Today is St Patrick’s Day, cause of much careless misuse of green colouring, rocketing sales of Guinness, and celebrated not only in Ireland and around the world by Irish people nostalgic for their homeland, but – and probably in part because of said Guinness – also by plenty of people who aren’t Irish at all.

As we did in celebration of that other proud and beautiful Celtic nation, Wales Scotland, back in January, I’d like you to join me in thanking this relatively tiny part of the world for giving us so much incredibly good stuff.

I’m thinking, as this is a musician’s blog (no, really, it is), of David’s respected peers; including two very fine guitarists in Rory Gallagher and Gary Moore.

Then there are the literary giants that we all know of, such as Oscar Wilde and James Joyce, and those we have very much grown up with: the wonderful imaginations of C.S. Lewis, Abraham “Bram” Stoker and Jonathan Swift gave the world ‘The Chronicles of Narnia’, ‘Dracula’ and ‘Gulliver’s Travels’, for example.

In fact, Ireland perhaps can claim the highest proportion of great writers, poets and playwrights of any nation.

It can also boast plenty of extremely funny men (Dave Allen, Frank Carson, Spike Milligan, Dara O’Briain, Dylan Moran) and one of the most gifted footballers ever to play the beautiful game, and one who truly did make it look beautiful: George Best.

We have Irishmen to thank for the modern tractor (Henry George “Harry” Ferguson), the caterpillar track (John Walker), the hypodermic needle and syringe (Francis Rynd) and the aircraft ejector seat (James Martin).

The man who found a treatment for leprosy (Vincent Barry) was Irish, as were the men whose names science has added to a law of gas (Robert Boyle), a type of algebra (George Boole) and a scale measuring wind strength (Francis Beaufort).

And, of course, there’s also the fearless humanitarian legend that is Bob Geldof, seen here at last month’s One Young World summit in typically charismatic form.

(I’ve not forgotten U2, before you ask, but I haven’t yet found it in my heart to forgive them for a current world tour which is comparable in terms of the carbon emissions it has so far produced to a return flight to Mars. Ah.)

So, there you have it. Your favourite Irish people, places and things, please.

Your opinions on Bob Geldof’s inspirational speech or U2’s arguably overly-excessive tour are also most welcome.

George Bernard Shaw is one of my favourite inspirations to hail from the Emerald Isle (and I think even that much-loved aphorist, Ron Geesin, would be proud of some of G.B.S.’ clever and witty observations):

We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.

Our necessities are few, but our wants are endless.

The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is.

The best reformers the world has ever seen are those who commence on themselves.

Sir Bob, I think it’s fair to say, would probably wholeheartedly concur.

I expect you’ve now heard the news that Pink Floyd were victorious in their legal case against troubled record label, EMI, which reached its conclusion yesterday.

In a lawsuit filed last April, lawyers acting for the band argued that EMI should not be entitled to sell Pink Floyd’s extensive back catalogue – a back catalogue second only to that of the Beatles’ in terms of value – as individual tracks online so as to “preserve the artistic integrity of the albums”.

EMI argued that the contentious clause in Pink Floyd’s latest contract, signed in 1999, five years before the boom in legal digital downloads (which states that they have no right to sell any of Pink Floyd’s music as single tracks other than with the band’s express permission), only applied to physical copies and not digital ones.

EMI were ordered to pay an estimated £60,000 in costs, with fines still to be decided, and banned from selling Pink Floyd’s music online.

A challenge on the amount of royalties that band members receive from online sales has also gone in the way of Pink Floyd. It is the first royalties dispute between artist and record company ever to be held in private, as per EMI’s wishes.

So, a triumph for art over corporatism… or all a bit unnecessarily precious? Would you do the same for your music if you felt it were open to exploitation and if, through a lifetime of commercial accomplishment (which had created successful careers and all its trappings for many others, don’t forget), you felt you had very much earned the right to protect your work from being dissected and packaged in more profitable bite-size pieces to suit interests other than your own?

Are you disappointed that you may soon be unable to individually purchase Pink Floyd tracks online, or would you always choose an album in its entirety because of its characteristic “seamless” nature? Should it matter if the creators of the music would ideally prefer you to listen to their work as one continuous piece, or should the consumer always have the right to choose?

It’s cheaper to download an album than each of its tracks individually, after all.

