December 23, 2006
SANTA NEWS
WISHING YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR
Won’t be posting for a while over the Jesus break (not that I’m particularly regular anyway) but just wanted to say I hope you’re as happy as possible and having a good Christmas whoever and wherever you are. Right now I’m putting the finishing touches on my present gathering and making and getting a few bits together for Joe too as we’re celebrating his birthday tomorrow. I’ve got a nice cold beer on the go and I’m watching the Guided By Voices farewell concert on DVD. I’ve had the disc for ages but this has been the first opportunity I’ve had to watch it properly and I’m digging it. Graham Linehan recommended GBV to me years ago and I’ve always kind of liked the idea of them but this year it all properly clicked. They’re kind of the ultimate indie band in many ways. A sort of American Fall but operating within a slightly more accessibly tuneful box. Check out Bee Thousand if you’re not already in the GBV camp, it’s a good place to start what may well be one of your favourite musical journeys!
While I think of it, check out the Minutemen DVD, We Jam Econo (one of the best music DVD’s of the year along with the Pixies loudQUIETloud)and make sure to watch the concerts on the extras. There’s one acoustic TV thing they do just sat on a little riser in a studio playing along with eachother and it’s fucking great. What an amazing band they were. Principled, good hearted quasi hippy types with a foot in punk and a love of the odd and the angular. That’s the ultimate person in my book! Again, if you’re curious the one to start with is Double Nickels On A Dime. Anyway, after a visit to the on stage bar, Robert Pollard is back singing Tractor Rape Chain. What the fucking hell is that title about anyway? Well done Bob! Peace and goodwill to all!!
December 16, 2006
XFM PODCAST NEWS
BEST OF PODCAST SERIES 1 NEWS
The bumper compilation of hi-lights from series 1 of The Adam & Joe Xfm podcasts is now available from the Xfm website or I-tunes. The compilation itself was put together by myself and Joe a few weeks back and we made it just under 74 minutes long so that people could download it then burn it onto a single audio CD then download the specially designed artwork we made with the help of our friend, the ludicrously talented cartoonist/musician Zac Sandler and print out a CD inlay to make a lovely collector’s item/Christmas gift for the comically challenged.
So basically, if you would like to download the podcast and burn a CD from it your best bet is to download each track from the Xfm site where the files are also available individually, all for free of course. Simply download each MP3 and arrange them in order on i-tunes or any CD burning application (not forgetting to set the gaps between tracks to zero for seamless playing enjoyment) and Bob will become your mother’s brother.
In a previous post I had a moan about the technical quality of the uploaded podcasts (I wish we had been able to have chapter points on them etc.) and I think I came across as quite ungrateful for the support and hard work that Xfm have put into the podcasts over the year. Didn’t mean to, I was just sounding off late one night. They didn’t ask me to change the post I hasten to add, I just re-read it and felt a bit gittish. Anyway, Hope you dig the ‘best of’. Time Out call it ‘likeable’ and what higher praise is there than that? Shh, don’t tell me…
December 12, 2006
HAVE I GOT NEWS FOR YOU NEWS
I’M A TWAT AND I GOT BUMPED
So in my previous post I was joking about someone from Never Mind The Buzzcocks reading my blog and getting someone else to do the show instead of me. Well it looks as if someone from Have I Got News For You read it too and decided to take me up on the whole getting rid of me idea. I’ve been ‘bumped’ from this week’s show! That’s right, I will no longer be appearing on the legendary topical gameshow due to the fact that they’ve ‘had to bump the whole schedule around’ before Christmas apparently. They’ve said they want me back in the new year but I won’t hold my breath. Now I’m going to have to watch the show and see who they’ve got instead, then think ‘I am less entertaining than him/her’. Man, it better someone amazing or I’ll be even more depressed.
What a shitty few days it’s been! Cycling home tonight after recording our latest Adam & Joe Coke podcast (should be quite a good one, so for goodness sake download it you disloyal bastards!) I got in a barney with a man on a moped. I ran a red light at the big roundabout on the south side of Westminster Bridge Road and as he was passing me he shouted ‘the light was red! You’re supposed to stop!’ It instantly put me in a rage because I think I’m quite a responsible cyclist and though I do shoot the occasional red light, I only do it if I think it’s safe. Of course, that doesn’t make it legitimate and I guess deep down (well, not that deep) I knew he was right but it made me furious that moped man had busted me, Jimmy Responsible when I bet he would never go yelling at one of those fearsome youths that weave in and out of traffic with horrific disregard for safety! I don’t know, maybe he would.
Anyway, I yelled at him to pull over and asked him what his problem was. He said he was a cyclist too and people like me were giving cyclists a bad name. That made me even angrier because that’s exactly what I think when I see some cycle git lurching across heavy traffic against a red light, but that’s not something I would ever do! I consider my red light shooting an occasional reward, taken only when safe, for choosing an environmentally friendly mode of transport with few other obvious perks. I know in writing that looks like utter hypocritical ball crap and exactly the kind of shite you would imagine a twatty cyclist to come out with but, er, it’s not! I tried my best to put that brilliant point of view across to the moped man but instead got angry and defensive and said that I was not the one giving cyclists a bad name, HE WAS! BECAUSE HE WAS A SANCTIMONIOUS TWAT! He then pointed at the nearby red light and said “There’s a red light, why don’t you run that one too?!” So I came back with: “Yeah, thanks, I will!” So you can see it was a pretty productive summit.
I cycled the rest of the way feeling half furious and half very ashamed. Why can’t I hold my hands up when I’m legitimately busted for anti social conduct and learn my lesson with good grace? Well, it’s because I don’t like being told, that’s why. I’m trying to fix the problem, but I’m afraid nothing I do is going to get me back on HIGNFY. Fuck, I hate being humbled.
