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POWER TICKETS
There's one more aspect of the weekend I thought I should share, for the betterment of mankind: POWER TICKETS!
We live in East London, near an Overground Station. These are run by Transport For London but are technically part of the rail network, and I recently discovered that this means you can buy a ticket from Leytonstone High Road (our station) to ANYWHERE in the country. I looked up the prices online and it turned out, to my surprise, that the price of a ticket from Leytonstone to Peterborough was EXACTLY THE SAME as buying one from Kings Cross! EXACTLY!
That meant we'd not only save the tube fare across town, but also that we wouldn't have to cue for tickets when we got to the station. This turned out to be INCREDIBLY handy because, when we arrived at Kings Cross, we saw there was an earlier train than the one we'd intended leaving in TWO MINUTES. Two minutes! If we'd had to queue for tickets we'd NEVER have got it, but as we'd already got them a quick HOP and SKIP and we were there! BRILLIANT!
We told my parents about this saving of MONEY and TIME but as car owners they didn't seem quite as THRILLED as we were. "But it only took an hour and twenty minutes to get to Peterborough from the end of our road!" I said. "And we saved a TENNER!!" but still they were unimpressed. Ten pounds though! It was AMAAAZING!
posted by MJ Hibbett, 8.2.10
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(0) comments We had a LOVELY night out in Peterborough this weekend - not something I say very often!
The occasion was VERY special tho, as it was a Surprise 40th Birthday Party for Mr Steven Carter, pretty much my longest serving friend in THE UNIVERSE. We met aged SIX at Queen's Drive Infants and were BEST PALS all through Junior School and into Seniors. I can't quite work out why, but we gently lost touch when we got into our late teens and twenties (it's something which I regret HUGELY know and can't work out how it happened, it just sort of did) but we got back in touch at a School Reunion a while ago, which was FANTASTIC.
ANYWAY, his lovely wife Sam had organised the party for him so myself and The Cakes Beneath My Candle rolled up with my parents, who THOROUGHLY enjoyed themselves going up to various COUSINS of Steve (who they'd known when THEY were little) and SCARING them by suddenly looming out of the PAST at them. Cousin Tony, apparently, nearly fell over!
Steve arrived and reacted EXACTLY how you'd hoped - he was AGO, SCREAMED, and then did some HUGGING and some CRYING. BRILLIANT! We also loaded him with PRESENTS - beforehand I'd worried slightly that both ours and my parents presents were distinctly 2000AD themed (Mum had spent a WEEK making a Judge Dredd Badge Gift Tag!!) but he didn't seem to mind. In fact he seemed RATHER pleased!
It was a LOVELY evening, but it does feel a bit strange to suddenly know so many people who are turning 40 this year. It seems like too much to be just a coincidence - LOADS of my friends, especially the ones I've known since school or Poly ALL seem to be turning 40 this year. I just don't understand how that can be?
posted by MJ Hibbett,
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(0) comments Today you find me sat like a Poor Lonely Old Pensioner in an area that's about to go completely over to digital, wondering how on EARTH I'm going to be able to watch Coronation Street in future, for LO! I write this blog on Blogger and then FTP it onto my server, and now Blogger have CHARMINGLY decided to stop letting me do this altogether.
It's not just me, by the way, it's everybody who does it this way. BUT IT FEELS PERSONAL.
For those who don't know/don't want to know but have got this far and are having a sandwich or something so are going to keep reading anyway, what happens with this type of blogging is that i WRITE these DEATHLESS EPITHETS in Blogger, which then publishes them onto MY website using FTP. They then appear at http://mjhibbett.tripod.com/bit.htm which you may be seeing instead as http://www.mjhibbett.net/bit.htm or, INDEED, through the RSS feed at http://mjhibbett.tripod.com/atom.xml. Whichever way you choose, you're coming to my webpages to look at them.
But I'm not going to be able to do that for much longer, as blogger insists I move over to THEIR subdomains, and use something like www.mjhibbett.blogger.com or somesuch. This might not sound like a problem, but it means that EVERYONE who comes to read this regularly will have to update their bookmarks (yes, TENS of people will be inconvenienced!) as will anybody who reads it via RSS. I'll ALSO have to change the way it interacts with facebook, lose the links to the archives, have to completely re-do EVERY link back here on the website, and go through the hassle of re-doing the templates so that it LOOKS the same as the actual website.
I'm probably making a BIG FUSS about it that it needn't be, I know - but still, bloody hell! I've been using bloody blogger since FOREVER and have had the blog on this exact page for nearly TWELVE BLOODY YEARS, it does feel like a bit of an imposition to have to go changing it all now.
So, has anybody got any ideas about how I could EASILY sort this out? I need a solution that'll, basically, let me carry on as normal, like hopefully just with another online blogging company, without needing to do anything FANCY with the servers (which are run by Tripod, who are their OWN huge pile of worries!). Does anyone have any ideas?
And yes, the nice young person who helps me out CAN have a biscuit from the biscuit tin if it works!
posted by MJ Hibbett, 5.2.10
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(2) comments Darlings darlings, it's all been about THE THEATRE these past couple of nights. It has been sort of FABULOUS.
On Tuesday night The Food On My Plate went out for a MEAL in London's Glittering West End before meeting up with Mr S Hewitt and some pals in a PUB. It had been reviewed online as being "Off the beaten track", which I guess is technically true if you consider 10 foot from Leicester Square as OFF the aforesaid track, but it WAS Surprisingly Nice For Where It Was.
We were gathered there prior to going to see Richard Herring doing his current show, "Hitler Moustache", round the corner. Like a lot of people I've been following Mr Herring's blog for YEARS, and have DELIGHTED in watching him gradually forging a new CAREER for himself by trying out NEW ways of doing things - his many podcasts, ways of touring, constant blogging and FEATURE-RICH DVDs. It's been inspiring to read about him going from DESPONDENCY at not being able to fight his way back into the Traditional Media to, nowadays, doing without them and forging new way to get in touch with an audience. Knowing it's POSSIBLE to be an Indie Comedian like this always makes me think it's possible for Gentleman Amateurs like ME to be able to do it.
So yes, we went to watch hoping it'd be GOOD and feeling oddly PROUD of him. I've only met him very briefly a couple of years at Edinburgh when I said "IloveyourblogitisaninspirationOKthanksbye" and then RUN AWAY so it's not like I know him, but I sort of feel i do a bit from reading the blog and thereafter WILLING him to VICTORY. Anyway, that's how I felt going in and was RELIEVED and then VERY HAPPY to find that the show was GRATE. He seemed confident, relaxed, and completely in charge of THE SHOW.
THE SHOW itself was brilliant - actually properly really funny from start to finish, cunningly constructed and EXTREMELY thought provoking. I particularly liked the way he'd lead us into a Good Point, accept the APPLAUSE of people saying "Yes yes, i concur" but THEN turning that back around and making us question what we'd just agreed with. It sounds a bit DRY saying it like that, but it was HUGELY enjoyable, exciting and, like I say, DEAD FUNNY.
And then LAST night I was out again with Mr Hewitt, this time at a SECRET MEETING to discuss plans for this year's Edinburgh Festival with TWO GENTLEMEN AS YET TO BE NAMED. We've been talking to them, and another CURRENTLY UNSAYABLE group about going up to the Fringe TOGETHER, sharing publicity and maybe doing a GROUP SHOW. There'll be LOTS more about this when we get a bit more sorted out, but this meeting was just to explain the whole thing to each other and iron out any Possible Issues.
I was a bit nervous about it beforehand - one of the people is someone i a) know b) ESTEEM highly and c) have gigged with several times, but the other is A Proper Chart Topping Popstar! My nerves were not helped by getting LOST on the way to the pub, but when they turned up all was FINE. The first person is ALWAYS a delight, but the second turned out to be a really nice bloke as well. PHEW!
