What was abundantly clear was just what a different world the media was in 1977. Having to hassle to simply get a phone line in less than nine months, the magazine came together under a rag tag band of music enthusiasts rather than industry professionals. The archive footage of the production process was enough to make us working today hug our laptops in gratitude and the tale of how the magazine nearly went under after attempting to break into the UK market is one that still echoes today as title after title disappears.

Although the documentary was essentially a fluff piece, it was not without its insight. Bob Geldolf was as vocal as ever about his doubts when the magazine launched, and contributors such as John Waters, Declan Lynch and Liam Mackey painted a vivid picture of an Irish publication finding its feet in uncertain times. There are many memorable stories along the way, from the late Bill Graham steering U2 in the direction of Paul McGuinness (Bono was an obvious and not entirely unwelcome absence) and the four letter fuss surrounding Waters’ Charles Haughey interview. Above all, Hot Press mattered – to the people who ran it, to the people who wrote for it, to the bands and to the readers.

Fast forward three decades and the picture is very different. It’s debatable whether any music magazine can have that kind of influence anymore, with those that are left – along with record companies, music stores and the rest – are fighting a losing battle against a culture that no longer feels the need to invest time and effort into music. Yet Hot Press has managed to survive when plenty of others have fallen by the wayside. Even so, there were enough mumblings about a magazine stuck in a rut and losing its way to suggest that some of the old guard at least find it hard to recognise the original spirit in the modern day version. The site of that team reuniting in its old haunt of the International Bar, like some middle aged band getting back together, was an oddly moving one and a reminder that once upon a time you could make things happen by force of will alone. The past was theirs, but who owns the future?

Watch the documentary here.

Murray died a frail and broken alcoholic in the mid 90’s and Duke decided that it would be appropriate to link the recordings with an organisation whose clients lives reflect the struggles that Ruby lived with:

I decided to work with Depaul Ireland, an incredible organisation who reach out to some of the most vulnerable homeless people in Ireland, North and South.

The limited edition CD contains the tracks ‘Happy Day’s Lonely Nights’, ‘I’ll Come When You Call’, and ‘Smile’ and was released on January 21. The CD package contains a set of unique note cards, designed by some of Depaul Ireland’s service users during art sessions. All proceeds from sales will be reinvested in Depaul Ireland’s on-going services to the homeless in the North and South of Ireland.

Duke Special will also be preforming two concerts called ‘Ruby and The Duke Live’ for the RTÉ Concert Orchestra Signature Series 2011. The concert will feature Duke Special, his band, the RTÉ Concert Orchestra conducted by David Brophy, along with very special guests Mary Coughlan, and Mary-Kate Geraghty (Fight Like Apes). Two shows have been confirmed in The National Concert Hall in Dublin on February 2nd and The Opera House in Cork on February 6th.

A free launch gig will take place in Belfast’s Oh Yeah on January 27th at 730pm. To register click here.

U2 360 Live From The Rose Bowl – Sky One 8pm
Out on video this week, U2′s LA show has already been broadcast live on YouTube and now appears on satellite. An hour’s highlight package is probably about right, hopefully cutting the overblown and baggy bits in favour for the moments of genuine class.

Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars – Sky Arts 1 9pm
1973 film of David Bowie at the Hammersmith Odeon.

Wednesday 2nd June

The Eleventh Hour – RTE2 11.20pm
The old fashioned school of Irish music TV it may be, but The Eleventh Hour is still worth a look – even with the usual ridiculous time slot – and is about the only music show on domestic TV this week. Shame.

Thursday 3rd June

Thin Lizzy Live & Dangerous At The Rainbow – Sky Arts 1 9pm
Recorded live in 1978.

Friday 4th June

Gorillaz – MTV World Stage – MTV 11pm
First they made the album that they’d always threatened, now Gorillaz have stepped out from behind the increasingly tired cartoon persona to reveal the live show of the year. Get yourself in the mood for September.

Bon Jovi – When We Were Beautiful – BBC2 11.50pm
Behind the scenes with the bronzed rockers. Could be more interesting than you think.

Saturday 5th June

I’m In A Rock -n’ Roll Band – BBC2 10pm
Having run down the various elements of the world’s greatest groups, the series finale looks to assemble the best band of all time. You can probably guess some of the results. Great show.

8 Mile – ITV2 10.20pm
As he prepares to visit these shores on the back of another poor, lazy album, relive the two hours when Eminem really did seem to mean something.

Fearless Freaks: The Flaming Lips – Sky Arts 1 9pm
Profile of Uncle Wayne and co.

