May 26, 2006
FROM THE ADAM & JOE VAULTS
A&J’S AMERICAN ANIMATION ADVENTURE: RIGHT TOON REPLY
Herewith Right Toon Reply part 1 and Right Toon Reply part 2the 5th of the 6 episodes of this groundbreaking classic comedy series (using the same made up criteria as those 50 Greatest shows.) A reminder once again that you can find out more about the series in the April 2006 section of this blog.
This episode features Seth MacFarlane, the creator of Family Guy, which is a show that divides opinion in the animated comedy fan world. I kind of like it, but sometimes its attempts at subversion are so predictable and smug that I am forced to switch it off and do some swearing. I heard that Matt Stone & Trey Parker, the creators of South Park took the piss out of it in a recent South Park episode, as did The Simpsons so I can’t be the only one who feels that way. And American Dad?! Fuck completely off.
Anyway, we don’t really get bitchy in this episode of our American Animation Adventure. Mainly it’s me doing a character called Louis Goitre who I imagined to be the father of my character Louise (who Adam & Joe Show fans may remember) and Joe being excellent as a channel 4 commissioning editor with an answer for everything. If you work in TV you’ll almost certainly have dealt with someone like that at some stage. The more wound up and passionate you get, the more creepily calm and unflustered they become. It’s a technique designed to make you feel as insane and stupid as possible. Enjoy!
XFM PODCAST NEWS
EXCLUSIVE PODCAST OUTTAKE: RADIOHEAD GIG
As I write, our fourth podcast should be available any minute. People seem to be digging them, although I haven’t read the comments on I-tunes, apart from the nice ones at the top. I’m so excited that we’re in the top 10! We’ve never been in any chart and being right up there next to Gervais, Moyles, The Now Show etc. is making me unaccountably delighted. I’ve no idea how many people actually download the things, I imagine it’s not very many, but still, it’s a chart and we’re in it! If you haven’t yet subscribed, then I implore you to head to I-tunes or the Xfm website and keep my pathetic dreams from crumbling into a poo pile.
I continue to struggle with the business of actually trawling through the old shows for material to go in the podcasts. It seems as if either Joe or I or both of us were bad mood every other week for about 2 years and it doesn’t make for very enjoyable listening. As I’ve said before on this blog, I feel as if we’ve only just started to get into our stride on radio so picking out moments that aren’t totally cringey from the last three years is hard. Plus there’s all the space filling items like some of the competitions and Ditties In The Dock and such that wouldn’t really work on the podcasts.
We’ve continued trying to record a few new bits which we started off doing at my house but the sound quality was quite different from the broadcast clips so Joe suggested we go into Xfm and record a few bits there. Ignoring the fact that we are supposed to be taking a break from Xfm to work on other things we went in the last week and had a good time talking shite for an hour or so. Unfortunately when I got home and started to load the stuff into my computer, it turned out that the mic I was using was inexplicably tinny and totally different sounding to Joe’s. So we’ve ended up with a load of stuff that sounds much worse than it would have done if we’d done it at home. Ho hum. We’ll sort it next time. Perhaps most people don’t mind too much.
The funny thing about recording when you’re not going out live is that my internal bullshit filter apparently fails to activate. Witness this discussion about a Radiohead gig that descends into a sub Late Review monologue from me about the ‘dichotomy at the heart of Radiohead’. Jesus. I think I was thinking about trying to be deliberately pretentious as a joke, and then just forgot the joke part. I won’t be submitting this for podcast inclusion, so consider it a shameful blog exclusive!
Now subscribe! Subscribe! If Russel Brand beats us (as good as he is) I’m going to have to kill some animals.
