Hey ho hoo ha lu la! Back from my holidays and feeling quite blue at the impending closure of another Summer but cheered by gig shaped thoughts.

I did the Popcorn night at Notting Hill’s Tabernacle a few months back and enjoyed it very much. It feels like a wedding reception in a lovely cross between a small concert venue and a fancy village hall (but better than that sounds) so I’m looking forward to going back there and doing about an hour of laptop based bits and pieces that will probably be along the lines of me showing some videos (mostly new-ish I hope), reading out some You Tube comments and singing the odd song. Whatever I do is likely to look a little slipshod after Tim Key and Rufus Hound with whom I share the bill along with compere Carl Donnelly, but I’m going to try my guts out, I promise you!

Book tickets and read the hyperbolic preview HERE

BUG AT THE NORWICH PLAYHOUSE, 8PM, THURSDAY 9th SEPTEMBER 2010

Both the BFI shows for BUG 21 on Thursday 16th September at 6.30pm and Friday 24th September at 8.45pm are now sold out but don’t forget, it’s always worth phoning the BFI box office (0207 928 3232) on the day of the show as last minute tickets often become available.

If you’re round my woodneck next week then come along to the wonderful Norwich Playhouse on Thursday evening at 8pm for our 5th Norwich BUG. I bumped into a fellow yesterday who’d dragged his girlfriend along to the last one and had this to say: “We got in there and she saw the programme with all the details of the videos on it and she thought, ‘oh god what’s this? It looks really boring’ but in the end she loved the whole night. You’d just never get to see things like that otherwise really.” I paraphrased a little and possibly made the fellow sound more goofy than he actually was, but you get the idea, and that’s typical of a lot of comments I get from people after their first BUG. It sounds as if I’m saying ‘don’t worry if you’re a bit simple and you fear art, you’ll still have a good time!’ but actually I’m saying something more profound that I refuse to explain. Come along though. We can have talk about the Labour leadership election in the bar afterwards. Or not.

Book tickets for BUG at the Norwich Playhouse HERE

BUG AT THE GREENWICH FESTIVAL, 5PM, SUNDAY 12th SEPTEMBER 2010

BUG festival shows tend to be a little more ramshackular even than the BFI shows which themselves, seldom shy from shackle ramming. As with last year’s Greenwich show, this should be a mix of my favourite Bug videos of the last 12 months as well as the odd serving of semi fresh steaming mash from my own rusty pot. Apparently we’re in a big tent this year, which is great because I’m a very in-tents person. That’s the kind of top class intellectual word play that’s got me where I am today: sitting in a field, updating my blog and noticing that I partly sat on a fresh cow shit. See you soon, I certainly hope!

Book tickets for BUG at the Greenwich Festival HERE

I’m wary of being evangelical about Apple. Their products have transformed my life and enabled to me to have a huge amount of fun making my stupid crap but they’ve also siphoned off a large part of my income and given me back and eye problems, although they can’t really be blamed directly for those. The Apple Store makes me salivate though, I can’t help it. It’s almost as bad as the loin stirring that goes on in M&S when confronted by giant cardboard pictures of ladies in pants with big smiles. And those tubs of flapjack squares. I loathe myself for being so predictable. For that reason, I’m holding off on the i-Pad as long as I possibly can. Say, a month, maybe even two.

Here’s Steve ‘Big’ Jobs trying to persuade the rebel alliance that they need one.

Incidentally this came out of something I started working on about 4 years ago. I thought it would be a good idea to create an entirely new audio track to go with Star Wars Episode IV so that you could download it as a podcast and listen to it along with the movie, thereby not infringing any copyright. That’s why I haven’t added any other elements to the picture and left it unedited. I know that this is something people have kind of done with MST3000 style talk along podcasts recently and of course sections of movies are dubbed on You Tube all the time but I wanted to do something insanely ambitious and build up a whole alternative soundtrack with new dialogue, music and effects, as well as sections of DVD commentary, foreign language tracks etc. Needless to say I never finished. So far I have created new ridiculous audio effects for about two thirds of the film and revoiced about three scenes. For one section Joe came round and pretended he was an old special effects guy from Pinewood, which was pretty funny in parts. One night Julian Barratt and Rich Fulcher came over and I forced them to have a go too. Julian played some crazy electric guitar stuff over the dog fight scenes and Rich pretended to be George Lucas for a while but we’d had a lot of wine and tortilla chips and the project got away from us a little.

Recently I had a look at everything I’ve done so far on Star Wars: A New Audio (as I was lamely calling it) after hearing that the brilliant St Sanders was doing something vaguely similar with Bladerunner. I was thinking perhaps I should try to finish, but the moment seems to have passed and Star Wars tinkering is so widespread it’s hard to add anything new to the genre. Plus, to bring it back to the i-Pad again, I keep thinking, what’s the point? My time might be better spent writing a new film than carefully laying semi amusingly inappropriate audio fx over someone else’s film!

