For a while, in my youth, I lived in this flat in London. I was skint, so I couldn't go out, but there was a pile of records which nobody liked.

Browsing through, I came to this live double album of Tim Hardin - gigging some big hall in New York. And I chiefly remember a track of Foggy Mountain Breakdown. he was obviously quite a decent banjo player, but really just above floorsinger level. If you put something like that down on record you're gonna be compared to Scruggs -obviously - but also all those peole who can REALLY play.

It seemed weird to me even then, that he should have been so ill advised to commit to plastic and posterity stuff that he wasn't absolutely superlative at. I thought then - that poor bugger's in a strange and lonely place. But then so was I, at the time.