I make a simple statement of personal taste and I'm accused of elitism? Much of my early musical education came care of my older brother who was passionate about the guitar - I got everything from Martin Carthy, Nic Jones, Micky Jones, Derek Bailey, Sonny Sharrock, Hans Reichel, Fred Frith, Daevid Allen, Robert Frip, Frank Zappa, Roy Buchanan, etc. all of whom I dearly love to this day but I still find the essence of the thing in Bailey's playing. As a young teenager I used to sit enchanted by Derek Bailey during Company Week at The Roundhouse; no sense of any elitism or pretension, just the pure beauty of sound and the craft of musicianship. Moral superiority? Wind in your neck, man!

Never did get Richard Thomson though - as musical dead-ends go they don't any deader than that, but that's just me. I like my rock out there, my jazz free and my folk trad, but each to their own, and the guitar is everyman's!