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I present a three hour show on 6 Music which includes two featured concerts from the Ö÷²¥´óÐã music archive and four featured sessions. Then we play lots of other records.

The bits in between the music consist of me passing on the necessary basic information on the music and, with the help of the listeners, we spin and add to various discussion threads. Recent subjects have included "What is the best example of drumming on a record", "What song most epitomises the 1980s" and "Who was the greatest coat wearer in popular music history."

There's more to the show than the music we play from the archive. That said it provides the basic structure around which we scatter all sorts of new and old tunes. When I first took over the slot I was determined to explore the music archive much more than it had been investigated by my predecessors. I guess the idea was to boldly go (excuse the split infinitive) as far into the archive as possible. So far, so good. We've managed to repeat old sessions that probably haven't been aired since they were first broadcast. And most of them have been well worth the effort.

That effort can't be classified as proper work as it involves looking through books and listening to lots of music. That's how we rediscover Peel sessions and other recordings from throughout Ö÷²¥´óÐã radio including concerts and all the sessions that we've had on 6 Music since we launched in 2002. The great thing about the archive is that it keeps growing with every session and live recording the Ö÷²¥´óÐã makes. That gives us such a wide variety of stuff from which to choose. Once material has been chosen, we order it up and wait for it to arrive.

On any given show we can mix up a session from The Smiths with Gil Scott-Heron playing at Glastonbury in 1989 and a Sonic Youth concert from London's South Bank with more recent sessions from or The Shins alongside older ones from Roxy Music or The Soft Machine. And every time I worry that we might be getting low on potential material - some more arrives. Or I'm reminded of something we played a while ago which is worth repeating.

There are some holy grails; some older recordings that I fear may be lost forever. I hold out the hope that, as with rediscovered Hancocks, some of the lost music archive recordings may turn up one day.

There was a flurry of excitement in my part of the 6 Music office last week. Admittedly it wasn't a very recognisable flurry. And we're tucked away in the corner anyway so nobody takes any notice of us anyway. Truth be told, it was more a conversation I was having with researcher and sometime 6 Music Freak Zone Professor Justin Spear. He was on the trail of a session Captain Beefheart had done for John Peel which we were hoping to repeat on the show. For a brief moment we thought we had it in our grasp. Or at least in the post. Sadly, the trail has now gone cold but we're still hoping it will turn up one day. It could be sitting on a cassette somewhere. In a drawer. Next to an old copy of .

Gideon Coe's show is on 6 Music Monday - Thursday from 9pm