When was music great?

1969, 34 years since?

No, no, you protest - 70s rock surely, 80s synth of course, 90s Britpop was the peak of modern music, 00s dance, it has to be, you cry.

But isn’t the issue here tense? The ‘w’ interrogative? The grammar’s all off-key. Music Today is great, and to assure all those fearing that it’s gathering speed down a one-way, -80° degree gradient track, Future Music will be great too.

We’re just looking for it in the wrong places. Most local music stations are KO’ed without a chance of revival, dredging up last year’s Rihanna between every advert break. MTV hasn’t got it either. But it’s the law of nature, and the rules of business, that the giant doesn’t take care of the ant, however hard it works. And whatever happened to NME?

It’s just all easy access, neatly arranged on the TV or page before you, no leg work required. To find great music, crawl deep into the web and allow yourself to become entwined in its gossamer. Then gamble gig costs and make the journey; that’s where the future of music lies: in one of the ever-dwindling areas channels in which acts make their pennies.

And it’s hard to convince your peers that your latest Indie find is better than any act on stage at Bethel. But with nostalgia, sprinklings of tragedy and a good helping of Zeitgeist attributed to that period, of course such claims would be blasphemous.

So what will it be in 2047? The same: but this time the prison-worthy offence will be the suggestion that Blake’s loops are anything less than pivotal, or that Alex Turner’s regional accent is inferior to computerised vocals. Why ever not.