Prior to this week, it had been 35 years since hardcore punk firestarters Black Flag had set foot in the UK. That said, it was not without some trepidation that I made my way to one of Birmingham’s more compact venues to see a band who had once been genre-defining, get on stage and do their stuff.

The Ol’ Black Eyes is Back Tour celebrates Alice Cooper’s 50 years using his stage name. He’d been around under other names before 1969 but Alice Cooper – originally the title of the band rather than the man – achieved success as the Seventies began by combining trash-glam drag with stompin’ riffy music. He’s famed for his theatrical shows but needed to be on especially fine form tonight to match support acts who are both riveting.

Kano’s lyrics often sound like a wake, mixing mournfulness and anger as they raise a toast to fallen friends on abandoned estates, casualties of crushing pressures alien to the authorities who pronounce on them in the tabloids and parliament.

The onstage arrival of Two Door Cinema Club was heralded by a tongue-in-cheek video countdown that reached zero and then flashed up an error message, before asking the crowd to “try again”. In truth, the band’s own performance was never likely to hit any hitches, being the sort of well-honed and slick display that you would expect from a group who have been touring steadily for the past several months. That is both a positive and a negative.

The Hollywood Stars were not shy.

Rodrigo y Gabriela are no longer the youthful metalheads that once spawned an organic fan movement from the muso grapevine, via rigorous gig schedules and world tours.

K-Music has become one of the highlights of the autumn cultural calender since it launched in 2014, bringing an eclectic range of Korean artists and bands, from pop and rock to jazz and folk, and all the gradations between. Next Sunday Korean Pansori opera comes to Kings Place, while Park Jiha’s beguiling looped soundscapes come to Rich Mix on 17^th October, and Kyungso Park returns to the Southbank with her zither-like gayageum and new band, SB Circle on 29 October.

So it’s your birthday. Not just another one but your 70^th. So who’s on the guest list?

Charles Hazlewood's 2018 two-parter for BBC Four, Tones, Drones and Arpeggios: The Magic of Minimalism explored work by some of the great composers of the genre Hazlewood dubs as “last big idea in classical music”, which emerged from the experiments of John Cage in the 1950s, with offshoots spearheaded by the likes of La Monte Young and Terry Riley, and later Steve Reich and Philip Glass.

It’s reckoned that this time next year vinyl sales will have overtaken CDs. It’s still a small market and anyone who thinks vinyl will one day replace streaming is living on Planet Lah-lah. There’s so much coming out even theartsdesk on Vinyl cannot review it all, but what we can do is devote 7500 words to what grabs our attention. We are not limited by genre or by new vs reissue. We eat it all up and want more. So check below for the juice on what’s out there. Dive on.