I’m doing two BUG shows at the Norwich Playhouse this week (same show Thursday 6th and Friday 7th @ 8pm), which will feature some of my favourite videos the last couple of London BUGs. Thursday’s show is pretty well sold out but as I write there are still loads of tickets left for Friday so if you find yourself east at then end of the week, come along and we can have a drink in the bar after. Check the events calendar to the right or click here to buy tickets.

WHAT ELSE HAVE YOU BEEN DOING DR BUCKLES?

Great question net pal.

CRABBING!

I went crabbing with my family in Southwold on the weekend enjoy the weird late summer sun. It was idylic. Crabbing is the shiz for children. Dangle a bit of bacon in a bag and the crabs can’t clamber on fast enough. Then at the end of the day you tip your bucket over and watch them all race back onto the sea. No one gets hurt! At least if you do it right.

DOMINATING THE AWARD WORLD!

Last week I went to the BT Digital Music Awards with the 6 Music team, Tom, Lucy, James and of course Joe who I hadn’t seen for a while. It was a fun night and we won our award (best digital radio show or podcast)! Still no immediate plans for a return to 6 Music sadly. We’re waiting for a good chunk of time to open up but it’s hard with me so busy doing BUG and crabbing. Joe’s got some commitments too apparently.

READING LADYBIRD BOOKS!

If you’re feeling deprived of my warm and friendly voice (and you’re under 10), here’s something I contributed to that may help. It’s a picturebook app that been very nicely put together and features the voices of people like Josie Lawrence, Simon Farnaby and Doctor Adam Buckules. My 3 year old daughter thinks it’s excellent and now I no longer have to read to her at night, giving me extra time to drink alcohol and gamble. Buy the app here. Once you’ve downloaded the app you can purchase books via your ‘device’. So far i’ve done Goldilocks, Chicken Licken and 3 Little Pigs. Think I’ll be recording some more titles in the next few weeks.

BEING A POSTER PONCE!

A few weeks back we did a short BUG show at the Kings Place festival. It was an enjoyable show but significant for me in that it marked by banner debut! When Joe and I were younger we always fantasised about being on posters and were always hoping we might make it onto a billboard or some such but it never happened. Now Joe’s well and truly popped his poster cherry and his name is on billboards round the world thanks to his film work but this was my first time as a giant poster ponce. Of course strictly speaking, aspiring to being a poster ponce is rather tragic and futile and you can sort of see that in my expression as I point to the banner. It’s a look of shame as people walk by and think ‘who’s that guy pointing at that poster ponce I’ve never heard of?’

Louise who is part of the BUG team, told me the other day that she was able to keep the banner and she’s going to send it to me. I haven’t run it by my wife yet but I plan to drape it from a tree near my house and aim some lights at it. That way visitors will know what kind of man they’re dealing with: Dr Buckles -- massive poster ponce.

Nice to be home after a busy week with a couple of bill paying jobs as well as three BUG shows and Song Wars composition. I don’t usually have so much going on in a single week and a couple of times I felt things got a bit cock shaped. I’ve had a few somewhat disgruntled messages from people who were at one or other of the two BUG shows we did at the BFI on Thursday 19th May. We were doing some more filming of You Tube comment recitals but I went a bit overboard and decided to film three in each show, breaking up the flow rather and subjecting the audience to my shit ups and retakes for the camera. I had hoped that the filming wouldn’t detract from the audience’s enjoyment of the show, but for some people it ended up being more disruptive than I had anticipated. Apologies to anyone who felt short-changed. We won’t do it again!

Despite filming gripes, I thought it was one of the best selections of videos we’ve had at BUG in a while, thanks as ever to curator David Knight with help from Phil Tidy. Many of the videos we’ve featured in previous shows are archived in playlists on the BUG You Tube channel though this month’s show may not be up there yet. Here’s a couple of my faves from BUG 25.

Last week was also the first time I have ever visited Manchester (!) for a BUG show at the Zion Arts Centre in Hulme organized by Mike, one of the two people who came to see my one hour live show in New York last October. I thought the Manchester show went pretty well and I hung out for a while afterwards with some of the people who came along. I felt like an art student again! Thanks to everyone who was there and especially to Helen Davies who presented me with knitted versions of myself and Joe for which I am profoundly grateful. I see Helen has blogged about our meeting too, here. She might like to know her beautiful creations are sat in the celebrity enclosure of the shelf in my studio. I have every intention of returning to Manchester for more BUG shows later in the year when maybe I’ll get to see more of the city than I did this time. As far as other BUG shows outside London go, I’m also hoping we might pop up at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this year with a ‘best of’ show. I’ll let you know when I hear anything definite.

