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Blog Archive: January 2009
Up To DateI've been feverishly UPDATING webpages today. There's a couple more gigs over on the GIGS page, including LONG AWAITED (NB by me, if nobody else) returns to the fine cities of Brighton and Cambridge. I'm rather pleased with how the gig listings are looking - late last year it was all London London London, but now it looks a bit more out and about, especially if you SQUINT at Croydon. Which, I believe, many do.
I also realised that I've not put any gigs on the MYSPACE for ages, so have now DONE so. I've also added yet ANOTHER new song to the NEW SONGS section. It's Data Storage Thing, which is the song for an advert I mentioned yesterday. I DID change the words, after a DELIGHTFUL detour into the PUB with Mr Flowers last night, but then woke SUDDENLY ALERT this morning, realising that I'd not changed everything I needed to, so found myself at 8.30am shouting "Faster than a 10 year old in a stolen car" into a microphone, just to get it sorted out. Which it now is.
PHEW! After all that, I think it's time for a bit of a lie down!
posted 28/1/2009 by MJ Hibbett
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The Giddy Whirl
I don't know why, but suddenly it's ALL GO around here. LOADS of stuff seems to be kicking off ready for My Exciting Life In ROCK at the Leicester Comedy Festival the weekend after next (that's February 6 and 7, tickets here if you fancy it). Yesterday I did a phone interview for 10 Days, the festival newsletter, and this morning I did one with The Leicester Mercury. Posters have just gone up there for the venue, and AMAZINGLY we've already sold 25 of the 40 tickets for the Friday night! OK, and only 1 for the Saturday, but still, ot actually looks like someone might turn up!
Meanwhile preparations for the ALBUM continue apace, with FEVERISH activity going on to sort out the multimedia sections. I'm also in the process of trying to sort us out a Press Plugger type - pardon me for saying so, but I think our current promotions team (me) hasn't done too badly on the radio and interweb side of things, but we've never really got very far with The Traditional Print Media and, as the album sounds so GRATE, I thought we'd try and have a proper GO at it this time. Watch this space for RESULTS!
And besides all of THIS - and also on top of my Actual Day Job, which is suddenly HUGELY busy - I've finally managed to have one of the songs I've written to order USED! It's for a internet advert, I think, and it should be finished soon, but first I've got to re-write some of the lyrics... TONIGHT. It turned out that referring to actual real BRAND NAMES in the lyrics might be a bit DODGY, so I need to make them less SPECIFIC, and I need to do it before tomorrow morning. YOINKS!
Luckily I'm off now to meet Mr C Flowers [Cocks, The Fighting] for a BEER. I'm sure that'll be FINE, won't it?
posted 27/1/2009 by MJ Hibbett
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User Interface Proposal
Cor, that was a GRATE weekend of ROCK that was, culminating yesterday in a trip out to The Hangover Lounge so see Mr J Jervis on his birthday as well as, it turned out, roughly 45% of the entire Indie Community of London. It was LOVELY!
But today it is Monday and so we must turn our heads to the Serious Business of ROCK. As (i think) reported previously we're just starting to sort out VLAD FACTS, the OFFICIAL Validators Magazine (you know, as opposed to all those unofficial ones), the first issue of which will be including in the multimedia for the next album. It's going to have LOADS of stuff on it, and Producer Pattison has suggested we have a section where CONSUMER QUERIES are answered. I think it is a GOOD IDEA, and so I ask you this:
Do you have any questions re. The Validators that you would like answering? This can be pretty much ANYTHING and does not have to be restricted to the next album, just so long as it's vaguely connected to one of us it is FAIR GO. THUS, we'd be very grateful if you could add it to the COMMENTS below or, if you're on the mailing list just email me on the newsletter email address, and we'll try and sort it out!
posted 26/1/2009 by MJ Hibbett
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A Preposterous Tale
I ZOOMED off to London Bridge last night to go and see I,Ludicrous. It all seemed a bit, well, LUDICROUS before I went - they were booked to play on a four band bill, one of those you get at the Bull & Gate and places like that, where each band was just starting out and was expected to bring their own audience. One of those gigs that everyone plays to start off with...but surely not when they've been going over 20 years, are proper famous, have released loads of GRATE records, done Peel Sessions and STILL get played on the radio, toured with The Fall, influenced THOUSANDS and... well, ARE I,LUDICROUS?!?!
I got there to find that they weren't even listed on the poster - maybe i HAD made a mistake. "That's wrong", said Will Hung, lead singer, as he passed me on the stairs, "we're on in 10 minutes". PHEW!
I got myself STAMPED, went to fetch a pint, and then found Mr J Higgott, who'd told me about the gig. We went upstairs to find it, if anything, even MORE ridiculous, in that there was almost NOBODY there! What was going on? I've said it before, I'll say it again, but here were I, Ludicrous, playing at 8.40pm on a Saturday night to about NINE people!
They played and were FANTASTIC. They've recently expanded to a three piece with a bass player, so it was even MORE ROCK than usual, and there was EVEN MORE dancing. It sounded TERRIFIC, especially "Trevor Barker" which was suddenly EXTRA RELEVANT. They were THRILLING to watch, sounding AMAZING, and it only made the whole situation seem more BIZARRE.
Downstairs Jeff and I discussed this, until the band came over to say hello - Jeff knows them and indeed does their WEBPAGE. They all seemed happy and unbothered, and when I politely asked what was happening (i.e. i DIDN'T leap up and down going "BUT... WHAT THE??!?!") they just said they'd got an agent who'd booked them this gig, and that really they only did gigs when people ask them. I tried REALLY hard not to come across like some kind of LOONIE and/or end up offering to book them a tour, and I think I just about managed it, but as we came away I couldn't help thinking this was RONG. There's so many GIGS in That London, and so many pointless bands PLAYING them, surely it can't be right for a LEGEND like I,Ludicrous to do things like this? It is a RONG which must be RIGHTED!
posted 25/1/2009 by MJ Hibbett
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The June Brides
The Station On My Tube Map and I headed off to distant Stoke Newington last night, on a train containing a band who SEEMED to be from Germany. COuld it be S/T, the second of the two bands on tonight, we wondered? They didn't get off at Stoke Newington, so we assumed EITHER no OR they were horribly lost and we should have asked them.
