June 17, 2008
SONG WARS ALBUM & COMPETITION NEWS!
SONG WARS VOLUME 1 OUT MONDAY 23rd JUNE 2008 ON I-TUNES!
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.
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!
March 29, 2008
RADIO 4 PILOT NEWS!
‘A WEEK WITH ADAM BUXTON’
Hey ho hoo ha! It’s been ages! How are you? I haven’t posted for a while because I’ve been distracted by an increasingly steady trickle of bits and pieces that may or may not ever see the light of day (that’s life on the exciting margins!) Earlier this month I wrote and recorded a half hour pilot for BBC Radio 4. It has the provisional title ‘A Week With Adam Buxton’ and it’s a mix of sketches and character bits (there’s some Famous Guy in there) as well as interjections from my Dad, Nigel Buxton (a.k.a. BaaadDad). Helping me perform the sketches were Amelia Bullmore (Jam, Brass Eye and Big Train) and Matt Berry (Snuff Box, Mighty Boosh, Darkplace and IT Crowd) who were both as good as you’d expect (ie. very).
We recorded the show in front of an audience at the Radio Theatre in Broadcasting House. I would have posted details for getting tickets here but they all went very quickly so I wasn’t able to. If you were one of the people who came along, thanks, you were a very good crowd. It was really fun to do and it would be a hoot if the BBC saw fit to commission a series but I won’t hold my breath. As I’ve discovered with MeeBOX (my TV pilot for BBC3 which is still awaiting a transmission date) things like this can take a very long time in the Big British Castle. I’ve heard the radio pilot is likely to go out some time in the autumn, so I’ll let you know when I hear a definite date.
With all these pilots I should be given a fricken pilot’s license! Ha ha ha. I made that joke at the recording but I thought I’d repeat it for those who weren’t there. I went on to say that I’m now able to fly commercial airliners but they won’t let me have my own series! Obviously I sincerely hope that doesn’t turn out to be the case, even though there’s a fuck sight more money in flying planes than making culty comedy shows.
Here’s the Radio 4 pilot team in the green room before the recording. From left to right: producer Ed Morrish (who got the thing off the ground, thanks Ed!), me, my Dad, Amelia and Matt.
December 26, 2007
6 MUSIC CHRISTMAS PRE RECORDS AND GOOD WILL
HAPPY JESUSPARTY!
I haven’t posted for a while because I’ve never been busier working on odds and sods that I’ll be able to tell you more about in the New Year (if and when they turn into something) as well as pre recording a few 6 Music shows to give me and Joe a good chunk of time to spend with our various paramilitary gangs over the festivities. Some of the pre records are better than others (our New Year’s Eve one starts off hysterical, goes normal and ends solipsistic and weary, much like new year’s eve itself come to think of it) but the Christmas show that went out on Saturday 22nd (which you can currently listen again to here) was good fun to record and enjoyably stupid as was the show that will go out next Saturday (the 29th December, 9am-12pm). After that we’re back with you live every Saturday morning from 9-12 for a good while. Apologies for belching a couple of times on the New Year’s Eve show (7-10pm). If I heard someone else doing that on the radio I’d be appalled but I was a little tooty and got over-relaxed. No excuse though really.
I’ll ramble on at length in the New Year but for the time being here’s wishing you all the best for the Cringle Zone and Enforced Calendar Shift Celebration, whoever and wherever you are. Be careful out there, will you?!
Love Adam, Boxing Day 2007
October 28, 2007
CONSUMER NEWS (SOME CHRISTMAS PRESENT IDEAS)!
Hello phantom friends. Today’s post is going to be a little like a consumer guide in a glossy magazine for thick men or half-witted women. Funnily enough Joe and myself have been offered the job of writing just such a column a few times and we’ve been tempted because we’re both a bit thick and we both like free stuff, but usually we come to our senses before the contract is signed. Anyway, today amongst all the other self regarding eyewash, I’m going to impart to you some top purchasing tips which have improved the quality of my life in recent years. I should stress that no money has changed hands for these endorsements (although if any of the companies involved would like to just send me some free things and/or money, that would be fine). These are just UK based companies I’ve stumbled across who in my experience provide an excellent and efficient service and sell stuff that isn’t a total rip. I like getting these kinds of recommendations from friends so I thought you might dig it too. Plus it’s Christmas in about 15 minutes isn’t it!
