Got To Admit Its Getting Better

It s the third night of MIDEM 99 and already people are looking forward to next year. The opening night in 2,000 will be an Irish showcase, promoter Keith Williams confides. It s something we ve been working towards for the past couple of years and now it s been agreed. It s a really important one, given that the next MIDEM takes place in Millennium year.
While there s an implicit endorsement of the achievements of Irish music and Irish musicians involved, it s not something that s approached by MIDEM on an altruistic basis. In fact nothing comes cheap at what remains the international music industry s premier marketplace, so it s hardly a surprise to learn that someone s going to have to raise the not inconsiderable sum of #250,000 to transform this particular dream into a reality.
The following night in Morrison s bar, which the bulk of the Irish contingent have made their night-time hangout, well away from the main drag of the Croisette, the word is seeping out. During the day, Johnny Lappin has been engaged in what he reckons are significant discussions about the prospect. He s sufficiently enthused that he s already conjuring up prospective titles for the event. Party With The Paddies, he declares with conviction. The Irish Are Coming To Cannes 2000. His smile suggests that he s pleased with that one.
In situations like this, it is the duty of imaginations to run wild. In the buzz of the bar, with a day s wheeling and dealing behind them, the Irish contingent are bursting with schemes and ideas.
Michael Croke of RTE suggests an IMRO songwriters collaboration as an interesting and different way of approaching the showcase. Don t do it on the opening night, he advises, and he may have a point. MIDEM opening nights are social occasions, with people dressed formally and carrying plates full of food. It s not the context in which to get serious about the music and so there s an argument that it d be better to wait a night or two, and to do a showcase at a time when people are prepared to focus on the stage, and to listen.
It s evident, even from preliminary discussions of this kind, that there ll be plenty of soul-searching before the idea gets the cross-industry backing it ll require if it s to happen. Which is probably a good thing. #250,000 is a lot of money to spend, and it s important to ensure that the people or organisations who are paying the piper get good value for it.
Developments will be awaited with interest.
No doubt about it, the Irish presence at MIDEM 99 was a strong one. With over 30 companies officially represented on the Irish stand, the numbers were impressive and there was a further contingent who arrived separately from the Enterprise Board s operation Oliver Sweeney, for example, was down this year representing Liverpool s Hope collective.
Indeed of the five Irish acts doing official showcase gigs, only two, Kaydee and Sack, were connected to the Irish stand. It was a twist that was not without its undercurrents of disillusionment on the part of the other musicians who made it to the South of France, and of their minders.
We ve got nothing to do with the Irish stand, Robert Stephenson informed me. Sean s showcase was organised by this good friend of ours from Denmark who put it together. We got absolutely no help from anyone in Ireland in terms of getting here.
The Sean in question is the good doctor himself Sean Millar, who s in town to give a bit of industry profile to his second (and second superb) album The Deal. He shakes his head ruefully by way of elaboration, giving the impression that he s had enough of dealing with Irish bureaucracy. Clearly he doesn t really want to get started. It s crazy when you think about it that we re here as honorary Danes, he says. His artist s badge confirms that this indeed is his nationality for the week.
The Committed report a similar experience. I just phoned up Xavier Roy, who s a friend of mine, and looked for the gig, their business affairs minder David Coyle tells me. Roy is a key figure within the Reid group who run MIDEM and he used his influence to swing a prestigious Martinez showcase slot for the band.
As it transpires, it was a good call on Roy s part, The Committed are a live band par excellence and they know how to put on a show. It may all be hugely familiar territory but they do their soul covers with great gusto and the crowd lap it up.
Comprising music biz execs who ve either seen it all before, or at least like to think they have, the MIDEM audience can be cynical and unforgiving. I ve seen highly rated bands play to a handful of people in the expanses of the Martinez: if you don t impress them in the first five minutes, they re gone. But the hall is well full for The Committed, and they go down a storm, winning a genuine encore from an audience that s clearly impressed.
The Committed are in town touting a live album and their performance should enhance their prospects of doing business. I don t know what s happening with the album in Ireland yet, drummer and agent Dick Massey reports. To be honest, we re not really bothered it s too small a market to worry about. But there s a lot of interest from the continent already and we re quite close to doing a deal for France, which would be a good start.
It s one of the interesting things about MIDEM. It isn t really the place where mega-million type deals are struck but there s a lot of good, solid business to be done nonetheless, if you know how to work the channels. It s a particularly useful forum if you have an album to licence, or product to shift. And business can happen in the strangest of places.
