To run a successful blog that people keep coming back to you should post frequently and resist the temptation to post too much. The same could be said of most creative endeavours. So, is my refusal to follow that advice some kind of strategy? Yes, that’s exactly what it is. A strategy. I like long pauses followed by a torrent of content when the levee breaks. I should have posted a few weeks back when Adam & Joe’s Song Wars Volume 2 was released but I was in the middle of things with my Ken Korda project (thanks to those of you who helped out BTW). Now I’m in bed, dosed up to the tits with ill pills, necking cough syrup like L’il Wayne and generally cashing in my ill chips.

Yesterday was grim. I was shaking, groaning and coughing til I expected to see blood spraying the duvet (that’s a nice festive image isn’t it?) but there are also periods of fluey remission when it’s quite fun to be just tooling about in bed and not having to do any other chores. Last night with feverish focus I watched Francois Truffaut’s 1959 film The 400 Blows for the first time. It was either that or The Last Airbender.

400 Blows is good! It’s about a Parisian boy rebelling against crappy parents and teachers. There are many memorable moments but the one that really got its hooks in was a scene in the second half where dozens of children aged between about 4 and 7 are watching a puppet show. Every shot is filled with these little rapt faces all concentrating on the show, each one so expressive and filled with personality they could star in a film themselves. It was a little like watching my boys watching Harry Hill’s TV Burp. They can’t possibly understand all the jokes but they roll about, literally holding their sides with joy.

After my edifying dose of Truffaut I finished listening to Frank Skinner’s account of returning to stand up after his TV years. Like many comedians he’s a mix of self effacing, conceited and solipsistic but unlike many comedians he gets the balance pretty much exactly right throughout, even in a bizarre and pornographic recollection of a banana based casual sex encounter. I even found myself laughing at a joke about football. Speaking to Frank about his Roman Catholic faith David Baddiel asks if it bothers him that most other religious people seem to be stupid or mad or both. Skinner asks him if he feels that way at Chelsea matches. Now I’m downloading Alexei Sayle’s autobiography. Then I’ll watch The Last Airbender. Incidentally I’d like to take this opportunity to say I’ve finally got the point of the I-Pad. My wife got me one for my birthday last year and if you’re ill, or otherwise at leisure, it’s your best friend.

It was the fun aspect of non life threatening illness that inspired my Flu Song.

FLU SONG

It’s one of the ones I did for Song Wars when Joe was away for Glastonbury 2009 and Garth Jennings sat in. Garth beat me with a song about Hay Fever which I accept sounds superficially more appealing, but my flu song deserves serious analysis nevertheless. So you can imagine my delight when I came across this review on line:

Buxton’s clever and tuneful journey through the highs and lows of a bout of flu is an unfairly overlooked gem. The plummy, nasal vocal recalls Syd Barrett and perfectly compliments the woozy psychedelic feel of the guitar part, which drenched in a pleasing tremolo was played by Buxton himself and suggests a considerable talent that begs further exploration. Lyrically The Flu Song is certainly one of his strongest. The nod to You’re The One That I Want’s “I’ve got chills” is just one of many inspired moments like the observation that, for a heterosexual man of limited intelligence, an attractive woman with flu seems somehow less contagious than anyone else. There’s useful information too in the section about chewing vitamin C tablets only to find ones bowels distressingly loosened thereafter. All in all it’s hard to understand why this wasn’t included on the recent Song Wars Volume 2 album. Next time you have flu make sure this is the song playing in a fevered loop in your mind!

OK. I wrote that. But it’s all true. The reason it wasn’t included on the album was that we thought we should stick to competition entries between Joe and myself though my brilliant Bob Dylan’s DVD Box Set song appears as does Joe’s unaccountably popular Retro Text The Nation jingle. So, the album…

ADAM & JOE’S SONG WARS VOLUME 2

YOU CAN DOWNLOAD IT HERE OR SEND OFF FOR THE ADORABLE PHYSICAL VERSION HERE

SONG WARS FACTONS

• The release came about thanks to Dreamboat records. They pointed out to us that very little of Adam & Joe exists in the physical world and it would be nice to create a treasurable CD/vinyl object with which to dignify our musical efforts as much as possible.

