Dateline early 2005, and the CLUAS gaffer has summoned your then Dublin-based correspondent to an urgent editorial meeting:

CLUAS gaffer: I have a hunch that the French indie scene is about to take over the world. As an Irish music webzine, we obviously need someone there to cover it. This would involve arduous hours of swanning around Paris with moody, hyper-intellectual French actresses who take their clothes off for art. As every other CLUAS writer is currently locked inside Whelan's, it'll have to be you.

Your correspondent: For the sake of music, I will make that sacrifice [*deep sigh, hand to the brow*]. And fair play to Art!

And so we landed Seine-side and settled into Chateau French Letter, official residence of the CLUAS Foreign Correspondent (Paris). As it happens, Chateau French Letter is near 5 rue de Verneuil, which was the home of none other than Serge Gainsbourg, perhaps France's only true great pop star. Gainsbourg lived there with his legendary partner, Jane Birkin, and their daughter Charlotte, herself known to make a fine record. The house has stood empty since Gainsbourg's death in 1991, but Charlotte lives nearby with her husband and children.

You can see what attracted Gainsbourg to the house and location. The street-side is a large wall with a double entrance, ensuring some privacy. And it's just round the corner from Saint Germain, where even today the wealthy and successful of Paris like to go clubbing.

Two bits of trivia: (1) Anecdotal evidence has it that despite his unkempt personal appearance Gainsbourg liked to keep his home scrupulously tidy and well-ordered; (2) the cover photo for his album 'L'Homme A La Tête De Choux' was taken in the courtyard of his home, featuring a statue of that name that once stood there.

As you'd imagine, the house on rue de Verneuil has become a place of pilgrimage for Gainsbourg fans. The outside wall (right) is covered in graffiti and there are tourists taking photos outside it on most days. However, there isn't a plaque or any official indication that a major figure of modern French culture once lived there.

But that may change. It's apparently the intention of his family to convert the house into a museum dedicated to the life and works of Serge Gainsbourg, with the high cost being a major stumbling block. To this end an exhibition on Gainsbourg last autumn at the Cité de la Musique in Paris helped to put the singer's legacy back into the spotlight - both Birkin and Charlotte Gainsbourg were prominent supporters of the show.

And the focus on Gainsbourg will continue next year with the release of a biopic on the man. The film has already garnered some tragic pre-release attention: Lucy Gordon, the English actress who plays Jane Birkin, killed herself on 20 May of this year, just days after the first private screening of the final cut.

There are two other must-see locations on the Serge tour of Paris - the metro station at Lilas that inspired his first hit, 'Le Poinçonneur Des Lilas', and his family plot at the cemetery in Montparnasse where visitors leave metro tickets from Lilas. (Across from Serge's resting place is the black slab of Samuel Beckett's grave, where fans leave bananas as a reference to 'Krapp's Last Tape'.)

So, in memory of our erstwhile neighbour, here's the fantastic 'Initials BB' and one of those days when Serge looked untouchably cool:

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Here's a tune that's on French radio almost as much as the traffic reports, and we figure there's a good chance you'll be hearing it on the Eire-waves very soon too.

The guy's name is Freddy McQuinn. Despite his Anglophone (almost Irish) name he's apparently a born Parisian, though he's spent many years in London. But you can hear the French phrasing when he sings.

McQuinn was a fairly popular DJ for many years, mostly as part of a collective called Marathon Men who had a soul-funk-electronica sound. (Think of Gilles Peterson's taste in tunes and you'll get the idea.) But for his first solo album, 'Exile On Brick Lane', he's become something of a jazz-soul troubadour, playing acoustic guitar onstage with a band.

Your blogger really isn't into jazz-soul-pop as anything other than aural wallpaper to have on when Chateau French Letter needs cleaning. But one of McQuinn's tunes, the one with airplay ubiquity, has us putting down the feather-duster for a closer listen.

The song is called 'Chasing Rainbows', and that rather bland title is a good indicator of the genre: coffee-table jazz pop à la  Jamie Cullum. But while this song's syncopated rhythm and be-bop trumpet line may sound familiar, McQuinn manages to put some personality into the track. His French phrasing gives the vocal line a slightly off-kilter feel, and the lyrics have an agreeable streak of arrogance in them, especially the chorus hook: "I'm better than the rest".

