Blog Archive: January 2025

Ineptitude Unveiled
As regular readers of this blog will know, I do love a bit of ROCK ADMIN. However, as anyone who has dealt with the RESULTS of my ROCK ADMIN will know, I am really not very good at ALL at muultiple aspects of it.

This realisation came upon me for the 17,000th time yesterday when I had a meeting with a Festival Organiser about maybe doing my DOCTOR DOOM SHOW at their event. It was a LOVELY meeting and I think it might actually work out as HAPPENING, but this was not helped in any way by MY efforts which were HAPLESS to say the least. For instance, right at the end we briefly touched on how to publicise it and I said "Oh, well I do have a mailing list of about 800 people, would that help?" That is OF COURSE the sort of thing you are meant to mention AT THE START, or indeed in the original proposal, and certainly NOT 20 minutes after a lengthy description of which nation's athletes* stayed in your flat during the Olympics (*San Marino - all of them).

Even worse is my ability to NEGOTIATE about FEES and suchlike. I have managed to build myself up to the point of nervously saying that I'm happy to do gigs if I don't lose any money - an improvement of my previous stance of saying YES PLEASE and then wondering, several months after the event, whether anyone was supposed to pay me - but the idea of someone e.g. FEEDING me or even PAYING ACTUAL MONEY never really occurs. This often leads - as in this case - to promoters gently talking up the fee FOR me, which is a bit embarrassing to say the least.

In my defence, I am QUITE GOOD at remembering to check that trains are actually running these days (after several years spent on rail replacement bus services), and unlike e.g. Bruce Springsteen I am doing all this alongside a) a day job b) trying to think up rhymes for "unified catalogue of transmedia character coherence"2, but still, you'd think I'd have got better at if over several ACTUAL DECADES.

Still, it's all a learning process, and MUSING upon my manifold failures this morning did remind my brain that - HEY - if I'm going to do an entire SHOW based on a BOOK, it might be an idea to let the people who published the book KNOW about it! OH YEAH! Thanks BRANE!

posted 17/1/2025 by MJ Hibbett
(click here for permanent link)
(0) comments


You've Got To Have A Plan
Last Friday evening I submitted my first ACADEMIC TEXT of the year - a draft chapter for a book about superheroes, updating the research in my Doctor Doom book (that has now been out in the world for a whole year! amazing!) by doing a NEW survey of texts from 2023/2024 to see if and how he's changed in that time. No SPOILERS obviously, but what I uncovered was, I think, Quite Interesting. I mean, it might not be interesting to anyone else, but it was to me!

Getting that done - or at least done to the first draft stage - was a HUGE relief as I've been spending a LOT of time on it for the past couple of months, and there's other things that I can now be getting one with. The first of these, as discussed yesterday, was UNLEASHING AI Guy as a single. This has involved a FLURRY of activity, not least doing the video, but I don't have to worry about booking PROMOTIONAL GIGS as I've already got a gig booked in Middlewich in February, as well as an online show for the lovely people at the Internet Archive, which will be available for everyone shortly afterwards.

That means that the next BIG thing is to start working on the Doctor Doom SHOW - as mentioned previously I've already written some SONGS for this, but I need to get on with sorting out how it all WORKS. The first step is going to be devising ten minutes of stuff for my forthcoming appearance at An Evening Of Unnecessary Detail, when I shall be DEBUTING a couple of songs, and then working it up into a proper thing. I'm currently taking the first steps towards booking slots at some FESTIVALS, which feels a bit scary. In the past I've at least had a DRAFT of a show written before booking Actual Gigs, so it will be nice to have SOMETHING worked out!

Then there's also the SECRET PROJECT which continues apace - I've just finished recording the final (for the moment) batch DEMOES for my SECRET COLLABORATOR and then hopefully within the next month or two we'll get together to do the SECRET NEXT THING, at which point, all being well, I'll be able to tell you what it SECRETLY IS!

