Even though I am an avid music fan, I have never been a big fan of the Beatles. It's not that I have anything against them, just that I never really bothered to seek out their music. Of course, I am very familiar with all of their hits, but up till a few years ago I never owned one of their albums. I bought Revolver in a '3 for 2' deal in HMV, and to be honest, only played it a few times.

The recent release of of the entire album catalogue of the band, remastered, did pique my interest. I was listening to Tom Dunne's radio show on the day of the release, and he said that he would love to be in the position of someone who was hearing the albums for the first time. So that prompted me to go and buy one. And not just any one, but their most famous one - Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Yes. I know. I should have bought it years ago.

Anyway, here's the great Alan Partridge discussing the Beatles with a member of staff at the Linton Travel Tavern, from the first series of I'm Alan Partridge:

As the young folk might say, I’m currently liking Fleet Foxes. I got their album shortly after Christmas, and it is wonderful.

Here they are, with my all time favourite band Wilco, recreating The Last Waltz and performing I Shall Be Released.

I haven’t done an Oldfartometer for ages, but Jim has posted his Top 20 albums of the year, so here goes:

(1) No Age “Nouns” (Sub Pop)
(2) Vampire Weekend “Vampire Weekend” (XL)
(3) Lykke Li “Youth Novels” (LL)
(4) TV On The Radio “Dear Science” (4AD)
(5) Bon Iver “For Emma Forever Ago” (4AD)
(6) Lisa Hannigan “Sea Sew” (Self-release)
(7) Fleet Foxes “Fleet Foxes” (Bella Union)
(8) RSAG “Organic Sampler” (Psychonavigation)
(9) The Gaslight Anthem “The ‘59 Sound” (Side One Dummy)
(10) Hercules & Love Affair “Hercules & Love Affair” (DFA)
(11) Santogold “Santogold” (Atlantic) (Diplo and Santogold’s “Top Ranking” mix also deserves a mention here)
(12) Lil Wayne “The Carter III” (Cash Money)
(13) David Holmes “The Holy Pictures” (Canderblinks)
(14) Our Brother The Native “Make Amends For We Are Merely Vessels” (Fat Cat)
(15) Spook of the Thirteenth Lock “Spook of the Thirteenth Lock” (Transduction)
(16) Kanye West “808s & Heartbreaks” (Roc-A-Fella)
(17) Katie Kim “Twelve” (Granny It’s OK Recordings)
(18) White Denim “Workout Holiday” (Full Time Hobby)
(19) She & Him “Volume One” (Domino)
(20) Chequerboard “Penny Black” (Lazybird)

I have heard of Lisa Hannigan, Fleet Foxes and Kayne West, but I wouldn’t recognise anything of theirs if it jumped up and smacked me in the mouth, so that’s one point each.

Err… that’s it. 3 points.

Hugh’s just done his list too. Applying Oldfartometer criteria to that one, I score 13. (I have heard of Kayne West, Ani DiFranco and Fleet Foxes, and I’m sure I have an album or two by Randy Newman stashed away somewhere.)

The new Bulmers TV ad for summer 2008 is out, and as usual, they have chosen a great song to accompany it. This time it’s ‘Lazy Day’ by The Byrds (or maybe The Flying Burrito Brothers). It’s a good example of how to do music in an ad like this. Take a classic song that most people will just about know, and don’t mess with it. They have done this several times in the past, including this one from a few years ago, featuring ‘Sunny Afternoon’ by The Kinks.



A good example of how not to do it comes via the Corona beer radio ad. It takes the 1979 hit “My Sharona” by The Knack and alters the lyrics to “My Corona.” Another line becomes “Ooh, you taste so good, like you should, like I knew you would” or something like that. My ears bleed every time I hear it. Whoever came up with it deserves to be cast into the wilderness wearing sackcloth and ashes, to feed off locusts. Here’s the original:

I was very sorry to hear of the death last weekend of the Swedish jazz pianist Esbjörn Svensson. He was 44, and died as a result of a scuba diving accident.

I discovered him about four years ago, and saw him in concert in Vicar Street in May 2005. This was my first "real” jazz concert, and it was an incredible experience. Even though the piano was the lead intrument in the trio, the bass and drums were also to the fore. Although the main focus of his work was on his own compositions, he was also a fine interpreter of standards, as this version of Thelonious Monk’s “Round Midnight” shows.

OK, everyone in Ireland has heard this one by now. I was in London on Tuesday, and so missed the debut on Gift Grub.




