August 6, 2010
FESTIVAL TIME NEWS!
GETTIN’ MIDDLE CLASS ON YO ASS!
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…
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
May 28, 2010
i-PAD BRIEFING & BUG NORWICH 04 NEWS!
I-PAD FUN & STAR WARS COMMENTARY
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
February 17, 2010
BUG & JOSS STONE NEWS!
KEN KORDA’S ANALYSIS OF THE VIDEO FOR JOSS STONE’S BABY BABY BABY
The BUG shaped part of my life seems to be getting busier, which I’m all up for as it’s still my favourite live assignation. In the last few weeks we had a pair of shows in Norwich then Leicester, all of which seemed to go down pretty well and I had a good time meeting some of the audience after the shows, some of whom gave me some great tips for videos and internet weirdness that we’ll certainly include in forthcoming BUG nights. And only one person gave me a hard time about The Persuasionists!
One of the videos I made for BUG was an analysis of a Joss Stone video that has been doing the rounds online for a while. This is something I thought might be a good strand, not only for the live shows but for a possible TV/internet version of BUG that I’m putting together in pilot form over the next few weeks. I’ve always wanted to do some kind of music show (I wrote about past attempts here) and maybe some form of BUG hybrid is the way to go.
We’ll see, but for the time being, here’s Ken. Oh, and if you have any suggestions for other videos that would benefit from Ken’s analytical skills, do leave a link on my You Tube channel comments section. I love you byeeee!
Download the single of Baby Baby Baby here.
January 28, 2010
SITCOM NEWS!
READING REVIEWS FOR THE PERSUASIONISTS
January 8, 2010
ALONE IN THE SHED NEWS!
THE ADVENTURE BEGINS, THEN CONTINUES FOR A SHORT WHILE…THEN ENDS!
Here are the 4 pieces I made for 2009 Unwrapped presented by lovely Miranda Hart, a Time Trumpet-ish review of last year that went out on BBC2 on 30th December. My Shed bits were spooves of Channel 4’s Alone In The Wild which went out in September last year. Visit the BBC Comedy website to read my hilarious accompanying blog entries now!!! Careful to tape up your sides before you do though or they might split with mirth! Seriously. Hospitals have been reporting record numbers of mirth related injuries since my blog posts went up on the BBC site. Oh wait, apparently they’ve been reporting record numbers of injuries from slipping on ice. So tape up your feet AND your sides.