Robert McNeil - Give me rock without roll, country without western, Chas without Dave

WIT'S end

I'D LIKE to go and live on the West Texas plains. Not that I've ever been. But Ryan Bingham sings aboot them. Ryan belongs to a musical genre labelled alternative country or new American folk. I've never liked country and western music. It makes me vomit. However, the key with musical genres is never to like anything with "and" in it: country and western, rock and roll, rhythm and blues, Chas and Dave. Funnily enough, the first part is always all right: country, rock, rhythm, Chas. It's only the second part that causes problems.

Ryan's album, Mescalito, is super: wonderful, throaty voice; great gutsy feel; real depth and wisdom, and the guy's only in his 20s. But he has walked the walk, living rough and riding the rodeo. He makes me want to wear cowboy boots with my leisure slacks, and strap a geetar on my back as I take off for the dusty highway (probably in my Ford Focus, at least to begin with).

At the last count, I had seven geetars, though I still haven't figured out which end you're supposed to blow into. Seriously, in 35 years, I've never learned one tune. But I know my scales and just tootle at will to take away the pain. If anyone ever watches or listens, my fingers turn to lead and I feel a fraud.

But it's been great discovering a new musical genre. As well as Ryan Bingham, I've been listening to Nels Andrews and Kimmie Rhodes. I like the feel of the music. It feels honest. I came across it on Radio Two, through the good agency of whispering Bob Harris, and it shows the value of these chaps in bringing artists to a new audience.

Usually, I'd be driving in my car, on my way to Thursday night tai chi, and the music made the passers-by look like they were in films. Somehow, it made me feel like an observer, not totally unengaged, and certainly not omniscient. It just gave things perspective.

I still listen to a lot of guitar music, though recent years have seen classical and jazz take a lead role. My tastes are surely catholic. Different types of music match varying moods, though genres can also stay for months on end. Jazz for ages, then all classical, then all rock. Or all one band: the Beatles; Led Zeppelin; XTC; the Presidents of the United States of America.

But I'm not as interested in rock as once I was. I haven't bought a New Musical Express for years. Indeed, the only magazine I buy these days is BBC Music, from which, lately, I have been headbanging to a CD of Renaissance choral music.

The Burd is much more musical than I am. Until recently, she sang in a choir (amateur) and plays classical titbits on her clavinova. But the Burd has catholic tastes too – though these do not run to punk or hard rock – and has also turned me on to musicals, which I know are loathed by many citizens. True, the lyrics can be glib, but the shows are often fun.

If you'd said to me 20 years ago that I'd be listening to musicals and country music, I'd have summoned a constable and explained that you'd gone doolally. But we grow and learn and become more tolerant. Recently, when I was moved to anger by the rich networkers who still think they control high art, I eschewed classical music and wanted to stuff tea-towels down their bassoons.

But I told myself these sick-making swells have nothing to do with the actual art and should not be allowed to spoil it for others, nor yet to monopolise it for themselves. I soon started listening again but, funnily enough, it was Ryan Bingham who helped me ride out my rage at the time.

His rough-edged, earthy songs took me miles from such arrogant, metropolitan phoniness. They were real. They dealt with hardship. Gave a voice to bums, drifters, and those gobbed on by life. Different types of music offer their various benefits, according to what's going in your life at the time. They provide an alternative, an escape. They give you food for thought and encourage your mind to wander hither and, occasionally, yon.

I'd still like to head for West Texas, though heaven knows I find West Lothian wild enough. I don't know if I could get all seven guitars on my back. Don't know if I could ever pick out a tune. But I've started practising for the trip by walking up and down Morningside Road, with Ryan's voice in my head taking me "a long way from nowhere, wishin' I was somewhere".