Simon Reynolds last featured in Cherwell way back in 1983 when, along with fellow students and future colleagues David Stubbs and Paul Oldfield, he launched Margin, a polemical poster-magazine: "We stuck it on notice boards, laundry walls, all over the place. It made a few waves. We did a mini version of one issue, about the size of a postcard and virtually illegible at that size, and we went around sticking them inside toilet rolls and inside people’s loaves of sliced bread: the idea was kinda "Margin–we’re everywhere! Insidiously eroding your ability to carry on!"

Since then, he’s established himself as one of the world’s leading music writers by championing emergent sub-cultures and rewriting the official histories of pop and rock. Reynolds’ last book, Rip It Up and Start Again, was a comprehensive account of the post-punk and New Pop movements of the early ‘80s, the era that shaped his own "idea of the activist critic who makes things happen and shakes things up." His own career began when the narrative of Rip It Up ended, and it’s this passionate commitment to music that forms the core of his new book, Bring the Noise: 20 Years of Writing about Hip-Rock and Hip-Hop, a fascinating composite of anthology and memoir. Reynolds’ appeal is easy to get. There’s the state of permanent delinquency that you might associate with John Peel – an uninhibited enthusiasm that’s plugged into some pretty strong convictions about how music should sound but always open to the shock of the new. And that current stays live throughout the book. What’s remarkable is Reynolds’ far-sighted ability to capture wildly inventive movements like jungle, post-rock and grime in their infancy and to evolve a set of terms and phrases to describe them.

But he’s equally fascinated by the backdrop to music. He hints at this public dimension in an interview with Radiohead around the release of ‘Kid A’ and ‘Amnesiac’, describing the "relentless bleakness" of the records as "an alienation that is never entirely private…one might describe it as ‘the political is personal’". And Thom Yorke’s alienation is something that all engaged listeners should be able to appreciate, particularly as the visceral, life-changing potential of music is steadily diluted by iPods and MTV. Reynolds stresses that "skimming through loads of downloads on your computer in a desultory fashion doesn’t seem as impressive as being a participant in a subculture, where’s there an element of strenuousness, whether it’s going to a rave and having an adventure – sometimes a misadventure, when the rave is busted – or being a fanatical metal fan and going to cramped, sweaty gigs, and doing things like moshing and crowdsurfing."

For Reynolds, the last big musical escapade began with the "surge of rhythmic invention and freakadelic production in hip hop and R&B" at the turn of this decade. "You had highpoints of commercially massive yet pretty bizarre-sounding music like Missy’s Get UR Freak On, Kelis’ Milkshake, the early Destiny’s Child hits, too many to mention…and then for me the next stage was grime, where the producers were melding all those Dirty South, crunky ideas with noises and rhythms from the rave tradition, from hardcore techno and jungle." But "grime was pretty much barred from pop" and though the scene is far from exhausted, there’s a reason why only Dizzee has dented the popular consciousness. Mostly because the grime scene is largely sustained by mix-tapes, white label 7"s and live sessions from Rinse FM, it demands precisely the sense of adventure that Reynolds would argue is largely missing today. Such trends reflect damaging new divisions in society. He suggests that "perhaps the experiential gulf between street rap and white indie-rock types has grown so big that it’s discouraging people from trying to take on ideas from hip-hop or grime." Perhaps. But in the book, he sounds a more despairing note; "not many people actually want to hear what the voice of the streets has to say: partly because it ain’t pretty, and partly, because most people honestly don’t give much of a fuck".

Crikey! That comes from an article called 2005: The Year Black Pop and White Pop Stopped Talking. If Reynolds has a story to tell in this book, it’s the fate of this musical dialogue between black and white, hip-hop and hip-rock. He argues that, "historically the entire story of rock and pop wouldn’t exist without this white romance with black music, and that is especially pronounced in terms of British pop, from The Beatles and The Stones onwards." But it isn’t as if this conversation is entirely one sided. Just as rock benefits from mimicking, revising or misinterpreting the innovations of dub, funk, rap, jazz and the blues, these black cultural movements often look to punk, indie, metal and grunge as effective mouthpieces for generational discontent. So in an interview with Public Enemy’s Chuck D, Reynolds draws attention to the Brooklyn collective’s debt to rock for its combustible energy while, over a decade later, he fantasises about how 2-step and R&B might be saved from their reactionary obsession with material wealth by "the return with a vengeance of rock bohemianism" that might restore the "whole package" of "rhythm, melody, lyrics, compelling persona."

