Heard with increasing frequency on Chinese radio, a soft-voiced female singer doing a version of the song written by Jimmy McCarthy and popularised by Christy Moore. She's kept the Ride On, see you" part, but the rest is sung in Mandarin. There's even some people on the bus humming it. Expect it to be heard accross the nation this summer on Chinese ringtones.

More details of the singer and the translation later.

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Cork's Simple Kid, maker of 'SK2', CLUAS's top Irish album of 2006, is playing two Paris shows over the next week.

First, on 15 June he's appearing with The Servant and Grand National at a venue called Showcase under the Pont Alexandre III (the bridge with the gold eagles that goes between Invalides and the Champs-Elysées, Paris fans).

He'll also be at the Maroquinerie next Thursday, 21 June - a free concert as part of the Fête de la Musique, France's national music festival. Also playing on the night will be Good Books, Fields and Paco Volume.

We will definitely be there. Report to follow

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Saint Malo is a quaint old town on the northern French coast. It has kept its original walled city, and it is a favourite destination for French holiday-makers - in particular, Parisian indie kids. Every summer Saint Malo hosts La Route Du Rock, France's hippest music festival.

This year's edition takes place from 16 to 18 August, which is Wednesday to Friday. The strangely non-weekend dates owes a lot to the fact that 15 August is a public holiday in France, so in true Gallic tradition most people will take the entire week off.

As every year, the line-up is achingly indie-cool: it includes The National, Justice, Elvis Perkins, Herman Dune, CSS, Peter Bjorn and John, LCD Soundsystem and The Besnard Lakes.

The strange (and for some die-hard Saint-Malo-goers, controversial) choice as chief headliner is a genuine marquee name - the reformed Smashing Pumpkins, a rare instance of La Route Du Rock hosting (1) a metal band and (2) a megastar act.

Tickets cost an unwhopping €63.50 (yes, sixty-three euros fifty) and are available online at www.fnacspectacles.com.

At the time of posting, the (incomplete) line-up for La Route Du Rock 2007 is:
          

Wednesday 16 August: Justice, The Go! Team, The National , Herman Düne, Elvis Perkins, Robert Gomez, Thee, Stranded Horse
 
Thursday 17 August: The Smashing Pumpkins, CSS, Peter Bjorn & John, New Young Pony Club, The Besnard Lakes, Fujiya & Miyagi

Friday 18 August: Sonic Youth (Daydream Nation), LCD Soundsystem, Voxtrot, 120 Days, Final Fantasy

Check www.laroutedurock.com for updates on new additions to the bill.

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French DJ duo Justice release their first album today (11 June). Its title is † - that is, the symbol of a crucifix.

Their sound is just as hard to name - it's the most evil, intricate, banging, catchy, queasy, funky, joyous dance music we've heard in ages. It's a quantum leap forward from 'Homework' by Daft Punk, the record a decade ago which sent French dance music stratospheric .

Xavier de Rosnay and Gaspar Auge are the pair of Parisians behind Justice.  They first came to attention with a remix of Simian's 'Never Be Alone', which they followed with 2005's amazing 'Waters Of Nazareth', a track which causes stomach upsets if you go too close to the speakers.

You can check out Justice when they appear at Oxegen this summer. Be warned - they DJ with two stacks of Marshall amps, so all you PYTs had better mind your eardrums.

Here's the clever 'T-shirt' video for their current single 'D.A.N.C.E.'

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Carlsberg don't do surf music but if they did; Here are three versions of that classic surf pop song, "Surfin' Bird".

Firstly, The Ramones in 1978

Secondly, the German band der fall Böse perform it in the back of their VW bus.

Finally, Kermit the Frog gives it a lash.

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"We wanna be free! We wanna be free to do what we wanna do. We wanna be free to ride. We wanna be free to ride our machines without being hassled by The Man! ... And we wanna get loaded. And we wanna have a good time. And that's what we are gonna do. We are gonna have a good time... We are gonna have a party." These immortal words, uttered by Peter Fonda in cult biker movie, "The Wild Angels", found a new lease of life when they appeared in an edited form at the start of the Primal Scream track, 'Loaded'. I was reminded of them recently when I read a report in 'Bicycling Magazine' concerning a leisure cycle along America's best road. The article contained a vignette about a group of the cyclists on the trip who spent their evenings watching 'Wild Angels' on DVD, drinking beer and playing their guitars into the early hours of dawn. The overall impression was of cycling as rock & roll, rebellion, freedom, sticking it to The Man, partying and the open road.

