As played on Phantom 105.2, Saturday December 29, 10pm-midnight

The second half of the show’s review of 2007 (the playlist for the first half is here) and that is that for 2007 from this quarter. Next Saturday’s show is the first of the new year so the plan is to feature as much new music for 2008 as I can get my hands on. Well, that’s the plan anyway….

Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip “Thou Shalt Always Kill” (Lex)
Operator Please “Just A Song About Ping Pong” (Brille)
Simian Mobile Disco “It’s The Beat” (Wichita)
Justice “Stress” (Ed Banger)
LCD Soundsystem “Someone Great” (DFA)
Battles “Atlas” (Warp)
Dan Deacon “The Crystal Cat” (Carpark)
Holy Fuck “Super Inuit” (Young Turk)
Fight Like Apes “Jake Summers” (FIFA)
Tiger Force “Beat This” (Marquis Cha Cha)
Prinzhorn Dance School “Up Up Up” (DFA)
Les Savy Fav “The Equestrian” (French Kiss)
The Octopus Project “Trunk” (Peek-A-Boo)
White Rabbits “Kid On My Shoulders” (Say Hey)
Menomena “West & Rusting” (Barsuk)
Bruce Springsteen “Radio Nowhere” (Columbia)
Arcade Fire “No Cars Go” (Merge)
Adrian Crowley “These Icy Waters” (Tin Angel)
Fiery Furnaces “Ex-Guru” (Thrill Jockey)
Magik Markers “Taste” (Ecstatic Peace)
Wilco “Either Way” (Nonesuch)
Little Dragon “Twice” (Peacefrog)
Amiina & Lee Hazlewood “Hilli (At The Top of the World)” (Ever)
Efterklang “Maison de Reflexion” (Leaf)
Nancy Elizabeth “Hey Son (Leaf)
The Antlers “When You Sleep” (MP3)
Robert Wyatt “Stay Tuned” (Domino)

If you thought 2007 was an eventful year for the record industry, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

The next 12 months will see even more upheaval and change as established stars, major labels, rising acts, music fans and pundits try to keep track of seismic shifts in how music gets from the artist to the consumer.
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One area that will continue to provide plenty of stories in 2008 will be the Irish live music sector. For a start, next summer will probably see even more outdoor shows and festivals around the country.

While there may be one or two new additions to the macro-festival circuit (it has long been mooted that the Latitude festival will be pitching its tents in Co Westmeath next summer), the real growth will be in smaller, boutique festivals catering to crowds of 5,000 or less. Don’t be surprised if the number of outdoor shows surpasses the 70 events held in 2007.

There will also be continued grumbles about ticket prices. However, with more and more acts giving away their music for free, live music prices will not be falling any time in the near future.

And expect a lot of Live Nation coverage too as they seek to further increase increase their Irish footprint.

The best You Tube footage at the moment comes from Tori Amos, as captured at a recent show in San Diego.

Midway through Code Red, Amos stops the song to berate two fans in the front row for not paying attention.

“Get the fuck out of my show,” storms Amos. “It’s a privilege to sit in the front row and I reserve those seats for people who appreciate music.”

Amos obviously reckons she won’t need support in the future from fans who find some of her material a little boring.

January and February are traditionally the months for award ceremonies. Joining the Meteor Music Awards and the Choice Music Prize on the red carpet in the coming weeks will be the Irish Dance Music Awards.

Organised by Irish clubbing magazine Slick DJ, the awards will take in clubs, events (like the Garden Party and Planet Love one-day fests) and DJs from all over the country.

The awards ceremony will take place in Spirit 57 on January 27th.

As played on Phantom 105.2, Saturday December 22, 10pm-midnight

The Christmas special to mark the eve of the eve of Christmas Eve. As if this wasn’t enough unseasonal seasonal music to be going on with, Bob Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour show is playing in the background as I type and, yep, Bob’s in a Christmas mood too.

