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Seth Lakeman: "Lady of the Sea"

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Now the two are together again in Belfast – Emily Loizeau is supporting the Duke at his concert tonight (Sunday 19 August) at the Empire. If you’re going to the show, lucky you.

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For those of you 'down with the kids', this will be old news. 50 Cent and Kanye West are releasing their new albums (Curtis and Graduation respectively) on on the same day in the US - September 11th. A rather entertaining war of words has now escalated to the following sensible conclusion: they'll be debating who has the best album live on television. As you do.

Fiddy's somewhat baffling response to West's TV debate request closed with "Just don't be asking me if I am a conscious rapper. I know exactly what I am saying - so I am conscious". I read this imagining Fiddy in baby oil placing his finger on his chin and pursing his lips a la Dr Evil.

Kanye's somewhat more reasonable reply ("What am I going to debate about?") has led to even more drama! Fiddy has declared that he will never make another 50 Cent album should West outsell him. This is an empty threat as Cent is regularly amongst the highest selling artists in the world. Still, we can but hope.

At least this level of juvenile engagement probably won't result in multiple gun-related rapper casualties.

Still, this is all rather reminiscent of other music battles. I thought I'd start a list of my own personal favourites, NOT in the order of their cultural significance of course!

• The Stones vs The Beatles

Still a healthy debate a full 35 years plus since the bands were at their peak, this argument will probably never be definitely settled. For me, Beggar's Banquet to Goat Heads Soup wins the day.

• Oasis 'Roll With It' vs Blur 'Country House'

Conventional wisdom ran that Blur won the battle (Country House debuted at no 1, beating Roll With It to top spot) but that Oasis won the war. Morning Glory went on the sell squillions and the Gallagher brothers became OK and Hello fodder. But... Blur scored bigger hits in the US (Song 2?) and have arguably released better and more challenging albums than their Mancunian foes. For me, Blur by a street.

• One True Voice vs Girls Aloud

Heh! 2 "bands" created on 2002's Popstars - The Rivals. One managed by Pete Waterhouse, the other by Louis Walsh. "Sound of the Underground" announced the arrival of a sassy young group that wiped the floor with their male rivals. One True Voice fell apart after just two singles and Pete Waterman has never been heard of since. Yey!

• The Music Industry vs Downloaders

Still raging. And dealt with elsewhere on the CLUAS blogs.

• The Dark Wars - Norwegian Death Metal vs Finnish Black Metal 1992 - 1994

It's not just the rap genre where musical conflict has escalated to murder. Varg Vicenne of Barzum stabbed Øystein Aarseth of Mayhem 23 times and is currently serving a 21 year jail sentence for his trouble.

• The Killers vs The Bravery

The Killers currently ahead on points in the Lightweight Dead-eyed Careerist Championship of the World.

Any others I've missed?

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Twenty-five years ago, on August 17 1982, the first ever CDs rolled off an assembly line in Hannover Germany. And the music that was on those first CDs? Some future-focused music of the day? Maybe New Order's 'Temptation'? Or Simple Minds 'Glittering Prize'? Or even the Stranglers 'Golden Brown'? No, the first music on the first CD was Richard Strauss' Alpine Symphony.

The first CD player hit the shelves a few months later on 1 October 1982. A Sony player, it was initially available only in - where else but - Japan. And the first CD to be supplied for mass consumption? Billy Joel's '52nd Street'. Obvious choice, really.

Anyway, will the CD be still on the high street for its 30th birthday? I have my doubts.

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How did your blogger spend his morning? Well, first we picked up today’s edition of Le Monde (‘All Quiet, Nothing Happening, Call Back In September’, says the front page headline), then bought some galettes in the local French market and eventually passed the morning with both newspaper and sweetbread in our favourite little café. Yes, you’ve guessed it – we’re still on holiday in Tralee.

A homesick French exile freshly-landed in Dublin, for example, can start today (Friday 17 August) by buying real pains au chocolat and croissants (not the awful Cuisine de France stuff in your local breakfast-roll shack) in the French bakery next to Grogan’s pub behind the George’s Street arcade – and then eating them in Café en Seine on Dawson Street.