CAVEAT!
If any of these recommendations don’t turn out as well for you as they did for me, I’m sorry but please resist the temptation to tell me about it in great detail. As much as I’d like to be, I’m simply not Nicky Campbell.
6 MUSIC AND DIGITAL RADIOS!
Thanks if you tuned in to our first Saturday morning show on BBC 6 Music. We’re there for the next year (!) from 9-12 every Saturday so if you haven’t already, invest in some kind of DAB radio and plunge into the superior world of digital listening! I get many of my electronicals from Stone Audio here. They deliver the quickest of anyone I’ve used on line for this kind of thing and they send you e-mails written by actual humans with real names if your product is out of stock so you can select an alternative. If you’re after a digital radio I’d go for a Tivoli DAB or for a lovely sounding, compact i-pod speaker/radio (although this one’s NOT digital) may I recommend the Tivoli Audio Model PAL (Portable Audio Laboratory) Radio. Many of my close friends have received one of these as a birthday present over the years and they always go down a treat.
Of course if you just want to listen again to our 6 Music shows you can do so from their website here. As the weeks wear on I hope we’ll get round to providing the BBC webfolks with some more recent pics. It would be nice if we were still as fresh faced as the fairly ancient photos on the site suggest, but it’s probably best for all of us if we simply come to terms with the older, jowlier versions. Isn’t ageing terrific!?
As we mentioned on the show yesterday we haven’t yet nailed down the details of the podcast situation but we’re thinking along the lines of doing a monthly digest featuring the best of the Saturday morning shows as well as a good few specially recorded nuggets where we can be a little more free wheeling than we might be on air. I’ll keep you posted.
BOOK NEWS!
A while back I went for a meeting at Faber & Faber who were interested in hearing any book ideas I had. Days later however I got the commission for my BBC3 pilot MeeBOX which has taken up most of my time since so my literary pretentions had to be popped on the bookshelf for a while. Shame though cos I had some great ideas for books.
10,000 THINGS THAT ARE SOOO CRAP
This would be just a long list of things that I think are crap. Mainly I would just write them all down in no particular order without even really justifying why I thought they were crap. Every now and then there would be a childish drawing of one of the things I thought was crap but it wouldn’t even be on the same page as the thing it corresponded to. Here are some of the things that would be in there: Trees (so crap!) Bad Food (yuck!) Metal (the point anyone?) Fish (hate them!) and the letter ‘p’ (Piss off!) You get the idea. There would also be a tie in TV show. In fact I think I’m going to make it and put it in MeeBOX as a clip.
RAPPER MOUSE
This would be a children’s book based on a story that I made up for my sons one time. There’s a mouse and he wants to be a rapper. He’s called MC Mouse. The book would be cute but also streetwise and there’d be a lot of quite rude jokes that would go over the kids heads. I would illustrate it myself to ensure that I got more money, even though the illustrations would be embarrassingly poor. The kids won’t mind, have you seen how crap their drawings are? Anything looks like genius to them. There would also be a tie in movie and of course an album both of which would also be sub par.
I WAS BULLIED AT SCHOOL
A very slim collection of memories from my school days when I was often bullied. I would make it sound as if the bullying was very bad although it was actually fairly low level. I would leave out the times when I was a bit of a bully myself, or maybe I’d mention those times but make it sound as if I learned some valuable lessons. Perhaps I’d even track down some of the people that bullied me and the people I bullied. Has someone done this already? Fuckit, I’ll do it again but it’ll be different cos I’ve got a different name. Again, could also be a TV series.
ADAM BUXTON’S POLAROIDS OF COCKS
I travel the world at great expense for a year taking pictures of people’s penises with a Polaroid camera then put them in a book. Some of them are famous people, others are just ordinary people, some of them are homeless etc. What do their cocks say about their lives? You decide. I’d do cocks first as I’m not gay so it would appear that prurience was not my primary motivation. A year later I would do Adam Buxton’s Polaroids of Twats. Both would sell very well. Again, I don’t care if this has been done before, I’m doing it again with my name on it.
