Instead of a miniature Eiffel Tower or carefully-stashed bottle of wine, Gershwin’s Paris souvenirs were those car horns – he brought back several to New York and added them to the orchestra for the première of ‘An American In Paris’ in December 1928. The idea of the horns was to add to an overall mood of being in Paris, what one would hear while strolling along the boulevards. (Car horns still hog the ambient noise in this city, Parisian drivers being as impatient as they are reckless.)

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In the same way as the summer transfer window gets us excited for the forthcoming new football season, so the April-May period of festival line-up speculation and announcements starts us planning for a summer of music. You in Éire are already dreaming of torrential rain, horrendous traffic jams and alleged campsite riots (allegedly).

But for those of you looking to head off foreign for some sunshine with your live tunes, here begins our annual overview of the French summer festival line-up.

The busiest weekend for French festivals is the first weekend of July, when traditionally there are THREE big events simultaneously – Solidays in Paris, the Main Square Festival in the northern town of Arras and Eurockéennes in the eastern city of Belfort. Today we’ll look at Eurockéennes, which takes place from Friday 3 to Sunday 5 July. (We'll feature the other two in due course.)

Now in its 20th year, Eurockéennes is perhaps the French festival that’s best known internationally. This is certainly due to the size and quality of its line-up, but also because of its location; Belfort is close to Switzerland and southern Germany so it’s within reach of Euro-railers and backpackers throughout central Europe.

The 2009 programme has marquee names and cult heroes galore. The Friday night features The Prodigy, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Alela Diane, Emiliana Torrini, Hockey, Diplo, The Ting Tings, La Roux and The Kills, while that night’s headliners are French rappers NTM. Saturday has Kanye West, Pete(r) Doherty, Friendly Fires, Tricky, Passion Pit, Peter Bjorn & John, home favourites Birdy Nam Nam and Austrian chanteuse Sophie Hunger.

Finally, on Sunday you’ve got Slipknot, Glasvegas, Mos Def, Tinariwen, Florence And The Machine, adopted-Irishpeople Rodrigo y Gabriela and The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart. But that final day belongs to three heavyweight French acts: Phoenix, Yuksek and Laurent Garnier.

Any questions?

How much will Eurockéennes cost me? If you book on the festival website, you can get a three-day pass (including four days of camping!) for €88 and a one-day ticket for €39. These prices don’t include booking fees, putting-ticket-into-envelope expenses, etc. but that’ll hardly be much. That three-day pass looks like great value.

How do I get to Eurockéennes? Well, Easyjet fly to nearby Basle-Mulhouse airport, and the French national rail company is offering special fares for three-day ticketholders.

Full details of the line-up and practicalities are available on the Eurockéennes website's English page.

From Saturday Night Live recently, here’s another fab new Phoenix track: off the forthcoming ‘Wolfgang Amadeux Phoenix’ it’s ‘Lisztomania’. What’s with all the classical composer references?
 

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This Saturday (18 April) is World Record Store Day, when punters are encouraged to support their local music dealers. It’s a good opportunity to tell you about our favourite French record shops – and encourage you to tip us off about ones we haven’t discovered yet.

High-street record shops in France are quite good, with breadth and depth to their stock. Should you find yourself in a busy shopping area in a French city, chances are you’re close to an outlet of FNAC, an excellent chain of home entertainment and multimedia stores. Their music space is usually divided into large sections for rock, French, jazz, classical, urban and world music, and each section has its own information desk where the staff (in their distinctive green and yellow waistcoats) tend to be quite knowledgeable. The FNAC on the Champs-Élysées in Paris is open until midnight, like the neighbouring Virgin Megastore (also very good) – there’s something magical about being in a record shop late at night, as if all the best music only comes out after dark. And because the Champs-Élysées is a designated tourist zone, both stores can open on Sundays.

As well as being a fine store, we also commend FNAC for their Indétendances series of samplers and summertime Paris concerts, giving valuable mainstream exposure to up-and-coming French acts of various styles. And the larger FNAC stores have a dedicated space for live performances – in particular we recall a full-on, plugged-in, amped-up set by Grenoble band Rhesus at the FNAC near Montparnasse one Saturday afternoon.

Even better than FNAC, in our view, is Gibert Joseph (right), a book and music seller that can also be found in many major French towns. In Paris, you can find Gibert Joseph halfway up the Boulevard Saint Michel, the record shop at number 34 a few doors past the bookstore. (Warning: don’t confuse Gibert Joseph with Gibert Jeune, the virtually-similar group of bookshops around the fountain in Place Saint Michel.)

