I don't, as it happens, own an i-Pod, so returning home brings the pleasure of being reunited with my music.

Having spent the best part of the past couple of weeks out traipsing around tropical climes there are many pleasures to be had upon getting back to Tauranga's more, er, temperate weather.
And, best thing, back in the cosy confines of the Watusi Spiritual Retreat, is all the music, both old stuff and new stuff. So this week, by way of a catch-up I thought we'd take a little ramble through the bits ‘n' bobs that have brought a smile to my ears in the last few days.
First of all I've been getting into the new Leonard Cohen stuff, the CD and the DVD, both entitled, in a helpfully explanatory manner, Live in London. And they are both, to all intents and purposes, identical, except for the obvious difference that the DVD has pictures as well as sound. Beyond that, the same – 25 songs, immaculately played, the emphasis being on tracks from the I'm Your Man and The Future albums.
It's terrific stuff. I saw the Auckland show on the tour and it was as good as this live recording, and vice versa. Well, at least as far as the music goes…
I would have thought the same way about the video, if I hadn't happened to download an alternative live show from the internet.
Let me just pause there, in case this all goes pear-shaped, much as it did for an American critic who admitted in his review of X-Men Origins: Wolverine that it was raining and cold so he hadn't bothered to actually go to the cinema and instead had rather naughtily downloaded the unfinished Wolverine workprint that scandalously leaked to millions of fans worldwide a couple of weeks before the movie debuted. He quickly found that this was somewhat frowned upon and was almost as quickly looking for a new job.
So first let me say that the live Leonard Cohen show I downloaded wasn't exactly illegal. More one of those grey areas... And I did then go out and buy (not get sent by a kindly record label) both the CD and DVD. No lost revenue for the music multinationals there.
Anyway, the show on the download was an earlier date on Cohen's UK tour and was filmed by a guy with a handicam in the audience. Just behind the sound-desk by the look of it. And with these new-fangled hi-def video recorders you can get a pretty damn good picture. Of course it does shake quite a bit and bounce around, most of it is just a wide shot of the stage, and the audio is from the mic on the camera, so it's not strictly state of the art.
But you know what? Watching that shaky rough single camera job takes me back to the concert in a far more visceral way than the five star production of the official video. Sometimes I can't help but think that perfection is overrated.
Where the official video is full of beautifully-shot close ups and gets right on top of what each player is doing, the audience-filmed video captures the interaction between the players, how their eyes stay glued on Cohen and what they do when they're not in the spotlight.
After all, at a show you see the whole thing, you don't just watch the guy at the front or soloing. The audience video, even with the occasional heads ducking in front of the camera, comes closer to recapturing the real concert experience.
Perhaps, I couldn't help but think, we spend too much time chasing technical quality in music or video when a few rough edges actually make for a more exciting and authentic ride.
Moving on, I was also chuffed to get back to current favourite Benji Hughes' extraordinary double CD A Love Extreme, as well as new albums from those groovy swing cats from the capital Wellington Heads and French Canadian chanteuse Madeleine Peyroux. There's also another album from Dave Roy, which should be reviewed in the next week or so, and a brilliant new live DVD of Hot Club Sandwich. But we'll get on to all that next time…