Blog Archive: March 2025

We Have A First Draft
As I speak I hold in my hands a completed first draft of Data And Doctor Doom, fully finished (for now) with songs and talking and everything! HOORAH!

According to the title page it's the second draft, but that's just because when I started it a couple of months ago I very quickly decided that two of the songs needed removing, but I didn't want to just DELETE them because they'd taken me flipping AGES to write. However, it's very much the first COMPLETED draft all the way through, and it sits beside a fully completed SLIDE DECK too, so I think it counts.

There are currently TWO HUNDRED AND SEVENTY slides in the aforementioned slide deck, which may seem like a lot (and has certainly FELT like a lot putting them together for the past month or so) but the show's meant to be about an hour long so that's only 4.5 slides a minute, or one slide every 12-ish seconds... which actually does seem quite a lot doesn't it?

The plan is to have a complete run through at some point in the next week for TIMING, just to check that it's the right length, and then after that it will be HO! for several weeks of LINES LEARNING. I really hate lines learning and these days I tend not to do it for presentations, preferring to just go through the general idea in my BRANE and then explain it as if I was... well, as if I was explaining it to people, which is what I AM doing. However, this time around I'm going to be singing songs and playing guitar at the same time as moving slides along with my FEET so I'm going to have to have a pretty clear and confident GRASP of how it all works.

It's all very exciting though, and does seem to WORK. I've got a PROJECTOR on order too, so when that arrives I can hook it all together and have a proper GO. It's all SCARY but also a RELIEF to think that there now IS a show to do at the various gigs what I've booked (and am still in the process of booking). It's happening!

posted 31/3/2025 by MJ Hibbett
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Back In The Radio Times
Last week I spent several happy hours with the incredibly long Avengers Doomsday cast announcement video running in the background. This was a LIVE video feed, thrillingly showing pictures of CHAIRS. Every 15 minutes there would be a short blast of some sort of theme music and then the camera would pan along to the next chair. The chairs all had actor's names on them, and I was amazed to see people in the live comments feed guessing who it would be next just by the tiny bit of pre-panning music. All in all it was a lovely thing to have pootling away, kind of like the live feed of the queue to see the Queen's coffin, except with slightly more famous people and less worried curtseying.

The next day I had a surprising and wonderful email from The Radio Time asking if I had any THORTS about the video and what it might PORTEND for the actual movie. At that point I had had one main thought which was "Cor that's a lot of chairs", but I was fairly sure that that wasn't what they were after so had a good old THINK and came up with some slightly more INTERESTING ideas which, over a couple of email back and forths, we got into shape for an ARTICLE.

This was VERY exciting but also NERVE-WRACKING. When I had my FIRST article in The Radio Times last year it came about because I'd emailed to ask them if they'd like one, and then the whole thing was like a weird DREAM. This time around they'd got in touch with ME, so I felt hugely responsible for getting it RIGHT, and so spent AGES on Thursday evening and the Friday morning writing and re-writing it to make sure it was PACKED with a) GAGS b) informative information c) further jokes about Zack Snyder movies.

To my ENORMOUS relief the final article was accepted and is now live on their site. At the moment it's right there on the (bottom of the) front page, but I guess it won't stay there for very long. Either way it fits in rather nicely with the sensible and grown-up plan to promote myself as Someone Who Knows About This Sort Of Thing ready for when RDJ starts appearing in movies, but more than that it's just dead exciting. It's the Radio Times!!

posted 28/3/2025 by MJ Hibbett
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They Are The Resurrection
I'm on annual leave this week so have been enjoying multiple mighty lie-ins, but this morning I made a special effort to get up so that I could go online and buy tickets to see Chris T-T at the 100 Club in November.

Yes, true believers, you read that correctly - the extremely great and excellent Chris T-T is coming out of retirement for one night only to promote the re-release of his amazing "9 Red Songs" album on vinyl for its twentieth anniversary. I flipping LOVE that album, but then I love pretty much everything that Chris has ever done, and his gigs have been some of my favourite EVER, so I am very very excited about this. I'm also quite relieved it's out in the open - he told me about it over a pint a few weeks ago and SWORE me to secrecy, and I have been DESPERATE to talk about it!