Whatever about Jerry Flannery's reaction to hearing it for the first time, I'd love to know what his girlfriend thought of it!

The people have spoken. Ireland's representative at this year's Eurovision Song Contest is to be Dustin the Turkey, with the song "Irlande, Douze Points."

Back in May, after Dervish were sent home from last year's Eurovision with just five points, I opined:

"If Ireland is ever to have notions of winning the Eurovision again, the strategy involved must change dramatically. Forget the idea of meaningful songs. Eurovision is as gay as Christmas, so to do well, Ireland's entry needs to camp it up. Two and a half minutes of fizzy Europop, that kids can remember just long enough to vote for it, performed by a pop starlet or a boyband/girlband. Skimpily clad dancers swishing their hair around, all that sort of stuff. Nothing deep and serious, as that just scares the votes away."

And this is exactly what Dustin is doing. The song is hi-NRG Europop nonsense with a catchy chorus. A very appropriate chorus too - "Irlande, douze points" is after all selling a message. The backing singers and dancers are as camp as they come. It's Eurovision gold, I reckon.

A fair few bloggers have compiled their lists of the best releases of the past 12 months, many no doubt agonising over what to include and what to leave out. A bit easier for me, I have to say, as my Top 5 goes like this:

1. Sky Blue Sky - Wilco
2. Easy Tiger - Ryan Adams and the Cardinals
3. Trinity Revisited - Cowboy Junkies
4. Because of the Times - Kings of Leon
5. Errr…That's it!

Yes, I only bought four new albums last year. Everything else I bought was old stuff. And the Kings of Leon probably wouldn't have been on the list if I had bought two more albums. It was well received by the critics, but I thought it lacked the raw, strutting energy of their first two albums. They seem to be in a groove now, and probably will pump out several albums of a similar ilk over the next number of years and go on to be one of the biggest bands in the world.

Twenty posted his top ten Christmas songs today, and I have to say I agree with him.

Every year, on December 1, radio station bosses decide that the season is open, and the Christmas songs can be played. And every year, the same old shite gets trotted out. Most of it comes from the 70s and 80s, which is in line with general playlist policy of stations like 98FM and FM104, who seem to think that music stopped on 31 December 1989. Here's my all-time top five crap Christmas songs:

5 - Last Christmas - Wham!
Back in 1984, a mate of mine in college had a dual turntable and used to DJ at house parties. One night in December, we were at a party, and he asked me to take over as he was on a promise. So there I was, trying to be as cool as fuck, when this hot young wan from college (that I had the major hots for) comes up to me and hands me a copy of "Last Christmas" by Wham!. What could I do? Play it and lose my cred, or refuse to play it and blow my chance with (I've forgotten her name) forever? I played it. I blew my cred. I never even spoke to (I've forgotten her name) again. I will hate this song as long as I live.

4 - Merry Xmas Everyone - Slade
My elder brothers were the custodians of music in our house, and one of the earliest bands to creep into my consciousness was Slade, along with The Sweet some time around 1973, when I was seven. This song dates from them, and gets wheeled out faithfully every year. Noddy Holder must turn on his wireless every December 1, and then sit back and wait for the royalty cheques to arrive.

3. I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day - Wizzard
From the same year as Slade's opus, Roy Wood is most likely living a comfortable retirement on the proceeds of this ditty. But what about the tuneless kids that sing the chorus? Do they still get royalties?

2. All I Want For Christmas Is You - Mariah Carey
A cash-in-on-Christmas song, complete with Mariah's vocal gymnastics and the obligatory sleigh bells. Hey, let's face it, anything with Mariah Carey in it is going to be shit, isn't it?

1. Stop the Cavalry - Jonah Lewie
The early-1980s charts are peppered with what I call anti-hits - songs (exclusively one-hit-wonders) that are outside the normal genre of a pop song but for one reason or another capture the imagination and get to No 1. Good examples of this are "Save Your Love" by Renee and Renata (itself a Christmas No 1), "Shaddapa Your Face" by Joe Dolce and "Grandma We Love You" by St Winifred's School Choir.

"Stop the Cavalry" is shit on two counts. First of all it's a perennial Chistmas radio favourite, and secondly it's an obvious anti-hit. And it's got fucking sleigh bells, too.

This was originally going to be a Top Ten, but I'm tired and need to go to bed. I may revisit the topic again before Christmas.

Rocky Frisco corrects me on the lyrics of JJ Cale's "Cocaine" here.

