'I Drove All Night' is a song with an interesting history. Most people think of it as a Roy Orbison song - and it was originally written for him, in 1987.

However, it was Cyndi Lauper who first had a hit with it, in 1989. Years later, Celine Dion attempted to wrestle the song to death with her super-strength larynx.

Now The Maccabees have rescued the song from the realm of embarrassing cheese with a slowed-down, spooked, XX-style version. It's rather beautiful, I think, and nicely teases out the note of sinister obsession latent in the line: "I woke you from your sleep, to make love to you."

It's been a bad week for musicians looking to hang on to their dignity. At a gig in Liverpool the other night Morrissey quit the stage after just two songs after being hit by a drink hurled from the crowd.

A few days before that, a few moments into a show in Dundee, Calvin Harris was struck by a rogue shoe, causing him to collapse to the floor, clutching his face in agony. In the interests of journalistic record we reprint a photo of the incident, which is not – we repeat not - the slightest bit funny.

Pic courtesy of The Courier

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Apparently Calvin was confidently bellowing "Hellooo Dundee!" at the very moment of impact, but of course there's nothing funny about that either.

Seriously, though: who throws a shoe? Especially if the culprit is, presumably, someone who's already paid to get into the gig. Still, maybe shoe-hurling is a sign of affection in Scotland, a bit like cheering when England get knocked out of the World Cup, or dropping Temazepam in a close friend's drink.

The thing is, you can tell a lot about a musician from the way they respond to provocation. Morrissey probably over-reacted slightly by cancelling the gig with a terse "Goodbye" (Calvin soldiered on) - but neither of them unleashed a salvo of F-bombs, or waded, Axl Rose-style, into the crowd to duff the culprit up. Both performers exhibited a very British kind of irritation, the live equivalent of going, tsk, typical.

Contrast with the childishly belligerent behaviour of Josh Homme, who tends to greet audience misdemeanours with a deeply unpleasant line in cock-obsessed vitriol. Here he is, threatening to "beat the shit" out of a young bottle-thrower. "Lift him up," he instructs the vast Norwegian festival crowd, "so I can kick him in the fucking face". The poor kid's only about 12.

It's not the first time Homme has singled out an audience member like this. On the 2005 live album 'Over The Years And Through The Woods' he accuses one unruly crowd-member of being a "total cocksmoker" and "throwing shit at me". Then, just in case you failed to apprehend the full extent of this guy's overwhelming cocksmokerishness, the QOTSA frontman follows it up with: "Hey cocksmoker, eat a bag of dicks."

It seems like the classy and mature thing to do, when faced with a hostile crowd, is to adopt a battle-hardened determination, and just get on with the gig. Emo bands are good at this, perhaps because they're so used to being scorned by metal fans, they no longer even notice the flagons of hot piss arcing inexorably stage-ward. Here's My Chemical Romance at Download 2007 - note the full-throated cry of "WANKEEERS!" at 0.23, so evocative of the unique charm and open-mindedness of heavy metal fans (they bottled Lethal Bizzle, too, the year after).

It's a measure of MCR's professionalism, abhorrence of violence, and general good blokeishness that they weathered the bottle-storm and completed the gig without calling the audience a bunch of cocksmokers. At the opposite end of the humility scale, here's Nickelback's Chad Kroeger acting like a total douche at a gig in Portugal. "Do you guys wanna watch some rock and roll?" he asks, having been struck by a plastic bottle launched from the crowd. "Or do you wanna go home?"

By rights, that question should have been met with a sudden stampede for the exits. As it is, Kroeger didn't stick around to find out – he cut the gig short and strode offstage, giving his own paying fans the finger.

The lesson to draw from all this? Getting hit in the face by a bottle undoubtedly sucks. But it doesn't suck quite as much as paying £25 for a gig ticket and then only being able to enjoy two songs because the guy you've paid to see is having an almighty strop.

The other week I went to Malawi, to the Vinspired Lake Of Stars festival (Kenya Airways - good nut selection), where The Maccabees had been invited to play.

You would have read about this already in the mag, of course. Well here's exactly what it looked like, but moving:

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See the Maccabees in Malawi photo gallery at NME.COM/photos too.

Somewhat ludicrously, it seems Jamie 'Afro' Archer is being positioned as the 'rock' contestant on this year's X Factor – despite the fact that he looks like a cross between Sideshow Bob, the bloke from Toploader, and Toad from 'Mario Kart'.

The Daily Mail are calling him the next Susan Boyle, potentially "another hairy angel in the making". He's a hairy something, alright. The other night he did Primal Scream's 'Rocks' (or 'Get Your Rocks Off', as X Factor producers seem to think it's called):

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He's also tried his hand at Oasis' 'Stop Crying Your Heart Out', with equally painful results.

And, most famously, he's done 'Sex On Fire', which got written up as if it was a moment of transcendent genius – rather than a risible bit of shouty pub karaoke.

Thing is, if he's supposed to be the 'rock' contestant, why doesn't he cover some real rock songs. Pantera's 'Mouth For War', for example. I think we'd all enjoy that.

Seems like the buzz surrounding Ellie Goulding has really ignited in the past few days.

Radar Editor Jaimie Hodgson interviewed her backstage in Bristol the other night, not long after her debut TV performance had gone out on 'Later... With Jools Holland'. Watch 'Under The Sheets':

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Meanwhile, here's the official video for the song.

Hats off to photographer Roger Sargent for putting together this enormously affectionate tribute to NME writer Steven Wells, who passed away earlier this year.