Chris's grand return is the culmination of a TRIO of grand returns of some of my favourite bands EVER all at the same time. The return of PROLAPSE has been rumbling on for about eight years now, but it is only during the past week that they have FINALLY released any music. I heard a brief snippet of their new single On The Quarter Days a couple of weeks ago when The Validators got together for a curry. I must admit that when Tim played us the intro I laughed out loud, in DELIGHT at how utterly LIKE PROLAPSE it sounded. Later listens have proven this to be the case as it is a right bloody racket and also BRILLIANT, as you can hear for youself here:



Prolapse are off to Germany to play The Cologne Popfest in a couple of weeks, which was ALREADY making me jealous - we had such a brilliant time when The Validators played in 2017 that I was MINDED to just buy a ticket and go and see them. I can't, due to Other Commitments, and this was only made MORE painful when I saw firstly that Stuart Murdoch out of Belle & Sebastian was playing but then also that ALLO DARLIN were on the bill too!

These are the THIRD of my favourite ever bands to be getting back together again - technically they reunited back in 2023 when me and Steve followed them round on tour but this time they've actually recorded a new ALBUM and there's a new single out soon too. Hopefully that means there'll be GIGS so I can go and see them without needing my passport, but the idea of seeing them AND Prolapse AND loads of lovely Kolsch all at the same time is a painful one to miss out on!

As ever, when this sort of thing happens, it does make me wonder if The Validators should have split up at some point. Obviously we've never been as BIG as any of the three mentioned above, and also we've never really had a NEED to officially stop being The Validators, as we've simply transformed into a DINING CLUB instead, but part of me still thinks it might have been a good idea, just so we could come BACK again. The only problem is that just THINKING about not being The Validators, even if it was pretend and just for a few months, makes me feel SAD, so I guess we'll never be able to!

posted 28/3/2025 by MJ Hibbett
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Non-Duplication Of ROCK - The STATS!
There has been a distinct lack of NEW BLOGS just lately, and this has been because there hasn't been a huge amount of NEW STUFF to impart. I mean, I have been BUSY, but it's mostly been working hard on the new Data And Doctor Doom show and trying to get bookings for it, which has all been jolly exciting for ME, but may not be all that interesting for you, gentle reader, to keep reading.

However, a THORT did occur to me which might (eventually) be of (some) interest. Doing a new show means I'm going to need a new Special Button for The Database Of ROCK. The Special Button is a bit of JavaScript wizardry what I made for myself many years ago when I got fed up of typing in the same setlist for every performance of My Exciting Life In Rock and realised that this was a mundane activity that I could automate. Hmm. Sounds like the sort of thing you could make billions of quids out of without knowing what it means.

ANYWAY. Thinking about setting that up for Data And Doctor Doom led to me PONDERING setlists further. Doing the shows means/meant doing the same setlist again and again, but I wondered how often I had done the same setlist APART from those? Whenever I'm busy doing lots of gigs I do TRY and make the shows unique, but surely there's only so many times you can start with The Peterborough All-Saints Wide Game Team (group B) and end with The Lesson Of The Smiths without repeating the songs in the middle?

THUS this very morning I set out to find out, and had a DELIGHTFUL half hour or so of writing some SQL code (NB I am currently on Annual Leave so am free to ROCK OUT in this way as much as I like) to work it out. The results were Quite Interesting, in that obviously the SHOWS all repeated themselves multiple times, and there were several instances where I did the same individual song on its own as an entire set (e.g. going to computing events and just doing Hey Hey 16K) but once you'd taken those out it appears that I have only repeated a setlist THREE times!