Unfortunately Faber & Faber tend to concentrate on slightly different kinds of books but I bet I could talk them round. My meeting there concluded with me being given an armful of their recent publications which all turned out to be very good. Particularly entertaining were Ten Bad Dates With De Niro, a great collection of well written movie top tens for both the high brow and low brow film fan, and Simon Reynold’s excellent Rip It Up And Start Again, about post punk music from 1978 to 1984. If you like bands like Talking Heads, New Order, Devo, Pere Ubu, Orange Juice and their arty experimental pop colleagues then you will love this book. He covers the story of pretty much every single significant act from that time with enough love and enthusiasm to make you want to listen to all their stuff again, even the really quite rubbish stuff (the rubbosity of which is also acknowledged). It does for this most interestingly diverse and rewarding period of music what The World At War did for WW2! I’m telling you!
RADIO CONTROLLED PLANE NEWS!
Last Christmas my wife got a cheap looking RC plane for one of our young sons and it looked so unpromising that after the initial unwrapping euphoria it lay untried for the next few days. However on New Year’s day (surely one of the most depressing days of any year) driven to desperation by physical misery and unable to watch more frigging telly, we found the nearest field and gave it a go. It worked pretty well! It was hard to steer but Frank, aged 4, was able to keep it in the air for several satisfying minutes at a time and since then we’ve become rather skilled at making the thing do what we want. All it needed to be ready to fly was a 20 minute charge from the controller which we started as we left the house. By the time we arrived on the airfield, we were ready for takeoff!
We’ve lost a few to roofs (rooves?) and wear and tear but they’re cheap enough for it not to be the end of the world so I keeping ordering new ones and the newer models are even better. What’s more, the place I order them from, Wonderland Models delivers the next day, and again if they don’t have what you need they call you up and suggest alternatives. Along the way I’ve tried buying other similarly priced RC planes and helicopters and not one of them is as satisfyingly easy to use and hardy as these X Twin planes which have provided me and the boys with some of the most enjoyable afternoons ever. Hope they do the job for you too.
August 3, 2007
RADIO, TV AND VARIOUS GOOD STUFF NEWS!
I’VE BEEN AWAY!
But now I’m back and despite the weather going all biblical and television finally being exposed as the cesspool of deceit I always suspected it might be I’ve got a fair bit to enthuse about. First let me tell you how my gig at the Albany went before I went so rudely AWOL.
MY GIG AT THE ALBANY, 12th JULY 2007
On my way to The Albany I was cycling past stationary traffic on Whitehall when someone opened the passenger door of a black cab and I slammed right into the edge of it. I went most of the way over my handlebars and sustained quite a serious bashing to my right shoulder, left thigh and shins. I didn’t flip out but I said to the guy who was looking at me with a mixture of alarm and indignation, “what are you doing opening the door without looking!?†He came back with “what are you doing cycling up on the inside?†“That’s generally where people cycle†I replied. Yesss! Score 1 for me!!! He looked chastened but not perhaps suitably chastened. The show was starting in 10 minutes so I decided against a pointless row and peddled on, a little shaken and achy. I suppose in those situations the correct thing from a legal point of view is to exchange details in case my injuries turned out to be more severe than I thought and I decided to call Baines & Ernst or whoever. I can’t help feeling that life’s too short though.
The gig went OK to begin with but I quickly lost control of the filthy mother. For a start I had foolishly drunk a pint of fizzy lager backstage and for the first few minutes of my act I was negotiating with a belch that refused to surface and torpedoed my concentration somewhat. Plus the lights on the tiny stage, which were only a couple of feet from my face (but several faces from my feet), seemed unusually bright. I could see Rob Baker, who was an AP on The Adam & Joe Show sat in the audience. ‘Fuck’ I thought, ‘I haven’t seen him for ages and now he’s going to think I’m a loser.’ All in all in was in a bad frame of mind and that was before I got to the new stuff I’d just finished writing just hours earlier.
Needless to say I was no way on top of these shiny new nuggles and after a few minutes I managed to completely silence a previously very jolly room. In my defence they went quiet during a dramatic passage for which silence was entirely appropriate, but later on when some laughs would have been welcome, they remained disrespectfully silent. In fact it was probably the quietest reaction I have ever got for anything I’ve done live. It was so extremely quiet I couldn’t help laughing a little at the utterness of the quietude. They only started laughing again when I had left the stage and Dave Armand & Nick Tanner had returned.
