Blog Archive: August 2026

Preparing to ROCK
A very busy weekend began on Friday morning with me sending out the latest issue of the newsletter. This is of course ALWAYS a hearty meal of FACT and NEWS but this month it was even MORE so as it contained not just updates on the Data and Doctor Doom Podcast and soundtrack album but also details of a WHOLE HEAP of gigs featuring a mysterious new act called 'Hibbett & Christopher'.

What could this mean? Who could they be? ALAS I am unable to officially reveal more for now, but exciting updates will be heading your way soon.

Meanwhile, on an ENTIRELY UNRELATED NOTE, I then packed up and headed down to Brighton to meet Mr Christopher Thorpe-Tracey to have a practice for some gigs we're doing together over the next few months, starting with a trip to FOUND FESTIVAL a couple of days later.

We were both quite nervous about the whole thing, as it's quite a BIG gig and also LONGER than the other couple we've done so far, and so we got stuck RIGHT in to going through our entire REPERTOIRE to work out what to do. Over the morning and early afternoon we went through eleven songs, before deciding on TEN which we felt confident enough to do. These were then sorted into a SETLIST and we had another go at going through THE LOT in order.

COR! I tell you what, it really flipping worked and felt DEAD GOOD, like this was a real and actual proper THING what we were doing. Obviously the two of us playing in Chris's living room is a different prospect to being in front of PEOPLE and through a PA system, but it did give confidence in the material what we have accrued. Now all we had to do is regroup a couple of days later and DO it!

posted 28/8/2026 by MJ Hibbett
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Back In The Studio
On Friday last week I headed south once more to distant CRYSTAL PALACE and OneCat studio, where I was due to gather with Mr CJ Thorpe-Tracey and Mr J Clayton to do further work on our ALBUM.

Chris had something of a TRAIN NIGHTMARE so to begin with it was just Jon and I who worked on some new vocals for I'll Fetch Me Book. I have been giving this song a LOT of THORT lately, as I very much wanted it to have the ENERGEY of Kirsty MacColl singing "In These Shoes?" To be honest I don't think I quite managed to achieve this but it was at least a SIGNPOST to myself of how to do it.

Chris arrived just as we were going through the finished tracks - as with most of the songs thus far we did a few takes and then Jon led us through them picking out only the VERY BEST bits to put into a single vocal track. Some people may think this is like when Lee Marvin did "Wandrin' Star" and they had to go through each take syllable by syllable to find whichever bit was closest to in tune, but it is definitely not like that at all. With me, sometimes whole WORDS are in tune.

With that done we turned to the EPIC Timewasters which went pretty well except for the MIDDLE BIT where I was unable to get the NOTES right, largely because I wasn't sure what they actually WERE. Jon rather brilliantly solved this by getting me to sing it in the right PHRASING at least, auto-tuning the results of THAT so it sounded right, and then having me sing along with it! One can't help thinking that all this might have been easier if we'd got someone much better at SINGING in to do it, but I guess it's too late now!

Next we did The Perfect Love Song which was easier because a) it is much shorter and b) I have been singing it for over 30 years so have a better idea of where the notes are!

This led to LUNCH and some CHAT, after which it was Chris's turn to - FINALLY - do some singing, starting off with backing vocals for When Your Hear A Bird which OH MY GOODNESS sounded AMAZING. This also enabled ME to sit in the control and give direction, which was mostly of the "COR OOH GOSH that sounded LOVELY" type but also occasionally "Can you do that some MORE please?"

A similar state of affairs occurred with his vocals on In The North Stand (GOLLY), although this did lead to a discussion about whether it is valid to do backing vocals along with somebody singing the word "I" e.g. can you sing along with "I went to the shops" or is that incorrect because it is clearly one person doing it? I think it very much IS fine, but it was rather excellent to be sat in a room DISCUSSING it.