So, with a month to go before the start of the 2007 Tour De France it was interesting to do a short trawl of i-Tunes to see that a number of famous musicians have written songs about bicycles. There is, of course, Queen who sang how, "I don't wanna be a candidate for Vietnam or Watergate / Cause all I wanna do is / Bicycle bicycle bicycle". There is Pink Floyd who revealed that, "I've got a bike. You can ride it if you like / It's got a basket, a bell that rings and / Things to make it look good / I'd give it to you if I could, but I borrowed it." There is the elegiac 'Broken Bicycles' by Tom Waits that parallels a broken love affair with, "Broken bicycles / Old busted chains / With busted handle bars / Out in the rain." And there are also hymns to the simple velo by HAL, John Cale and the fragrant Katie Melua. Most importantly, there is Kraftwerk's 'Tour De France'.

If there is one cyclist that embodies all these diverse qualities then it is Lance Armstrong, a genuinely heroic athlete who fought off cancer to come to win Le Tour seven times, has since raised millions of dollars for cancer support and research, was briefly engaged to Sheryl Crow and, being a Texan, has a healthy streak of the rebel yell runing though his veins. So, to finish, I thought I would show you an advert he did for Nike that has a genuine touch of poetry to it and a soundtrack that tugs at your heart strings in the right way. Vive Le Tour, ride free or die.

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Tonight in Paris at a small indie venue called La Boule Noire there's a concert by a French group called Ultra Orange & Emmanuelle.

The Emmanuelle in question is their lead singer - French actress Emmanuelle Seigner, best known for starring beside Harrison Ford in Roman Polanski's 1988 Paris thriller 'Frantic'. These days Ms Seigner is actually Mrs Polanski, and the couple live in Paris.

Last year Seigner starred in a French film called "Backstage", the story of a wild rock diva - and the role obviously gave her a taste for the real thing.

You can listen to some tracks by Ultra Orange & Emmanuelle on their MySpace page, and you can watch the video for their single 'Sing Sing' below:

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Mat Tanner is a musician. He has already self-financed, self-recorded and self-released one album and is in the process of doing the same with a second. Last week, however, he incurred the wrath of Universal Music Publishing Group.  What could a Manchester based singer-songwriter have done to offend one of the world’s largest publishing groups? 

Please Note: Repeat incidents of copyright infringement will result in the deletion of your account and all videos uploaded to that account. In order to avoid future strikes against your account, please delete any videos to which you do not own the rights, and refrain from uploading additional videos that infringe on the copyrights of others. For more information about YouTube's copyright policy, please read the Copyright Tips guide.”

As far as I’m aware Mat has made no money from this video. It’s not a song he plays live all that often and so doesn’t trade on the back of it. He is simply a musician making his own music who happens to play a cover version to vary his set every now and again.  Where is the crime?  Surely, there is more chance of someone going out and buying a Huey Lewis/Prince/Paul Simon record on the back of being reminded of it than there is of any of the above losing out?  And what of the thousands of cover bands who make a living playing other peoples music in almost every pub in the UK and Ireland every night of the week? 

Taking action against a musician for playing music doesn't help music; it only threatens it. 

What next, copyright infringement for learning to play the guitar?  Oh wait!

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Last Tuesday I watched David O'Doherty continue his quietly savage assault on the shibboleths of Post Boom Ireland as he wrote, recorded and released what he termed 'the ultimate power ballad' about a girl who had overdone the fake tan. He had high hopes that this musical masterpiece would go all the way to number 27 in the Irish singles charts. In order to achieve this, David followed a masterplan not unlike that employed by many a boyband Svengali, down to the soft focus promo video shot on a beach and the trademark white suit.

Last Sunday, I watched 'maverick master of the garden' Diarmuid Gavin convince another well to do Irish family to pony up in excess of €25,000.00 for a garden designed by him that they were going to have to build themselves.

