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Godot Returns
Yesterday I had the afternoon off in order to go to THE THEATRE, as I am dead sophisticated like that.
The play I was going to see was Waiting For Godot at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, and I was going to see it with my old pal Mr C Lawson, who was down in London especially for the occassion. The LAST time me and Chris went to see a play was ALSO Waiting For Godot, that time starring Captain Picard and GANDALF, and that had been BLOODY GRATE, so we had high hopes for this iteration.
When we got to the theatre we both said "Hang on, is this the same place where we saw it LAST time?" but it was only when we got to the BAR that we realised it TOTALLY WAS. This led to much discussion of coming to see this play EVERY 10-15 years or so in the same place, which to be honest would be fine by me.
It ALSO led to further comparisons with the Professor X/Magneto version, which I am afraid to say were not favourable for the current production, for LO! it was... sort of all right? As Chris said, it often felt like they were Saying The Words without hugely investing in what they actually MEANT. In places it was like one of those SHAKESPEARE productions where they've gone "This olde worlde speak doesn't make any sense, so let's say it loudly while making some extra noises and, if at all possible, miming something for LARFS". Also, they didn't seem to have decided whether it was meant to be PROFOUNDLY BLEAK or FUNNY or something else, so although there WERE laughs they were always slightly NERVOUS ones, as if the audience weren't sure whether they should or not.
The STAGING was dead good, I thought, as it looked like a PAINTING that had fallen slightly out of its FRAME, but there were some other aspects of The Production that seemed a bit daft. For instance, usually Vladmir and Estragon wear bowler hats but here they had WOOLLY hats on, which is FINE and looked good but then it meant that The Hat-Swapping Routine in the second half didn't work AT ALL. Also, Ben Whishaw's costume involved jogging pants, which is FINE similarly but then meant he had to MIME doing his flies up, which happens several times and made it feel a bit SCHOOL PLAY-ish.
There was quite a lot of that sort of thing, but then not really DIGGING the production did allow the ACTUAL PLAY to shine through A LOT. I have seen Waiting For Godot LOADS of times and INDEED have even DIRECTED it 300,000,000 years ago when I was a student (featuring Chris as Pozzo, in fact!) and so it was LOVELY to hear all the LINES and remember the different BITS as they happened. It really is BLOODY BRILLIANT, and it struck me that it would be AMAZING to do a version where you got Morecambe & Wise impersonators to do it AS Morecambe & Wise (Eric as Estragon, Ernie as Vladmir OBVS). I'm thinking about that again now and it is AMAZING!
It would have been nice if it had been BETTER but it was still FINE and we had a lovely time DISCUSSING it after, and also drinking BEER in various venues and also PIZZA - which, it turns out, is pretty much exactly what we did last time! Hopefully in another 10-15 years we can go back and see the Fassbender/McAvoy or Jackman/Reynolds versions!
posted 21/11/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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The Songs Are Flooding In
In yesterday's blog I mentioned that in Cambourne I had performed a BRAND NEW SONG what I had written, but that is not the ONLY new one on the go at the moment.
For LO! over the past few weeks I have written no less than FOUR new songs, with a couple of other ideas bubbling under also. This is more than I've written in the past few YEARS put together and has come about, as usual, because I'm supposed to be doing something else.
What happened was that I got talking to a PAL a little while ago and we agreed to have a go at doing a COLLABORATION. I won't go into any great detail about it here as we have still to hammer out the details, but the general GIST was to do some of my old songs together but in a different FORMAT to what I'd done them in before. I thus went home and thought "Right, the important thing to do now is to try out some of those old songs and see which ones might be suitable" and instead of that started writing a new song instead. Obviously.
That has since CONTINUED and I must say I am really really enjoying it. As regular listeners may have noticed, my lyrics have got quite DENSE over recent decades, largely because I LOVE trying to cram as many internal rhymes as I can into every single line. This takes a bit of EFFORT (and also means I need to stick to alcohol-free beer before a gig so as not to mess everything up!) but does feel GRATE when I'm doing it. It's also GRATE fun having a little BATCH of songs to ROCK through when I fancy a bit of SINGING, and that in itself is a lovely reminder of how much fun it is just to sit around with a guitar and BELLOW.
The HUGE advantage of coming back to this after so long in abeyance is that I have all sorts of THORTS lying around for songs. I usually like to PERCOLATE an idea in my BRANE for several years before turning it into a song - this may APPEAR to the uninitiated that I am sitting in pubs saying the same thing over and over again but NO, it is songwrting - so now have quite a few SEEDS to nurture into either ROCK EPICS or - to my great surprise after years of refusing to do so - songs about DOCTOR DOOM. Yes!
The only thing I'm lacking at the moment is GIGS. It was brilliant being able to try out a new song last week (and very helpful to THE PROCESS too, as it highlighted the fact that it wasn't really clear what I was on about!) but I've not go many opportunities lined up to do more of that sort of thing. Maybe I will have to get my CONTACTS BOOK out of storage too!
posted 15/11/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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A Whole Lot Of Hats
Last week I spent a DELIGHTFUL couple of days at the Figshare & Symplectic EMEA User Conference 2024.
To clarify, before we go any further, I'm not being sarcastic or anything here - I really did have a lovely time, spending two days with excellent colleagues talking about the two systems what I manage at work. HANG ON - no, I mean I AM being sarcastic, because obviously I am too cool and rock and roll to think it's really interesting to talk about the implications of the lack of REF guidelines for the future of academic impact data collection. THAT WOULD BE KRAZY.
Yes yes all right that was me and it was GRATE. As I have mentioned before, I am in the strange (for me) situation of really enjoying my job these days, and it turns out that that makes conferences a whole lot more fun to go to, especially when you're with WORK PALS who are similarly interested. The only downside of it all was that I was forced - FORCED, I tell you - to do a presentation about one of our projects. As regular readers will be aware I HATE showing off, as you can see for yourself in the video below:
The talk was about how we transferred an archive of The Piaggi Collection (a lot of HATS) from an old system and set up on Figshare. We did this earlier on in the year and, as you will see from the talk, there was a specific point in the data migration where I thought "OOH blimey, this will be AMAZING for a presentation" and took LOTS of screenshots. I won't spoil WHAT happened as it is a dead good bit in the presentation, and is worth seeing for yourself, honest! It's also worth having a look at The Piaggi Collection site itself as you can zip around looking at all sorts of aspects of the HATS for yourself. I have never been a hat fan before I must admit (having a GIGANTIC HEAD I have never really got on with them) but I must admit this experience has converted me. Maybe I don't need 800 of them though!
posted 14/11/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Back To 2017
It's been a WEIRDLY EMOTIONAL morning for me today, all to do with the long prophesied MASS EXODUS from Twitter finally actually (probably) happening.
I mean, I know poeople have been leaving there for a while now, but it seems like this week a decision been made by Nice People Everywhere to go over to BLUESKY en masse. As far as I can see this has been caused by D Trump offering E Musk a place in his government as an Efficiency Tsar, and I must say I can very much see the reasoning. After all, if you have millions fewer uses of your system you need a lot fewer STAFF, which I'm pretty sure is SUPER EFFICIENT all round. If all goes to plan next year I expect him to change the name of the country to The UXA and sort out immigration immediately by having a third of the population up sticks and move to Canada immediately.
