he ever had when he was alive.

U2 made a surprise appearance at London's Shepherd's Bush Empire last week, for one of a series of five concerts to celebrate 50 years of Island Records.

It was when Paul Weller replaced the artwork for the Style Council’s 1988 album ‘Confessions of a Pop Group’, with photographs taken by Lawrence Watson, that the young photographer’s career took off.