It ends, pretty much, with fireworks and Sinatra, somewhat appropriate, you would think, for a film series that privileges Vegas cool over substance like the Oceans movies do. And that's not a criticism, not by any means. Regular readers of this blog might have picked up recently on my gripes directed at this year's batch of blockbusters -- particularly Spiderman 3 and Pirates Of The Caribbean 3. The red mist has risen somewhat at the filmmakers' risible attempts to bring gravitas and mythic stature to what, essentially, are 4-colour comic book characters or theme park rides. Stephen Soderbergh's Oceans movies, thankfully, have never attempted to be anything other than gossamer-light brain candy: cool people in expensive clothes doing wonderful things in beautiful locations. Chin, chin, and pass the olives. There's something incredibly refreshing about watching George Clooney and Brad Pitt, dressed to the hilt in retro-lounge wear, swanning round Vegas as they plan to rip-off Al Pacino's nasty casino owner. They're clearly having a hoot, and at no point does anyone dwell on anything more profound than working out where the next Martini is coming from. There's a great scene in an earlier Oceans movie that finds George and Brad watching an episode of Happy Days dubbed into a foreign language. In what appears to be a natty bit of improvisation, they start to dissect the cultural relevance of dubbed Seventies' sitcoms. You could, frankly, watch them do this kind of thing all day, such is the charming, easy-going cameraderie that passes between them. In fact, it would make a brilliant TV show in its own right: each week, George and Brad watch an episode of a classic sitcom in real time and their thoughts and observations are beamed into homes around the world. I'd watch it. Beats Orlando Bloom's rather bloodless attempts at swashing a buckle in Pirates any day. There's a comparable scene in Ocean's Thirteen, where Brad walks into George's hotel room to find him wiping a tear from his eye. Turns out, he's watching Oprah on TV, and soon the two men -- icons of contemporary cinematic cool, no less -- are blubbing like babies as a particularly heartwrenching tale of human tragedy unfolds before their eyes on the television screen. It's these moments that make the Oceans movies. Sure there's a plot, but I'm damned if I can remember a thing about it. It's all about watching these people have fun, with a warmth that brings you into their orbit. If Ocean's Twelve lacked the polish and wit of its predecessor, this is a return to the freewheeling fun of Soderbergh's original. Pacino finds himself in one scene opposite both Andy Garcia, his Godfather 3 co-star and Ellen Barkin, who he played opposite in Sea Of Love. It's a nice little movie joke touch, and one of the many things that adds to the warmth and humour of this movie. Ocean's Thirteen opens this Friday in the UK

To Cargo in East London last night, for the long-awaited UK debut (by me, at least) of Oakley Hall. If you've not come across them before, Oakley Hall are a six-piece from Brooklyn who play a kind of driving, euphoric country psych. The two albums they released last year indicated that they were probably a pretty roistering live band. And fortunately, they are. They begin with a pounding motorik beat, two needling guitars running rings round each other, a leaping fiddle, and some very Gram'n'Emmylou harmonies. The song is "Volume Rambler" from the "Second Guessing" album, if memory serves, and as usual at this point, I'd be quite keen for it to go on for another 20 minutes. Oakley Hall have a bunch of songs like this - "Hiway", "If I Was In El Dorado" - but they're also getting better at ballads, too. There's a great one they play which will apparently be on the new album, out in August in the States. We've been championing the band for a year and a half now, and have placed a couple of songs on our free CDs. They haven't got a UK deal for the new album yet, though things seem to be happening in the States. The new one is coming out on Merge, home to The Arcade Fire and Lambchop, and frontman Pat Sullivan tells me that they've just come off a big tour supporting Bright Eyes and the wonderful Gillian Welch. Conor Oberst, he says, would spend three minutes each night telling the audience that Oakley Hall were his favourite band. And frankly, you can see his point. Sullivan reckons they'll be back in the autumn, when hopefully the album will be out over here. Oh yeah, I just remembered my shit pun: Neu! Riders Of The Purple Sage. I'll go now.

Over the weekend, I watched the new BBC documentary series, Seven Ages Of Rock, which on Saturday night was dedicated to punk. A lot of it seemed inevitably familiar, but I perked up as I always do with the footage of The Sex Pistols' Jubilee boat trip, which I was on, standing about four feet in front of Johnny Rotten as a heaving crowd went hysterical and police launches surrounded us as the Pistols hammered out a defiant "Anarchy In The UK" as we cruised past the Houses Of Parliament. I'd just done a cover story on the Pistols and the release of "God Save The Queen" for what used to be Melody Maker, almost getting arrested in Ladbroke Grove with them on the way back from a photo-shoot. Evidently, this was enough to secure an invitation to the boat trip that followed on Monday, June 7, Jubilee Day itself. We left Charing Cross Pier in the early afternoon on a boat called The Queen Elizabeth, setting sail beneath brooding, overcast skies, a whipping wind coming off the Thames. There's a surly on-board mood, a ton of sulphate around, most of it being washed down by can after can of lager, a lot of people ripped off their tits before the boat reaches Greenwich, where we turn around and head back towards Chelsea Bridge. Tempers are fraying badly by now and there's an ugly scuffle, a photogrpaher getting kicked around the deck by someone we're told is Jah Wobble. We're heading towards Charing Cross and Parliament when the first police launches appear, coincidentally around the time the Pistols start playing - "Pretty Vacant" giving way to "No Fun" as we pull alongside Parliament. The police launches are circling us now, searchlights aimed at us, someone with a megaphone shouting at us, presumably ordering us back to the pier, where ranks of surly coppers are waiting, the thought of kicking punk ass an entertaining notion after a long day on Jubilee duty. Whoever's in charge boards the Queen Elizabeth when we dock at Charing Cross, and we're told that if we don't quit the boat immediately the police will remove us with as much force as they deem necessary. You can see truncheons being unbuckled, and things start getting ugly in a hurry, the police now thundering up the gangplanks, swarming into the crowd. Paul Cook is still hammering on his drums at this point, and Rotten is screaming "No fun! No fun!". The power's off, so you can't hear Steve Jones and Sid appears to have vanished. There'sd a lot of punching and kicking as we're herded on to the Embankment. Malcolm Mclraen goes down in front of me, and a couple of us scoop him up before the police close in on him. "You fucking fascist bastards!" he yells at them, and is promptly dragged behind a souvenir kiosk, beaten up and arrested, one of 11 people from the boat trip who end up that night in jail. Police vans roar around me as I stand on the Embankment, blood in the gutter and on the wall behind me, torn Jubilee bunting hanging from railings and lamposts, sirens in the distance, the sound of England screaming.