Editors walked a fine line. Plagiarisers in extremis? Spirit-channelling musical mediums? Fiery flashes in the notorious indie pan? First album ‘The Back Room’ went platinum, bounced along by the anguished, catchy dynamism of cuts like Bullets and Munich. This year has seen the public bombarded with sophomore indie efforts which have caught their imagination – the likes of Arcade Fire and Bloc Party leap pulsatingly to mind; if Editors want to make it to the big league of career recording artists, that much-abused word ‘consistency’ must be scratched onto the agenda.
Second album ‘An End Has A Start,’ despite the cod-philosophising of the album title and some trite lyrics (think Coldplay with more angels), thankfully packs an emotional punch.
The arrangements follow a similar pattern to the first album, except here are augmented by denser backing, an actually audible rhythm guitar and some pretty angry drumming. Tom Smith’s voice is a revelation. No longer a bathroom mirror, hairbrush-wielding Ian Curtis fairground attraction, he uses baritone as a weapon, ripping through choice cuts with desperate devotion (An End Has A Start, The Racing Rats). The band still employ the old, somewhat underwhelming, ‘Uh-oh, we need a slow one’ knee-jerk, however, and the tracks that display a concern with this consideration don’t always come off (The Weight of the World).
Standout track is Escape the Nest, with its frisson-inducing guitar atmospherics and moment-crystallising emotional frenzy. Future single and, if the world has any sense, future hit.
Editors are concerned with sadness, but never despair. Here the message, first prophesied by Open Your Arms on ‘The Back Room,’ is redemption, the light at the end of the tunnel. Ultimately, Editors’ faith lies in human nature and the rejuvenating power of love. This is no hippy-happy collection, however, but a reflection on 21st century alienation and the eternal desire to connect with others. Here, music matches ambition in an album marked by quiet confidence and musical scruff-of-the-neck grabbing.

‘Funf’ collates ten years’ worth of the Liverpool band’s ‘B-sides and rarities’ into something of a diverse collection. Clinic recycle the clichés of their musical ancestors, twisting them into a new style instantly recognisable as their own. Tracks such as Nicht and Magic Boots (both clocking in at well under two minutes) are straight from the punk/garage-rock cauldron, stripping down to three power-chords and a dirty, antique production sound; Lee Shan and Golden Rectangle, with vintage organs amid acid-tinged swirls of reverb, give more than just a nod towards ‘60s psych-rock. Clinic’s unabashed appropriation of these and other conventions never seems derivative however, as the Dali-esque vocals of Ade Blackburn add an entirely modern dimension to the songs, his lyrics rarely shifting into the decipherable; even then they are characteristically bizarre and dreamlike: ‘Penny pinch and penny chews/Ooh, its Christmas’ – naturally.
Clinic inhabit some sort of musical no-man’s-land, and this short blast of a record shows the ease with which they straddle the vintage and the ultra-modern. Although there are frequent moments here that sound like they could be from several decades ago, they are set against moments that sound entirely alien, as in the slow and brooding Christmas mentioned above.
For a B-sides and rarities record (lit: ‘songs we don’t know what to do with’) Funf is modest in length, at less than 30 minutes, and as such doesn’t become the self-indulgent fans-only release it so easily could have. It’s been pared down to an eclectic and contrasting twelve tracks, but that said, is probably still a little too schizophrenic for most newcomers to enjoy immediately. The three instrumental tracks do little apart from emphasise the importance of Blackburn’s vocals; but outside of these the collection is consistently interesting, becoming most exciting when the band reaches a balance between their experimentalism and their pop sensibilities.

This is one of those corporate things which normally we’d shy away from acknowledging – part of Vodafone’s ‘Live Music Campaign,’ according to their press release. Yes, press release: even they have the humility to write ‘secret gig’ in ironic inverted commas. Yet since it’s a chance to see Maximo Park for free on the Friday of 8th Week, we thought it worth a look: an end of term indulgence, or even one last pre-exam fling for those with Prelims in 9th.

The ‘competition’ simply requires you to register your details at www.vodafone.co.uk/music – hardly a Faustian pact. Get lucky, and you get to see a tight and surprisingly heavy live act pushing their actually rather brilliant second album as if their record deal depended on it (funny, that) in some unlikely venue. Rad Cam anyone?

he misfiring Keble XI finally registered a victory in the league in a topsy-turvy tussle with Wadham.