Thus the evening also turned into an opportunity for LARFS and REMARKS and general GOOD TIMES, which bodes EXTREMELY well for us knocking around together-ish for 10 days in August. We had a GRATE discussion about many ISSUES and came up with some REALLY good ideas for ways to move forwards, and even had a LUCKY OMEN - we'd been talking about The Free Fringe and then Steve went downstairs... where he saw that Peter Buckley Hill, MR FREE FRINGE, was sat in the pub! SPOOKY!
It was all rather jolly and I got on the tube home with a big grin on my face and a BRANE full of IDEAS and ANTICIPATION. Life in SHOWBUSINESS, it's TERRIBLY exciting!
posted by MJ Hibbett, 4.2.10
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Today We're Gonna Party Like It's 1995
At first I thought it was The Usual Thing i.e. SOMEONE (hem hem) had blundered about and fallen over a WIRE, pulling it out of the socket, but it soon became clear that that WASN'T the problem and in fact the whole phone line was DOWN!
A Nice Young Man came round to look at it but couldn't mend it, so we've got to wait for ANOTHER Nice Young Man with a LADDER to come on Tuesday to... er... look at something else. This meant that we had NO INTERWEB AT HOME over the entire weekend! NONE! It was like going back to the heady days of BRITPOP or something, so much so that I was Quite Excited about coming into WORK today, just so that I could see if anything had HAPPENED!
So, instead of STARING VACANTLY at a SCREEN, myself and The Air In My Atmosphere went and PLAYED OUTSIDE! We went for a Brisk Walk in Richmond Park, which turned into a LENGTHY MARCH due to SOMEBODY (it would be UNFAIR [to me] to say who) misread the map, but that DID mean we got to see DEER and also PARROTS. Parrots! We also went to what we THOUGHT was going to be a super posh Vegetarian Shoe Boutique - Bourgeois Boheme on Garden Road in Richmond. It SOUNDED like it was going to be MEGA CHI-CHI but was ACTUALLY a quarter of a showroom on an industrial estate. Still, inside it was a bit OVERPOWERING - a whole ROOM full of LOADS of Vegetarian Shoes! It was like going to a Veggie Restaurant, as the fact of CHOICE made my HEAD spin a little, but i ended up getting TWO pairs of shoes. Shoes that FIT! Because I tried them ON!! I haven't had those for YEARS!
Next day there was MORE action as things in our house got FILED or IRONED or PUT AWAY or SORTED OUT like never before - it was incredible! I kept thinking "I don't remember being THIS organised in the 1990s, but what was I doing instead?" and then realising "Oh yes, THE PUB."
It was nice to VISIT the 1990s but I must say it's nice to be back in THE FUTURE. It's amazing how many things I wanted to LOOK UP over the weekend, but couldn't. Did we all have massive sets of encyclopedia during The John Major years, or did we just not worry about FACTS so much? Thinking about it, with all the time I seemed to spend in the PUB back then, it was probably the LATTER!
posted by MJ Hibbett, 1.2.10
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(0) comments I've just sent out the first NEWSLETTER of the year - of the DECADE, in fact. It's always a bit odd sending the January newsletter, as it's always nearly six WEEKS since I sent the December one, so it feels like the final BOOST to the post-Christmas Back To Work Schedule.
Yes, it does take me this long to get back in the swing of things... but it feels a bit different this year, as things seem to be a bit quieter than normal. Every year for the past three or four years I've said "THIS year I'm not going to do as much!" and gone spectacularly AWRY early on, but this time around I seem to be actually STICKING to the plan. This is of course very much helped by the fact that 50% of The Validators are in a different HEMISPHERE for most of the year, but I've also stuck to my guns for SOLO stuff and NOT gone out asking for any gigs... just yet.
I've also been saying "NO" to gigs! I HATE doing this, it REALLY upsets me, but I've so far said no to FOUR (4) gigs this year! FOUR! That's more than I've said no to in the whole of the past DECADE!! These were all due to lack of Validators OR other commitments (we now have a LENGTHY list of Dinosaur Planet practices and warm-ups which'll take us well into the summer) so it wasn't like i was exercising a STEELY WILL, but still. Four!
I do worry that if I keep doing this NOBODY will EVER ask me to do a gig again - I'm sure some people would increase their ALLURE by a layer of mystery, but I doubt that I'm one of them - but I'm keeping reminding myself that, come the summer, there will be a WHOLE LOT of gigs, both for Dinosaur Planet AND a couple of things which I Cannot Speak Of As Yet. It seems a long way away at the moment tho!
posted by MJ Hibbett, 29.1.10
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(0) comments Our preperations are HOTTING UP for this year's Edinburgh Festival... which is a bit mad really, as it's still over SEVEN MONTHS away, but when you've got two busy men about town like myself and Mr S Hewitt involved, you need to BOOK AHEAD.
We've just finished filling in our Venue Application Form which I'm going to try and hand in at lunchtime (their London offices are within The Walking Circle!) and the script for the Concept Album is JUST ABOUT at the stage where I can start ADAPTING it for performance by the two of us... and THAT is where most of the preparation is taking place.
For LO! Once that's done we're going to have to LEARN it! And work out how to DO it! And make PROPS! And do DRESS REHEARSALS! And WARM-UP SHOWS!! YIKES! I've been worrying about all this for ages, and last night sat down to try and work it out. I sent Steve a list of EVERY DAY from here until the end of July, indicating the days I'd be free for practices and gigs, and he sent it back with HIS days on it. Using that I scheduled in SEVEN practices (a number which suddenly seems like HARDLY ANYTHING - PANIC!) and SIX gigs (four of which haven't been booked yet) before we got to Edinburgh.
I am now OSCILLATING WILDLY between two different states of PANIC. Is it a) FAR TOO MANY or b) NOWHERE NEAR ENOUGH?!? I have no idea - I keep trying to PLACATE myself, thinking "Come on, it's all spread out over six months so a) it won't seem like that many and b) there's loads of time to learn the lines sin between" but still the FEAR remains. And also, it must be said, EXCITEMENT. Reading through the current script I think it might actually WORK, and possibly even be quite good FUN.
And, if nothing else, I'll get to eat a LOT of curries and have my own GIANT ROBOT HEAD to show for it when it's all over. WIN!
posted by MJ Hibbett, 28.1.10
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(0) comments Sometime between us coming back from The German Tour and Christmas I got an email from Mr Martin Petersdorf, asking if I'd like to contribute a track to a tribute album for Manfred Maurenbrecher. I hadn't heard of him so Martin sent me a couple of tracks, which I liked, and thought I'd have a go. The song we decided I should do was called "Arbeit".
Martin sent me the lyrics which, Mr Maurenbrecher being German, were in German. I didn't really feel confident about singing German (not without HUGELY OFFENDING the entire nation with my Comedy Accent) so I decided to do it in ENGLISH. The results I got through Google Translate weren't exactly great so I asked if someone could do a Human Translation for me, just so I knew what it MEANT. A friend of Martin's very kindly did this, but I soon realised it wasn't really enough - it made more sense, but due to the language differences it no longer scanned and didn't RHYME either.
THUS I began my TITANIC TASK: a full on Proper Re-Write, trying to keep the meaning and tone of the song while making it make sense AS a song in English. I felt like Anthea Bell and Derek Hockridge (legendary translators of ASTERIX) but without the huge pile of EXTRA GAGS, and set to it - and it took AGES. I thought the difficult bit was going to be working out the chords (something which I always find incredibly difficult) but in comparison that was PEASY. It took me WEEKS of thinking about it and trying out different things but finally, FINALLY, I got it done.