Anyway, it's a radio-friendly song - and McQuinn's English name should make it easier for him to appear on UK and Irish playlists. The rest of his songs are closer to funk than the jazziness of 'Chasing Rainbows', and calling your songs 'Bitch' and 'Sex Obsession' is really not good. (The songs live down to their titles.) But as we always say, one good song is one more than most acts have.

There's no video for 'Chasing Rainbows' yet, so you'll have to pop over to Freddy McQuinn's MySpace page to hear it.

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Here's one I saw recently on Radio Free Europe's Iran news site: Iranian singer Mohsen Namjoo has been found guilty of "disrespecting religious sanctities" for his use of Koranic verses in a song and sentenced in absentia to five years in prison. Although Namjoo, 32, apologized for the song a few months ago, some say his open support for the "green" movement around presidential candidate Mir Hossein Musavi and his appearance at opposition rallies abroad led to his being sentenced to prison. Namjoo was classically trained in Tehran music academies and excelled at the setar before teaching himself guitar. Along the way he encountered the blues, and that’s where the Dylan comparisons began. "I regret my self-censorship and condescension for all these years, like many others who do the same," Namjoo, who lives in Vienna, told the BBC. The Western press's championing of him as the voice of dissent won't have helped his cause. I’m tired of seeing musicians of any alternative style being postered as the voices of a generation, or the voices of protest. It happens every few years in China, where rock musicians love publicity but generally shun any chance of confrontation with the rule-alone Communist Party here. Is it fair to hang all these expectations on musicians, particularly since the media in question in all cases I've seen have rarely if ever written about the musician before or after putting them on the cover as China's/Iran's great Dylanesque hope? 

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An excerpt from the Kevin Smith movie, Dogma:

Bethany:  What exactly brought you to Illinois?
Jay:  Some fuck called John Hughes.
Bethany:  Sixteen Candles John Hughes?
Jay: You know that guy, too? See, all these movies take place in a small town called Shermer, in Illinois, where all the honies are top-shelf, but all the dudes are whiny pussies - except for Judd Nelson, he was fuckin' harsh - but best of all, there was no one dealin', man; then, it hits me: we could live like phat rats if we were the blunt connection in Shermer, Illinois. So we collected some money we were owed, and we caught a bus. You know what the fuck we found out when we got there? There is no Shermer in Illinois. Movies are fuckin' bullshit.

Outside of my family and friends, there are few people whose death would stop me in my tracks and make me reflect upon their life and work.  John Hughes was one such person though.  It was with a mixture of shock and sadness that I heard of his passing this morning.  You see, as a child of the eighties, Key Notes grew up with movies like Breakfast Club, Weird Science and Ferris Bueller's Day Off.  Of course, this blog was a bit too young to see them first time around but, as a teenager in the early '90's the movies seemed to fit perfectly with my own teenage angst.

Hughes was great at writing outsiders and showing, ultimately, that they're not so different from the rest of us.  There was a Ferris Bueller, Wyatt Donnelly or Samantha Baker in all of us during our teenage years.  It's not often as a teenager that you feel that someone 'gets' you, but when watching a Hughes movie you really felt like he did.  Such a pity then that he moved away from teen movies so as not to be considered a one trick pony. 

Pop songs always played a huge part in a John Hughes movie. Sixteen Candles had Paul Young's Love of the Common People and True by Spandau Ballet, Ferris Bueller had Twist & Shout and an instrumental cover of The Smiths' Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want and The Breakfast Club had, of course, Simple Minds' Don't You.

However, my own personal favourite was Tesla Girls by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark from Weird Science and that's the song I'm going to finish this blog off with today. 

Life moves pretty fast.  If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it - Ferris Bueller.  I, for one, will be having a John Hughes marathon this weekend.

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Well, it seems that all your correspondent has been doing lately is moaning and complaining. The new Phoenix album is disappointing; the new Air song is poor; the new Cassius EP is uninspired, and so forth. Some of you have been wondering if the Paris heat is getting to us, if some Parisienne had battered our coronary organ, if we just needed a holiday. All of that may be true, but those Phoenix, Air and Cassius records are tiresome nonetheless. If only there were a kindred spirit, someone with a fellow feeling for French music's current staleness...

