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Tuesday, November 04, 2008 

You probably saw that recent post on the CLUAS discussion board: a busker telling the story of how he was invited onstage by Glen Hansard at a recent Swell Season show in Boston. (Damn the cynicism: it was a bloody decent thing for Glen to do.)

Anyway, Glen and Marketa Irglova (and Oscar too, perhaps) are in Paris this week for a gig at La Maroquinerie on 5 November. Will the steep hill up to the venue be lined with buskers pitching themselves at the Oscar winners? Maybe, although there aren't many street buskers in Paris. Most musical begging is done underground, in metro passages or even on the trains themselves.

(Your blogger was passing through the metro stations at Saint Michel last Friday evening when we heard the dreaded 'Hallelujah' being busked. Four years in Paris, and it was the first time we'd had to endure it. And there was a crowd around the guy listening to him murder it! It reminded us why we choose to live far, far away from Grafton Street.)  

Notwithstanding all that, you probably have come across the Take Away Shows - a series of live acoustic sessions with the hippest indie acts, usually impromptu and on the streets of Paris. It's probably a no-brainer that there'll be a Glen n' Marketa special filmed this week.

We'll bring you any Swell Season session as soon as we can 'borrow' it from the Take Away Show. In the meantime, here's the most recent edition, featuring Bloc Party and an acoustic version of 'This Modern Love'. Paris-watchers: they're coming out of a rock bar called the Truskel, the traditional location for after-show parties by visiting indie bands, and they end up playing in front of the Bourse:

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