Just three times! That sounds KRAZY, but SQL don't lie! To be clear, this is looking at repetition of EXACTLY the same songs in the same order and the same number, so if I repeated a setlist one time but did an ENCORE - sorry, I mean, was FORCED to do an encore after a ten minute ovation and against my artistic principles - then that would not count. But then that's fair really, as it IS a different User Experience and it's not like that scenario happens a lot!

With all that in mind then, let's look at the gigs where this mighty PAIRING occurred:

Repetition ONE: the RER Tour
The first time this EVER happened was while The Validators were doing our ACTUAL TOUR to promote Regardez, Ecoutez et Repetez. This was the time when we were at our most ACTUAL BAND, with a new album being played as ALBUM OF THE DAY on BBC 6 Music and a VAN to travel around in, and so it is probably understandable that we would fall prey to that most ROCKIST of activities and do the same setlist on almost consecutive evenings. For LO! The set we played on May 22 2009 at Mother's Ruin in Bristol was then exactly repeated the day after next on May 24 2009 at The Wilmington Arms in London! It's not like we HAD to do this for the sake of the lighting and special effects guys or anything, and I do have a vague memory of our Setlist Czar Mr T Pattison being quite AGAINST the idea, but I also quite like the fact that we DID do it here at the one time in our long careers when we COULD make legitimate claim to do so!

Repetition TWO: Security
The next time this happened was later that same year, when the gig I did on 18 June 2009 at Chinnery's in Southend was a direct copy of one I'd done a few months earlier on 13 March 2009 at The Boathouse in Cambridge. That year was my second most BUSY for gigs, with 69 across the course of the twelve months, and I did do quite a few gigs then where I really had to WORK to get people onside, and so would often revert to setlists like this one which were THE HITS. I think we can forgive the babylike almost 39 year-old me for falling back on security in this instance.

Repetition THREE: Pure Coincidence
The last time this happened was on 22 January 2018 at The Green Man in Sheffield when I inadvertently repeated a setlist I'd done a few months earlier on 17 September 2017 at The Bill Murray in London. The first gig had been a show with Mr G Osborn and Ms J Lockyer, while the second had been the birthday party of Ms P Blackham, so clearly this was a TOP PALS setlist designed to DELIGHT one and all - to be honest it's not that dissimilar to the HITS HEAVY set of Repetition TWO, but for rather different reasons!

So what can we GLEAN from all of this? I think the main thing is that my EFFORTS to at least try and do a different set each show have paid off! This is Quite Surprising to me as I always BERATE myself for having grand plans to do weird and wonderful unheard songs and then end up doing the SAME ones, although this shows that I do at least do them in different orders. The other thing is that there does at least appear to be a REASON for doing it on the very rare occassions when I have.

ALSO I personally take two things away from this. Firstly, that it was a whole lot of FUN doing loads of gigs one after the other, especially when The Vlads went on tour in a VAN like a Proper Actual Band, but that goodness me it fills me with FATIGUE just THINKING about it now. Secondly, it reminds me how much fun STATS can be. Put those two things together and what do we get? Why, the possibility of doing some gigs where the same songs are repeated in the same order and it all involves a lot of STATISTICAL ANALYSIS! What are the chances of THAT happening eh?

posted 26/3/2025 by MJ Hibbett
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Talking About Superman
Yesterday I had a lovely chat with someone about SUPERMAN.

This may not seem like news in particular - I have lovely chats about all SORTS of things all the time - but it was slightly different here in that I was speaking to a JOURNALIST for an article what he was writing for A Well Known Magazine. I guess he had got my details via a press release that UAL's lovely comms team did about my THORTS. The idea of doing that was to get my name out as Someone Who Can Say Mildly Interesting Things About Superheroes and, almost exactly a year later, it seems to have worked!

I'd done a bit of REVISION beforehand about new things like Absolute Superman and OLD things like the fact that Superman stayed in continuous publication even when most other superhero titles shut down (I was pretty sure that that was the case, but wanted to make sure), and amazingly all of that came in handy.