Wild Billy Childish & The Musicians of the British Empire “Santa Claus” (Damaged Goods)
The Ramones “Merry Christmas (I Don’t Want To Fight Tonight)” (Sire)
Ted Leo & The Pharmacists “Annunciation Day/Born On Christmas Day” (Touch & Go)
The Kinks “Father Christmas” (Deram)
Animal Collective “Winter Wonder Land” (Domino)
Flaming Lips “Christmas at the Zoo” (Warner Bros)
Run DMC “Christmas In Hollis” (A&M)
James Brown “Lets Make This Christmas Mean Something This Year” (People)
The Flirtations “Christmas Time Is Here Again” (Deram)
Darlene Love “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” (Phil Spector Records)
The Ronettes “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” (Phil Spector Records)
Marvin Gaye “Purple Snowflakes” (Motown)
Cocteau Twins “Frosty The Snowman” (4AD)
St Etienne “My Christmas Prayer” (Creation)
El Perro del Mar “Oh What A Christmas!” (Memphis Industries)
Mum “Nóttin Var Svo Ágæt Ei” (Mobile)
Badly Drawn Boy “Donna & Blitzen” (Twisted Nerve)
Mogwai “Christmas Song” (Chemikal Underground)
Low “Long Way Round the Sea” (Tugboat)
Hermann & Kleine “Catch A Snowflake” (Morr Music)
Ryan Adams “Hey Parker, It’s Christmas” (Lost Highway)
Sufjan Stevens “That Was The Worst Christmas Ever!” (Asthmatic Kitty)
Palace Music “Christmastime In The Mountains” (Drag City)
Tom Waits “Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis” (Island)
Joni Mitchell “River” (Reprise)
Mary Margaret O’Hara “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?” (Koch)
Johnny Cash “Blue Christmas” (CBS)
Blind Boys Of Alabama “Silent Night” (Real World)
Bruce Springsteen “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town” (Live track)

Is it time to break out the giant box of chocolate kimberleys and make with the niceness? It is.

Happy Christmas to every single one of you. Yes, I said every single one of you so that also applies to you, you lovely-jubbly Radiohead fans who provided me with so much amusement during the past few months. As Midge Ure once said, it’s Christmas time and there’s no need to be afraid of the big bad bold bully yanking your chain when it comes to your favourite band.

Yes, there will be a few blog updates over the Christmas, but if you’re really bored, type something like “Arcade Fire” or “2FM” or “greyhounds” into the search engine on this page (scroll down and it’s on the right after categories and before the archive) and read away to your heart’s content.

Until we exchange smart alec comments and pleasantries again, have a smashing Christmas.

All eyes will be on U2 in 2008 as the Irish veterans return to the fray with their 12th studio album.
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The Christmas season may be the nadir when it comes to quality live music but you can’t say the same about the beginning of 2008.

Once the quietest months of the year, January and February were already bursting at the seams with must-see gigs before these latest additions were added to the mix.

Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip, creators of ‘07 anthem Thou Shalt Always Kill, are one of the first off the blocks, playing Dublin’s Crawdaddy on January 18th.

One of 2008’s most intriguing prospects, Southend’s These New Puritans, hit the same venue on February 20th.

New York singer-songwriter (and holder of a recent Ticket CD of the Week accolade) Jaymay plays upstairs at Whelan’s in Dublin on February 11th.

And if you have just got a 2008 diary full of blank pages, you can put “The Breeders live in Vicar Street” in the space reserved for April 7th.

Stuck for a last-minute present for The Ticket reader in your life? Check out blogger Nialler9’s Irish Albums of the Year Top 20 poll and get buying.

While there are problems of accountability with any public poll - Nialler himself points out that 9 of the 20 bands in the final countdown canvassed people to vote for them - it’s a good indicator of those Irish albums worth checking out from the year nearly gone by.

Super Extra Bonus Party topped the poll which also featured high placings for Cathy Davey, Delorentos, Mumblin’ Deaf Ro and Dry County.

Mixaloo may be the 33,078th new music business model which On The Record has heard about in 2007, but it’s one which may make you, the music fan, some cash.

Users browse Mixaloo’s catalogue of three million tracks to create a digital mix-tape which visitors can then check out and even purchase.

When a sale goes through, the person who put the mix together gets half the profit from each sale (between eight and 20 cents per track).

Make sure it’s David Byrne’s overview on what is currently happening and what may well happen in the music business in the future.

As he’s someone who has seen the industry from all sides - and from the perspective of both artist and businessman - Byrne’s views are worth noting.

2008 is going to be a whole lot of fun, people. No, it is, it’s going to be great. Trust me on this. I’m hardly ever wrong these days.
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There’s an excellent interview with the Radiohead singer in this month’s Wired magazine. The man asking the questions? David Byrne.

And he asks Yorke one of the questions I was waiting for someone - anyone - to pose in the light of how the world and its missus now thinks the “In Rainbows” model is the way forward for everyone.

Byrne: What about bands that are just getting started?

Yorke: Well, first and foremost, you don’t sign a huge record contract that strips you of all your digital rights, so that when you do sell something on iTunes you get absolutely zero. That would be the first priority. If you’re an emerging artist, it must be frightening at the moment. Then again, I don’t see a downside at all to big record companies not having access to new artists, because they have no idea what to do with them now anyway.

Yeah, Yorke doesn’t have a clue what new acts are going to do in the brave new world either. But he has his fanbase so he’s sorted.