Gibert Joseph’s main virtue is that they sell new and second-hand music side by side. You can even find the latest releases marked with a yellow sticker that says ‘Occasion’, the French term for second-hand, at discount prices and shelved beside new copies at full price. Gibert Joseph has the best alternative music section of any French high-street chain. They also have live sessions. And, if you’ll forgive the digression, the bookstore has new and second-hand English reading material on the fourth floor, though we should also mention the small second-hand English bookstores nearby around the Odéon.

If you crave the real independent music store experience in Paris, simply go out the door of Gibert Joseph, cross the Boulevard Saint Michel and you’ll find rue des Écoles, home to small second-hand shops like Crocodisc. The nearby O’CD has become successful and opened many branches, but at a price: like many small record stores in Paris, it now stocks more DVDs than music.

Then, further along the street, turn right and go up rue de la Montaigne Saint Geneviève. At the very top, just before you come up behind the Panthéon, you have La Dame Blanche, which specializes in jazz and classical music on vinyl. Even if you don’t do the wax, some of those old classical LPs have wonderful sleeves – dig the scary head on young Daniel Barenboim! Half the pleasure of visiting record stores is simply flicking through the stock and finding an album cover that’s surreal, kitsch or slightly troubling. (Another digression: round the corner from La Dame Blanche is the Bombardier, a very nice English pub with filling meals and football on TV.)

But what’s the best record store in Paris? Well, our choice is well outside the city centre – you’ll need to take the metro to Belleville in the east and then push your way through the busy streets of this ethnic, working-class area. Suddenly you’ll fall across Place Saint Marthe, a quiet cobblestone square that has boho cafés on one side. On the other side is the record store, Ground Zero.

Ground Zero (left) is small and homey – we know it’s a converted house because there’s still a sink in one corner. Like Road Records in Dublin, it stocks the latest indie releases and correctly assumes that you already own the essential classics. Their main trade is in the sort of alternative guitar pop that attracts shy, bookish male punters who then shuffle timidly up to the girls behind the counter.

And, crucially, it sells product from local acts – you’re likely to find records by Paris-based singers and bands displayed in boxes on the counter. In particular, Ground Zero seems to be a favourite of the extended Herman Dune family, who have performed in-store sessions there.

So, this World Record Store Day your correspondent will head for Ground Zero near Belleville in Paris to buy albums and give the twinkly eye to those shop assistants.

On our rare trips outside Paris, we’ve made sure to look for local independent record shops. Should your holidays take you into deep France, we have two recommendations: Planet R in Saint Lô in Normandy and Sofa in Lyon. And there are Gibert Joseph record shops in Versailles and Lyon – we’ve been there, we know that they exist.

If you know any other good record shops in France, especially outside Paris, or if you have a memorable record-buying experience from your school tour or last holiday here, tell us about it with a comment below. Live from Ground Zero in Paris, here's Herman Dune and Julie Doiron singing 'With A Fistful Of Faith':

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Your correspondent took a rare trip out of the French capital recently. We went to Lyon, the second-largest city in France and only two hours south-east of Paris by high-speed train.
 
Outside of France, most people probably know Lyon for the recent success of its football team. But the city is renowned as a centre of gastronomy. This demanded rigorous investigation, so your blogger duly ate his own body weight in fantastic local food. (We recommend boudin noir, the Lyon equivalent of black pudding but a zillion times nicer. Next time we'll have the andouillette, a kind of sausage.)
 
The centre of Lyon is a commercial strip of concrete slabs and the usual high street stores. The old part of town, Vieux Lyon, leads uphill to two uncanny reminders of Paris - a kitsch, oversized white church like Sacre Coeur atop Montmartre and a replica of the top half of the Eiffel Tower. But apart from that Lyon has its charm. We stayed in Croix Rousse, a quarter that's home to artists and small bars still defying the smoking ban.

As usual in a new town, we looked for record shops. There's a local branch of Gibert Joseph near Bellecour as well as large stores like Virgin and FNAC - but for small independent music dealers in Lyon you should head for the streets around the town hall, where there are a handful. Our favourite was Sofa on the rue d'Algerie, which stocks mainly vinyl and non-rock sounds such as hip-hop and electronica. (To our joy, in the world music section we found 'I Am Brazil' by the Redneck Manifesto. We prefer to believe that it wasn't misfiled because of the title and that Irishness is fiercely exotic to the Lyonnais.)

