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
March 17, 2010
6 MUSIC SONG NEWS!
CHANGES (FOR 6 MUSIC)
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)
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.
December 14, 2009
SPIKE JONEZ INTERVIEW NEWS!
INTERVIEW PODCAST & PATHETIC SLAP FOOTAGE!
Hello there. Just before new year’s resolution: post more bollocks on this blog. To kick off, here’s a picture of me and Spike Jonze at the BFI Southbank after I interviewed him about Where The Wild Things Are at The Apple Store in Regent Street on Saturday 5th December 2009. It was a really exciting day, as you may be able to tell from my special slightly-too-smiley smile.
Photograph by Linda Nylind
Listen to the podcast of the Spike Jonze interview HERE
I thought Spike might appreciate a break from the kind of indepth Q&A’s he must usually get and decided instead to read him some of the comments the You Tube trailer for Wild Things has accrued which I copied into photoshop for the audience to see. I’ve been doing the You Tube comments thing at BUG for a couple of years now and I’ve done it with my own clips at the odd live gig too and it’s always fun. I’m thinking of ways to do it on You Tube too so the whole process comes full circle. Anyway, here are the comments I used for Spike for you to enjoy at your own pace.
Luckily Spike had a sense of humour about it as I imagined he would and he seemd to enjoy himself as much as I did although upon listening back to the podcast I was a little shocked by how inarticulate I was at times. I was nervous and interviews are not my forte but still, I don’t think Mark Kermode concludes his critical musings by saying ‘…and stuff’ as much as I flipping do. Also it takes a while for me to get the ball rolling and it seems an age before you hear Spike do anything but breathe and chuckle. When he was finally allowed to speak however, he was as engaging and candid as I’ve seen him in front of an audience and though our conversation never got particularly indepth there’s some interesting moments I think.
One of the things we mention briefly is the time in 2003 that Spike and I found ourselves reading through the script for The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy for our friend Garth Jennings who was vaguely considering Mr Jonze as a possible Ford Prefect. Below is a brief clip of us reading through a scene for the first time, which Spike decided to punctuate by slapping me hard on the face. It doesn’t look like much in the video but as I say in the podcast I was genuinely shocked albeit a little excited at having been slapped by Spike Jonze.
Another thing we mention in the interview is the video for UNKLE that was cut from the skate video Fully Flared that Spike worked on with Ty Evans. It’s pretty explosive stuff! (That’s a funny thing to say because the video involves explosions so I’m using the word ‘explosive’ both literally and metaphorically. Not bad eh?) Check it.
That’s enough Spike news.
Go and see Where The Wild Things Are though, I thought it was lovely!
Adam 14-12-09
July 6, 2008
ADAM & JOE’S SONG WARS VOLUME ONE OUT NOW!
DOWNLOAD IT FROM I-TUNES HERE
It’s our first ever album and it’s only £6.32 so if you bought it we’d be delighted. The songs sound better than they ever did on the radio or our podcasts thanks to Radiohead’s producer Nigel Godrich who took a few hours one afternoon to give them a quick polish to make them sound more shiny. So in a way it’s like a new Radiohead album. Admittedly it’s an infinitesimally small way, but hey, a Godrich polish is a Godrich polish even if (on this occasion) what’s being polished is occasionally a little turd-like. The Video Wars competition is now closed and the results will be announced when we return to the radio on 2nd August or possibly the following saturday (9th August).
Here’s a video I just finished for my song The Hours. Because of the kaleidoscope effect in the background the compression on the You Tube version has gone mental and it looks quite shitty which is a shame because it looked great when I showed on the big screen at the BFI the other night for Out Of Focus Group (thanks for coming if you did. It was a blast!) Hang on, you can now look at it in better quality if you watch it from here and click ‘watch in high quality’ which makes a big difference…
One thing that’s missing from the artwork and track listing, which you can find on the MySpace page here is an indication of which the winning tracks were. Here’s a track by track guide to the album with notes.
01. Song Wars Song (album exclusive) 2:51
This is a track I made especially for the album which starts out as the Song Wars jingle and ends as a piece of semi prog electronica with samples of a particularly fraught Song Wars discussion. In the song you’ll hear snatches of conversation from a show when we had to come up with ring tones and Joe brought in 3 different attempts; something I considered to be a heinous infraction of the Song Wars rules. Passive aggressive middle class radio chat ensued, preserved forever now on this Hot-Chip-but-better style song.
02. European Supermarket (by Joe) 1:56 / 03. Jane’s Brain (by Adam) 0:32
This was the first time we did Song Wars, while filling in for Sean Keavney back in October 2007. There was no theme. Joe’s song won and I must say, it is a fine piece of work. Hang on, just received this message from Joe:
“I’m pretty sure Jane’s Brain won the first session. European Supermarket had it all week but then a sudden Jane’s Brain surge won the day on the friday I believe. I never forget when I lose, and this is, after all, rock history being written…”
04. T.A.L.L. (by Joe) 0:50 / 05. 4 Foot Club (by Adam) 0:39
The theme was Height. Joe’s song won.