After that I suggested we have a crack at Wrong About Everything which, in my head, is DRENCHED in LUSCIOUS HARMONIES. Obviously we had to first go through the process of ME singing but, once we'd staged a tactical withdrawal from me trying to do the difficult bits and retreated to the safer ground of MID-BELLOWING, evolved into a WONDERFUL session of Chris sounding like A FLIPPING POP GROUP. Luckily I had brought extra supplies of "COR" also "OOH", "GOSH" and "GOLLY" because CRUMBS it sounded amazing. We all sat around afterwards listening to it being A BIT EXCITED, as we had now crossed over from a day of "recording some piano and singing" into the glorious technicolor land of MAKING AN ALBUM!

With all that done we said our farewells, with Jon staying on for MORE ROCK and me and Chris popping round the corner for a quick drink and some ADMIN DISCUSSION about our forthcoming DATES. It was, all told, a rather WONDERFUL day - we keep saying that the PRODUCT we PRODUCE at the end of this may or not be successful, but it is definitely going to be BEAUTUFUL!

posted 27/8/2026 by MJ Hibbett
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Hey Hey 16K In Finland
Last week I got a lovely email from The Computer Museum Of Kallio asking me if I'd mind them using Hey Hey 16K as part of one of their exhibitions. I, obviously, said "Yes! Of course you can!"

Apparently somebody came into their museum recently and showed them the song on the internet, and they thought it would be a good thing to include in their touring exhibition I Love 8 Bit. Even as we speak this exhibition is on in the Central Library in Oulu, where it's part of Oulu2026 European Capital Of Culture, and Tuomo (who had originally contacted me about it all) was kind enough to send me some photographs of the whole thing in action:



If you look closely in some of those pictures (or indeed just click on them to make them bigger) you should be able to see that Rob Manuel's marvellous VIDEO playing, which is all very exciting. I mean, the whole long long story of 'Hey Hey 16K' has ALL been exciting, starting with Dr N Brown DIGITISING it as the first* ever internet single (*yes it was), then Mr D Green promoting it in Need To Know, Rob creating the video, and then ALL of the crazy madness that happened after that.

The wonderful thing is that the aforesaid crazy madness CONTINUES to happen, if in a rather more sedate form that in the first week of the video, when we were second only to the invasion of Afghanistan as the most talked about thing on the internet (NB this is actually true!). Once or twice a year I get an email from someone saying they've found the video for the first time, or re-found it decades later, or want me to come and do a GIG (sometimes JUST to play that song), or even asking if it's be OK to feature it as part of the European Capital Of Culture.

When I wrote the song I was trying to talk about a part of recent-ish history that seemed to have been forgotten, but now those early days of home computers are memorialised all over the place, and it's utterly lovely that this song gets to be part of all that. When you sit down to write a song you never know what's going to happen to it - usually, to be honest, what happens is Not Much At All, but very occasionally it turns into something wonderful like this!

posted 26/8/2026 by MJ Hibbett
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Data and Doctor Doom CONCLUDES!
Today is the release day for the FINAL episode of Data and Doctor Doom, which you can listen to wherever you get your podcasts and indeed right HERE:



This one discusses auteur theory, the world's greatest ever committee, Marvel Superheroes Secret Wars. and why we don't talk about comics in the same way as other media formats. It then goes on to to summarise the central message of the whole series in the form of a MEDLEY! As I find myself regularly saying, there is a whole lot of STUFF and also SONGS in it (including the fairly fab and previously unheard Why Don't We Talk About Comics? this time), and you don't have to really know or have much interest in a) comics b) statistics to enjoy it, honest!

Thanks very much to everyone who's listened to it so far - to be fully open and frank, this whole project has rather taken over my life for the past nine months or so, going WAY beyond the original idea just to do a reasonable recording of the live show, and so it would be lovely to get a few more people to give it a go!

posted 25/8/2026 by MJ Hibbett
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The Original Cast Recording is OUT
Let joy be unconfined, worldwide as in Latveria, for LO! the Data and Doctor Doom (original cast recording) album is OUT NOW from all purveyors of digital music, and indeed direct from us via Bandcamp!