We arrived at the venue - The Others, hidden above a snooker parlour - to find S/T had just soundchecked. RELIEF. The foreign seeming band DID however turn up later on, which was slightly unnerving.
Anyway, The Others was a LOVELY venue, it had the air of early 90's organised bohemia that I remembered from, well, from the LAST time we were In Recession. Much like The Magazine back in Leicester back then, it was clearly somewhere that had seen better days but was being run by lovely people with a PURPOSE. There was an open call for ARTISTS, RUGS and SOFAS all over the place, and all it really needed was a "Women Of History" poster on the wall and free condoms in the toilet to make it IDENTICAL.
We were there to see Mr Phil Wilson play with a combination of his new band and his old, The June Brides. We met he and Mrs Pam Wilson in THE VIP AREA (well, it didn't have a signs saying so, or a velvet rope, but i reckon that's what it was) and were soon joined by Dandelion Radio's ROCKER. He said he was off afterwards to see Gregory Webster DJing, and I said that we'd only been In Recession for a few hours and ALREADY the 80's indie popstars were coming back. Actually I said this several times in the hope that someone would say "AHA! Excellent joke Hibbett!" and am, indeed, doing so again now.
Soon it was showtime, with Phil, his new band, and THREE other June Brides taking to the stage. They were FANTASTIC, especially, rather excitingly, when they did some of the new stuff, and ESPECIALLY especially when they did "I Own It", which is my FAVOURITE. It was a huge powerful show of ROCK, also TUNES, and by golly there were a LOT of Gentlemen Of A Certain Age And Inclination who were REALLY enjoying it. It was FANTASTIC.
Afterwards we sat around and had a bit of an old chat with the many and various delightful TYPES who were there, during which I told Rocker about the album "Drunken Trees" by First Aid Kit, what I'd just got (and which I am listening to now, it's ACE). He WHIPPED a gadget from his inside pocket and said "Note to self: First Aid Kid album." We were AWESTRUCK - he had a DIGITAL DICTATION MACHINE! It even had a USB PORT! WANT!
Then it was S/T who were GRATE - totally mesmerising PROPER Krautrock, absolutely brilliant stuff which seemed to happen at high speed and make you blink and suddenly realise you'd been watching, grinning, NODDING for half an hour without realising.
Soon however it was time for us to head for the train, bumping into Tony The Manager (of Prolapse in days of yore) on the way out, which was a bit odd as I was a) surprised and b) in a DASH. I'm off to see I,Ludicrous tonight, ANOTHER band from the last Recession, i wonder who I'll bump into THIS time?
posted 24/1/2009 by MJ Hibbett
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Frankie Says
Like any Organisation with a strong core team, it is VITAL for The Validators to COMMUNICATE, and goodness knows we have been doing THAT a lot for the past week or so, primarily about the running order of the new album. We thought we'd got it all sorted out until we gave rough copies to a few people, just to check that it all sounded OK.
To be honest the MAIN reason was just to let SOMEBODY here it, as I'm all of an excitement about it and would really just like someone to say "It's GRATE!" so I can bashfully agree with them. What I wasn't expecting was that the first responses, from TWO respected sources (The Facts On My Factsheet and Indie Troubador Mr Pete Green) would be EXACTLY the same - that we should have Being Happy Doesn't Make You Stupid as the first song. It was completely unprompted on both counts, and so a bit STUNNING that they'd BOTH say the same thing.
This led to the aforementioned WEEK of debate as I tried it out and became VERY PERSUADED, while Tim argued FERVENTLY for keeping Red Black Gold as the opener and Tom CONSIDERED the issue and came down on the side of Tim. Frankie did not contribute as he was on holiday in MEXICO - Tim was in Mauritius at the time too, THUS, as he says, we are like DURAN DURAN. In that respect at least.
THORTS and IDEAS have thus buzzed around like NOBODY'S business, until the aforesaid Frankie returned and LAID DOWN THE LAW. It's not the first time it's happened this way, on several occasions inter-Validator wittering has been ENDED by his firm hand, but once he had spoken I think we all knew the game was up. Officially we're waiting for Tim to return to the UK and have a LISTEN, but I think we may be making the big change.
That is, of course, unless Emma breaks her silence and DEMANDS we make it IT Guy Addendum.
posted 22/1/2009 by MJ Hibbett
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Charlie's Birthday
After an invigorating walk through Farringdon The Gait Of My Walk and I arrived at The Dry Bar, proposed venue for the night's gig, to find it suspiciously quiet and closed - so closed, in fact, that we weren't even sure it WAS a venue. I rang Mr C Flowers, whose BIRTHDAY DO it was, and discovered that I'd taken us to the wrong place, and that it was ACTUALLY happening at The Camden Rock in... er... Camden.
I think it originally WAS at The Dry Bar, when first we booked it, but it must have changed without me noticing. We HOPPED onto the tube and were soon in the CoRRECT place where we found Cracktown soundchecking. There was CHAT, there was BEER, and then George Death went on and was GRATE, full of witty songs and REMARKS. He's the man who taught Charlie to play guitar, it's HIS fault!
Charlie wanted INSTANT changeovers, so i BOUNDED on stage to get set up. Charlie introduced me and I thought "Aha! If i did a COMEDY PRATFALL at this point it would be HILARIOUS!" and just as I was thinking how I could do this I ACTUALLY tripped over and went flying across the stage, to great AMUSEMENT. Me, i am a NATURAL at the slapstick!
