Maidenhead United's Sam Beasant tells Paul Newman about emulating his dad's heroics

1. Laurence Sterne, Laurie Lee, Compton Mackenzie, Noël Coward. What's the connection?

The electric guitar has survived ritual stage smashing and the rise of electronic pop. But now it faces a bigger challenge: guitar makers are running out of wood.

Dave Grohl dreams that Kurt Cobain is still alive and they have reformed Nirvana.

Back to basics time for the Foo Fighters. Well, kinda.

Just because it was recorded in Dave Grohl's garage doesn't make Wasting Light garage-rock, even if it was captured on analogue tape by Nirvana producer Butch Vig.

Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl was declared a God-like genius at the Shockwave NME awards and dedicated the prize to former Nirvana bandmate Kurt Cobain.

By my reckoning, Michael is the sixth posthumous album by Michael Jackson, albeit the first with any serious claim on containing a majority of original new material.

Fans across the world mourned when chemical dependencies prematurely robbed us of such musical greats as Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison and Keith Moon, to name but a few.

At a time when it's widely assumed that Jack White and a handful of unknown indie chums merits the accolade, Them Crooked Vultures is a supergroup worthy of the term, in the classic rock tradition of Blind Faith and ELP.

A band picking up some "blog hype" (see below) are the young Canadian band Braids (right). Based in Montreal and comprised of two girls and two boys, the band are unsigned but have released two EPs, with talk of new material to come in the first half of next year. They play a sort of spacey, experimental pop that calls to mind Animal Collective, Broken Social Scene and Telepathe. Download two of their tracks, including the wonderful "Liver and Tan", at tinyurl.com/ya7q5x3.