Anyway, we survived away from Paris and it gives us the opportunity to tell you about an upcoming festival in Lyon. Nuits Sonores takes place on 20-24 May in venues around the city.

Now in its seventh year, Nuits Sonores is a popular and well-respected electronica and indie gathering. This year's programme features established acts like Carl Craig, Laurent Garnier, Miss Kittin, Holly Golightly and Dan Le Sac. The hipper-than-thee festival-goer will note the presence of Tiga, the Montreal-born DJ whose name is being dropped by other electronica acts the world over.

Miss Kittin is from Grenoble, so she won't have far to go for her Nuits Sonores show with The Hacker on 24 May. The pair have collaborated on a new album called 'Two' (their second long-player together, you see) and it's a superior set of melodic electro-clash floorfillers.

Before Lyon, Miss Kittin and The Hacker will be in Dublin on 3 May. Because they're French, this inevitably means their Dublin show is on at the ALT, the little Gallic musical enclave in Ireland. And, says Miss Kittin's MySpace giglist, later this summer they'll be in Paris, Madrid and... Naas! Of course, this is for Oxegen but at least they won't be shouting "'Allo, Dublin!"

(We feel bound to tell you that 'Naas' resembles a French word pronounced 'nazz' and which means 'very uncool'. If at Oxegen they tell you "You're Nazz!" and start giggling, now you're in on the joke and you can tell them to f**k off. It'll be gas.)

Miss Kittin and The Hacker are definitely not 'nazz'. Check out some of those 'Two' tracks on Miss Kittin's MySpace page, including '1000 Dreams', presented below in homemade video. Thanks to the Scottish community in Lyon:

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French turntable team Birdy Nam Nam have attracted a lot of international attention recently, as much for their sound as for the fact that there are four of them mixing and twiddling together where normally such things are a solitary pursuit.

In a way, this is quite odd. No one remarks on the fact that four rock musicians can combine as a group. Jazzmen tend to gather in fives, sixes or more. And what about the Berlin Philharmonic? There’s a hundred of them!

What’s more, in the studio Birdy Nam Nam probably don’t record live together but in individual takes and overdubs, like most rock bands. So, their onstage innovation counts for little down the coalmine of making albums. Like for most rock bands, in fact.

Fortunately for Birdy Nam Nam, the ends are just as impressive as the means. ‘Manual For Successful Rioting’, their second album, has just come out and it’s a cracker. Top-quality turntablism married to dancefloor electronica of considerable depth and imagination, it will make their name internationally. And, in our parish notes, anyone who was at their show in A.L.T. in Dublin last December will give a wry smile at that title. [Don’t go there, croissant boy! - CLUAS Legal Department]

Perhaps a more telling title is that of ‘Trans-Boulogne Express’, the 2007 track included here. That allusion to ‘Trans-Europe Express’ is a clear nod to Kraftwerk, the spiritual forefathers of this album, and marks a slight change in direction from the hip-hop-isms of old. Clinical beeps and blips, control-freak loops, distorted voices: the sonic template is Teutonic audio engineering at its finest. But, like the legendary German foursome, Birdy Nam Nam infuse their electronica with humanity and wit – mostly with the old-school rapping of Newcleus on ‘Shut Up’ but also with the soul and jazz samples that flash like lightning through this record. Crucially, you can dance to it too; producers Yuksek and Justice are old hands at that game.

And, of course, in places they sound positively French. The strangest track here is probably ‘Homosexuality’, a Jarre/Air-style exercise in swooshing retro-futuristic synths under a vocoder-ed voice that repeats the title. (We don’t know if there’s a point being made there; if so, it’s above our heads at least. That said, we could suggest some innuendo about the title ‘Trans-Boulogne Express’, but perhaps we’d best keep that to ourselves.)

Hardcore fans may be disappointed that this record is closer to carefully-crafted studio electronica than turntable cut n’pasting, but the BNN live experience can only enhance the thrill of this music. Until they land at your local venue, check out their MySpace page for tracks. And here they are on video, painting a model of the word ‘RIOT’ over and over. It must be art:

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The Pont Alexandre III (right), named for the Tsar to commemorate the Franco-Russian Alliance of 1892, features four extravagant gold-leaf statues of winged horses on columns at each corner. Raffaelli’s painting shows them as fauviste blobs of gold above the blurred red and blue dots of passers-by below.

