Never mind advent calendars or Pat Kenny scaring young children on The Toy Show, the surest indicator that Christmas is on its merry way is when Ireland’s musical elite gathers in the capital for the annual HP Summit.

Being only 10.30 in the morning, the traditional tongue-loosening feed of pints and whiskey chasers – hands up who remembers Neil Hannon’s magnificent Guinness-fuelled display in 2004? – are replaced by The Central Hotel’s weapons-grade coffee.
Nevertheless, the talk is tough as we address such burning rock ‘n’ roll issues as Radiohead seizing back control from the major record companies, the level of domestic radio support for Irish acts, bands endorsing politicians and, er, having one of your songs used in a French pantyliner commercial.
Sitting in a statesmanlike fashion around the table are:
Rónan Yourell – Singer and guitarist with Delorentos who, having stormed into the top 10 here with their debut In Love With Details album, are preparing for their biggest headlining show yet on December 14 in Dublin’s Ambassador Theatre.
Cathy Davey – Also on live duty in the run-up to Christmas, the Dubliner caused much critical drooling in October with the release of her Tales Of Silversleeve album. A Choice Music Prize nomination in January seems assured.
Lance Hogan – Multi-instrumentalist member of Kíla who also circumnavigated the globe in the ‘90s with those other wanton eclectics, Dead Can Dance.
Alison Curtis – Expat Canadian whose Today FM duties include keeping Ian Dempsey up to speed with new music on his breakfast show, and presenting her own Sunday night indie blowout, The Last Splash, which has this year doubled its audience.
MayKay – Defiantly surname-less lead singer with Fight Like Apes who have a pervasive whiff of the ‘next big thing about’ them. If you don’t believe us check out their David Carradine Is A Bounty Hunter Whos Robotic Arm Hates Your Crotch EP, which won’t win them any spelling competitions, but rocks like a bastard.
Paul Finn – Arrives late, but gets away with it by dint of his band The Flaws’ debut album, Achieving Vagueness, being a bittersweet pop classic.
And joining us on speakerphone:
Josh Ritter – The American would love to be with us in person but has been recording a Later With Jools Holland appearance, which airs on Friday November 30 at 11.35pm.
STUART: Paul, we’re not going to give you Chinese burns and flush your head down the loo this time, but any repeat of your tardiness and you’re in big trouble.
PAUL: Sorry, we were on Podge & Rodge last night doing Rock ‘N Roulette and didn’t get home ‘til late. It was really good fun though. They make you come up with a silly name and do a cover, so we were ‘The Flaw Doctors’ performing ‘My Sharona’!
RONAN: That was probably a better choice than us doing ‘No Limits’!
STUART: You mean the “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no” 2-Unlimited one?
RONAN: I think you left a “no” out there, but yeah, we decided that being on Podge & Rodge required making complete fools of ourselves. The funny/worrying thing is that people seemed to like it as much as our own stuff.
LANCE: One of my more dubious claims to fame is that I drummed on the first Zig & Zag album, Zig Zagging. A friend of mine was producing it and they asked me to come down.
RONAN: Were they hard taskmasters?
LANCE: Terrible! “Change that beat, it’s not fluffy enough!”
STUART: Have you ever had any close encounters of the puppet kind, MayKay?
MAYKAY: I was in a studio audience full of children, some of whom cried when somebody stuck their hand up Dustin The Turkey. They were like, “What’s that man doing to him?” We did the Once A Week Show with Dustin and Sile Seoige and Ryan Tubridy as well, but Tubridy isn’t really a puppet.
STUART: There’s a cheap comment begging to be made, but I’ll resist! Josh, what about your surreal TV moments?
JOSH: It’s different to what you guys are talking about, but I really had to pinch myself last night when I appeared on Later With Jools Holland with The Who watching us. I’m a guy from Nowheresville, USA and here’s one of the greatest bands of all time on the stage next to me! I thought, “Perhaps I should do some windmill arm actions or smash my guitar into the amplifier in their honour.” If you’re following The Who, you want to rock! In the end I just made a complete idiot of myself when Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey waved and – God knows why – I flashed them a heavy metal devil’s horn salute in response. That’s going to give me nightmares for the rest of the year!