I got EMOTIOANL about it this particular morning because of STARTER PACKS. These are basically lists of people with Specific Interests that you can use to find accounts to follow, and the first one I saw was for BEATLES people, forwarded to me by International Rock Star Pete Green. I was very merrily following those when I noticed that my notifications had gone NUTS. "60+ Notificatuions?" I thought. "Surely that can't be right?"
Mr R Manuel had set up a B3ta Starter Pack what had my name on it, and suddenly a whole HEAP of familiar names were popping up. I went through and did a whole load of Folows Backs of people I knew, and then all of a sudden my entire feed was EXACTLY LIKE OLD TWITTER! Nice people! Saying amusing things! Without adverts or Nazis!
I had a quick look over on twitter to make sure I wasn't IMAGING the huge gulf of difference, and saw that "Bluesky" was trending. However, when I looked at what people were SAYING it was mostly snide remarks by people (often with blue ticks) claiming that they'd been for a look but Bluesky was "just like twitter in 2017" AS IF THAT WAS A BAD THING!! Twitter in 2017 is pretty much exactly what I wanted, and now it appears to be BACK! Just not on twitter!
Other dreary people were OPINING that all the nice people leaving twitter was a Bad Thing as it meant that we couldn't ENGAGE with each other. Personally speaking I never really WANTED to engage with arseholes and Nazis, and I certainly didn't want them FOISTED on me repeatedly along with weird adverts for AI Products, so that is entirely fine with me!
Anyway, all of this is mostly to say a) HOORAY for something GOOD happening on the interweb and b) if you want to find me over there I'm on https://bsky.app/profile/mjhibbett.bsky.social. Do come and say hello!
(PS and if anyone can set up a Starter Pack featuring People Who Used Go To Indietracks Who I Haven't Seen For Ages, that would be much appreciated!)
posted 13/11/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Return To Cambourne
On Friday evening myself and The Flatness Of My Fen headed off to CAMBOURNE once again to play at an evening of Retro Gaming and SONG alongside the very excellent The British IBM.
When I played the same gig last year we had an horrendous time trying to get from Cambridge to Cambourne beforehand, so this time the aforementioned Stops On My Route suggested that we go via St Neots and get a taxi from THERE instead, which worked out MUCH better, enabling us to get to our hotel with LOADS of time.
It did not, however, stop me from getting LOST on the very short journey to The Hub where it was all taking place, although this did mean that I had the opportunity to see AN ACTUAL ROBOT! Cambourne has a PILOT SCHEME whereby you can get your shopping delivered by AN ACTUAL ROBOT, which people there seem to think is now entirely unremarkable but which I was AMAZED by. Dear Tech Bros: more of THIS sort of thing please, and less six-fingered art theft!
I got to the venue to find things in full swing, with BAR up and running and Aidy British IBM very excited to present me with a SURPRISE - bottles of HEY HEY 16K beer! This was FANTASTIC and, I can confirm, DELICIOUS!
There was chat and good times and then, just after 8pm, The British IBM went on and were FAB. They were a DUO this time but it still sounded ACE, helped along by a LOVELY amp which Aidy gave us a full purchase history for. It also helped that the songs were GRATE!
After that we had a short break and then I went on and done THIS:
The Peterborough All-Saints Wide Game Team (group B)
The Perfect Love Song
I'll Fetch Me Book
It's Hard To Be Hopeful
Cheer Up Love
I'm Doing The Ironing
Clubbing In The Week
20 Things To Do Before You're 30
Bad Back
It Only Works Because You're here
Hey Hey 16K
Looking at that list now it does seem like a slightly odd set - I was aware that it would be a very similar audience to last time so wanted to ensure they were hearing different songs, and that included a WHOLE NEW SONG what I'd written in the preceding fortnight. I made a few mistakes but it seemed to go OK, although I think I'm going to do a REJIG and swap the first and second verses around.
I also made a slight error at the end by saying that I was finishing with Hey Hey 16K rather than saving it for an encore - what I MEANT was that I was being dead classy and could do something ELSE for an encore, but everybody seemed to take it as me saying that was IT! Foolish Hibbett!
Afterwards there was much chat, some MERCH selling, and then further chat back at the hotel bar. It was a LOVELY evening, followed by a lovely next day when we had a bit of a wander around and saw MORE robots. I'm not sure if doing the same gig two years in a row at roughly the same time makes it an ANNUAL EVENT, but I do rather hope so!
posted 12/11/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Topper and Sparky
Like some kind of remorseless juggernaut OF FUN, another episode of The Funny Comics Fan Club has rolled around, and is available wherever you like to find your podcasts (spotify, Apple etc), on our own website or indeed right HERE:
This time we're talking about The Topper and Sparky, which is one BIG comic with a smaller one included in the middle. It was, as ever, a DELIGHT to chat with Mr John Dredge about it, and this time we got ourselves unnecessarily worked up about all sorts of things, not least the appallingness of Mickey The Monkey. Ooh, we were furious!
If you want to read along with us you can find pretty much all of the strips that we talk about on our socials - that's Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Bluesky - and if you enjoy it we'd be very grateful indeed if you could share it with other people, whether that's by modern TECHNICAL means or just by mentioning to somebody. We're having a LOVELY time banging on about these old comics, and we rather hope that other people might get something out of it too!
posted 11/11/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Talking About TV Comic
The latest episode of The Funny Comics Fan Club has just gone onto the interwebs, and I think this is my favourite one so far. I wouldn't necessarily expect that to be the case, as it's about a copy of TV Comic from 1970, so it contains a bunch of strips that I'm almost entirely unfamiliar with, but it turned out to be a CRACKING 49 minutes and 51 seconds of me and John nattering on about a wide variety of topics, some of which were actually to do with the comic we were reading, but many not. You can hear it for yourself HERE:
I keep meaning to say that, as hinted at above, although it is based AROUND a particular comic, it isn't an entirely dry assessment OF that particular comic. Also, although we do OF COURSE offer intellectual insight into the history of British comics and various theories about them, it is not ENTIRELY DRY and may feature items of interest to people who are not British and/or not hugely invested in the world of comics. This episode in particular features quite a lot of TITTING ABOUT that is not directly relevant to either of the above, especially late on in the episode when we get to the adventures of Popeye and the nature of hoedowns.
As you will be able to tell if you have a listen, John and I rather enjoyed ourselves recording this one, and I hope that others might get some pleasure from it too. We're both keen to get the word out about it to more people if we can, so if you, dear reader, are able to MENTION it somewhere that would be highly appreciated. As they say in the world of professional-type podcasts, please do like and subscribe!
posted 28/10/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Lonely Tourist and Mr Spoons
Last night we gathered once more at The King And Queen for a rather spectacular evening of Totally Acoustic, with guest artistes Lonely Tourist and Mr Spoons. It all went very well indeed!
I knew it was going to be good when BOTH of the guests arrived early and were DELIGHTFUL, but then things got rapidly better and better as a multitude of Unexpected Pals appeared, not least Mr G Urquhart, who had travelled down from Glasgow FOR THE EVENING just to be there! Amazingly he wasn't the ONLY person to have come from Scotland for the gig either, as a couple of other people told me they'd done the same. We also got visits from Mr P Clarke, Mr C T-T and the legendary Mr P Buckley-Hill, as well as some International Rock Stars, various pals and regulars, and first-time attendees. All of which meant that, by the time we kicked, off pretty much every seat in the room was full. This made me very happy!