It all feels like quite a lot of different STUFF going on, and that's not even considering various WORK STUFF that's occurring. THUS I find it is very very VERY helpful and reassuring to have a PLAN written down for what I'm doing when. For example, the PLAN has been telling me for a couple of months that I've got to get that there DOOM chapter finished off BEFORE I allow myself the fun of doing the Doom SHOW, lest my BRANE get all confused. As stated earlier, that's done now so it's on to the next thing. I must admit I am feeling slightly a) AFEARED but b) EXCITED about it all. There's a lot to do, but if I just stick to THE PLAN all should be well!

posted 16/1/2025 by MJ Hibbett
(click here for permanent link)
(0) comments


Early Release for AI Guy
Today I am DELIGHTED to announce that you do not need to wait until the end of the month to hear my new single AI Guy, because it is out NOW!

Well, it's not out on streaming services yet as I only decided to do this last night, but it IS very much available on bandcamp and also on YouTube, THUS:



Good eh? What happened was that I was watching the NEWS last night with everyone going on and on about AI and thought "Curses, I wish my single was coming out THIS week rather than in a fortnight, because then I could WEIGH IN on this GRATE DEBATE with the song!" A still small voice within me said "So why not release it now then eh?" and the more I thought about it the more sense it made. All right, unleashing it NOW means it won't be on Spotify etc straight away, but who cares about that? It's not like that's going to significantly hinder my REVENUE STREAM is it? And this way the song can be out and about in the THICK of the THORT, rather than rolling up a fortnight later like a television comedian telling a joke that everyone's already told each other on a panel show OR SOMESUCH.

So I consulted with my Internal Communications team, who said "DO IT", so do it I have! As ever with this sort of thing I would be extremely grateful for any SHARES or TWEETS (if anyone still does that) or POSTS or especially Mentioning To Colleagues On Internal Channels, which I think is where it will gain most of its POWER. Most of all though I hope it becomes a useful tool for lumping onto internet discussions like a two-minute-long "HA!" for those in THE KNOW!

posted 14/1/2025 by MJ Hibbett
(click here for permanent link)
(0) comments


New Year! New Series! Old Comics!
Let joy be unconfined amongst all those who like listening to podcasts in which me and John Dredge talk about old comics, for LO! a new series of The Funny Comics Fan Club is upon us!

To be honest, we're only calling it a new series because that gave us an excuse to a) have an extra week off and b) send out press releases to various Media Organisations saying "we've got a new series, please mention it in your outlets", but the general idea remains pretty much the same i.e. we look at a specific issue of an old British kids' humour comic and talk about it, utilising a mixture of INSIGHT, vague memory, and occasional OUTRAGE at the other person's opinions. Obviously I am biased but I think it is QUITE GOOD - you can judge for yourself though by having a listen to tge latest episode HERE:



This first episode of the new series (AKA the eleventh episode overall) is about "Cheeky Weekly", which turned out to be a surprising and REVOLUTIONARY comic entirely unlike anything else we've looked at so far. As you will hear if you listen in, Cheeky Weekly is literally about what the character Cheeky does over a week, with his wanderings around his local town linking directly into each of the other strips, so it's sort of like one continuous story. I don't think there's ever been another British comic that does this - I do remember 2000AD doing something similar in Trifecta a few years ago, and I understand the recent Beano Christmas Special had lots of linked stories, but Cheeky did it every single week for months and months.

On top of that it was absolutely RAMMED with jokes, with them crammed into pretty much every panel and feature. As you'll know if you've listened to some of our previous episodes, that was not the NORM for a lot of British kids' comics, some (though not all) of which often felt like they were just going through the motions. Cheeky Weekly is a whole THUNDERSTORM of invention and extra LARFS!

I could go on but then you wouldn't need to listen to the podcast, so I will simply say TUNE IN and also READ ALONG on our various SOCIALS (e.g. BlueSky, Facebook, instagram or twitter) where you can also see some of the strips we're on about. It's dead good, honest!

posted 13/1/2025 by MJ Hibbett
(click here for permanent link)
(0) comments


New single on the way
Put on your Unleashment Hats and hang up the Engagement Bunting, for LO! I am here to tell you that there is a new single by ME on the way! SOON!

The single is called "AI Guy" and it is one of the songs what emerged in the recent song flood I have been experiencing. It was prompted by attending a CONFERENCE and sitting next to someone who talked about AI with the zeal of an evangelist but without any apparent knowledge of what it was, how it worked, and why people kept wanting to punch him when he told them their jobs were "mundane activity".