06. The Public Transport Song (by Joe) 1:36 / 07. Tiny Mobile Speakers (by Adam) 1:18
The theme was Public Transport. I was very pleased with my song, which sampled I Walk The Earth by King Biscuit Time and took me ages. Joe went for a more Ben Folds/Chas’n’Dave vibe and beat me convincingly perhaps due to his genuinely affecting middle eight/chorusy thing about wanting to be at home rather than on the tube.
08. Jack Meller’s Song (by Joe) 1:33 / 09. James Rohan, Neanderthal Man (by Adam) 1:21
These were songs inspired by descriptions of friends sent in by listeners. I went for a cheesy reggae tune and unbelievably managed to beat Joe this time!
10. Global Warming Song (by Joe) 2:09 / 11. Sincere Whistling Eco Song (by Adam) 1:57
The challenge this time was to record a song with singing that sounded sincere (ie. no silly voices) about climate change. Inspired by the song Young Folks by Peter Bjorn and John, we decided it should also feature whistling. Again, tried hard but Joe won.
12. Meatballs (by Joe) 1:00 / 13. Meatballs (by Adam) 2:17
A listener suggested we compose songs using the cooking instructions from IKEA frozen meatballs. This was the first track that I constructed from scratch, playing all the keyboard parts myself. They’re very basic but it took a long time. I was very pleased with the final song, which was kind of inspired by the Suicide track, Girl. Got beaten again.
14. IACGMOOH (by Joe) 1:33 / 15. I’m a Celebrity Song (by Adam) 1:39
Songs about I’m A Celebrity Get Me out Of Here, a reality show that I like very much but Joe doesn’t care for. I often fantasise about being on I’m A Celebrity but I know that if I ever was I’d almost certainly be voted out first for being too dull. My song is written from the point of view of just such a loser. And guess what? I lost out to Joe AGAIN!
16. All Night Garage (by Joe) 2:12 / 17. Christmas Country Party Time (by Adam) 2:08
Our Christmas songs. This might be my favourite of mine. I had a very good time recording it and the cheers and whoops in the middle 8 are genuine hoots of pre Christmas excitement. However Joe’s garage based mini drama was a powerful adversary and I was beaten yet again. By this time I was getting quite annoyed. I vowed that next time I would be victorious.
18. The Shining (by Joe) 1:56 / 19. The Hours (album version) (by Adam) 2:15
These were songs designed to be played over closing credits of our chosen films. I used samples from The Hours (Oscar scooping Nicole Kidman as Virginia Woolf with plastic nose) and did some Euro rapping in the middle and secured my second Song Wars win! We couldn’t clear the samples for the album so I re-recorded them myself and I’m pleased with the results.
20. Bigfoot (by Joe) 1:38 / 21. Loch Ness Song (by Adam) 2:07
Cryptozoology this time. I phoned mine in rather and was predictably clobbered by Joe’s admirably demented Bigfoot song. I’ve got a soft spot for my effort though.
22. The Right and Wrong Song (by Joe) 1:48 / 23. Toothpaste Brush (by Adam) 0:58
The theme was Instructional Songs For Children. Didn’t spend too long on this one but again, I liked it. Forgot that Joe had used the same Garage Band backing track for his Meatballs Song. Joe was on very strong form this week though and I got the kicking I so richly deserved.
26. No More Song Wars (by Joe) 1:45
After so many merciless drubbings I requested we take a break from Song Wars, a state of affairs that inspired Joe to bring in his own hiatus lament, a fitting conclusion to Song Wars Volume 1.
Volume 2 should be along before too long and that’ll have the full versions of our Kate Nash songs, our festival songs, Dr Sexy, The BaaadDad Rap, The Mind Of A Pirate and many more. I’ll keep you posted.
January 28, 2008
SAVE THE RHINO (& MY EGO)
I’m glad last week’s over. I spent most of it feeling thoroughly deflated. Mentally that is. Physically I look and feel as if I’ve had a compressed air pump shoved up me.
Last Monday’s Save The Rhino gig at The Comedy Store went well and a good time was had by all. I’d asked to be first on as I was keen to get back home early, but it was fun seeing people like Tom Basden, Dan Clark, & Noel Fielding backstage before the gig and after I’d done my 10 minutes of Famous Guy (which went down fine I thought) I decided to hang out and keep chatting as well as catching the other performers (including Paul Kerensa, Jack Whitehall, Vicky Frango and MC John Fothergill, all very good indeed). I’ve been sat in my nutty room doing radio bits and pieces and going slightly mental for the last few weeks so it was great to get out and see some nice people. Thanks to all of you who came along. It was very good meeting those of you who said hello.
Here’s a pic of Famous Guy in off duty gear (taken by Alex Sudea). Usually I would do this character dressed in a flight suit, as if he’d just come from the set of one of his exciting films (you’ll see a clip in my MeeBOX pilot, transmission date still pending) but I wanted to try out some new bits for which his regular clothes would be more appropriate. In the end I ran out of time and ended up doing the usual stuff.
In this pic, Tom Basden and his guitar, backstage at The Comedy Store. Noel in background revising. If you haven’t properly investigated Tom’s sometime comedy family ‘Cowards’, you really should. They’re the real deal.
