The Ripcurl Boardmasters, Newquay is one of the big ASP events held in the UK. Combining the 5 star mens and womens WQS contests with skateboarding, BMX biking and, er, bikini contests, the 6 day event also has a two day music festival wrapped up where the bands this year include Ash, Guillemots & Funeral for a Friend. Channel 4 recently broadcast highlights from the 2006 event and it looked sick. Tickets for the Unleashed festival are £25 per day or £49.50 for both Unleashed dates and can be bought at this link. There is no onsite camping and here is the full week schedule.

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'Reminiscing; it ain’t what it used to be,' or so the saying goes.  I for one would like to disagree.  I was recently given a gift of The Travelling Wilburys double CD and DVD.  An unusual gift as I’d never once mentioned my deep rooted appreciation of The Wilburys to this person; but it was an inspired one.

As soon as I started listening to volume one of the CD I was instantly transported back in time to December 1988.  Don Mclean was singing about the day the music died, but, for me at least, this was the day that music was born.  It wasn’t that I had ignored music up until that stage; indeed, growing up in a house where Hendrix and Lynott shared airspace with Rod Stewart and Freddie Mercury it was hard to avoid it.  But until then music had always been in the background, just extra noise distracting me from Transformers or He-Man.

However, as I've said, in December 1988 that all changed.  The start of the song didn’t even get my attention.  I’m sure if I was older George Harrison’s vocals would have raised an eyebrow or two but for me it was just another song.  Then, the man with the greatest voice I’d ever heard sang 'I’m so tired of being lonely, I still have some love to give, won’t you show me that you really care,' and I was hooked.  Who was this guy?  How did he manage to sound like ice cream?  (It was a stupid question, but that’s what he sounded like to my six [and a half] year old ears.)

He was Roy Orbison; the band was The Travelling Wilburys and I’ve been hooked on music ever since.  I’ll never get tired of hearing this song and I’ll never get sick of looking at this video, so here it is for you:

 

 

What about you; when did the music bug first bite?  Who was it that grabbed you by the ears and had you pressing the repeat button on your tape deck?  While I couldn’t agree with the truism that started this blog, I’ll end with one I can:  'You always remember your first time.'

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I can't imagine Renault Supremo and entrepreneur Bill Cullen being interested in the decidely non bling lifestyle of the average Irish surfer and he wouldn't be happy to hear that Renault is not a favoured brand of Irish wave riders, but it hasn't stopped Renault from bringing out a surf branded version of the Clio in association with RipCurl. I won't get all Jeremy Clarkson on this car but, lets just say, no self respecting surfer would be caught dead in one of these, although I had a Aussie mate who had to be physically restrained in a surf shop once from purchasing a pair of Billabong branded underpants, so addicted was he to buying anything with a surf brand logo on it. Even he would not part cash for this because surfers drive one of three types of automotive transport; station wagons, two seater commerical 4WDs and camper vans. I think the makers of the adverts for this car know it too as they focus on a pair of surf turkeys sitting in the car with their wetsuits on backward. I guess this car is aimed at the same people who have bought tickets for Cois Fharraige, non surfers who want to get a little of the surfer lifestyle. I have some advice for those guys (and girls). Instead of parting with your cash for something with a logo on it; simply get up at 5am with a splitting hangover, pull on some clothes you have left in the freezer overnight then get into a bath full of cold water with ice floating in it.

 

 

 

 

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Ok, Bundoran Ocean Festival, a long established date in the surfer's social calendar and one which is endorsed by the Irish Surfing Association. This year events include gigs by The Undertones & Gerry Fish, a surf movie festival, surf art exhibition, free surfing lessons and the Gala Ocean Ball, an event that is always a riot in the best sense of the word. For further details and full line up, click here.

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Lauren Guillery is from France - and don't forget it. You see, the Dublin-based singer is so fed up with people asking her where she's from that she's written a song about it. The title? 'Rude'. Hmmmm - personally (as an ex-pat too, here in Paris) it seems like a perfectly reasonable question.

In fairness to Lauren, though, if you've heard her being interviewed recently on Phantom's Access All Areas or Anna Livia's Indie Hour you'll have found that she's a lot friendlier that song's story suggests.

In any case, Irish music fans have taken a liking to Lauren and her band The Claws, who were recently voted (bizarrely) 'Best World Music Act' by viewers of Balcony TV - no doubt just pipping Panpipe Moods and the Mongolian throat-singer quartet.

Playing the sort of energetic indie rock that will always appeal to a wide audience, the three-piece band are currently looking for a fourth member. If you fancy the job, you can find out more by reading Lauren's no-nonsense Musicians Wanted ad on the CLUAS discussion board.

Lauren Guillery and the Claws will be at many of the fun-sized festivals that seem to be popping up all over cash-to-burn Ireland these days - Knockanstockan in Co. Wicklow on 28 July, Indie-pendence in Mitchelstown on 4 August and Eurocultured at Thomas Read's in Dublin on 18 August. Go on, check them out.

Over on her MySpace page you can also listen some tracks from Lauren's first EP 'Listen', as well as the aforementioned Phantom interview with Edel Coffey. Stick around here, though, and you can watch Lauren performing 'Rude' live on Balcony TV:

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Israeli band Izabo begin an intensive month-long French tour this week, including a semi-residency at our favourite Paris venue, La Flèche d'Or.

The Tel Aviv-based four-piece play an addictive blend of psychedelic '60s rock and idiosyncratic '90s Britpop, all sounding like a mix of Talking Heads and Space (that much-underrated Liverpool band of a decade ago), and spiced up with some distinctive Middle Eastern vibes.