Keble captain, Peter Bolton, won the toss and decided to bat, no doubt keen to protect his fragile batting line-up still bearing the scars of Sunday’s failure to chase a modest 133 in cuppers semi-final.

The decision appeared to have backfired as a succession of early wickets fell to the impressive opening pairing of Smith and Parkinson, who cleaned up the flamboyant Stobbs and doughty Bland with successive deliveries in the final over of an extremely classy spell.

However, Nik Baker stood firm in the face of the Wadham attack, effortlessly pushing lofted drives to the boundary.

When Baker eventually fell for 46 runs the Keble batting line-up looked to their talented lower order to salvage the innings. With some powerful hitting coming from Simon Ackroyd and a surprisingly aggressive Tom Ouldridge, the Keble total reached a defendable 181 runs. Ackroyd and Ouldridge whipped up a rapid and impressive 110 run partnership, with both batsmen peppering the straight boundaries, much to the torment of the Wadham second and third change bowlers.

The Wadham batsmen took the crease with an air of confidence, keen to compensate for their recent loss in Cuppers and to capitalize on the return to action of several key finalists following exam commitments. However, despite some intimidating shots in the pre-game nets, they never really found any rhythm.

With Bolton opening the innings with a wicket maiden, there was very little room for improvement as the Wadham scoreboard soon read three wickets for a pitiful and rather embarrassing ten runs.

Potential dangers were removed from the crease in the forms of Coperman and captain Parkinson as the Keble opening attack of Bolton and ever-accurate Harvey stuck to their guns, constantly forcing the batsmen to play as they nagged away in the so-called ‘corridor of uncertainty’ outside off stump.

With such a rapid turnover of batsmen there was no room for the Wadham line-up to attempt anything other than survival. Tom Harvey capitalized on this and absolutely devastated Wadham with his devilish inswing bowling.

The slight paceman was successful time and again, taking the ridiculously impressive figures of 7 wickets for only 9 runs in his 8 overs.

Sheer consistency from Harvey combined with cutting sledging from Ainsworth and a celebratory over from James Seddon saw Keble complete their whitewash of the demoralized Wadham side, bowling them out in less than 16 overs, for only 28 runs.

There are a number of elements which comprise women’s tennis at it’s best, with short skirts, grunting and a gloriously sunny day all up there on the list.

All these, and more, were present in the LMH vs Hilda’s women’s Cuppers tennis final and they combined to make an exhilirating match.

St Hilda’s, captained by Emily Johnson, took an early lead when she and her parter Nicola Ullathorne defeated LMH’s captain Louise Pugh and Holly Bower in straight sets 6-3 6-4.

The match was every bit as close as the scoreline suggested, but eventually the superior net skills of the Hilda’s pair proved decisive. In the alternate tie the LMH second pairing of Nicole Carlson and Jusleen Karve manstruck back against opponents Sarah Trueman and Nadia Goldbach 7-5 6-0.

A tense first set went with serve and was only just secured 7-5. LMH dominated the second set however, with Carlson and Karve finding the length on their strokes to show their superior class.

The power of the LMH pairing from the back of the court simply overwhelmed their opponents, allowing them to take the set 6-0.

With the scores now even, both teams knew they would need to up their game if they were to break the deadlock and secure victory.

The next match proved to be a nail-biting affair with both teams determined not be outdone.

The outstanding standard of tennis played by Carlson and Karve was obvious to anyone watching, but it was not enough to overcome the Hilda’s girls who eventually proved stronger, Trueman and Goldbach taking the win 6-3, 7-6.

Advantage now lay with Hilda’s and LMH went into their last tie bearing the hope of the College on their shoulders; they had to win to tie the game and give them any hope of victory.

Despite the pressure, Pugh and Bower rose to the challenge, going for every opportunity in a tenacious performance which saw them win the first set 6-4.

However, they could not maintain the consistency in their strokes in their second set which fell 6-4 after a single break of serve.

Hilda’s carried the confidence of this into the decisive set, Johnson and Ulathorne’s aggressive net play allowing them to take the set 6-3.

Now left with an unassailable 5-4 set advantage Hilda’s Cuppers triumph was complete, though it had come right down to the wire.

On Saturday the hacks from St Aldates and Frewin Court laid down their notebooks and put on their football kits for the traditional end of year OxStu vs Cherwell football match.

Both papers lined up a motley crew of current staff and old guard to settle questions of tracking rules and the best way to do a cut-out.

However, Cherwell were to run out deserved winners, proving their superiority on the pitch as well as in print.