When I start writing my film, here’s the software I’ll use.

BUG NORWICH 04, Thursday June 10th 2010

BUG is returning to the lovely Norwich Playhouse on Thursday 10th June. The show starts at 8pm and will consist of a selection of the best music videos we’ve shown at the last few BUGs in London as well as a few extra nuggets from my own rusty locker. I’d love to see you there and share a fizzy beer in the bar garden after the show, so do come along.

You can buy tickets for BUG Norwich 04 on Thursday June 10th here

Cheery hoo ha bye.

Love Adam

Hello there. Just before new year’s resolution: post more bollocks on this blog. To kick off, here’s a picture of me and Spike Jonze at the BFI Southbank after I interviewed him about Where The Wild Things Are at The Apple Store in Regent Street on Saturday 5th December 2009. It was a really exciting day, as you may be able to tell from my special slightly-too-smiley smile.

Photograph by Linda Nylind

Listen to the podcast of the Spike Jonze interview HERE

I thought Spike might appreciate a break from the kind of indepth Q&A’s he must usually get and decided instead to read him some of the comments the You Tube trailer for Wild Things has accrued which I copied into photoshop for the audience to see. I’ve been doing the You Tube comments thing at BUG for a couple of years now and I’ve done it with my own clips at the odd live gig too and it’s always fun. I’m thinking of ways to do it on You Tube too so the whole process comes full circle. Anyway, here are the comments I used for Spike for you to enjoy at your own pace.

Luckily Spike had a sense of humour about it as I imagined he would and he seemd to enjoy himself as much as I did although upon listening back to the podcast I was a little shocked by how inarticulate I was at times. I was nervous and interviews are not my forte but still, I don’t think Mark Kermode concludes his critical musings by saying ‘…and stuff’ as much as I flipping do. Also it takes a while for me to get the ball rolling and it seems an age before you hear Spike do anything but breathe and chuckle. When he was finally allowed to speak however, he was as engaging and candid as I’ve seen him in front of an audience and though our conversation never got particularly indepth there’s some interesting moments I think.

One of the things we mention briefly is the time in 2003 that Spike and I found ourselves reading through the script for The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy for our friend Garth Jennings who was vaguely considering Mr Jonze as a possible Ford Prefect. Below is a brief clip of us reading through a scene for the first time, which Spike decided to punctuate by slapping me hard on the face. It doesn’t look like much in the video but as I say in the podcast I was genuinely shocked albeit a little excited at having been slapped by Spike Jonze.

Another thing we mention in the interview is the video for UNKLE that was cut from the skate video Fully Flared that Spike worked on with Ty Evans. It’s pretty explosive stuff! (That’s a funny thing to say because the video involves explosions so I’m using the word ‘explosive’ both literally and metaphorically. Not bad eh?) Check it.

That’s enough Spike news.

Go and see Where The Wild Things Are though, I thought it was lovely!

Adam 14-12-09

As I write there’s a few tickets left for both nights of the music video forum I host at the BFI Southbank and I’m very keen that you, a real, warm, intelligent, compassionate human being book them rather than some block booking from a production company who then fail to turn up having prevented you, the compassionate ones from getting tickets, resulting in great swathes of free seats in a supposedly sold out show which as we all know is a problem far greater than climate change, the credit crunch or any other of today’s so called ‘issues’. If you’ve never been to BUG before, please come, it’s one of the few live things I do and easily my favourite. I really think it might cheer you up and after the month you’ve had, you could use it! If you’ve had a really good month and you’re feeling emotionally robust you can go and see The Invention Of Lying instead.

You can book tickets for BUG 16 on Thursday 22nd starting at 8.45pm here

Or you can book tickets for BUG 16 The Directors Cut on Friday20th starting at 6.20pm (and featuring mostly the same content as BUG 16 but without the director interview and with a few extra sprinkles) here

WONDERIN’ DIRECTED BY TIM POPE

In the meantime here’s a video for Neil Young directed by Tim Pope, my charming guest at BUG 15. I suggest you spend a long time watching his vids and reading the accompanying anecdotes on his excellent website here. Tim is perhaps best known for his great Cure videos but amongst a huge amount else he has for a long time been a trusted Neil Young collaborator and though he’s ended up making vids for some of Young’s more outré material (and by ‘outré’ I do of course mean ‘stinké’) he always gets something unexpected and often hilarious out of the grumpy old genius.

