Irish band can make their Merc’

IT started in 1992 with Primal Scream’s Screamadelica getting the nod.

Nobody knew back then that the Mercury Prize would be seen as the definitive awards scheme for albums. Bobby Gillespie and Co beat off a motley crew in that inaugural year, with U2, Simply Red, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Saint Etienne and Erasure among the rest on the shortlist.

Since then, luminaries like Pulp,

PJ Harvey, Badly Drawn Boy, Dizzee Rascal, Arctic Monkeys and Elbow have taken the gong.

There has never been an Irish winner — though Van Morrison, Gemma Hayes, The Thrills, Snow Patrol, Fionn Regan, Fontaines DC and Lankum have all been in the final shake-up.

If there is any justice, A Lazarus Soul will be in the mix this year. Their upcoming album No Flowers Grow in Cement Gardens is special.

Every summer, BBC shows hours and hours of the Glastonbury Festival. Glastonbury IS one of the great experiences — when you watch it on telly from your sofa.

Being there is a colossal pain in the arse. I know, I’ve been twice.

Relics

Endless queuing, the sweet fragrance of human dung in the air, tedious 1960s relics everywhere and new age eejits who want to be them.

There are even people who try and sell you ‘healing’ crystals, for Chrissake.

Flags are everywhere. One year, there was one with Marty Morrissey’s face.

Just added to the feeling that there is no escape from Marty. Sometimes we’re afraid to open the fridge in case he’s sitting there waving at us when the light comes on.

But Glastonbury is heaven compared to the hell of Coachella.

Music in fields is rubbish, music in a desert is even more rubbish.

Why have deserts become so fashionable? Everything from the World Cup to Formula One takes place in sandblown saunas.

Every drug dealer on the planet wants to live in cities built in places where you’d barely last a week without air con.

Coachella takes place in a desert valley with temperatures of 32 degrees in April. No, I don’t know why either.

There was one moment that stood out from last weekend’s Coachella.

Damon Albarn of Blur got snotty with the crowd because of their lame attempt to sing along to Boys And Girls.

This is where we’d give the desert posers a pass.

Fair play to them for their indifference to that 30-year-old dirge, and for realising that Britpop was a dark time in music that we should never speak of again.

But, bad and all as music in fields is, it’s still better than podcasting in fields. What fresh hell is this?