STUART: The Who aren’t the only rock royalty you’ve met in 2007, are they?
JOSH: You mean April’s Tribute To Bruce Springsteen gig in Carnegie Hall? Man, that was the best night of my life so far. I got to play ‘The River’, hang out with Steve Earle, Patti Smith, Pete Yorn, The Hold Steady, Badly Drawn Boy and Odetta, and then be part of the communal choir when Bruce came on and did ‘Rosalita’. Forget surreal, that’s insanity!
STUART: Sticking with gigs, what are everybody else’s favourite ‘played’ and ‘been in the crowd for’ moments this year?
ALISON: (Laughs) I didn’t publicise my own gigs, but fan-wise The National in the Olympia last month was a joy from start to finish. It was a bit like Arcade Fire at the Electric Picnic in that you realised here is a band whose time has come. And come on their own terms because it’s about music rather than haircuts. I have it on good authority that the singer, Matt Berringer, was pretty hammered that night but it didn’t show.
CATHY: Played? Halloween night in Cork, which was the last gig of this residency thing I did for a month. I was dressed as the devil and the guys had skeleton suits on, and it was just really fun. Oxegen was memorable for there being a guy in the crowd who had my name spelt out on his chest with yellow sticky-tape! The best I’ve seen was Tacks, The Boy Disaster, which is the same guy that started up Midlake. Although they were headlining, the crowd had turned up to see these eight girls dressed like the models from Robert Palmer’s ‘Addicted To Love’ video, and who made the most disgusting music I’ve ever heard.
STUART: Would you care to name and shame?
CATHY: I didn’t catch their names, but I’ve been calling them Menstrual Cycle! Once the pretty girls had finished the place emptied, leaving me and four other people to listen to this really beautiful music.
RONAN: One of the standouts for Delorentos was supporting Arctic Monkeys at Malahide Castle. A friend and myself used to walk to school through the park every day, and I remember us saying, “This’d be a brilliant place for a gig!” I wanted to go on and scream, “Malahide, you are the rock ‘n’ roll capital of the world!” but chickened out.
STUART: Playing with a band who are as big as the Monkeys, do you think, “Fuck, we’ve a long way to go”, or is it, “Hang on, we’re as good as them!”
RONAN: A year ago I’d definitely have been daunted, but I’ve seen the standard of UK bands from gigging there, and they’re no better than any of the people sitting round this table. As for gigs I’ve been at, Kings Of Leon blew me away at South By Southwest in Texas. They don’t really talk between songs and are comfortable doing their own thing, which after going through the self-doubt all bands do is where Delorentos are now.
PAUL: We played in Whelan’s shortly after the album came out and expected people to know the singles and nothing else, but when I announced this slow ballad, ‘Windmill Talent’, there was a huge roar from the crowd who then proceeded to sing it with me.
MAYKAY: Our weirdest gig was at the Electric Picnic. Having been let loose in a field for two days beforehand I was very groggy, but un-phased because we’d only been together a year and I knew there’d be no one in the tent. Wrong! There wasn’t much else going on at the time, so we got a huge walk-in crowd that was ten times bigger than anything we’d played to before. I was shaking with nerves/the alcohol for the whole set, which I think worked in a Joy Division, I-looked-a-bit-insane kind of a way!
STUART: As we said in relation to The National, there’s nothing wrong with being hammered on stage.
MAYKAY: Hammered’s good, but more after the show than during it! Our best gig was last Friday in Whelan’s where we were simultaneously sad and elated at having to turn people away. As Paul says, having a song that’s never been played on the radio sung back to you is such a buzz! The best I saw is British Sea Power in New York. I’ve just been informed they’re playing in Dublin on January 18, which means anything Fight Like Apes have planned for that night is now cancelled!