This contains ALL of the songs heard during the Data and Doctor Doom podcast series, with some of them slightly REWORKED to fit the album format e.g. there's only one version of the main Data and Doctor Doom theme tune which I re-wrote to fit, rather than all the different ones at the start and end of each episode.

Hopefully it works as an ALBUM, although if you crave the bits in between the songs you can of course listen to it for FREE with all of that in via your podcast provider of choice. Talking of which, tomorrow sees the FINAL epsiode of the whole series - how will it all end? Find out right here, tomorrow!

posted 24/8/2026 by MJ Hibbett
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More Video Thrillz
Two weeks ago I unleashed upon the world a new video for Like Batman But Better. The idea was to try and promote the Data and Doctor Doom podcast from whence it came but, as has been previously discussed, my attempts to get people to listen to the series are not - SHALL WE SAY - causing G Lineker, R Stewart or any of them lot any sleepless nights.

HOWEVER, something rather exciting DID happen. I was checking the stats for the video a couple of days ago and was suddenly surprised to say that the count of viewers was not, as I first thought, 12, but actually 1.2K i.e. A HUNDRED TIMES AS MANY as I was expecting! I dove into the comments (which were all rather lovely) and then the ANALYTICS and realised, to my great surprise, that it had somehow got into the ALGORITHM and had been shown to complete strangers who, according to YouTube anyway, might be interested in why Doctor Doom is, categorically, better than Batman.

It was all rather delightful, and filled me full of hope that maybe, just maybe, this whole crazy thing might actually be of interest to other people apart from ME. That was a nice feeling anyway, but even more so because I had already PREPPED UP another video, this time for The Where, What, How And Whom Of Doctor Doom which I am unleashing on the world... NOW!



As ever, any likes, shares, posts and/or pasting into your profile on Friends Reunited are always very much appreciated. I guess that ALGORITHMIC LIGHTNING is not likely to strike twice but hopefully it will bring some DELIGHT to people who wish to know the where, what, how and/or whom of Doctor Doom as we lead up to the big movie coming out!

posted 12/8/2026 by MJ Hibbett
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Podcasts Of The Third Kind
Today is TUESDAY or, as I like to think of it DOOM'S DAY (has anybody used that as a title for anything before?), as it is that most wonderful day when a new episode of Data and Doctor Doom "drops" (or is gently placed) wherever you get your podcasts or indeed HERE:



This one's got a lot of stuff about the survey I carried out and also a whole new song called Eyeball The Data about DATA WRANGLING, which is apparently a real term and one I fully endorse.

As ever I should say that it's not JUST about Doctor Doom, and it's hopefully not unintelligible to people who somehow have no interest in statistics either. The general idea of doing this as a podcast was to try and make it like An Interesting Documentary that anybody could enjoy, but with extra SONGS and also JOKES in it. I say all this because I am looking at the listener numbers and thinking that there are probably JUST A FEW more people who might get something out of it than are currently doing so!

posted 11/8/2026 by MJ Hibbett
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Prolapse At The 100 Club
On Friday night I popped down to the Pump & Tap in Leicester to meet Mr S Wilkinson for a drink or two before going to see Prolapse at The Princess Charlotte and...

No, hang on a minute, that's not right is it? No, because on Friday night I popped down to the King & Queen in London's Fashionable Fitzrovia to meet Mr S Wilkinson for a drink or two before going to see Prolapse at The 100 Club. Yes, that was it, how on earth was I getting that confused eh?

For LO! The club may have been 100 but the night itself felt extremely NINETIES, as it was full of old pals and old tunes, all of which I was DELIGHTED to be experiencing again. This was, of course, not the first time I have been to see a fellow Validator at this venue - thinking about it, technically it's not even the second time I have been to see a BANDMATE there either - so maybe that's another reason it felt so Princess Charlotte-ESQUE, as a place I knew well and rather liked. INDEED my various experiences of going to gigs there meant that when we arrived I was able to steer Simon over to the far side of the venue where I knew there to be a much less busy BAR, space to stand, and also easy access to the LOO!

