So Rage have beaten Performer Joe X to the Christmas number one spot, thanks to a Facebook campaign. The theme ringing out this season of goodwill is therefore the rather refreshing and uplifting – fuck you I won’t do what you told me.

Traditionally, of course, the Christmas number one has always been rubbish, either a comedy record or a charity record or, in recent years, the X Factor finalist’s cabaret cover version. So, this is no small sign that there is life out there in consumer land. That we, the people, are not all couch potato zombies in thrall to Simon Cowell and his cronies. There are thinking, feeling people who still love music and would rather be force-fed a dose of adrenaline fuelled, old school agro-rock than the latest bland offering from the X machine. OK, it’s an old, dumb tune but the message is clear.

In these tough times we must celebrate these small, sweet victories. This is certainly not the end for X, Cowell and reality entertainment shows that pretend to be something to do with music, it’s not even the beginning of the end but it could well be, as Churchill said, the end of the beginning.

This little national event will make TV execs and radio programmers and those in charge of what’s left of the real music business, think that maybe it is worth looking at music beyond the narrow band of manipulable, pretty young things that Cowell parades in front of his lazy, hypnotised punters.

The point to be made is simple. There is more to music than cabaret for a mainstream Saturday night TV audience. Thanks to the net it’s easier than ever before to find music that suits our tastes (however eclectic or peculiar). There is amazing, exciting, innovative music being made by all sorts of different people in all sorts of genres that we can explore and experience and fall in love with. So let’s get out there and do it.