Hey ho hoo ha hey! BUG 13 and BUG 13 The Directors Cut at the BFI Southbank on Thursday 14th and Friday 22nd are already fully booked although I would stress how much I’d recommend just coming along on the night and seeing if you can hold of a ticket as there are always a few no shows and free seats. Of course I can’t guarantee you’ll get a seat and I wouldn’t want you to put yourself in the position where your night would be ruined if you didn’t, but I really think it’s worth a try if you’ve been unable to book a seat for what continues to be my favourite live engagement in one of London’s most smartiferous cinema shaped venues.

As well as the usual selection of extraordinary music videos from around the world I’ll be unveiling my own no budget effort for my song Nutty Room which I made recently with the help of video whizzmachine Dougal Wilson.

NORWICH BUG 2

If you’re in striking distance of Norwich then here’s some very early notice of the second BUG show at the wonderful Norwich Playhouse on Thursday 17th September at 8pm. The first one of these was a giant East Anglian hoot and I’m looking forward very much to another hoot slice so book early to avoid crushing disappointment and also to make me seem popular and important.

You can book seats for NORWICH BUG 2 here

It’s over halfway through the series and I’m digging it so much. It’s on BBC2 on Monday nights at 10pm in case you haven’t caught it yet. Quite apart from the fact that it’s very satisfying to have a comedy show this intelligent being commissioned ‘these days’ (he says sounding like an old fartprick) it’s properly funny stuff. Even the bits that don’t make me laugh are so artfully done I’m happy to wait for the next very funny/brilliant bit, of which there are many. The riff on nostalgic memories of Woolworth’s, MFI and Zavvi this week was a peach. My wife, who normally has low tolerance for TV comedy said “he’s very dishy isn’t he?”. Yes he is, I thought, which I guess makes me a kind of groupie.

So it was exciting for me to contribute to the show, kind of. OK, I contributed to the first of the red button interviews that Armando Iannucci did with Stewart that you can see after the show goes out each week. I was excited to be involved even though I don’t imagine Stewart even knew I was. Can you spot my input? Is it sleazy to want you to spot my input? Sorry if so.

Lat night’s BUG 12 The Directors Cut at the BFI Southbank was one of my favourites so far. We showed some wonderful stuff including an animation called Story From North America by talented young animator Kirsten Lepore, Reuben Sutherland’s video for Royksopp’s Happy Up Here, Martin De Thurah’s for Fever Ray, Karni & Saul’s for Flogging Molly, a very funny vid for French band Odelaf’s song Le Café, a jaw dropping skate vid for UNKLE’s lovely track Heaven directed by Ty Evans with Spike Jonez, and various things I made myself and with Garth Jennings who was our guest at the previous week’s show.

One of the standout animated videos we showed was by super smart directing team Walter Robot for Deathcab For Cutie’s Grapevine Fires. I read out some of the comments that had been left by You Tubers including one mini thesis from a chap called NathanY579. You can find the comment if you scroll down far enough but in case it gets removed or whatever, here’s a pic:

Intrigued, I navigated the BUG audience to Nathan’s channel where I found a video he’s posted of himself singing the traditional American song Wildwood Flower. The bad part of me was hoping it would be dreadful and he would be revealed as a colossal ponce, but only the very hard would deny he’s got talent and throws himself manfully into his early Johnny Cash routine. I couldn’t help noticing that someone calling himself devinoxford had left a message on his home page, clearly part of an exchange that had taken place elsewhere on You Tube telling Nathan that:

you’re only a poor musician because you suck, it’s that simple!

to which Nathan replies with an unguarded candor seldom found in You Tube comment sections:

I wasn’t referring to myself and you have hurt my feelings. However you are entitled to your opinion.

