Yes, it is beginning to appear that June is the new May. Here’s the full line-up for the first Future Days festival, brought to you by Foggy Notions and Forever Presents, to be held in various Dublin venues in June.

Thursday June 12 - Matmos and Si Schroeder - Andrew’s Lane Theatre

Friday June 13 - Low, Atlas Sound and The Holy Roman Army - Andrew’s Lane Theatre

Saturday June 14 - Dan Deacon, Jape, White Williams, High Places and more - Vicar Street

Sunday June 15 - Bonnie Prince Billy, Baby Dee and Paul Curreri - Vicar Street

Sunday June 15 - Metronomy and Spilly Walker - Andrew’s Lane Theatre (late)

Info on tickets to come. And as if we needed an excuse for this….

There are some shows which are selling out this weather. All tickets for funkmaster Maceo Parker’s gig at the Mermaid Arts Centre as part of the Bray Jazz Festival tomorrow night have been snapped up.

This year’s FeileAfrica fest in Cork runs from May 22nd-25th with shows from Gregory Isaacs, Afrocelt Sound System’s N’faly Kouyate and many others.

Master At Work Kenny Dope will spend the June bank holiday weekend in Ireland with shows at Dublin’s Tivoli (May 31st) and Limerick’s Baker Place (June 1st

Part of the Future Days festival. Support from the lovely Baby Dee and Paul Curreri. Video niceness from the Prince below to mark the occasion.

Not all outdoor shows this summer will feature old men and over-priced indie acts. There are also a few homegrown festivals to keep an eye on.

On May 3, the Sibin Festival takes over the Man O’ War pub in north county Dublin. Its four stages will feature General Levy, DJ Storm, Noise Control, DJ Bailey, Magnetize and many more.

Festivals returning to a field near you include the Irish Green Gathering (Enniscorthy, Co Wexford, August 8-10), Day Of Darkness (Ballylinan, Co Laois, July 4-5), Mantua Project (Ballaghadereen, Co Roscommon, August 1-3) and Glasgowbury (Draperstown, Co Derry, July 26).

Castle Palooza is also back, with Mystery Jets, The Black Seeds, The Flaws, Luan Parle, Fight Like Apes and others playing in Tullamore over the August Bank Holiday weekend.

The nonsense over why there are still tickets on sale for this summer’s Glastonbury festival continues.

Oasis’s Noel Gallagher entered the fray this week, telling BBC’s Newsbeat show that it’s all Jay-Z’s fault.

“Glastonbury has a tradition of guitar music, do you know what I mean?” claimed Gallagher. I’m not having hip-hop at Glastonbury. It’s wrong.”

Leaving aside the fact that Gallagher thankfully doesn’t book the festival, Glastonbury’s sales slump is due more to the audience’s bad experiences with the weather in previous years than to some collective decision by the British middle classes to diss Jigga.

Future Days is the festival from Foggy Notions and Forever Presents which will be happening in various venues in Dublin in June. The first confirmed acts for this are Low (Andrew’s Lane Theatre, June 13) and Metronomy (a late show at Andrew’s Lane Theatre on June 15 for the folks who’ve done a boss remix of Goldfrapp’s “Happiness”). Expect more acts - and confirmed dates for Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Dan Deacon and Baby Dee - soon

The Analog festival returns to Dublin’s docklands in July with performances from Hal Willner’s Rogue’s Gallery, Tortoise, Efterklang, Taraf de Haidouks and many more.
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Readers may recall me raving last year about Italia Wave, one of Europe’s friendliest and best value music festivals.

It’s on again this year (July 16 to 19), this time in the seaside town of Livorno on the Tuscan coast. Over 100 acts will be playing (The Chemical Brothers and The Verve are their big names at the moment) and there will be loads of music, literature, cinema, theatre, electronic and digital culture stuff happening all day and night.

The best thing about Italia Wave (besides the weather, the food and the location)?

Most parts of the program will be free of charge. The day-time stages and events will have free access, while tickets for the Main Stage ill be 10 to 20 euros (depending on the day and the time of entrance) and 10 Euros for Elettrowave (the festival’s all-night dance stage)

This one comes from the Foggy Notions stable and will star Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Dan Deacon, Baby Dee and many more. More info to come.

Ticket sales for this year’s Glastonbury festival are said to be steady rather than spectacular, with about 100,000 of the 137,500 tickets sold since they went on sale yesterday. Maybe Rod Liddle is right: festivals have become middle-aged. Or perhaps he and the other Glasto champions take a look at some very interesting alternatives.

This may be the summer when Ireland’s love affair with the outdoor show begins to wane.
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Well, here’s the line-up for Electric Picnic 2008:

Sex Pistols, Sigur Ros, Grinderman, Franz Ferdinand, George Clinton & The P-Funk Allstars, My Bloody Valentine, Goldfrapp, Christy Moore, Wilco, The Gossip, Duffy, Underworld, Tinariwen, Foals, CSS, Tindersticks, New Young Pony Club, Josh Ritter, Lisa Hannigan, Cathy Davey, That Petrol Emotion, The Breeders, Michael Franti & Spearhead, Sinead O’Connor, The Waterboys, The Roots, Kila, Micah P Hinson, Conor Oberst (Bright Eyes), Hayseed Dixie, Candi Staton, Juana Molina, Turin Brakes, Faust, Midnight Juggernauts, Tartit, Hadouken!, Silver Apples, Mark Geary, Teitur, Blitzen Trapper, Absentee, Balanescu Quartet, Lou Rhodes, Adrian Crowley, One Day International, The Yard Dogs, Tobias Froberg, Boss Volenti, Dawn Landes, Constantines, Yacht, Lionheart Brothers, Large Mound, Emmy the Great, Kormac & the BSQ Band, Jape, The Noisettes, Dublin Gospel Choir.