I'm rather pleased with the outcome, I must say, so here for your DELECTATION is a comparison between the textual translation (in italics on the left) and my eventual version.
| Maybe today´s the day | Perhaps today's the day |
| When I´m telling myself: | When to myself I'll say |
| Come to work. | Come to work |
| I´ve considered everything carefully. | After due consideration |
| I could call it my project, | Of it's proper designation |
| (but) I call it work. | I call it work |
| I´m my own boss with that | I'm entirely self-employed |
| and I won´t be phased and | And I will not to be annoyed |
| when I´m off to the park in a sec | In a minute in the park |
| with all the hustle and bustle out there and I´m standing there amidst the passers-by | By all the people and the noise |
| I won´t let get all the stuff that´s going on | I won't let anything in the world |
| Get on my nerves, by nothing – | Get on my mind or on my nerves |
| and that is work. | And that's work |
| I hold my nose into the air | I hold my nose up in the air |
| And sense the sweet scent of barbeques | Smell the sweet barbecues out there |
| And that already is work | And that's work |
| Lay myself (down) on a bench backwards | Backwards on a bench I'll lie |
| And watch along the blue sky | And watch the big blue sky go by |
| And this (too) is work. | And that's work |
| I want to see the dogs who are pulling the people | The dogs are walking people |
| bark silently (voicelessly) | Bark their orders voicelessly |
| but I look away and don´t listen a | But I don't look or listen even though |
| lthough they´re sniffing up to me. | They're here sniffing at me |
| here in the womb of warmness and light | Here in the womb of warmth and light |
| I´m trying to think of nothing – | I'm trying to keep my mind quiet |
| and that is work! | And that's work |
| I felt a little itch | Well I feel a little itch |
| In my neck but I didn´t move | In my neck, but I don't twitch |
| And that is work. | And that's work |
| A bird crapped down from a tree | A bird is dropping me a gift |
| I pressed my lips, I didn´t twitch | And all I do is purse my lips |
| And that is work. | And that's work |
| The good friend that just wanted to | A good friend who's out for a walk |
| have a quick chat at my bench in the park | See's me and comes by for a talk |
| with somebody (whom) she just recognized | All she wants is a quick chat |
| and called by my name – | So she sits down where I am sat |
| I pretend she´d not exist (she wasn´t there) | But I pretend she don't exist |
| And her friendliness fulminates (evaporates) | And soon nor does her friendship |
| And that´s work. | And that's work |
| I´m a boat of peace in the Arctic Sea of wars | In a sea of war I'm a boat of peace |
| The positive pole in the magnetic field. | The positive pole in a magnetic field |
| Laying here, I´m a monument – well, actually I´m a (fire) signal | I'm a monument, no I'm a signal fire |
| I send silence out over the world | And the message I'm sending is silence |
| Keeping silent and enwrap | Keeping silent, wrapped up, and maybe |
| That’s, maybe, what´s missing the most… | Maybe what we're all missing the most is... |
| Hey, you stupid brats, watch out with your ice cream | Oi! Bloody kids, mind your icecream |
| It´s dropping on me. | You've dropped it all over me |
| Don´t you see what I´m doing here? | I'm trying to work here! |
| In the waves of warmth and light | In the waves of warmth and light |
| I am trying to think of nothing | I'm trying to keep my mind quiet |
| And that is work. | And that's work |
| I had drifted of a little (in my dreams) | In my dreams I'd drifted off |
| And thus missed the arrival | And I'd missed the arrival of |
| of the gentlemen from T.V.. | The television |
| Now they´re standing around me hectically. | They cluster round me in a crowd |
| Am man with a mic, (who´s) never silent | They're frantic, flustered and too loud |
| Is shouting: “We´ll see | They're on a mission |
| How this dosser on the bench (here) | The presenter says "We'll see |
| Bulky on the outside, blank on the inside | If this dosser holds the key |
| Will, together with me, | Though his appearance is absurd |
| Hold the mirror up to the world with his silence” | His silence might speak to the world |
| And with that he hands me a glass | The point the camera in my face |
| I say: Mr. Schlingensief – | So that they can hear me say |
| I´d love you to be silent.” | "Can't you be quiet?" |
| I keep my nose (up) in the air | I keep my nose held in the air |
| The ear will forget what is shouted | And I'll forget the words they swear |
| And that is work. | And that's work |
| The sun is dancing yellow dots | The dots of sunshine dance around |
| Until you can´t count them anymore – | Until there's too many to count |
| The (just) reward for work. | My reward for work |
| Arms and legs are (feeling) light | Arms and legs are feeling light |
| Maybe one (more) thing reaches you | One more sound comes from outside |
| On that beautiful spring day: | On this beautiful spring day |
| Someone saying: “Move a little” – | "Udge up a bit", someone says |
| And later, on the lane of the light (prob. meaning the route the sun is taking) | And later as the sun moves on |
| Something like: “Just keep on (dozing), I doesn´t matter. | They say "It doesn't matter, carry on" |
| Keep at (your) work | "Keep at your work" |
| Sweet work. | Sweet work. |
| Sweet nothing. | Sweet nothing. |
Phew! That was a whole lot of - for want of a better word - WORK! Suddenly that bench in the park seems like a LOVELY idea!
posted by MJ Hibbett, 27.1.10
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(0) comments I'm not sure if I mentioned it or not, but I was POORLY last week - I know, I know, I am ENORMOUSLY BRAVE and usually hate to mention such things AT ALL, but I bring it up because this time around it's given me PAUSE FOR THOUGHT re: EXERCISE.
This is because EXERCISE seems to be part of the Background Details which brings on my recurring - but, as I say, LITTLE REPORTED - bouts of poorliness. It almost always happens when I am KNACKERED/lacking KIP and then go to the gym. Sometimes it happens without GYM, but that's rare and it led my household to wonder whether there's an Actual Link.
At this point people usually look astonished and say "YOU go to a GYM?!?" I can only assume they thought my sylph like ADONIS-esque PHYSIQUE was the result of me running secret marathons or something.
Anyway, I've decided to try NOT going to the gym for a bit, but doing ALTERNATE EXERCISE. The THEORY here is that it's GERMS in the gym from other people's sweaty body getting into MY sweaty body via cuts and/or dry skin that cause the cellulitis to come on (MEDICAL DETAIL). And the exercise I have chosen is my FAVOURITE type: URBAN EXPLORATION!
I was doing a bit more of this just before Christmas - I worked out a walking route from my work in Central London to Liverpool Street Station, which takes about 50 minutes. I've wanted to do this for YEARS, just in case the tube EXPLODES or something and I have to get a TRANE in, and have since STOMPED this route on several occasions. It's a GRATE walk as it wanders through inns of court, squares, alleyways, markets and all sorts of interesting places and it's EXCITING to see all these BRILLIANT bits of That London and work out how they fit together.
THUS I thought I'd have a go at doing something similar in my lunch hour, and so have devised The London Walking Circle. I've printed out a MAP and drawn a CIRCLE on it, centered on my work, showing everywhere within roughly 20 minutes walking distance. It's RAMMED with cool places, and the plan is to each day wander off and have a LOOK at bits of London - yesterday I went to Trafalgar Square (which always makes me think "COR! I live in THAT LONDON!") and on the way back nipped down some side streets off Charring Cross to see some amazing Second Hand Book Shops and a whole ROW of galleries each staffed by a single very bored individual reading a book.
Today I headed for the Telecom Tower, and every time I saw a MEWS i went down it for a NOSEY. I do love a good MEWS - I felt a bit GUILTY going down ones that were cul-de-sacs and effected the air of a Lost Millionaire, Trying To Find The Bijou Pad Of A Pal, but eventually realised that nobody was looking at me so had a good PEER into some windows. It was GRATE! The ones that WEREN'T cul-de-sacs appeared to be meeting places for Pairs Of Van Drivers, Smoking. They were EVERYWHERE.
I'm also COLOURING IN my map so I can see which streets I've looked at, and I'm hoping to have seen EVERY street within the 20 minutes by the time I've finished, like a pedestrian version of The Knowledge. There's a LOT of streets to look down so I reckon it'll take me ages, but so far I'm enjoying it IMMENSELY and I would HEARTILY recommend it to anyone else. The Walking Circle, for ALL your Foot-Based Fitness Needs!
posted by MJ Hibbett, 26.1.10
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(3) comments We had some people round our house on Friday night - I think it's fair to say it was a SOIREE.
I got loads of WHISKY for Christmas, which was ACE, but as I sat and sipped a single malt the other night I thought "Actually, part of the fun of Whisky is trying lots of different types with a variety of COVES, saying 'yes yes, peaty, with a hint of petrol' - how can i ENGINEER such a situation?" Shortly after THAT i went to the Writers' Group and thought how HANDY it would be to have a readthrough of the album script for Dinosaur Planet and INSPIRATION struck: I could feed two birds with one CRUDITE!