December 7, 2006
HUMILIATING TV APPEARANCE NEWS
‘HAVE I GOT NEWS FOR YOU’ FRIDAY 15th DECEMBER 2006, MY BUZZCOCKS HELL & RICHARD & JUDY.
That’s correct, next Friday night I’ll be appearing on the legendary topical gameshow for the first time and it’s safe to say I’m slightly crapping my pants. The last show of this kind I went on was Never Mind The Buzzcocks about 3 years ago and that was no fun at all.
On that occasion I turned up to BBC TV centre around 2pm and was shown to my dressing room, which was pretty nice. It had a bowl of fruit anyway. As soon as I had hung up my ’show shirt’ (a comfy black number that I had come to rely on to disguise my sweaty armpits for TV appearances) there was a knock on the door. It was an assistant producer (or AP!) to take to me to meet my team-mates and the writers who would supply us with jokes for the show. “Put it this way†said the AP, “If I was going on a hot date, these are the guys I’d want feeding me lines. They’re two of the funniest men in Britain so if I were you I’d write down everything they say and you shouldn’t go wrong. I’ve seen people come on the show and ignore that advice and they’ve regretted it. Here we are. I’ll see you in a couple of hours. Have fun!â€
The AP shoved me into one of the hundreds of airport lounge style rooms that line the basement of TV centre and there I found the two funniest men in Britain slumped on a couch alongside my team captain, the extremely genial Phil Jupitus and Midge Ure of Ultravox and Band Aid fame. Midge Ure had clearly been fed the same hoobah about writing everything down and was already frantically scribbling on a pad as the two funniest men watched the videos we were to comment on that evening and threw out amusing quips thereon. It was like being back at school. Every time we heard a good line Midge and I would start scribbling, eyeing eachother now and then as if to say ‘I’m having that one you fucking bastard!’ After a couple of hours of joyless note taking we were released for refreshments before make-up. I decided it was time to hit the booze and had the first of several bottles of Becks to steady my increasingly jangly nerves. Bad move.
By the time we were lead into the studio to take our seats in front of the audience I was a little tooty and very nervous. Even my show shirt was having trouble concealing the rivers of perspiration winding down my arms. Mark Lamarr, who had barely said hello before we got started was scrupulously charmless from the get go and I began to wish I hadn’t agreed to come on the show. Fairly quickly my face set into a petrified gameshow rictus as the team captains and guests unleashed their semi rehearsed quips between unpleasant and occasionally funny salvos from Lamarr, who clearly regarded me with utter indifference. Once or twice I piped up with a couple of bits from my note pad and sure enough, they went down OK-ish. I tried desperately to think of a couple of my own comments but it never seemed the right moment to take the plunge. Anyway, the spectre of a withering rejoinder from Lamarr was too effective a deterrent. I have seldom felt so lonely. Occasionally I glanced over at Midge Ure. I’m pretty sure he felt the same.
An hour into the taping the four bottles of Becks I had consumed were taking their toll on my tiny bladder and I was desperate to pee. I couldn’t concentrate on what anyone was saying. I was dimly aware of Suzi Quatro, sat beside Sean Hughes, sparring lamely with Mark Lamarr and I took the opportunity of whispering to Phil Jupitus “What’s the deal if you need to pee?” “Well, we’re taping as live†he whispered back, not altogether helpfully. I didn’t know what to do. After a while the pain was becoming so unbearable I just put up my hand, hoping to turn my toilet request into kind of a public school joke, with me as the pupil and Lamarr as the frightening teacher. “Please sir” I said “I need to be excused”. Lamarr fixed me with a death glance and spat “you should have thought of that before we started then shouldn’t you?” then continued with his spiel. After a little while he turned to me and sighed, “alright then, you’d better go, but hurry up”.Everything in the studio stopped as I got up to leave. As I did so I managed to kick over a couple of the empty Becks bottles at my feet, which clattered loudly on the stone floor. The noise echoed round the now silent studio as I skulked past the audience to the exit. Once in the toilet I seriously considered just making a run for it. ‘I will never do this again’ I thought as I zipped up my flies and trudged back in to rejoin the party.
So why am I doing it again and on a show that is highly likely to be considerably more terrifying? Well partly because I’m very grateful to be asked when I haven’t been on TV very much at all in the last few years and partly because I feel as if I might not get so worked up this time, having done a few frightening live gigs in the intervening years and building my confidence in the process. Also you get paid to go on these shows and nowadays every little helps. That said, I watched the Lucy Porter on the show last week and although she was great, I could see her wearing the gameshow rictus once or twice and I got terrified all over again. Christ I’m not making a very good case for myself am I? Here’s the really stupid thing though, I’ve also agreed to go back on Never Mind The Buzzcocks in the new year, albeit at the request of lovely Simon Amstell who is now hosting brilliantly but still. Will I never learn? We’ll see. Maybe someone from the show will read this blog and they’ll replace me with someone less neurotic and more funny. Like a tramp.
The best show you can ever appear on is Richard & Judy. I went on there a couple of times to publicise various bits and pieces and each time I was treated like a genius king! You get a very nice goody bag, everybody who works on that show is 100% polite and professional and R&J themselves are so kind, friendly and straightforward that you very quickly relax and end up not only having a good time but being far more entertaining as a result. Also they lay on a really good little aftershow drinks and canapees thingy at which R&J themselves hang out winningly! That clinches the deal for me I’m afraid. If you ever get the call from Dick & Judy, go my friend, go. Still I couldn’t resist screwing about with a round of You Say We Pay in the style of my Bin Laden Tape clip from a while a go, so enjoy and I’ll get back to you after my Have I Got News For You adventure next week!