We kicked off with a rendition of the theme tune as usual, and then I did THIS:
Bad Back
I'm Doing The Ironing
It Only Works Because You're here
That all seemed to go all right - I had a lovely time anyway - and then it was Mr Spoons' turn. As he said, he was a bit nervous as it was his first time doing a gig of mostly his own material, but it went GRATE. I particularly liked the genius idea of kicking off with a song ABOUT the fact that he was playing a ukelele, and explaining to the audience that it was all going to be FINE. It was dead good, and I confidently predict it will not be the LAST time he rocks out in such a fashion.
We then had a break for MAXI-CHAT and then Lonely Tourist came on for a STUNNING set. I must admit that I was quite surprised to see him kick off with what I consider to be two MASSIVE bangers that I'd've expected to come at the END, but then he kept on in pretty much the same way in a set of just GORGEOUS songs full of emotion and humour and... well, it was very good indeed, and the inter-song CHAT was brilliant too. It was the first time I'd seen him play live, after listening to and loving his records for a few years, and I'm going to make a proper effort to get out and see him again as soon as is sensible, he was GRATE!
When that was all done there was the usual AMPLE time for chat, and discussions ranged widely and included some rather exciting POSSIBLE PLANS for future stuff. I also got talking to a couple of chaps who'd not been before, one of whom said "Did you write that song... what's it called?" and I thought "AHA! Obviously he is thinking of Hey Hey 16K" but NO! To my GRATE delight he meant Agile, which pleased me IMMENSELY. Apparently it is being POSTED in work chats, which was basically what it was written for. HOORAY!
This was a high point in an evening what was FULL of them - it really could not have gone much better, and I'm very much planning to do another one soon. Well, soon-ISH anyway!
posted 25/10/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Dark Star and Hush
This week I have been consuming TWO (2) alleged classics of their respective genres - the film Dark Star from 1974 and Batman: Hush from 2002. I had Differing Opinions of them!
I read "Hush" mostly because it's just come out as one of DC's Compact Editions i.e. a nice thick SLAB of comics in a slightly smaller than normal format at a MUCH cheaper than usual price. It's basically NINE QUID for a trade paperback of twelve comics that would usually cost three or four times that much, putting it very much in the ACTUAL AFFORDABLE category that comics used to be in. I've read a couple of stories in this format and it is WONDERFUL to be able to cacth up with the so-called "classics" of superhero comics in this way, especially for someone like me who has HEARD about stuff like this for years and never got around to reading it.
It's been a SURPRISING number of years for me with "Hush", as I thought it came out ten years ago at MOST but is actually TWICE that far ago in the past, which led to me being a bit confused when it talked about Tim Drake as Robin rather than Damian Wayne. Apart from that, and Batman having PANTS on throughout, it felt pretty similar to how most Batman comics are in my opinion i.e. not very good. I didn't understand what is/was supposed to be so good about it AT ALL - it's basically lots of STERN PEOPLE standing around looking a) STERN and b) INDISTINGUISHABLE from each other. It's drawn by Jim Lee who I've always thought of as one of the GOOD artists from that school of 90s art where all men are eight foot tall and made of MUSCLES, all women have impossibly large bums and boobs, tiny waists, and a spine that can twist through about 300 degrees, and EVERYTHING has ten million lines over the top of it. This makes it really difficult to tell who is meant to be who, as everyone looks IDENTICAL, especially when they're standing around STERNLY at social events where tight fitting tuxedos or very very short dresses. It also seems to rely on the reader knowing who all Batman's baddies are and what their powers are - which I sort of do - as well as caring one way other the other which, by the end of it, I didn't!
After that I put the telly on and saw that "Dark Star" was being recommended to me by Amazon Prime's Algorithm. This used to be a thing of magic and wonder, way back at the start of the century when we were unused to such things, but these days it feels like a forgetful elderly relative who has looked in your shopping bag, seen the things you have just bought, and is insistent that you should buy them all again. Nonetheless, I had vague and happy memories of watching the first half of "Dark Star" one Friday or Saturday night in the late 70s when I guess it will have been on BBC2 and we were allowed to stay up. There was a beachball monster and a LOT of beards, was my main memory of it.
I gave it a go and I am happy to report that my memory was accurate - there was a beachball monster and an awful lot of BEARDS - but also that it was a LOT more fun than I remember. I vaguelly recall it being all right, but a bit confusing to my young BRANE, as I'd been expecting it to be more like STAR WARS and less like Some Hippies Having Workplace Issues. Watching it again now I was AMAZED that it had been made fifty flipping years ago, as it felt very FRESH and MODERN, especially with the way all of the characters kept having hissy fits at each other and loping around the universe like they didn't know what they were up to. It was also wonderfully SHORT - 83 minutes, which is about how long I think ALL films should be. It was, in fact DEAD GOOD and, unlike "Hush", I would recommend it to anyone with easy access.
Next time I expect to be reviewing a GEORGE FORMBY movie and probably ALLY SLOPER!
posted 24/10/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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From Sheffield To Alaska
Yesterday was PRS STATEMENT DAY, that most wonderful time of the year that is SO wonderful it can happen twice in the same year. Or, for a lot of us, none times in the same year.
For LO! it is the day when The Performing Rights Society send you money (loosely) (sometimes very loosely) based on the amount of airplay you have had, whether that be from radio shows, telly, jukeboxes, gym workout sessions, or a variety of other ways to hear music publicly that seem a bit made up but almost definitely probably aren't. You have to get over a certain threshold of CA$H to GET a statement, but when you cross that line you get a full list of ALL the plays that PRS has collected money from.
This is almost always a DELIGHT because you often find all sorts of places that your music's been played that you had no idea about - for instance, I once discovered that we'd had national radio play in SPAIN because of a PRS statement. THIS time I around I was utterly AMAZED to find that almost the entire payment - and the reason we had got over the Getting A Statement Threshold at all - was because ALASKAN AIRLINES had been playing Thank Goodness For Christmas on their aeroplanes!
Alaskan Airlines do make a big deal about Christmas, so I ASSUMED they put us on some sort of Festive Playlist for the season, and I am thus DELIGHTED to imagine rugged Alaskan types zooming through the air with US ringing in their ears! HOORAH!
I was also very pleased INDEED to see that BBC Radio Sheffield appear to STILL be using Good Cooking as the theme for the cooking section on their breakfast show, going by the number of times PRS say they've played it anyway. I must say I find this all rather WONDERFUL. When one releases a song into the wild, as like what I have done so many times, you have no idea AT ALL who is going to listen to it or where they're going to play it - or indeed IF anyone's going to - so it's fantastic to discover these strange uses that they have been put to. I must say I fully support it, and if any OTHER airlines or local radio shows want to follow suit I would have no problem with that whatsoever!
posted 16/10/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Live From Nottingham
I had the afternoon off work on Friday to enable ease of travel to distant Nottingham, where I was due to play an actual GIG!
It's been a good old while since I've travelled solo for a gig, so I had done my usual careful planning. I used to stay in an IBIS in Nottingham City Centre but after some Premier Inn googling I found what appeared to be my old place trannsformed into another franchise. "Oh lovely", I thought, "all the advantages of that location, with the extra delight of Premier Inn luxury. BOOKED". It was only when I was heading up there that I realised that the original Ibis was VERY MUCH still in existence, and that I'd booked myself into a Premier Inn that LOOKED similar but was about half and hour's walk away. Luckily as an INTERNATIONAL ROCK STAR I am extremely forgiving of myself as ALSO TOUR MANAGER and so undaunted I took the first of MANY tram trips from the station to my hotel and all was well.
