Weekender : on a stick

FREE MUSIC: Victoria Bergsman's last appearance with the Concretes was on Friday Night With Jonathan Ross, which seems to have been more of a springboard for more high profile things for her then for the band. Young Folks is pointlessly coming back round again, while Bergsman's own Taken By Trees project, a loose collective which on album Open Field brings in Bjorn Yttling of Peter, Bjorn & John as producer. It's not too far removed from the Concretes' best moments, airier maybe, with overtones of Camera Obscura, not unlikely as not only is she best mates with them but Tracyanne Campbell wrote Lost And Found.

HEY YOU GET OFFA MYSPACE: Michael Knight, in a long lost grand tradition, are a band, a Dublin-based trio who really did name themselves after the Knight Rider character. Please, keep reading Having released an album, Youth Is Wasted On The Young, in 2005 and currently preparing a second, there's the same airy, erm, air of a lot of those Irish bands who briefly came to prominence at the tailend of Britpop, they exist not too far from Belle & Sebastian's rarefied atmosphere (leader Richie Murphy hates the comparison, but that's just artist inevitability) but have also clearly taken account of the Magnetic Fields' dreamy writing, Bacharach structures on a tight budget and more than just the Beach Boys' harmonies, although the female rhythm section provide those to a T. They've recently played with Suburban Kids With Biblical Names, which if you remove their electronic elements is a fair enough comparison.

VISUAL REPRESENTATION: As promised last weekend, this week we take a proper look at the Tony Wilson legacy through Factory Records. The Factory cataloguing scheme is one of our favourite music industry idiosyncracies ever, containing doublings up, special numbers reserved for landmark albums and catalogue numbers granted for everything from Rob Gretton's molar reconstruction work to a bet between Wilson and Gretton in which Wilson put the future of his chairmanship of the label on New Order's Round And Round going top five (it didn't, he did, albeit temporarily). FAC 211 was a two part documentary on Joy Division for Channel 4's Wired which also acts as a Factory history primer, featuring Wilson, Gretton, Peter Hook, Paul Morley and Alan Erasmus. Also on the books, FAC 6 (OMD's Electricity), FAC 13 (Joy Division's Tranmission, from the BBC's Something Else with John Cooper Clarke introducing with a snatch of Evidently Chickentown), FAC 34 (ESG - You're No Good, live at last year's Primavera Sound), FACT 210 (Cath Carroll's Moves Like You), FAC 222 (Happy Mondays' Lazyitis with Karl Denver live at the G-Mex in 1990) and FAC 329 (The Other Two - Tasty Fish), not overlooking the Durutti Column (rarity Marie Louise Gardens) and A Certain Ratio (Shack Up, never properly released on Factory). FAC 51, The Hacienda, was still the subject of pilgrimages up until its closure in June 1997 but looked in much better shape when the Stone Roses and New Order played there.

VIRAL MARKETING: We'd watch out if we were you around the 24th September, because we're already coming over all unnecessary about Future Of The Left's debut album Curses. Had we been at this gig at the 100 Club in February we might have not recovered yet, frankly, as one person recorded forthcoming single Small Bones Small Bodies and another got Wrigley Scott and My Gymnastic Past. When you've gone and done all that, Too Pure's podcast page is full o'Falkous in top form in discussion with Huw Stephens.

FALLING OFF A BLOG: The Plastic Floor has existed for about a month, but starting with Zappa, Edan and a summer mixtape which includes perfect barbeque accompaniment Faust, Black Mountain and Herbert is as good a way as any of marking yourself out.

EVERYBODY GET RANDOM: WinAmp, which we play CDs on our PC through, has stopped scrobbling track and artist titles (do drop us a line if you know why), which means our last.fm isn't as completist as we'd like it to be. If yours is, find out "How eclectic is your musical style?" Ours is 83%. We are better than you.

IN OTHER NEWS: Does anyone else have the sinking suspicion that Cadbury bringing back Wispa bars - and we don't recall anyone being a fan of them at the time, so away with your Internet petition irony - was entirely brought about by that banner brought on by some of the Stooges stage invaders at Glastonbury?