The video for Wonderin’ below is from 1983 when Young had just released Everybody’s Rockin’, an album of doo wap pastiche that Geffen (his label at the time) decided was not what Neil Young fans wanted or expected to hear and sued him for being ‘unrepresentative of himself’. Incidentally that kind of twattish behaviour from Geffen was apparently what convinced Michael Stipe that REM should sign with IRS records and not Geffen. Here’s a review of Everybody’s Rockin’ that looks more kindly on it than perhaps it deserves but makes the point that looking back ‘through the lens of time’ (!) there are things to love about this crappy and bizarre detour, not least the superbly demented performance that Tim Pope gets out of Neil for this vid.

BUG 12 on March 19th is already sold out but BUG 12 the Directors Cut (the same show minus interview but with additional music vids and joy added) still has a few seats available as I write this. As usual the show takes place at London’s wonderful BFI Southbank, starts at 8.45 and features a selection of interesting, unusual and brilliant music videos along with the occasional very short film and some random bullshite from the mad, mad world wide web. In between I drink beer and make asinine comments.

Our inaugural BUG at the Norwich Playhouse a couple of weeks back was a lot of fun with a really good, varied and enthusiastic crowd turning up for the show and staying for a drink in the very cosy Playhouse bar afterwards. I hope we’re going to do be doing more in a few months time and will of course keep you posted in my semi efficient way. Hope to see you in London though.

In the meantime you can book tickets for BUG 12 The Directors Cut here

I seem to be more or less living in the BFI Southbank and spending a lot of time asking you to pay to come and see me, but as I haven’t had a bad night there yet, I hope you won’t mind if I do it again. After our 6 Music show this Saturday afternoon I’ll be hosting a special screening of Choking Man, the new feature by pop video titan Steve Barron. Apart from the pop promos, Steve has quite a bizarre feature filmography that includes Electric Dreams, a well received version of Pinocchio and the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. Check out Siskel & Ebert kicking the Turtles here, ouches!

I haven’t seen Choking Man yet but I hear it’s very different from his previous films, very much an indie feature about ‘a morbidly shy Ecuadorian dishwasher toiling away in a New York Diner’, which blends ‘psychological drama and magical realism to encapsulate the contemporary immigrant experience in America’. Check the trailer here. I’ve only heard great things about it and if it has half the imagination and visual invention of some of Steve’s wonderful music videos from the 80’s, it should be a smash.

Speaking of music vids, I think the plan is to show a few of Steve’s favourites from his own mighty cannon as part of the Q&A after the film so it’s going to be a visual treat-a-thon! I’m also going to have to ask him about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles too I suppose, and I may dig out a few You Tube comments on some of his vids depending on how robust his sense of humour seems to be…

The Choking Man screening and Q&A starts at 3.50pm on Saturday. You can book tickets here

Here’s some vintage Barron fun to keep you going til Saturday. Hope to see you there.

This Friday’s Out Of Focus Group is now sold out but if you’re up for catching me as Famous Guy as well as Alabama 3, Irvine Welsh and others next Tuesday evening, come along to the Bookslam in East London. If the weather’s good it should be like an amazing barbecue with interesting people and a twat dressed in a flightsuit pretending to be American. If it rains it’ll be more or less the same but inside. Details and tickets here.

A reminder that I’m doing a show at the BFI Southbank on Friday 4th July. It’s early (about 6.10pm) so you can come along and still have your Friday night ahead of you. I’ll be doing a few bits of live stuff including Famous Guy and showing a few video bits some of which may be familiar, some not. It’s the first time I’ve done this kind of show in a larger venue so I’m excited to see if it’ll work!

you can book on line for Out Of Focus Group at the BFI website here or call 0207 928 3232.

Contrary to what I’ve said before there seems to be no seat allocation this time round, so you can sit where you like on the night.

As well as my contributions I’m expecting to be joined on the night by:

Arnab Chanda

Tony Law

Jo Neary

Will Adamsdale

Fat Tongue

I really hope you can come along. Now I’m off to pack my bags for our 6 Music stint Glastonbury. Unfortunately Joe still isn’t well enough to make the journey too so Garth will be helping me out again. Maybe see you out in the mud for Vampire Weekend on Friday afternoon!

Herewith details of several new BUG dates, as well as a few live appearances I’ll be making in comedy mode. Hope you can make it to one or two.

OUT OF FOCUS GROUP @ BFI SOUTHBANK, FRIDAY 4th JULY 2008, 6.10pm

I’m really excited about this and I think it’s going to be a good night so do get in there early with ticket bookings. I used to do these at The Zetter Hotel for a fairly tiny audience and I’m looking forward to trying it out in a larger venue. Basically it’s around 90 minutes of live comedy from myself and guests, interspersed with bits of video I’ve made. For our inaugural BFI Out Of Focus Group there’ll be a bits and pieces from previous shows as well as brand new stuff, all taking advantage of the top quality audio visual facilities at the BFI.