JOSH: Since The Historical Conquests… took off in the States, we’ve gotten to play famous venues like Webster Hall in New York and Nashville’s Exit Inn, which I fantasised about as a kid, but never thought I’d walk into through the stage door. The Irish shows I did in February were special too ‘cause I was introducing the new record to the people who’ve known me the longest, and would feel personally affronted if I’d let them down. It’s like performing for your old Sunday School teacher – things in your life have moved on, but you still yearn for their approval, which is what I felt I got on that tour.
STUART: Did anyone bother going to see The Police in Croker?
CATHY: The son playing support?
RONAN: How did he get that gig? I had a ticket but couldn’t go.
LANCE: Stewart Copeland is one of my drumming heroes, but I didn’t want to risk spoiling my memories of them.
ALISON: I was gutted that the rumours of AC/DC playing Slane turned out to be false.
MAYKAY: The only reunion I’m interested in is the My Bloody Valentine one!
STUART: Are we all agreed that Kevin Shields is a genius?
EVERYBODY: Yes!
PAUL: Even the three songs he did for Lost In Translation were brilliant.
ALISON: Like PJ Harvey and Sinéad O’Connor, you know from the first note exactly who it is, which is a real testament to someone.
MAYKAY: Kevin Shields for President!
JOSH: To my eternal shame, it’s only recently that I realised he’s Irish.
STUART: Before I forget, Josh, the Hot Press photographer you nearly killed in July, Graham Keogh, sends his regards.
JOSH: God, that was bizarre! I play a gig up an Austrian mountain, and one of the press guys covering it collapses on the way home from the bends. I thought you had to be coming down the Andes or the Himalayas to get decompression sickness.
STUART: No, our Graham managed it without leaving the continent.
LANCE: The one that stands out is WOMADelaide, which took place in an 84-acre botanical park and totally debunked what Radiohead said the other day about there being no surprises in music anymore. Going from tent to tent, I heard an African funk band followed by the Burundi Boys and a group of Tibetan throat singers. I was always on at Peter Gabriel’s people to bring WOMAD here, but then the Electric Picnic started with a similar ‘the arts meets music’ ethos.
STUART: Talking of Radiohead, was them releasing In Rainbows online the big “fuck off!” to the record companies it was made out to be?
JOSH: My attitude was “Good on them!” until I learned there’s a physical version coming out next month, which is going to cost $80. Forcing your real fans to pay that much money for packaging makes Radiohead as wantonly profiteering as any of the corporations they profess to being against. I still love their music though!
ALISON: I thought it was a novel and creative way to release it, and worth every cent of the €9.99 I, as it turned out, overpaid for it! It also provided a good business model for people like Courtney Love who’s announced that she’s going to do the same thing.
MAYKAY: You can only do that though if you’ve got a pre-existing fanbase, which these ‘evil’ record companies have helped you build up.
STUART: Stripped of artwork, manufacturing costs and everything else bar the music, what do you think an album’s worth?
CATHY: All I can think about when asked that question is the money I owe from my last one! I love the fact that you can give songs away online, and have people spread the word for you if they like them. If I could then make a living on the side from doing something else, I would, but I can’t because all my time’s devoted to music. As it is, the only money I earn comes from gigging – I don’t get any from my records.
RONAN: God, I don’t know. We released an EP a couple of weeks ago and were like, “How many songs should we put on it? If there’s five rather than four, do we charge an extra euro?” We’re about to spend two weeks in the UK where we don’t have a distribution deal, and have to decide what to charge for In Love With Details at gigs. Sometimes if you give things away for free it’s actually worth less to people, so it’s very hard to know.
MAYKAY: Where I do agree with Radiohead is that a band should be able to say to iTunes or whoever: “I only want my album to be downloaded as a complete body of work rather than being cherry-picked from.”
STUART: What about the argument that albums are an outdated concept, which no longer appeals to young people?
MAYKAY: Well, I’m only 20 and they still appeal to me! Take a band like Pavement – I love listening to their albums and working out from the music and the lyrics where at that particular time their heads were at.
RONAN: It was interesting this year when Ash said that instead of making albums they’re going to release songs two or three at a time on the internet.
STUART: David Bowie says he wants a deal which allows him to release a conventional album every two years, and in between make whatever remixes, live sessions, collaborations and individual tracks he wants available for download through his website.