When the audience at BUG saw that comment they let forth a loud and sincere ‘Aww’ of sympathy for Nathan’s hurt feelings which spurred me to take it a few steps further and film a message of support on my camera which I have posted below. I’m not suggesting anyone should further hound devinoxford (who as Nathan magnanimously points out is entitled to his opinion) or overload Nathan with commentary to make him even more self conscious than I may have already, but I thought it would be a good chance to reach out to a man admirably unafraid of writing essays beneath Deathcab For Cutie videos and posting vids of himself doing heartfelt Johnny Cash impressions for all the scary internet to see. Good on you Nate! And I’ll see the rest of you at BUG in May.

In between trying to write the ultimate 80’s song for next week’s Song Wars I’m preparing frantically for the third Out Of Focus Group at the BFI Southbank. If you haven’t been to one of these before it’s basically an excuse for me to show some old and new video morcels I’ve made in between live performances from myself and other more talented actors, comedians and musicians. Finalising the running order is always a fairly last minute thing because foolishly I ‘organise’ these shows myself and never really get to grips with the logistics so I can’t say exactly who’ll be appearing, but it’s always a good night, one way or another.

The show starts at 6.50pm on Friday 13th, March and should be over by 8.30pm. Let’s have a drink at the Benugo bar at the BFI after the show! Lovely. I wonder if any of you reading this are the kinds of people who refuse to go out if it’s a Friday 13th because you’re so superstitious. If you are, I wonder if you’re also an atheist. If that’s the case you’re my kind of totally irrational fuckwit and all I can say is it’s a great shame you won’t be able to make it to the show because I think you’d like it.

You can book you tickets for Out Of Focus Group C here

Here’s the kind of thing I’ll be showing at the BFI. It’s another Signing For The Deaf thing from my BBC3 pilot, MeeBOX, but this is a longer edit than the piece that was actually broadcast. The twatty annotations feature on You Tube is actually quite brills for these as it means that you can enjoy them (or not) if you are actually deaf. I had a few complaints from deaf people that the last one of these I put up didn’t have subs and they felt that to be playing about with deaf signing while not even letting deaf people in on the joke was a bit much, so I’m glad to be able to fix that here. By the way, don’t forget you can always turn the subs off. I’ve been thinking about doing some more signing bits but I may not get it together for the 13th, especially with Song Wars. Wish Phil Oakey or someone from New Musik or Landscape would get in touch with a backing track, then I’d be sorted. It’s possible they have better things to do, but you never know! Hope to see you on the 13th March!

I notice that when playing the vid in HD it’s got all lines and shit innit. Field dominance issues. These are exactly the kind of issues that I hoped Obama would address when he came to power but so far, nothing. It’s all very well saying you want to help the Odds (lower?) AND the Evens (higher?!) but sometimes they just have to remain de-interlaced. Either that or you drop a field, but who wants the responsibility of making that kind of decision? Not I.

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

No doubt I’m breaking all kinds of Big British Castle rules by doing this, but as the show went out weeks ago and is apparently floating about on other parts of the web and no money is changing hands, I’m hoping no one will mind if I enable you to download the New Year compilation I put together for Radio 2 along with artwork should you wish to burn a CD and print out a sleeve like in olden times.

Just click on the links below, which will take you to Sendspace where you can download the 4 WAV files that make up the 2 hour show. If you want to print out artwork for your 2, 1 hour CDs just click on the ‘COMPILATION CD INLAY’ links then right click on the artwork to save them to your desktop and when you print them out they should fit into an old school jewel case. Of course now, evil geniuses have introduced a new design of jewel case, which will force everyone to invest in new printing software for the inlays, but I’m encouraging you to recycle the old ones. Simply locate a CD by some unbelievably over hyped band from a few years ago, pop open the jewel case and substitute this exclusive artwork instead! Everyone wins! Even the overhyped band because they already have your money although they’re probably wishing they could have just matured slowly rather than being thrust into the limelight so quickly and having all kinds of unwanted pressure put on them as a result.

