The lineup for this years Hard Working Class Heroes Festival has been announced.  Taking place in the POD complex over the course of 3 nights (28th, 29th and 30th of September) HWCH '07 will see almost 100 Irish up and coming (and indeed some more established) bands given the chance to perform around Dublin in a festival like atmosphere. 

For me, the outstanding bands in this year's line up are Alphastates, Ham Sandwich, and Dark Room Notes.  Alphastates were the first band I saw at my first HWCH.  A cold shower inducing fusion of sultry soul and near erotic electronica; the Alphastates sound is augmented perfectly by the breathless vocals of Catherine Dowling.   If you don't believe me, check out the video for Kiss Me, a track from their 2004 debut Made from Sand.

Those of you who've graced the Key Notes blog before will already know of my admiration of Ham Sandwich.  Currently working on their, as yet untitled, debut album they are undoubtedly one of Irelands finest live bands. Having toured relentlessly over the last 18 months or so you can expect a full house when Ham Sandwich hit HWCH.  I don't think you're likely to see Lionel Richie there though.

Dark Room Notes are not only the saviours of wet and windy Monday evenings in Whelan's but also the purveyors of some of the finest electronic indie you're likely to hear.  Usually all it takes is a Casio to draw comparisons between *insert band name here* and the likes of Depeche Mode and Joy Division but in the case of Dark Room Notes it's entirely warranted.  It's a long time since a band excited me this much.   The video for Love like Nicotine is available to view below.

The full line up of Irish acts performing is available here.  Who are you looking forward to seeing most? 

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If you managed to catch Daft Punk’s show at Oxegen in July then you’ll have seen the trailer for their new movie. ‘Daft Punk’s Electroma’ is currently showing at the IFI in Temple Bar in Dublin.

The soundtrack also plays an essential part in shaping this faceless, speechless story. Daft Punk fans may be disappointed to learn that the film doesn’t feature any music old or new from the helmet-wearing pair. Instead, the choice of tracks ranges from classical pieces by Chopin and Haydn to more modern sounds from Brian Eno, Curtis Mayfield and Todd Rundgren – all scrupulously selected to serve the narrative.

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The days of record company lawyers sending intimidating letters to music fans suspected of illegally downloading and/or uploading copyrighted music may be coming to an end. At least in the EU.

If it happens it will be as a consequence of some action in that plush auditorium there to the right. No it's not Whelan's after its ongoing refurbishment, it's the main chamber of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in Luxembourg. There is a strong likelihood that the ECJ's judges may soon rule that ISPs should not hand over to record companies details of an individual subscriber who is suspected of illegally downloading music.

An 'Advocate-General' produced advice for the ECJ on a case in Spain where a group representing the interests of copyright holders were requesting, in the context of a civil action, that an ISP (Telefonica) hand over information that would help them identify individual subscribers. The advice to the ECJ was that only in criminal cases - not in civil cases such as this - would the ISP be compelled to hand over the requested data. If the record companies can't get that data, they can't - obviously - get their lawyers to write those letters.

In the past the ECJ have followed the advice of an 'Advocate-General' in three-quarters of cases. If they do so this time it will put an almighty plank in what has been a principle reactive strategy pursued by record companies and their umbrella industry organisations since the arrival of music downloads. Maybe this will get them to focus proactively on more important aspects for the future of the music industry such as: removing copy-protection from MP3s, reducing the cost of a download and using more innovative pricing models.

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When recently blogging about what might possibly be the best ever pricing model for selling MP3s I mentioned how EMI were the only major record label to allow MP3s of their artists' music to be sold without copy protection. Now however they are being joined by Universal. Well, sort of. Let me explain.

Over the weekend Universal records said they would start selling MP3s free from the shackles of Digital Rights Management. A welcome move, but as always the devil is in the detail. For example:

• Their move is an experiment and not a full commitment to go down the route of DRM-free MP3s. They will evaluate how things are at the end of January before deciding if they will stick with this strategy.
• They will not sell songs on iTunes that are free of copy-protection.
• Tracks will not be sold indivdiually but by the album. Which defies logic as consumers shift more and more towards cherry picking the tracks they want to buy. Not to mention acts such as Ash who are moving towards releasing singles only.

The sort of good news is that they will sell these tracks for 99 US cents, 30 cents less than EMI are selling non-copy protected MP3s. Still twice the price they should be sold at, if you ask me. But some competition is better than none at this early stage in the whole digital music game.