About twenty minutes later I was out again and on the tram going in the other direction, back towards JT Soar where the gig was due to happen. WEIRDLY I had never been there before, despite the fact that it is also home to Snug Recording Co, which has been our studio home for MANY years, just not since they moved from Derby. Actually, I think we were MEANT to do a gig there the weekend before Covid, and we ended up all just coming to Nottingham anyway for FUN.
I found the venue OK but when I got there there didn't seem to be anyone around. After a short time Mr T McClure arrived and then, a short while after that, Mr R Newman arrived for a) HUGS b) soundcheck. Tom was doing a guest spot on WHISTLING and INEVITABLY the soundcheck for that took about 17 times as long as the rest of it, but by golly it was worth it. As I pointed out at the time, whistling is very much like playing TAMBOURINE - you'd never think it was possible for someone to be actively GOOD at it, but you know it when you hear it.
With that all done we strolled round the corner to Mocky D's, a vegan BURGER place with a fantastically excellent name. It is housed in an INDUSTRIAL ESTATE where there is also a BREWERY, and I was surprised to find that Tom was not familiar with this sort of thing as a concept. Round my way every second building is a brewery on an industrial estate selling vegan food! The place had been suggested by Mr N Page who had come with Mr T Pattison, who both arrived shortly after for a DELIGHTFUL early evening of grub and beer and intellectual discussion. Tim suggested that this was the first time he had EVER paid to see me play - monetarily anyway, I am pretty sure our long association has come with PSYCHOLOGICAL costs!
I picked up some BEERS from the fridge - JT Soars is a BYOB establishment - and we headed back to the venue, which was filling up with people. This doesn't take much as it is TINY, but the people it DID fill up with were uniformly DELIGHTFUL, and as well as Vlads and The Family Machine, who arrived not long after us, there were TONNES of lovely people who I had not seen for AGES. Hugs abounded, and then it was time for me to go on and do THIS:
Bad Back
It's Hard To Be Hopeful
I'm Doing The Ironing
Fire Drill
Chips And Cheese, Pint Of Wine
In The North Stand
Cheer Up Love
It Only Works Because You're here
The Lesson Of The Smiths
It went well, I think! Loads of people made two (2) very specific comments. Firstly, they said "Ooh, I haven't heard some of those songs before", which I guess is true - I didn't INTEND it to be mostly new or new-ish songs, but I guess it was! Secondly, and much more forecefully, everyone said "COR! That whistling was BRILLIANT!" which is probably because it WAS. We should do more songs with Tom whistling in them!
After me it was the turn of the night's main attraction, WHITE TOWN. My booking for this gig had come about as a sort of old-fashioned GIG SWAP after Jyoti and Frankie came down and played at Totally Acoustic, but this evening was very much ELECTRICAL. Jyoti has basically reunited the original White Town band, including Mr G Thatcher on AXE, and also roped in Frankie for additional GTR and especially TRUMPET. It all sounded GRATE, not least because the SOUND was being so excellently manned, and as at Totally Acoustic the songs that were somehow NOT globe-straddling hits sounded brilliant alongside the one that WAS. That one, however, sounded FANTASTIC in the full-band arrangement, as Frankie's MAGICAL LIPS tooted their way through.
Afterwards we wafted around saying thank yous and goodbyes to friends old and new before me, Tom, Mr V Vorton and various other pals went round the corner to The King Billy pub. This had been recommended to us by Mr A Hale who, alas, was not able to attend, but I was very grateful for the suggestion as it was LOVELY, like a pub from the OLDEN DAYS of the 1990s!
All that remained was to have a pint and then wander off into the night and onto another tram. It was a pretty BRILLIANT evening - gigs, it turns out, are GRATE!
posted 15/10/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Can You Beat John Dredge (9)?
Today we unleash the FIFTH episode of The Funny Comics Fan Club, which this time is all about an issue of KRAZY COMIC. You can listen to our THORTS on it HERE:
(SUMMARY: we really really liked it!)
Along with the usual mix of INSIGHT and HIJINX this episode also features an idea I have borrowed from the This Are Johnny Domino podcast - an ENGAGEMENT OPPORTUNITY! As you will hear in the above, the issue we looked at this time featured a winning competition entry from a young John Dredge (9) of Penn. This is the very SAME John Dredge with whom I do the show, and you can hear all about the spoils of his victory within. The competition itself was called "Get Out Of This" and involved the comic showing a first panel with a problem, and readers being invited to send in their solutions. So, the first panel was THIS:
Readers then had to suggest a way out of it, and John sent in this solution:
We may all have our thoughts on the effectiveness of this solution, but it still raises the question of whether any of US could do any better? We therefore decided to throw this out into the universe as a CHALLENGE to our listeners to see if they could come up with their own answers, putting it out on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Bluesky to see what people can come up with. If you'd like to take part please do so on the SOCIALS of your choice, and otherwise please enjoy this latest episode which is PACKED with GRATE stories!
posted 14/10/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Going To The Comic Mart
On Sunday I headed into old London town to attend my first ever COMICS MART. I have read about such affairs from afar for most of my life, not least in the FANZINES I used to buy as a teenager, where they seemed like super glamorous affairs where heroes such as Alan Moore etc wafted around buying drinks for other legends and revealing top secret secrets of future storylines. I longed to be there!
In the intervening decades, however, I was aware that things had changed somewhat. The sort of thing I dreamt of is now called a Comic Convention (although they tend not to have a huge amount to do with comics and are more about MOVIES), whereas the actual COMICS MART had stuck to the business of LONG BOXES (i.e. cardboard boxes full of comics) to be flicked through and bargains to be sought. Still, it was quite exciting to be actually GOING to one, and I arrived with a pocket full of CASH hoping to come away with a big pile of British comics ready for future episodes of The Funny Comics Fan Club.
Friends, it did not quite work out like that. The signs were good when I entered the MASSIVE hall where the mart was being held, as I saw before me table after table PACKED with long boxes FULL of comics. However, as I made my way around the room I realised that they were pretty much ALL American comics. Now, obviously, I was expecting this to be mostly the case, but I wasn't prepared for the almost complete lack of British comics. Even 2000AD was in short supply, but British humour comics of the 60s to 80s were almost entirely absent - in the end I found THREE stalls that had ANY British comics, and most of those were either Whizzer & Chips (which we've done), The Beezer (which I've already got) and, for some reason, Hotspur. My GOODNESS but there were a lot of issues of Hotspur!
After some diligent flicking through boxes, many of which were hidden UNDERNEATH the stalls, I eventually came away with 8 different comics, which did not feel like quite the HAUL I had hoped for. I also attempted to publicise the podcast a bit with some FLYERS what I had made, but that didn't go terribly well either. I did FOIST them on a few stall holders I spoke to, and though most were friendly some of them gave the distinct impression that they DISDAINED the very IDEA of a podcast and would be placing the flyer in recycling as soon as they could find an appropriate receptacle.
