Check this guy out, he's amazing. Better than Enigma any day of the week.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7513571.stm

I recently went to see the Pentangle on their UK tour and came out with a mind roughly 20 per cent wider than when I went in. I've been listening to them on MP3 and vinyl for a while now but I was amazed at just how incredible they were live. Unfortunately I don't think I'm going to be able to go and see any local bands now without the nagging feeling that they're being more than a little bit lazy by not even attempting to play the sitar or perform a five minute double bass solo in the middle of an ancient folk ballad.
Anyhow, it set me on a small voyage of jazz discovery. I do like Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins et al but they don't set my world alight, however I have now found there's a steady trickle of really interesting new young jazz groups making very interesting and very original sounds - with the same kind of care-free don't-look-back attitude that Jansch, Renbourn, McShee and co did 40 years ago. My first new discovery was Polar Bear (post-jazz?), then The Blessing (made up of half of Portishead), and just a couple of days ago the quite incredible Portico Quartet.
Anyone else care to share any recomendations?

Discovered any great new bands, singers or didgeridoo players recently? Care to share them with us?

I'll start. I was given an album by someone called Foy Vance called Hope yesterday and was instantly blown way by it. I know little about him other than that he is from Northern Ireland and it is a rerelease having been first issued last year - presumably to little or no interest. Fantastic gospel blues balladry with a bit of Ray Lamontagne, a lot of Van Morrison (when he was good) and a hint of Joe Cocker in there as well. Sounds like it was recorded in a garden shed though.

http://www.myspace.com/foyvance

What is the most controversial musical opinion you've ever encountered?

I mean, I'm all for questioning recieved wisdom and being open minded to other people's veiws but sometimes I have to go outside and cool down when someone says something stupid in a pub debate about bands or I won't be held responsible for my actions.

A freind of mine once, in all seriousness, suggested that UB40 were superior to Bob Marley, who he dismissed as 'just pop'.

An ex girlfreind insisted throughout our relationship that Freddie Mercury couldn't sing.

Although apparently I am also capable of such infuriating opinions. I have often been pilloried for my stubborn assertion that Cast were the finest Britpop band.

Ever felt the urge to lamp someone because they claimed to prefer Madonna's version of American Pie, or thought Blaze Bayley was superior to Bruce Dickinson?

I'm getting married on Saturday - the nerves are just starting to kick in.
For our first dance we're having Button Up Your Overcoat by Sarah Vaughan. I'm not sure where it came from - I think it may have something to do with Tim Robbins singing it in The Sure Thing, my favourite actor playing one of my favourite characters in one of my favourite films. I just used to sing it a lot in a comedy fashion when we first started going out and it sort of stuck with us.
The short list included You Send Me by Sam Cooke and Let's Get It On by Marvin Gaye but anything by Bob Dylan (it's his birthday on Saturday) was instantly vetoed.

What was your choice on the special day and why?

Have you ever wanted to see some old black and white footage of a 50 year old female evangelist from Arkansas riding into a rain sodden train station in Manchester on a horse and cart to rip into some tasty blues riffs on an electric guitar?

Of course you have.

Has there ever been a more incredible female artist than Sister Rosetta Tharpe?

I'm putting together a mixtape of true originals, the first song of a genre.

Soul Makossa by Manu Dibango is regarded as the first ever disco tune.

New Rose by The Damned was the first punk single.

For Rock and Roll the two most common contenders are Good Rockin Tonight by Wynonie Harris and Rock Around the Clock by Bill Haley.

For rap I think The Sugar Hill Gang's Rapper's Delight take the crown.

Care to argue, or suggest any more?

I don't know if you can do this with iPods because I don't have one but on my MP3 player you can search for music by the year it was recorded. According to this the oldest music I have on there is Mississippi John Hurt's 1928 sessions which I listen to regularly. However this morning I was listening to some Bessie Smith on vinyl and the sleeve stated that the recordings were made between 1925 and 1930 something.

The Anthology of American Folk Music starts in 1927 because that's when Harry Smith believed that recording technology was good enough to produce accurate representations of music.

I do have one or two recordings that are slightly older (including that French bee in a jar one that was unearthed a few weeks back) on my MP3 player but I can't say I would ever listen to them out of anything other than historical curiosity.

What's the oldest music you regularly listen to and genuinely enjoy?