First reason to be cheerful: SILVER APPLES! The fucking SILVER APPLES! Playing in Co Laois. Hell, yeah

Second reason to be cheerful: WILCO! Great to see them on the list, especially as they’ve been on every possible line-up since year one.

Third reason to be cheerful: BALANESCU QUARTET! Awesome, awesome, awesome

Main reason to be fearful: Christy Moore. Ah lads, c’mon. Tell me this is some kind of situationalist prank. What next, the Wolfe Tones?

Weekend tickets are €240 (no day tickets) and a family camping ticket is €480 for 2 adults & up to 4 kids under 12 with access to the designated family campsite. Tickets go on sale on Friday at 9am.

There’s oodles and oodles of space for your thoughts below

The first confirmed acts and ticket details for this year’s Electric Picnic festival will be announced next Wednesday, March 26th
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Anyone else surprised to learn that there are still tickets on sale for Oxegen? Isn’t Oxegen supposed to be the festival which sells out in a couple of hours because the kids love it so much and even get to pick the line-up? Have the kids bualked at those ticket prices? Have they said “meh” to the fact that REM are on the bill? Or have they decided to travel to a festival in Europe instead?

5.30pm UPDATE Press release tells me that “3 day weekend camping and 4 day weekend camping tickets along with Day tickets for Saturday 12th July have sold out”, but “a very limited number of 3 day (no camping) tickets and day tickets fo rFriday 11th and Sunday 13th July are available at this time.” All of which means, I suppose, that there are still tickets on sale for the festival.

If you haven’t done so already, read this fantastic post by Naomi Off Her Rocker about the real Irish underground scene. This is the kind of piece which should be on the cover of Hot Press and not Michael “trust me, our new album is really better than our last album and you have to buy it because we need the money and we’re still relevant and we got your man Jacknife Lee to produce the yoke and we’re playing Oxegen and did I tell you that I know Helena Christensen and Bono” Stipe. Hey, it could be the give-a-Stipe-a-kick week on the blog all week long to celebrate the release of their new album.

Footnote to the debate which raged last week on this blog about Irish music magazines: we are not alone. Former NME writer Stephen Dalton looks at the current state of the magazine he once called home.

And a footnote of sorts to the other debate about that Top 40 Irish Albums poll, here’s Mark Edwards explaining why music critics love albums that the public hate.

Bet the millennials won’t be buying music magazines. Or CDs.

Good to see Andrew’s Lane Theatre back on the event listings for the capital city. The theatre was closed down and sold last year for €9.25 million, but it now seems to be operating again as a venue. Forever Presents are promoting Crystal Castles at the venue on April 22 (they also play Cork’s Cyprus Avenue on 21 and Belfast’s Stiff Kitten on 23) and Foggy Notions have Why? playing there on April 26.

Can a music festival really be eco-friendly?

And finally, do you want a Tenori-On in your life? Here’s Four Tet’s Kieran Hebden having a go. Note superfluous subtitles.

Oscar-winning duo Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova play Oxegen in July.

How long do you think it will take for Oxegen to sell out this year? An hour? Two hours? 146 minutes, 17 seconds? On The Record reckons it’s time some enterprising bookie started offering odds on this annual phenomenon.

The line-up for this year’s event continues to grow on a daily basis.

The latest additions include Seasick Steve, Band Of Horses, The Courteeners, Aphex Twin, Rage Against The Machine, Panic at The Disco, The Feeling and The Prodigy.

Other acts expected to be looking for road-signs to Punchestown this July include Amy Winehouse, Editors and Newton Faulkner.

Tickets for Oxegen 2008 go on general sale next Friday, March 7th.

The summer festival rumour season has begun.

On The Record must take its share of blame for this with a post on the blog during the week leading to a lot of informed (and uninformed) speculation about line-ups for open-air stages around the country.
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This summer will again see thousands of Irish music fans heading abroad to get their festival kicks.

In recent years, many have headed to Serbia for the Exit Festival.

Held in the 18th-century Petrovaradin fortress near Novi Sad in northern Serbia, Exit has been running since 2000 and now attracts an audience of up to 200,000 people, half of whom come from outside the country.

Aside from bringing top international names to Serbia (among them this year the reformed Sex Pistols), the festival also prides itself on having a strong social and political angle.

Its most recent initiative is the “Nema zezanja” (”no kidding”) campaign, which encouraged young people to vote in the Serbian presidential election.

This year’s festival runs from July 10th to 13th.

On The Record has learned that REM are set to play this year’s Oxegen festival.

On The Record has learned that My Bloody Valentine are playing this year’s Electric Picnic. More to follow.