Sure, most of the audiovisual product in even the smallest Chinese city is 80% bootlegged. But leaving the numbers aside - 1.3 billion people will buy more of the stuff - it appears that worse offenders in the whole CD piracy problem may be the Russians. I remember a couple of years ago travelling through central Asia and finding dozens of traders in the capital city department store (invariably called Zum) selling collections of MP3s on CD, the product having been shipped in from Russia. Well they're still at it. Zum in Odessa, the black sea port in southern Ukraine where I found myself this week, sells collections of big name artists' albums for about EUR3.50 each. That's 11 albums - most of Pink Floyd's back catalogue on the "Pink Floyd Diamond Collection' CD I examined. Manufactured in Russia, according to the salesgirl, each collection is packaged in generic, rather tacky artwork. Chinese counterfeiters tend to reproduce single albums - including copying the packaging to exacting detail - and sell each for about EUR1.60 each. 11 albums would cost considerably more the Chinese way. It's hard to know who'd doing more harm but on numbers the Russians are selling more knocked-off music cheaper.  

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Almost inevitably, the tickets weren’t for the away end of the stadium but the Boulogne end, home of the PSG ultras and one of the most notorious terraces in European football. So there we were, right behind the Paris Brigade – a group of young men with the pinched, rat-like faces of right-wing youth. (The real hardcore fans, the infamous Boulogne Boys, were to the left of us on the other side of a fence I loved like no other fence before.)

Fortunately again, the Paris Brigade had been concentrating on stiff-arm salutes and drill-sergeant chanting when the goal was scored, so they were taken by surprise. Either that or they really didn’t give a damn about who was up the stand behind them.

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Fight Like Apes (live in Whelans, Dublin)

Review Snapshot: I still haven't decided whether I enjoyed this gig or not. Fight Like Apes themselves were undeniably excellent as ever, but an over-excited crowd made the whole thing a manic affair.

The Cluas Verdict? 8 out of 10

Full Review:

I think I preferred Fight Like Apes when they were just starting out. While I always admired their ability to get an often-bemused crowd moving, they seemed to have honed this into an ability to induce spontaneous loss of limb control and often senses. Last night’s album launch gig in Whelans, was one of the most terrifying gig experiences of my life: after a heavy hour of being squashed, I left nursing an aching head from the impact with a metal dustbin and aching neck from the impact with someone’s elbow as I was crushed between two people reaching for a crowd-surfer, bruised arms and a dress that stank of spilled drink. And I narrowly missed being egged while walking home, although I can’t really hold the gig to blame for that one.

But yet it was inexplicably one of the best gig experiences. Nearly all of the problems of this gig were the result of the young and over-excited crowd, whereas Fight Like Apes themselves played a blinding set, with admirably few album plugs. There is very little of interest to say of their support band, whose name I couldn’t even catch, but that they need to learn that noise and screams are much more effective reserved for climactic peaks and dramatic effect, and that pushing your singers’ voices will make for an early retirement for them and loss of interest for everybody else. Evidentally thy have listened to too much At The Drive-In without learning any of their ingenuity or complexity. But, their bass-player knows how to hit a groove and lash out riffs, making a noise no three-piece should be capable of.

FLA were, as ever, funny and good natured, despite the violence of their songs, and they play the old songs with the same fervour and crazed energy they do the new. The band themselves have come a long, long way in the last few years – and have apparently concentrated most on developing their already-strong live performance and crowd-control techniques – mostly whipping them into a frenzy. They are more powerful, more wild, and just a little more controlled. However, with this has come a certain complacency: when you know that you will get a screaming reaction no matter what you do, you tend to hold back. MayKay, while putting so much more effort into her crowd interaction than in their early days, is nonetheless putting less into her own performance. The screaming aggression and sudden crying breaks from the slightly introverted – dare I say girlish? – norm is being lost, and slowly making the Fight Like Apes show more ordinary. Nevertheless, judging by last night’s show, Fight Like Apes and the Mystery of the Golden Medallion should prove to be one of the best Irish albums of this year.

Anna Murray

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You may have noticed that there appears to be something of a global economic crisis going on.  This week it became a bit more personalised as Key Notes was made redundant late on Friday afternoon.  Now, this blog can't say he was totally surprised, working in the financial services industry, how could he be?  It's a strange feeling, knowing you've done absolutely nothing wrong but still losing your job.  Very 1980's really. 