Tuesday 25th May

Radio 1′s Big Weekend – BBC3 7pm
Shot last weekend, a splendidly diverse bill from the BBC’s free event features everything from JLS to Biffy Clyro.

Blur : The Singles Night – Sky Arts 1 9pm
From the days when they weren’t the best of pals, Blur run through their peerless A sides at Wembley Arena.

Later Live – BBC2 10pm
And so another series of the best music show on the box comes to an end, seemingly in the blink of an eye. Vampire Weekend, MGMT, Tom Jones and Corinne Bailey Ray see us out.

Wednesday 26th May

The History Of The Clash – Sky Arts 1 10.25pm
Does what it says on the punk rock tin.

Mercury Prize Sessions – Channel 4 1.05am
The XX play live.

Thursday 27th May

The Culture Show – BBC2 11.50pm
The Magic Numbers are back. Hurrah!

Friday 28th May

Top Gear – BBC3 7pm
The opinionated one, the small on and the posh one transport the Who’s equipment. Hilarity no doubt ensues.

TOTP 2 -BBC2 10pm
A Duran Duran special. Yowser.

Backstage – BBC2 12.50am
Hip-hop documentary from 2000.

Saturday 29th May

REM: Rough Cut – Sky Arts 1 10pm
Behind the scenes in 2005.

The Stones In Exile – BBC2 11.10pm
Documentary on the making of Exile On Main Street. Like the album itself a bit all over the place but ultimately rewarding.

But what’s this? Green Day opening the show with a raging two song set that actually sets the pulses racing? Well yes. As we have pointed out here, the band’s live show is still a case of annoying enthusiasm over their undisputed content but this is perfect for the occasion, a raging cocktail of pyrotechnics and punk rock that actually comes across the airwaves as they combine the power of their VMAs performance with a decent song. Billie Joe is at the audience’s throat from the start, going on a carefully planned walkabout before a bouncer gives him a shove up the jacksie back onto stage and they follow it up with a ragged, accordion led version of -Minority’ that sounds more like the Levellers than ever. Wow.

Do we know our enemy? Yes we do and here she comes in her underwear. Can someone please explain the Katy Perry thing to us? Ok as a pop star she has an appeal to more than a few people, but why allow her to host these things…again? So we get the skimpy outfits(including a Russell Brand inspired West Ham kit), the sexual innuendos and not a lot else. Her heart doesn’t really seem in it which is handy as neither is ours. All of which reminds us that this is still a TV Awards show and that it will have its awful moments. Thankfully the overt Americanism of Liverpool is largely gone (Fall Out Boy’s Pete Wentz – last seen on the Dog Whisperer emo fans – presents backstage in an agreeably crap manner) replaced by some genuinely bizarre European moments. There’s a lot of -and you are?’ presenters, Joss Stone totters on with the boxer Vladimir Klitschko, David Hasslehoff is greeted like a freedom fighting hero (only, surely, in Germany…) and Jean Reno proves himself utterly unable to whip a teenage audience into a frenzy. And, yet again, we must ask – who the fuck are Tokio Hotel?

Generally though, the evening is rather good. Beyonce, U2 and Jay Z all make short, eloquent speeches, while Lady Gaga and Eminem don’t show up. The awards seem to go to the right people,which means Kings Of Leon don’t win anything, although the rundown of European winners shows that it must be time that Ireland got its own category rather than having Pixie Lott forced upon us. Even the madness of some Turkish band winning best European act reminds us of the continent’s melting pot make-up. And who would have predicted Placebo getting best alternative act, especially since Brian now looks like Caroline Quentin from Men Behaving Badly?

Best of all there are some really good, great even, performances. Beyonce and Shakira are oddly ineffectual, both choosing weak songs that are easily overshadowed by the productions. The big set piece of the night is U2 live from the Brandenburg Gate. As Edge had pointed out earlier, Berlin was the place where the band had rediscovered themselves and they responded with a beautiful performance of the song that brought them together, -One’. OK, so they threw in something new and ropey but you couldn’t help but be impressed.

The other big showing comes from Jay-Z. If you though his VMA take on -Empire State Of Mind’ was good then this was really something, even without the assistance of Alicia Keys. His band are great, Jay is great and this might just be one of the best awards performances ever. Hell even the Foo Fighters were pretty good.

If the show starts to drift after that, well it doesn’t really matter. We’ve had more than we expected, even if Leona Lewis is a real disappointment. The unavoidable Michael Jackson tribute, though, is actually well done – displaying genuine affection and humour and avoiding mawkish sentimentality, the Jonas Brothers intro aside. Just what is going on here? Who are you and what have you done with the MTV Awards?