Noel Cusack of Chart Records, is looking understandably pleased with himself. I met this guy when we shared a taxi on the way in from the airport, he says. We started talking and it just went from there. He was interested in the product I have, and so I ended up doing my best business of MIDEM on the basis of a chance meeting.
The word on the grapevine is that Belfast s Outlet Records were the beneficiaries of a similar piece of random good fortune. Their rep s luggage went missing in transit, and he had to fill in a form giving details. He got talking to another guy who had been similarly afflicted, and was filling out a form beside him. Formalities completed, they sat down together in the airport and had their first meeting of the convention. And Outlet ended up shifting between 20,000 and 30,000 pieces, I m told, before the punchline puts it in perspective: That s MIDEM for you.
And in a way it is bread and butter stuff that keeps Irish musicians in work, studios in bookings, and a steady stream of revenue flowing into the country in royalties and profits.
The general feeling is that Irish industry movers and shakers are getting better at handling themselves in situations like this. At the Irish dinner paid for incidentally, by the Cork-based CD manufacturers Tocana the President of the Music Publishers Association of Ireland, Michael O Riordan of Emma Music, made a speech which emphasised how much the Irish industry has grown and developed.
I remember the first year we came down, he chuckled afterwards. We were so naive. We arrived here with a few boxes of Larry Cunningham records in the boot. That was what the Irish industry amounted to.
By way of contrast, this year the Ritz Group of companies were ensconced in what one of the more ebullient of the Irish party described as a fuck you boat which was parked, what s more, in the prime position right next to the Palais de Festival. With a sizeable contingent on board and food provided, the word from the Ritz camp was that it made more sense financially than might be apparent at first glance.
To begin with, it obviated the need to take a stand and Ritz were able to throw a couple of parties on the boat, as well as holding meetings and generally going about their business in a more pleasant ambience than that provided by the Palais bunker. It actually works out well when you ve got seven people and you take all of the savings into account, MD Paddy Prendergast observed.
Sitting down, sipping a glass of wine in the sumptuous living quarters, Brian Godfrey of Brian Godfrey Music seemed suitably impressed. It s a long way from 5-6 Lombard St., he said with an amused look.
And he was right.
It wouldn t have been a properly Irish occasion if the feel-good factor had prevailed all the way well, it didn t. In 1998, for the first time LEDU, the small business agency for Northern Ireland, had joined forces with An Bord Trachtala (as it had been styled then) and IMRO, to support a contingent of Northern Irish companies joining the Irish stand.
Almost inevitably, it seems, the first thing on the agenda in the meantime was the split and this year there was a separate stand for Northern Ireland. Ross Graham, who put the hugely successful Omagh Fund album Across The Bridge Of Hope together and who manages the enigmatic Ursula Burns, seemed bemused by the development.
I d prefer to be part of a larger Irish stand, to be honest, he observed. And when you think about it, the fact that a separate stand was supported by the Peace and Reconciliation Fund seems particularly crazy.
Back on the Irish stand, it was obvious that delegates were unhappy about the development too. Off the record, it was clear that people had been taken by surprise, and that they were upset. On the record, the prevailing response among the IMRO officials who are central to Ireland s presence in Cannes was not unlike Ross Graham s one of bemusement mixed with a sense of frustration that the overall impact of the Irish campaign had been diminished somewhat by the confusion.
As far as people from France or Spain or Greece not to mention Japan or Korea are concerned, if you re from Ireland you re from Ireland, one delegate observed. They don t make any distinction between Belfast and Dublin. It s absolutely meaningless to them. There s just no logic to having two stands and judging from the buzz around the Irish stand, it s the companies from the North that are suffering.
Suggestions that the decision had anything to do with politics were rejected by Jim Heaney, the chairman of NIMIC (the Northern Irish Music Industry Committee), who supported the idea of a separate stand.
It was entirely down to economics, he said. With LEDU s support, we were able to participate here at a cost of #150 each, which was far less than it would have been if we d gone on the Irish stand. That was the sole reason. Quite a lot of those who travelled just wouldn t have been able to afford it if we hadn t been separate.
Why that should be the case remains unclear. However, the policy may well be reviewed before next year s event.
I think it s fair to say that we might not do the same thing next year, he said.
Given the huge level of synergy, and the mutual support, which has characterised the development of music in Ireland over the past five years in particular, there s a lot of people who ll be hoping that an even more impressive single, co-ordinated presence will be on the cards for next year.
It can t be that hard to make it work. n
See also The Phantom, page 74