Their first album, 'Fun Makers', is appropriately titled - it fizzes with energy and (as they say in these parts) joie de vivre. The band are currently preparing their second album, to be called 'Superlight'.

Izabo's French tour comes at a time of Parisian interest in modern Israeli society. Eytan Fox's movie 'The Bubble', currently showing in French cinemas, depicts the life, loves and partying of a group of Tel Aviv's bright young things. Its depiction of inter-ethnic and same-sex relationships has inspired much curiosity and comment among the French cultural media.

You won't find any overt political comment or social reflection in Izabo's music - just good-time pop that subverts the common western perception of Israel.

No news of any Irish dates for the band as yet, but you can check out some of their tracks on their MySpace page; here's the appropriately cartoon-style video for the catchy 'Morning Hero':

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It's an understatement to say that France and Germany have 'history' - and that's even just thinking about football (for all of Zizou's heroics in 1998, Seville in 1982 still touches a raw nerve here in France).

All of which makes it surprising that the current idols for French teenage rock fans are Tokio Hotel, a four-piece band from Magdeburg in Germany. Even more amazing is that this is a group that sings in German.

Tokio Hotel trade in the same teen-angst nu-metal as Linkin Park, and we presume they're also singing much the same type of self-pitying lyrics. The group's image centres around singer Bill Kaulitz's distinctive hairstyle and heavy make-up. All around France, parents are asking the time-honoured rock question: C'est un mec ou une fille? (Is that a boy or a girl?).

Singing in German has so far not hindered the band's success in France. Their first two albums Schrei and Zimmer 483 have both gone top ten in the French charts, and the videos for their singles 'Durch Den Monsun' and 'Ubers Ende Der Welt' enjoy heavy rotation on French music television. They recently appeared before 600,000 people at the massive free Bastille day concert on the Champs de Mars (the park beside the Eiffel Tower) in Paris.

With a heavily-mascara'd eye on world domination, the band has just recorded their first album in English: 'Scream' is a compilation of tracks from their first two records, and it's due to be released in the UK in August. You may be hearing more about Tokio Hotel very soon.

In the meantime you can watch the video for 'Ubers Ende Der Welt' and learn how to say in German 'I hate you!', 'I won't do my homework!' and 'Daddy wouldn't buy me a pony':

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Review Snapshot: This reviewer's first childhood memory was hearing the Beatles' "I want to hold your hand" and he's been in love with pop music ever sionce then,"Volta&qu...

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Review Snapshot:
The new White Stripes album shows off its blues and folk influences the way a pre-pubescent boy wears a fake moustache. An uninspired and uninspiring rock trudge that's not half as odd or interesting as it seems to think it is.

The CLUAS Verdict? 5 out of 10

Full Reviews:
In the sleevenotes to 'Icky Thump', Jack White admits to being an impressionist. Fair play to him for his honesty; this record sounds like one long Led Zeppelin homage - blues-rock guitars and little else.

White's songs are as flat and unremarkable as ever but this time around there's no 'Seven Nation Army' killer riff to carry them off. Like with Morrissey, his titles are more interesting than the songs themselves - 'You Don't Know What Love Is (You Just Do What Your Told)' and 'A Martyr For My Love For You' are unmemorable plod-rock.

Only the mariachi-style 'Conquest' is quirky and appealing - but that's a cover version.

The low point is 'Prickly Thorn (But Sweetly Worn)' a hilariously bad (but apparently serious) attemp at Celtic folk-rock. Also good for unintentional laughs is 'Saint Andrew (This Battle's In The Air)' - "Saint Andrew, do not forsake me", squeals Meg White with her schoolgirl-voice. Even twenty years from now, street urchins will be taunting her in public over it.

 If Jack White were to put into his songwriting at least half the imagination and energy he devotes to his imitation of a Deep South bluesman/medicine show huckster (as on the irritating 'Rag And Bone'), then The White Stripes might yet make music that lives up to the hype and mythologising they seem to inspire.

On the evidence of 'Icky Thump', however, they seem to have hit a creative dead-end.

Aidan Curran

 To buy a new or (very reasonably priced) 2nd hand copy of this album on Amazon just click here.

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Review Snapshot:
A fine work of Cohen- and Reed-influenced lo-fi folk-pop from a globetrotting chanteuse. One to put alongside Feist as this year's coffee-table albums of choice, perhaps?

The CLUAS Verdict? 7 out of 10

Full Review:
Born in Israel, raised in the Netherlands, matured in Paris and domicile in New York, Keren Ann Zeidel is a successful chanson francaise singer in France. This, her fifth album, is in English and it's good enough to get attention as international as its recording (in studios in Paris, Tel Aviv, New York, Rekjavik and Los Angeles).

Keren Ann's music is not as eclectic as her globetrotting - she sticks mainly to intimate folk-pop, a lo-fi Feist, if you will. For the most part, most noticably on 'The Harder Ships Of The World', she seems heavily influenced by Leonard Cohen's world-weary writing style and murmuring delivery.

Other times, as with many Paris-based female singers these days, Keren Ann also draws heavily on Lou Reed - first single 'Lay Your Head Down' features a 'New York'-style spoken word verse and a blatant VU guitar drone. Her sweet chorus (and some well-placed handclaps) saves the song from being a complete Lou parody, and throughout the album Keren Ann manages to flavour her borrowings with her own personality.

Vocally she barely rises above a low croon, though sometimes with a touch of Beth Gibbons' soulfulness and Stina Nordenstam's quirkiness. Instrumentation is minimal but with enough subtle layers to keep the listener engaged to the end.

The whole package is that of a quiet, thoughtful musician writing melodic and intriguing songs. Definitely worth a listen.

Aidan Curran

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