• In that spirit I lavished both time and care on the artwork which features an inner montage packed with details to pore over and fathom for years. I was a little disappointed to see someone’s already ripped the cover off though.

• For a while we were considering a different design. How exciting for you to see it here!

• We didn’t go ahead with it because some ponces ripped that one off too.

• We decided not include every song we’d done since Song Wars Volume 1 for reasons of space and decency. Instead we chose our favourites.

• On the whole the critics have been fulsome in their praise and many consider Song Wars Volume 2 one of the best albums of this or any other year. However there have been one or two troubling comments that I’d like to address.

Some people seem think I thrashed out songs like Bob Dylan’s DVD Box Set and Bums & Binge Drinking (Kate Nash Song) in ‘a giggling 10-minute rush of post liquid lunching’ implying a kind of dissolute, freewheeling disregard for songcraft that I for one refuse to accept. Can’t speak for Cornballs but as far as I know he’s not much of a lunchtime drinker. Bums & Binge Drinking was carefully constructed from pure scratch and was a considerable investment of both time and emotional energy. DVD Box Set didn’t take quite so long, created as it was over a pre existing backing track, but now a whole year after that momentous recording session, I sing that song to myself quite often and find it to be excellent. To see someone saying that my Zimmerman ‘bears absolutely no resemblance to Bob Dylan’ is hurtful and maddening. The impression is of the Bob Dylan who sings on last year’s Christmas album and it is both accurate and moving, as Bob himself would readily attest if he were given the opportunity. But no, certain so called journalists just don’t want to go the extra distance do they?

• The album is divided into an A side (with my songs on) and a J side (with Joe’s songs on). This is great on the vinyl but a bit weird on the CD. I guess no one listens to CDs in order any more though, do they?

• When I play the album I like to add more treble and turn up the volume. No disrespect to Ali Chant who mastered the thing, that’s the just the way my ears groove.

• The album has parental guidance stickers and the word EXPLICIT all over it because of the word ‘shit’ that I left unbleeped in Nutty Room. I honestly didn’t think ‘shit’ was considered explicit any more. I guess I wouldn’t say it on the radio or in front of my children. I might say it in front of your children though.

• Song Wars Volume 2 was number 1 in the i-tunes comedy charts for a while. I’m well aware that this mainly serves to highlight the craziness of the i-tunes chart system, but I’m still very happy to enjoy my formal status as a number 1 artist (or to put it another way an artist adept at doing number 1s. A piss artist?)

That’s it for now.

6 MUSIC

The question people keep asking is of course, ‘when are you both back on the radio?’ We’ve done a pre-recorded Christmas day show, which will go out from 10am to 1pm on the big day and that was fun but both of us were well aware that it’s not the same. The regular live show is the important thing and we both want to do more, it’s just a question of when we can find a few months to have another decent run.

Until then, time and 6 Music permitting, I may well do some more Big Mix Tape shows or perhaps something live again, either on my own or with someone else. I’ll let you know if and when things materialise on any of these fronts.

I did an I-TUNES PLAYLIST recently that features a lot of the songs I played on Big Mix Tape shows as well as few more recent purchases. For a while my photo sat next to the members of Take That and gratifyingly, it seemed as though we’d been at the same photo session.

Do leave a comment and the same goes for the Song Wars album too, whether you’re on Amazon or wherever, it’s always nice to see lively debate raging below if not blanket praise!

I’ll try to post in a few days with details of the on-line version of BUG we recently put together but for the time being…

love Adam

Here’s the video for my song about Baz Lurhmann’s film Australia, which I’m probably a little too delighted to say, won Song Wars on our 6 Music show last weekend. I liked Joe’s song a lot, but I would have been depressed if he’d won having simply sung over the intro for Kim Wilde’s Cambodia when my effort (though heavily indebted to Rolf Harris’s Aussie classic Sun Arise) was at least constructed from scratch. When I say ‘from scratch’ I mean from scratch and the possibly harder work of both Harris and Luhrmann of course.