(On which point, it’s disappointing that there’s no live music on the streets of Tralee for this year’s festival. Last year, bands like Republic of Loose, Delorentos, Dry County and loads others came to Kerry and played free outdoor concerts over the festival weekend. This year, all the live music responsibility rests with Richie Kavanagh. The organising committee plead lack of resources, as well as increased competition from festivals in nearly every Irish town – for instance, the recent music events in Mitchelstown, Portlaoise and Birr.)

Of course, most French people living in Ireland are well integrated here and aren’t trying to cocoon themselves in their own Paris-sur-Liffey. Similarly, your blogger isn’t really involved with the Irish community in Paris (approximately 10,000 ex-pat Pats in the greater Paris region) – nearly all my friends are French and I only venture into Irish pubs to watch football, GAA and rugby on TV.

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Normally, this blog is the gentle, timid type. It takes a lot to get it angry; it takes even more to get it in such a state that it’s shouting at the radio while stuck in traffic on the N81, much to the bemusement of its fellow motorists. The reason for such apocalyptic rage? Cllr. Dessie Ellis of Sinn Féin.

Why, you might ask, is Key Notes discussing politics? It’s not, it’s discussing idiots. You see, Cllr. Ellis found the time to address the burning needs of his electorate in yesterdays ‘Irish’ Daily Mirror. His problem was that A Lazarus Soul have featured an image of Martin Cahill, aka The General, on the front of their new single The Day I Disappeared. Cllr. Ellis claims that this is ‘inappropriate’ and ‘sends out the wrong sort of message.’ However, and the reason why I was shouting at the radio, on Phantom yesterday evening, Cllr. Ellis admitted he hadn’t yet heard the song.

If he had taken the time to listen, rather than pontificate, perhaps he might not be so quick to judge. The Day I Disappeared discusses the loss of the ‘Ordinary Decent Criminal.’ It doesn’t portray them as heroes, but it does spark debate about whether Cahill and his ilk were ‘better’ than the ‘Younger, faceless, more sinister gangs’ the Gardai are failing to deal with today.

Of course, Martin Cahill was no saint; who is? What he was though, was the biggest fish in the murky pond at a time when we had crime under relative control, something that Graveyard of Burnt Out Cars, the album from which the track is taken, deals with in full. We used to think things were bad, and indeed they were, but they are a lot worse now. That is the theme of the album in general and this track in particular.

Now, it’s not for this blog to point out that Cllr. Ellis is a member of a party with extremely close links to the organisation that claimed responsibility for Cahill’s death. That information is already freely and publicly available. What this blog would like to highlight, however, is that politicians, and indeed people in general, shouldn’t be so quick to criticise a band/artist for a song they haven’t even heard.

Marilyn Manson isn’t responsible for kids shooting other kids, Elliott Smith (despite what this blogs mother might think) isn’t responsible for people killing themselves and A Lazarus Soul aren’t responsible for the gangland trouble we have today. Sparking debate and posing questions, while still composing a pretty accomplished indie-rock song, is something A Lazarus Soul should be applauded for, not criticised by someone who doesn’t know what they’re talking about.

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NME are reporting that the new Radiohead album (which was remastered last month) won't be out until 2008. I can only speculate, but there may well be some fascinating stuff going on behind this decision to postpone the release.

With Radiohead out of a contract, their non-aversion to corporate bashing (despite being signed for years to a multinational) and the music industry up in arms over what the future holds, I suspect that they are planning some innovative means of getting the album out there. I certainly don't expect them to do a Prince and stick a free copy of the album on the cover of the Daily Mail, nor just release it via iTunes or eMusic or Amazon's new MP3 store. They are in a unique position - a band with a huge global following without any record company obligations - to do something radical, shake some indsutry feathers and make a pretty buck while they're at it.

Or maybe they'll just release it on vinyl only.