The thought struck me several times recently rewatching 24 Hour Party People: the problem with the record industry is that it doesn’t have mavericks like Tony Wilson any more. Of course with Wilson, you’d have to also have an expensive boardroom table, iconic posters which turn up too late to be used and acts which he and he alone could appreciate. But you also got magnificent colour, over-the-top conspiracies and plenty of mad times. It was, you’ll probably agree, a good trade-off.

Wilson’s death in August was one of the real low-points of this year. I’d encountered him several times during the late 1990s. He was someone who was both larger than life and, for a Manchester United fan, as cool as fuck.

Michael Winterbottom’s film on how Wilson went from Granada TV presenter to the man behind Factory Records, Joy Division, Happy Mondays and the Hacienda via seeing the Sex Pistols in Manchester is one of the finest music films ever. It’s definitely the best to feature copious WB Yeats references. Music is usually badly served by film directors but Winterbottom was a welcome exception. One shudders to think how this story would have turned out in the hands of anyone else.

What’s apparent again and again throughout 24 Hour Party People is Wilson’s self-belief. It came from that Venn diagram where civic pride, mischevious tinkering, timing and a mighty motormouth came together. Wilson was the one who marshalled the troops, took some gigantic chances and found himself in the middle of a cultural revolution.

Yes, it comes down to the acts. Wilson knew this more than most because he spent the last few years of his life trying to find that elusive third great band to go with Joy Division and the Mondays (and it was not going to happen with the Space Monkeys, no matter what Tone thought). It also helped that Manchester was buzzing like no other city in Europe at the time.

But it was also Wilson. There were lots of other head-the-balls in Manchester at the time pushing things forward - Martin Hannett certainly, Rob Gretton for sure - but Wilson was the one who pushed things furthest.

I know it’s probably a little simplistic to argue that what the record industry needs today is another Tony Wilson. But it is always the mad ones, the wild ones, the off-kilter ones who’ve turned this industry on its head. There will always be a need for a middleman to broker the exchange between the artist who creates the music and the audience who consume it. Lets hope the next Tony Wilson will be interested in getting involved in that barter.

Lets start with a tune from a band who made me jump up and down a lot in 2007

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The next time I get in trouble, I’m hiring PR supremo Mary Finan if I can afford her fees. Listening to her on Drivetime treating presenter Mary Wilson like a bold child who had the sheer gall to question her authority, you could understand why suited and booted business leaders pay serious wedge for advice from the WHPR founder.

Finan’s other gig is as chair of the RTE Authority and she was on Drivetime in that role to talk about the RTE report into the High Society debacle.

The report? I might be reading it wrong, but I think it goes a little like “hey, we’re RTE and you’re not! No, just kidding, we’re OK, thanks for asking. There were some shortcomings in the awful little programme about charlie abusers which slipped through the net, but do have another mince pie, darling. No-one is going to get sacked, OK, that doesn’t happen here, we’re not the BBC, after all. The licence-payer won’t notice as long as Derek Mooney is still on the TV. Everything is happy-happy-joy-joy, everything is tickety-boo. Could you pass the pies please?”

The manner in which Finan dealt with Wilson’s questions and quibbles was a masterclass in spin. She even managed to tie High Society in with the acclaimed Seven Ages series:

The people responsible for this programme have also been responsible for some of the best programming that has been broadcast by RTE in the past, such as the Seven Ages, the history of the 20th century.

Associating master documentary-maker Seán Ó Mórdha and Seven Ages, his fantastic, peerless, unquestionably honest tour-de-force of a series on the birth of the Irish nation, with a shoddy, sensationalist, cheap-ass, unsubstantiated series about junkies was breath-taking in its arrogance.

But it also doesn’t seem to ring true. Seven Ages was made by Ó Mórdha’s Araby Productions in association with The O’Reilly Foundation, while High Society was made by a crowd calld Big Mountain Productions. While both shows may well have had production people in common, the association seems a little odd.

Naturally, Wilson let this pass. Maybe this was because Finan had already snapped once at Wilson when the presenter had interrupted the chair’s thoughts. I couldn’t imagine Sean O’Rourke giving Finan the same lee-way with her answers. Interestingly too, it sounded like a pre-recorded interview from the way it was intro’d and outro’d. You can be sure that a cute operator like Finan would not allow herself to be ambushed on air.

It’s worth repeating that no heads will roll over this ridiculous and opportunistic waste of time, money and resources, all paid for by you and me, the licence fee holders up and down the country. It never happens. You just never see those who have messed up in, for example, the health system or a government department or even a TV studio taking responsibility for their actions and departing with some modicum of dignity. There seems to be an inbuilt Irish gene that prevents them from doing the honourable things and instead encourges them to brazen it out.

