In the spirit of Denny/Mcdonald I got LFM to play me Robin�s new version of Sandy Grey � the mix of acoustic guitars, rock drums and harmonies sounds very convincingly like an electric ballad from an English folk rock team circa 1973 � which is a way of saying I liked it.

I have just about finished my paper on Brazil � its 25 pages long and comes to the right conclusion. I think I�ll send it off tomorrow.

Laurence has replied about a link I sent him for a review by Simon Blackburn of a collection of essays about Virtue Ethics.

Last FM seeks to establish one�s musical favourites and then other members with similar tastes who are listed as one�s neighbours. For each neighbour it identifies the artists that you have in common. As far as I am concerned it is Laura Nyro, Joni Mitchell and John Martyn that provide the main bridge to the neighbourhood. Then there are a variety of artists who make up the fourth element � Sandy Denny, Fairports, Jeff Buckley, Jackson Browne, Judee Sill and sometimes Tracy Thorn.

I am surprised TT isn�t a more frequent member of my neighbourhood especially as she and EBTG are in my top three artists in my LFM charts. Miss M comes in fifth. Conscious that my listening profile tends to slot me into a particular age group and indeed my neighbourhood contains a fair number of members in their 50s, I have been adding artists from more recent decades. These include the Sundays, Lamb, P J Harvey, Tin Tin Out , Florence and the Machine and at PW�s suggestion Bats for Lashes. Carl Craig, the second generation Detroit producer falls into my top ten but obviously there aren�t enough people whose taste clusters around chilly techno and triphop influenced electronic songwriting and arranging for me to link up with members of a younger generation that way.

However, I should point out that not everyone in my neighbourhood is of the same vintage. Some of them advertise their age and there is a smattering of teens and twenties there. Its also worth noting that there�s quite a lot of jazz in my library not all from the same decade � good decade although it was.

One of the features on LFM is the ability to play selections from other peoples� libraries which are automatically added to one�s own library. I have done this with the neighbours who are judged to be closest to my preferences. The result is an introduction to new artists for the most part � although they are my closest neighbours taste-wise it doesn�t mean that our tastes are identical.