I stopped buying fRoots roughly 10 years ago, when Ian A told someone on the fRoots letter's page to 'fuck off and start their own magazine if they don't like his' or words to that effect. Funnily enough, he'd said the exact same thing the issue before hand and I'd agreed with him - in that case the recipient of his anger seemed really as though he needed to be told to fuck off - but the second time... well, my memory tells me that it was a harmless enough letter which got an extremely rude reply. And that was the moment I finally had enough of his annoyingly egotistical 'more-important-knowledgeable-and-special-than-thou' behaviour.

So, I stopped buying it every issue. I've bought it since then maybe once a year. I don't even really go for the double CD issues as they went through a phase with seemingly a lot of Parisian produced African music, which for me 9 times out of 10 means exceedingly glossy and over produced African music. I don't like any of my music exceedingly over produced and glossy, so I stopped buying those. I have first heard some great things from previous CDs though - I especially remember the recording of Bob Copper singing Rags & Old Iron.

However, Ian A seems, from a distance, to have a slightly milder editorial & personal slant now and I'm slowly warming to the magazine again. Certainly, I sincerely hope it doesn't close. Colin Irwin and Andrew Cronshaw especially I consider very knowledgeable, interesting and reliable writers. In my eyes Ian A does deserve this award, as I consider fRoots to have been an important publication - However I'm extremely glad he wasn't awarded it ten or even five years ago as I have the feeling his already mightily swollen head would have exploded.

Good luck Ian, I hope fRoots continues for a good long while yet. Oh - and in reference to the discussion on your message board re Mumford & Sons - go ahead, do an issue with all the blighters in one fell swoop - someone mentioned Nick Cave - ask them interesting questions and it'll be an interesting piece.