Anyway, that HOMAGE to Norman Wisdom completed I got on and did THIS:
It was a whole LOT of fun, people seemed to get RIGHT into it, especially when we got to the Joining In Bits towards the end, and nobody seemed to mind that Man Band was a bit shakey. I've never played it live before, but thought I ought to as it's ABOUT Charlie reaching an age (ever nearer) when he's going to form a Man Band. My favourite bit though was introducing Bands From London (are shit) by saying Charlie and I first met when he threatened to kill me, and half the room saying "Me too!" ARF!The Peterborough All-Saints' Wide Game Team (Group B)
The Gay Train
Bands From London (are shit)
Man Band
Being Happy Doesn't Make You Stupid
The Lesson Of The Smiths
Easily Impressed
Boom Shake The Room
After that it was Cracktown, who were dead good as ever tho even MORE talkative than I remember from gigs in Hull. It was lovely to see them and, INDEED, a lovely night all round, and I made my way out into the Camden Night full of the joys of ROCK. It's good to be back On The Road again!
posted 21/1/2009 by MJ Hibbett
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ACTION weekend of ACTION-packed ACTION
I must say it's nice to be in work today, i need a REST after the WHIRLWIND of FRENETIC ACTION over the weekend.
On Friday I went to distant KINGSTON (S.London, not Jamaica) see an ART SHOW by a Challenging Young Artist called Tom Smith. Who is my BABY BROTHER. The main bit is a guitar AMP (mine!) balanced on some beer crates (my idea! I was so proud!) with, hanging off it, a delicate mechanism with a pen prodded against a sheet of paper, which is itself miked up. The idea, apparently, is that the noise of the pen writing gets amplified, so noise comes from the amp, which shakes the paper, so the pen writes something, the noise of which gets amplified... And so on and so forth BUT the pen never actually DOES start writing, it only has the potential to do so. Which did lead my Mum to ring me on Saturday morning to ask whether it was properly switched on, "Nothing seems to be happening", she said. "I think that's the point... I think."
ART of a slightly more ROCKY persuasion was the order of the day for the rest of the weekend, as I set to work on Dinosaur Planet. FIRED UP and FULL of ideas from our meeting the other day I re-jigged Nobody Believed It as Operation Ignore It And Hope It Goes Away to make it fit better and then went on to write not one, not two, but THREE brand new songs! KER-ZANG! They all sound pretty good I must say, and fit into the NARRATIVE what I have writ. I've gone rather rapidly from being AFEARED about whether this was AT ALL a good idea to being EXCITED. It's going to be GRATE - well, I think so anyway, you can see for youself on the New Songs page.
And in amongst all THAT there was various and sundry other activities on the album cover and booklet, as well as a BIG NIGHT OUT. Myself and The Font Of My Text headed out to distant PUTNEY to meet a couple of my oldest pals in the WORLD to go and see Mr John Otway. We had a FANTASTIC night, as we usually do when seeing these people, but ESPECIALLY so with a MAGNIFICENT set from Mr Otway. It's far FAR too long since we last went to see him, and it feels like even longer since I've seen him with the Big Band. They were FANTASTIC - honestly, if you're ever feeling a bit fed up then you can do NOTHING better than to go and see him do a gig. We came out with GRINS all over our faces - SUPERB!
posted 19/1/2009 by MJ Hibbett
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Constant Revolution
ve now got the LATEST version of the new album on my iPod - featuring more tambourine, ukelele, SEGUES and, perhaps most excitingly, a NEW version of The Music Of The Future for Do The Indie Kid - and I must say it is sounding RATHER GOOD, also NEARLY FINISHED.
HOWEVER, do not think we are grinding to a halt on the ACTION front, there is PLENTY going on. And not just for the album either - although, GOODNESS ME, it is a FRENZY of activity working on the packaging and EXTENSIVE multimedia section - for LO! last night DINOSAUR PLANET made a GRATE STRIDE towards becoming reality.
As with most of the best things in life this occurred in THE PUB, where my colleague Mr Hewitt and I met to have our first Proper Meeting. During this we decided on a VENUE (the same as last year), accomodation (the same as last year), SHOWTIME (one hour later than last year) and Length Of Run (4 days more than last time). It was MIGHTILY FRUITFUL. We also agreed that the proposed appearance at this year's Brighton Fringe would mark the end of My Exciting Life In ROCK (for now at least), and that we'd probably kick off Dinosaur Planet at the Southend Fringe.
PHEW! It was a LOT of Decision Making, and will mean we're quite busy getting all that sorted out. But surely, you must be asking, you've got to HAVE something called "Dinosaur Planet" if you're planning to parade it around like this? Well, YES, we DO got to have it, and BY GOLLY we very nearly DO. I've been vaguely thinking about the PLOT since last summer but have always got a bit bogged down with the BACK STORY, also for some reason having LARA CROFT be in it. There seemed to be a LOT of saying "ah, but then he PUBLISHED the academic paper?" and not enough FITES with DINOSAURS. Also, precious little EXPLOSIONS.
HOWEVER on Wednesday night I had a sudden BRANESTORM and had to even get out of BED to write it all down. This was followed by a MAD RUSH of THORT on Thursday morning which resulted in me pretty much working out the WHOLE THING. I am happy to announce that this almost entirely NEW version of Dinosaur Planet features not only INSIGHT, RICH CHARACTERISATION and FASCINATING SCIENTIFIC SUGGESTIONS, but also LOADS of FITES with DINOSAURS and GIANT ROBOTS. And a NUCLEAR BAZOOKA!
I'm rather pleased with it I must say, it does appear to make NARRATIVE SENSE and there's ample opportunity to stick songs in. I've got FOUR lined up already, "Don't Make Me Work In The Real World", "We Are The Giant Robots", "Don't, Darren, Don't" and "It's Not Nice To Eat Your Friends", with Nobody Believed It (in slightly rejigged form) and of course (theme from) Dinosaur Planet already in the big. HA! That's halfway there already, writing epic science fiction ROCK OPERAS is PEASY!
posted 16/1/2009 by MJ Hibbett
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RIP Princess Charlotte
News reaches me that LEGENDARY ROCK VENUE The (Princess) Charlotte is probably going to be closing down in a couple of weeks which, I reckon, is MUCH bigger news than the crappy old Astoria being flattened. BOTH venues were foul smelling with disgusting, ludicrously priced beer, but The Astoria was one of TENS of places like that in London, whereas The Charlotte was the only place of its kind in Leicester, and it DIDN'T employ arsey security staff to push people around.