I've often gotten my wires crossed when it comes to lyrics, as I'm sure have many others. A friend of mine always thought that the opening line of Elvis Presley's "Suspicious Minds" was "We're calling a tram/I can't look out."

As it's the season that's in it, perhaps it's a good time to reveal one of my earliest lyrical misapprehensions. As a kid, I was under the impression that the words to Jingle Bells went like this:

Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells,
Jingle all the way,
Oh what fun it is to ride
In a one horse ope and sleigh

At about age 10, I began to wonder what on earth an "ope" was, and subsequently realised what the correct lyric was. It was an early Father Dougal-type "Oh, right, Ted!" moment.

Which brings me to this, a brilliant ad for Maxell tapes (cassette tapes - remember them, kids?) from the 80s, featuring "Into the Valley" by The Skids.



So do you have any lyrics that you have been carrying around for years in your head, only to discover that the real lyric was actually very different?

I don't normally get into online campaigns, but this one is worth it.

Get "Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis" by Tom Waits to No 1 for Christmas.



If you don't know the song, watch this, it's fucking classic:

Yesterday was an anniversary that I had in the back of my mind for a while as a potential post, and wouldn’t you know it, I forgot about it.

Twenty years ago, on Friday 27 November 1987, a little-known Canadian band called Cowboy Junkies set themselves up in a church in Toronto to record some tracks. Using just a single ambisonic microphone, Michael Timmins, along with his sister Margo and his brother Peter, family friend Alan Anton, and a few others committed to tape a very special recording.

The Trinity Session (named after the church in which the recording took place) is one of the most haunting, captivating and devastatingly beautiful collections of songs that you are likely to hear in your lifetime. A mixture of originals and covers, it veers from folk to country to blues to rock. They took country standards made famous by the likes of Hank Williams and Patsy Cline and completely reinterpreted them.

I discovered the album sometime around 1989, having read several rave reviews. Not being a great aficionado of country music at the time, I wasn’t really impressed with my first listen. But I found myself going back to it, until I was listening to it at least once a day. It is the only record I have ever owned that I have physically worn out. I played my vinyl copy so many times that it is now scratched and worn beyond redemption. I subsequently bought it again on CD.


Wait! There's More…

Just home from the Wilco gig at Vicar Street. What a gig! They were easily as good as the last time I saw them in 1999. Mind you, the only members of the band to have been there in 1999 and again tonight were Jeff Tweedy himself and bass player John Stirratt.

Jeff Tweedy has managed the evolution of his band very skillfully. Not only is he writing such brilliant material, but he has gathered around him a band of immense talent. To borrow a phrase from the world of sport, Nels Cline, Glen Kotche, John Stirratt, Mikael Jorgensen and Pat Sansone are all "wuuurrld class." If they were a football team they would be the sum of AC Milan and Barcelona. If they were a rugby team, they would be the All Blacks (and it would not be a World Cup year.)

Here's a bit of video I shot on my phone from tonight. "Walken" from Sly Blue Sky. (Please excuse the crappy picture quality. And the crappy sound quality too.) Still, if you're going along on Thursday, this will give you a flavour of what to expect.

Can't bleedin' wait. This is the first gig I will have been to in about two and a half years.

In the meantime, Impossible Germany from Sky Blue Sky:

Jim's playlist:

Bob Dylan “Subterranean Homesick Blues” (CBS)
These New Puritans “Colours” (Angular)
Tiger Force “Beat This” (Marquis Cha Cha)
Tokyo Police Force “Citizens of Tomorrow” (Paper Bag)
Health “Triceratops” (Lovepump United)
Can “Moonshake” (Spoon)
!!! “Yadnus” (Warp)
Jape “Christopher & Anthony” (V2)
Les Savy Fav “The Lowest Bitter” (French Kiss)
Hooray For Humans “‘06 Forever” (Out On A Limb)
Blitzen Trapper “Devil’s A Go-Go” (Sub Pop)
Deerhunter “Strange Lights (Kranky)
Secret Machines “Better Bring Your Friends” (Reprise)
Carmel “More More More” (London)
Eight Minutes “Here’s Some Dances” (Numero)
The Supremes “My World Is Empty Without You” (Tamla Motown)
Voice Of The Seven Woods “Valley of the Rocks” (Twisted Nerve)
Adele “Hometown Glory” (Pacemaker)
Cat Power/Karen Elson “Je t’aime moi non plus” (Barclay)
Kraftwerk “The Model” (EMI)
Giorgio Moroder “The Apartment” (Polydor)
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan/Eddie Vedder “The Face Of Love” (Columbia)
Mark Hollis “The Gift” (Polydor)
Vic Chesnutt “Wallace Stevens” (Constellation)
Michael Nyman “To The Edges of the Earth” (Virgin)
Roscoe Holcomb “Man Of Constant Sorrow” Smithsonian Folkways)
Fairport Convention “Farewell Farewell” (Island)
Coldcut “Autumn Leaves (Irresistible Force Remix)” (BMG)