In this case, the relevant commissioning editors are the guilty parties. They were the ones, after all, who oversaw this disaster. They were the ones who went ahead with a show without exercising “RTÉ’s established editorial controls” to quote the report. Isn’t that what commissioning editors are supposed to do when things go wrong, take the rap for the crap they’ve created? Do they even get a slap on the knuckles? A dressing down? Detention? A hundred lines? Actually, on second thoughts, that last one is a little inappropriate in the circumstances.

(1) You know you’ve reached Northern Ireland when the drivers with southern registration plates on their cars turn into boy racers. From Dublin to Dundalk, it’s the northern cars which think they’re in The Fast & The Furious. From Newry on, though, the southern cars turn into bad boys.

(2) Headline of the weekend: “RTE probe into High Society to clear station’s own staff” (Sunday Tribune). Now, there’s a surprise.

(3) Quote of the weekend (from the same article - getting value for my €2.50 this weekend)

An RTE employee told the Sunday Tribune: I truly believe that the coke (found in RTE) is from guests from The Late Late Show, Tubridy’s show, basically every entertainment show. It’s not rampant in RTE amongst staff, but this is a place where half the celebrities in the country come through, so obviously the place is going to get covered in it.

“Basically every entertainment show”? Surely not.

(4) I owe Pedro €30 thanks to this. Gah, I should stick to the greyhounds. Pedro deserves it more, though, for what is the best 2007-and-all-of-that post I’ve read yet. Hysterical.

(5) Belfast’s Odyssey Arena is the most impressive large venue in the land because they’ve got all the basics right. There’s no hassle getting in or out. The sightlines to the stage are perfect. The sound is always good. It really makes you realise what a truly awful dump Point has been since, well, forever and how atrocious the RDS continues to be. The Nordies must guffaw at us when they come down to the dirty south to see gigs or fill their cars with cheap petrol.

(6) Superb post from the always excellent Cheebah gang about record fairs, vinyl collectors and keeping the faith.

(7) There were several points during Saturday night’s Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band show in Belfast when the roof threatened to blow off towards Cave Hill. One was during “Because The Night”, another came during “The River” and, of course, the audience reaction to “Born To Run” could have powered a small city for a few days. But, as in Madrid a few weeks ago, the new songs also resonated hugely. “Livin’ In The Future” is already a sha-na-na anthem, show opener “Radio Nowhere” sounds meaty and beaty and “Long Walk Home” is a monster ballad equivalent to anything else in the back-catalogue. Another awesome night out with Bruce. If you have a ticket for next May’s shows, keep it very safe.

(8) Before the show, I bumped into my favourite ex-NME commissioning editor Stuart Bailie from the Oh Yeah music centre. Their next big hop will be the “Astral Weeks” Revisited day out on January 5 to mark the 40th birthday of that seminal album and they’re also planning a similar outing for The Boss’s “Nebraska” next summer.

(9) It is the post which keeps on giving. There must be very few other mentions online of the “MT USA” album because people keep coming back again and again to the post and there has bee a steady trickle of comments over the last few weeks. Anyway, buy the album for the 80s nostalgia freak in your life this Christmas.

(10) For the third time this year, I saw 15 minutes of Fujiya & Miyagi live when they played the very impressive Button Factory last night. Only problem is I keep seeing the same 15 minutes. Some day I’ll get to see a full set. The gig was hopping too.

(11) The reason why I had to split was to hightail it to the Adrian Crowley show in Whelan’s. On a night when the mercury was plummeting and the singer was battling with the ‘flu (we recommend Pei Pa Koa), the songs from “Long Distance Swimmer” shimmered beautifully around the venue. He even has a substantial hit in the making in the shape of “These Icy Waters”. Buy the album today for everyone else still on your Christmas present list.

As played on Phantom 105.2, Saturday December 15, 10pm-midnight

This was the first half of the show’s review of 2007 and the second part will air on Saturday December 29. Next week, seeing as it will be (nearly) the eve of Christmas Eve, I’m planning two hours of alternative Xmas music to go with eating mince pies and slurping mulled wine. I’ve already got the likes of Cocteau Twins, Joni Mitchell, Bruce, Wild Billy Childish, The Knife, Badly Drawn Boy, Low, Palace Music, Tom Waits, St Etienne, Bright Eyes, “A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector”, the Blind Boys Of Alabama and a few more in the bag. Anything else you think I should play on the (nearly) eve of Christmas Eve show?