Thus we got in a batch of NIBBLES and BOOZE and invited round the various Department Heads of the Dinosaur Planet Multi-Media Conglomerate - Mr T "The Tiger" McClure (album production), Mr J Kell (Animation) and Mr S Hewitt (stage). Along with Mrs M Hewitt, The Landlady, and The Guests On My Guestlist we had a DELIGHTFUL DINNER PARTY in the offing!
The only GLITCH was that I got POORLY. My GP put me on antibiotics so I STEELED myself for Not Drinking At My Own DO. People on twitter told me that, actually, that was an urban myth and that you could quite happily DRINK in combination with most antibiotics (and mine, Flucloxacillin, is one that apparently it's OK with) but I thought I'd try and NOT booze it up anyway. I Know What I Am Like: one SNIFTER very easily becomes A Tour Of All The Distilleries, and anyway being STONE COLD SOBER meant I didn't drop ANY trays of Individual Fruit Pies, which is the KEY to Party Success.
So we gently gathered, had some chat, some drink, some grub, and then did The Readthrough. I'd allocated PARTS to everybody and we did it in two halfs (with The Arrival Of The Giant Robots marking the split) with a break in the middle, then at the end had a Discussion. I thought it might throw up some IDEAS and GOOD GOLLY it did - just HEARING it all spoken out loud made me realise which lines worked and which didn't, and having six other BRANES listening to it showed up all sorts of bits that needed trimming, or adding, or changing altogether. John especially got STUCK IN, but everybody pitched in with THORTS, which led to a very productive Sunday afternoon doing RE-WRITES. I think my favourite bit is getting the DIMETRODON (not technically a dinosaur, but COOL) into For The Fate Of The Earth but there were several other little touches that, I think, tie it all together a lot more tightly.
But that was in the future, as on Friday night we still had some JOLLITY to do before most of our guests retired to catch their train. In HORROR I realised, just before they got their coats on, that I hadn't got the whisky out yet, so forced a couple of GLUGS into The Tiger, as he was staying over. That was half the point of the evening!
posted by MJ Hibbett, 25.1.10
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(1) comments You find me Back At Work today, up to my... well, lower thighs, I guess, in Catching Up. It turns out that the world COULD carry on without me, but it would need a bit of tidying up.
It's nice to be back in the world of ACTION and DOING stuff - at lunchtime I went to the print shop and got some POSTERS done for Dinosaur Planet in Leicester, and it was VERY exciting. I've not done proper gig posters for AGES and these look ACE! Tom's taking some to The Criterion for me, and like last year there's some DMU students who are going to put others around town. I must say I'm really looking forward to doing this again (tickets HERE if you'd like to join in the THRILLS), tho a bit WORRIED about remembering how it goes. Everything's been about the NEW version, with Multiple Characters, so that the more stand-up-ish version has slipped my mind a bit. This weekend: PRACTICING.
Part of the MIND SLIPPAGE has been because we're getting closer and closer to making THIS year's show a reality. This morning I had an email from Mr S Hewitt about potential VENUES, timings and dates - it all suddenly looked VERY real and also EXCITING. Contrary to statements last time around I think we're probably NOT going to do the extra length run we decided upon and just do a week again, and that all looks quite do-able now. All we need to do is book the venue, find somewhere to stay, finish writing the show, learn it, practice it, and then get on the train to Edinburgh. What could be simpler eh?
posted by MJ Hibbett, 21.1.10
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(0) comments I was full of THE FEAR last Wednesday night - as i turned out, this was a symptom of The Coming Illness (a week later I'm STILL off work from an VIRAL INFECTION that I'm prone to, which usually announces itself with ANXIETY, As The Silver Surfer Doth Announce Galactus) but I thought it was just because of the gig itself.
For LO! this was my re-jigged performance at True Stories Told Live, a rather lovely night that myself and The Words In My Story went to last year. The idea is that they get five people to stand up in a room above a room and tell some stories, the only rule being that the story is TRUE. Well, actually, since the last time we went they've initiated a NEW rule which says "and cannot be longer than 12 minutes long." WISDOM.
I'd actually been meant to be playing at the first one - they always have a MUSICIAN (hem hem) doing a story and SONG in the middle - but i got BUMPED for Chris Difford From Squeeze. Which, you know, fair enough - if he wanted to play Totally Acoustic I'd probably bump ME too! Since then they've had Thomas Walsh (from Pugwash and the GRATE Duckworth Lewis Method) and Luke Haines, so I was a little bit worried that after that parade of People That You've Probably Heard Of they would be a little disappointed to see ME lumbering in front of them. Also it's organised by, amongst others, Mr D Hepworth From The Word AND there's a fair smattering of Media Types, so that I felt a bit like a Conscientious Teenager who's been allowed downstairs to have a glass of wine with The Grown-Ups. i.e. SCARED!
My fear was slightly abated when I saw that afternoon on Twitter that Ms J Rogers was ALSO going to be telling a story and that Mr S Evers was going to come along - I was going to tell the FIRST story from My Exciting Life In Rock, which starts at a gig in Stoke Newington that was organised by Jude, and the Editor who features so heavily in THAT story was actually Stuart, so I felt a bit better knowing there'd be some people there who could VERIFY the story's VERACITY.
Just before setting off I was listening to 6Music, where Rhodri Marsden was on the Lauren Laverne show talking about Time Wasting Games. "Ooh, like Tower Defense!" I thought... and ended up making myself LATE by playing that. I HATE being late so was a bit FLUSTERED, and MORE nervous, when i RAN in but everyone was very nice, so I popped downstairs for a Calming Pint... as Rhodri Marsden walked into the bar! I THINK I've met him once before, and was about to go over and say "HA! You made me LATE!" but realised in time that this MIGHT make me sound like a LOOONIE. So didn't.
Soon it was SHOWTIME and the first act on was Lance Gerrard-Wright a.k.a. "Mr Right" a.k.a. "Blimey Didn't He Used To Be Married To Ulrika Jonsson?" I felt a bit BAD for thinking that, as I guess did pretty much everybody in the room, as he told a long (12 minutes was widely ignored!) and suddenly SCARY story about being NEARLY KILLED IN BOSNIA! Then a young woman called Delia told a story about becoming, very briefly, a member of Flight Staff at Virgin Airways - I didn't realise they have to do so much training, including HOW TO COMB YOUR HAIR!
And then it was ME... and PHEW, it all seemed to go OK. I told that first story in FULL, even with a couple of extra bits along the way. I'd been a bit worried about the ending, because it just sort of STOPPED on a DOWN NOTE before, in the show, I'd do the proper introduction to the HIGH CONCEPT, so this time said about turning it all into a show, having so much fun that we went on to do Dinosaur Planet, and then THE BIG REVEAL of dedicating the song to Stuart, as he was "The Editor". Then I did I Did A Gig In New York and that was THAT.
I really REALLY enjoyed it - it's ages since I've done the storytelling BIT like that and, with a lovely, sitting down and listening, audience it was a JOY to do. I have to admit I even allowed myself the slightly big headed thought "I'm quite good at this" at the end - i know, it'll be dressing rooms full of puppies and M&Ms next - and went downstairs for a Pint Of The Well-Earned. I couldn't help but notice that I was CLEARLY the only person there actually in a band, as I got downstairs WAY before anybody else. In fact I ended up stood at the bottom of the stairs, like a Vicar after a service, saying "Oh, thanks very much!" as people came down and said nice things. I didn't mean to, honest!
Things got MOVING in a MOVING sense in the second half, as Jude told a story about her brother, Welsh Male Voice Choirs, and Robert Plant, which was ACE. Afterwards she said she never realised that, from the stage, you can't actually see people's faces - this was surprising to me, and made me think, once again, that people who write about music should be sent on a Being In A Band Boot Camp to get exactly that sort of insight. I am volunteering to LECTURE!