AUDIENCE QUESTIONS

A few of my recent live shows have included a couple of questions posed by the audience from my Technical Meltdown show a few months back at the BFI. I’d like to try and make this a semi regular feature so if you ever have any questions for me that you wouldn’t mind me reading out and having answered at a live show, please post them in the comments section below, including your name etc. I’m meeting Moby for a BUG special next Wednesday 1st June, so if you have any questions you’d like me to relay to the baldy dance & sample genius then you can add those too.

SONG WARS

Don’t forget to vote for Song Wars this week. You can Garth’s magnificent Twister song on the BBC blog here as well as my own Party Pom Pom song (though the word ‘song’ is really stretching it), which if you wish you can right click on and download for keepsies below. Email VOTE ADAM or VOTE GARTH to this address: adamandjoe.6music@bbc.co.uk

PARTY POM POM

In case you’re interested, here’s a charmingly animated video of the conversation a few years back on the 6 Music show (when there was more of a ‘zoo’ type atmosphere in the studio!) that inspired the song/noise in the first place. Cheery bye ho pom pom!

Love Adam

love Dr Buckholes

ADDENDUM I hadn’t actually heard the show before I wrote this post. Turns out the joke I was referring to never made the cut! As Rob commented below, it was indeed a gangster joke that I’d used in the radio pilot ‘I’m Spartacus’, a film quiz that Jon Holmes came up with a year or two back in which I’d referred to a gangster called Mickey Football, so called because one of his testicles was shaped like a foot. I know, it’s a peach isn’t it? Anyway, I remain unimpressed by my panel show skills and, despite Ed’s over-generous assessment of my darkest day on HIGNFY, they remain a fixture of my ‘NEVER AGAIN’ list.

LISTEN AGAIN TO ‘AND THE WINNER IS’ HERE

Spot the confused chancer

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

Too much has happened for me to start recapping since my last post. Suffice to say, you did it! and Joe and I should be back around November. Now before the festival season ends…

A couple of years back Joe and I did songs about festivals for Song Wars. Joe’s was about Glastonbury and mine was about people like myself who love the idea of music festivals but cherish a degree of comfort. I ‘sung’ my Festival Song as part of BUG at Latitude this year (at least a sweaty, breathless version of singing) and some people thought I was biting the hand that tightly attaches the wristband. Not at all! I love Latitude and the more friendly, clean, comfortable and diverse festivals get, the happier I’ll be. It’s not as if you can’t still go off to some litter strewn wasteland and burn plastic bottles while you listen to Zane Lowe endorsed shouting music, it’s just nice to have the option to sit on pillows in the Robin Tent and listen to Robin Ince introduce Robyn Hitchcock instead. Here’s a video for the song which I started last year (hence lack of beard) and only just completed. I mean I haven’t ONLY been doing this video for a year. I have done other things in that time, though it’s hard to think what…

www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCgfLSuf2O8

On the last night at Latitude I snuck back after bedtime with my 8 year old son and I was in Rock Dad fantasy festival paradise. We’d already seen Sweet Baboo that day who had gone down very well and Buxton jr was eager to see Vampire Weekend so we tooled up with doughnuts and drinks and went roamin’. Before long we found ourselves in the Robin tent and sure enough, there was Robyn Hitchcock with whom all my children are familiar from car journeys peppered by salvos from the ‘Cock’s tremendous psychedelic folk cannon(!) At one point we seemed to be the only people in the little tent laughing at Robyn’s weird inter song rambles that night and I wondered if he felt fed up. Perhaps he was fed up with me laughing at him. Hmmm.

On the Friday I’d seen Spoon, one of my very favourite bands, getting tetchy with a noncommittal late afternoon crowd on the main stage and I wanted to jump up and give them a hug then electrocute them into action, but they seemed depressed by it all. Not so Robyn who will not be diverted from ploughing his eccentric furrow by anything or anyone it seems and is well loved for it. He was on very good form and with Frank looking on admiringly I got to join him on the tiny stage with other more musical guests and we sang Olé Tarantula, something of a tradition in the Robin Tent I hear. It sounded good (I was INCREDIBLE!) and as we left the stage Robyn said “Ooh, I welled up there” and sure enough his eyes were glistening. Then I started welling up. The Paul Weller started welling up.

Vampire Weekend are not the kind of band that would ever really scramble your mind but they delivered a well drilled and energetic set and deserve all their success IMHO. Would I have been happier in some no man’s land watching a more ‘important’ band with my son 20 years ago? I’m glad you asked, it’s a very pressing question. No, is the answer.