The Ting Tings “That’s Not My Name” (Switchflicker)
Health “Crimewave” (Lovepump United)
MIA v Battles “Boyz” (White)
!!! “Must Be The Moon” (Warp)
Bjork “Earth Invaders (Spank Rock remix)” (One Little Indian)
Shape of Broad Minds “Lets Go” (Lex)
Animal Collective “Chores” (Domino)
Matthew Dear “Don & Sherri (Hot Chip remix)” (Ghostly International)
Candence Weapon “Black Hand” (Big Dada)
Aluminium “The Hardest Button to Button” (XL)
Christian Prommer’s Drumlesson “Strings Of Life” (Sonar Kollektiv)
Flying Lotus “Tea Leaf Dancers” (Warp)
Burial “Untrue” (Hyperdub)
The Hold Steady “Stuck Between Stations” (Vagrant)
Cathy Davey “Moving” (EMI)
Malajube “La Monogamie” (City Slang)
Windmill “Ashmatic” (Melodic)
Josh Ritter “Mind’s Eye” (Independent)
The Crimea “The 48A Waiting Steps” (Free Two One)
The National “Start A War” (Beggars Banquet)
Beirut “In The Mausoleum” (4AD)
Candie Payne “I Wish I Could Have Loved You More” (Deltasonic)
Panda Bear “Bros” (Paw Tracks)
Grizzly Bear “Alligator” (Warp)
Bloc Party “I Still Remember (Lull’s Music Box & Tears Mix)” (V2)
The Antlers “East River Berlin Wall” (Fall)
Bat For Lashes “I’m On Fire” (Echo)
Catherine Howe “Up North” (Numero)

Kevin Courtney recently interviewed PJ Harvey for The Ticket and raised the ticket prices kerfuffle which blew up on this blog with her. You can read what she had to say here.

Sigh. There are some things in life you never want to revisit and the Music Board of Ireland fandango is one of them. I wrote about this body many, many times for the paper until 2004 when it was finally put out of its misery. I thought that was the end of it, but I was wrong.
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Thanks to everyone who participated in our round-up of 2007 over the last few weeks. You can read what made it into the paper here, plus there are more round-ups here and here. You can also read the thoughts on the year that was from all the music writers at The Ticket. Again, huge, huge thanks to everyone who took the time to let us know about the music which made them smile in 2007.

After the jump, I’ve compiled a few lists to round up the year from this quarter, including the best moments from the blog to date.
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Hands up those who would like to see Tom Waits at Number One in the Irish charts on Christmas Day?
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Reunion fever is very much in the air at present. This week saw hoary, over-rated, dull rock dinosaurs Led Zeppelin reduce grown men to tears when they performed in London.

Given the fact that more than 20 million allegedly entered a lottery for tickets for this show and that some venues are believed to be on hold for next summer, a full Led Zep tour can be expected in 2008.

Tickets for My Bloody Valentine’s comeback shows next summer are also in demand and all seven UK shows next June and July are sold out. Speculation is also rife about possible festival dates, with a date at Spain’s Benicassim already confirmed

The best news of all, though, is That Petrol Emotion have became the latest band to succumb to reunion fever. The band, featuring various Undertones and Yank singer Steve Mack, announced on their website that they’re planning a 2008 tour, beginning with an appearance at Texas super-fest South By Southwest in March with Irish dates to follow in April or May.

Music fans with a guilt complex can stop fretting, it’s time to make amends to your favourite group for downloading and not paying for their music.

DearRockers.org has been set up by Darren Barefoot to encourage music fans to write a letter to acts, accompanied by $5, to say thanks for the music.

Letters and cash for such acts as Sufjan Stevens, David Bowie, Radiohead, Whitney Houston, OMD and others have already been received.

U2 fans seeking words of wisdom about the band’s recently reissued The Joshua Tree album can check out what the group’s manager Paul McGuinness had to say in a recent interview.

McGuinness talked at length about the album to Dublin local radio station, Phantom 105.2, last weekend.

The interview, conducted by the station’s head of music John Caddell, formed part of an Album Archive special on the release.

For those who missed the show, the interview is now available to download as a podcast.

22nd century inner city blues.
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Is there any need to say anything more this morning? This sums it up nicely. Moscow in May? Sounds good to me.

Oh and I hope some of you had the sense to put a few quid on Feelgood Yo Yo last night.

If you are Dublin on Thursday night and looking for a good time, this may be of interest.

Tourist destination of 2008? Bruges, baby, Bruges

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Do you want to see Tom Waits at Number One in the Irish charts on Christmas Day? Adam Maguire has kickstarted a campaign to get “Christmas Card From A Hooker In Minneapolis” to Number One. To help this happen, you need to buy the track from one of a number of official download channels (per chart overseers IMRA, these are Apple iTunes, Eircom Music Club, Mycokemusic, Vodafone, Sony Connect, Bleep, Wippit and easyMusic) between Friday December 14 and Thursday December 20.