Finally Danny Brainin told a long, involving, beautiful story about holidays in Austria in a place tainted by Nazism and different reactions of members of his family to it - I don't really want to summarise that one as a) i don't think I could and b) if i did it would be GLIB, which the story wasn't. It wasn't DOUR either, it was v.funny too, but suddenly at the end everyone had TEARS in their eyes. It was LOVELY.
And that was that - all done, MUCH to my relief. All that was left to do was sit around and have a bit of a CHAT, which featured me saying "NO! You must go to INDIETRACKS!" quite a lot until Mr J Walsh LOOMED into view (as detailed by himself) and got HUGGED, before we headed off home into the night.
It was a BRILLIANT evening - little did I know it was going to be my last night of HEALTH for the next WEEK!
posted by MJ Hibbett, 20.1.10
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(2) comments Sorry for the lack of updates lately, I have been POORLY. Every so often I get a bout of Cellulitis as a result of having mild Psoriasis - usually when I'm KNACKERED. That's what happened on Thursday, so I followed the usualy Medical Advice and retired to my BED to watch DVDs (NB that last bit isn't actually part of the prescription, but still). This usually sorts it out within 24 hours but today, four days later, I'm STILL poorly! I AM on the mend at last tho, so things out to be back to normal soon, but it's been a bit virulent this time around.
It HAS meant that I've had a lot of time to lie around IN FEVER thinking up IDEAS tho, and my new Ideas Book is filling up at SPEED, so watch out - they'll be heading your way as soon as I'm BACK!
posted by MJ Hibbett, 18.1.10
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Slowly And Surely Drawing Our Plans
That's right, ladies of the nation rejoice, for the first time in about ten years Steve is going to be taking to the stage, and also SINGING. The plan is to recreate the text of the CONCEPT ALBUM on stage, acting out the whole thing using little but our TALENT... and a range of hats and WIGS. It will be GRATE!
The plan is to have a readthrough of the script, with Mr T "The Tiger" McClure and Mr J Kell in attendance - representing the other proposed VERSIONS of the show. It was SO interesting going to that writers' group with John the other week that I thought it might be useful to do it again with my version(s) of the show - if nothing else it should point out any GLARING ERRORS before I get people to actually record it.
It should also mean we can HONE it a bit before me and Steve have to sit down and a) divvy up the lines between us b) LEARN it. I'm still going to be doing the sort of STAND-UP version of the show when we're in Leicester (tickets available here, by the way) but after that we'll be moving into it being more of a SHOW.
Obviously we'll need to try it out a bit before we go, so we're going to attempt to do a MINI-TOUR of it in the summer. If anyone would like to book us do please let me know!
We discussed MANY ideas of how and where to do this, as well as agreeing WHERE we'd like to do it, how long for,and many many other Technical Neccesities, as well as a BIG IDEA that I've been discussing with some OTHER people which I shouldn't really discuss as yet. But if it works out, it will be GRATE!
High on the GIDDY THRILL of THEATRICAL HISTORY in the making we finished our beers and headed out EAST to go and see a Comedy Show near Old Street... only to find that the whole thing had been called off, because the audience comprised entirely of me and Steve. I made the point that comedians are thus BLOODY LIGHTWEIGHTS and that I personally have played to FAR less people than that, but it was pointed out, rather more politely than it might have been, actually, that stand-up comedy is meant to be a DIALOGUE, and that you can't do that very easily if there's nobody there.
Once again the difference between ROCK and Comedy were demonstrated and, as I walked home, I was glad to be staying over here on the ROCK side of the divide. It's nice to pop over to comedy and THE THEATRE every now and again, but it's oh so much nicer to come home!
posted by MJ Hibbett, 12.1.10
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(0) comments On Friday night The Bands On My Bill and I set out for our first gig of the year, at The Buffalo Bar.
The evening began DELIGHTFULLY as we had our TEA at Hummus Brothers. This is a really nice place, tho I wouldn't recommend it if you don't like Hummus as you get a LOT of Hummus. If you DO like Hummus tho, this is the place for you.
And people make a big fuss about reviewing restaurants! It's PEASY! Anyway, suitably full of the aforementioned HUMMUS we headed off to the afore-aforementioned Buffalo Bar to see The Bobby McGees. I think if you asked the pair of us to come up with a mutually agreed FAVOURITE BAND then The Bobby McGees would be IT, as they are SO VERY GRATE. They didn't let us down on Friday either, they were FAB.
It was the full line-up, which is something I've not seen very often, featuring additional bass, percussion, flute-type things and SAXOPHONE! SAXOPHONE! Just SEEING such a thing onstage makes me excitable, and hearing it PLAYED makes EVERYTHING seem sophisticated - except maybe Jimmy's singing, but still.
Blimey tho, they WORKED the gig HARD. The Buffalo Bar's a funny old place - it's probably the NOISIEST venue I've ever been in, to see bands or to place myself. Pretty much every time I've been there there's been a RIGHT old racket going on. I think it's something to do with the shape and low ceiling of the room, because even if someone's whispering very very quietly in the far corner it gets HUGELY AMPLIFIED so that, by the time it reaches the stage, it sounds like a CROWD. This of course forces/encourages other people to talk and so nearly always there LOTS of people around the edges talking and it sounds like EVERYBODY is.
I played SEVERAL times there before I learned not to take it personally, but this time there seemed to be a small added layer of Those People Who Go To Gigs To Talk Loudly. You know the sort of people I mean - they haven't come to see a band that they like or meet some pals, they've come out to Be At A Gig. "Wankers", to give them their correct name. There weren't MANY of them at all - INDEED, the room was soon full of LOADS of lovely people (SPOOKY THING: every time I mentioned someone in conversation they APPEARED five minutes later. I tried saying "McCartney McCartney McCartney" but this didn't work) - but the few who WERE there were making up for it. I guess it was because the gig had been Guardian Gig Of The Week that encouraged them to come, but I wish they hadn't. Especially the Posh Dickhead In A Cravat who stood behind me, BELLOWING WITLESSLY. I ended up having to give him HARD STARE.
Afterwards I congratulated Jimmy on his HARD ROCKING and he said that he'd FELT the noise - "I came as close as I ever have to asking people to be quiet" he said. I was SHOCKED. "You must never do that!" i exclaimed. "I know!" he said, "But I came close!"
Me and Jimmy are currently in Early Discussions about writing a BOOK together, about HOW TO BE IN A BAND. IMMENSE WISDOM such as "If you're on stage you must NEVER tell people the audience to be quiet" and the REASONS behind such PEARLS will be a KEY part of its appeal.
After them were The Tender Trap. I really like The Tender Trap now - I've never DISLIKED them particularly but, because they were around about 12 years ago when I was first gigging in That London i'd lumped them in with all the other bands I saw/didn't really like around then, without ever really seeing them. It was only when we supported them at JAMM last year that I realised they are actually DEAD GOOD. It was a shame we couldn't stay long enough to see much of their set, but now i know i LIKE them I will have PLENTY of further opportunities, I'm sure!
We couldn't stay because we had a DATE WITH TRAIN DESTINY. One of the JOYS but also the AGONIES of living in That London is the train network - when it works it is a DELIGHT but often it is also a NIGHTMARE. This time, however, was a WONDER as we timed it JUST right to get the tube from Highbury & Islington and get home, via The Overground, just 25 minutes later. That's about HALF the time it would usually take, and we rewarded ourselves with WHISKY to celebrate.
Hummus, gigs, beer, effective travel and WHISKY - a pretty good way to start the ROCKING YEAR, I think!
posted by MJ Hibbett, 11.1.10
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(0) comments Having just read back the previous blog entry, I should say that the only reason the two big lessons were a bit NEGATIVE is because all the FANTASIC and POSITIVE stuff that happened this year was all due to things I'm already hugely thankful for. I only got to have SO much fun because of the huge amount of lovely people that I know and hang around with, whether it's The Validators or the TONS of friends who come to gigs or the brilliant indie-types on THE BLOGOSPHERE or the GRATE promoters who gave us gigs or people like John The Publisher, Mr S Hewitt and The Totally Acoustic Regulars who made all SORTS of crazy SCHEMES happen, and ESPECIALLY because of The Rock Of My ROCK who not only LISTENED to all my GRATE IDEAS but also SUGGESTED a lot of them.