Speaking of Robyn and Spoon, here’s a couple of acoustic performances I shot in London back in 2007. I was doing my pilot for BBC 3 at the time and wanted to cram it with everything I could possibly think of that I thought was any good and music was going to be an important part of that if it ever got to series, which of course it didn’t and I’m still very, very bitter. I shot 3 performances with Robyn at his home in Chiswick (‘Chinese Bones’, ‘I Often Dream Of Trains’ and ‘My Wife and My Dead Wife’) and 3 with Britt Daniel of Spoon backstage at The Borderline before they played the most amazing gig I’ve ever seen. I’ve already uploaded Britt playing ‘Black Like Me’ but I’ve posted ‘Advance Cassette’ below. He also sang ‘The Beast And Dragon, Adored’ which I’ll post later, along with the other Robyn stuff. Thanks Robyn and Britt!

Cheerio ho ho. Hope you enjoy the rest of the festival season! Now here’s some men with acoustic guitars…

Love Adam, 6th August, 2010

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4u2-V-1sivA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCgfLSuf2O8

I’m posting this as an open letter on my blog rather than once again going through the proper channels because you seem more approachable on-line than off for some reason and I’m hoping that there’s a chance you might somehow be directed to read this! It’s worth a try.

I wonder if you’d consider being a guest on my radio show on BBC 6 Music: Adam Buxton’s Big Mix Tape (Sunday, 12-2pm)?

The format is straightforward: I make a themed compilation tape each week, the way people did in analogue times, and I’m joined by a guest for the central section. For example, this week’s show features music for a tape you’d make for a new boyfriend/girlfriend. The title of the tape is Wave Of New Relations (after a misheard Pixies lyric) and my guest is Jon Ronson, a journalist and documentarian whose work I’ve always admired and enjoyed (check out his brilliant radio show Jon Ronson On or his superb documentary about Stanley Kubrick’s Boxes). Jon contributed a few tracks for the mix tape and talked to me about his books, TV and radio shows and whatever else happened to come up. As usual my interview style was far from slick but I hope that my encounters are entertainingly conversational at least.

I was told via a series of Chinese whispers that you’d heard a version of Changes that I recorded in support of 6 Music, which you apparently liked! Perhaps you were being polite and supportive or perhaps you never heard it and the Chinese was mistranslated, but I was pleased nonetheless. One of our listeners (Chris Salt, the Saltman) made a fantastic Lego video to go with it look!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Gcabr_09e4

At this point I’m going to put myself in your boots and consider how unappealing my request seems. I have after all spent a large part of my life doing bad impressions of you, often with my sometime comedy partner Joe, mainly based on saying ‘wuzza wuzza wuzza’ which, if I were you, I would find perplexing. Joe and I also spend in inordinate amount of time considering your role and your magnificent packet in Labyrinth when there is a good case to be made for some of your other film roles being more significant. Also I might appear to be a silly man on a number of levels but you’re someone whose work I’ve loved in all it’s forms since I was very young and I’ll never give up the meagre hope that our paths might one day cross.

I’m not a physical or mental threat and the show would be recorded at the BBC with responsible humans around and would take only an hour of your time so what’s the worst that could happen?! Best case scenario: we make a memorable radio show that thousands of highly intelligent 6 Music listeners will cherish! Worst case scenario, you find me an unctuous prat and make a mental note never to respond to online petitions for your guest services again (though you may have already made that mental note). If you don’t want to be alone in a studio with me, we could ask Joe to come too!

Give our producer James Stirling a call at 6 Music. I could do any time next week. Or any time after next week. Hoping this finds you well and eating a Bowiesnack.

Love Adam

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Gcabr_09e4

Some more details here

I’m recording a show round the corner in the morning but I’ll be there as soon as I can after we’re finished. I’m not planning on performing or anything but I want to come and show my support so maybe see you there! And hey, guys, let’s try to keep it non violent, yeah? We don’t want a repeat of the ugly scenes that unfolded when Wogan left…

I’ve been working on a song for 6 Music in the style of The Goblin King, who proved once again why he rules not only the Goblins but also the school when he was one of the first big names to come out in support of 6. I’m so sad about the notion that 6 may close. They’ve got a really good thing going there and they’ll really regret it if they break it up. Or perhaps they won’t give a dogshit, but I will.

From a purely personal point of view, the reaction we’ve had from listeners to the Adam & Joe radio show and podcast over the last couple of years has been humbling and wonderful. Best of all, those listeners improved the show itself which transformed when we started basing more of our stupid bollocks on the funny and inspiring texts and emails we get, something we’d never really done before because the contributions you’d get at most radio stations wouldn’t really be good for much more than the occasional dedication most of the time. Last week at BUG a small group of friends who Tweet about the show (twitsquadron) presented me with a hand made album of printed tweets, drawings and photos inside a beautifully made sort of A&J pillow case! Chaps, if you’re reading this, thankyou. I don’t want to get too sentimentile, but it was an amazing thing to receive and I’ll always treasure it.