I chuntered on for about twenty minutes altogether, giving my THORTS on various aspects of Superman across different media. It was a bit weird because I'm usually HYPER-AWARE these days of chuntering on, and after a couple of minutes ALARMS go off in my BRANE shouting "You are Going On A Bit now Hibbett, draw these remarks to a close!" However, in this case I had to keep reminding myself that he'd rung me specifically to harvest some of these THORTS and so I was actually behaving correctly. I kept saying "Well, if you want my opinion..." and then remembering that that was the whole point of the conversation!

I also tried to say AMUSING and/or INSIGHTFUL things, my favourite of which was coming up with a possible modern revision to Superman's motto as "Truth, Justice OR The American Way". It struck me, and continues to strike similarly, that the "All-Star Superman" version of the character that James Gunn seems to be going for is EXACTLY the sort of Superman we could all do with at the moment i.e. a REALLY NICE PERSON who is incredibly powerful but, unusually, has not turned massively evil. In a way the idea of someone HAVING so much power and managing to use it wisely feels almost as fantastical as him being able to fly!

The chat was for a piece that'll be coming out nearer to the film's release so I'll keep an eye out for it and will see how much of my mighty insights get into the final thing. Whatever happens, it was a lovely excuse to have a chat with someone about it - especially someone of a similar age and comics-history as me who really did sound like he wanted to do it all justice!

posted 12/3/2025 by MJ Hibbett
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Riding The Slides
Since last we spoke I have been toiling away on Data On Doctor Doom and am extremely happy, also a bit surprised, to report that the first draft is nearing completion! I've written LOADS of new songs which have been flooding out of my BRANE like nobody's business, which is all very exciting except for the rather alarming fact that these new songs have about 10,000,000 words EACH in them. On the one hand this makes it easier to EXPLAIN a lot of the stuff I need to explain, but on the other it's going to make it a a bit tricky to actually LEARN!

I'm now homing in on the ending, which I think is going to be a MEDLEY. This is lovely in TWO (2) ways. Firstly, it works as a fab way of summarising everything that has gone before - most of the songs are about an aspect of THEORY of DOOM HISTORY, and so they work quite nicely as BITS that draw it all together. Secondly, as it's just ME doing these songs I have felt even less impulse than usual to write them in different keys, which makes it MUCH easier to blend them all together! HA!

Rather than rush to the end, however, I'm now focussing on the SLIDES as a way to understand how it's all going to WORK. I've got myself an exciting FOOT PEDAL so that I can move slides along at the same time as singing, but the key bits are the slides BETWEEN songs, where I'm trying to explain what's going on from one section to the next. The show is going to basically be a long PRESENTATION, just with more songs and GAGS than usual, and what I always do for presentations is to get a general idea and then work it out with the slides. I'm hoping that doing it this way will give me time for THORT and consideration as the the grand IDEAS I'm going to express at the end, and also what order I shall be doing them in.

It's all very exciting, not least because I have now got a SECOND official booking for the show, at the Watford Fringe, where I shall be playing in July. Full ticket details and timings are still to be finally finalised, but it's definitely happening! There's another five or six gigs in various stages of submission at the moment, so hopefully you'll be able to see more of them appearing over the next few weeks on the Doom Dates list, but in the meantime the prospect of DOING these shows does rather INFER that I'll need a show to DO. I'd better fire up the Powerpoint again!

posted 11/3/2025 by MJ Hibbett
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A Trip To The Dentist
I went to the DENTIST on Wednesday and it felt as if I had somehow drifted into a NEAR FUTURE SATIRE.

For LO! I had to go private and there was MONEY involved. My local practice originally advertised itself as accepting NHS patients when it opened a few years ago but now the button to choose "NHS" on the booking form always flicks to "no appointments available" - I'm sure they DO have NHS appointments, but I guess it's like when a national retail outlet advertises a sale price of 50% off based on the fact that the item was doubled in price for 15 seconds at 3am in the branch on the Shetland Islands.