May 16, 2006
FROM THE ADAM & JOE VAULTS
A&J’S AMERICAN ANIMATION ADVENTURE: GUNBOY
Here we have Gunboy part 1 and Gunboy part 2, the fourth of the 6 episodes in this series for your jaded perusal. In many ways this is my favourite, at least it’s the one that actually makes me laugh more than once when I’m watching it, despite the fact that it’s pretty straightforward stuff. Basically it’s me and Joe doing our bad cockney accents and swearing a lot at all the incredibly sweet and helpful people we meet in LA as we pretend to be two wide boy twats (Mick Knutz and Nick Knox) trying to cause an internet stir with our super-cynical, ultraviolent animation: Gunboy (“He’s got a shooter for a hooterâ€) The voice-over was supposed to be having a pop at the insane intonation surfing favoured by Lisa Ianson on shows like Ibiza Uncovered. In fact it comes over as being a bit annoying in itself. Of course that’s always the risk with the kind of razor sharp satire found in our work…
I forgot until I loaded it this morning that this episode also contains our weird spoof of Madonna’s What It Feels Like For A Girl, the original video for which was directed by Guy Ritchie and featured Ciccone driving around town, mugging, robbing and generally misbehaving in a profoundly risible fashion. The producer of Adam & Joe’s Animation Adventure, Gregor Cameron, had an ‘in’ with Boy George and somehow convinced ‘the gender bending pop sensation’ (as he was known when I was a totty) to take part in the Mick Knutz and Nick Knox version of the video which we called What It Feels Like For Boy George! Ha ha ha ha ha! Come on, it should have worked! Somehow though, it manages to be not that funny, but I’m still happy it exists. And I got to drive around Hampstead dressed as on old woman with Boy George! Heady days.
The denoument of Gunboy in the offices of I-Film used to leave a bad taste in the mouth because I remember being in a horrible mood the day we shot it and my final febrile attempts to steal the TV and subsequent use of the ‘c’ word came from a very real place. We parted on good terms with the chap though, and now I think it sort of works. The midget baseball thing at the very end makes me laugh too, it’s so fucking pathetic.
As I’m writing this a lot of quite good semi glamorous, name droppy memories are coming back to me about this shoot… That the last thing we did for this episode was the interview bit with Joe and myself on the veranda of this lovely house in the Hollywood hills that belonged to a record producer friend of our producer Gregor who was working with Gregor’s hot/talented girlfriend Amanda Ghost at the time. When we finished shooting Amanda and the record producer and all these very attractive LA types showed up and we had a party! A real sexy Hollywood party! At one point I found myself talking to the most beautiful woman I have ever actually had a conversation with. She turned out to be the record producer’s wife though. That sentence seems to imply that if she hadn’t been married she would have been begging me to join her for a nude Jacuzzi session. In fact I’m fairly sure she would because I was being very funny and charming I seem to recall.
At that same party the record producer said that he’d passed a copy of The Adam & Joe show on to one of the Beastie Boys who had watched it with Spike Jonez. Having watched our 20% Free prank (available on our DVD of course!) Spike exclaimed that this kind of homemade pranky stuff would make a great TV show. Mere months later they shot the pilot for Jackass! So you see, Adam & Joe single handedly invented Jackass! I’ve since met Spike Jonez and he didn’t deny it so it must be true! I mean, I didn’t actually ask him if it was true obviously because that would have been incredibly uncool but he didn’t deny it and that, in law is known as ‘lack of denial pointing to it’s true’ or something. OK I’m all name dropped out…
For more on this episode (more?!) and the series as a whole, proceed to the April 2006 section of this site. Next week: Right Toon Reply!
May 10, 2006
FROM THE ADAM & JOE VAULTS
A&J’S AMERICAN ANIMATION ADVENTURE: FANIMATION
This is the third of the six episodes that I’m uploading in a teasingly gradual kind of way as if you were a salivating banana junky and I was the banana king, handing out delicious, rare bananas whenever it suited me! Oh, who am I kidding? All you care about is looking at some pointless random shit on YouTube (although this is pretty flipping good.) Anyway, this episode of Adam & Joe’s American Animation Adventure is the parody of MTV’s Fanatic wherein we get to meet John DiMaggio, the voice of Bender from Futurama. Here’s Part 1 and here’s Part 2. For more on this episode and the series as a whole, proceed to the April 2006 section of this site. More delicious bananas soon!
May 7, 2006
TECHNICAL ADVICE FROM MY BROTHER
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