The five-string banjo, guitar, cavaquinho, mandolin, berimbau, various bits and pieces.
Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net
See 'heroes'. I'd also like to meet some samba, bluegrass and cajun musicians. I love meeting 'old-time' musicians especially. Mind you, Bill Keith, Leon Hunt and Max Cavalera ('the Bob Marley of metal') have been top of me list for a coupla years now...
I like noises made by people hitting, plucking or blowing into bits of wood, metal and plastic. To me that's 'music'. Playing other people's records doesn't make you a musician, but a lot of 'DJs' these days seem to think it does. Turntablism is a different matter, as are proper sound systems. These days every other bugger you meet is a 'DJ' - they seem to forget that Dave Lee Travis was a 'DJ'. So was Noel Edmonds - that's the heritage you're dealing with.
Also, there's too much sampling, regurgitating and theft going on. The current trend is: find something someone else has done, nick it, put it in a machine, make it shit, flog it.
The kind of stuff I like could probably be squeezed into these categories: metal, hardcore punk, samba, bluegrass, cajun, blues, 'alternative' country, reggae. I'm getting into a few jug-bands from the '30s. I advise anyone who's into hip-hop to check out some of the jug-band stuff - that's where it began.
Loads, a few of which are: Carandiru, Once Upon a Time in the West, anything by Kurosawa, Dead Man's Shoes, Aguirre: Wrath of God, Novocento, Deliverance (of course - love the book too), A Room for Romeo Brass, Meet the Feebles, Evil Dead II, most Japanese horrors.
Not big on rushing home at set times to gouch out, but I've got these types of things on disc: Deadwood, Oz, The Sopranos, Lost, South Park, Match of the Day, I'm Alan Partridge, Jam, Stella Street.
Graphic Novels: From Hell, Watchmen, Dark Knight, etc. 'Proper' books: Murakami - Kafka on the Shore, Alex Bellos - Futebol: the Brazilian Way of Life, Gordon Burn - Happy Like Murderers, Moby Dick.
Rorschach (above), Victor Lewis-Smith, Bruce Lee, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley, Earl Scruggs, Bill Keith, Curtis Eller, Shane Meadows, Pele, Burning Spear, Klaus Kinski, Sergio Leone, MC Pitman (the only British 'rapper' talkin about proper stuff), Jello Biafra, Max Cavalera. Also, the guy in Brasilia who sold me my second berimbau (he's at the base of the TV tower, if you ever go), my fiancée's dad (Senhor Almir dos Santos), and the Chesterfield-based luthier Neil Bradshaw, who's the only man I'd let near my banjo with a hammer.