Blog: More MJ/CJ ACTION

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Today Found Festival have UNLEASHED their full line-up for this year, which excitingly includes me and Chris doing our first MJ Hibbett & CJ Thorpe-Tracey FESTIBAL show! HOORAH!



Obviously I wouldn't stoop to anything so foolish as to check WHERE in the listing we are but if anyone DID feel the need to do something so BANAL they would find that we are bang in the middle of the listing i.e. not at the bottom or in tiny type, which of course means nothing to me and definitely didn't please me inordinately when I double checked. HOORAH!

This announcement comes hot on the heels of a whole DAY of CJ/MJ ACTION, as yesterday I went down to BRIGHTON for some PRACTICING. To be brutally honest most of what we practiced was chatting and drinking tea, but we did manage to squeeze in a few songs too. We kicked off with a go at a proposed cover version (the name of which I shall not mention here in order to maintain the already high levels of excitement and interest) before launching into runthroughs of a whole batch of NEW songs. We started with I'll Fetch Me Book which had been the first song attempted at our first ever practice. That time it had been COMPLICATED, but went MUCH more smoothly this time, partly due to our increased AWARENESS of each other and the OUVRE, and also partly because we took out some of the fiddly bits.

We then did two songs UNHEARD by any human being except each other, starting with one only wrote a few weeks ago called Timewasters. This was originally called "Timewasters Need Not Apply" and then changed to "The Greatest Music" but then Chris suggested that just "Timewasters" was much better, and he was CORRECT. I had been very eager to get this one into our list, despite its very recent creation, as a) I think it is dead good and b) it's the only song I've written specifically FOR this project, so I was relieved to discover that it sounds ACE!

I was similarly delighted with our version of A Christmas Cry, which is about a year old and which I have been DESPERATE to let out into the open. This probably wouldn't go on the actual ALBUM we're making but I really wanted to give it the piano treatment as I thought it would suit it, and I was right, as it sounded BLOODY WONDERFUL. I often get a bit over-excited when we're doing these songs, but in this case I had to stop myself from SCREAMING with excitement at one point, and then realised that I was wafting round Chris's living room PRETENDING TO BLESS ORPHAN CHILDREN as if in a C Richards video, such was my Christmassy Joy. Chris did some AMAZING work on it and put not only FANCY CHORDS in but also - brilliantly - a GEAR CHANGE!

We then went for a well-earned pub lunch before coming back to have a go at ANOTHER otherwise unheard song, Give It Up. I really like the THORT behind this song, but once we had a go it didn't feel to me like it was RIGHT. We had several goes at it, with Chris trying all sorts of ways to improve it, but in the end we had to follow the songs own advice and, well, give it up!

We then had a runthrough of what we'd achieved, recording VERSIONS of everything, before a celebratory spot of BUBBLES, some more tea and chat (and BISCUITS), and then the day was done and I headed off back to That London, full of EXCITEMENT about what we'd done and what we might indeed YET do. It really does feel like this is turning into something Rather Special, and I can't wait for people to get to hear it, whether that be in August or possibly sooner!

posted 12/2/2026 by MJ Hibbett

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