It all started in a small upstairs room in Dublin’s Twisted Pepper in July 2009 with a feisty discussion on radio.

It has featured a galaxy of guests from Nile Rodgers, Joe Duffy, Paul Morley, Miriam O’Callaghan and Lenny Abrahamson to Bill O’Herlihy, Rosanna Davison, Brian Kerr, Paul Muldoon, Guillem Balagae and dozens (nay, hundreds) more.

It has hosted talks in a hardware shop in Dingle, an artist’s kitchen in Donegal, a thatched cottage in Derry, a former bomb shelter in London and in festival tents and rooms all over Ireland from the Electric Picnic to the Galway Arts Festival to the Make A Move hip-hop festival in Limerick.

It has featured discussions on books, food, campaigning, Madonna, photography, football, media, politics, TV, climate change, new businesses, feminism (in conjunction with our friends at The Anti Room), craft beers, the Swedish House Mafia, running, masculinity, David Bowie, technology, new businesses and umpteen more things.

What is it? It is Banter. And it’s about to turn 50.

For our 50th Banter outing, Anyone buying or selling a ticket?, we’ve decided to take a look at the hot button issue of the summer: the Irish festival and outdoor live music scene. There has never been so many festivals and big outdoor shows on the agenda. Even the aul’ lads who know everything about everything are saying they can’t recall a time of such plenty when it comes to live music – and they remember Lisdoonvarna, Feile and the first Witnness. You could literally spend every weekend between now and September going to shows in the open air or in tents. You would have a whale of a time, but you’d also be broke.

Bon Jovi at Slane, summer 2013

Before the season gets underway in earnest, we’ve gathered some of the people behind our favourite events to get their read on how things are going out there and punters’ reaction to their events. Are there enough punters to go around? Who will be the winners and losers this summer? And is there anything missing from the schedule (aside from a big heavy metal festival for the agri-metal fans from Sligo)?

The panel: Declan Forde (Forbidden Fruit & POD Concerts), Avril Stanley (Body & Soul) & Leagues O’Toole (Aiken Promotions & Harmonic). The guest list blagger: Jim Carroll.

The details: Banter 50 will take place at our spiritual home in the main room of the Twisted Pepper (Middle Abbey St., Dublin 1) on Monday May 20. Doors open 7.30pm and the Bantering gets underway at 8pm sharp. As always, there will be a discussion followed by an audience Q&A. Tickets are available here (price does not include Ticketmaster fees, rebates or advances).

Banter on the road: details to come of Banter events over the summer at theKilkenny Arts Festival, Kinsale Arts Festival, CultureTECH and the Electric Picnic.

They’re back! We’ve had two visits from The Anti Room to Banter for live recordings of their monthly podcasts. All involved have had a swell time on both occasions so it’s time for round three of The Banti Room.

On this occasion, it’s The Anti Room on books, literature and feminism with Sheila Heti (the Canadian writer whose new book How Should A Person Be? has just been published), Sinead Desmond (TV3) and Roe McDermott (Fanny.ie and RTE Arena) joining Anti Room hosts Sinead Gleeson and Anna Carey.

Sheila Heti

Sheila will be reading selections from How Should Be A Person Be? and also signing copies of the book afterwards. You’ll find Anti Room host Sinead Gleeson’s recent interview with Sheila for The Irish Times here.

The details: The Anti Room on books takes place on Sunday April 28 at The Workman’s Club, Wellington Quay, Dublin 2 (thanks to Karl and all at the Workman’s for facilitating this event). Doors open at 7.30pm and the conversation gets underway at 8pm sharp. Admission is free, but you need to be signed up to the invite list which you will find here.

About The Anti Room: The Anti Room was founded in 2008 by four Dublin-based journalists and was the home of many Irish ladies writing about everything from fashion to feminism and pop culture to politics. Last year, they’ve started podcasting and you can listen to or download some of the recent episodes here.

It’s Banter Salon time again. This time, after hugely entertaining and successful jaunts in Dingle last December and Derry last month, we’re joining our friends at Other Voices for a trip across the Irish Sea to London on Saturday and Sunday April 6 and 7.We’ve a heavyweight list of writers, cultural commentators, artists and thinkers lined up for the weekend in east London including:

Karl Ove Knausgaard for Banter Salon in London

Caoimhin O Raghallaigh - the Irish fiddle player currently to be found in The Gloaming, whose debut album is due for release in the coming months.

Ben Watt – the man from Buzzin’ Fly, Strange Feeling, Everything But the Girl and dozens of other projects on doing things differently in the music industry and the renewed importance of artist development.

