'wards

Hello,
By now you might have heard that Low Culture has received three nominations in the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards - for best album, best traditional track (for 'Lucy Wan' - a murder ballad! with a rapper!) and best original song (for 'All You Pretty Girls' - a pop song! from 1984!). Although I wouldn't usually suggest it, you can discuss these on my messageboard, or go and shout your opinions to the wider world at the BBC messageboards at http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/mbradio2/F2142825. The awards seem to always attract some "controversy" or at the very least minor grumbling, so get on there and show your support (whether for me or someone else).

The album has also been nominated for the fRoots critics poll album of the year. This is what used to be the Radio 3 World Music awards, so its a pretty big deal to be even mentioned bearing in mind that since 2000 the award has been won exclusively by West African artists - the last English album to win was Red Rice by Eliza Carthy in 1997 in fact! With Eliza's latest, Bellowhead's Matachin and my own Low Culture it's quite a strong showing for English music though so fingers crossed etc. You can talk about that one at http://froots.net/phpBB2/index.php where they will likely be sympathetic to your cause or http://www.charliegillett.com/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=1&sid=37dc1e4e4a7da4bfeb6db0e909f1da19 where they probably won't (they don't like English music there much, but the winner is being announced on Charlie Gillets show on Fri December 6th so the discussion is already underway)

J