Anyway, I hope you like the song and the video, which is the first I have uploaded to You Tube in HD! Double click on the video below to open the You Tube page then click ‘watch in HD’ beneath the vid window to get the full effect. It took me a while to figure it out because I still favour a 4:3 frame with 720 x 576 resolution. I like things boxy, like an old TV set and to me that will always be the most desirable aspect ratio and resolution for anything that isn’t a an actual feature film but I’m aware that I’m part of a dying breed. Plus, if I switch to HD for everything I’m just going to have to invest in twice as many storage drives to accommodate the bigger file sizes. Fucking technology. Huge Jackman’s manly pecs certainly have come out nice though.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_z2Jug78zw

The thought of once again being stood shoulder to shoulder with fellow Spoonocrats (Spoonatics?) cradling a pint, confident in the knowledge that I’ll know and like every single song the band play has sustained me through a black winter. Truly I am a small, nerdy man. I haven’t always got as much from Spoon gigs as I do from their records but last August at London’s Borderline was up in my top 5 gigs of all time, so my quarg-circuits are fizzing with anticipation! Haven’t been to The Scala for ages (last time was probably 10 years ago (!!) when, dressed as Ken Korda at the request of the band, I introduced Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci) but I remember it being a lovely venue. Will you be there? Buy tickets here

Here’s a bit of footage I shot of lead singer Britt Daniel before that Borderline gig on 17th August of 2007. When the band had finished their soundcheck Britt and I squeezed into the tiny dressing room backstage and I tried not to look too obviously over-excited as he played 3 songs for me: The Beast & Dragon Adored, Advance Cassette and this one, Black Like Me, the wonderful final song on their latest album Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga and one of my favourite Spoon songs ever! I’ll probably post the other two at a later date. You can read my fan review of the subsequent gig and more about how I got to film with Britt here.

In addition to the hand held camera that shot this footage I had a small digital camera on movie mode, taped to the wall shooting the performance as if from a webcam. The idea was to include it as part of my MeeBOX pilot somehow but in the final analysis this kind of musical performance just didn’t fit with everything else and for the sake of compromise we used an edited version of my video for Spoon’s Don’t Make Me A Target which I posted briefly last year then removed. I’ll repost that vid, along with loads of brand new bits from MeeBOX just before the pilot goes out in March (or early April).

Maybe see you Monday!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMi-FqJfclY

Hey ho hi! It’s exclamation mark time again!! If you enjoyed listening to us on the 6 Music breakfast show a couple of weeks ago, here’s a very special treat for you! It’s the multi award-winning jingle from the nation’s favourite feature*: Text The Nation, as well as my brief but powerful rock song Jane’s Brain and Joe’s triumph of chilled electro tourism, Euorpean Supermarket. My life will be nearly perfect the day I hear a stranger’s phone emitting the Text The Nation jingle as a text alert or ringtone.

TEXT THE NATION JINGLE

JANE\'S BRAIN by ADAM BUXTON

EUROPEAN SUPERMARKET by JOE CORNISH

It looks as if the powers that be at 6 Music were sufficiently happy with us and the positive feedback they got from listeners to try and find us a regular slot of some kind. It’s too early to say when that might be, or indeed if it will definitely happen but it’s looking good. I’ll keep you posted, and thanks very much if you were one of those to feedback positively! Thanks again to Lisa, our fantastic producer, Jenny who gathered important facts and helped Joe marshal the texts and e-mails and Milly who did something so complex and important that I can’t properly describe it. Good work team!!

*Technically it was not award winning or in any way the favourite of the nation but if you make these kinds of claims they generally go unchallenged and impress those of us who assume there must be some kind of truth to these kinds of statements for them to be made in the first place.

I’M HOSTING BUG 03 THIS FRIDAY 14th SEPTEMBER @ BFI SOUTHBANK, 8:15PM!

Buy tickets here for a night of top class music video and inconsequential chatter from myself and some of the industry’s brightest stars.