Photography – Eva Vermandel, Rich Gilligan and Linda Brownlee on the art of photography and the spark behind innovative and distinctive portraits.

Morley on Bowie – Paul Morley on David Bowie, longevity, pop careers, images, personas and the art of the cultural chameleon.

The campaigner – Maeve O’Rourke from the Justice for the Magdalenescampaign on civil liberties and human rights

Clandestino – Journalist and author Peter Culshaw on his new book about the fascinating life and music of Manu Chao

Music Tech – David Adams (SoundCloud),  Stephen O’Reilly (Mobile Roadie, Topspin) and Mark Nagurski (CultureTECH) on the current state of the music tech field. This panel has been put together by our friends at the CultureTECH festival in Derry.

There will also be performances at the Banter Salon from Shannon Saunders, Luke Sital-Singh and Olivia Chaney

Shannon Saunders

Shannon is an 18-year-old songwriter from Swindon. She has been posting videos on Youtube since she was 14 years old and has accumulated over 3.3 million views and 22,000 subscribers on her channel. Her debut single “Heart Of Blue” reached number 48 on the iTunes chart with no promotion. The video, which cost £9 to make, received over 175,00 views on Youtube in its first month.

Luke Sital-Singh

Luke has just returned from a very successful trip to the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas and he has been touring of late with Villagers and The Staves. His new EP “Old Flint” has just gone on release and he will be embarking on a headline tour of the UK in April.

Olivia Chaney

Olivia is a modern English folk singer who has just released a new EP, is performing as Joe Boyd’s special guest at the Legacy of Nick Drake event at Wilton’s Music Hall on April 2, is guesting with Phronesis at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on April 5 and is about to embark on a spring tour with Alasdair Roberts.The Banter Salon will take place upstairs at the Zeppelin Shelter (40 Leman Street, London, Aldgate, E1 8EU), around the corner from the Wilton’s Music Hall where Stornoway, Dexys, Laura Mvula, John Grant, Imelda May, Matthew E White and others will be performing for Other Voices over the weekend. Doors for the Banter Salon will open each day at 2.30pm and the sessions will run from 3pm to 6pm. Admission is free, but capacity is limited so spaces will be allocated on a first-come-first-serve basis.

The impetus for this Banter comes from our recent adventures with The Anti Room podcast. We invited Sinead Gleeson and Anna Carey and their guests to host a live recording of their podcast about feminist issues at Banter last October and it was such a success that we invited them back last month to do another one.

But it also got us thinking about why we never hear men’s issues discussed so openly and freshly in the same way. We also wondered why when it comes to men’s issues that the same tired, boring voices and agendas always hold sway. It’s A Man’s World will look at what it means to be a man in Ireland today, why men don’t talk about issues which affect them and the huge benefits of actually discussing this kind of stuff.

The lads: Sean Moncrieff (Newstalk), John Buckley (SpunOut), John Evoy (founder Irish Men’s Sheds Association) and Damien Mulley (Mulley Communications and a zillion other things).

The details: It’s A Man’s World will take place at the Twisted Pepper (Middle Abbey Street), Dublin on Tuesday February 26. Doors open at 7.30pm and the Bantering gets underway at 8pm sharp. Admission is free, but you need to be signed up to the invite list which you will find here.

Big thanks to Banter kitchen cabinet dude Finian Murphy for the initial idea.

It’s time to Cork. We’ve been meaning to do some Bantering in the southern capital for quite some time so it’s awesome to finally get it together.

The topic for our debut in the city is Doing It Differently, a chance to talk to people who are actively out there doing stuff and doing it with a twist. The overall Irish narrative right now may be about economic doom and gloom, but there are splashes of colour in the midst of all that. And it’s those splashes of colour and people who are not just sitting back fuming amd moaning that we’re keen to highlight.

The bright sparks: James Whelton (CoderDojo), Niamh O’Mahony (journalist, former board member of FORAS and Cork City FC and project manager of an EC-funded Improving Football Governance project in Ireland), Mary Nally (Drop Everything) and Mark Carry (Fractured Air).

Cat Power illustration by Craig Carry from Fractured Air

The details: Doing It Differently will take place at The Pavilion (Carey’s Lane), Cork on Saturday February 16. Doors open at 1.30pm and the Bantering gets underway at 2pm sharp. Admission is free, but you need to be signed up to the invite list which you will find here.

Huge thanks to Joe Kelly at the Pavilion for his help in setting this up.