My out-of-touchedness:

One point awards: Carmel, Giorgio Moroder, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan/Eddie Vedder, Vic Chesnutt, Michael Nyman, Fairport Convention

Five-point awards: The Supremes, Kraftwerk

Ten-point awards: None

Twenty-point awards: Bob Dylan

Total: 46.

What the fuck is all this about?

Seeing as it's the day that's in it, here's Ryan Adams's Halloweenhead, from the album Easy Tiger. (iTunes Music Store link)

(Lyrics contain some words that might offend. "Shit" and "Fuck" to be precise.)



The video itself is from a Finnish dance instructor. Here's the original.

Jim has published his Phantom playlist from last Saturday night. Twenty nine tracks, which gives me 580 points to aim for.

One point awards (Heard of artist in question, but know little or nothing about them):
Cathy Davey (good old Cathy, good for a point every week. Maybe I should get her album and that one point increases tenfold straight away.)
William S. Burroughs (assuming that this is the writer WSB, not that I have ever read anything by him.)
Vic Chesnutt
Josh Ritter (I have heard his stuff played on the radio many times, but nothing has ever stuck.

Five point awards (Know at least one song by the artist in question):
Grace Jones

Ten point awards (Own a recording by the artist in question, or have seen them live, but not both):
None

Twenty point awards (Own a recording by the artist in question, and have seen them live):
Cowboy Junkies (I have six of their albums, and have seen them live four times)
Also, I'm going to correct Jim on the name of the song - it's "Dreaming My Dreams With You", and for that little bit of pedantry, I'm going to claim another ten points.

Total for this week: 39

Explanation of the Oldfartometer

Back in my youngster days, music was very important to me. I bought new music constantly, read Q religiously and went to gigs on a regular basis, sometimes to go see bands I had only ever read about and had never heard. That all changed as I got older, and I tended to stick with what I liked. These days if I find only one new act in a year that I really like, I think I'm doing well.

I realised I was becoming an old fart when I would hear something on the radio and think to myself "Jesus, is this the shite the kids are listening to nowadays? When I was a youngster, songs had a tune you could whistle and lyrics you could sing. These days, it's just bang bang bang!"

So I have devised a method to quantify my out-of-touchedness, which I call the Oldfartometer.

Each week, Jim Carroll of The Irish Times does a show on Phantom FM, a Dublin station that is apparently popular with the young folk. He then publishes his playlist on his On The Record blog. Now Jim is obviously down with the cool kids, so I'm using his weekly playlist as a barometer of what is out there right now. Scores are assigned as follows: for every artist I have heard of, but wouldn't recognise their music, I award one point. For each artist I recognise and know at least one song of theirs, I award five points. If I own a recording by one of the artists on Jim's list, or if I have seen them in concert, I help myself to ten points. And finally, if I have seen that artist live and own at least one recording by them, I award myself twenty points. So with a maximum of twenty points per artist on the playlist, a twenty song playlist has a maximum potential score of 400 points. Anything below 100 points would indicate chronic oldfartedness.

Let's look at this week's playlist:

26 songs on the list, so there are 520 points to play for.

1 point awards: Cathy Davey
5 point awards: None
10 point awards: Nirvana, Billie Holliday (it's my wife's CD, but I'm putting it in anyway), Ennio Morricone (We have the DVD of Cinema Paradiso)
20 point awards: Mary Margaret O'Hara, Emmylou Harris

Total: 71 points. Not too bad, but mind you the acts where I score would be within the bounds of an old fart anyway.

Last week's playlist:

27 tracks - 540 potential points

1 point awards: Cathy Davey
5 point awards: None
10 point awards: None
20 point awards: None

Total: 1 point. Oh dear.

September 15 list:

28 tracks - 560 potential points

1 point awards: King Creosote, Bat for Lashes, PJ Harvey, Robert Wyatt
5 point awards: Captain Beefheart, Robert Johnson, Ennio Morricone, Herbie Hancock
10 point awards: Tim Buckley,
20 point awards: None

Total: 34 points. Better.