Et voilà! Meet Hervé Salters (right), whose mammy is French and daddy is Irish (so he says in this interview). Born and raised in France, Hervé spent some of his teenage years in London before moving to California in 1999. (Continuing the Irish connection, he lives in Berkeley, named after Kilkenny's greatest ever philosopher.) Amending his first name to RV, he started making music and fell in with the likes of Blackalicious and DJ Shadow - indeed, his first album, 'Cliquety Kliqk' in 2003, featured Blackalicious.

Now Salters has released his second album, 'Good City For Dreamers'. It's a marvellous blend of loose funkiness and tight electronica, flavoured with jazzy progressions and Beatles-y pop hooks. The sense of fun and adventure is infectious.

So what's the link with your blogger's recent moaniness? Well, our favourite song on the record is 'Raid The Radio', where a soulful chorus declares war on the airwaves because "we're tired of hearing the same old song". Yes! That's us! We hear ya! (We also love it for the blissed-out groove and playful whistling.)

General Elektriks are currently touring around France - no upcoming Irish shows for the moment but perhaps he may have been there recently (visiting his family, for instance). Check out RV Salters' tunes on the General Elektriks MySpace page.

Here's a brilliant unofficial homemade video for 'Raid The Radio' that perfectly catches the spirit of the track - the sound quality isn't perfect but you'll get the gist. Under UEFA regulations this may well be both the best French song and best Irish song of 2009:

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Day Two of Castlepalooza 2009

Review Snapshot: The expected rain finally hit Castlepalooza on Sunday, though it did little to dampen spirits that were still high from the day before, while the second day saw some of the best performances of the weekend.

The Cluas Verdict? 7 out of 10

Full Review:
The Hot Sprockets, mostly dull though they were, had one gift: the ability to make the crowd forget that the rain had begun. Having paid far too much attention to the style and music of early Kings of Leon (the hairy days), they are nevertheless one of the few bands in Ireland at the moment whose main ethos is good naturedness and fun, making their show pretty enjoyable if not groundbreaking. In fact, they probably couldn’t be more different from the band that followed in the HMV tent: the quite frankly bizarre Patrick Kelleher and His Cold Dead Hands. Dark, strange, and accompanied by a table of electronic instruments and gadgets – and an accordion – Patrick Kelleher and his band give the impression of people who have spent too much time together in a small room with little contact with the outside world. That doesn’t make them any less brilliant, his strange gothic-tinged music beautiful.

Sandwiched between Kelleher and Le Galaxie were the 202s, another band who made use of electronic backing tracks, though unlike Skibunny, they at least had the ability to capitalise on them. The 202’s are all catchy songs and varying sounds, and one to keep an eye on. Le Galaxie, as ever, proved themselves one of the strongest live forces doing the Dublin circuit at the moment. Their sound may be all power, created by discrete layers, but their strength really lies in their ability to interact with the crowd, at once terrifying the people in the front row by practically jumping on top of them and involving those at the back. The combined energy of any of the bands on Castlepalooza’s first day was nothing compared with the buzz from the crowd in the HMV tent for those 40 minutes.

The Chapters...well, the Chapters were alright, it's difficult to say much more than that. Inexplicably, the songs on their album, released earlier this year, are already beginning to sound dated, but unlike most acts over the weekend, the majority of their audience at least knew the songs. Robotnik, also on the Main Stage, proved to be my final act of the night, and though followed by Channel One and Noise Control, made a fantastic closing act. Though visibly nervous and unused to the imposed distance between himself and the audience, Chris Morrin quickly warmed to the situation, immersing himself in his usual antics and bizarre stage behaviour, including pelting the audience with bread during a version of Pat the Baker. To merely say Robotnik is quirky is to sell short his ability to entertain, entrance and of course create great music, strange though it might be.

Anna Murray

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Day One of Castlepalooza 2009

Review Snapshot: The first day of this boutique festival was a mixed bag, a kind of rollercoaster tour of today's Irish indie. Altogether a great night, with just one or two low points.

The Cluas Verdict? 7 out of 10

Full Review:
This reviewer has always had a kind of love/hate relationship with Castlepalooza: though in all honesty, it’s not the fault of the festival. The first year it was my cheap, leaking tent and 14 hours of heavy rain; this year, the tent situation was circumvented by booking a very un-rock’n’roll B&B, it was the stomach upset, seemingly mild food poisoning from eating a dodgy chicken burger at the festival, which led to me shuffling off early on Sunday back to said B&B.