I played it live last month in Rainham, Kent and it went down pretty well, then afterwards Helen from Sassyhiya asked if/when it was going to be released. Up until that point I hadn't got any further than thinking about PLAYING it, to be honest, and thought "Oh yeah, releasing it would be a good idea."

Since then that THORT has grown and grown in my BRANE as I keep on seeing stuff about AI online and thinking "HA! I should post the video to my song AI Guy here because it would be ENTIRELY APPOSITE so to do". The world seems to be being taken over by MONEYED TWERPS who have never actually read a science fiction novel in their life but are entirely happy with the idea that there will be NO PROBLEM AT ALL with robots taking control of everything. This is then commented on by PILLOCKS who also have no idea how anything works and think that a CALCULATOR being able to spell "BOOBS" upside down is the same as HAL.

Over Christmas these ideas all coalesced and I realised that the only thing stopping me from UNLEASHING the song upon a needy world was the fact that I hadn't recorded it yet, so I DID that, checked the MIX with The Validators' in-house MIXOLOGIST Mr F A Machine, and then was about to punt it off to Emubands for streaming services when I remembered that online singles need cover images. There followed a day of piddling about with all sorts of daft ideas before I thought "Oh sod it" and went for the very straightforward image BELOW.



With that done and a tenner handed over for en-Spotify-cation all that remains for me to do is make a video, log it with MCPS, PPL and so forth, write a press release and sort out a mailing list, all ready for release on Monday 27 January. That's still quite a bit on the to-do list, but at least I've already got some tour dates sorted out!

More news as and/or/if it happens!

posted 9/1/2025 by MJ Hibbett
(click here for permanent link)
(0) comments


The First Otway Of The Year
On Sunday evening I headed to London's fashionable Islington area of Islington, there to meet with my friend and colleague Mr S Hewitt for attendance at a ROCK SHOW!

For LO! we were off to see Mr John Otway playing at The Lexington. Otway is almost definitely the person I have PAID to see the most often out of anybody EVER - there are probably PALS I've seen more often, but that's usually been when I've been playing WITH them, whereas I've been paying CA$H MONEY to see John Otway for about 35 years now. I think the first time I ever saw him do a gig was at The Princess Charlotte around 1989 or 1990 and he was SO AMAZING cthat I have been to see him at least once a year on average ever since.

On that first evening I was surprised to see him hanging around in the bar of the Charlotte and asked him why he wasn't Chilling Out in The Dressing Room. He told me that he COULD do that, but then he'd be sat all on his own, whereas if he stood in the bar then people would come up to him and tell him he was brilliant and buy him drinks. This was one of those moments when you can FEEL your life changing around you, and I have followed this guidance ever since.

Thus when we arrived at The Lexington I was DELIGHTED to see him still following his own advice and sitting downstairs in the bar, this time with his BAND. The Otway Big Band has been together for about THIRTY of the 35 years I have been going to see him, and amazingly they have NEVER had a line-up change, which makes The Validators' mere quarter century without a personnel change seem PALTRY by comparison!

The gig itself was a thing of JOY. There's something really rather WONDERFUL about seeing a band who have been together for so long, as there's a RICHNESS and DEEP LOVE there that comes rolling out around the room. In Otway's case though there's also a) the AUDIENCE and b) the SET that has stayed constant too, so it feels like you're taking part in a RITUAL what SURPASSES normal one-off gigs and becomes part of a long LINE of them. During the gig Murray pointed out that this was Otway's 5,250th gig (again making my mere 1,014 so far seem LIGHTWEIGHT), and it's amazing to think of SO MANY performances stretching back through time, often with not only the same SONGS but an awful lot of the same JOKES as well!

A great part of the fun of an Otway gig is hearing these same jokes and the same PATTER done as if they were new each time, and it's even more exciting when you hear something NEW slide in as well. This time there was not only a whole actual SONG that I don't remember hearing before ("My body is making me") but a whole BIT about how they were going to be playing songs from the new album... which is a live album called (RATHER BRILLIANTLY) The Set Remains The Same. I of course purchased one at the first opportunity

It was a hugely delightful evening out, although possibly a rather high bar to set for OTHER gigs this year!

posted 6/1/2025 by MJ Hibbett
(click here for permanent link)
(0) comments


A Midsummer Night's Dream
On New Year's Eve I went with The Lines In My Script to THE THEATRE, specifically to see A Midsummer Night's Dream at The Barbican. Executive Summary: it was AMAZING.

