La Monte Young is the grand old man of minimalism. His influence has been felt in most major strands of music, pop and classical, since the Sixties, yet few actually know his work. Robert Worby looks back at Young's life and previews an all-star benefit gig in aid of the composer's wife and collaborator, Marian Zazeela

IN ALLISON Anders's segment of Four Rooms, Madonna's coven of witches attempt to conjure a goddess from a cauldron of frogs, dogs and Tim Roth's sperm. The balance of ingredients couldn't have been right: Amanda de Cadenet rises from the pot. Something similar afflicts the director's latest confection, Grace of My Heart (15), an attempt to relate the history of Sixties pop through the predictably disastrous love life of a singer/songwriter heroine, Denise Waverley (Illeana Douglas).

"This is my favourite," said Beth Orton. "It's called `Galaxy of Emptiness' and I like it because I'm a miserable cow." Backtrack to 1990, and the age of the shoegazer, and you'd be bracing yourself for a deafening wall of noise that used to have a tune attached.

During the Iran hostage crisis in 1978, the wives, sweethearts and relatives of many Americans who had been prisoners of the Vietcong took their cue from a current popular song, and tied yellow ribbons to trees as a gesture of solidarity. Irwin Levine's sentimental "Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree" became the unofficial anthem of that troubled time.

Yesterday, a rare sighting: Phil Spector, legendary crazed pop genius, came to a London court to reclaim the song inspired by his father's gravestone.

Smokey Joe's Cafe: The Songs of Leiber and Stoller opened recently in London. It's hardly a musical in the conventional sense - no book, no plot - just a bunch of songs, tightly drilled and blasted right up into the cheap seats. But what a bunch. "Hound Dog", "On Broadway", "Love Potion Number Nine", "Spanish Harlem", "Stand by Me"... What must it be like to be the creators of this giant catalogue of seminal pop hits?

Rheinallt H Rowlands: funny name, no joke.

Beck fuses hip-hop, folk and underground rock to memorable effect. Ben Thompson listens in

WAITING FOR THE SUN: The Story of the Los Angeles Music Scene by Barney Hoskyns, Viking pounds 20

Everyone from Meat Loaf to McCartney has called for the violins. Michele Kirsch says pop's entanglement with strings can sound ropey

HUGH GRANT starts with a stammer, and ends with a girl in his arms: a new film, but not a new role. "Excuse me, does anyone here speak English?" is Grant's emblematic first line in (and as) The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain (PG). Grant takes that one line of quintessential English insularity masquerading as inquiry, and turns it into an aria of hesitant charm - you wonder whether he'll ever finish. If Grant has developed mannerisms, then at least they are his own mannerisms. His stutter is second only to Woody Allen's. Like Allen's, it is not so much an impediment to speech, as a run-up to wit - the splutter before the engine roars into action. Tabloid notoriety may be the obvious link between Grant and Allen, but they both also have a way of manufacturing charm out of anxiety.

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THE CAKE left out in the rain from 'MacArthur Park' was one of the most memorable (and apparently meaningless) images of Sixties' pop. Written as a concerto by Jim Webb, who also arranged and produced the recording, the song featured a pained vocal by a hot-foot-from-Camelot Richard Harris and a swirl of strings so overblown that a less histrionic performance would surely have been drowned out by the first chorus. It was the 'Bat Out of Hell' of its day, and Webb was a boy wonder to rival Phil Spector. A millionaire by the age of 21, around the time the song hit the charts in 1968, Webb had already written 'Up, Up and Away' (for the Fifth Dimension) and the first of his checklist of place-name songs for Glen Campbell ('By the Time I Get to Phoenix', 'Wichita Lineman', 'Galveston') as well as serving out a songwriter's apprenticeship at Tamla Motown. Since those glory days, Webb (now called Jimmy rather than Jim, as if the extra gravitas were no longer needed) has continued to write hits and compose for Hollywood and Broadway, and also to perform his own songs, which may well have been his real ambition all along. He appears in cabaret at the Green Room of the Cafe Royal, where he will perform solo, accompanying himself at the keyboard. Robbed of its orchestral bombast, the beautiful structure of 'MacArthur Park' should stand out all the more. But will Webb tell us what on earth he was on about? (Green Room, Cafe Royal, London W1, 071-437 9090, Tues-3 Sept.)

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