The heyday of The Charlotte was when it was The PRINCESS Charlotte, when it had two proper BARS seperate from the actual gig venue. It meant that you could pop in for a pint (usually on the way to The Magazine) and see who was around, and if anybody interesting was playing. When they knocked through it meant you'd NEVER just happen to be there, and it also meant there was nowhere else to go if the support bands were rubbish. None of this would have been so bad if you could actually SEE. The MAD thing was that they never moved the sounddesk, which completely blocked the view of the stage from most of the venue. This meant they could sell more tickets, but that most people who'd paid to get in couldn't actually SEE. They also left the toilets up near the stage, so you had to either HANG ON or know about the SECRET DOOR to the room upstairs, where there were more.
I'm slagging off the downstairs bit, I know, even though it's probably where I've played MORE gigs than anywhere else - we did LOADS as The Council and as Voon that aren't in The Database Of ROCK, just because I was usually to DRUNK to write down when they'd been - but it's the upstairs room that I'll really miss if the place does shut down. This was where they had the Acoustic Nights that we'd occasionally go to and feel Rather Uncomfortable at, and where we put on several gigs ourselves, but MOSTLY it was where RAZZLE and it's successor The Tube Bar used to happen. These were the clubs run by TURK, aka Turk From Prolapse (not IN Prolapse, but nearly) and he'd play, basically, the playlist of Stuart Maconie's Freak Zone with slightly MORE TV Theme Tunes, slightly LESS avant jazz, and a HUGE amount more Tony Christie. We we looking for the way to Amarillo YEARS before Peter Kay.
I went and had a look up there last year, when we supported Half Man Half Biscuit, and just the SMELL of the room was overpowering - in a very different way to how the SMELL downstairs often was - with MEMORY and GOOD TIMES. The upstairs room hasn't really changed since I first went up there twenty years ago and, in a way, I'm still doing gigs up there with Totally Acoustic, albeit in a different city.
So yes, somewhat mixed emotions, falling largely on the side of sadness, which is rather a lot more than can be said for The Astoria!
posted 15/1/2009 by MJ Hibbett
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Back On The Road Again
I was a bit nervous before last night's Totally Acoustic, as it was my first gig in FOUR WEEKS. I was so nervous I even PRACTICED! I know!
I arrived to find Mr E Munro and Mr S Hewitt, who pointed me in the direction of Nichole and Ree a.k.a. Orange Nichole. Much to my relief they turned out to be lovely, and we had a chat about customs control (they'd nearly been turned back, and had to persuade the Apparently Chatty customs guy that they weren't doing Professional Concert Appearances) and WALES, before it was time to head upstairs and start setting things up.
People gradually started to arrive, with an unusually LARGE number of people who'd come from afar - part of the IDEA of doing the gig early is that it means people can come from further afield and still get home, but it's never been taken up as much as LAST night, with Ray (Stourbridge en route to MOROCCO), Jon (Basingstoke, celebrating his birthday) and Jeff (Ipswich) all making long journeys. Thanks chap!
One person who DIDN'T arrive for AGES tho was Ben, a.k.a. Superman Revenge Squad. He arrived five minutes before I was about to GIVE UP, and my panic was such that i think I made him feel a bit GUILTY about it. Sorry chap! I was EXTREMELY pleased that he did make it though, as he was FANTASTIC and totally won over the entire room with his CUNNING and EXTREMELY WORD-FILLED songs, he was amazing. Loads of people seem to be tipping him for GRATENESS, and the reason for this is that he is GRATE.
As indeed were Orange Nichole, tho in a rather different way, as they came on and CHARMED everyone with a succesion of lovely songs, delicately played, ooh, it was smiles all round!
And then, after the BEER break, it was my turn. As I may have mentioned, I'm VERY excited about the new album, which would go some way to explaining why i did THIS:
Apart from the first and last ones it's an abbreviated run-through of the ALBUM, with >Where Do All The Women Go To? done because I listened to it the other day and a) liked it then b) realised it was THEMATICALLY SIMILAR to All The Good Men, which ALSO went down pretty well. It was a RELIEF to do so much new stuff (some BRAND NEW) and have it go down OK, especially as I'm going to need to do it LOTS when the album comes out!(theme from) Dinosaur Planet
Do The Indie Kid
Where Do All The Women Go To?
All The Good Men
Being Happy Doesn't Make You Stupid
My Boss Was In An Indie Band Once
It Only Works Because You're Here
IT Guy Addendum
We're Old And We're Tired (and we want to go home)
Easily Impressed
That done there was BEER, there was CHAT and then a stroll/train home. It was a BRILLIANT way to start out what will hopefully be a MIGHTY year in ROCK!
posted 14/1/2009 by MJ Hibbett
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Executive Production
The final section of the ascent of MOUNT ALBUM continued last night, as Producer Pattison was back in the studio, this time with Mr R Newman (engineering) and Mr T 'The Tiger' MacClure (making sure nobody deleted any violins). When I was a younger person I'd often wonder what the difference was between Engineer and Producer, but now of course I know full well - the Engineer turns things up and down and while the Producer drinks beer/coffee/tequila, and reads magazines. Sometimes he will pop to the shops for some crisps, although Phil Spector, I believe, had someone to do this for him.
The real mystery, however, has always been the role of Executive Producer. Surely, I used to think, this is a vanity title given to a long serving record company boss, or occasionally to a celebrity who they wish to have associated with the resulting work? HOW WRONG I WAS. It turns out that the Executive Producer does pretty much ALL THE WORK.