The amazingness was very much helped into being by the fact that The Barbican is a LOVELY theate, with VERY comfy seating which is roomy enough for you to put your legs out a bit, and also for people to GET BY without you needing to stand up. The show is pretty much sold out for the rest of the run as it has had RAVE REVIEWS, but we very handily managed to find two seats together near the middle in the sixth row which were FANTASTIC, although having been there before pretty much EVERYWHERE is a GRATE place to sit. The Barbican is, in this way at least, similar to The Bridge Theatre where we went to see Guys And Dolls last year and - unblogged but somehow also true - again a few weeks ago (as it was SO BRILLO) in that it has been designed to make going to The Theatre PLEASANT. Some of the older theatres in That London go out of their way to make it difficult with horrible cramped seats, loads of things in the way so you can't see, an average 0.3 toilets per 1,000 customers (0.1 for women) and terrible bars where you can't get served, but in the more "modern" (i.e. built in the last 50 years or so) places you get the impression that they'd like you to have a a) nice time b) drink c) wee at your leisure.

We were thus all set to have a nice time and BY GOLLY we did as the production was AMAAAZING. I have seen quite a lot of Shakespeare plays in my life, what with having done O Levels etc, but I have never ever LARFED quite as much as I did for this one. Usually when you go and see a Professional Production of The Shakespeare the "comedy" bits are APPALLING and unpleasant to sit through, but here they were ACTUALLY FUNNY. I mean, usually actors stick in extra bits of larking about (usually RUDE larking about) to get a laugh, but in this the ACTUAL SCRIPT had some jokes in it! I've never seen Midsummer Night's Dream before so maybe that is always the way with this one, but CRUMBS I wasn't expecting that.

Most of the publicity for the play has focused on Matthew Baynton From Out Of Ghosts playing Bottom, and to be honest you can see why because he was EXCELLENT and very very funny indeed, but the whole cast was great and especially the Rude Mechanicals. As I say, I've never seen or read this one before (i.e. I have never had to do so for an EXAM) so the whole AM DRAM bit came as a Rather Delightful SURPRISE to me, and it was ACE!

Having said that we did do SOME revision beforehand, so it all made SENSE (pretty much), which again is not always the case. Also the aforesaid Sound From My Speakers listened to the Creative Audio Description where members of the cast described what was going on for you with added jokes, which I am reliably informed was DEAD GOOD. I had some headphones too, but I couldn't get mine to work properly!

The set was AMAAAZING (I am using the word "AMAAAZING" a lot I know but that is because it WAS) with everything looking exciting ALL of the time and some astonishing EFFECTS. The one thing I wasn't quite sure of was the way that the EXTRA FAIRIES were done with ... er... well, FAIRY LIGHTS I guess you would call them, with the associated actors speaking their lines over the PA. It made it slightly confusing at times, for me at least, but did look Very Clever Indeed.

OH, and also also there was a LIVE BAND playing all the music, which was ALSO also also AMAAAAZING. There were positioned on TWO (2) balconies, one on each side of the stage, which worried me a bit but appeared to work all right. The last time I'd seen something like that was about 1,000,000 years ago when I went to see Belle & Sebastian in Manchester and they were split across two stages on either side of the room, which did not work AT ALL, but I guess TECHNOLOGY has come quite a long way since then!

At the end of it all I genuinely felt myself WELLING UP a bit, as it had been SO INCREDIBLE. It was, I think, one of the BEST EVER plays what I have ever seen at The Theatre, and was a pretty wonderful thing to do at the end of the year, especially going on a MATINEE as we did, so we had plenty of time to get home for New Year's Actual. It was a GRATE, and, in case I haven't mentioned it before, AMAAAAAAZING, experience, and one I would HIGHLY recommend!

posted 6/1/2025 by MJ Hibbett
(click here for permanent link)
(0) comments