It’s hard to criticise a festival as selfless as this one. With a conspicuous lack of big corporate sponsorship (with the exception of HMV and Metro, whose presence were still unobtrusive), the whole weekend is run by volunteers and all to raise money for the restoration of the beautiful castle at which it is held. Not only that, but with the majority of all acts at the festival Irish, the organisers showed themselves to be dedicated to Irish music. On the other hand it is a boutique festival, and though eco-shops, workshops and a spa are a unique idea for inclusion in a festival, this one has begun already to descend into cheap gimmickry.

I finally reached Charleville Castle in time to catch Holy Roman Army at the HMV stage. Disappointingly for such a hotly-tipped band, they completely failed to make any kind of impression beyond leaving you vaguely questioning the point of having the sax just doubling the synth through most of their final songs. The Ambience Affair however, made a far greater impression by playing one of their best gigs so far. Some problems with sound and some beside-stage carpentry meant a delayed start, but The Ambience Affair simply and utterly absorbed the attention of the audience. A musician who has the layered structure of rock down to a fine art, Jamie Clarke’s guitar loops and samples really do create an inimitable ambience, part Final Fantasy, part small-club band.

Staying in the HMV tent after such an uplifting experience was perhaps ill-advised. The introduction promised an affair that was ‘the most deborched…and lecherous’… really The Rocky Horror Picture Show Live was nothing but embarrassing, for the people involved and everybody watching. Cue quick exit to the main stage and Angel Pier, a band with a lot of promise but a disappointing lack of stage presence. They are nonetheless a considerably stronger force than even one year ago, Angel Pier have a melody-driven pop-rock mix which is clearly still maturing.

Dark Room Notes, long a favourite of Cluas, didn’t disappoint. Even though their singer looked more trendy banker than rock god, the band is one of the few who can create an album-perfect sound without compromising live energy: energy is what DRN is all about, and while We Love You Dark Matter was one of the best releases of the year, they have definitively proven that their electro-indie was meant for the stage. Similarly, next band Super Extra Bonus Party simply live for performance. SEBP, though fallen quiet since their initial splash on the scene a few years ago, have a sound that is surprisingly refined and immaculately honed for the stage: club beats vie with heavy distortion and thumping rock basslines. In fact, SEBP would easily have qualified for putting on the best show of the weekend, were one - if not two-fifths - of the band being incredibly annoying onstage at all times (headbanging and generally cavorting in what just seemed a very contrived way).

From here, day one of Castlepalooza began to go downhill, starting with a steep dip: Skibunny. With a complete absence of a personality of any kind, the kind of lyrics that most people stop writing at age 14, some simply quite poor music and some cringey on-stage interaction, the duo’s only redeeming feature was their halfway-decent backing tracks. Never again. It was hard to fault the headlining David Kitt’s performance, but easy to fault the choice of line-up that led to his slot. As always he proved himself a brilliant musician and songwriter, assisted by Somadrone’s Neil O’Conner and playing some mean geetar. But as the build-up of heavy beats through Dark Room Notes, Super Extra Bonus Party and Project Jenny Project Jan made way for subtle grooves, loud aggression for nuance, and the crowd’s gentle inebriation for all-out pissed, Kitt simply failed to hold sway with most.

Anna Murray

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This is supposed to be a series of blogs that look at the individuals who populate Irish indie gigs and yet, in this particular entry, Key Notes will be profiling the type of person who would never be seen alone.

Introduction:
scenesters are far too cool for capital letters.  The time you and I waste searching for the shift key (or, worse still, caps lock) is time they can spend getting their fringe just right.  Indeed, such is their dedication to this, they only purchase products beginning with lower case letters, such as iPhones, iPods and, well, you get the idea.  It is one of nature's great mysteries that scenesters are very self-aware and yet, almost always unaware of their status as scenesters.  As such, they are amongst the most deluded of the Irish indie gig goers.

How to spot one:
For a start, you won't spot just one as scenesters are the cattle of the Irish indie scene, roaming, as they do, in herds.  The male of the species tend to speak at a higher pitch than the average Irish male.  This may have something to do with the fact he appears to be wearing his 15 year old sister's jeans.  Beneath these ill-fitting jeans you're likely to find pointy shoes or white canvas trainers, depending on the scenesters mood before he left home.  The torso tends to be covered with an equally tight fitting t-shirt adorned with the logo of a band the scenester may never have actually listened to.   The very worst scenester ends up looking like a Jonas Brother!