What seems like several months since I heard The White Stripes' "Icky Thump", I finally had a few more listens to it over the weekend. Reassuringly, my usual hysterical over-excitement seems to have been pretty justified. "You Don't Know What Love Is (You Just Do As You're Told)" remains my favourite track, which I've decided this morning is a striking fusion of "Sweet Home Alabama" and "Ziggy Stardust". Phil, who sits behind me in the office, tried to spoil it all be pointing out the song's similarity to "Centerfold" by the J Geils Band, but he can't hurt me. In fact, I guess that comparison only reinforces my hunch that this may be the song to really launch the Stripes into the American heartland. It's curious that a lot of early reviews of the record have concentrated on perceived difficulties and eccentricities (the mariachi metal of "Conquest", the crazed Scottish pair of "Prickly Thorn, But Sweetly Worn" and "St Andrew (This Battle Is In The Air)"), when what strikes me about plenty of "Icky Thump" is its bigness and accessibility. I think The White Stripes are one of those bands who prove that record labels and journalists can underestimate the listening public: if something unexpected happens on a record (a spluttery synth solo, say, or a swirl of bagpipe), does that automatically make it uncommercial? I don't think so, and I suspect Jack White - though he'd never admit that his music is either commercial or uncommercial - doesn't either. Anyway, a quick plug for our brothers and sisters at NME, who are giving away "Rag And Bone" (maybe the weakest song on the album, I'd say now, but still good) on a free seven-inch with this week's issue. Pretty nice. And while we're on the subject of business affairs, some interesting messages were posted here about the new issue of Uncut. I know this is going to sound trite, but we really are interested in the artists we write features about - I saw few better gigs last year than The Rolling Stones at Twickenham. For what it's worth, I'm glad that many of you seem to be able to see beyond the cover star and understand that our mag strives to cover the widest range of bands possible: from the artists Penelope calls "dinosaurs" but we call the biggest and most significant in rock history, to newcomers like, I dunno, Wooden Wand and forgotten heroes like some of those who figure on the "Fill Your Head With Prog". And of course it'd be churlish of me to deny that there are commercial practicalities involved, too: putting The Rolling Stones on the cover of Uncut will draw potentially thousands of new readers to the magazine, who - currently - may have a very different relationship to music and the mag compared with regular readers of this blog. If we can turn on more people to so much great music, is another Stones cover too much to bear? Thanks for the feedback, though - we are genuinely interested, I promise you. Shop talk over. One more thing: my grumbles about the Comets On Fire gig last week have been explained by the link that James posts here. I was actually stood behind the soundbooth and saw this happen, bizarrely.

In these heady days of New Rave and such, it was heartening to be reminded this morning of the last time British bands tried to pull off that trick. "Warming Up The Brain Farm: The Best Of The Lo-Fidelity All Stars" turned up in the post. And amazingly, ten years on, it sounds great. The Lo-Fis, if you missed them first time, were a bunch of faintly shady gents who sloped out of the big beat scene with a kind of malign, acid-tinged brand of indie-dance. It was easy to be a sceptic about them, not least because they were fronted by a chronically paranoid man called Dave who adopted a moody street poet persona and went by the name of The Wrekked Train. We didn't call them New Rave back then, of course. Someone at NME came up with the idea of summoning up a scene around them and the often hilarious Campag Velocet. Skunk Rock, we called it. The indie nation, however, were far too busy listening to Travis and the Stereophonics at the time, probably. History, I would have guessed, couldn't have been kind to them. But as I write, "Blisters On My Brain" is playing, a propulsive disco rant that samples the Breeders' "Cannonball" and is fantastic. Next up is "Battleflag", their intense hijacking of an old Pigeonhed track, which I remember being obsessed with back in the day, and which I suspect I'm going to be hammering for the next week or two. The late '90s was a weird time for music, I seem to remember, because while there were just as many good records as ever, most of them were very hard to write about for the music weeklies. The Lo-Fis were a gift to us, because they had massive self-conscious attitude, very daft names and music that fused the current dance scene with rock'n'roll classicism in a very seductive way. As a result, plenty of people were very keen to dismiss them as hyped chancers. The Wrekked Train skulked off just as they were edging towards popularity, leaving his bandmates to soldier on and do implausibly well in America without him. They made another album, which I don't remember as being much good. When I get to the tracks from it on this comp, maybe that'll prove to be a revelation too. But how nice to discover that something which seemed so ephemeral, a daft fad, has aged so well. Have a good weekend, everyone; I know I promised a bunch of previews this week (notably Robert Wyatt) that I haven't got round to writing. Next week, trust me, I'll do my best. The Super Furry Animals album is meant to be on its way, too.