I note in the publicity for Solomon Burke's new album that he is still trying to get people to call him 'The King of Rock and Soul', a clumsy and contrived moniker that will surely never take off.

Elvis had lots of cool ones, The Hillbilly Hellcat, Elvis the Pelvis and of course, The King, James Brown was the Godfather of Soul, Sir Billiam of Bragg is the Bard of Barking and Bruce Springsteen is The Boss.

What are the best and worst rock and roll honorary titles?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7374846.stm

OK here's some band names which have gone through predictive text on my mobile phone and come out garbled. Some are more obvious than others, can you guess them?

mistana
purestpans
fairsopt contention
lands
showcfewwadey
hows
mout the goosle
resultusa
marijlion
grindepoco
imhol boredklm

Hmmm...time for bed I think...

After an aside from the randomiser thread earlier I have downloaded and listened to some recordings of Numbers Stations - http://www.archive.org/details/ird059 - eerie voices reading mechanically generated lists of numbers for spies to decode interspersed with short snippets of music or other sounds. Fascinating stuff and it got me googling like mad to find more interesting sounds and downloadable audio. It seems Wikipedia haven't really got a handle on this yet and it's all spread around and difficult to find.

There's quite a bit here although it's a bit random (for some reason there's a whole section for Grateful Dead concert recordings)- http://www.archive.org/details/audio

Librivox is a great project in which lots of people in the US have recorded books whose copyright has lapsed and they've put them up on the web for anyone to download and listen to. Obviously everyone has an American accent and they don't all have the passion and annunciation that Stephen Fry reading Harry Potter has but there's a lot of great stuff (Dickens, Austen, Twain etc) and it's all free.
http://librivox.org/

Here's an interesting article with download links to some pretty bizarre recordings - check out the Russian exorcism if you want to be really freaked out or listen to Jimmy Jones ordering his followers to poison themselves.
http://listverse.com/bizarre/top-10-incredible-recordings/

There's a frankly incredible amount of stuff available at the American Folklife Centre which is part of the Library of Congress. Check out the extensive collection of interviews with Black southerners in the 1930s and 40s talking about their memories of slavery. There's also a lot of feild recordings from the Lomaxes and others.
http://www.loc.gov/folklife/onlinecollections.html

There's a few sites maintained by enthusiasts like http://www.haigpit.com/page73.html which is an oral history project with recordings of people talking about mining in the Lake District and this one http://www.steamsounds.org.uk/ which has downloadable sounds of trains (is this what trainspotters listen to on their Ipods?).

Any other sources of audio gems out there?

I have spent the past three Thursday nights being deafened by cheap guitars and sozzled by free booze whilst helping to judge my local (Cambridge) band competition.

I don't get to as many gigs as I used to so I'd forgotten just how great 'local' bands can be. We forget that all the bands we hear on the radio or see on the shelves of record stores are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of people making a racket and trying to get heard out there.
And while by and large they are the best ones, often many great bands get overlooked because they aren't cocky enough or they aren't commercial enough and they never managed to lose the dreaded 'local' status.

Persuing the local band scene is a little like going to the first day at Wimbledon if you aren't up to speed on your tennis. There's some great players there but you have no idea who they are or when and where they'll be playing - and the remaining 90 per cent are chancers without a hope.

From last night's heat I was almost shocked by the quality of these jazz hip hop chaps,

http://www.myspace.com/jtreole

However having seen and heard them a few times I reckon these moody rockers are most likely to get anywhere from the local scene.

http://www.myspace.com/thewinterkings

And these country blues twangers are my personal favourites. I've seen them several times now and they are just fantastic every time - they occaisonally play further afield so make sure you check them out at a folk festival or dingy pub backroom near you.

http://www.myspace.com/theshiversband

Broken Family Band are from round our way but I think they've shaken the local tag off now.

Anyone else got the next Radiohead playing in their local every Friday night?

I'm really enjoying the Devotchka album at the moment and it is the latest in a line of Eastern European/Gypsy influenced music I've really felt a connection with. After seeing Fanfare Ciocarlia at the Cambridge Folk Festival last year I then went to see the Kocani Orkestar and both were stunning and had me leaping about like a maniac (well that's what 'er indoors thinks it looks like but I was attempting to 'dance'). I subsequently discovered a love of Beirut, Gulag Orkestar was a great album but The Flying Club Cup is just amazing and I can't stop listening to it. I've also really enjoyed Gypsy Beats and Balkan Bangers 2 (I couldn't find the first one).
It's quite rare to discover a whole new genre of music totally different to anything you've heard before and be blown away by it.