Here we see the charming Paul Kerensa, Dan Clark (who has his own series coming up on BBC3), Adam Buxton (who wishes he had his own series on BBC3) Noel Fielding (who practically owns BBC3) & the ludicrously young and talented Jack Whitehall.
Despite all the rhino saving fun and bonhomie I woke up the next day feeling inexplicably blue. During the afternoon my agent called to say I’d been bumped from Thank God You’re Here, the ITV improv show on which I was due to appear last weekend (Saturday 26th Jan). There was a clause in my contract for the show saying I shouldn’t discuss my appearance as it was supposed to be a surprise for the audience or something but it turned out I was listed as a guest on their website for a couple of weeks before I was due to appear and was there still on the weekend.
My Ma left a message saying she’d seen I was going to be on the prog and was very excited as she ‘d watched it before and thought I’d be good. I was excited too! I think I might have done a decent job! Someone at ITV didn’t agree and I was booted in favour of bigger names. The people from the production company were very nice about it indeed but it’s always hard in these situations not to feel like a kind of pathetic loser. I spent much of last week trying not to imagine someone from ITV bursting into the production offices and yelling, as if in a scene from Moving Wallpaper: “you booked Adam Buxton?! I had to fucking Google him to remind myself who the fuck he fucking is!! Did you see him on Have I Got News For You?! We don’t want people to instantly fall asleep for fucks sake! Get me Vernon Kaye immediately!” SLAM! (That’s them storming out in my mind). I had to phone my Ma and break the news.
I spent the rest of last week trawling through our first 10 or so 6 Music shows to find stuff we might include in a possible extra podcast in addition to specially recorded bits (which was how we did our Xfm podcasts). That did nothing to lift my spirits. I hate listening to myself unedited! Part of the reason we did the Xfm podcasts was so we could have something that wasn’t just unedited chunks of rambly crap, which is fine if it’s in the context of a live show with music and all, but not so great for a podcast. There’s a totally different feel to stuff that Joe and I do when it’s not a live show and we can be more offhand safe in the knowledge that the really worthless bits can be chopped (more for my benefit than Joe’s who’s much happier off the cuff than I). However now that the 6 Music podcast is out there (the condensed version of our Saturday morning can be found here) it seems a little superfluous to have another one. We’ll see.
To compound my state of self absorbed mania I spent far too long on my Net Piracy song for last week’s Song Wars. At one point it was well over 3 and a half minutes and I was way too into it! It was my Smile! I have to confess I was pleased with my final song and I cycled into town for our 6 Music show on Saturday morning feeling upbeat. However, I’m ashamed to say my merciless drubbing for the previous week’s Instructional Songs For Children got to me and I’m afraid lost it a little bit. Of course the thing to do in the face of a humiliating defeat is to buck up your ideas and plough on (this is jolly Britain after all!!!) but I suddenly had a vision of myself a few months from now having done nothing but try in vain to beat Joe at Song Wars. My wife would have left me and taken the children, the BBC would have laughed off the idea of commissioning a show from me and I’d be sat in a room rocking back and forth listening to my Frozen Meatballs song over and over and wondering why no one had voted for me. And I’d look like…
So as of this week Song Wars is on sabbatical. But the weekend still had one more ego bruising biff to deliver. When I got home and checked my e-mails I saw that I’d been sent a link for a review of the Rhino gig by Evening Standard comedy critic Bruce Dessau. You can read it here. He seemed to have mentioned every performer that night except me! What was that all about?! Thanks James from London for pointing out the fact below the review (I appreciate it even if you’re my Mum or my agent masquerading as an audience member) but it wasn’t enough to stop me e-mailing Mr Dessau to ask if there was a special reason he blanked me…
I hasten to add that I would never think to question or complain about a shitty review but in my post-bump paranoid state, I was just genuinely curious to establish whether it was an oversight or a more pointed omission. He would have had every right to ignore me but he replied very quickly explaining that his main aim that night was to review Noel Fielding and had only mentioned a few of the other acts in passing. He pointed out that I was not the only person he hadn’t mentioned as well, which on closer inspection was true. Of course it’s a shame he didn’t think enough of Famous Guy include a reference to it, but that’s entirely his prerogative. I’m just lucky he didn’t blacklist me for e-mailing him like a total psychopath. Jesus, what a week.
I’m hoping this one will be a little jollier (as long as nothing I’ve written here gets me into trouble somehow!) I’m very much looking forward to BUG 05 on Thursday. I’m very glad to say it’s sold out so apologies if you were unable to get tickets, but if there had only been 6 people there I think they would have witnessed a full scale ego collapse of the sort normally reserved for Amy Winehouse gigs, except without the amazing talent.
Pipples!
Love Adam, 28th January 2008
PS. Halfway through series 2 of Battlestar Galactica and it’s getting good now. I’ve already had death threats after calling it ‘fracking rubbish’ on the show last weekend. It’s just Mary McDonnell’s brave, sad smile I can’t handle. Still at least she’s done for. Hang on a second, what’s Baltar doing with that half Cylon, half human blood?! No you moron, no! Oh Christs. She’s smiling her brave sad smile again…