What about the other 2 major labels who are still selling their MP3s with copy protection? I'd say give them just 6 months and they will be on board. And then competition will hopefully drive prices down. And maybe to even zero cents one day...

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France usually shuts down for the month of August. The local boulangerie closes for three weeks and you've to search for a bakery that's still open. Families clog up motorways as they head for massive campsites and holiday villages, and the president goes nuclear-reactor-selling in Libya and paparazzi-hunting in the USA. Even the usually-invincible Lyon still seem to be en vacances, losing to a late late Toulouse goal in the second weekend of the Ligue 1 season.

Luckily for Dublin's Francophiles, there's no summer holiday for French Friday. The Gallic-flavoured club night keeps its regular third-Friday-of-the-month appointment at Thomas House on Thomas Street in Dublin this Friday night, 17 August.

If you've never been, you can expect to hear the creme de la creme of French music (as featured on this blog) and party hard with Dublin's huge French community. As usual, entry costs zero euro and rien de centimes.

To get you in the mood, here's the single remix of 'Cassius 99' by Cassius:

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Anyway, last night while surfing the megahertz we picked up France Bleu (an oldies station we never usually listen to) just as they were playing a classic French hit, ‘Marcia Baila’ by Les Rita Mitsouko. Sacre Bleu! Now we already know and love this song – it’s a daytime radio favourite – but last night, far from France, it sounded so fresh, so exotic, so… French!

However, apart from their music they will always be remembered in France for a notorious TV incident in the '80s. Ringer was a guest on a chat-show, and beside her on the couch was none other than Serge Gainsbourg. It was common knowledge that Ringer had appeared in porn movies as a young actress, and that night she was discussing the experience calmly and dispassionately. At that time, though, Gainsbourg seemed to be making a determined effort to be as boorish and unpleasant as possible in public, and in an unforgivable lack of gentlemanliness he began repeatedly calling Ringer a ‘pute!’ (‘whore!’).

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With some of Dublin's live music venues closed for reconstruction, it seems that every tent, marquee and big top in Ireland will be mobilised into active rock n'roll duty. But what if it's a windy night and, just as Arcade Fire walk on stage, the tent blows away? Can you take that chance?

Well, in Paris there's a neat line in alternative venues: barges on the Seine. We went to one, the Alternat, for a punk night a while back. The boat was moored at Bercy, just upriver from the Gare de Lyon and Austerlitz, and the gig took place in the hold of the barge. It's a strange feeling to be a a concert and literally rock and roll with the music - looking left we could see out the portholes as police boats cruised up and down and their wash lapped against the hull.

The barges are extremely popular as nightspots. Perhaps the best known among Paris music fans is the Batofar (above) - a fire-engine-red former lightship which actually comes from Ireland. It was restored in the nineties and opened as a venue in 1999. Docked at Tolbiac (not far from the Alternat), it can hold 300 punters in its venue space and hosts French and international DJs and electronica acts.

Another much-loved floating venue is the Cabaret Pirate (left), known to all Parisians by its former name of La Guinguette Pirate. As the name suggests, it looks like a pirate ship - and just like the Batofar it regularly hosts top DJs and dance acts. However, the old Guingette's most popular shows were always its dance nights - salsa, zouk, reggae and so forth. The new venue's programme seems to feature less world sounds, which is a shame - discos and electro nights in Paris can be intimidatingly hip and cool, whereas dance nights are licence to dance and flirt shamelessly (so we're told).

In Dublin there's a distinctive red barge moored near Patrick Kavanagh's statue on the Grand Canal - it serves as a French restaurant. There was also U2's video for 'Gloria', where the superstars-to-be played on the deck of a canal barge. Perhaps some old boat can be spruced up, moored at the Docklands and used as a small venue? It would surely be a lot less leakier than a tent in a park in October.

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Will Ferrell Advertises i-Pod

Will Ferrell Does Phantom of the Opera

Will Ferrell Sings to Lance Armstrong

Will Ferrell & Jack Black sing @ The Oscars

Will Ferrell Does Air Supply

Will Ferrell Does Elton John

Will Ferrell Does Neil Diamond

 More Cowbell (thanks to Shane H)

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French music fans talk about ‘la pop anglaise’, by which they mean the classic English indie sound of melodic Beatlesy songs. Amazingly, some French people of our acquaintance use this as a pejorative term for what they see as the frivolous frothiness of the pop we know and love – for example: “Peter Bjorn and John? Oui, pas mal… mais ce n’est que la pop anglaise!” But then, for a lot of the French rock/pop audience a song’s melody is much less important than its words. Some Irish singer-songers would approve, we feel.