In the past that kind of reaction would have shaken me a fair bit but for the first time I found myself not minding too much. I knew the stuff I had written was good and I just needed to do it more to make it work. It’s worse if you know deep down that you’ve gone out with some ropey old shite and been busted for it.
Anyway, I’ll let you know when my next experiment with silence is due. Now for the rest of this week’s inconsequential fartcloud.
THE TAO OF BERGERAC NEWS!
Back in mid June I played a part in the first episode of a live recording of a new Radio 4 comedy series called The Tao of Bergerac by Will Smith and Roger Drew, who I met while working on Time Trumpet. Inspired by an audio book of John Nettles reading the Tao, the show features Will ‘navigating the minefield of his life’ and it’s very good indeed. I can say that without smugness because I had absolutely nothing to do with it’s creation other than turning up and reading one of the parts on the night in the incredibly fancy new BBC radio theatre in Broadcasting House. You can listen again to the show here and catch future episodes on Wednesdays at 6:30pm on radio 4.
One of the most amazing parts of this excellent programme is when at the end Will links random films to episodes of Bergerac by connecting the work of their featured stars. I should stress that only the first of these was scripted. When we recorded the episode Will took about 6 or 7 films shouted out by members of the audience with no prior preparation and was able to link every single one to specific episodes of Bergerac in less than six steps with no hesitation whatsoever. It was one of the weirdest, nerdiest and most strangely impressive things I have ever beheld. Check it!
BBC PILOT NEWS!
This month I start work on my pilot for the BBC with the provisional title of MeeBox (although that may well change as there seems to be a glut of projects with ‘box’ in the title at the moment). The overall idea is to create a sort of spoof of the kind of material you find on places like You Tube, ie. clips, virals and ‘vlogs’ from various ludicrous characters (including Famous Guy and possibly Ken Korda) spouting off about all kinds of moronic crap. I’m aware that there are probably about 100 other projects not dissimilar to this either being pitched or in production at the moment, but I hope I’ll be able to make it my own somehow! Basically I’m going to try out all kinds of different bits and see what fits and what doesn’t.
One of the things I wanted to do was incorporate some phone call stuff that wasn’t so much pranky as character based but having seen a few clips of E4’s excellent Fonejacker, I might steer clear. If it was just another shit Crank Yankers type thing it wouldn’t be a problem but Keyvan Novak and his chums have breathed enough new life into phone japes, I’m worried that particular route might be a bit redundant for the time being, although as with Trigger Happy TV, I’m always amazed when someone does just one thing, albeit very well, for a whole half hour and then makes a whole series of it. That’s the way to get into people’s head though I guess. Keyvan Novak’s clearly a talented guy though. Can really be the same unfeasibly handsome Iranian actor who appeared in Holby City, Spooks and Syriana?! If so, I feel another Sasha Baron Cohen coming on…Bastard! If you haven’t already seen it, type ‘fonejacker ‘ into You Tube and get watching, you’ll definitely like at least one or two. I’ll keep you updated with pilot news in the next few weeks.
VERY LATE FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS RADIO & TV SERIES NEWS!
As usual I’m a few years late with the latest comedy sensation, but over the last month my life’s been improved by Flight Of The Conchords. In case you’re as tardy as I, they’re two engaging Kiwi chaps who write very amusing songs, mainly parodying various musical genres in a non tedious way and banter winningly in between. I only just listened to their radio series a few weeks ago. It’s a peach! This week I got hold of a couple of episodes of their US TV show from Bit Torrent and it’s an even more delicious peach! Joe, if you’re reading this, check out this amazingly loving and spot-on tribute to the sublime ridiculousness of early Pet Shop Boys from episode 2. How much more kindred do you want your spirits!?
I’m telling you, if you’re partial to super talented, funny musicians (see also Matts Holness and Berry and Julian Barratt ) and the kind of enjoyably odd conversational rhythms that the Boosh do so well then it’s time to book your Conchord flight! (yeah? Get me a job on a shit magazine, IMMEDIATELY! But not NOW!) Look out for many exciting US comedy talents in the Conchords TV show too, some of whom, like Eugene Mirman and Kristen Schall, were on the bill with David Cross when he was over here a few weeks back. Here’s one more blast; surely the last word on pathetic rap (although nothing will ever stop me pathetic rappin’!) ‘I’m a motherflippin’!’