Blog: First THORTS Of Christmas

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Living in That London is, at times, pretty darn SWEET. If there's a film out, or a band's touring, or there's an exhibition or anything like that you can be almost entirely SURE that it's going to be coming here at some point, and even WITHOUT seasonal variance there's ALWAYS something to do. This is GRATE.

Even better than this, however, is our delightfully MASSIVE public transport system. People who've lived here FOREVER don't seem to realise quite how lucky they are, but GOLLY anybody who grew up in (FOR ARGUMENT'S SAKE) Peterborough, say, would have LOVED to have even ONE bus going somewhere they wanted to go at ANY time of day, let alone 300 MILLION of them every 3 seconds all day and all through the night. If there'd been an underground TUNNEL network of TRANES too... well, I'm sure I'd've spent much of my youth zooming backwards and forwards between Dogsthorpe and Orton Longueville just for the SHEER HECK of it.

There is, after all, no other reason to ever go to Orton Longueville.

And one of the MOST GRATE things about HAVING this here underground tube train network is that if you work in London's Fashionable Bloomsbury Area Of London and live MILES away, you get to have a TRANE journey every single day during which you can think of IDEAS. I don't know about anyone else, but all through my life there have been specific places or journeys which have engendered IDEAS - the walk from my old flat to Simon's flat, for instance, in the mid-1990s, was a PARTICULARLY fertile stretch of THORT SPACE - and at the moment the prime spot appears to be the Westbound Platform at Leytonstone Underground Station. BY JIMINY but there's been some JUICY THORTS and PLANS that have seen their birth throes there, LO, on the edge of Essex.

As an example, let me take you back in time to this very morning, when I found myself suddenly reaching for my pen and IDEAS BOOK as a FRESH and EXCITING THORT made itself known to me: I've got a bunch of Christmas Songs, none of which have been part of the ongoing Bandcamp-erisation of our BACK CATALOGUE, so how about releasing a CHRISTMAS EP, via that proud website, this yuletide?

It could be all SORTS of wonderful! It'd have I Got You What You Want For Christmas, Give Us A Kiss (for Christmas), The Advent Calendar Of FACT AND my version of "Little Donkey" which i did YEARS ago for an online fanzine thing. It would be GRATE!

"Hang on though", said my INNER MIND, "ChristmasALICIOUS as that is, surely that's a bunch of OLD songs? How much are you expecting people to PAY for all that?"

"As much as they LIKE!" replied my OUTER MIND. "Hark!" (i was feeling pretty Christmassy by this point) "Bandcamp do a thing where people can set their OWN price for a download, we could do that!"

"And glory shall shine around!" countered the aforesaid INNER MIND. "How exciting! Let's have a bit of a sing song now, shall we?"

But as my various internal psychiatric workings prepared to burst into song, a NEW THORT appeared (NB I'm not sure if any of these come from the id, ego or super-ego but i've just looked it up on Wikipedia and remain CONFUSED, so let's just move on) and it was THUS: How About Writing A New Song too?

There was much rejoicing, also HALLOO-ING as a long vaguely considered idea for a song about BOXING DAY transmogrified into one about The 29th Of December. "HA!" yelped the united BRANE, "That would be AMAZING!"

So that's the PLAN, as it stands a couple of hours later in the day - release a bandcamp EP of our Christmas songs with a bit of new material added and let people pay what they like for it! What could be more CHRISTMASSY than that eh? I might even have a go at "Oh Little Town Of Bethlehem" or something too! MERRY CHRISTMAS everybody!

posted 17/9/2010 by MJ Hibbett

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