The Best Of Adam & Joe Part 1A

The Best Of Adam & Joe Part 1B

The Best Of Adam & Joe Part 2A

The Best Of Adam & Joe Part 2B

ADAM & JOE 6 MUSIC COMPILATION CD INLAY FRONT

ADAM & JOE 6 MUSIC COMPILATION CD INLAY BACK

Photograph by the brilliant Perou

A handful of tickets have been released for this Thursday’s BUG at the BFI Southbank, so if you tried to get hold of some before and it was sold out, now’s your chance to scoop one or two. There’s also a few for next week’s BUG 11, The Director’s Cut (same show as this week but minus the interview) so do come along. And if it says it’s sold out on the BFI website you can try just turning up on the night. You’re not guaranteed a seat but there’s always one or two empty spaces from last minute no shows so it’s a good bet you’ll get in. Show starts at 8.45pm on both nights and tickets need to be collected or purchased from the BFI Southbank box office. See you in the Benugo bar after the show!

You can book tickets for BUG 11, this Thursday 22nd here

You can book tickets for BUG 11 The Directors Cut, next Wednesday 28th here

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.

Hello again. It’s been too long, but it was a very busy Jesusparty. Apart from the usual high octane present prep, I did a highly enjoyable week’s work in a Radio 4 adaptation of a book by William Thackeray called the Yellowplush Papers (a favourite of Al Murray apparently), and I spent longer than I intended to putting together a compilation of our 6 Music show for transmission on New Years day on Radio 2 (I’ll make the whole 2 hour prog available for download here in the next few weeks). In addition I’ve been working on a few video morcels that should be available on the BBC’s comedy website sometime soonish.

Apart from further 6 Music duties, the next items on my agenda are all BUG shaped. BUG 11 on Thursday 22nd January is sold out but tickets are now on sale for BUG 11 The Directors Cut the following Wednesday 28th, which will be more or less the same as BUG 11 except without the guest but even more fun! A reminder for those who haven’t yet been that BUG is a show I host at the BFI Southbank featuring a selection of amazing music videos from recent times with me reading out a few You Tube comments and talking ballwash in between. The videos are mainly chosen by David Knight from Promonews and he always comes up with some wonderful stuff, much of which you’re unlikely to have seen anywhere else. Show starts at 8.45pm.

You can book tickets for BUG 11 The Directors Cut here

CALLING ALL EAST ANGLIANS!

BUG is coming to Norwich! I’ll be hosting a show featuring jawdroppalicious vids from previous London BUG’s at the Norwich Playhouse on Thursday 5th February so why not come along and see what you’ve been missing? Let’s have a drink at the extremely cosy Norwich Playhouse bar afterwards! Come on, Stephen Fry’s the patron!! See you then I hope.

You can book tickets for NORWICH BUG 1 here

I’ll be doing another show featuring live comedy and videos on Friday 12th December so book now as tickets for the last one went fast. Hard to believe Out Of Focus Group A was back in July when the world banking system had yet to collapse completely, Brand & Ross hadn’t tortured any sweet old actors sufficiently badly for anyone to notice, America still had the wacky president and everyone was wearing leg warmers and deely boppers and saying Wassssuuuup! Wow, it seems longer than 5 months ago.

As with the previous Out Of Focus Groups this is an opportunity for me to try new things out on an audience as well as honing older bits and mixing it all with guests and other golden nuggets. Speaking of which, I was thinking of dusting off some Pavel bits and pieces last time but never got round to it so I may do that for this one. Golden nuggets! There’ll also be some new Ken Korda stuff as well as a couple of new video pieces. More golden nuggets! Special guests are as yet unconfirmed so I will post nearer the time to fill you in.

It’s an early start (6.50pm) so you’ll be out by 8.30pm and your Friday night will only just have begun so really, unless the whole of the south bank gets zapped by aliens or whatever, you can’t lose. Even if the aliens did start zapping, you might be one of the lucky survivors and then what a tale you’d have to tell! An alien attack AND Out Of Focus Group B in one night! Hope to see you.

You can book tickets for Out Of Focus Group B here