The irony of the whole situation is that Key Notes initial reaction to the so-called 'credit crunch' was to celebrate.  After all, capitalism has, time and again, shown that it is a very unforgiving socio-economic model and its apparent demise as the dominant world model should be welcomed.  So is Key Notes a victim of its existance or a victim of its demise?  It's far too early on a Saturday morning to consider that but this blogs gut feeling is that it's a result of the former. 

So, what's the point of this blog you may well ask?  Well, thinking about it last night, there aren't very many good songs about unemployment or recession are there?  Okay, maybe you could count Money for Nothing as the unofficial anthem of the Social Welfare system but that would be giving Dire Straits far more credit than they ever deserve.  Likewise, Bachman Turner Overdrive poked fun at 9-6-slave-to-the-wage types with Taking Care of Business.  Again though, a song about basking in unemployment isn't really something to promote.

One song that does take the idea of unemployment and deal with it in a way that Key Notes can appreciate is Paperback Writer.  The Beatles (or, more likely, Paul McCartney) wrote this song at a time when they were being criticised for only writing songs about boy/girl relationships.  The lyrics are essentially about a writer with serious artistic ambitions but who resorts to writing Paperback novels just to make some money.  The point being, the subject of the song can see an opportunity, regardless of how 'beneath him' it may be, where many others would see a crisis.

The point being that Key Notes now finds himself at a crossroads and anything goes from here on in his life.  It's not the wrost thing that ever happened to him, it's not even the worse thing that's happened to him this year but it could be his opportunity to make some changes; be it career direction, upskilling, travelling, etc.  It'll also give him a chance to listen to lots of new music and think up new and wonderful topics for this blog, none of which will be as self-centred as today's entry.  This one time, however, Key Notes would ask that you forgive the indulgence. 

Here's the video for Paperback Writer/Rain for your enjoyment:

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CLUAS was one of 15 sites longlisted last week for the 'best music site' category at the Irish Web Awards. The short list of six sites was published yesterday and CLUAS was not among them. The sites that made the grade were:

• Muzu TV
  
• Kilkenny Music
• Enda Reilly
• 2tone
• Drop-d
• State Magazine

The shortlist represents a cross-cutting list of different types of sites: there are two music magazines (Drop-d and State), one musician's site (Enda Reilly), one local music blog (Kilkenny music), one label fansite (2tone) and one video hosting platform (the impressive Muzu TV).

So who will win? I think it is between Muzu TV and State, and that State in the end will bag it.

Although I like to think Drop-d could be a surprise on the night.  Their site is very impressive with its clean design, fast loading pages and depth of content. It certainly deserves to get more traffic than it appears to get. See the to-be-taken-with-a-grain-of-salt Alexa traffic chart to the right which shows their 'reach' (the red line running along the bottom) compared to that of CLUAS (the blue line) or State.ie (the gold line). Making the shortlist - and maybe even winning the award outright! - will at least help them get more visibility and traffic. 

Anyways, congrats to the all the shortlisted sites and best of luck on the night!

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You might remember that we told you last year about the floating music venues of Paris - boats docked on the Seine by the quay near the Bibliotheque François Mitterand. Being at a gig in the hold of a boat is a strange experience, but one we definitely recommend. (One of these boats, the Batofar, is actually an old Irish lightship still painted fire-engine red.)

The most popular of these venues was the Guinguette Pirate (right), more recently known as the Cabaret Pirate. As the name suggests, the boat had a pirate theme to it, although the music could be anything from electro beats to salsa rhythms.

As the more astute of our readers will have guessed from our use of the past tense, the Guinguette Pirate is no more. The boat still exists and will continue to host a busy programme of concerts and clubs. It's just that the owners have decided to change the name back to that of when it was a fully-functioning boat. So, from this day forth it's La Dame de Canton.

The Oriental flavour to its name is due to the fact that the boat is actually a Chinese junk. (The South China Sea was, and still is, a popular spot for pirates.)

Of the upcoming events on board, the one that catches our ear is the Spectaculaire festival this Sunday 28 September. We hear that one of the performers on the bill is The Mighty Stef (left, on a previous Paris trip). Stef's MySpace confirms the gig, but the venue's programme doesn't mention him.

(We also believed that French singer PacoVolume was on the bill. Again, the venue doesn't list him.)

Your blogger will head along on Sunday to find out, safe in the knowledge that he will not now risk having to walk the plank.

With a tenuous link to walking the plank, here's the video for "Death Threats" by The Mighty Stef, where he finds himself beside the sea:

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PutoMayo in Onda, a cafe in Sofia

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