The Last Working Day Of The Month: Issue 14

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(MJ Hibbett & The Validators FACT, March 31st 2006 )

Hello all, and welcome to the FOURTEENTH issue of our FACT FUELLED newsletter. Let's make it HAPPEN shall we?

GIGS TO COME

This month I shall be playing the following places:

Friday April 7th - Wimbledon AFC, Kingston upon Thames, Surrey (with Boo Hewerdine and James Richard Stevens)

Thursday April 13th - The Luminaire, Kilburn (with My Sad Captains)

Sunday April 16th - Fox & Firkin, Lewisham (with Glass People and Alex Gettinby)

Friday April 21st - Red Rose Comedy Club, Finsbury Park (with The Lovely Brothers, Project Adorno, Amateur Transplants, and The Graham Parsnip Liquidiser Torture Think-Tank (Project))

Sunday April 23rd - Hannakin's Farm, Billericay (all day launch gig for Phoenix FM, with Deferred Sucess, Harry Shuttleworth, iDou, Crosstown Traffic, Bird Lane, Dirty Fairies, Cable Street Spy Club, Caleb, Loverock Road, Whoremoan, The Release and Dollset Tones. Starts at 2pm, I'm on at 7.30pm)

Saturday April 29th - Bunkers Hill Inn, Nottingham (with Dressy Bessy, The Radiator Experts and Julian Donkey-Boy)

Monday May 1st (afternoon) - University of Sheffield Students' Union (Fuzz Club BBQ, outside in the garden if it's nice!)

Monday May 1st (evening) - The Victory, Leicester (with The Bobby McGees and Plans & Apologies)


Back back on The Road again - to be followed by a lie-in!

GIGS WE'VE DONE

I've only played two gigs recently - at the start of the month I played the Quad with Winston Echo (ACE) and Mr Chris T-T (INSPIRING) then later that same week went up to Leeds, had a BRILLIANT time and also saw Sarandon, who were ASTOUNDING. Quantity poor, Quality rich!

RECORDS

Much ACTION has occurred here. Tom recorded some extra material with Mr Kev Reverb at the start of the month which has been FOLDED INTO the existing remixes by Frankie, and we're currently discussing the FINAL mixes of (nearly) all the songs. We had a Band Meeting on March 12th where The Pattisons did us PROUD, supplying full conference facilities - you'll see what I mean when the album comes out, as we have pictures of us gathered round the boardroom table. We got a LOT sorted out, not least that the EP is now going to be a Proper Single with two A-Sides, "Better Things To Do" and "Hey Hey 64K".

Yes, "Hey Hey 64K" - we're UPGRADING it! I'm currently writing the lyrics for this new version of the song, which we're going to record on April 9th. The full story is as follows: I was contacted by a chap from a toy company who make joysticks loaded up with Commodore 64 games who wanted to use "Hey Hey 16K" to advertise it. I was a bit wary about this, as it seemed like we'd be CA$HING IN on all the goodwill from that song for the sake of a product which, really, it has little to do with. So instead of that we're going to RE-DO it in a way that a number of people have asked for over the years, get Mr Rob Manuel Of B3ta involved to make it a Whole New Thing, and hopefully make it into a thing of BEAUTY.

The plan is to release the single "Better Things To Do/Hey Hey 64K" (with "The other Rush Hour" and "Leave My Brother Alone" as b-sides and still with the six "Zipcodes" songs on the multimedia) in late June and then follow that up a couple of weeks later with the album, "WE VALIDATE!". We've got distribution sorted out now through the very nice people at Proper Distribution so it'll be available on Amazon and, in theory at least, in the shops (you'll probably have to get them order it for you there though), and we're planning to go on a full TOUR around July 21st. We're going as a BAND this time, which is rather exciting, and we're hoping to visit a bunch of places we've not been to before - more news next time!

Our deadline for getting everything finished is April 13th, when we play in Kilburn, so at the moment most of us are hunched over our computers - Tim's doing the artwork, Frankie's sorting out the mixes, I'm working on the multimedia bits, and emails are FLYING across the ether. If it all actually DOES get done by the time we play that gig I may even get a ROUND in, who knows?

RADIO

The only news this month is that Phoenix FM got their full time broadcast licence - it's about time!

OTHER THINGS

There's two new tracks over at http://www.myspace.com/mjhibbett - my version of "Fly Me To The Moon" and "Tell Me Something You Do Like" from the new album. This is the first outing for ANY of the songs from "WE VALIDATE!" so I'm quite nervous about what people will think - see what you reckon.

The only other item of interest is to warn you that there's a webpage redesign on the way. http://www.mjhibbett.com has had the typewriter look for about seven years now and though it's very nice it isn't the easiest site to link to or add to. The new version will be a lot simpler with a LOT more features and existing bits UPDATED. It should GO LIVE shortly before the single comes out, and it's looking GOOD!

Right then, that's enough for this month - see you next time!

Cheers,

Mark

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