How's about you? Will you take the Oldfartometer challenge?

In honour of the thirtieth anniversary of Elvis's ultimate departure from the building, a tribute from Spinal Tap.

Wilco are on their way to Dublin this November, and will play two nights at Vicar Street, on Wednesday 14 and Thursday 15. I had heard a rumour that they were coming, and hoped that it wouldn't be the weekend of the 17th, as I am away in England for a wedding that weekend. Just made it!

Booked me ticket already. This will be the first time to see them since June 99, when they were touring Summerteeth. The only two members from that gig still in the band now are Jeff Tweedy and John Stirrat.

It should be one hell of a gig and I'm really looking forward to it.

(Found out via Jim)

When I lived in London, I used to be a bit of a hi-fi geek. I used to read the mags and knew which shops on Tottenham Court Road were worthwhile, and which were not. I always knew that a good hi-fi system consisted of "separates", i.e. each component was chosen separately, and the final system could be made up of components from several different manufacturers.

My first "hi-fi" was assembled while I was living with my aunt in Milton Keynes. It consisted of a Sharp tape deck, an amp (the make of which I have forgotten) and a pair of KEF speakers. I later added a record deck. It was known as a "linear tracking turntable", which meant that the whole arm moved straight across the record, rather than being mounted on a pivot. Back in 1986, a linear tracking turntable was a cool as a polar bear's arse, but sadly this one was a pile of junk. I was working part-time for an electronics chain called Tandy, and the deck was part of one of their own-label ranges called Realistic. Unfortunately, the sound it emitted was anything but.

As time went on, I got more into the whole hi-fi thing. For a vinyl junkie like me, the holy grail was a Linn Sondek LP12. This was to turntables what Apple was to computers, but it was also practically unaffordable. The deck itself was one thing, but then you had to get a tonearm and a power supply. I wanted one so much, it hurt. And I never did manage to requite that desire.

In 1989, I upgraded almost everything. The amp was replaced by a NAD 3020e, which I still have. The tape deck, which I had flogged to the Record and Tape Exchange in Notting Hill a year earlier, was reinstated, this time by a Denon DRM 10. Being unable to stretch to an LP12, my compromise was a Dual CS 505-3, which sat atop the whole lot. To set this off, I invested in a hi-fi table and speaker stands.

This kept me going for a few years, until I started finding it increasingly difficult to find new releases on vinyl. I had long resisted the move to CD, but finally in 1993, I succumbed. I swore that I would only buy the CD version of an album if I couldn't buy vinyl, but the truth is that I have never bought an LP since the day I brought that CD player home.

When I moved to France, I couldn't take the hi-fi with me, so I left it with my a mate of mine. I got it back after I moved back to Ireland, but one of the speakers got damaged in the moving around. As by then they were more than ten years old, I replaced them with a pair of Tannoys.

A couple of years back, when my wife and I were still living in Dublin, we invested in a couple of bookcases from Habitat for the apartment. We decided to put the TV and hi-fi into one of them, and so the hi-fi table fell from favour. I kept it though, as I felt that one day it would come to be useful again. By this time, the CD player and the tape deck had both given up the ghost, so I dumped them. The record deck was on its last legs too, but I was determined to get it fixed. As well as that, I had bought an iBook and an iPod, and so these had become the main sources of music for the apartment.

When we moved to the new house, the hi-fi-table was reinstated, though my wife let it be known that its days were numbered. Once the baby started crawling it would be a hazard and would have to go. So today I took it to the dump, along with the record deck that hasn't worked for years. I bought a new baby-proof cabinet for the TV and the remainder of the hi-fi (the amp, a DVD player and the Chorus box).

These days, the music is on the iMac in the kitchen. We rarely play a CD now. It's just to easy to use the Mac or to hook up the iPod to the hi-fi. I'm sure hi-fi enthusiasts would be appalled by the arrangements I have in place, but that's how it is in a house like ours.

Mind you, I think we could do with a decent set of speakers for the iMac…

Could The Gossip please just fuck off?

Beth Ditto can't sing, her band sound like they have never graduated from their parents' garage, and their song "Standing In The Way Of Control" is so clichéd, it makes Liam and Noel Galllagher's songwriting look like that of Leonard Cohen.

I don't care that Beth Ditto is overweight, or a lesbian or an exhibitionist. I do care that people think she and her band have musical talent, and that her God-awful "music" gets so much airplay.