Rhesus are a three-piece from Grenoble in the east of France, and they make music which is pop anglaise all the way down to its English lyrics. In 2004, on the back of their early EPs, French music weekly Les Inrockuptibles named them as winners of their annual CQFD (Ceux Qu’il Faut Decouvrir, or Those You Must Discover) prize for most promising new act. They made good on this expectation with their 2005 debut ‘Sad Disco’, a fine collection of melodic indie-pop.

Their second album, ‘The Fortune Teller Said’, will be released on September 24 in France (no news of any UK or Ireland release or concerts), and the first single taken from it is called ‘Hey Darling’. It’s not up to the high standard of the songs from the first album, so there’s a serious risk of second-album syndrome here. Having said that, it’s still miles more enjoyable than current French indie heroes Kaolin and Mick Est Tout Seul (the latter being the solo project of the singer from a band called Mickey 3D), neither of which are our thing.

God save Rhesus and their pop anglaise, and let's hope that second album is a cracker. Check out their website and MySpace page for more info and tracks. In the meantime, here’s ‘Hey Darling’:

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Live at the Awer IDP Camp, Gulu, Uganda  (July 2007)

Review Snapshot:
This gig was nothing like any I have ever been to before. I’ve been scratching my head trying to come up with a frame of reference, and all I’ve drawn are blanks. Was this a great gig? Well though was nothing like Toots & The Maytals in Vicar St, it was a different type of good. It was one of the most memorable gigs I have ever been to, the atmosphere was amazing, (the music more often than not wasn’t!), hell, it was probably a once in a lifetime experience.

The CLUAS Verdict? 8.5 out of 10

Full review:
We had arrived in Gulu two days previously, hot, sweaty and sore after a seemingly never ending bus ride from Kampala, a journey broken only by infrequent stops either to allow half the bus time to piss against its back tyre, or chain smoke in petrol stations.

Gulu itself is a relatively small town in the north of Uganda, and for the last 20 years it has been largely inaccessible. It was from here that the LRA rebellion really took hold, and some of the worst violence, in one of Africa’s most brutal conflicts, took place. We had come, taking advantage of a tenuous ceasefire, to visit the IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) camps, to experience life in what is still officially a war zone, and to sate some unexplainable, magnetic, fixation. The last place I expected to find myself was in the middle of a crowd, in the middle of an IDP camp, bopping my ass off to the “cream” of local Ugandan talent.

The concert was organized by “Invisible Children” an NGO set up to care for the child victims of the civil war. “Fallout Boy,” an America band, have become involved with I.C. and were over to shoot a video in Awer camp. As a token of gratitude, and to relieve the monotony of camp life, I.C. were putting on this free gig, where local artists would perform. I don’t think Fallout Boy’s brand of punk is quite in touch with the average Ugandan’s tastes…

We arrived an hour and a half late for the gig (this being Africa!), but (eh, this being Africa again!) it turned out that we were actually an hour and a half early. The stage was set up at the corner of the main square, and a couple of hundred kids, as well as a few token alcoholics (banana beer breath smells BAD) were milling around the stage, grooving away to the Top of the Uganda’s Pops, which was booming from the speakers. Being brutally honest Ugandan pop music is dire, consisting of pre-fabricated synth drum tracks, and Casio preset keyboard lines. In the rush to modernity the people seem to have forgotten their rich trad history and the drumming that can fire up any hoolie.

Most acts here don’t have backing bands, and cost must have been a factor for the gig, so all the acts sang over their CDs, or tapes. This is the first time I had seen something like this outside of a kids birthday party, but given the occasion, the enthusiasm of the crowd (which had by now swollen to well over a thousand), and the performers exhilaration, it all somehow worked.

Five acts in all played, though the language barrier kept me from getting all but one of their names, Lady Jane. In a tantalizing brush with celebrity however, the headline act did get changed into his stage gear in the back of our car. Some of the tunes were great, some were awful, but the crowd responded to them all energetically, and the day was a memorable, bizarre, and ultimately feel-good experience. The undoubted highlight came when one of the rappers pulled a group of children from the front row, only for one of the kids to grab a microphone and rock the crowd, and the mic, like a bad ass pro. They did have to cut him off when it all got just a little too raunchy, but it was something you just don’t see everyday.

The acts will probably never hit the big time, or even make it out of Uganda, and hopefully the situation that gave rise to the camps will never occur on these shores, but should you get the opportunity, you will never forget it!

Daragh Murray

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