Take last night for instance. While Producer Pattison was lounging around in the comfort of Snug Studios, Derby, leafing through Empire Magazine and occasional barking orders across the room the Executive Producer (ME) was TOILING away in the East End of London. It may have LOOKED like I was re-heating last night's curry but ACTUALLY I was poised, PANTHER-LIKE, for THE CALL that would come from The Midlands. Sure enough the phone rang, and i LEAPT into action - Tim had not taken the most recent copy of The Spreadsheet Of Finality (the final final final list of Things To Do with the Penultimixes) and needed me to log on, download it, and read it out to him. This I did - some would say TERRIFICALLY, but I am too humble to pass such judgement.
PHEW! ALBUM SAVED! I managed to keep this level of INVOLVEMENT up all night. For instance, it might have LOOKED like I was sat in bed watching Doctor Who (series 4 is EVEN MORE GRATE than I remember! HOORAH!) but I was actually THINKING HARD THORTS about how we might do the album booklet. And yes, though TECHNICALLY I had gone to sleep LONG before Tim, Rob or Tom packed up for the night, i DID leave my telephone on, should they need me. I think.
posted 13/1/2009 by MJ Hibbett
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Question Time
To finish off last week's STAT ATAK, there were a few questions that require answers. Allow me to slip on dressing gown, slide into an armchair with a decent brandy, and answer them as follows:
I am indebted to Mr Jon H who asks "Cleator Moor Validators in a Flat???? What business do you have knowing about the one horse Cumbrian town, and home of my Grandparents?" My dear Mr H, the term "Cleator Moor Validators" is used to describe the version of The Validators consisting only of Mr T Pattison [drums], Mr T "Tiger" MacClure [violin] and myself. A little while ago the three of us played a concert in Cleator Moor which was so eventful/amazing/drunken that we took the name to describe us ever more. The full description is HERE. It was a night that will live on in our personal legends FOREVER.
Next, Mr Ray K asks "how come the only 2 places counted as seperate that are in the same county happen to be in the West Midlands? Have i rumbled a That London-based conspiracy against the fine county of my origin?" This would indeed have been a shocking act, if true, but fortunately there are wholesome reasons for this apparent discrpenacy. Stourbridge gets its own code in the DATABASE OF ROCK because it's somewhere I've played LOADS of times and is an allied but DIFFERENT place from Birmingham or The West Midlands as a whole whereas LONDON gigs are usually of a pretty LONDON-y nature. I COULD re-code them as happening in "Camden", "Brixton", "Bloody Shoreditch" and so forth if I wanted to but, to be honest, I can't be bothered. ALSO, as shown in the longer list of ALL places I've ever played gigs in, there's LOADS of places that share counties with each other but are coded seperately in the DATABASE OF ROCK, it's just that I didn't play them in 2008.
And finally, Mr Dan H (any relation to Jon, I wonder?) remarks "So, there are approximately 556 people on your mailing list, for whom you have postcodes". Yes, Dan, there are! EXCELLENT MATH!
I hope that's a) answers all your questions sufficiently and b) satisfies anyone's lingering need for CYRIL FLETCHERISMS, though if anyone has any further queries do please ask!
posted 12/1/2009 by MJ Hibbett
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Weekend/CHARTS
You find me back at work REFRESHED after an DELIGHTFUL weekend, the highlight of which was a trip myself and The Ram And My Ram-A-Lam-A-Ding-Dong made to MILE END, for a mini-Voon reunion, to celebrate Dr Brown's birthday. We went to The Palm, which is a GRATE pub anyway and would have had a FINE old night of it even if a JAZZ BAND made up, it seemed, entirely of pensioners who had JAZZED IT UP the first time around and never stopped, hadn't kicked of next to us and been AMAZING. You know in films where people go out for a quiet evening and get involved in KRAZY GOOD TIMES? It was like THAT. Brilliant!
... although, I must say, Sunday morning was LESS fun. It reminded me what Sundays were like when Voon were going full tilt and LUDICROUS EXCESS was par for the course. Still, I did manage to get it together enough to record that Two Beatles song, do some work on the album booklet, and make a - i have to say - FANTASTIC curry. It all helped me feel better!
As, INDEED, did THIS! It's the Poptimists Tracks of 2008 and we're in at NUMBER TEN! HA! Who cares about not being in The Festive 50 eh?
(answer: US, but let's not go on about it, even DEEP WOUNDS will heal if they're left alone. MELODRAMA.)
It's a rather lovely thing to happen - all right, yes, I have a pretty clear idea of PRECISELY who voted for us, but the debate AFTERWARDS about whether we should be allowed in with all the pop/R&B stuff is GRATE, especially when I am referred to, even if in a slightly roundabout way, as the ASTERIX of Pop. YES PLEASE!
posted 12/1/2009 by MJ Hibbett
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The FACTS
Phew, after all those STATS there's been little time for some actual NEWS... mind you, there's not actually BEEN much news but still, what there is is HERE:
ITEM! Work on The Album continues, as ongoing negotiations between The Producer and The Record Company reach, for now, an amicable solution. I think The Song Suite is IN, though there may be a fight to come about "IT Guy Addendum". In the meantime I'm busily working on the BOOKLET which will come on all CDs as a PDF and, for the lucky first hundred or so to BUY a copy from direct from us, as an Actual Real BOOK. It'll have credits, lyrics, chords, photographs, sleevenotes and - most excitingly of all - FUN FACTS!And that's the FACT at present time of speaking. On Monday, it's ANSWERS!
ITEM! Our version of "Glory Days", destined to be on a forthcoming Bruce Springsteen compilation from WIAIWYA, may need some adjusting. Apparently THE BOSS doesn't like people messing with his lyrics which, you could argue, is precisely what i DID by translating them into English. Hopefully I'll be able to do this at the start of February when we do the Album Mastering.
ITEM! Talking of compilations, we sent off our version of "House Of Fun" for that French Madness Compilation before Christmas - they were going to have a Listening Session to check that all the contributions so far were OK. Either they haven't had a chance to do it yet, or they didn't like it and are too polite to say so!