2 ALL TIME GREAT MUSICAL PERFORMANCES!!!

I used to have a VHS tape with amazing musical odds and sods I’d taped off the telly, most of which were missing the first few seconds as I scrambled to stick the tape in the VCR and hit record. Then I mislaid the tape and for years I mourned those lost musical TV treasures and they became legendary in my head. Of course thanks to You Tube, they’re found again! There’s a little muso snob part of me that thinks that’s a bit of a shame; that my VHS tape represented a hard won journey of chance musical discovery more valuable and meaningful than simply typing a name into a search engine. On the other hand seeing those clips again was a fucking treat and nearly every one was as wonderful as I remembered. Here’s a couple for you.

The first is a very famous clip of Bruce Springsteen and The E Street band doing Rosalita in 1978. I think I originally taped it off The Rock’n'Roll years in the early 90′s (so much for my hard won journey) and despite not being much of a Bruce fan then or now I was completely electrified by this performance. It’s a good song (very much the template for a lot of what makes The Hold Steady enjoyable) and they play all the shiz right out of it, but check out Bruce! In a time before irony it’s as if the biggest Bruce Springsteen fan in the world has somehow been transported into the body of his idol (has that been done in a film yet?) and suddenly there he is, duelling with sax genius Clarence Clemons, fighting off beautiful stage invaders and fizzing with energy as he plays one of the gigs of his life. Check out his expression when he finally disentangles himself from the tenacious blonde who’s managed to get a full-on snog off him at the end of the song! Bemusement! Joy! Rock’n'Roll!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVIYW4MDyXw

The second clip is Jonathan Richman from what must have been one of the first series of Later with Jools Holland around 1992-3. While I think of it, Later provides me with one of my Bad Jokes That I Won’t Stop Using Despite The Fact That No One Ever Finds Them Funny. In this case if someone asks me a question to which the answer is ‘later’ I will reply, “Later, with Jools Holland!” I can almost hear people thinking ‘you’re a prick’ but I can’t stop saying it. “I’ll be back later. With Jools Holland!” Ha ha ha ha! Anyway, Jonathan Richman…

Here he is playing a song called Now Is better Than Before which I believe is only available on the currently deleted album Rockin’ & Romance although you can order a privately burned CD here. There’s a version on his lovely Spanish album Jonathan, Te Vas A Emocionar but, well it’s in Spanish. Everything about this performance is appealing from the song, his voice and guitar playing to the daft commentary he provides with his range of facial expressions and hand gestures. His guitar solo is beautiful but he does this madly exaggerated acoustic whammy bar thing with his arm, which looks insane, something he acknowledges with a little smile at one point. Then when he slightly cocks it all up he gives a look of slightly hurt confusion that more or less sums up my entire life! If you’ve had a horrible bad tempered day this should fix you right back. Guitar!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVIYW4MDyXw

Last Monday Joe and I recorded our 5th podcast for Coke Music. Having started out fairly lame these podcasts are now getting pretty decent in my opinion. See what you think. Please? Anyway we had a god time doing podcast no. 5 and when we got out I had a message from a friend saying he had a spare ticket for The Arcade Fire gig that night at St John’s church in Smith Square, Westminster so I said “I’m in!”

I bought the Arcade Fire album last year along with everyone else who had been told they were the best thing ever and quite liked it without getting hooked. To be honest I lumped them in with The Polyphonic Spree, The Flaming Lips and Mercury Rev; all great bands who mean everything to their hardcore fans but just a bit too much of a good thing for my taste. Too epic! Too emotional! Too intense! Too many people on stage! Anyway this was the first time I had seen them live and for the first half hour of the gig it was more or less what I expected. Big! Emotional! Devotional! But the sound was not great. It was too loud for a church and all the subtlety and complexity of the songs was just ricocheting off the stone and colliding in a big emotional noise mulch. ‘Why don’t they just turn it down or unplug?’ I kept thinking, which, being old, I do more and more at gigs these days. After all here is a band whose technical chops are clearly superior to your average 3 chord guitar merchants, they’ve got all kinds of different instruments on stage and a good singer so why adhere so slavishly to the old fashioned notion that all ‘pop’ music should be blasted out at top volume if it stands any chance of impressing an audience?