Being grateful for being surrounded by BRILLIANT people is a lesson I learned a long time ago, I hope I never forget it!
posted by MJ Hibbett, 7.1.10
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(0) comments For the past week or so I've been trying to get round to doing a REVIEW OF THE YEAR. I'm going to start doing the usual STAT ATAK in the next few days (people have ASKED about it! EXCITEMENT!) but I thought I might kick off this time with a bit of Qualitative Analysis first, to give A Broader Picture.
This plan, however, ran into a major stumbling block: I Really Can't Be Bothered. I did TRY, spending AGES going through January looking for TRENDS, and then yesterday just trying to summarise February and March, but BLIMEY: a LOT of things happened last year and just READING them was wearing me out.
So instead of that, here is, i think, the TWO major things I have LURNED this year. WISDOM AHOY!
1. DON'T DO SO MUCH ALL AT ONCE
This is pretty straightforward really - last year I did 69 gigs, including a couple of tours, gigs abroad, and several festivals. I did My Exciting Life In ROCK all over the place and then wrote Dinosaur Planet and did THAT in Edinburgh for a week. We finished recording the MERCURY PRIZE SHORTLISTED (hem hem) Regardez, Ecoutez Et Repetez then released it and publicised it ourselves (NB see point 2 for more details). I made THREE song videos and TWO trailers. I also wrote a whole OTHER album (DOUBLE album!) of songs as part of the continuing goodtimes of Trying To Write Songs For Albums!
I've probably missed something out in all of that - and that's all alongside maintaining a HOME LIFE and also a full-time JOB! It was all too much really, especially when being FAR TOO BUSY prevented me from enjoying chunks of it, and especially especially when I was spending week after week hardly ever being at home. THUS the lesson (hopefully) learned here is: DON'T DO SO MUCH ALL AT ONCE. The planet will not forget that MJ Hibbett & The Validators EXIST if we don't do any gigs for six month... i hope.
2. DON'T PAY PEOPLE WHO DON'T CARE TO DO THINGS YOU CARE ABOUT
Ooh, COUNTER-INTUITIVE ALERT! But stay with me, this'll make sense by the end. One of the big things I decided to do with Regardez, Ecoutez Et Repetez was to try and PUBLICISE it more. We've always done quite well off our own back, but I'd never managed to get much coverage in the mainstream print media, so decided to take on a PR Agency to help us out. Several people in The Know advised me AGAINST this, but I wanted to have a go, so spent a good while trying to find someone who'd do it for us and, when I'd chosen them, spent a LARGE sum of money paying for it.
I really REALLY should have listened to the people who told me not to. I basically paid two and a half grand for somebody to massively piss me off by completely cocking up the whole thing! The Words In My Press Release said to me, before I hired them, "Watch out, they'll often do the meetings beforehand with one of their best people and then fob you off with the office junior" and this seems to be exactly what happened. Here's a list of INIQUITY:
And so it went on and on and on... the album got sent out to various Heavy Metal and Corporate Indie blogs and websites, so what few reviews they DID get for us were slagging it off. The reports they sent looked good - until i asked them NOT to include the stuff that I'D done, after which they became appalling. When I complained I got no response... until I spoke to the Director, after which they bought in A Top PR Guy and did a month's extra work. This achieved precisely NOTHING.We were promised a couple of Lifestyle Features in proper newspapers and loads of reviews in the mainstream press. We GOT a cheesy article in The Weekly News and ONE review in the mainstream press. Amazingly, I'd arranged for this review MYSELF, only to have the PR agency almost BLOW IT, until I stepped in!
We were promised support for our album tour, including local newspaper reviews, interviews, and articles leading up to gigs. We got ONE feature in a Sheffield paper, on the day of the actual gig.
We were promised thinking "outside the box" to develop "innovative strategies". We GOT one suggestion, the day before we set off on tour: that I stand in the centre of the cities concerned and tell people jokes for an hour, to make them "be happy". When this was suggested it me I came as close as I ever have to throwing a telephone at a wall!!
We were promised regular contact and reaction to all events. We'd often go a fortnight without hearing anything and, when we got the 6Music Album Of The Day (due to my mailouts to radio...) they did nothing about it until about a week afterwards, when they sent out a spam mail.
It really was BLOODY AWFUL and, as you can probably tell, still makes me angry several months later. I'm probably extra annoyed because last week, SIX MONTHS after it all ended, I FINALLY got the press cuttings pack from them (after five emails!) which reminded me just how shit it'd been.
And the thing is - it's not like it was a particularly difficult album to publicise. When I did my side of things it seemed to go OK - we got plenty or radio play, and the places that _I_ sent it to (you know - websites that review INDIE STUFF) all seemed to like it, and we DID get that Album Of The Day thing. The worst of it, for me, is knowing that when I've done all the press for PREVIOUS albums I've actually got a lot MORE from it!
So there you go - that's the very VERY expensive lesson I learned, DON'T PAY PEOPLE WHO DON'T CARE TO DO THINGS YOU CARE ABOUT. Either do it yourself or, if you can find lovely people who are ON YOUR SIDE (like Proper, who do our distribution, or especially WipeOut, our publishers) go with them!
posted by MJ Hibbett,
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(2) comments This morning over breakfast (and then for ages afterwards) I sat down and watched THE END OF TIME (part two). My Dad taped it for me so I could watch it while I was down in Cornwall and I'd thought it'd been a) exciting b) a bit confusing and generally c) all right, but i KNEW that EVERY Dr Who Special has been a bit like that the first time round and (with the exception of The Next Doctor, which was a bit dull) is ALWAYS much better when watched SOBER and SOLO.
Crikey tho, i didn't expect it to be THAT much better, it was AMAZING! I was TERRIFIED watching it, EXCITED, and then BLUBBING for the last 15 minutes, it was BLOODY GRATE. I've spoken to many people about it since it was on, many of whom have complained that it was SAGGY with loads of needless bits in it, which I initially agreed with, but now I see that that's what made it so AMAZING. It WASN'T a Single Drama that needed to have a beginning, middle, and end - ESPECIALLY this episode where part of the point of it was that it was AN end but not THE end. It's a continuing series of adventures - anything not explained this time is GOLD DUST for the future when it can be picked up and USED and makes you want to know more. And the fact that it IS like that means that they can also quite happily have BITS in it, like the whole Donna sub-plot, that are just there for the fun of seeing the characters again (ALTHO if The Mysterious Woman IS Donna then maybe there was more to it than that).
I was sitting at the table BLOWING MY NOSE and WIPING A TEAR (NB not simultaneously) when i realised that, actually, Doctor Who is the nearest telly gets to COMICS, and specifically MARVEL COMICS. It's funny! It's sentimental! It features heroes who are HUMAN (whether they're ACTUALLY human or not) who DON'T boldly stride uncomplainingly to their doom but say "IT's NOT FAIR"... but then do it anyway. When Mr D Tennant said "I don't want to go" he was, basically, SPIDER-MAN - a proper real life hero who ISN'T PERFECT but does the right thing anyway.
And, like Spider-Man (or spider-man done RIGHT anyway) the story will carry on, and be exciting, and funny, and lots of it will contradict other things, and it won't actually MATTER because there'll be something else along straight afterwards that will explain it, or remove it, or ignore it and do something else BRILLIANT instead.
There's loads of rumours on-line that Mr S Moffat is trying to get Mr N Gaiman to write an episode - sod that, get STAN LEE in instead!
posted by MJ Hibbett, 6.1.10
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(1) comments Happy New Year everybody! Hope you've had a DELIGHTFUL Festive Break. Myself and The Dates In My Diary had a lovely start to the New Year, heading down to Cornwall to see my parents where we did some walking, some chatting, some drinking, and a LOT of eating. It was GRATE!