There was a weird sort of ATMOSPHERE overall that was a bit like that, like everyone was very much ON THEIR GUARD and I must say I came away feeling a bit UNNERVED by the whole experience. I wasn't expecting it to be glorious festival of glamour that I had read about in the back pages of Fantasy Advertiser, but I was surprised to find how DEFENSIVE everyone seemed to be. I can sort of understand it - traditionally comics readers have been outsiders and thus the target of BULLIES, and so perhaps one builds up those sort of defenses as one goes along - but I was surprised how pervasive it felt in what you would hope was a SAFE SPACE.
However, despite all that I did manage to ACCRUE a mighty HAUL of comics, and hopefully managed to spread the word around, so it was all good in the end, and The FCFC is powered up well into next year!
posted 7/10/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Comics | Histories
Last week there was a knock at the door, and that knock was knocked by The Postie with a special package for me what had come all the way from Germany, containing THIS:
As you can hopefully see from the above, this is a book called Comics | Histories (I'm not sure what the "|" is for) what has been published by Rombach, edited by Jessica Bauwens-Sugimoto, Felix Giesa and Christina Meyer, and I received a copy because my chapter Periodizing 'The Marvel Age' Using the Production of Culture Approach is very much in it!
I am EXTREMELY pleased that this book is out as my chapter is the FINAL SLICE of my PhD to be published, and it is quite a BIG slice. As fellow Comics Aficionados will be aware, American superhero comics have traditionally been divided into AGES. The Golden Age starts with Action Comics #1 in 1938 - the debut of Superman - and is when most of the really big DC superheroes were first invented. The Silver Age starts in 1956 with the introduction of the new Flash in Showcase #4, and saw revised versions of most of those heroes plus, in 1962, the debut of The Fantastic Four. PEASY!
After that, however, it all gets a bit confusing, with The Bronze Age starting somewhere in the early 1970s, sort of, and then... um... well, nobody seems to agree WHAT happens after that. It's all very inexact and unsatisfying, especially when you're trying to do an empirical analysis of a corpus of comics BASED on ages, so I decided to SORT IT OUT by developing a DIFFERENT classification, based on empirical methods rather than just "this is when a comic I like came out".
The POINT of this, for my PhD, was that it gave me a way to select a CORPUS of comics, cartoons, radio shows etc featuring Doctor Doom that all appeared during this period, which I called "The Marvel Age". However, when I was putting together the BOOK Data and Doctor Doom, describing how all this worked was starting to DERAIL everything else, so I decided to EXCISE the full explanation and put it somewhere ELSE, and THIS is the place where I put it.
I am therefore REALLY EXCITED that it is now OUT in the world because, as stated above, it was a HUGE part of the PhD that didn't really get into the book, and I think that ACTUALLY DEFINING what "The Marvel Age" MEANS (rather than just SAYING it, as everybody seems to) could be Quite Useful for The Comics Studies Community.
I am EVEN MORE EXCITED to realise that you can actually READ my chapter for FREE by accessing it on the Nomos e-library! Do go and have a look if you can, it is NOT TOO LONG and does explain quite a LOT about how all this works!
posted 4/10/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Influencer Level Unlocked
I am happy to report that myself and Mr John Dredge have this week reached a whole new level with our podcast The Funny Comics Fan Club, for LO! we are now INFLUENCERS!
Yes, you read that correctly - me and John are now being approached by organisations (well, AN organisation) desperate (I assume) for us to promote their wares for them. The TYPE of organisation is, of course, one involved in FASHION WEAR which will be of no surprise to anyone who has ever seen either or both of us casually draping ourselves in the latest must-have "togs", but I must say it was quite a nice surprise to us.
What happened was that we got an email from Apparel of Laughs asking if we'd like a couple of free t-shirts in exchange for a mention on the show. They have the actual official licence from Rebellion to make t-shirts featuring the old IPC kids' titles and, as you can see on their website, they have done a LOVELY job with titles like Buster, Oink, Tammy, Misty and so on. We of course said "YES PLEASE" and the shirts arrived yesterday afternoon, just before I was heading off to meet John to record a new episode. This, of course, led to a FASHION SHOOT, and I am very happy to share some of the ensuing shots BELOW:
As I'm sure you will agree, we are NATURALS at this and so, in order to help boost the economy and raise national morale, we are prepared to entertain further offers for either ENDORSEMENTS or MODELLING.
We also recorded an ADVERT for a future episode of the show. As regular listeners will be aware we usually include one in each show based on an actual advert in one of the comics we've looked at, so it felt a bit weird to do it FOR REAL. I've not started editing this episode yet, but I might have to include a bit where we tell people that this really IS an advert for something they can buy, rather than an offer for 6,000 Stamps Of All Nations that you could have sent a postal order off for about forty years ago.
That's all to come in a few weeks, but for now please gaze in wonder at our mighty selves above, and thanks very much INDEED to Apparel of Laughs for the t-shirts, they really are very nice indeed!
posted 3/10/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Triple Threat
On Wednesday evening I headed off to distant WEST LONDON to go to the THEATRE. West London is a flipping WEIRD place as it is full of super-posh people who are ODD. As soon as I got into the lift at Gloucester Road tube I felt out of place, as everyone else seemed to be wearing KNITTED CLOTHES with haircuts from the mid-1980s and more BROACHES than I've seen for several decades. Truly, THE WEALTHY are not like the rest of us!
I was heading for Drayton Arms Theatre to see a play called Triple Threat, written by Mr Andrew Cartmel. A certain subset of people will be thinking "Hang on, not THAT Andrew Cartmel?" to which an entire corpus of me replies "Yes, THAT Andrew Cartmel" i.e. former script editor of Doctor Who back in the Sylvestor McCoy era and current author of the Vinyl Detective series of novels. Andrew was my MENTOR back when I did my MA in Screenwriting at City University, and was both EXCELLENT in his advice and GENEROUS in his marking, so it was lovely to hear from him a week or so ago when he spotted my face in The Radio Times. "Is that you?" he asked, and it WAS!
I bumped into Andrew almost as soon as I got into the PUB bit of The Drayton Arms and we had a delightful chat before it was SHOWTIME. I must admit I was a little trepidatious before going upstairs to see the play, as I always AM when going to see a normal play without even any songs in it, but there was no need as it was BLOODY GRATE. It was actually GRATE three times in a row, as it was THREE short plays in a row, with the same three actors in each. The acting was VERY GOOD INDEED and the writing was BRILLO - I especially enjoyed the middle play, "The Magical Money Tree", which got into some really in-depth arguments about whether money exists or not while still being DEAD FUNNY. The dialogue was especially ace here, it was very very snappy INDEED enabling the actors to bounce off each other, keeping all the THORTS rolling along while still being fun to watch. As I say, it was ACE!
There was a break in between the second and third plays, when a rather wonderful PUB MIRACLE occurred. Being a theatre pub they had prepared for the interval by having only two members of staff on the bar and having both of them working on fulfilling food orders rather than serving customers - for some reason almost ALL theatres and theatre-like places seem to do this sort of thing, as if having a massive queue at the bar is somehow a measure of Artistic Integrity. We all waited about 10 minutes for ANYBODY to get served, and then there was a gradual shuffling about as we watched the now ONE member of bar staff keep having to go and check things with colleagues.
