Excess, excess, excess. It's all come round again hasn't it? The children of '76 and '81, you see them driving around in their limos, splashing mud down your trousers as you wait at the bus stop, their inspiration dried up, and their chins multiplying.

In music, as in other things, the law is that the rich get richer and the poor make home demoes. So what do we do, comrades? Get cynical, become hacks, trying to revive psychedelia? There's no cause for alarm though because I can now reveal to you that soon a massive tidal wave will surge over the moribund tides of what we term Pop music. No, it's got nothing to do with going back to basics, or thrashing out three chords in some boomy pub hoping that you are approximating some primal scream. It's something big, irresistible, and it's so obvious it's staring you in the face.

Meanwhile, all this doesn't actually help the poor musicians standing with their collars up in draughty bus shelters, shut out as they are from the ivory towers of musical productivity. Ah well, sod them, they're probably a bunch of talentless bastards anyway.

If you want to be successful these days you've got to be rich, rich, rich. Talent helps, but money is essential. If you got lucky in '76, or anytime since, then if you had any sense you bought, built or blagged a studio. If you squandered it on Liquorice Allsorts or put it up your nose then goodbye. To be continually successful you've got to be a bit like an old miser keeping your money stashed away in your mattress ready for when the tides turn.

How else could the Moody Blues spend nearly three months in one of the most expensive studios in the land, Good Earth, with one of the world's top notch producers, Tony Visconti? That isn't excess, it's simply the modern reality of success. Emerson, Lake and Powell — who have been tagged dinosaurs not a hundred miles from these pages — in fact prove themselves remarkably adept at surviving in the modern world, having practically become resident in Maison Rouge's Studio Two over the last three months.

And these survivors from the past have been accompanied in their Ivory Towers by the children of '76 and the ensuing years. Siouxsie and the Banshees have been in Air studios for a month or so with Steve Churchyard, and The Pretenders have been there too for six weeks working on an album with Jimmy Iovine, and a deity known as Bob Clearmountain. Also in that studio recently have been Hit List, produced by Jon Punter (brother of the famous Ronnie Punter) and The Red Guitars, produced by Howard Gray, both bands no doubt being the musical equivalent of an investment drive by Virgin records. Simply Red — the band whose best song was written by someone else — should also be in over Christmas.

True to my analysis, The Kinks are still recording in their own Konk studios...

About the only studio around that hasn't benefitted from the appearance of one time giant bands has been Sarm West (that is if we forget about The Firm, or The Infirm as it should be at their age). Sarm has been host to Stiff acts. The Mint Juleps, produced by Dominic Bugatti, and The Untouchables, produced by Gary Bell. Smooth cheeked Stephen Duffy has been working on a single with producer Paul O'Duffy, Wham! have been doing the soundtrack to their China film, and relative newcomers, though seasoned players themselves, The Perils of Plastic, consisting of Steve Allen and Steve Nieve have been working on debut material. And then there's... oh shit... yes, they've been in again. I was wrong about the giants, please forgive me. (Did you notice?)

So that's all for this week/month/lifetime depending on how much you love or hate my little lectures, thinly disguised as information. Next month I propose to discuss the mysterious question of the effect of music on music journalism, and if there's time and it doesn't get subbed out. I'll expound further on the second coming. Now that's what I call controversy.