It was hard to know which was the most bizarre sight; O'Doherty burning all two hundred copies of his single in four hours on three borrowed laptops on the floor of his flat or a family of wealthy Dubliners stump up the equivalent of the deposit for a house so that they can get into some big time DIY.

Both programmes offer a vision of Ireland that was strangely similar; the person using their own precious time and capital to acquire something that was both visible and yet transitory. At least, O'Doherty slaved away in service to his own vision whereas the home owners chosen by Gavin's producers have to pay for and execute a garden that was not of their design or inspiration.

I am not sure what these programmes are trying to tell us about Ireland but as slices of pop culture they are certainly fascinating to watch.

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Let me ask you a simple question ? Do you think Elvis was a lesser artist because of the cheeseburgers ? Do you think Moby is a greater artist because of the lack of them. There is no link between Hitler's vegetarian and homicidal tendencies yet hardline vegans frequently attempt to link a vegetarian diet with a superior moral or ethical approach to life as outlined by books such as "Vegan: The New Ethics of Eating" by Eric Marcus and the selective use of quotes from a variety of religious texts on websites such as VeganForLife.Org. In popular music Sir Paul McCartney has helped to popularise vegetarianism and a number of well known musicians such as Morrissey, Peter Gabriel, Leonard Cohen, Prince, Martin Gore, Fiona Apple and Meatloaf (no sniggering at the back) have been spotlighted as celebrities who have eschewed meat, fish, chicken and dairy to various degrees.

Don't get me wrong, good diet is an essential part of good health, but when you have to take vitamin supplements as a substitute for the vitamins you are missing out on because of your chosen diet then I wonder whether people are being told the whole story. In fact, I was particularly concerned when one acquaintance of mine kept on insisting that the value of a vegetarian diet was highlighted in Morgan Spurlock's "SuperSize Me". I had seen the documentary a number of times and it was quite clear that Spurlock's ill health stemmed not from his meat intake during that month but because of the amount of sugar, salt, fats and food additives that he ingested on that diet. Although, after filming ended, his vegetarian girlfriend did put him on a diet to lose the weight and help him back to the good health he had previously enjoyed Spurlock never became vegetarian; his subsequent diet was monitored by a doctor and devised by his girlfriend who works as a professional chef and health counsellor. In fact he is quoted as saying, "There’s still nothing better than pork chops, ham and bacon. I just can’t resist the swine.”

I'll put my cards on the table. I am, like any person born in this world, naturally an omnivore and when I say that I mean that my mouth is full of teeth that are able to handle a wide variety of foodstuffs which my stomach is then able to digest. As far as I know, Lions are unable to eat vegetables and cows don't eat meat but mankind is neither solely a herbivore or a carnivore so, as far as I can see, vegetarianism/veganism is primarily an emotional or intellectual choice. There are, of course situations where people are unable to eat certain foods for health reasons but we are not talking about people who are eating under the direction and supervision of a doctor or dietician, we are talking about people who, in the absence of any medical impetus, have made a conscious, personal choice about what they eat, sometimes as a result of reading the opinions of a person such as a famous musician who is not themselves qualified to give dietary advice but yet have taken it upon themselves to tell others what to eat and why and, in the process has attached certain moral or philosophical values to that unqualified advice.

In our modern, post religious society I am amazed that people, who would protest loudly if someone was to quote religious scripture at them in an attempt to direct their sexual behaviour would then meekly accept quotations from the same religious texts when it came to their diet. If you reject what the Bible says about homosexuality or contraception why will you accept what it says about eating meat ? I am perfectly happy to accept Macca's advice on how to write a good song or even what kind of bass guitar to buy but why should I accept what he says about food when he is not a qualified doctor, dietician or chef. How can I be sure that Morrissey is correct when he sings, "And the flesh you so fancifully fry / Is not succulent, tasty or kind"?. Maybe he just doesn't know anyone who can cook. Why should I look to rock musicians for health tips in the first place when so many of them suffer from severe drug or alcohol problems?

As I said at the beginning, there is no link between Hitler's fondness for carrots and his masterminding of the Shoah and so, until there is a proven connection between diet and morality, I would like to remind those campaigning vegetarians out there that its rude to talk with your mouth full, especially when the topic is ethics. Eat what you like, but don't bore others with spurious reasons for why you eat what you do.

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