Drums - Thomas Lang

As the forces of commerce gather for the fast-approaching festivities, we would do well to guard against another stain that has, of late, indelibly marked the spirit of the season: "alternative" takes on our cherished traditions.

Jane's Addiction are both a product and a victim of their time. Formed in the same city (Los Angeles) in the same year (1985) as Guns N' Roses, they ascended to their pinnacle in 1990, even then overshadowed by the heavy metal titans next door, only to then split up for the first of what would be two times in 1991. Their history is fractured and staccato, one of acrimony and reformation, but the warm embrace afforded the band by tonight's crowd at Koko speaks volumes about the impact that their first two albums had on a generation of young rockers.

Nick Valensi, guitarist for The Strokes, recently told Pitchfork (ind.pn/fQYH7L) that the fractured process of making the band's new album was "awful – just awful".

The Industrial music genre beloved of angsty teenagers and "edgy" American filmmakers has its roots in the experiments of the British agent provocateurs Throbbing Gristle in the mid-to-late 1970s.

It's The X Factor season again. October comes, the Santa chocolates appear in the shops, and The X Factor moves from auditions to live shows.

Last Christmas, nearly two decades after they started out in California, Rage Against the Machine found themselves at No. 1 in the charts as a result of a Facebook campaign to keep Simon Cowell's X-Factor contestants away from the top slot.

In many ways, particularly at meal times, Jamie Oliver gets my vote. If you're hungry and it's almost pay day and the only vegetable left in Tesco is a rock-hard butternut squash, you can do a lot worse than make his Party Squash Soup (get the recipe for free from his website).

BBC station Radio 5 Live has been criticised by the broadcasting watchdog for letting the US band Rage Against The Machine swear four times on the breakfast show before they were faded out by a producer.