Guy Hands loves his acts. No, really, the new EMI Music owner just loves his acts. Just a pity so many of them will be dropped in the next few months as Terra Firma realise you can’t make a quick buck from a record label.

Maybe I should get Miranda Sawyer to be a Choice Music Prize judge next year….

Dan Deacon is not happy with Greyhound Bus. Anyone know if he used Bus Eireann when he was here?

Beer brands are turning their back on music:

Brands must add something of value to the consumer while giving a clear context to their product in the sponsorship.

Jon Parales interviews Radiohead for the New York Times. Much, much better interview than the one that ran last weekend in the Observer because there are no questions from the fans.

Jack White buys a saw.

It was Marian Finucane’s sharp intake of breath which made me realise that I wasn’t actually hearing things. Yes, Bill Cullen had really just said that non-national taxi drivers were selling coke to their passengers. It was terrible for the regular decent native taxi drivers, Bill droned on as the nation looked at their radios in confusion, because young people weren’t getting into their cabs as a result. Listen back here if you don’t believe me.

Maybe it wasn’t Bill Cullen at all, maybe it was Tom Dunne doing his best Dr Bill impersonation. But no, there was no way you could make up some of the stuff Bill was coming out with yesterday. I didn’t dare switch over to Pearl on Phantom 105.2 or Sam Smyth’s yakathon on Today FM for fear of missing another foot-in-mouth incident.

Most weekends, the Sunday morning talking shops on the radio are as boring as bejaysus because you have the same crew with the same opinions and same prejudices reviewing the same stories from the papers every week. The panels are drawn from the same shallow gene pools: a little Law Library here and some big business there, someone from the general political Venn diagram here and a journalist or two there. There will also be a couple of additional experts on the phone and Sam Smyth always seem able to interrupt Boris Johnson’s Sunday morning. In truth, these panels are insufferably smug, hopelessly unbalanced and rarely interesting, the wireless equivalent of a dull dinner party or a bad college debating society.

Maybe Bill Cullen feels the same way. Surely there is no other way to explain why the businessman and best-selling author felt the need to contribute to every single item in a way which made you feel there was a clanger at the end of the sentence? Fantastic car-crash radio all the same.

As played on Phantom 105.2, Saturday December 8, 10pm-midnight

LCD Soundsystem “Get Innocuous (Soulwax remix)” (DFA)
Sisters Love “Give Me Your Love” (Motown)
Marvin Gaye “Got To Give It Up Part 1” (Motown)
Boban Markovic Orkestar “Rromano bijav” (Piranha)
A Hawk & A Hacksaw “Serbian Cocek” (Leaf)
United States of America “Garden of Earthly Delights” (Edel)
Menomena “Muscle ‘N Flo” (Barsuk)
The Acorn “The Flood” (Paper Bag)
Celebration “Fly the Fly” (4AD)
School Of Language “Rockist Pt 1” (Memphis Industries)
Ghostface Killah “Walk Around” (Def Jam)
Wu-Tang Clan “Protect Ya Neck” (Loud)
Screamin’ Jay Hawkins “Alligator Wine” (Charly)
Burial “Archangel” (Hyperdub)
Aretha Franklin “Don’t Play That Song” (Atlantic)
Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings “100 Days, 100 Nights” (Daptone)
Michele Arnaud & Serge Gainsbourg “Les Papillons Noirs” (Pathe)
Dawn Landes “Bodyguard” (Fargo)
Hafdis Huld “Diamonds On My Belly” (Red Grape)
Fairport Convention “Who Knows Where The Time Goes?” (Island)
Adrian Crowley “Walk On Part” (Tin Angel)
Bill Callahan “Diamond Dancer” (Drag City)
United Bible Studies “Columba’s Song” (Deserted Village)
Norman Blake “You Are My Sunshine” (Lost Highway)
The Valerie Project “Torchlight” (Twisted Nerve)
Julia Kent “Idlewild” (Shayo)

Thanks to Brendan and Karl from the excellent Analogue magazine for this out-take from an interview done today with Radiohead’s Phil Selway

Analogue: Tickets for your gig in Dublin in Malahide Castle went on sale this morning and are very expensive, it’s €70.70, and there’s been some discussion of how you can justify the fair way of releasing your album and then charge that much for a tour gig?

Phil: Right, and what’s been the general response on that?

Analogue: Well I mean it is the most expensive gig of the tour and there have been arguments that you’re pricing out some fans, people who may have bought the discbox, big fans or students, who don’t have that much money to come to a gig.

Phil: Right.

Analogue: Do you have any reaction to that?