Despite all this I gravitated towards the front and by the final half hour the sound seemed to have improved and I was digging the whole spectacle in a major way. All the semi religious euphoria that they trade on hit the mark and by then end I was totally transported. Most of the stuff they were playing was from their new album and it sounded very good indeed. When it was all over and the band filed out past the crowd to the exit where I happened to be standing by then so I just followed them out and was very close when they suddenly set up on the steps of the church and started playing an unplugged version of Wake Up. What a moment! Apparently they do this kind of thing a lot but I hadn’t seen anything like it, ever. It was an amazing climax to what was already a thoroughly climactic evening and like many other people I couldn’t resist whipping out my camera and grabbing a little chunk of it to guild my own memory box. Jimmy Bignutz has uploaded it for you if you’re interested and you’ll see that even though the sound and picture quality aren’t up to that much, the loveliness of their performance is kind of there. I think everyone who was there that night will remember it for a long time.

While I’m rambling indulgently about music may I take a moment to draw your attention to The Shins? Their new album Wincing The Night Away is an embarrassment of unassuming riches and though the music is not really ironic or silly as such, they have winningly elected to publicise it with several group shots that are (intentionally, I think) fucking stupid and hilarious. Viz:

It’s like a Bob Fossil tribute band! Hooray! Apparently they’ve just recorded an appearance on Nigel Godrich’s From The Basement (his excellent on-line music show) so that’ll be well worth forking out for when it arrives later this month on I-tunes and the From The Basement site. Now, here’s the Arcade Fire busking!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=7T9Eltgw2Xo

I have removed the Frank Black videos I posted a couple of weeks back from my AdamBuxton You Tube channel and repsoted them on a new channel under the name JamesBignutz where I’ll put stuff that isn’t really Adam & Joe or comedy related or that I haven’t made myself.

The exciting new JimmyBignutz channel is where I hope to indulge the music nerd side of myself and commune with other music nerds many of whom have already responded enthusiastically to the first two Frank Black clips, so for them here is another.

This video of Frank singing You’re Such A Wire was filmed by Joe and myself when we were in Frank’s house in LA back in September 1998. We were there filming a Vinyl Justice segment for The Adam & Joe Show and before we left Frank (AKA Charles) played us a few new songs in his basement. Those songs ended up on his album Pistolero a year later and as I was leaving he gave me a tape of rough mixes to check out. If you’ve read this blog before you’ll know that I’m a massive Pixies/Frank Black fan (or ‘potentially dangerous stalker’ as Joe puts it) so you can imagine how intensely over-excited I was by that whole day. Driving back to our hotel listening to the tape having filmed a pretty good piece with Frank I was profoundly happy. Unfortunately this video doesn’t do the song or the man much justice as the sound from the camera mics is so rotten but if you’re a fan you may enjoy it. It’s also quite a handy guide to the chords for that song if you’re a guitar player!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzsdttq5hdc

I got to know Nigel Godrich, the prodigiously gifted producer of some of my favourite albums by Radiohead, Beck, Pavement, Travis and many other indie behemoths when I met Fran & Doug from Travis back in 1999. Since that time Doug, Nigel and I along with our friend Garth Jennings from Hammer & Tongs always talked about doing a new music show that would be an alternative to Jools Holland’s excellent but sometimes maddeningly diverse show and in 2005 we came very close to actually getting it done. Nigel would record the acts, I would present and crap about with them, Garth would direct it and Doug would make us drinks and tell us we were very clever. It was supposed to be like the best bits of shows like The Old Grey Whistle Test, Rapido and Snub TV, all music programmes that weren’t averse to mixing great straightforward performance stuff with other, less reverent ballcrap. I thought of calling it The Basement Tapes but Nigel didn’t like that cos he thought people would just think of the Bob Dylan record so Garth came up with From The Basement. In the end Nigel decided to go it alone with the legendary Sophie Muller directing and no one presenting or making drinks, but they kept the title I see.