ITEM! Over the weekend I'm also going to be recording a yet ANOTHER cover version for a compilation in aid of The British Lung Foundation. This is a SLIGHTLY different affair than the others though - have a look at the original to see why!
ITEM! It's Totally Acoustic again on Tuesday, with Orange Nichole and Superman Revenge Squad. If you fancy coming that'd be GRATE! The NEXT one, with Tim Eveleigh and Bob Fischer, has MOVED though, it's now on February 24th not February 17th. Please re-diarise accordingly!
posted 9/1/2009 by MJ Hibbett
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STAT ATAK: MISC
And so we draw the STAT ATAK to a close for another year. Before we do though, I'd just like to mention that if anybody has any QUESTIONS, either about issues raised by these statistics OR INDEED any other aspect of The Validators, do please leave a comment on the end of this post. I've got a couple of queries already, so I'm going to do an ANSWERS session on Monday - if you've got a BURNING THORT let me know by close of play Sunday in this fashion and I shall attempt to SORT IT OUT.
Anyway, back to some FACTS, starting with an old favourite, MONTHS we played gigs in:
FASCINATINGLY this both reinforces and DEFIES certain ideas I have about when I play most gigs. I've always known that October is SUPER BUSY, as that's when everyone is back from holidays (school, college or just holiday holidays) and it's not too cold for FUN. Similarly I was very aware that January and February are always quiet because everybody's too busy doing CHRISTMAS to organise anything, and that March is extra busy because people START organising stuff for then when they come back from Christmas holidays. What surprises me, however, is that there's no appreciable JUMP for December, which i've always thought of as busy, and that July and August are some of the busiest weeks GOING. I always reckoned on that being PRIME SUMMER when the students have completely run out of money so nobody puts any gigs on, but CLEARLY i was incorrect.
All this talk of GIGS leads me to wonder - who's PLAYED at these 72 gigs I've done this year? Let's have a VLAD FACT!
Validator Activity 2008
Tom - 11 gigs
Tim - 11 gigs
Emma - 9 gigs
Frankie - 7 gigs
Cleator Moor Validators are GO! In Real Terms this means we played only SIX gigs at full strength, two as a four piece, three with just three of us and two in DUOS. The other FIFTY NINE i did all on my lonesome! This, i feel, may well be a different story next year, when we is hopefully ON THE ROAD.
And finally, we've had our names so let's have a look at the names of people on the mailing list, JUST FOR A BIT OF FUN. Here's the top 30ish first names:
1: Dave/david (29)
2: Andy/Andrew (28)
2: John/Johnny/Jon/Jonathan/Joni (28)
4: Cris/Chris/Christophe/Christopher (24)
5: Mark (22)
5: Paul (22)
6: James/Jamie/Jim/Jimmy (20)
6: Steven/Stephen (20)
8: Bob/Rob/Robbie/Robert (15)
8: Dan/Daniel (15)
10: Mike/Michael (15)
10: Thom/Thomas/Tom/Tommy (15)
12: Ian (12)
12: Mat/Matt/Matthew (12)
14: Nic/Nicholas/Nick/Nico (10)
14: Pete/Peter (10)
16: Anthony/Antony/Tony (9)
16: Gary/Garry/Gareth (9)
18: Phil/Philip/Phillipe (8)
18: Tim/Timothy (8)
20: Alex/Alexander (7)
20: Catherine/Cathy/Kat/Kate/Kath/Katherine/Kathryn (7)
20: Jo/Joe (7)
20: Martin (7)
24: Ben/Benjamin (6)
24: Lee (6)
24: Ricardo/Rich/Richard/Ricky (6)
24: Sam/Samuel/Samy (6)
24: Stuart (6)
24: Will/William (6)
Some pretty STOUT names there, I think you'll agree. INTERESTINGLY my own name WAS joint first with Paul until I factored in alternate spellings, when the fact that both names can only really be changed by adding a "y" at the end meant they lost out to the Dave/Davids, the Andy/Andrews and the many and multiple versions of John and Chris. Also of note is the fact that there's hardly ANY ladies' names on the list - there ARE women on my mailing list, honest (18.3% of people on the list are female), it's just that names for girls are a LOT more varied. Mind you, in twenty years time pretty much NOBODY will share a name with anybody else, in my Proper Job we do a lot of work with BABIES and GOODNESS ME but they have some funny old names!
Anyway, that's your LOT for pre-planned STATS for this year - but if you've any questions, FACT me!
posted 8/1/2009 by MJ Hibbett
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STAT ATAK: How Many?
Today we're doing the NITTY GRITTY of COMMERCE - here's the Top Twenty Selling ITEMS that we've released:
| ITEMS | % |
| WE VALIDATE! | 14.17 |
| Shed Anthems | 9.87 |
| This Is Not A Library | 9.65 |
| Warriors Of Nanpantan | 9.61 |
| Say It With Words | 8.95 |
| Milk & Baubles | 6.32 |
| The Lesson Of the Smiths/The Gay Train | 5.92 |
| Hey Hey 16K T-Shirt | 5.57 |
| The Uberset | 5.26 |
| A Million Ukeleles | 4.08 |
| Better Things To Do | 3.77 |
| It Only Works Because You're Here/My Exciting Life In ROCK | 2.94 |
| Do The Indie Kid | 2.76 |
| Ukelele T-Shirt | 2.67 |
| Born With The Century | 2.46 |
| All Around My House | 2.11 |
| A Church Hall Of Sound | 1.8 |
| Clubbing In The Week | 1.14 |
| I VALIDATE! T-Shirt | 0.96 |
| Xmas Gig Ticket | 0.04 |
OK, a LOT of things to say before we ANALYSE. First of all I've NOT included sales via digital distribution largely because I'm MONTHS behind with logging it in The Database Of ROCK because it's so finickety and complicated, ALSO because It'd be a top SEVERAL HUNDRED of sales because so much is done by a song by song basis. Secondly this only goes back to 2003, when This Is Not A Library came out and I started keeping track of such things. Finally, I've shown sales figures in terms of percentages just because it felt, well, SLIGHTLY VULGAR to do the raw figures. Any MATH LOONS can probably work it out though!
