We had mentioned recently how Ireland’s reputation in France is quite low at the moment. Well, if it’s any consolation to you all in Eire, today sees the return of a classic French negative image: the strike.

Public servants, teachers, transport workers and state broadcasters have been called out by their unions. Many private sector workers from large factories like Renault are expected to join them, and most daily papers are off the news-stands. Cities and towns across France will witness massive protest marches and public meetings on the streets. At present it’s just a one-day strike, but it could be repeated in the coming weeks. President Sarkozy’s tactless boast last year that “nowadays when there’s a strike, no one notices” may come back to haunt him.

The rationale for the strike is a general air of dissatisfaction rather than any specific government action. Public service employees fear cutbacks; some primary school teachers are already taking home less pay for more responsibilities. Then there is the constant French worry about “le pouvoir d’achat” – purchasing power. While the economic crisis has hit France less hard than Ireland (no crazy mortgages here), the cost of living is rising. A baguette, that symbolic and reliable barometer of French prices, has become shorter, thinner and dearer.

The most visible signs of the strike are school closures and transport problems. Here in Paris, buses are running almost normally but on average only 1 in 3 trains and metros are operating. This presents less of a problem in the morning, when commuters are spread between 6  and 10 a.m., but the evening rush home tends to be a concentrated heave of panic. Your blogger had no problems getting an early train this morning, and an hour-long stroll home through Paris is no hardship.

(Today’s strike in France and last week’s disturbances in Iceland make us wonder why Irish people haven’t yet hit the streets en masse. Yes, we’re generally apathetic, but surely even the apolitical Irish have a boiling point?)

We’re reluctant to suggest that anyone profits from today’s transport disruptions, but for some there’s certainly a strike dividend. Cafés near our workplace were full with early risers who skipped breakfast at home in order to catch a crack-of-dawn train.

Then, of course, there are the taxi-drivers, who’ll be in greater demand this evening. Scorned in Paris like in every city, doesn’t anyone have love to give to them? Why, yes!  

To prove it, here’s one of the most famous French pop singles ever: ‘Joe Le Taxi’ by the young Vanessa Paradis. Listening to it after all these years, it actually sounds great – the sparse production and breezy arrangement are refreshingly easy on the ear compared to today’s cluttered and compressed radio hits.  

And there’s nothing sleazy about it after all: it really is just a song about a taxi driver! (Sorry to disappoint you.) Mademoiselle Paradis, or Madame Depp if you prefer, is still making music. In collaboration with French rocker M she released ‘Divinidylle’, a likeable album of catchy guitar pop, back in 2007 and toured successfully all last year. But outside France she’ll be forever associated with this 1988 single.

So, for the day that’s in it, “tous ensemble!” and “vas-y Joe”:

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According to a number of sources, including Drop-D and On The Record, the Meteor Music Award nominations were leaked online yesterday.  Though they will be officially announced today (28th) it would appear that the people behind the Meteors haven't figured out that the secret to a good awards show is variety.

This is Key Notes second draft of this particular blog.  The first draft was your typical 'how come my favourite band wasn't chosen' blog.  However, while writing that, Key Notes had something of a 'Road to Damascus' moment.  Not that I'm suddenly a God botherer or anything of the sort, but this blog now realises what 'normal' people have be trying to tell him for ages; music awards don't really mean all that much.  Of course, Aslan winning best band at last years Meteors should have been enough for Key Notes to lose all faith with music awards but no, it was something else entirely.

Looking through the nominees for this years Meteors there is a distinct feeling of 'Meh.'  There is far too much overlap for an award night that only has 8 categories.  For example, The Blizzards and The Script are nominated for both Best Irish Pop Act and Best Band.  Indeed, it seems that The Script are nominated in every category except best regional DJ and that's probably because not even Zach in the Meteor Music Marketing Department could convince his bosses that LA could be considered a region. 

