Too old for clubbing, I am

I think I may have reached that point of no return. The point where I have to give up and say, 'yes, from now on I fear the only clubs I go to will be ones which play slightly tragic old music which remind me of my childhood and will probably be related to stag dos or leaving parties.'

I say this after going to see DJ Yoda at Club Academy in Manchester yesterday. I was interviewing him for The National (he plays in Dubai later this month), and it seemed like a good idea: I haven't been to see a DJ for ages and if you're going to reintroduce yourself, it may as well be someone who is entertaining, who does video mixing as well, and generally puts on a bit of a show.

Yoda's USP is basically classic hip hop cut up with kids TV samples, bits of the Apprentice, even footage from Champions League games (although he told me he knows nothing about football). But he's diversifying a bit and there was a fair amount of dubstep in his set too: thrilling for me because as much as I like Burial and so on, I've never actually heard it much louder or bassier than on iPod headphones.

And, well, as much as it was enjoyable, it felt like a young person's game. I listen to this music at home, but the whole night seemed slightly odd in that watching someone playing other people's records loud wasn't actually that impressive or, really, lasting beyond being entertaining at the specific moment Yoda dropped the Tetris music over a breakbeat.

Perhaps we live in a post-clubbing world, where the era of the superstar DJ is actually over. Or perhaps the days of getting a whole group of friends together to dance to music they possibly won't know are long gone for me.

All I do know is that the biggest cheer of the night came when Yoda played Step On by Happy Mondays. And most of the crowd there - honestly - probably weren't even born when that was first released.

McSweeney's 2 Granta 1

I've been reading and researching McSweeney's this week in preparation for a story in The National about its 10th anniversary. For those of you that haven't come across McSweeney's, you're likely to know about Dave Eggers. And McSweeney's was started by Eggers as a quarterly magazine packed with new writing. The packaging is frequently lovely - in fact, as Nick Hornby says in the introduction to The United States Of McSweeney's: Ten Years Of Accidental Classics, "I hadn't actually read many of the actual, you know, stories themselves. I had merely oohed and aahed at the extraordinary and elaborate constructions which illuminated and, on occasions, imprisoned them."

Hornby goes on to admit that it does McSweeney's a massive disservice to concentrate on how it looks - and a beautiful story by Roddy Doyle two pages later confirms that. It's not just established writers that make McSweeney's so important though: it's the sense that it's a great place to talent spot. Philipp Meyer - who I've just spoken to and cannot underestimate how important McSweeney's has been to him - was first published here, and it gave him the impetus to write one of my favourite books of 2009: American Rust. Here's a review, by, er, me!

Anyway, my real point is that McSweeney's is not always brilliant, but it's always interesting. I've been trying to make a UK comparison, and really all I can think of is Granta. I subscribe to Granta and have done for two years, but it often gathers dust on my shelves. There is some great work inside - more Robert Macfarlane please - but it seems constricted by its format: A5 book. The last McSweeney's I had came as eight mini books containing short stories, which when you put them together made a big picture. Twice. As I said at the time, it looked better than it read, but still. There was a real desire to push the envelope. An oddly shaped envelope.

Meanwhile, Granta has been through at least three editors in the last two years (McSweeney's is still put together by the same people who founded it - for fun - ten years ago) and seems to be drifting. I don't know if I'll re-subscribe next year. But I do know that I want McSweeney's Issue 32, where all the stories are set in 2024. Sums it up really: they're forward thinking.

The Pay Model

Welcome to my blog. Not going to bang on about what it will try and achieve, but hopefully it'll be a nice one-stop shop for my general thoughts about culture alongside links to the stuff I've actually been paid to do! Anyway, let's get stuck in straight away...

So, now my cosseted life at Metro is nothing but a distant dream, I now have to - shock horror - actually buy music, wait a week for the next instalment of television series, and consider exactly what gigs I want to go to.

Sounds pathetic, and I'm sure your heart bleeds. Welcome to the real world, eh? But it does change your relationship to culture almost immediately - and I think for the better. I was actually excited when news broke of a new Vampire Weekend song to download, a new LCD Soundsystem tune available whereas before I might have been mildly interested (or more likely, already received it on CDR or on e-mail from a kindly PR person).

And before you tell me those two songs were free anyway, I have actually taken a deep breath and bought a record: Florence And The Machine for a full £5 on download from Amazon. I have listened to that album far more than I would otherwise have done (unless I was directly reviewing it). The verdict: £5 seems about right, but when you own something rather than just get it for free - which is a point that stands from illegal downloading too - you do have a different, perhaps more intense relationship with it.

The tickets thing is the most interesting: I can now understand why safe-ish middle of the road bands sell so many tickets. Because I don't know whether I'm prepared to take a £10 punt on a a band I don't know much about, any more. But I do want to go and see Arctic Monkeys or Lisa Hannigan because I know they won't let me down.

And as for television series: in the past I would have got a couple of preview discs for the likes of Heroes. But actively waiting a week for an episode of Flash Forward, only to find it's like a bad version of House meets Grey's Anatomy, is very irritating.

My point? I think I prefer not having to know about what The Twang are doing because there might be a preview that needs writing. There's a lot less clutter in my house. And I haven't been to Vinyl Exchange for a while...