With all that in mind, what do we see here? Personally I'm EXTREMELY pleased to see WE VALIDATE! is so far out ahead of other comparable albums, having had less time to sell itself in, although it has to be said that a) This Is Not A Library sold OUT a couple of years ago [re-release still pending, to be considered once I've paid for the NEXT album!] and b) Say It With Words may well have sold more than BOTH of them, as ALL the sales logged there are from at least two years after it was first available. We shall never know.
It's also worth noting that recent singles haven't really done very well in Physical Sales. To be fair to Do The Indie Kid it WAS on 7" vinyl, which most people simply can't play, and it DID do pretty well on downloads, but I have to admit I was a bit disappointed by how few we shifted of It Only Works Because You're Here, especially as it's my FAVOURITE. Still, it's a clear message to our MERCHANDISING DEPARTMENT: Proper old-fashioned EPs, with NEW stuff on them, will still do all right, but who in this day and age wants to shell out for a CD with just one or two new tracks on? I don't _think_ we're going to be putting out any more traditional singles, not from THIS album anyway, but I've got all sorts of ideas for VIDEO SINGLES to try and promote individual songs in more TWENTY FIRST CENTURY ways.
But I digress. Suffice to say, Albums Good, Singles Not So Good and T-Shirts Depend On The T-Shirt themselves. I mean, goodness me but the Hey Hey 16K t-shirts have certainly shifted, but the others (especially the I Validate tour t-shirts) have been slower to move. Look out for some COMBO DEALS on old t-shirts and the new album when it finally comes out, there's SHELVING I'd like to reclaim!
Right then, after all that POLICY DISCUSSION tomorrow will see the final STAT ATAK looking at everybody's favourite category: MISCELLANEOUS!
posted 7/1/2009 by MJ Hibbett
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STAT ATAK: Who?
Today we're having a look at our MIGHTY MAILING LIST: the lovely people who are interested enough in our activities to sign up for the newsletter. First up, where IS everyone? GRAPHS!
Not really any surprises here, as usual England is WAY ahead of everywhere else, probably because that's where most of my gigs are. But look at the other two big places - for somewhere with only a TENTH of the population and a TWENTIETH of the Hibbett Gigs that England has been BLESSED with, Scotland is pretty well represented. And look at The US of A - ONE gig ever, but it's got the second largest Validators FANBASE in THE UNIVERSE! Why on Earth we've never been chased by the giant American corporations and FORCED on a tour of Hawaii i will never understand.
These figures show only the GLOBAL reach of our organisation, of course. Let's take a look at just the UK, and see whereabouts on our fair islands these people are:
As you might expect, our HEARTLANDS are the places we live in, London and The Midlands, but there does seem to be a surpisingly good spread, with an understandable DIP in Wales, which we have NEVER ventured into (though if anybody would like to have us, I'd LOVE to play Cardiff... especially if it's near TORCHWOOD) and NOBODY liking us in Northern Ireland! I should say, this bit is based on people whose POSTCODES I have, so there's a few people who are in the UK whose postcodes I don't have, but not many.
In fact, let's USE those postcodes a bit more shall we? To finish off here's a TABLE showing precisely WHERE everybody is in the UK:
| City | Percentage |
| London | 20.94 |
| Leicester | 5.96 |
| Sheffield | 5.42 |
| Nottingham | 3.61 |
| Birmingham | 3.07 |
| Derby | 2.53 |
| Brighton | 2.35 |
| Hull | 2.35 |
| Cambridge | 2.17 |
| Manchester | 1.99 |
| Cardiff | 1.81 |
| Glasgow | 1.62 |
| Bristol, Leeds, Edinburgh, Warrington, Oxford | 1.44 |
| Ipswich, Kingston Upon Thames | 1.26 |
| Stoke-on-Trent, Swindon, Exeter | 1.08 |
| Liverpool , Coventry, Motherwell, Carlisle, Bath, Reading, Stevenage | 0.9 |
| Tonbridge, Blackburn, Southampton, Aberdeen, Norwich, Twickenham, Chelmsford, Halifax, York | 0.72 |
| Hemel Hempstead, Harrow, Gloucester, Stockport, Lincoln, Huddersfield, Telfrod, Clywd & Gwynedd, Canterbury, Wakefield, Bradford, Wolverhampton, Doncaster, Oldham, Milton Keynes, Northampton, Shrewsbury | 0.54 |
| Plymouth, Walsall, Bournemouth, Redhill, Blackpool, Salisbury, Cleveland, Newcastle Upon Tyne, Colchester, St Albans, Worcester, Chester, Peterborough, Dudley, Dundee, Sutton, Southall, Slough, Guildford | 0.36 |
| Ilford, Perth, Paisley, Southend-on-Sea, Bolton, Wigan, Bromley, Croydon, Northern Ireland, Dorchester, Torquay, Lothians, Luton, Enfield, Falkirk, Durham, Dartford, Portsmouth | 0.18 |
Now, this DOES tally quite nicely with GIGGAGE, as we can see from the tables last week. The top chunk especially is pretty much what you'd expect with the bottom being, basically, a long list of places I clearly haven't played ENOUGH. The only slight oddment is CARDIFF - I've NEVER played there and yet there it sits at number 11, above lovely GLASGOW which I've inflicted myself upon SEVERAL times. I think this is the main lesson of today's SCIENCE: get thee to CARDIFF Hibbett!
posted 6/1/2009 by MJ Hibbett
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It All Starts HERE
Right then, I'm sat back at the WORKSTATION (whoo! work! yippee!) and ready to ROCK. Today is the REAL start to the year i reckon - the Christmas Decorations are coming down, the Christmas/New Year period is FINALLY finished (ending triumphantly for us with a LOVELY trip down to Cornwall at the weekend) and we're all back to work with beautifully BLANK diaries, ready to be filled up with GOODNESS.