Now, obviously Key Notes is being facetious but it's difficult not to be.  Perhaps it's a sign that we just don't have the quality and diversity of music in Ireland that those of us who write about it, talk about it, live it and breathe it think we have.  Or could it be that, shock/horror, the peope that run these awards (other than the Choice) don't actually do the dirty work and go to gigs on cold, wet Monday nights where the only other audience members are the support band and the barman.  Indeed it's difficult to see anyone from Meteor thumbing their way through the tiny (but important) Irish Independent Music Section in Tower when they've got all those Kings of Leon records to get to.  As an aside, Kings of Leon are set to headline OXEGEN again!!! Are they the new Red Hot Chili Peppers for the GAA-jersey-wearing-Tayto-munching-not-there-for-the-music-but-for-the-craic/crack festival goer?

Now, this isn't a 'Key Notes is indier-than-thou' blog.  Those sort of blogs I'll leave to the Skins-watching-skinny jeans brigade.  No, this is just one man finally realising that music awards mean nothing when there is so much great music produced that goes unrewarded.  It's only taken 26 years, but hey, better late than never.

For those of you who care/are interested here is the list of nominees:

Best National DJ

Tony Fenton - TodayFM
Dan Hegarty - 2Fm
Alison Curtis -Today Fm
Dave Fanning - RTE Radio 1
Ray Foley - TodayFM
Rick O’Shea - 2FM

Best Regional DJ

Dermot, Dave & Siobhan - Dublin’s98
Keith Cunningham - RedFM
Leigh Doyle - Beat 102.103
The Zoo Crew - Spin South West
Mark Noble - FM104
Jon Richards - Galway Bay FM

Best Irish Band

The Blizzards
Republic of Loose
Fight Like Apes
The Script
Snow Patrol

Best Irish Male

Mick Flannery
Damien Dempsey
Duke Special
David Holmes
Jape

Best Irish Female

Enya
Lisa Hannigan
Gemma Hayes
Imelda May
Tara Blaise
Camille O’Sullivan

Best Irish Pop Act

Boyzone
The Blizzards
The Coronas
The Script
Westlife

Best Irish Album

Fight Like Apes - Fight Like Apes & The Mystery of The Golden Medallion
Snow Patrol  - A Hundred Million Suns
Lisa Hannigan  - Sea Sew
Messiah J & The Expert  - From The Word Go
The Script  - The Script

Best Irish Live Performance

The Coronas
The Blizzards
The Swell Season
Fight Like Apes
Republic of Loose 

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Bruce Springsteen has just been announced to headline the first day of the Vieilles Charrues festival in Brittany on Thursday 16 July, with The Killers and Fiction Plane as support that day.

Tickets for that day cost only €49, on sale Friday 30 January at 7 a.m. Irish time from usual French outlets like www.fnacspectacles.com and the festival website: http://www.vieillescharrues.asso.fr/

Springsteen's appearance at Les Vieilles Charrues will be his only French concert this year, according to the festival's organisers.

A four-day pass for the full festival will cost €114. More updates on the full line-up to follow.

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Their name almost put us off listening to them. However, our source insisted that My Internal Playground were worth checking out. Once again, our source was correct.

Apparently, they're a duo with names that even the Scissor Sisters would find suspicious: Jiim Burger and Kriis Mac 'otta. Yeah, right! But if that's what they name their group, you'd hardly expect them to come up with decent aliases either. We're not even sure they're from Paris. And there's no picture of him/her/it/them - only this bit of artwork (right).

But they make sunny '60s West Coast pop: they're obviously driving under the influence of Brian Wilson. But don't dismiss them as Justa Nudder Beach Boys Band. Those choons are charming and well-written in their own right.

(Our favourite is called 'Phantom And Desert': can these guys not name anything properly? For their children's sake, let's call a social worker right away.)

Check out a handful of those summery songs on My Internal Playground's MySpace page. No video, though.

 

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White Denim are a three-piece band hailing from Austin, Texas. Formed in early 2006, they specialize in tornado-belt rock & roll with a manic cut & paste energy. They released their first LP W...