LANCE: One of the great things about Kíla is that we own all our music, so we can do what we want without asking a record company’s permission. I still think there are a lot of people who want the adventure of sticking an album on and seeing where it takes them over the course of 10 or 11 tracks.
CATHY: (Laughs) I think they should bring back cassettes! After a while you couldn’t be arsed to fast-forward them and let the whole thing play, which is when you fell in love with the slow-burners. For me, this boiling albums down to the three most immediate tracks is ruining things.
ALISON: I’m a bit of a technophobe, so this downloading stuff is all kinda new to me, even though it’s been around for a few years. I think it’s all of our duty to drag kids into record stores because once they’ve experienced the thrill of going through the racks, seeing the artwork and reading the liner-notes, they’ll realise it’s so much better than just clicking ‘buy’ on their computer.
STUART: I can see the ‘Alison Curtis In Child Abduction Shocker’ headlines now! We’re talking about record sales as if they’re the be all and end all, but Dylan from The Chalets recently said that for many bands they’re now a secondary revenue stream.
CATHY: I’ve just got a pantyliner ad in France, which I’m hoping will stir it up for me there!
PAUL: Another thing that pays big money is getting your music on TV shows like Grey’s Anatomy and The O.C. We’ve signed a publishing deal with a small company called Impala Media who’ve got ‘16’ on the ad for The Premiership. Hopefully that’ll be the first of many.
LANCE: Television and adverts are a great way of getting your music out to a mass audience, and unless they’re soundtracking a promotional film on seal clubbing or a McDonald’s ad, I don't think there's anything wrong with doing them.
STUART: Switching to matters of a televisual nature, was The Sopranos’ sudden ending genius TV or a cop-out?
ALISON: I think having to decide what happened next yourself personalised the show. A cop-out would’ve been for someone to burst in and shoot them all dead.
CATHY: I watched all of it up ‘til the last two episodes and then had to stop because I couldn’t stand the tension!
JOSH: Definitely genius! What I got from that show is no matter how large or small your guilt is, it always catches up with you. That show is all about how quickly your frailties can be exposed. Even if Tony walked out of the diner, he’ll be looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life. It certainly gripped America in a way that no other series has in years.
The papers gave it more coverage than Iraq and you couldn’t switch the radio on without hearing Journey’s ‘Don’t Stop Believin’’, which was such a perfect choice of music on David Chase’s part.
STUART: Iraq was obviously the big news story of the year. Has it impacted on your life in any way?
JOSH: A cousin of mine is a marine and on his way there, and I’ve been corresponding with a girl who’s back now after serving as the only woman in a 10-person combat unit. She was wounded pretty bad and still has braces. To have somebody in that situation connect with your music and send you a letter is very humbling. When I was starting out I used to go to open mics and prey that somebody would give me ten bucks for a CD so I could pay for the groceries. I never thought about them taking the record home, and it becoming something of real importance to them. I’ve also got a friend who’s a military correspondent for the Washington Post, Tom Ricks, who goes there pretty regularly and is totally disheartened by what he sees.
STUART: What's America more ready for – a black president or a woman president?
JOSH: I think they’re ready for anybody who’s not George W. Bush. Historically this is the best time for either a black person or a woman to make it to the White House.
LANCE: That in all probability the next President of the United States will either be a black man or a woman signals a change for the better in that country.
ALISON: I was pretty sure it was going to be Hilary, but the more I see of Barack Obama the more I like him.
STUART: In the last American election you had the likes of Springsteen, Pearl Jam and REM campaigning on John Kerry’s behalf whereas here bands never get involved in party politics. How comes?
PAUL: Politics? What’s that? Being serious, it’s not a good career move to alienate half the country by saying, “This is who we support.”
LANCE: For Kíla to do that, there’d have to be a total consensus, which is hard to reach if there’s seven of you. It’s all a bit more clear-cut in the States where there are only two parties, one resolutely conservative and the other resolutely liberal.
CATHY: The time when Irish artists were more politicised was when there was less freedom of speech, and they had a moral obligation to say things. Musicians had a platform that other people didn’t, but that’s changed now.