The above is apparently a real ad for Microsoft's iPod rival, the Zune. It purports to demonstrate the joys of "squirting", where one Zune user can transfer a music file to another via the devices' WiFi capability.

Fake Steve:

Best part is that the dopes at Microsoft creamed their jeans over it. Seriously, this has to be the lamest advertisement ever made. It looks like two dicks trading genital warts.

Tags: microsoft, zune, fake steve

It's only recently that I have started to listen to Radiohead to any great degree. I missed out on them initially when they first became known, mainly because I was living in rural France and didn't buy a single album for nearly 18 months. By the time I had re-established a music-buying habit, they were big time and I wasn't really interested in big time acts.

Their performance at Glastonbury ten years ago was seen as one of the great sets at the festival, and as Glastonbury is on again this weekend, I thought this might be appropriate.

From the DVD "Shake It Off", Wilco performing "Side With The Seeds".

(via Amazon.co.uk)

Tags: wilco, sky blue sky, groove supply, video

I preordered my copy of the new Wilco album "Sky Blue Sky" in the hope of having it as soon as it was released, and saving a few €s over what I'd pay for it in the shops. There was a special edition for €23.49 on play.com, consisting of the album and an accompanying DVD called "Shake It Off", so I ordered that. It was released last Tuesday week, but by Thursday my copy still hadn't arrived. I wandered into Tower Records in Wicklow Street that afternoon, and there it was on sale, CD + DVD edition for €21.95. D'Oh! It eventually arrived on Friday.

I started listening to Wilco ten years ago, with the album "Being There", and have followed them ever since. Their sound has evolved a lot in this decade, over the course of four more studio albums and a live album, plus several side projects. In my opinion, 2001's "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" is a masterpiece, and it really marked their departure from the alt.country scene, with which they had been associated from their beginning. "A Ghost is Born" released in 2004 took them even further along that route, but to me this was a less satisfying piece of work, with quite banal lyrics on several tracks and a self-indulgent use of noise on tracks like "Less Than You Think."

"Sky Blue Sky" is much more immediately accessible than YHF or AGIB. In some ways it is almost harking back to Being There (the title track itself is quite similar to "Far, Far Away".) The sound is much more mellow overall, but it does have twists and turns as we might expect from Jeff Tweedy and Co. Tweedy's fellow band members are much more to the forefront in this album, particularly guitar virtuoso Nels Cline.

Some hardcore Wilco fans may see this album as a regression. Like any other album by the band, it requires several listens in order to absorb it properly. Standout tracks so far for me are "You Are My Face", "Side With The Seeds" and "Walken."

It's well worth spending the extra few euros for the special CD + DVD edition, which features eight of the album's twelve tracks performed live by the band in their Chicago studio, plus numerous interviews.

Tags: music, wilco, sky blue sky

Oh dear! Ireland's real-life "My Lovely Horse" moment came true last Saturday night, when Dervish came last in the Eurovision. The post-mortems have been ongoing since then, with the performers and songwriters taking most of the flak.

Much of the criticism is unfair, I think (as indeed is my headline.) Unlike Ted and Dougal's infamous ditty, the song wasn't expressly chosen to lose Ireland the competition. Whatever one's opinion of the song - and I hold none, because (a) even though I have heard it a couple of times, I can't actually remember anything about it, and (b) I tend not to opine on the merits or otherwise of individual Eurovision entries - there is no doubt that it was the wrong song for the occasion.

Wait! There's More…

Apple and EMI have announced a deal whereby the music company's entire digital content will be available for sale in best quality and DRM-free from iTunes Stores from May.

My thoughts on the deal here

Today's "Pricewatch" in The Irish Times was all about music purchasing, and comparing the price of downloading with buying a physical CD.

While Conor Pope was happy enough about the value available for those seeking to buy singles, he felt that album purchases weren't such good value.

"While a CD single costs in the region of €4 - for which you also get the B-side and other material - often of dubious merit - a song can be downloaded from iTunes for just 99 cent. It is not a lot to pay for a single. The price of a full album downloaded from iTunes is not quite such good value, however, particularly when you consider how little it costs to make the music available."

Wait! There's More…

Apple have introduced a "publish to web" option for iTunes Playlists, so I thought I'd give it a whirl.

It's a selection of some music I have been listening to over the last year or so. Not necessarily a "Best of 2006" or anything like that, as some of it dates back to 1998.

If you feel motivated enough, you can buy it in its entirety from iTunes, or just pick individual tunes off it.
Wait! There's More…