The first few minutes of the game were scrappy as the teams struggled to find their feet in the blazing sunshine. There were a number of flying objects all identifiable as a football for the OxStu players to get to grips with but Cherwell defender and Sports Editor John Citron was a giant in the air to aid his paper’s defence.

As the game began to settle, OxStu ex-Editor Rob Cookson made a number of charges up the centre, although in the two Michaels, Coombes and Crowhurst, he more than met his match.

However Cookson was not to be denied and after slipping past OSPL MD Ran Wei, he found himself one on one with the keeper and kept his cool to slot the ball low past his former opposite number Alex Stewart.

Cookson continued to threaten throughout the opening half but Wei recovered from his earlier mistake to dominate the Stu striker and his brutal defensive style managed to keep Cookson at bay.

As the first half wore on Cherwell managed to gain dominance. Dan Rolle displayed some deft footwork on the wing, taking off on a series of mazy runs straight through a bemused OxStu midfield.

Moving into midfield, Sports Editor Crowhurst began to assert his authority in the middle of the park, controlling the tempo of the game in combination with editor James Rogers.

As the OxStu defence found themselves pushed back, they became increasingly reliant on the uncontrolled aggression of ex-Editor Simon Akam to save them.

However even the blond giant could not shake off Rogers, and the midfield dynamo, who hails from Shropshire, eased past the towering centre-back and launched a blistering strike from 25 yards.

The shot deflected off a hapless OxStu defender providing Cherwell with their equaliser.

Inspired by their captain’s goal, Cherwell started to play with more fluidity and chances came thick and fast. Although a couple of good opportunites were spurned, the pressure eventually told when shortly before the break Ed Kemp struck, pouncing on a loose ball to rifle home from close range.

The OxStu came out fighting in the second half piling pressure on their opponents. Kristian Walsh worked hard up front, though lacked stamina towards the end, and along with Sports Editor, Chloe Mattison, he worked closely with Cookson but a goal was not forthcoming.

Led by Rogers, Cherwell managed to regain the dominance displayed at the end of the first half and Isis staffer William Cowell De Gruchy and Rolle had opportunities on goal but was left to rue some nervy finishing.

With the end fast approaching, an OxStu counterattack appeared to have been seen off, but from nowhere a long range effort went straight through the hands of smoking goalkeeper, and DPhil relic, Stewart, to level the scores as the final whistle blew.

Eschewing extra-time, it came straight down to penalties. The first two OxStu efforts found the back of the net and were answered by confident strikes from Cherwell.

With the shoot-out finely balanced, Crowhurst inexplicably scuffed a tame effort straight at the keeper and suddenly the game appeared to be swinging towards the OxStu.

But Stewart, who missed his penalty and lost the match for Cherwell last year, suddenly found form in goal, stopping the next two OxStu attempts with some great reflex saves.

A quick question for you: what links Edinburgh, Nottingham and UWIC? Answer: according to the BUSA league table, they’re all better than Oxford at sport. Of course, Loughborough is in first place on the BUSA table, closely followed by Bath and Birmingham, both universities renowned for sporting success; perhaps it would be unfair to expect Oxford to beat any of these three. But when did Edinburgh and Nottingham become excellent universities for sport?

And do you even know what the letters UWIC stand for? (University of Wales Institute, Cardiff, for those of you who, like me, didn’t know). Why is Oxford University worse at sport than six other universities? Should we be happy at being seventh out of 149 – and, what’s more, five places above Cambridge – or should we have a right to expect Oxford to be better?

First things first, though: how is the table compiled? Well, the British Universities Sports Association takes all the results from the biggest competitions in BUSA-accredited sports, allots points accordingly and the universities with the most points come top.

All fine and dandy, you might think. But, of course, not all sports are included: among the forty-nine sports included are Tenpin Bowling and Ultimate Frisbee, but Dancesport, a sport in which Oxford excels, is not recognized by BUSA.

According to Mark Brian, Head of Sports Programmes at BUSA, this isn’t BUSA’s fault: "When new sports want to be considered for accreditation, they have to put forward a paper to us and then there are criteria they have to reach – they will then be considered on a case-by-case basis. A group from Dancesport hasn’t yet come forward."

But then there’s the problem of how the sports are weighted. 66154.5 points are awarded overall, but sports aren’t given an equal allocation of those points: Football is given the most points, with 5886 overall, while the most minor sport, with only 60 points, is considered to be Fives.

