Black keys

Feist and Mastodon have covered each other's songs to celebrate this year's Record Store Day and you can hear the covers now by scrolling down to the bottom of the page and clicking.

Among the residents of Treme, David Simon’s HBO drama series about the inhabitants of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, you’ll find a character called Delmond. Delmond, a talented jazz trumpeter, is a deeply conflicted individual. In the person of his father, he is tied to the ruined city, its historic music and its obscure ritual cultures. And yet, he is drawn to the East coast, where the ensemble in which he plays is in considerable demand.

Alexandra Palace, where All Tomorrow's Parties holds its now yearly I'll Be Your Mirror event - headlined in 2011 by Portishead - has received a £320,000 grant from English Heritage for "urgent repairs".

Just before Christmas, you may remember, I asked for your 2011 Top Tens, in response to my lengthy end-of-year effort.

Florence And The Machine, Cee Lo Green and Paul McCartney also feature on new tribute compilation

Jay-Z and La Roux also pick up gongs

Thanks, once again, to all of you who submitted your Top Tens of 2010 to the blog at the end of the year. I’ve now applied the dark mathematics and come up with a Top 50 from them, which provides an interesting - healthy, to be honest - contrast to my own list. The winner was ahead of the pack by a mile, incidentally…

Among other things I’ve failed to blog about this year, it occurs to me I’ve been particluarly slack on the subject of garage rock. A quick attempt to make amends today, with three of my favourites, before I get round to putting together a 2010 chart of sorts.

Followill's play massive gig in Hyde Park

I’ve just had a look at all your suggestions on the Best Of 2010 blog from last week, and managed to crunch them all into a chart of sorts.