ANYWAY when it was finally my turn to order I realised that I'd possibly got in front of the person next to me. I didn't want to risk the sole member of barstaff wandering off again, so I just offered to buy the other person's drink FOR them. She wasn't sure, but while we discussed it a bloke behind us said "Could you get two pints for me too please?" It seemed like the right thing to do, so I ended up getting a round for all of us but, just I was about to NOBLEY pay for the lot, the chap behind me said "Don't worry, I'll get these. I can put them on the work credit card!"
It was all rather wonderful, like THE UNIVERSE had leant in and said "LO! You shall be repaid for your patience and - for once - not getting all arsey about the situation." I shall have to remember this in future!
In fact, the whole EVENING was rather wonderful, and I hopefully made these feelings clear to The Author as I left. The play, or rather PLAYS, is/are on for two weeks all together, until Saturday 12 October in fact, and I would WHOLEHEARTEDLY recommend buying a ticket or even TICKETS if you are around that area. I cannot guarantee that you too will end up being rewarded with FREE BOOZE, but I CAN guarantee a FAB evening out!
posted 3/10/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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A Case Of Beano Vu
The latest episode of The Funny Comics Fan Club is out NOW, and this time John and I are talking about The Beano!
Some regular listeners may feel a strange sense of DEJA VU when they listen to it as, due to a purely technical error, this episode was accidentally uploaded instead of the one about Nutty a couple of weeks ago. This was spotted early and we were able to take remedial action, so hopefully no harm was done and it wasn't anybody's fault and definitely not mine for putting the wrong file up the first time.
Those who've NOT already heard it can delight to John and I having a FINE old time revisiting a classic issue of The Greatest and also The Most Important British Comics Of All Time - for those saying "Oh what about 2000AD then en?" I would respond by pointing out that almost every single writer and artist on that JUSTIFIABLY ESTEEMED publication grew up reading and being influenced by The Beano, and THUS without it there would have been no 2000AD nor any British Invasion nor approx 98.7% of all the mainstream comics we have enjoyed up to and including today. I am prepared to make this argument in public and/or at volume.
This episode features a few surprises for us, a lot of discussion about postal orders, and also, right at the start, one of my favourite JOKES of the whole series from Mr J Dredge. You will know it when you hear it, largely due to me LARFING quite a lot.
We're dead chuffed with how these episodes are sounding so far, and would be EXTREMELY grateful to anyone who can like, subscribe, retweet, mention, or wave a placard in their local high street about it. As you can hear, it is very much a DIY operation, so any help getting it out to other people is very much appreciated!
posted 29/9/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Prolapse Return (Again)
Last night I went to distant North East London, which is a faraway place from my own home in... um... East London. It was round Tottenham-ish way, which is peculiarly awkward to get to from Stratford at the best of times, and even less convenient when you set off confidently for Mansion House and realise that you were meant to be going to MANOR House instead.
So it was that I was slightly late to meet Mr S Hewitt for a delightful PINT in The Finsbury before heading down the road to New River Studios, there to see Prolapse, who have re-emerged from their slumbers to do a string of gigs leading up to Paris Popfest. The venue was SURPRISINGLY NICE - it was in The Trendy Warehouse District of converted warehouses (the clue is in the name) so I was expecting Arsiness and Board Games, but everyone was dead friendly, the beer was nice, and all was well.
Within 5 seconds of being there we had bumped into Mr T Pattison and then Mr D Dixey, but WEIRDLY that was almost THE LOT for People From Leicester, with the slight exception of Dave and Sean from Airport Gurl who, technically, are more Loughborough. At previous Prolapse gigs there have been about 9,000,000 familiar faces from Back In The Day so it was strange not to see so many people this time, although maybe that is a GOOD thing as the gig was SOLD OUT so I guess it was allowing tickets to go to people who WEREN'T going to spend most of the night saying "Ooh do you remember The Charlotte?" and so on.
Prolapse themselves were GRATE as per, with Scottish on ESPECIALLY good form between the songs. He always was dead good at this bit, back in the day - ooh, do you remember them playing the Charlotte etc etc - but MATURITY has refined his abilities even further. It reminded me of seeing Allo Darlin' last year and MARVELLING at Elizabeth's CHAT PROWESS.
The thing that struck me MOST though was that the SOUND was different from previous occasions, with them being mixed like a BAND with seperate INSTRUMENTS, rather than A BLOODY RACKET. Back in the 1990s, when they formed, PA systems at all venues were uniformly AWFUL and soundmen tended to just turn up the bass and drums A LOT. This really really suited Prolapse as the bass and ESPECIALLY the drums are a huge part of their sound, with everything else having a BIG FITE in the background, but last night you could hear all the words and the individual instruments. I'm not sure how I feel about it, to be honest, but INTERESTINGLY it seemed to work best for the two new songs played (which were ACE and also not a sudden new direction!). I believe that Prolapse songs are composed through "jamming", so I guess these new ones will have been "jammed" ON one of these new PA systems, and so maybe work better that way.
Anyway, it was DEAD GOOD as per and made me Quite Excited to hear NEW STUFF, which I believe should be emerging next year. Don't tell Tim I said so (as it will make him insist WE do the same) but I quite like the idea of hearing them do some songs I haven't heard before, and hopefully there will be AMPLE chances so to do!
posted 27/9/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Who's Better - Radio Times or B3ta?
Last year, following my GIG ONE THOUSAND, I unleashed an AVALANCHE OF STATS from The Database Of ROCK, including sales figures, gigs played, people played WITH, and MUCH much more. Should you wish to revisit it you can start with the blog what EXPLAINS it all and then move forward from there. There are LOTS of graphs and tables as it goes along, so prepare yourself for EXCITEMENT!
I mention this because I have recently been looking over a couple of other graphs and tables, this time to do with The Funny Comics Fan Club. Our podcast provider gives us GRAPHS and LOGS of how many people have downloaded stuff, and I have been PORING over it regularly for the past few weeks - entirely for analytical reasons, of course, and not because I CRAVE VALIDATION. I mean, if I DID crave Validation you'd think it would show up somewhere in my ROCK career wouldn't you?
Anyway, it is GRATE, and gives us graphs like THIS:
This shows how many downloads we've had overall for the past 14 days. As you can see there are two PEAKS, which coincide almost exactly with us being featured in The Radio Times and then a few days later us getting a plug in the b3ta newsletter. It's not surprising that we DID have big bumps in downloads on those two occasions, but what DELIGHTS me is that the B3ta Bump is almost as big as The Radio Times one. I mean, one of these is a long-running periodicial very popular with the middle-aged demographic we're looking for - AND THE OTHER IS THE RADIO TIMES - so I suppose they WOULD be similar, but it still makes me happy that b3ta is reaching out to so many people still. WELL DONE EVERYBODY!
This graph is for downloads, but I remain unsure of whether or not it counts if someone STREAMS the show instead. Technically they don't actually download it then, so I don't know if that means it's stored with the provider (e.g. Spotify) or not, and it's not QUITE the same story when you look at the CHARTS. Here, for example, is a graph showing our CHART PLACINGS for the past 14 days.
Now, the MOST exciting part of this is that we got to NUMBER ONE in the Comedy Fiction chart last week (as previously discussed), but there's also something going on with this and the line for the Fiction chart (the lower one). The Fiction one shows a much closer relationship to the earlier downloads graph, with the same very similar bumps for the Radio Times and for B3ta. The upper line, showing our placing in the Comedy Fiction chart, doesn't move around anywhere NEAR as much, which leads me to think that there might possibly be quite a lot FEWER contenders in that one, so there is less competition for places. Maybe. Perhaps?
