The reading corner

Sometimes you read breakthrough research with a growing sense of wonder – not at the breakthroughness of it, but that people have spent good money to find out what we knew all along.

The latest example? A report by a team from Italy's Pavia University, showing that music can affect the body, and may be of benefit in the treatment of conditions such as strokes.

According to Dr Luciano Bernardi, his team asked two dozen healthy volunteers to listen to tracks including opera arias and choruses, and a Bach cantata, while monitoring their breathing, heart rate and blood pressure.

The results? Crescendos caused blood vessels to narrow, while blood pressure and heart and respiratory rates increased, while diminuendos had the opposite effect, relaxing the test subjects.

Hold the front page – music can make you excited, or calm you down.

News for Dr Bernardi: someone may have spotted this before.

After all, as William Congreve said just a little while ago – in 1697, to be precise – "Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast".

Or indeed John Dryden, ten years before that, in his Song For St Cecilia's Day: "What passion cannot music raise and quell!"

Ah, but surely the research suggests music goes beyond simply stirring or soothing us?

Umm, yes, but then the ancient Chinese philosopher had that one covered: "Music produces a kind of pleasure which human nature cannot do without."

Sometime around 1600 years ago...

Luke Haines: Bad Vibes

It’s a fine line between insanity and genius, so they say, and Luke Haines certainly seems to not only have a foot in both camps, but also to have defined the boundaries.

The man who brought us the woefully overlooked Auteurs, Black Box Recorder and Baader-Meinhof amongst other things, has finally put pen to paper and the result is the dark, absorbing and frequently hilarious read that is Bad Vibes, Haines’ view on life between 1992 and 1997.

If you remember the sorry debacle that was Britpop back in the mid-90s, you’ll probably remember how The Auteurs were placed squarely at the vanguard with such luminaries as Suede, Elastica, and a whole host of faceless Adidas clad nonentities. To Haines, who, following the sparkling New Wave album from 1992 had clearly other, and more, sinister things in mind, this must have been akin to the equivalent of being stuck in a lift with a creature morphed from Eddie Waring, The Chuckle Brothers and the worst of Marty Feldman. Truly horrible.

As Bad Vibes progresses, and Haines is propelled from the studio to touring America, back to England via a whole host of misadventure only to have the whole sorry pattern repeat itself, you feel torn between chortling surreptiously and thinking ‘oh, the (in)humanity’. When he pulls the vintage German flare-pistol from his luggage in America with a weary, yet determined air, it becomes clear that Haines is not a man to be trifled with.

Quite simply, this is one of the most exhilarating things I’ve read for many a month; if you’ve ever wondered what made the man who wrote Government Bookstore, Unsolved Child Murder and the positively cheery Light Aircraft on Fire tick, then as an obsessed fan this is for you. If alternatively, you’re looking for well-written prose, dark humour with more kinks than a Ray Davies convention and a view on life, strip searches, cellists and the music industry in general then this should be on your reading list, if not actually in your grubby little hands without delay. Genius.

Bad Vibes by Luke Haines is published by William Heinemann at £12.99

There's a slight problem with the title of Travis Elborough's new homage to the vinyl LP, published to coincide with the 60th anniversary of the format.

You see, as the blurb on the back of The Long-Player Goodbye puts it, this is "The history of the album from the invention of vinyl and the LP to its revival in our iPod age".

Not much sign of a goodbye there, then.

But that's just about the only thing wrong with this affectionate and informative look back over six decades of the album, written from a personal and sometimes iconoclastic viewpoint - I'm sure not everyone will agree with his choice of the greatest album ever made - but also packed with little pub-expert nuggets of musical history you'll no doubt trot out again and again.

Some of them you will know if you're seriously into your LPs, some of them you'll half-know, and some will be completely new - and that's the delight of this book. It manages to be a supremely easy read, totally gripping even when the pace slackens a bit as Elborough wanders off down a diversionary route or two, and hugely informative.

Despite the sideways glances in the office when I said I was reading a history of the LP, and the slight feeling that my geeky reputation was being reinforced by doing so, The Long-Player Goodbye is anything but dry and geeky. Elborough previously brought alive the history of the London Routemaster bus - and there's another subject guaranteed to have friends giving you a wide berth - in his book The Bus We Loved, and through a mixture of fact, anecdote and extensive references, now does the same for the LP.

It's a good story, winningly told, and complete with extensive footnotes for those wishing to delve a little deeper. The original audio format war - 'The Battle of the Speeds' between Columbia and RCA - seems just as daft as more recent system-clashes, and closer to home it's interesting to read how the founder of The Gramophone first denounced, then later embraced, the new LPs.

You'll also discover how the LP 'made' Vivaldi's Four Seasons, discover the wonderful world of easy-listening discs - including the seduction tool Music To Change Her Mind, released in 1956 - and canter through the jazz greats, the prog-rock epics, the famous discs of the 1960s and the role of Sinatra as the great album artist.

Could have done without some of the more tortuous chapter headings - To Be Perfectly Frank and Beat Less are just two of the milder examples - but then given the title chosen for the book, I guess someone got just a bit too caught up in their wordplay somewhere along the line.

For all that, however, Elborough remains entertaining, quirky at times and able to keep up a constant procession of little-known facts. Just beware of those strange looks when you tell people what you're reading...

The Long-Player Goodbye by Travis Elborough is published by Sceptre on July 10.