There was a time when I used to get excited by new music. Not any more. Now there’s only one way to describe the way it makes me feel: utterly terrified. I used to pretend to myself that I knew a bit about music – that I kept myself up to date, read the right magazines, knew the important facts: how the band Can formed, whether or not ‘Abbey Road’ was recorded before ‘Let It Be’, the usual important geek facts traded between males with low senses of self esteem and large record collections. Thankfully I now know better. There’s no other way of putting this: I know fuck all about music.

I blame the internet. Things, quite simply, are moving far too fast. The time-lag between a band being billed as ‘The Next Big Thing’ and them appearing on the front page of a tabloid newspaper used to be measured in years. It took Pulp about a century to get a record deal. Nowadays the transition is almost instantaneous.

I’ll give you a perfect example of this phenomenon: Gnarls Barkley. A few months ago, their name started cropping up here and there, mentioned in conversation by people so fashionable that their jeans probably cost more than your parents ever earned in their combined lifetimes. Only a few weeks later they were at number one in the UK with the single ‘Crazy’. Moreover, they managed to do so without selling a single actual record: it was all done over the internet, through download sales. Imagine all those kids, downloading their music long before mere mortals like you and I have even heard of the name of their band… it makes me want to weep.

The average life-span of a band has similarly shrunk to terrifying proportions. I can name dozens of bands who last year were hot property, their albums downloaded and passed between friends faster than sexually transmitted diseases. Most of these groups are now forgotten, permanently consigned to the dustbin of history.

I don’t think people even listen to albums any more, not like they used to. I’ve got certain records which I can anticipate the parts where the needle inevitably skips a few seconds, or where there’s a crackle on the vinyl, records that I must have listened to literally hundreds of times. I love reminiscing about this because 1) I feel threatened by ‘The Kids’, and 2) I want to get my own back. I want to try and pretend that they’re not proper music fans, that they’re not ‘properly appreciating’ the music. But in all likelihood, they are. And they know about a million times more than I do. And I don’t like it.

Things are moving so fast, that I’ve come up with a solution. I’ve stopped trying to take an interest in the music itself and have confined myself to collecting band names. It’s an easy escape route in case you don’t have the time to listen to the millions and billions of groups, producers and artists demanding your urgent attention. It’s as though bands have realized this, and have spent a disproportionate amount of time thinking up clever names, because right now there’s a glut of bands whose names alone should win them Nobel Prizes.

One own personal favourites is the group ‘Duran Duran Duran’. ‘The Test Icicles’ also deserve a mention, as do ‘Shooting At Unarmed Men’, ‘Whores Whores Whores’, the DJ duo ‘Flosstradamus’, and of course, the inexplicably namded Gnarls Barkely. However, it’s ‘I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness’ who undoubtedly win the prize for the best band name ever thought up in the history of humankind. Their music isn’t half bad, either, but in my increasing state of utter confusion I’m no longer pretending to take an interest.

I give up. I hereby tender my resignation. I want to write a column about cats or cheese or something that doesn’t go in and out of fashion in about thirty seconds. Next month expect me to be writing about the joys of dust. Or something.