Either way, it remains JOLLY exciting for all of the above reasons, even if it remains Slightly Perplexing. I'm not 100% sure, for instance, who decided that we should be in those two charts and not 'Religion & Spirituality' or 'Fashion & Beauty', for example, both of which John and I are clearly Thought Leaders in. I also don't know what the relationship is between downloads and streams, or how many people are SUBSCRIBING to us as we go along on these different platforms, or all SORTS of things. I guess this is another of those occasions where, at some point, I'll have to learn more skills, but for now I'm just enjoying the FACT that we're IN these charts. It feels GOOD!
posted 26/9/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Unwanted Skills
This weekend I had to learn a new skill, and let me tell you my friends I did not like it ONE BIT.
The problem was not the skill itself, which was learning how to use a mixing desk to record audio onto a laptop. It was slightly complicated, because the equipment what I had bought came with NO MANUAL AT ALL and so I had to watch a whole bunch of videos, read various webpages, try it out in various configurations and generally think back to all the times I've sat behind either Robbie and Rich at Snug OR Kev Reverb in Stayfree and try and remember what on earth they were doing. Actually, it was slightly more than slightly complicated as I also had to get it to work with a new microphone, and also with Adobe Audition (for REASONS) and also with Microsoft Teams (for OTHER reasons), but it was at least do-able.
The PROBLEM was not any of the above, it was the fact that I really really did not want to HAVE to learn any new flipping skills. Over the years I have had to learn LITERALLY MILLIONS of new skills that I didn't want, and to be perfectly frank I have had just about enough. Several years ago when I was a teenager - maybe even a decade or more ago in fact - all I wanted to do was WRITE WORDS what people would think were clever, and so I had to learn to TYPE. Fine. Then to put these words out in public I had to learn how to use one of them STENOGRAPH machines you used to have with the carbon paper and the turny handle, and then staple them all together into magazines. Then I thought it'd be good to do some sort of PERFORMANCE, as that would involve a chance to SHOW OFF, and so I had to learn how to book a venue, and rehearsal space, and organise people to turn up, and do some sort of directing, and then TELL other people about it. MORE SKILLZ.
After a couple of years I realised that actually being in a BAND was probably easier and would involve MORE showing off and also BEER so did that, which meant having to learn to play an INSTRUMENT. As it turns out, you didn't need to have to learn how to play an instrument WELL, so I didn't, but I did have to learn about how AMPS worked, and PA systems, and LIGHTING sometimes, and also designing posters and flyers, and how to get into gig listings. As time went by we did some RECORDING so I had to learn how all THAT flipping works, and how to do MIXING and then how to MANUFACTURE tapes and CDs and who to send THOSE to to get them on the radio or in shops or on websites.
"Great news everybody", said the Universe around this time, "now there's a thing called the INTERWEB what you can use to do all of this yourself!" This sounded fun, but then you had to learn about SERVERS and HTML and CSS and then WEB PAGES and SOCIALS and OH MY GOOD LORD it just keeps going on and flipping on. Do you need someone who knows the difference between CMYK and RGB? Ask me! Need a slightly wrong explanation about the difference between Mechanicals and Publishing? I can do that! I can also give extremely basic advice on how to EDIT BLOODY VIDEO and then get it onto YouTube and all those as THAT was something that we all suddenly needed to flipping know about.
It makes me feel like I am a VILLAGE HALL filled with a crowd of surly teenagers who have all been sent on a variety of training courses that they didn't really want to go on and didn't properly pay attention to. Some of them have talked to each other and pretty much worked out the basics - Video Editing Teen and Music Editing Youth realised it was all sort of the same thing, for instance, while Gig Booking Boy can fill in for PR & Communications Lad if need be - but it really is quite a LOT of youths in rather a small metaphorical village hall and by this point they are starting to smell a bit, as gatherings of youths often can.
Over the years otherwise perfectly sensible and lovely people have occasionally asked if I would like to use all of these gathered skills/metaphorical teenagers to manage someone ELSE, and my answer has always been to politely say no thank you very much, for two very excellent reasons. The first of these is that although, as stated, I know the basics of all manner of unwanted skills, I am not actually very good at ANY of them, and the second is that I don't LIKE knowing about them and would really rather not have these skills in the first place!
All of which is a very roundabout way of saying I now understand what an XLR is, what 2TK INPUT (RCA) means, and which settings to alter to get the correct CODEC into an audio file. Look out for all of this knowledge being inexpertly applied to a podcast near you soon!
posted 25/9/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Nerd Nite
Last Wednesday myself and The Acts On My Bill went OUT, heading to The Backyard Comedy Club in Bethnal Green for an evening at Nerd Nite London. It was meant to be REVISION as I'm doing a spot there myself next month, but it turned out to be BRILLIANT FUN as well.
We arrived at The Backyard Comedy Club to find that it was Surprisingly Nice, with a big bar, wide range of beer, friendly staff and - perhaps most importantly - REALLY NICE CHIPS. They were lovely! At showtime we went through to the back room which was ALSO really nice, much more spacious and fresh than a usual comedy club set-up, with a mixture of Cabaret Format tables and chairs at the front and several rows of chairs at the back, which all soon filled.
It was a VERY good sign that when the host (who I don't think told us her name) came on everyone stop talking right away. It was also good when she carried on and explained EXACTLY how the evening would go and, crucially, pointed out that though this was taking place in a Comedy Club it was NOT a comedy NIGHT. The idea was that people would talk about their research areas in an entertaining way but weren't aiming to do stand-up comedy, which was a GRATE thing to know going in, and also a GRATE way to run a night because it meant that you got a bunch of enthusiastic people telling you about their VERY VERY INTERESTING research areas without feeling the need to shoehorn GAGS in, which meant that the enthusiasm and excitement and Being Very Interesting could generate their OWN larfs.
And COR but it was all SO interesting. The first speaker was Professor Sarah Hart who explained things like the SQUARE CUBE LAW as it applies to fictional GIANTS and tiny people, done in a way that was a) really funny b) completely clear. I have had this explained to me MULTIPLE times over the years and never really got it but this time I totally did, along with a whole other bunch of stuff like terminal velocity and calories in tiny apples and various other previously unthought of (by me anyway) aspects of fictional characters growing and shrinking. Even better, once she'd finished, there were QUESTIONS. This happened with every speaker and it was BRILLIANT as everyone asked Actual Questions (i.e. not "more of a comment than a question") and the speakers dealt with them Intelligently and also Wittily.
Next was Rachel Coxcoon who gave an amazing explanation of her PhD research around the language used to discuss climate change, the different political groupings that exist in the UK, and how they do or don't communicate with each other. I'm not really doing it justice as it was pretty MIND BLOWING in places, not least when she very nicely and kindly pointed out that although us in the audience might think we were pretty diverse in terms of age, race, gender etc etc, in actual fact we were pretty much all of the same political/philosophical viewpoint, and that this lack of diversity REALLY MATTERS when trying to get across public policy. It was BRILL!
Finally Professor Kevin Murphy talked about the history of obesity drugs and the science of some of the current jabs, which had multiple UNEXPECTED outcomes and results and was similarly REALLY REALLY INTERESTING and followed by Questions. It was basically like going to the best conference EVER with the best AUDIENCE too, as you came out feeling as if your BRANE had had a really good workout, with lovely people sharing their enthusiasms with you.