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The last festival Short Cuts attended was so long ago that I'm not even sure what it was! I suspect it might have been Feile, 1995, when the sadly missed Irish festival moved to Cork City. My abiding memory of the event was feeling sorry for Kylie Minogue (who was mid transition from teenie bopper to dance icon and performing her first open-air festival). Her microphone didn't work for her first few tunes, but she battled on, manfully ignoring the crowd's cry of "Show us your arse!"...

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Depending on where and when you came in to the Irish music scene, Conor O'Brien will be known to you either as part of the much-lamented The Immediate, the guitarist in Cathy Davey's touring b...

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As you'd expect, the new U2 single is all over French radio. (Are we the only ones to find it similar to 'Diamond Hoo Ha Man' by Supergrass?) Even non-Anglophone French DJs find 'Get On Your Boots' and 'No Line On The Horizon' to be terrible titles.

The other big single on French rock radio these days is from a home-grown contemporary of U2. 'Little Dolls' is the first track off the forthcoming new album by Indochine.

On the go since the early '80s, Indochine (pronounced "Andosheen") remain enormously popular and respected in France - rare for a French guitar band. They tend to plough a similar furrow to The Cure, Depeche Mode, Echo & The Bunnymen - that sort of dark, epic alt-rock. We don't find them up to the same quality as those three mighty groups, but that's just us: their upcoming dates in Europe are selling out quickly.

That tour reaches its climax in summer 2010 with a show in the Stade de France, further proof of their enduring popularity. To publicise their concerts, the band have been appearing on posters (right) where singer Nicola (born Nicolas) Sirkis and the bravest of his bandmates are in the nip, modesty preserved by some well-placed type. Giant posters of nudie middle-aged men plastered on billboards and the walls of metro stations: if that doesn't shift tickets then nothing will.

Though Indochine's back catalogue is agreeable yet unspectacular, 'Little Dolls' is quite good. Similar to Muse's 'Starlight', it hangs off a pounding piano riff and swells to an epic chorus. You mightn't pay hard-earned recession euros for it, but it's catchy coming out of your radio. And it's better than the new U2 song.

From a recent French music awards show (the one where Katy Perry was accidentally presented an award meant for Rihanna), here's 'Little Dolls' by Indochine:

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Ireland doesn’t feature very often on the news here in France. When it does, it’s generally for the bad things. Your average Jacques le Frenchman knows three things about Ireland 2008-09:

 - We’re bankrupt

 - We Said No To Europe

 - Our rashers are poisoned

To counteract all that bad PR, it would take someone superhuman. But we’ll settle for mighty.

And so The Mighty Stef (right) is the first Irish act to visit France in 2009. The cult Dublin singer-songer is playing in Paris tonight (21 January).

The show at a venue called L'Alimentation Générale, which is how a Frenchperson would describe the stock of a local grocery. We haven't been there yet, so we can't enlighten you as to whether they also sell breakfast rolls and milk and the like. (No Irish rashers, that's for certain.)

Stef was in Paris not so long ago, playing on a converted Irish lightship called the Batofar that's docked Seine-side. The Batofar has recently been the scene of repeated public order disturbances and police visits. No connection implied between those two sentences, of course.

Anyway, more Stef info and tunes on his MySpace page. Here's the video for 'Death Threats':

 

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Our first French pop discovery of 2009, and if the rest of the year is as good as this then it'll be a vintage year here Seine-side.

Those two girls in the photo on the right? That's Nadège and Lucille, and their nom de rock is Andromakers. We believe they're originally from Aix-en-Provence but now based in Paris.

What are they doing under the tree in that field? They're making lovely electro-pop that the marketing guys will surely sell as "if you liked Au Revoir Simone, you'll love Andromakers!"

Anyway, we're smitten by what we've heard so far of them. Best of all is a track called 'Electricity', which we reckon will smite you just as much.

No news yet of any albums or EPs or other product, but you can listen to a few tracks at Andromakers' MySpace page. Sorry, but there's no video of them for the moment, so this post just ends here. Au revoir!

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