Nigel plundered his contacts book and lined up Thom Yorke, Four Tet and The White Stripes for their pilot show. I went along to a little bit of the taping they did at the BBC’s Maida Vale Studios in London and caught the end of The White Stripes set. I felt a bit of a lemon because a few days before that I was all set to be presenting the thing and now I was just a hanger-on, but I couldn’t resist having a look and I’m glad I did because The Stripples were extraordinary and I got to stand just a few feet away as they did their pretend-brother-and-sister-rock-pyrotechnical shtick. It was like a fucking bomb going off I’m telling you! Between songs Jack would noodle about and stare at Meg and she would stare back as he noodled and boy, those were some delicious noodles! Whether you like the Stripes or not you’d have to be a bit of a duffer to deny the man has some pretty enjoyable guitar chops. And when he opens his mouth, whether it’s a blues rip-off Led Zep spoof or not, it’s quite a thing to hear! Oh goodness!

I left Maida Vale feeling a strange mix of elation at having seen The White Stripes in action at such close quarters and melancholy that we weren’t going to make the show we talked about but having seen the results on I-tunes I have to admit Nigel and co did a great job. I recommend you check it out. As you’d expect from Godrich it sounds wonderful and Sophie Muller has made it look very nice indeed. I still think it would have been even more wicked if I’d got Thom Yorke to do some improvised rapping with me though.

I haven’t given up hope that one day we’ll get it together to do a new music show that is cheaply produced but good and funny and focuses on underground bands as well as heavy hitters but for the time being here’s a bit of footage that I shot of Frank Black back in 2001. Frank (or Charles to give him his proper name) was in town warming up for some solo shows so I called him (as I still had his number from when we did a video for his song Dog Gone) and asked if he’d mind me coming along to John Henry rehearsal rooms in north London and filming a few numbers with my camcorder. I was about to get married so I had the idea that I’d get him to dedicate the songs to my wife and I’d play them to her on our wedding day. How’s that for taking advantage?! I’ve cut the dedications out of these videos as I’m putting them on You Tube and it would look weird, but Charles was so charming and generous about the whole thing and it really made our wedding day extra memorable. He did a big long speech before each one for my wife as if they were old friends and she was really knocked out when she saw them. I’ve never met Dave Grohl but I have him and Frank Black bracketed in my most hardest rocking yet lovely men section of my brain.

Even before he indulged my giant sentimental streak so outrageously Frank Black was always quite a hero of mine and his music means so much to me, both with the Pixies and in his solo capacity. The Pixies body of work is pretty lean and well known but Frank Black’s is a little tubbier, less celebrated and sometimes maligned by music snobs, keen to judge everything they hear by their favourite Pixies moment. I’m sentimentally prejudiced, but they’re missing out is all I can say. My clips aren’t exactly up to Nigel Godrich/Sohpie Muller standards (I had 2 mini DV cameras and no proper mic so the sound was shitty, hence the ludicrous amount of reverb I stuck on afterwards…) but if you’re a fan you should dig them. I asked Charles if he’d mind me posting these bits and he was fine about it so I may stick up a few more nuggets Joe and I filmed with him at a later date. And if you’re not yet a convert, buy Teenager Of The Year NOW and get on the Black bus! And don’t forget to check out From The Basement on I-tunes or here. Don’t be afraid to think ‘it would have been better with Adam Buxton presenting’! Though to be honest, you’d be slightly mental if you did.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLe7-8WMGsg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLe7-8WMGsg

My friend Garth Jennings is part of an amazing company called Hammer & Tongs who make films, pop promos and commercials and back in January 2003 he directed this video for The Wannadies who are friends of his. They didn’t have any money for a promo and their record company weren’t interested in making one but Garth loved this song and suggested that he and I shoot something that might get it some play on TV. Garth was able to wangle a few hours in a photographic studio for free so his wife got hold of a wig, some decorators stilts, a few feather boas and BONGO! No budget pop promo magic! Kind of. I’d never displayed my naked hairy stomach on camera before this day and while we were shooting I honestly believed I looked quite sexy. When Garth showed me the results I was a little depressed but I got over it.

The piece was edited by frequent Hammer & Tongs collaborator Dominic Leung and produced by Nick Goldsmith, Garth’s professional other half. The Hammer & Tongs website is stuffed with allsorts of interesting ballwash, so check it out!

Needless to say, my hirsute paunch failed to propel The Wannadies into the charts on this occasion. I’m not sure the frigging video even got an airing on TV so I thought I’d put it up here for your filthy enjoyment…!