Anyways, want to hear some snippets of the new album? Nigel Godrich, back as producer on their new long-player, took bits of tape which were chopped out of the mixes when tracks on the new album were edited. He then stuck them on a reel and when you play it back it sounds like this (Quicktime plugin required, if your browser does not show anything below go to where this was originally posted on the Radiohead site, and scroll down to the 15 June entry):

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Maybe it was all the thunder and lightning which scared and soaked the festival site Thursday and Friday that drove the crow legged Rastafarian to stumble along in the post-storm mud in what could only be his girlfriend’s pink knickers. He was tame however compared to the Italian who took it all off and stumbled around the muck and pools of rainwater near the main stage, taking mad runs at screeching girls and his mortified friends, his penis swinging in the wind.

Not officially nudist, Sziget is nonetheless one of the best natural locations in the world for a rock festival, an island on the outskirts of one of Europe's finest looking cities. The line up at Sziget 2007 in Budapest (taking place from Aug 8 to 14) isn’t bad either. Sinead O’Connor shares a main-stage bill with The Killers, Nine Inch Nails and Chris Cornell as well as Brits like Razorlight and The Rakes to play in front of 60,000 festival goers, many of whom arrive by a ferry up the Danube.

Maybe the best value of the whole week-long festival are the few dozen Roma gypsy bands who travel from the Hungarian hinterlands, Romania and the Balkans to play. No other rock festival can boast such a strong world music line up, and that's thanks in part to the world music lable Putumayo, which brought the gypsy bands to a special Roma stage on the festival site. A big name on any world music rankings, Romania's Fanfare Ciocarlia pulled a bigger and more boisterous crowd on the World Music stage than several of the western groups playing the main stage.

Sziget is more established and laid-back hippy than many among the dozens of more opportunistic recent arrivals to Europe’s festival scene. It started in 1993 as a way for Hungarians to party off the traumas of a post-war era of totalitarian socialist rule. In the hometown of classical greats like Franz Liszt, the event is starting to pull really big name rock to its main stage. There's plenty of local talent to fill the other 20 stages offering world music, jazz, blues, electronica and lots of other stuff that's not easily categorized. Promising magicians compete for attention with mind-bendingly sexy belly dancers from Turkey who perform in a giant tea tent of hookahs and tea.

Like most everywhere else there's punks and drunks littered around the main entrance who can't afford to come in. Just as well because you have to leave all bottles at the gate - Coca Cola is a major sponsor. The festival has moved on from its hippy origins. ATM machines around the site make it easy for a few hundred stalls to sell. Sziget organizers have everything covered, including a branch of Hungary Post allows festival goers to greet the folks at home.

There's no shortage of t-shirt stalls but the invisibility of security– try finding someone who can tell you where the exit is when you’re tired – allowed some of the inebriated to go stark naked mad. Others were better covered. A grandly sized EU tent had the most comfortable couches south of backstage. There was more than the rain to tempt festival goers onto the deep blue couches. Like free pens and balloons - you have to do a quiz to get an umbrella. Outside beefy men in yellow impermeables power hose the loos. Inside local thinkers and polticians debate the cuntry's issues with youngsters and their musical heroes.

Next door in this "Civic area" of tents the country's culture ministry try to engage youth on the country's parliamentary process by offering pens, mugs and t-shirts. Given that they're emblazoned with a print of the parliament, one of the city's finest looking buildings - and that's saying something in Budapest - the maroon coloured t-shirts are worth having, if you can answer enough questions about the Hungarian political system.

Socialist sports rain down on the Sziget site too. Anyone bored by the music can play table tennis, for free. Budapest is a dream festival town, something to thank socialist egalitarianism for. Great public transport and millions of square metres of accommodation in this town were built by the socialists – the underground system is an identikit of its deep-bellied counterpart in Moscow, Pyongyang and everywhere else Soviet engineers took their trade. There's plenty of traces of the old communist era in the shop signs and proletarian looking old signs for state-owned restaurants and shoes shops which have faded into the decorous, unpainted facades of downtown buildings.

With sights like that this city doesn't need a festival to bring backpackers in. Yet caretakers and housekeepers of the graceful old tenements built during the Austro-Hungarian empire hang out with clipboards at Keleti train station to spot anyone loading a backpack, rasta hats and faded Guns n Roses t-shirt. Others just camp.

(to be continued, watch out for photos coming soon)

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