We're not in France
It’s been hectic, but Kesh Carnival is over for another year and we’ve done our best to cover as many events as possible at Kesh Carnival News. Astonishingly, with the exception of one wet morning, the weather was pretty much in our favour throughout. It’s a testament to Fermanagh determination that we conceive and plan and carry through events like this, in the face of reliably unreliable summers. Pity the French with their fêtes gastronomiques and fêtes des vins and fêtes whatever, all lightly carried off under cloudless blue with a nonchalance we might envy; they haven’t the reward of knowing what it’s like to snatch triumph out from beneath leaden skies.
I pay tribute to Sarah Ross, presenter of Kesh Carnival News, for her irrepressible enthusiasm throughout ten days of reporting. Now, last year she generously agreed to a compilation of ‘bloopers’ being tagged on to her last report from Kesh Carnival 2008. Unfortunately, this year she made so few errors that there was scarcely any material to work with. So instead we (hastily) created a music video, her rendition of ‘My Way’, as a fitting punctuation to her experiences reporting from the Carnival over the past two years. But then we reached the barbed-wire fence marked ‘Copyright Minefield – Proceed At Your Own Risk’.
The nice people at ProSound were very helpful in quickly clarifying a few points. Briefly, they could issue a licence to release their backing track with vocals onto the interwebs but with the caveat that we would need to get permission from the original songwriter first.
Unfortunately I’m not on first name terms with Mr Anka and I’m guessing that his representatives at BMI are probably, for the most part, Yale graduates. So, I’m afraid we had to admit defeat and make do with burning a copy to DVD for showing to family and friends only. Maybe if you ask Sarah nicely she’ll let you see the video.
You might disagree with the whole copyright thing, but I guess songwriters are entitled to protect their work. In any case, rules are rules and, as the Pub Landlord would say, where would we be without rules? That’s right…France.