It all finishes with something rather special. Back to the Brandenburg Gate we go for one more defining moment, the night’s two great stars together. If you thought the idea of Jay-Z rapping over -Sunday Bloody Sunday’ was a recipe for disaster well it is bizarre alright but it seriously works. Even Bono gets a bit overexcited, shouting in the house a lot and even trying to match him in the rapping stakes. He fails of course, but it’s a ludicrous, glorious, heroic failure and totally in keeping with the night itself. Berlin, the city that once saved U2, may have done the same for the MTV Awards. Who’d have thought it?

That, however, was still to come as we opened the show with Madonna striding sombrely onto the stage to address the major elephant in the room, the passing of Michael Jackson – an artist who came to define more than most during its glory days. Leaving Madonna’s stunningly self obsessed eulogy aside, the opening number was certainly an old school all singing, all dancing spectacular – even featuring sister Janet in a virtual duet on -Scream’. Put aside the fact that if he had lived and attempted those London shows his career may well have been in tatters, but they still handled the inevitable well and with style.

Watching this solemn opening, however, raised the spectre of Russell Brand and how he would react. This time last year his role as host was an oddity, a gamble that paid off. This time he is a biggish star in the US, certainly big enough to warrant an introduction from Katy and Joe Perry. With that stardom comes more to lose and he certainly isn’t about to throw it all away just to score a cheap Michael Jackson laugh. His opening monologue gets off to a shaky start and never really recovers, settling down as it does into a succession of shagging gags – the kind of stuff he can do in his sleep. Only his quick health care jibe seems to raise a reaction and he is an oddly impotent figure throughout the night, making only fleeting appearances.

From there on the whole thing becomes a tad confusing for those on this side of the Atlantic or over fifteen years old. Who are these people being wheeled out to read the autocue badly and mess up their carefully scripted ad-libs? Why have only a grand total of what feels like five different artists been nominated across the categories? And what the hell is Kanye West doing? At least we can answer the last one. He’s making a fool of himself. Again.

What is it with West and these awards? As one of the State writers put it, he probably thinks he’s showing maturity by bitching about someone else not winning as opposed to himself. As it was, his intervention was a classic hide behind your hands moment – not least for the obviously mortified Beyonce. Taylor Swift, meanwhile, just crumbled and every mention of the rapper’s name for the rest of the evening was roundly booed. In 808s & Heartbreak he made a career defining record. On Sunday he defined himself for all the wrong reasons.

As the award giving continued it became clear that the homogenisation of American mainstream music has reached an absurd level. You would swear that the nominees for Best Male were all for the same video, the same song even. We know that hip-hop and r ‘n’ b dominate the US charts but could there have not been some attempt to show a musical world beyond them? Well actually there was a Breakthrough Artist, won by Matt & Kim ahead of Bat For Lashes, Passion Pit and Major Lazer but that category wasn’t deemed worthy of broadcast, as sure as Kid Cudi, Wale and any other interesting hip-hop artist was relegated to playing during the many ad breaks.

Back in the (not so) real world, the artist of the night is unavoidably Lady Gaga. Any country that considers this woman as the pinnacle of pop music is seriously in trouble. Take away the horrible kookiness, stupid. stupid, stupid outfits and tabloid fascination and you’re left with very little. Surely this performance was an overblown exercise in papering over the cracks….

In fact the rule of thumb for the night seemed to be the more outlandish the staging, the more slight the material. Taylor Swift did some awful thing on the subway (although earlier events gave it a sense of vindication) and Beyonce put on a spectacle that saw her as the weakest link in the chain. Pink‘s choice of song too was a bit strange but her trapeze act was a genuine show stealer.

And so, as is so often the ironic case, it was the real live bands that came into pop’s backyard and kicked it’s ball over the fence. Again Green Day went with one of their weaker tunes but at least installed a sense of excitement, especially when their stage invasion really did seem to freak out the MTV heads. Pick of the bunch though had to be Muse, a band who we are used to seeing in full stadium rock pomp but seemed slightly small amidst all this glitz, pushed down the road to a separate venue. This though is their big shot at the US and they nail it, proving that beneath it all are still an electrifying live act.

After a show that was neither amazingly good or stupifyingly bad, mainly just dull, what the VMAs needed was a big finish. The arrival of Jay-Z had been trailed all evening and as a cavalcade of limos pulled up outside Radio City, it looked as if we might just get it. And we just about did, thanks more to an amazing Alicia Keys than perhaps Jay himself, but at least he proved that – in the right hands – black American music can still have a commanding and beguiling presence. Every year, however, and every VMAs make that faith harder and harder to maintain.