Does anyone else have any similar recomendations?

Music promo shots usually fall into a handful of unimaginative categories.

Indie rock band - Members lean against an inner city brick wall in tattered jeans and big coats and all look moodily in different directions.

Rave or hip hop group - members all try and get their sunglasses as close to a fish eye lens as possible.

Folk singer - lies in a grassy meadow gazing dreamily at the sky with a guitar and an accordian casually plonked nearby.

Etc,

However sometimes a band (or more likely their photographer) gets something a little more unusual. Supergrass occaisionaly throw up an interesting shot, the Rumble Strips seem to make a bit of an effort and Gnarls Barkley's recreations of their favourite films were genius - but here's my favourite from the past couple of years from Bromhead's Jacket.

What's you favourite band promo shot?

After hearing Eli 'Paperboy' Reed and the True Loves on Mark Lamar's show God's Jukebox the other day I dashed off to call up their MySpace page and was astonished - what a voice!

http://www.myspace.com/elipaperboyreed

Another one I discovered recently for lovers of rockin' and rollin' type shenanigans is The Hi Risers.

http://www.myspace.com/thehirisers

Any other intrepid MySpace explorers care to share their recent discoveries?

Further to the cover thread below in which people were suggesting whose ugly fizzog they'de like to staring out of the cover, does anyone have a suggestion for someone they desperatly want to see interviewed inside the mag?

I don't think he would be quite deserving of the cover but I would love to read an in depth peice on Mark Lamarr. His taste and attitude towards music is remarkable and I would love to see a pic of him standing in front of his record collection.

Also Liege and Leif is 40 years old next year. Wouldn't it be grat to see messrs Thompson, Nicol, Swarbrick, Mattacks and Hutchings around a table to chart how it all came about?

Apologies for my erratic memory/magazine buying if either of these have been done and I've missed 'em.

OK it's a lazy one and I'm sure you been through it once or twice before but I thought it might appeal to some High Fidelity fans like me with short attention spans who can't quite bring themselves to be insightful and verbose this late at night/early in the morning.

So it's simply top five favourite singers. One for the blokes, one for the ladies.

Nothing to do with how good the songs they sing are, whether they wrote them, how intellectual, influential, famous, important or generally nice they are. Just simply the quality of their voice and how they use it.

What the hell, I'll start.

Sam Cooke
Blind Willie Johnson
Stevie Wonder
Van Morrison
Captain Beefheart

Aretha Franklin
Etta James
Kate Rusby
Sandy Denny
June Tabor

You?

Further to recent debates on the value of percussive vocals and Jay Z's suitability for a summer rock festival I propose a sharing of hip hop gems. I've never really found a magazine that covers new and interesting hip hop in the way I like to read it and I rarely hang around at house parties with youths in baseball caps and sportswear so I often find it difficult to find new stuff to listen to.

Apart from the obvious stuff - Kanye West, NWA, Nas, Beastie Boys, Public Enemy, Run DMC and, yes, Jay Z - I have also recently (past couple of years) discovered and enjoyed,

Skinnyman - Council Estate of Mind
Mitchell Brothers - A Breath of Fresh Attire
Madvillain - Madvillainy
Peanut Butter Wolf's the Jukebox 45s
Plan B - Who Needs Actions when You've Got Words
Roots - Things Fall Apart
The Pharcyde - Bizarre Ride II
Klashnekoff - The Sagas of
Jedi Mind Tricks - Violent By Design
RJD2 - Deadringer
Jehst - Falling Down
...oh yeah and... Immortal Technique - Revolutionary Vol 2

Anyone care to offer up some recomendations or, at the very least, start up a Nas/Jay Z style 'beef'?

I was a bit annoyed when I finally got round to hearing Cajun Dance Party recently and found that there isn't anything even remotely Cajun about them and that they are, in fact, just another coma inducingly tedious indie rock band. You know the sort, skinny jeans... angular guitar... shouty vocals...zzzzzzzz...

It is also very doubtful that James Brown or George Clinton were an influence on Grand Funk Railroad and the Eagles of Death Metal are not death metal (nor indeed bird of prey).

Any other bands who should be reported under the trades descriptions act?