Out of those 5886 points given for Football, how many do you think Oxford got? I’ll tell you – six, for coming fifth equal in the Men’s Shield competition. In fact, in the 2006-07 season Oxford got far fewer points for Football than it did for Women’s Boxing (twenty out of a possible forty).

Rowing, meanwhile, although it is arguably the highest calibre and most important sport in Oxford, ranks quite lowly on the national stage: it is allocated just 1900 points, fewer than fifteen other sports, including Golf (2336 points) and even Table Tennis (2265 points). Mind you, BUSA has given it far more points this year than it had last year, when it had fewer points than Cycling, Sailing, Water Polo, Canoeing and Rugby League, all of which it has now overtaken.

Mark Brian told me why BUSA now puts more weight on Rowing: "At the top end of the team programme there’s a very good standard but in the Individuals Competitions, competitors who may be of world status were only getting three points. We’re trying to recognize the standard of individual competitors, and so sports like Rowing have benefited fairly significantly from this year’s restructuring of the league table. The points allocated to the Regatta are now 1090 points, whereas football’s Knockout points are only 925 points [the other points are all won from how well teams do in the leagues]."

So, is Oxford happy with its ranking? According to Kate Filochowski, Sports Federation President, the answer is yes: "This was another very, very strong year for us. We came fourth last year, but we always knew we weren’t going to do as well this year after the restructuring [of the way in which sports are allocated points by BUSA]. We always aim to punch above our weight, but it’s not realistic to hope to beat Loughborough, for example, or other sport-specific institutions – they’ve got specific sports departments, sports scholarships and that sort of thing. At Oxford we don’t have sportspeople first and foremost, but scholars and academics, and still we manage to come seventh – it’s pretty awesome, really."

The Sports Federation President is happy with seventh place, then – are Oxford sportspeople happy too? Well, in any case, a lot of them are being acknowledged by BUSA: out of the 49 BUSA-accredited sports, Oxford gained points in 34, including Windsurfing, Pool and Korfball – it certainly seems as if Oxford has breadth and depth.

Even so, there were fifteen sports in which Oxford failed to win any points. Mainly this is because more minor sports have fewer points to give away and therefore often only the best four universities get any points, whereas in football more than twenty-four universities can get points for the same competition, never mind the same sport; sometimes, though, this is for more prosaic reasons – as Rob Dixon, Vice-President of the OU Trampolining Club, told me, one member of the Trampolining team made it through to the BUSA National Finals but didn’t go because nobody else from Oxford was going.

So, apart from turning up to competitions, is there anything else Oxford can do to improve its student ranking? According to Richard Howell, Sabbatical Officer at Bath University Students’ Sports Federation, not very much: "Well, Bath’s success is very much a long-term thing – it didn’t happen overnight. Bath’s a young university – only forty years old – but it’s always focused on sport as an aim, and the Sports Department and the Federation work together to achieve the best results we can."

But he did have one piece of advice for us: "At Bath we’ve got reresentation in almost every sport, and we encourage participation in diverse sports, even trying to send individual competitors in sports where we haven’t got a university team." Considering Oxford doesn’t field competitors in all of BUSA’s 49 sports, perhaps this is something we should be looking to: anyone fancy competing in Tenpin Bowling?

We shouldn’t place too much importance on the BUSA league table, though – as Kate Filochowski told me, "BUSA isn’t everything for us; other competitions and national leagues are just as important."

"Government Ministers have a duty to be entirely impartial when it comes to spending taxpayers’ money, and it is completely unacceptable to put your political friends onto the payroll. It’s obvious that the culture of cronyism that existed under Tony Blair is going to carry on under Gordon Brown. But the Chancellor seems to be taking things to new depths."

Professor McLean denied all of Grayling’s accusations and said they did not constitute political support as he was acting in a professional capacity. "I didn’t provide direct political support to Ed Balls. I was a consultant to Wakefield City Council, as Mr Grayling would have found out if he had consulted them, or me. My financial terms for acting as an expert witness were my standard terms, as agreed with other local authorities in the Fourth and Fifth General Reviews of the Parliamentary Boundary Commission for England.

"All my work for HM Treasury has been unpaid. The only paid contract involving the Treasury was for a report on which I was principal instigator on ‘Investigating the flow of domestic and European public expenditure into the English regions’, which reported in 2003. It was not commissioned by the Treasury but by John Prescott’s department, then called the ODPM. I tendered successfully for it in an open competition," he added.