Phil: Eh, well whenever we’ve looked at ticket prices and set them, we’ve wanted to make them as fair as possible so I would hope that we’ve pitched it right on this one, make it as fair as possible on the price. You know we’ve never really set out to max, as they say, our tour revenue so I think we’ve always put out reasonably priced tickets. That’s as much as I can say really.

I’m glad I decided to bet on the greyhounds this weekend rather than on this gig selling out.

As various On The Record readers have been pointing out, there are still plenty of €70.70 tickets available for Radiohead’s big day out at Malahide Castle next summer.

Heeeere’s Caitriona:

Tickets are still available as of 14.10 - more than 5 hours after going on sale. given the crazed ticket-buying pace of other recent gigs, i think the rhetorical answer is no.

Eric points out some rather disturbing data mining:

When you’re about to finish buying these tickets, you’re told that you must consent to submit your personal information to Radiohead’s management in order to buy the tickets. And there’s a broken link to their privacy policy (that doesn’t even open in a new window).

Text from Ticketmaster: “By purchasing this ticket(s) you acc:ept Radiohead’s terms and conditions and consent that your data can be passed to www.radiohead.com and Radiohead’s artist management.

Thom Yorke is believed to be extremely upset about turn of events (he thought the fact that Malahide Castle has a fab model railway museum would swing a sell-out) and has written a letter to the editor. We will print that next week.

And here’s more proof that it really is all about the money.

A prediction for 2008: we’ll see more and more innovative moves like Cash Music.
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As last week’s feature in The Ticket on gigonomics and ticket prices showed, it is the artist themselves who determine the price you pay for a ticket.

With artist fees escalating, ticket prices are set to rise for the foreseeable future.

It seems that artists are not just content with getting the lion’s share of the money fans pay Ticketmaster and have now turned their attention to the secondary ticketing market.

The Resale Rights Society has been established in Britain to attempt to regulate the sale of tickets on such sites as eBay.

The group, which been backed by 400 acts such as Radiohead, Robbie Williams, KT Tunstall and The Verve, want to impose a levy on each ticket sold so that artists get a percentage from the resold tickets.

However, ticket resale agencies have criticised the move, viewing it as an extra charge on fans.

On The Record readers will remember summer 2007 as the busiest festival season on record in Ireland.

Despite the worst weather in years, there were nearly 70 music festivals and outdoor shows up and down the country.

The Irish Festival Awards brings you back to those days of mud and music.

The awards contain 17 different categories including best one-day festival, best line-up and best toilets.

It’s organised by CherryCool Promotions, the company behind the Castle Palooza festival. In the interests of fairness, they’ve excluded their own festival from the reckoning.

It can only be a matter of time before an aspiring Anton Corbijn or Michael Winterbottom takes a big screen look at the Irish showband scene.

He or she could probably start by gathering some stories from the acts and audiences at Ireland’s Showbands - Do You Come Here Often?

This five night run in Dublin’s Helix from January 2nd is the 12th run for the showband retrospective and will feature the likes of Roly Daniels, Tony Kenny, Geraldine Brannigan, Brian Coll, Gene Chetty and Muriel Day and Earl Gill as well as Gerry Marsden from Gerry and The Pacemakers.

Many of you who use iTunes may have received a promo email inviting you to (pay €16.99 including VAT to) download this 23 track compilation.

Per Apple:

Our mix combines the brightest acts of 2007 and the future classics of 2008.

What they really meant to say, of course is “our mix combines the brightest acts of 2007 and the future classics of 2008 as signed to Universal Music“. The fact that all the acts on the compilation are signed to Universal labels is not mentioned anywhere on the page. Indeed, the only sign that this is an Universal gig is that the release is on a label called No Carbon, which has some info about Universal Music buried in the small print of the website’s terms and conditions.

It would be very interesting to learn how much Universal Music paid for this mailout to the iTunes user database and, more importantly, if the label will get their mitts on the details of everyone who downloads the compilation. I’m sure some of the marketing and advertising lads and lasses who read On The Record know only too well the value of such data mining.

Mo’ smart work from the team behind The Wire in the shape of three prequels featuring some of the show’s main characters.

Bunk meets McNulty for the first time

A young Omar goes a-robbing

And, best of all, Prop Joe wheeling and dealing in the schoolyard.

The queenpin when it comes to cover versions? That would be Cat Power
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Nokia’s favourite Irish music blogger has kicked off his annual Irish albums and EPs poll. Join in the fun right away.

Back by popular demand!

They don’t do gigs like this any more. Mike Scott and Vinnie Kilduff pay a visit to a school in Clifden in 1987. Better than a visit from the cigire or the local bishop, I suppose.

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They might give your their music for free, but tickets for the Head’s love-in at Malahide Castle in Dublin on June 7 next will set you back €70.70 (plus whatever Ticketmaster will charge).