Whilst down there, as is my WONT, I quickly checked my emails on my phone, and realised that on my first day back at work I was due to head out to ACTON to attend a Writers' Group with Mr J Kell. I'd completely forgotten about it, and so was SURPRISED to realise that this was going to be my very first gig of the decade! John's writing SCREENPLAYS and is doing a version of Dinosaur Planet to propose as an ANIMATION, so he'd invited me along to one of his regular meetings to SING the songs during a readthrough of an exerpt.
HOWEVER, there'd been a slight change of plan - usually they have five or six readthroughs, but this time there might not be any as they were having a Guest Speaker in, the producer/director/author Chris Jones. To be entirely honest I felt a bit grumpy about it at first - here I was, on my first day back at work, TRAMPING for MILES across London in the COLD to go and sit in a ROOM where I might end up NOT even playing! BAH! But then I thought "Hang on, you're going to get a free seminar about scriptwriting from someone who's DONE it and continues to do so. This will be at LEAST interesting and maybe ADVANTAGEOUS. Come on Hibbett, let's GO!"
After quite a lot of travel and COLDNESS I rolled up (a bit later) to the West London Trades Union Club, where I found about 25 people gathered in a COLD upstairs room, listening to the talk. It was VERY INTERESTING INDEED. It was basically about making a success of being a screenwriter but it was fascinating how much of it applied to The Crazy World Of ROCK too. It was a bit like a Motivational Speech really - there wasn't much about it where I thought "WOW! THAT'S a new idea!" but lots where I nodded HEARTILY along and thought "Yes! Yes, that is what i think too!"
There was a really good bit where he recommended a NEW way of doing films - rather than struggling and trying to get into big corporate movie making, you could actually make films YOU wanted to make, distribute them yourself to a few hundred people, and be HAPPY doing that. You create the ART you want to and interact directly with people who LOVE it, rather than making probable crap for people who are unlikely to be particularly bothered. "THAT SOUNDS FAMILIAR", i thought, and it was GRATE to hear him speaking about it with Proper Respect, not seeing it as a cop-out or easy option, but as a valid way of doing things. "This is the way things are moving" he said, and he's not wrong.
The Motivational Aspect was basically him saying you've just got to DO it - and KEEP doing it, and then "luck" and ability will eventually flow from that which, again, EXPERIENCE has shown me to be correct. While he was saying all this I started to think "Hang on! Perhaps THIS is the 'lucky chance' of which he speaks! Maybe if i offer CHEEKILY to buy him a PINT he will feel indebted enough to listen to our READTHROUGH - then he'll LOVE it and make the film!"
I was a bit alarmed when, almost directly after this, he said "The way to get people to read your stuff is BUY THEM PRESENTS, then they'll feel the owe you something!" GOOD ADVICE, but a bit spooky - i got a bit nervous, SHOULD i really do this? "You've GOT to get over feeling scared about talking to people, and just DO it!" he said. SO, when he finished and said "Any Questions?" the second - and LAST - of the questions asked was "Would you like a drink?" asked by ME.
He LARFED but then i got him a cup of TEA - MOVIE FORTUNE AWAITED! I was now DETERMINED that John and I would get our readthrough - i used to get a bit like this in Olden Times at ROCK events, where Famous People would appear and my MIND would DISSOLVE into PANIC about whether or not I should say hello or not, in case they thought i was the kind of git who JUST says hello to people in order to try and get something out of them. I'm generally a LITTLE bit better about that now, and hopefully don't act like SUCH a wazzock, but this time he'd explicitly SAID you had to try and interact with people to GET stuff.
THUS I got John to come and stand near the organiser so I could listen out for any mention of the second half, and when it came up made myself visible and a bit STARY to try and REINFORCE the idea that i'd come MANY MILES to do this and that we should therefore get to do our BIT. As I say, I felt a bit of a TIT doing this, but it WORKED! There WOULD be time for ONE readthrough, and it would be US!
Actually it worked a bit too well, as Mr Jones did a big BIT comparing John to the traditional hero of HERO'S JOURNEY, ricking his script being rubbish but DETERMINED to make it. I didn't mean to LAND John in it QUITE so much, but was pleased we were getting the chance to DO this.
Once the second half of the seminar was over John LEAPT up to distribute scripts, I tuned up, and John introduced us. Various people from the group were reading parts and I was singing the relevant songs, and we WHISKED through a chunk featuring My Theory Of A Dinosaur Planet, We Are The Giant Robots, Dinosaurs Talk Like Pirates and We Are The Dinosaurs. I REALLY enjoyed it - it was EXTREMELY interesting hearing the words - some of mine, some of John's, and some a mix - being said out loud and realising what worked and what didn't, and also in hearing the different readers' different interpretations of it. Some were brilliant - some less so!! And obviously I ESPECIALLY enjoyed the songs, NOTHING will ever replace SHOWING OFF as my Favourite Thing To Do!
Afterwards we had some discussion and feedback, the BIG point being that, if this was going to be an animation, it needed more action and less standing around talking. I'd never even considered this before, but it made a lot of sense - the one man show version and the radio/concept album version currently being recorded both have LOTS of talking and Explaining What Is Happening because it has to, as there's no pictures, but this'll have to go in PRECISELY the opposite direction. AHA!
The Chairman then asked Mr Jones for his thoughts - be he said he hadn't really listened, as he'd had to answer an email. GAH! Bang goes THAT daydream of BEST MOVIE SOUNDTRACK OSCAR! Still, we did hang around for a bit afterwards and i DID do that thing of Lurking Nearby Someone Until You Can Force A CD On Them - well, he DID say you had to have Business Cards always to hand to give people, and it DOES have my email address on it!
The NICEST thing tho was a chap who came over and said that him and his old flatmate had used to listen to my records when they were getting DRUNK, as said flatmate was a fan. AAAH! That was LOVELY - it really made my night that, suddenly bumping into someone who a) KNEW b) LIKED my stuff. I was all pleased!
Less pleasing was the COLD outside, but we soon hopped onto a bus and then i FLEW home from Shepherds Bush station. I got home FLUSHED with pleasure, it had been an unexpectedly FASCINATING evening and a GRATE start to a - hopefully - DECADE of ROCK!
posted by MJ Hibbett, 5.1.10
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(0) comments I spent the past couple of days FEARFULLY looking at weather reports, for LO! i was due to head up to DERBY for the day yesterday and didn't want SNOW to stop me from so doing. In the morning there was nothing in London, so I got to St Pancras fine and dandy, but there'd been reports of LOTS of it in The Midlands and even more to come later in the day. I got on the train in FEAR - how long would I be sat in this chair, i wondered?
Just over an hour and a half, as it turned out - to my IMMENSE surprise everything worked perfectly and I was soon WHISKED away by Tom in The Tigermobile and off to The Snug, where we were booked in for a MASSIVE day's work.
As mentioned previously, we're not going to be doing many gigs at ALL this year, as Tim and Emma are MOVING... to MAURITIUS!! It's only for 11 months and they'll be coming back, so it means a year of LESS Validators rather than an all round CESSATION, but it DOES have rather serious implications for the recording of DINOSAUR PLANET i.e. they're leaving in just over a week and although we can wait until Easter to record Emma's part we HAD to get ALL the basic rhythm tracks done before they left otherwise we'd have NO chance of getting the album finished before we go to Edinburgh.
Obviously it wouldn't be the end of the world if we DIDN'T, but life would be SO much more pleasant if we DID, and thus I arrived at The Snug to find Rich setting up microphones and Tim happily HITTING things. Aaah, The Setting Up Of The Drums! Is there a more delightful sound? (yes)
Once that was all done we settled down to work out a PLAN. Tom is taking over a Producer/PROJECT MANAGER for this one, so he had a CLIPBOARD and LIST with him. Looking through that we decided that our best bet was to a) try and wait until Frankie arrived before doing the ones we'd PRACTICED with him b) also save (theme from) Dinosaur Planet until he arrived, as it had lots of BASS in it but c) ATAK For The Fate Of The Earth WITHOUT him, on the basis that TWO people who weren't sure what they're doing are more likely to achieve success than THREE.