Adam Buxton, happy in kitchen with gift

I wonder if Thomo and the nabobs at the castle have ever bought something they love from a small outlet because they know that it’s likely to be more special than it would be from a department store? They Mastodon! I mean, I’m not much of a discerning shopper but at Christmas I go into Soho and buy my dad (who is a booze snob) a bottle of Cognac from Gerry’s because I know they will recommend me some phenomenal item that will keep my Pa delighted for a good few months. They’ve never failed me once. Sure, I could get a bottle of Courvoisier from Sainsburys or Oddbins and my dad would be very grateful but he wouldn’t roll his eyes and eulogise about it the way he does with the more offbeat stuff from Gerry’s because the supermarket bottle is always the same.

I don’t know how good an analogy that is for 6 Music (which is more like a special deli counter in a big supermarket), but I think you get what I mean. Breaking it up and farming off the popular bits is missing the point completely. It’s a little corner of the BBC that is prepared to take all kinds of chances because they know their listeners won’t immediately get frightened and confused they way they might if it was a more mainstream channel. Certainly, Joe and I wouldn’t have been hired let alone afforded the latitude we have been anywhere else in the Castle.

It seems that campaigning and complaining about these kinds of decisions seldom gets results but wouldn’t it be amazing if they did reconsider? A truly modern corporation! The BBC Trust are reviewing the situation til May 25th and one would hope they will read every message they receive, either pro or anti the proposed closures so do get in touch.

MAKE YOUR VIEWS ON CLOSING 6 MUSIC HEARD HERE

So anyway, this song! It’s a version of Bowie’s Changes that features my impression of David and some painful singing (with the help of 6 Music’s Tom Robinson on the choruses! Thanks Tom!) I did a full length version but it was a little too gruelling so here’s a slightly shorter one for you to listen to, ignore, use to torture terror suspects, whatever you fancy. However, if you did like it and felt sufficiently moved, you might like to make a video for it! Then in May I’ll pick my favourite and award some kind of prize, say Adam Buxton/Adam & Joe odds and sods and tickets to BUG! Wow! Imagine all the Adam Buxton/Adam & Joe odds and sods and tickets to BUG! What could the Adam Buxton odds and sods be?! My socks! Bits of my hair!! Or my book!!! Not a book I’ve written, just a book I own. I don’t know, I’ll work something out, but anyway, here’s the song with lyrics beneath in case you want to study them for your English degree. And if you do make a video post a link on my You Tube channel comments section.

LISTEN TO THE SONG! (right click to download)

CHANGES (FOR 6 MUSIC) SONG

CHANGES (FOR 6 MUSIC) LYRICS

Incidentally I bought the backing track from a great karaoke versions site here

Finally, here’s my appearance on Channel 4 news a couple of weeks back where I managed to say almost nothing of any value except for inviting the DG out for some pushing and shoving. I haven’t actually watched this vid myself cos it’s too cringey but I hear Thomo’s expression upon hearing my obviously jokey challenge is entertaining.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLbkeAHyU7I

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

Yes, the first 22 of our Song Wars compositions from our radio show on BBC 6 Music will be available to buy from i-tunes from Monday 23rd June! In case you haven’t yet listened to our radio show, Song Wars is a semi regular feature wherein Joe and I each record an original song on a given theme then get our listeners to vote for which one they like best. Artwork, pics, tracks and track listing on the official MySpace page here. This is an earlier version the cover.

I’ll post an exclusive track by track guide to the album here on Monday (so that’s something to keep living for eh?) as well as a video I’ve been working on for my song about The Hours which is included on the album. I think I may also be appearing on Richard & Judy that day to promote it but that’s yet to be confirmed!

TAKE PART IN THE ADAM & JOE VIDEO WARS COMPETITION!

Speaking of Song Wars our hard working friends at 6 Music have organised a video making competition. Details here. Basically we want you to make a video in whatever style you like for one of two songs that have been put on the 6 Music website. They’re both short so it needn’t kill you, but the one we like best will win its creator an unforgettable few hours hanging out with Joe and me while we do our show and we’ll make you a goody bag of cool stuff too! Here’s us explaining further, kind of.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2VIsAn-47Q

There’s already been a couple of impressive entries which you can take a look at here and here. Go, on up the ante ridiculously!