Please note, Radiohead fans and right-on indie types, this is MORE than what Celine Dion is charging for her Croke Park show. It’s called “monetising your fanbase”, folks. You didn’t really expect Radiohead to play nice with their fans, did you? You did? Oh dear. But, as pointed out in this article, it’s the BAND who set the ticket price so you know who to blame.

Tickets go on sale on Friday. Sure, there’s the Christmas present sorted for your dopey, grumpy younger brother.

(Presses button, sits back, puts on kettle, waits for Radiohead fans to rise to the bait)

Ho, ho, ho! Christmas is coming! Yes, it is! It’s December and you can’t ignore it any more, baby. Kevin at MP3hugger is already getting in the seasonal spirit by asking various indie folks about their favourite Yuletide tunes. Check out the work in progress right away.

Want to ask the most successful Irish rock band manager of all time a question? Well, Paul McGuinness will be on Phantom 105.2 (he owns a slice of the station so they weren’t going to say no) next Sunday night (December 9) talking about his clients, U2 and the release of “The Joshua Tree” twenty years on. If you have a question you’d like to ask the great man about this seminal release, go to the Album Archive blog and add yours to the list. He may not want to talk about this or this, but you never know.

Talking of the radio, I’m probably not the only one who never gets around to listening to John Kelly’s excellent Lyric FM show because of its afternoon slot. Good news people: go to the site, click on the media player and listen back to the latest show at your leisure. This has been a public service announcement.

You can also use that media player yoke to listen to O’Brien On Song, another show which has also been cast to the margins by the RTE numpties. I know absolutely nothing about opera but after an hour of this show and Jack O’Brien’s fantastic tales, I wish I had the time to delve into a world which seems to contain more dramas, melodramas, duels and battles than a TiVo full of soap operas.

Is your office Christmas party as good as this?

It’s the post which keeps on giving. We speak of the snippet about the MT USA release, which continues to draw comments and indeed pleas, like this one from redhat:

back from drunken night with 13 DUFC supporters .. we remember a video .. black and white about uncle in prison and end of video car pulls up and man gets out … was a big hit and we all remember a bit but not the singer or title ? any help

Go on, you know the answer

AU, say hello to the web. Web, say hello to AU.

Want to know what you’ll be doing in 2008? Here you go.

On the other hand, it looks like a lot of us will be looking for new jobs in ‘08

I suppose I could always DJ. Speaking of which (subtle, seamless, sublime link, that), it seems I’m a rocker. And there I was thinking I was a raver. Anyway, Bring the Toys happens in the Bernard Shaw pub in Dublin on December 13. Organised by the Bodytonic folks and Thumped, it’s a Rockers v Ravers battle featuring Neon Love v Delorentos, Large Mound v Al Keegan, this gobshite v Mark Kavanagh and Richie Jape v Johnny Moy. Admission? Bring a toy (unwrapped and non-furry) or pay a tenner at the door. All proceeds to the Our Lady’s Childen’s Hospital Crumlin. Yep, we’re doing it for the kids.

As played on Phantom 105.2, Saturday December 1, 10pm-midnight

Bruce Springsteen “Born To Run” (Columbia)
Adrian Crowley “These Icy Waters” (Tin Angel)
Autokratz “Reaktor” (Kitsune)
Crystal Castles “Air War” (Trouble)
These New Puritans “Elvis” (Domino)
Cazals “To Cut A Long Story Short” (Kitsune)
Animal Collective “Peacebone” (Domino)
Chrome Hoof “Circus 9000” (Southern)
Ghost Frequency “Never Before Have I Seen A Man Alive…” (City Rockers)
Epsilons “I Hate Your Face” (Retard Disco)
Holy Fuck “Milk Shake” (Young Turks)
Simian Mobile Disco “Hustler” (Wichita)
White Williams “Route To Palm” (Tigerbeat6)
School Of Language “Rockist Pt 1” (Memphis Industries)
Bodies of Water “These Are The Eyes” (Thousand Tongues)
Studio “Origin” (Information)
Fujiya & Miyagi “Cassettesingle” (Tirk)
Yeasayer “Wait For The Summer” (We Are Free)
Toolshed “I Rooster II” (Twisted Nerve)
Rotary Connection “Respect” (Cadet)
Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings “Nobody’s Baby” (Daptone)
The Charmels “As Long As I’ve Got You” (Volt)
Dawn Landes “Bodyguard” (Fargo)
Grizzly Bear “Alligator (Choral version)” (Warp)
The Antlers “East River Berlin Wall” (Fall)
Artie Shaw Orchestra “Nightmare” (Prestige)