Weekender : raging in the plague age

FREE MUSIC: This, as we'll explain in the next couple of days, is the last Weekender of September, so let's make it precious. Like starting with free iLiKETRAiNS: new single out this week, previous single Terra Nova (the one about Captain Scott) available on SXSW's still active downloads.

HEY YOU GET OFFA MYSPACE: There's something naggingly mid-90s about Cambridge's The Sleep Wells. We don't necessarily mean Britpop and its attendant ills, more the sophisticated female-fronted power indiepop of a Salad or Mambo Taxi (dare we add Sleeper? They were much loved when they first emerged), and latterly the Land Of Talk type. The band themselves describe their sound as "somewhere between Radiohead and Jeff Buckley", but then bands have a tendency of hearing something different to everyone else. What it is is something which lulls the listener in broodingly and has much raw potential.

VISUAL REPRESENTATION: The only link this week is live clips we've had on our master list for some time and not previously featured. Which means Bjork and Polly Harvey covering Satisfaction at the 1994 Brit awards, Elliott Smith's Waltz #2 on Later With Jools in 1997, Television's Foxhole from 1978, Jonathan Richman's I Was Dancing At The Lesbian Bar with cooing backing vocalists, The Queen Is Dead at Salford University in June 1986 and, as a rejoiner both to this age of televised talent contests and Sly Stone's own abortive recent British shows, an absolutely astonishing clip of Sly and the Family Stone performing My Lady and I Wanna Take You Higher at the Ohio State Fair in 1968, filmed for NBC's Showcase.

VIRAL MARKETING: James Blunt on Sesame Street. That's James Blunt on Sesame Street. Course, it's nothing Stevie Wonder, REM, Johnny Cash or James Taylor haven't already done, but... James Blunt! On Sesame Street!

FALLING OFF A BLOG: One of the new breed of mp3 bloggers Keep Hope Inside is currently highlighting, A Space For Music Liberation is another of those unpretentious mp3 blogs that gets enthusiastic about a wide range of stuff, from Lethal Bizzle to Billy Talent to Calvin Harris.

EVERYBODY GET RANDOM: We've always meant to do a mini-series of blogs run by members of notable bands - members of the Mystery Jets, Gravenhurst and Voxtrot all maintain good ones we know of, and particularly meaty and readable whatever angle it approaches from is The Clerkenwell Kid, the work of Stephen Coates, conceptualist behind the "antique beat" dark poetry of The Real Tuesday Weld, last heard of soundtracking a Lucozade advert and releasing a new album (featuring on one track the Puppini Sisters!) next month in the US and next year in the UK, however that's been allowed to happen. Podcasts, stories and downloads are all included.

IN OTHER NEWS: We mentioned the Facebook group, right?