MAYKAY: I’d align myself to a cause, but not a party because there’s none I 100% agree with.
STUART: Right, that’s our Questions And Answers session over. Seeing as Alison’s just nipped to the ladies room, this is a good time to ask who your favourite DJs and radio stations are.
GROUP CHORUS: Phantom!
LANCE: I have to nod to Ryan Tubridy and Ronan Collins who’ve both been incredibly supportive of us on their radio shows. John Kelly moving to Lyric was a disaster – he’s still a great presenter but he doesn’t get to play nearly the range of music he did on Radio One.
MAYKAY: I was shocked when we got Tubridy Tonight and shocked again when they let us do it live without a backing-track. A band like us appearing on primetime Saturday night television wouldn’t have happened a few years ago, so fair play to them.
CATHY: I did Tubridy, and but for the rivalry between the two shows would have done The Late Late. Pat Kenny cancelled me because his little friend had had me on.
PAUL: We’d only been going six months when we got Other Voices,, so that was a big deal. Radio-wise, there’s a great guy in Limerick called Alan Jacques who does The Green Scene on Live 95.
JOSH: Yeah, Live 95 and their neighbours Clare FM are both excellent. Rick O’Shea at 2FM has always been a big supporter, as has Jon Richards at Galway Bay FM. I appreciate why the airplay thing is such a big debate, but personally I’ve no complaints.
MAYKAY: Red FM in Cork are good, as is Mike Knightson at Newstalk. The only reason he wants to be a DJ is so that he can play good music.
RONAN: Alison, Jenny Huston, Dan Hegarty and Tom Dunne are also great supporters of Irish music.
STUART: As fantastic as the specialist shows we’ve just mentioned are, the holy grail for bands is daytime airplay, which – take a bow Alison! – quite a few have been getting from Ian Dempsey. Do you browbeat him into playing new acts or does he pick up on them himself?
ALISON: To take The Flaws as just one example, it was Ian who said, “Have you heard this fantastic band?” and then proceeded to play them every morning for a month! There being only so many hours in the day, I do sift through records on his behalf, but he’s very proactive in choosing the music. We’re lucky at Today FM in that, yeah, we do have playlists going on but presenters are able to throw things in they personally like. Tony Fenton, for instance, played the hell out of Joe Chester’s album.
STUART: Okay chaps, albums that our readers absolutely have to add to their collections by the end of 2007.
ALISON: Internationally, PJ Harvey and The National and domestically, Delorentos, The Flaws, Dave Geraghty and – I have no vested interest whatsoever in saying this – Future Kings Of Spain.
STUART: I’m sure your husband who’s the drummer in the band will be delighted with the endorsement!
JOSH: The two I’ve listened to most this year are Lupe Fiasco’s Food & Liqor – he’s an American hip-hop artist who’s worked with the likes of Jay-Z and Pharrell Williams – and Alfred Deller who’s from the ‘40s and sung these courtly wooing songs in a hitch-pitched voice that makes them sound like Martian music.
STUART: Paul, bearing in mind your startling resemblance to him and the fact that Dundalk is your adopted hometown, do you think it was right of the FAI to give Steve Staunton the chop?
CATHY: I knew you reminded me of someone!
PAUL: I have no interest in football whatsoever!
STUART: So who here is a devotee of The Beautiful Game?
CATHY: I love Arsenal, especially with the new crop of players like Adebayor and Eboué – both of whose names I can spell properly! Everyone’s paying millions and millions for players and Arsene’s got this purist thing of bringing young talent through. I was in Highbury but not as yet the Emirates, so if anyone’s wondering what to get me for Christmas…
MAYKAY: Rugby’s my game. I work sometimes for the Munster team and was overjoyed when they won the Heineken Cup. I couldn’t go ‘cause I was doing my Leaving Cert but that didn’t stop me sitting in a pub in Naas and bawling crying when they lifted the trophy. My father’s their PR and they’re a funny, inspirational bunch of people.
STUART: And on that sporting note, I’ll wish you all a very happy Christmas!