As this column celebrates its fifth birthday, we'd like you to suggest songs with commemorative themesLook at this. It's the first ever Readers Recommend blog, posted five years ago on 1 September 2005. The theme was change. Almost everyone posted un... more info

(Big Dada)Roots Manuva has already released a dub version of one of his records – 2002's Dub Come Save Me – and, in 2008, commissioned DJ/producer Wrongtom to produce a bonus disc of dub reworkings of tracks from his fourth LP, Slime and ... more info

An eclectic set of nominations from a horribly subjective topicThat joke isn't funny any more, someone once sang, but which jokes were funny in the first place? Humour is a horribly subjective thing, and asking readers to post their favourite songs w... more info

Pop does intuitively what brand managers work years to learn – create vivid images and distil ideas into single hits of feelingEarlier this year, Black Eyed Peas leader will.i.am gave an interview to the Wall Street Journal about his group's su... more info

As he gets ready to conduct the Vespers for the 19th time, John Eliot Gardiner explains how it was Monteverdi's masterpiece that made him choose a career in musicMy relationship with Monteverdi goes back to when I was eight. The great French pedagogu... more info

Queen's Hall, EdinburghThis programme of American and antipodean choral works, from Ars Nova Copenhagen and director Paul Hillier, certainly tied in with the festival's New World theme – but it also showcased the vocal ensemble's talent for con... more info

With one band Nick Cave has a carefully built musical legacy. With his other, he can visit his 'lower self' and make chaotic noise. Alexis Petridis meets GrindermanYou would be hard-pushed to call the video for Grinderman's new single Heathen Child a... more info

Yesterday's sound today: how Jim Jones and Rupert Orton turned the clock back to 1955. By Steve JelbertAlthough the pair of them have already outlived Elvis Presley, Jim Jones and Rupert Orton are getting used to being called newcomers. As the voice ... more info

(World Village)Described by his record company as "part oud-flailing Hendrix, part transmitter of ancient culture", Hassan Erraji is a blind Moroccan multi-instrumentalist who has studied north African folk styles and western classical violin and pia... more info

Musicians don't often end up on FBI watch lists, but the Last Poets did, thanks to their links with the Black Panthers. Dorian Lynskey looks back at a time when pop and politics collided as never beforeOne day last December, Umar Bin Hassan of the La... more info