NOTE: The show has now been shifted from a smaller cinema to NFT 1, the biggest auditorium where we do BUG. If you’ve booked tickets already and wish to check on your new seat allocation call 0207 928 3232. Apologies for the fannying about. You can also use that number to book tickets if you haven’t done so already or;

you can book on line for Out Of Focus Group at BFI here

As well as my contributions I’m expecting to be joined on the night by:

Arnab Chanda

Tony Law

Jo Neary

Will Adamsdale

Fat Tongue

so I really don’t see how you won’t dig at least some of it a lot. I hope it will be the first of many such nights, albeit on a not particularly regular basis.

BUG 08 @ BFI SOUTHBANK THURSDAY 31st JULY 2008, 8.45PM

BUG 07 a couple of weeks back was a compromised hoot. The good parts came thanks in no small part to Dougal Wilson, our special guest and latest victim of my idiotic steamroller interview style. At one point Dougal related an anecdote about having been in the audience at a previous BUG when the chap sitting next to him started slagging off ‘that Douglas Wilson’. “I think you mean Dougal Wilson. That’s me actually” said Dougal to his deeply embarrassed neighbour. Well, it turned out the same chap was in the audience again and we got him up on stage to give Dougal a hug and bury the hatchet. As Dougal is about 6 foot 5 and this chap was about my height (and I’m the size of a tall hobbit), it was a bizarre but oddly delightful sight. Dougal is currently looking after award for best sport at BUG so far!

The bad parts of the night were due to an insurmountable problem with the sound that all but ruined a few of the videos we showed, most tragically the new video for Flight Of The Conchords, which is at least 50% about the lyrics. It was desperately frustrating for us to say nothing of our audience. It’s the only technical hitch we’ve ever had at BUG and everyone’s confident it won’t happen again but if you were there that night, I do hope your night wasn’t ruined for that reason. If your night was ruined because of me I’m still sorry, but I can’t really guarantee that won’t happen again.

You can book for BUG 08 here.

Here’s a wonderful film we sneaked in at the end of BUG 07 that I think withstood the crappy sound. It’s called ‘I Met The Walrus’ and although it isn’t strictly a music video it features the words of John Lennon and it’s amazing so we hoped no-one would object to us including it. The story behind it is that in 1969 when John and Yoko were in Toronto as part of their bed-in for peace tour, a 14 year old Beatles fan with a tape recorder called Jerry Levitan knocked on every door of the hotel where he knew Lennon was staying until he found him at which point Lennon was good enough to give him a 40 minute interview. The tape of the interview gathered dust for around 35 years until Jerry Levitan met a young animator called Josh Raskin whose work impressed him sufficiently for him to allow Josh to make a film to accompany an edited section of this Lennon tape. The result was nominated for an Oscar this year but remarkably few people I talk to about it have actually seen it. Enjoy.

ADDENDUM I failed to mention the vital contribution to ‘I Met The Walrus’ of illustrator James Braithwaite. But now I have. Click on his name, his site is both acey and spacey. But not Kevin Spacey. He’s here running through some non spontaneous impersonations with varying degrees of brilliance. Good Pacino, but my 3 year old son does a better John Gielgud than that Spaceboy!

BUG MASSIVE ATTACK SPECIAL @ BFI, THURSDAY 19TH JUNE 2008, 8.45PM

Massive attack are curating this year’s Meltdown and have agreed to let us feature some of the fantastic videos they’ve had made for them over the years in a BUG special. Even if you’ve seen them all before this will a chance to see them all big and loud on the big screen and as far as I know the Attackers themselves will be talking to me on stage. If that turns out to be bollocks I’ll let you know. Got to remember to resist the urge to ask 3D if he has to wear 3-D glasses now he’s a bit older.

Book tickets for BUG Massive Attack Special here

THE BIG CHILL FESTIVAL FRIDAY 1st – SUNDAY 3rd AUGUST 2008

As well as a special festival edition of BUG, I’ll be doing half an hour of live stuff (probably Famous Guy) at The Big Chill Festival, which takes place at Eastnor Castle, Herefordshire. BUG will be on the Saturday night (2nd August) and my live set will be the following night (Sunday 3rd August). The line up for the festival (which includes Hot Chip, The Mighty Boosh and Bill Bailey) looks good so I’m looking forward to it, big willy style.

Details and tickets for Big Chill 2008 here.

That’s it for now. I’ll be posting in the next few days about the release of Adam & Joe’s Song Wars album Volume 1 and a transmission date for my BBC3 pilot, MeeBOX.

Cheery-bye-hat

Adam 02/06/08

I’ll be doing a short version of my current Famous Guy set this coming Wednesday at the Knock 2 Bag comedy night at the FM Bar in Shepherd’s Bush (Hopgood Street, W12 7JU) so do come along if that sounds in any way fun. It should be a good night as I’m on the bill with, amongst other high quality turns, the mighty Tony Law and the sublimely odd Brian Gittins, two of my favourite comedy types at the moment. Details here. Hope to see you!