If all goes to plan it's going to be a BIG and BUSY year round here. The new album is SO nearly finished that it is AGONISING - we're not booked in to do the final mastering on February 7th, which means it should hopefully be OUT by May, with GIGS t follow. I had a listen to some of it again this morning on the way to work , it sounds BRILLIANT, honest!
The SHOW of My Exciting Life In ROCK will be happening some more, at the Leicester Comedy Festival on February 6 and 7th, then hopefully in Liverpool, Southend and Brighton. I'm thinking of maybe doing a FINAL performance in That London before it all gets packed away ready for the NEXT show...
... Which will of course be Dinosaur Planet! So far I have a theme tune and... Er... That's about it, but there's plenty of time to get THAT sorted out, right?
I'm also going to have a go at finally sitting myself down and writing THE BOOK - that is, the one I was going to write a few years ago which didn't happen and turned into the aforementioned Edinburgh Show. I've got the new first chapter in my HEAD and a pretty clear idea of the second half, as it'll be basically what's IN the show, but need to do a bit of work on the early bits. The show contains nothing from before 1997, largely because the Pop Art BLOG that it was partly based on started then, so I need to go WAY BACK to get some of the other stories sorted out.
And with that in mind, when the BLOG returns TOMORROW we'll be going back - WAY WAY BACK - to 1982, to the very START of My Exciting Life In ROCK and The Masters Of Nothing. I'm really looking forward to doing these stories, especially when we get to VOON in a few weeks. LOTS of stories there!
And on top of all that I'm still going to be trying to write some songs for ADVERTS (if only so I can continue to get ANNOYED when I see the final versions on telly with OBVIOUSLY INFERIOR songs attached) and am going to try and do WRITING-style-WRITING for places like Maps Magazine and, really, anyone else who'd like me to do it.
WHOLE LOT OF ACTION, I think you'll agree - it's going to be a GRATE year, I reckon, and it all carries on tomorrow with a return to STATS! STATS!
posted 5/1/2009 by MJ Hibbett
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STAT ATAK: What?
Happy New Year one and all - all does INDEED seem to be very quiet around here today, WELL DONE BONO, although I have to say things were very different overnight. I was woken from my slumber - it must have been around MIDNIGHT or something - by EXPLOSIONS and SHOUTING. I've checked on the news pages, but nothing seems to have been noted. What on EARTH could have been going on?
Anyway, today we're looking at WHAT was played during all these gigs, so here's the TOP THIRTY songs I played this year:
No MASSIVE surprises at the top of the chart - it's THE USUAL from gigs, rather heavily WEIGHTED towards the songs that appeared in My Exciting Life in ROCK. That said, I AM slightly surprised to find that even The Lesson Of The Smiths was only played at three quarters of gigs, and that the next few only managed to be in around 60% of them. It FELT like I was playing pretty much the same set wherever I went this year, but maybe I mixed it up a little bit more than I thought?
Also of note is that FIVE of the Top 30 are songs from the new album, which BODES well, and that there's oddments like (theme from) Dinosaur Planet LURKING near the bottom. And who know I played "Back For Good" FOUR times this year? NOT ME.
But how has this CHANGED over the years? Let's see the ALL TIME (well, since 2005 When Records Began) TOP 41!
It certainly LOOKS like I've been mixing the songs around a LITTLE bit more, and you can also see the difference My Exciting Life In ROCK has made to the RANKINGS, especially pushing up some of the newer songs. But OH! Look at some of the old favourites that have pretty much DISAPPEARED from the setlists of today, like Never Going Back To Aldi's or Things'll Be Different (when I'm in charge). I used to play those ALL the time but now, hardly EVER.
And talking of songs hardly EVER played, JUST FOR FUN, let's have a look at the songs I've only played ONCE. There's a LOT of them, so first of all here's the songs what I wrote that have made a SINGLE appearance in the past four years:
Dinky Doo
Dinosaur Planet
Everything's Turning Out All Right (everything)
Good Cooking
Hell On Earth
Hey Hey 64k
Honey Honey You Work Too Hard
It Isn't Jetpacks
Never Been Superstitious
Nobody Believed It
Praise The Traffic Warden
Save A Meadow
The Ballad Of Alan Moore
The Mystery Train
The Story Of My Life
We Can Start Having Fun
We'll See What We Can Do
Where Do All The Women Go To?
There's some PROPER old favourites in that list - Good Cooking, Praise The Traffic Warden, We'll See What We Can Do and Where Do All The Women Go To? used to be STAPLES of the live set at the the turn of the century, and now they're reduced to mere CAMEOS. I must dig some of them out of the BRANE again! Some of the REST of the songs, especially those from off of A Million Ukeleles have never really had their CHANCE in The Live Arena, whilst some of them... Well, some of them are unlikely to be heard in the open ever again.
And with that in mind, here's a list of the COVER VERSIONS which I inflicted ONCE and ONCE ONLY upon a delighted/surpised/APPALLED (delete as applicable) Universe:
All Of Me
Ask
Brickbat
Country House
Do They Know It's Christmas?
Don't Dilly Dally On The Way
Dress Sexy At My Funeral
Friday 13
In The Rain
I've Just Seen A Face
Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue
St Swithin's Day
The Last Of The Gang To Die
Theme From Sparta FC
To The End
Walking In A Winter Wonderland
Who's Sorry Now?
Wondeful Christmas Time
World Without Love
And that's the FACT for today - I'm away for the weekend from tomorrow morning, so our next STAT FACTS will be, hopefully, on Monday. I'll be back at WORK then - whoo - so in keeping with the theme of EARNING we'll have a look at how the SALES went this year. Early indicators show that they were SOMEWHAT in line with The Economic Downturn!
posted 1/1/2009 by MJ Hibbett
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An Artists Against Success Presentation