I hadn't been for a few years because my teeth, though they be peggy little Fenland affairs betraying a genetic history of Not Enough Great-Grandparents, are FINE. However over the past few days they have HURT and I thought "AHA! I shall be grown up and go to the dentist!" When I got there it seemed unnervingly similar to having an NHS appointment, with delays and receptionists SCOWLING at you, just with more contactless payments.

When I eventually DID get in it was all fine and delightful, except that everything the dentist said to me was followed by a PRICE. "We're going to need to do a couple of X-Rays," he said, "Which will cost £20 each". I mean, it was nice of him to forewarn me, but then he did it EVERY time, sometimes spending more time on the cost options than the diagnosis. "This will need a filling - these can cost between £150 and £300 depending on size and type" etc etc. It kept on happening and felt WEIRD, like (AS STATED) a SATIRE on the radio from the 1980s.

The worst of it was that I was in the GRIP of the dentist, and so not really in a position of NEGOTIATING STRENGTH, so when he said things like "You'll need to see the hygenist, which will cost £55 for a 30 minute consultation" I meekly agreed, rather than fulfilling my intent to REFUSE such appointments as I HATE the hygenist with their pointy metal PAIN PRODDERS. I would not for one moment suggest that they do it this way on purpose... but I bet they flipping do.

At the end of it all he gave me a PRESCRIPTION which had three of the same item on it (SPECIAL TOOTHPASTE). "Oh good", I thought, "that means I'll get three for the price of one prescription, at least THAT will save some cash" but OH NO. The very nice chemist round the corner very pleasantly explained that that's not the case for private prescriptions and you have to pay for each one seperately. I mean, FAIR ENOUGH I guess, but it is slightly suspicious that that's the only financial transaction the dentist did NOT explain in full. A cynic might suggest that that's because it was the only one that would be occuring away from their workplace, but I could not possibly comment.

In summary I now have new a) UNDERSTANDING of Americans starting funding schemes to pay for basic healthcare b) DISLIKE of dentistry beyond previous dislikes and c) GRATITUDE that the NHS exists still so that this isn't the NORM for other healthcare - for now, anyway.

Also: my teeth still hurt a bit, how is THAT even fair?!?

posted 6/3/2025 by MJ Hibbett
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Validators Re-United
I had the afternoon off work on Thursday last week because I had an Important Meeting to attend i.e. a Validators Curry in deepest Leicestershire. Executive Summary: it was GRATE!

I arrived at Leicester Station with some time to spare so went for a bit of a wander and was ASTONISHED to discover that The Market (i.e. one of the main features of Actual Leicester) had been demolished! This is like demolishing the WALL in York or something, I couldn't believe it! It's apparently been moved round the corner but it's completely changed the way that bit of town looked, with The Corn Exchange suddenly highlighted and looking Imposing - at least until you got close and discovered it is now a Weatherspoons - and the streets nearby suddenly exposed as Olde Worlde and Quaint. I lived in Leicester for over decade and that bit of town NEVER felt quaint, it was All Quite Unnerving!

I popped into Forbidden Planet to calm down, spent too much money, and then Mr T 'The Tiger' McClure picked me up in the Tigermobile for a trip to Woodhouse Eaves where we met The Pattisons. We then zoomed off to QUORN where we were joined by Frankie in the PUB for what turned out to be a ruddy DELIGHTFUL evening of generalised catching up and also LARFS.

In recent decades it has sometimes felt like the actual GIG bit of Validators gigs has got in the way of just hanging around in the pub together, and so recently we have been trialling replacing said gigs with CURRIES instead, and I must say it's working very well. We don't have to do soundchecks or arrange transport of gear, and we don't have to worry about whether we'll have time to get something to eat either. All right, we don't see so many PALS who've turned up to see us, but apart from that it is mostly ALL BENEFITS. Tom and I even got to visit a Fancy Supermarket to get some local BEERS to go with our curry, which was also DELICIOUS.

It was a lovely night full of LARKS and TOMFOOLERY. If any other bands of decades-long service are reading this I can highly recommend this policy, it really works!

posted 1/3/2025 by MJ Hibbett
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