Unlike other Paris music clubs and bars facing noise restrictions and complaints, Showcase doesn’t have too many neighbours. There’s the man who sleeps under the next bridge downriver, and houseboat residents upstream who should by now be used to the roar of quayside traffic and tourist cruises. In fact, it’s on a quiet route where your correspondent goes running.

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In true rock n’roll fashion, the problem is that the Flèche is too loud. The venue has been the subject of judicial complaints by local residents about excessive noise levels at late hours. However, the cost of renovation to reduce sound emissions is prohibitive. “The latest estimates for constructing a venue within the venue are too high,” said the Flèche management in a statement. “We don’t have enough money for this work and we must close.” Previous remedial works last year have proved to be insufficient.

To howls of disapproval from its regulars, La Flèche d’Or introduced a cover charge of €6 last September – still excellent value (your entry ticket gets you a small beer at the bar) but an affront to the innate anti-capitalist principles of Jacques le Frenchman. The move coincided with the gentrification of the surrounding streets – across from the Flèche the newly-opened Mama Shelter hotel featured a bar/restaurant by ultra-hip designer Philippe Starck – and the new Paris taste for disco-flavoured indie chic. The crowd demographic shifted: now the indie kids were rubbing shoulders with young professionals using Blackberries. The quality of line-up decreased, as the Flèche seemed content to trade on its reputation and profit from its hipness. Competitors like L’International, in the lively Oberkampf area closer to the city centre, began attracting the original Flèche-goers with its own free concerts. Quite simply, La Flèche d’Or became uncool.

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Were it not for the fact that we usually put embedded videos and MySpace links in our posts as evidence, you could be forgiven for thinking that the CLUAS Foreign Correspondent (Paris) simply makes up half the French acts featured here.

Yes, we appreciate that you have trouble taking seriously some of the music we write about.  For instance: today we'll be raving about a young Parisian singer-songer (right) who goes by the nom de rock of Arch Woodmann. Okay, says you, a rather odd anglophone name for a Frenchman but you continue reading nonetheless.

Then we tell you that Arch Woodmann's debut album is called 'Draped Horse Blue Licorne Argentée Feather Blue', and that's where we lose you altogether. You were willing to try Andromakers and take our word for My Internal Playground. But you're just not ready to go the whole 'Draped Horse Blue Licorne Argentée Feather Blue' by Arch Woodmann. Thanks all the same, like, but try selling it next door.

Anyway, for those of you still reading, Arch Woodmann's album is a fine one - a streamlined chassis of solid folk-pop songwriting, powered by an engine of American post-rock. There are even a few flecks of jazz in there.

Just to prove that we're not making all this up, here's the evidence:

(1) Arch Woodmann's MySpace page, where you can listen to tracks off (deep breath) 'Draped Horse Blue Licorne Argentée Feather Blue'. If you want to buy the album by post, cheques must be made out to a Mr Antoine Pasqualini; could this be the singer's true identity?

(2) From an acoustic session for a French music website called Sourdoreille (which translates as 'deaf ear'), here's Arch Woodmann with the just-as-fantastically-named 'Duities And Fruities':

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But for the rest of the world, the Avenue des Champs-Élysées (to give it its full name) is synonymous with Parisian glamour and French culture. Which is true, up to a point. Until the mid-19th century a few peasant hovels still lined the street; some Parisians see its souvenir stores and fast-food joints and maintain that this remains the case.

One of French cinema’s most iconic scenes (left) was filmed here: Jean Seberg in her ‘Herald Tribune’ T-shirt, selling newspapers and walking with Jean-Paul Belmondo in Jean-Luc Godard’s ‘À Bout De Souffle’ (known in English as 'Breathless').

Halfway down, the buildings end and the Champs-Élysées becomes a park-lined avenue, an arena for strolling. The richer of you will turn right onto Avenue Montaigne and its exclusive boutiques, but if you continue down the Champs you’ll see the impressive glass roof of the Grand Palais exhibition hall beside the statue of de Gaulle. Then at the bottom of the avenue you’ll reach Place de la Concorde (formerly home to the French Revolution’s most infamous guillotine, where Sydney Carton does his ‘far far better thing’ at the end of ‘A Tale of Two Cities’), the Tuileries and the Louvre.

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And, just as every late ‘80s/early ‘90s Irish band was labelled ‘The New U-Know-Who’, any promising French electronician is tagged as ‘The New Daft Punk’. Such was the case with Justice, and now it’s happening to an emerging DJ who looks like making it big in 2009.

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