Anyone who's seen the show will KNOW that For The Fate Of The Earth is an EPIC with lots of stops and MOOD CHANGES in it, so we tried a wholly new TACK for learning it: I played it and everyone else LISTENED to me doing so. This may seem obvious, but usually we LEAP IN to the song as we go along, stopping when we get to difficult bits. This time, not only did I sing it all the way through but Tim and Tom took NOTES! It was BRILLIANT - i think I'm going to try and introduce this at GIGS! They had sheets detailing the whole thing and scribbled furiously throughout. At the end we had a SEMINAR session when we discussed Important Aspects! HA!
It was thus surprisingly easy to record - Tim went into the live room and we did an Actually Pretty Good run through from start to finish before DIVING in for a proper go. We ended up doing several drop-ins i.e. when something went wrong or could be done better we rewound, and leapt in at appropriate moments to try again. After half an hour or so we had a, frankly, ASTOUNDINGLY GOOD version.
We did a couple of minor tweaks but soon realised that, when we come to mix it, we can improve ANY PART of it with the addition of EXPLOSIONS! This, i feel, will be our major contribution to The History Of Rock Recording. In the future people will say "Hmm, it sounds a bit flat, can we add some EXPLOSIONS?" to which Engineers will reply "Isn't that a bit obvious? How about we add DINOSAURS and SCREAMING CROWDS instead?" HELLO HISTORY!
Full of GLEE we moved quickly to record "Strangely Attractive", the LOVE BALLAD which has recently been added and which we briefly played through at the last practice. It sounds LOVELY. We found ourselves then with about 15 minutes to spare before Frankie was due in - should we have a bit of a break, we wondered? NO, we decided, ONWARDS! And so Tim went back into the live room and we recorded TWO more songs!
All right, the songs were basically the same as each other - Here Come The Dinosaurs and We Are The Dinosaurs, but we DID do them slightly differently from each other, and they both sounded SMASHING. To celebrate Tom and Rich went downstairs to make a nice big pot of coffee, which we enjoyed alongside the arriving Frankie with some CHRISTMAS CAKE that Tim had brought in specially.
Coffee and Cake! We are NOTHING if not SOPHISTICATED!
And so we moved on to the second part of the session. With Frankie plugged in we moved on to the OTHER addition to the show, Please Don't Eat Us. This was plugged in to replace It Isn't Nice To Eat Your Friends - everybody seems to Theoretically Like it, but it ALWAYS died when I played it live, so i decided a change was in order. The Validators were initially slightly resistant to this but, once we started playing Please Don't Eat Us its predecessor was never mentioned again, for LO! Please Don't Eat Us ROCKS! It's The Breakout Hit!
Full of the joys of ROCKING we next moved on to The Battle Of Peterborough, or "The Spanish One" as it is known. That's how it's always felt to me anyway, and maybe my SKEWED VISION of the song is what caused us so many problems. "Your guitar playing's putting me off", said Tim, so we tried a take without guitar. "No", said Frankie, "It's your singing". Hmm... was this a break for a CLIFF-LESS SHADOWS that I was facing, i wondered? We ended up doing it with DABS of me playing and singing in the verses (the singing DOES go clattering off at a funny rhythm and i DO tend to get distracted from the guitar playing) and then joining in more at the chorus, and all was WELL.
Now it was finally time for Tom to plug in, for LO! It was HORNPIPE O'CLOCK! Dinosaurs Talk Like Pirates was originally meant to be a very brief, slightly jokey, semi-song just to re-assure people about the fact that, well, that Dinosaurs Talk Like Pirates, but in Edinburgh it grew to feature a DANCE NUMBER and in the rehearsal room it grew further to be a MASSIVE CEILIDH SPECTACULAR! We had several run throughs of this one - we got it pretty much right on the first go, but it's such a lot of FUN to play nobody seemed to mind it going on a bit. We even did the Traditional Speeding Up At The End THING which they always do to annoy/confuse The Fiddle Player! It WORKED!
Looking at the clock we were amazed to find we had a good two HOURS left in which to record the final batch of songs, tho as these were the Various Versions of (theme from) Dinosaur Planet I wasn't HUGELY convinced we were on easy street just yet. We HAD had a go at this previously but it had been, frankly, AWFUL - it had gone off in entirely the wrong direction and sounded CLATTERING and WRONG. With some trepidation we gathered to try again...
This time we started off with the BASS - I'd spoken to Frankie about using a version of the bassline I'd done for the TRAILER which he took on board and modified to be MORE GOOD. Tim took this and RAN with it, and soon we were ROCKING BUT GOOD. Hoorah! It all sounded BRILLIANT! This was the TITLE MUSIC to the whole thing and it was GRATE - I was SO relieved, and also so GRATEFUL to have a) such a Tight Rocking Unit who b) didn't mind me saying things like "that sounded awful, let's do it entirely differently!" Mind you, I HAD only recently taken it WELL when THEY'D told me "your singing and guitar playing is putting us off. Stop it immediately" so I guess it DOES go both ways.
The only difficulty we faced at this point was the intro, which I wanted to do to fit the VOICEOVER which will go over the top. It took us AGES to get it right, but then we FLEW through... until the end of the second chorus where, it turns out, "What could make a Tyrannosaur Scared?" has ONE more syllable than "The Earth Is Under Attack." See, if I'd had a Classical Musical Training that's probably the sort of thing they teach you on DAY ONE, but it meant we had to go right back to the start again, and this time we ZOOMED through, right up until The Reggae Middle Eight... where we STOPPED DEAD.
We'd decided to take the sensible option and do that later, so instead skipped ahead and did the END of the song, before RIPPING through the final two tracks necessary - the INTRO version of (theme from) Dinosaur Planet which starts the whole thing off and the GRAND FINALE version which finishes things. They're not EXACTLY the same as each other and so I am therefore counting them as two WHOLLY OTHER SONGS for the purpose of counting at the end!
At last it was time for the final piece of the jigsaw, the long dreaded Reggae Middle Eight... which turned out to be LOVELY. Tim found a COWBELL and Frankie got into the GROOVE - so much so, in fact, that he kept forgetting to do the Correct Ending, as he was so INTO it. I ended up abandoning most of the lyrics and just SHOUTING "He comes the D bit - D! D! D!" through the window to make sure he got it OK.
When it was completed we nervously gathered to listen to it all put together. Rich LABELLED everything clearly and then GINGERLY slid The Reggae Middle Eight into position, so that the final beat of the main theme is replaced by the first one of the new section... would it work, we wondered? How many times would we have to re-do it until it fitted? Would it EVER?
IT SOUNDED FANTASTIC! The whole roomed CHEERED AS ONE! It was SEEMLESS - you know that bit about how George Martin slowed down one take of Strawberry Fields and found it fitted exactly with another in a different key? It was like THAT, only BETTER! HOORAH!
We were almost DONE - our final bit of recording was for Tim, Tom and Frankie to gather in the live room to record a THIGH SLAPS overdub for Please Don't Eat Us. Many MANY remarks were made about how this might be Tim's final ACT OF ROCK for the next year, and i DELIGHTED in taking several photographs of this occuring.
The three of them LIMPED back into the control room for a quick check and then that was that: DONE! Ahead of schedule! TEN SONGS (see above for qualifications)!
We said our farewells to Rich and then to Frankie, who had to get home, with Tim taking the main HUGGING ACTION, what with him leaving the hemisphere and everything, then the Cleator Moor Validators popped into the Brunswick for a swift pint, there to sit around being AMAZED by all we'd done. People make a big fuss about The Beatles recording their debut album in a single day but a) they only recorded 10 of the songs that day, the same number WE did and b) they took longer to do it and c) had been playing most of those songs on a daily basis for YEARS, whereas we'd only played some of them ONCE before and some NEVER! Therefore i think i can safely say that we are BETTER THAN THE BEATLES!
With this generally agreed there was further BIG HUGS and we went out seperate ways, Tim and Tom to their respective households and me for an entirely snow-free journey home. I still can't quite believe we did SO much!
posted by MJ Hibbett, 31.12.09
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