Besides, isn’t love for the mellifluous the reason why such effort went into making Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd what it is (and why familiarity with the albums from which the songs were taken meant that, for many, Echoes didn’t really work)? That wasn’t merely a carve-up job with the songs idly presented in any old order.

Go on, as NME’s Luke Lewis set me off with his blog post yesterday, which songs – from any classic album, not just Pink Floyd’s – could you live without if you chose to purchase digitally rather than in the formats that many of us still cherish.

I’ll go first: Blood on the Tracks’ frenetic ‘Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts’ by Bob Dylan. There, I said it. (Forgive me, Bob.) More often than not, it gives me an instant headache. As does Don Henley’s ‘Man With a Mission’ (from Building the Perfect Beast). But I can skip these songs when my head is feeling particularly delicate and they remain part of two of my favourite albums regardless. Granted, when purchased, there was no option to pick and choose each song, nor to preview them freely at leisure. However, I still feel that today’s wider choice is mostly irrelevant to me when it comes to downloading music, and surely this should be all the more true when it comes to concept albums.

In fact, of Pink Floyd’s more obvious concept albums, you’d be hard pressed to find a track that does not segue at either its beginning or end.

Can you imagine ‘Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ not turning into ‘With a Little Help from My Friends’? Or ‘Overture’ from The Who’s Tommy not concluding with the joyous announcement that ‘It’s a Boy’?

I’d enjoy sharing your examples of the perfect song segue, if you care to.

So, lots of questions to end the week with and perhaps to aggravate you well into the weekend, but I have (almost) managed to refrain from asking whether we should condone public flogging as the only punishment befitting the heinous crime of savagely butchering Dark Side of the Moon.

Now, there’s a thought… Dare I suggest that maybe EMI got off lightly?

Ah, this year’s releases, as the typically uncomplicated title already said. Now, I realise that we’re barely three months into the year, but I think it’s started with abundant promise. Have you heard anything that particularly caught your ear?

Two albums released (in the UK) this week – yesterday, in fact – which I’m enjoying are Man Up by The Blue Van and Beat the Devil’s Tattoo by Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. I do think I should have saved more than £1-a-time by downloading and forgoing all that awful plastic, but that’s another matter entirely.

Marcus Bonfanti’s What Good Am I To You?, released last month, is also one to look out for. He’s touring at the moment, with tickets extremely reasonably-priced.

The above- and below-mentioned artist names, you’ve probably already realised and maybe even clicked out of curiosity, double as links to respective MySpace pages, should you care to give their tunes a few moments of your time.

Free downloads provide a good way of adding new material to your music collection. Here’s one from MGMT, and here’s another – it’s from Peter Gabriel’s Scratch My Back. Produced by Bob Ezrin, it’s a collection of orchestral covers of songs such as David Bowie’s ‘Heroes’ and Elbow’s ‘Mirrorball’, to perhaps give two of the more enticing examples.

If you know of any other goodies, and they must be legal downloads, don’t forget, please don’t keep them to yourself.

Which as-yet unreleased albums are you most looking forward to? New releases are expected from Arcade Fire, The National, Radiohead, R.E.M. and U2 this year. The one I most eagerly anticipate, though, is a fresh offering from Fleet Foxes.

Black Rock by Joe Bonamassa comes out later this month, too…

And speaking (or blogging, rather) of guitarists, there’s also a ‘new’ Jimi Hendrix album out; called Valleys of Neptune, it’s made up of previously unreleased songs, and you could win a copy here, courtesy of the nice people at Fender. Good luck.

Your thoughts on any of these, plus recommendations for others, are, as usual, appreciated; as were the birthday messages for David, thank you all for those.

You never know, 2010 could turn out to be as good a year for music as… 2006?

The blog calendar rather than my increasingly blurred memory informs me that many a blogger celebrates a birthday this month, so I’d like to express a joyful “Happy Birthday!” to Stephen for today, to Susan and Thomas for tomorrow and to everyone else who will be observing the anniversary of their birth thereafter; including David, it goes without saying, whose birthday is on Saturday.

As I know that you’d like to do the same, because some of you have already started, I’ll let you get on with it.

My thanks, on David’s behalf, for the well-wishes.

If you’d like to continue discussing the illustrious John Peel and the great many Peel Sessions of note, you are very welcome to do so (but here, not here, please).