As you can probably tell, we really enjoyed ourselves and I was EXTREMELY glad that I'd decided to do my revision. All I need to do now is work out how I'm going to match up to these high standards when it's my turn!
posted 24/9/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Top Of The Pops
One of the (many) GRATE things about doing The Funny Comics Podcast is that you get access to STATS! Not MANY stats, but stats nonetheless i.e. you can go to the homepage and click 'refresh' as many times a day as you like to see if anyone new has downloaded one of the episodes. I really like this as it is a gently babbling stream of VALIDATION, although to be honest I'm not quite sure what it actually MEANS. I'm pretty sure it tells you how many people have actually downloaded a FILE of a show, but does it include people who STREAM them as well? Or what?
I'm still not entirely sure, which was why I was OVERJOYED last week to find that there's a whole OTHER page of stats you can access called podwatch that shows our overall CHART position. Sadly for me this only updates once a day, but it does mean I have an Exciting Thing to click every morning, and THIS morning it was VERY EXCITING INDEED, for LO! we were NUMBER ONE!!
NUMBER ONE! The above is a SCREENSHOT as it is a rolling data source, but it is living proof that we hit the top! All right, I know it is not the ALL PODCASTS EVER chart or anything, and that Comedy Fiction is very likely one of the SMALLER charts, though having said that we were ALSO number fifteen in the overall FICTION chart, so it's pretty good all round. This is, I feel, almost entirely due to the FACT that we were in The Radio Times this week, and I'm guessing that we will gently dip down again as that excitement fades into fond memory, but for now I reckon we're going to sit back and enjoy it. Funny Comics Fan Club! TOP OF THE POPS!
posted 20/9/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Back Back In The Radio Times
Yesterday I received a notification from Mr J Dredge that The Funny Comics Fan Club was in The Radio Times. We both reacted calmly to this as veterans of publicising things and, indeed, being in The Radio Times and anybody who said we both SQUEAKED WITH GLEE had better provide the evidence to prove it.
It WAS all rather exciting, to be honest, as not only was this the Actual Printed Radio Times but we were the PICK OF THE WEEK in the podcasts section, writ LARGE in this august journal! I dashed out to buy a copy and I must admit I was STUNNED to see it in ACTUAL PRINT right there in my local shop. It looked AMAZING, as you can see below!
Even more amazingly, that nice Mr David Hepworth (for it was he) had written this entirely without our knowledge. My guess is that this was because he knew John via him being on his and Mark Ellen's podcast a while ago, and so he'd spotted his ACTIONS that way. I did meet Mr Hepworth 17 years ago when he booked me for The Cornbury Music Festival, and though that LOOMS LARGE in my personal mythos I doubt it occupies a similar space in his!
It was all EXTREMELY exciting and John and I made very merry with it on The Socials, while watching our DOWNLOADS gently skip upwards. It was only at the end of the day when I leafed through the rest of the magazine that I suddenly realised that we were ALSO in the Top Ten Shows To Stream section right at the front of the whole magazine!!
ZOINKS! I couldn't believe it, that's US right there mixed in with all sorts of famous people! I tweeted this saying "Great to see The Radio Times supporting the work of one of the sexiest middle-aged male double acts ever! And also Brad Pitt and George Clooney", which I repeat here largely because I thought this was a GRATE joke that does not as yet seem to have gone viral, as surely it should.
The whole experience was pretty flipping incredible - I flipping LOVE The Radio Times and to be in it AGANE, but this time even MORE so, was completely mind blowing! HOORAH!
posted 18/9/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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The Superhero Project
I spent this weekend just gone in EASTBOURNE for the eighth iteration of The Superhero Project, the conference that discusses SUPERHERO stuff. I had a LOVELY time!
I first went a couple of years ago to Super 6 in Germany and had an EXCELLENT time, so I was excited to be back, especially as it was in a location significantly easier for me to get to. The journey wasn't entirely without issue as the train companies REFUSED to sell me a ticket to get there via Ashford International, which is 1,000 times easier than trudging across London to Victoria, and also QUICKER and with less Rail Replacement Buses, but I used NATIVE CUNNING to HACK IN and get seperate returns for each leg. Take That, THE MAN!
I don't think I've been to Eastbourne before and was expecting it to be a bit run down but it was actually REALLY RATHER NICE. It very much helped that the sun was out all weekend, but it also felt quite ALIVE and FUN - sort of like a Brighton without all the Brighton-ness of Brighton, I guess, or a smaller Bournemouth.
The conference itself was GRATE and also dead interesting. Usually when I got to a comics-type conference I have to PORE over the programme to find SOMETHING about superhero stuff or at least something that isn't about a boring "graphic" "novel", but here it was ALL about GRATE things, although interestingly there were hardly ANY presentations about comics. To my shock and horror there were even people who confessed to never having READ comics, concentrating instead on the MOVIES and TV SHOWS, and so I got even MORE new information as I've not really thought of those in the same DEPTH as what I have comics. I think my favourite was one that examined the effect of different aspect ratios on the film and TV versions of "Superman The Movie" which was EXTREMELY interesting and, even better, made me go and watch it again when I got home!
My presentation went down all right, I think, and there were a whole HEAP of questions afterwards, which developed into a general CHAT. Almost everyone there was also presenting themselves, so it felt like a SYMPOSIUM with several IDEAS continuing across the three days. Oddly, one of these IDEAS was a series of references to "Only Fools And Horses", which is not something that has happened at any other conference I've been to. One of my OTHER favourite talks, for instance, got deep into "The Ship Of Theseus" as used in "Wandavision" and I was very relieved INDEED when someone ELSE put their hand up to say "Trigger's Broom"!
It was a great VIBE all round, which also involved quite a lot of SOCIALISING. It turns out that decades of experience doing GIGS is extremely useful doing conferences, as it means i can stay up DEAD LATE and DRINK BEER without too many consequences, although having said that I did almost miss the Conference Dinner because a DISCO NAP got slightly out of control, and I had to run to the restaurant to get there before they starting serving up!
Other than that it all went off really really well, and I even managed to get an earlier train home that WASN'T a rail replacement service! There's not much more you can ask for from a conference than that!
posted 17/9/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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The Funny Comics Fan Club Episode Three: Um Bongo Eco
The third episode of my and John Dredge's podcats "The Funny Comics Fan Club" is out RIGHT NOW, available directly from our podbean site, on all of your favourite podcast sites, also all of the podcast sites you don't have strong opinions about, and also also right HERE:
This time we're talking about "Whoopee" comic, which had some flipping TERRIFC strips in it, including an AMAZING "Frankie Stein" story that proves, once again, that our old pal Umberto "Um Bongo" Eco was totally wrong to suggest that comics exist in a dreamlike state without a past or present. You can listen to my explanation of this on the show and also THRILL to John's DELIGHT in my telling of it. It was the sort of SUBTLE DELIGHT that, I think, is the hugest delight of ALL.
In response to Listener Feedback we've also put SCANS of some of the strips themselves on our SOCIALS, so you can see what on earth we're on about - we're now present on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Bluesky, so you should be able to find us - and even FOLLOW us - on whatever form of The Socials you prefer.
However you gain access I would highly recommend a listen to this episode, as it made ME laugh several times while editing it, and I'd heard all of the jokes ALREADY!
posted 16/9/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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