The female of the species loves Urban Outfitters, indeed, in a survey carried out by this blog recently, 82% of female scenesters listed Urban Outfitters as their favourite shop.  The remaining 18% pretended I didn't exist.  The female scenester will, therefore, often be seen without a drink in hand, having spent 85 euro on leggings that look exactly like those her older sister threw away before the start of Italia '90.  Female scenesters often bald quicker than non-scenesters due, in part, to their penchant for wearing hats indoors.

Behavioural Characteristics:
scenesters will spend 90% of every gig talking amongst themselves, about themselves.  They will spend the remaining 10% attempting to cheer and 'whoop' louder than anyone else at the end of songs while shouting for the band to play the one song they know from that album the NME said was the best thing since last week's album of the week.

It should also be noted that almost every scenester appears to be in a band though, strangely, you won't have heard of them as they've never actually played a gig or recorded any material.  They do have a 'really cool' name though, probably beginning with 'the.'

What they are likely to say:
'What was that support band wearing; it should have been my band up there.'

What you are likely to say:
'Look love, they have a set-list that they're going to stick to, no matter how much you shout.'

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The wider world’s perception of music from France is still based on a clique of ‘French touch’ electronica bands who’ve been around for over a decade. International audiences seem to be enthralled by anything French that goes ‘blip’ or ‘bleep’, flavoured with varying degrees of dreamy synths or skuzzy guitars.

But to our ears it’s all starting to sound tired. The new Phoenix album, ‘Wolfgang Amadeux Phoenix’, gives the impression of a band happy to consolidate rather than innovate. Air’s new track, ‘Do The Joy’, sounds like most Air tracks off their last two records – incidental music for some boho existentialist arthouse movie. And what have Daft Punk been doing lately?

‘Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix’ was produced by Philippe Zdar, né Philippe Cerboneschi, one half of Cassius and another member of this clique. Perhaps less well known internationally than their peers, Cassius (right) can nonetheless point to two cracking singles in their back catalogue – the banging remix of ‘1999’ and the slashing guitars of ‘Toop Toop’ from 2006.

Now Cassius are back with a new song from a forthcoming E.P. ‘Youth, Speed, Trouble, Cigarettes’ is the title and complete lyric of the track. It starts with an air-raid siren and features a catchy ascending-scale figure duplicated on guitar strums and a thin synth line. The lyric is shouted by teen-sounding voices, recalling ‘D.A.N.C.E.’ by Justice, the most recent off the assembly line of French electronic duos.

All this is packed into the opening thirty seconds – but the whole thing just repeats itself for the remaining three and a half minutes. It all feels a bit laboured, as if that one decent hook has to carry the whole track. Perhaps a canny remix can breathe some life into it.

The B-side, ‘Almost Cut My Hair’, is as mundane as the title suggests – dancefloor electronic that bangs out one keyboard riff ad infinitum. Or maybe your correspondent is just completely bored by le French touch and yearns for something exciting and new to happen here in Paris.

Judge for yourself – here’s ‘Youth, Speed, Trouble, Cigarettes’ by Cassius, set to extracts from Harmony Korine’s ‘Gummo’:

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Having been nominated for 'Best European Festival' in the UK Festival Awards 2008; Castlepalooza is back and will take place over the course of the August Bank Holiday Weekend (Saturday August 1 & Sunday August 2) in the gorgeous surroundings of Charleville Castle, Tullamore.

The line up is as follows:

Were it not for a stupid knee injury picked up while training for the Marathon (Grade II MCL and Medial Meniscus tear, if you're asking) Key Notes would be going himself.  However, this blog would still recommend that those of you going do your very best to check out the following 5 bands; Dark Room Notes, Le Galaxie, Rarely Seen Above Ground, Angel Pier and The Ambience Affair.

Of course, as with all the best boutique festivals, there is much more than just music going on at Castlepalooza.  This year the festival will also include lots of other entertainment, from the live Rocky Horror Picture show to Crafternoon Tea and dance workshops to the infamous Party Bus.  Castlepalooza also has hot showers and flushing loos which differentiates it from most festivals Key Notes has ever attended.

A limited number of tickets are still available from the Castlepalooza website and from usual outlets.  Also, be sure to check out Anna Murray's reviews of Castlepalooza 2009 over the weekend.

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