These are all important things for me at gigs these days, and looking around I felt safe in the knowledge that I was not alone in this. The VAST majority of the audience were people who, like us, had likely seen Prolapse MANY times the first time around, and of these almost ALL had made the decision to wear SHORTS. I had SEVERAL conversations with different people saying "Phew! I thought I'd be the only one wearing shorts tonight", as there was an idea in my BRANE and clearly other people's that everyone else would be wearing skinny black jeans and long raincoats, but no, it was all 6Music Dad casual. Or to put it another way, it looked like about 300 BARBECUES had been rained off and made to shelter indoors.

We got there just in time for the end of Jetstream Pony, who I have seen and played with several times OUTDOORS, but I don't think I've ever seen them INDOORS before and I must say they sounded GRATE. Can sound be more COMPRESSED inside a venue than out the back of one? Either way, it really suited them!

After that there was a LOT of bumping into people which, as the estimable Mr J Jervis pointed out later, is one of the main JOYS of these sort of gigs, especially now that we don't have the annual reunions of Indietracks. It was lovely to wander round going "Oh HELLO, how are you?" about 17,000,000 times, and there was much hugging!

This was then followed by Prolapse themselves, featuring our very own Mr T Pattison who played SO HARD that I believe he broke a drumstick! Here they all are in ACTION:



After seeing the high quality photographs in the previous blog you are probably thinking that this was also taken by a pro photographer with expensive equipment, but NO! Incredibly these were taken by ME using a simple mobile telephone!

The gig was GRATE, as per - the sound levels took a couple of songs to bed in, or rather to SMUSH TOGETHER into the massive sonic RACKET of Prolapse - but once that was done it was FAB. As with last time I saw them there was a definite move towards What They Used To Be Like Back In The Previous Century i.e. not the all out HITS PACKAGE of when they first got back together but rather a ramshackle, chatty, slightly dishevelled but then SUDDENLY ENORMOUS sound that I for one really really like. It even included Pat leaving his guitar up against the amp at the end - really all it needed was for there to be some old TV sets on stage getting smashed up and it would have been PERFECT!

It was thus a ROCK SATISFIED Hibbett who left the venue, after further HUGS VARIOUS, with a spring in my step and a sudden urge to go to GRANBY FISHERIES on the way home!

posted 8/8/2026 by MJ Hibbett
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Pints of Knowledge
On Wednesday evening I had a DREAMLIKE journey across London to distant Chiswick, where I was due to give a TALK for Pints of Knowledge. I say "dreamlike" because it was a series of delays, errors (on my part), more delays, and lots of other trains overtaking us as we tried to get to An Important Appointment with time running out. If my legs had turned into tree trunks and/or I had forgotten to wear any trousers then I would not have been AT ALL surprised.

Still, we got there in the end with approx 7 minutes to spare to find the lovely people who run Pints Of Knowledge entirely unruffled, possibly because this was NOT technically a gig and so there wasn't any real need FOR me to be there until the whole thing actually started. On the way there I had rung them and said "I'm playing at Pints of Knowledge tonight", and The Acts On My Bill pointed out that this probably wasn't the correct terminology. In related news, I also spent about half the journey realising I hadn't got my guitar, panicking I'd left it somewhere, and then remembering I didn't need it.

Professor Steve Cross was also there, wielding a camera for some snazzy pictures (some of which are BELOW), and after a quick chat with him and a hello to the organisers the show... sorry, TALK, began with the host asking if this was anyone's first time at Pints of Knowledge. To my surprise/delight about two thirds of the audience put their hands up, meaning they had come to see ME! Gosh!



I then took to the stage with clicker and microphone in my hands to begin talking about "Why Doctor Doom Is Better Than Batman (and How We Can Prove It)" and realised that OH NO I did not have access to Presenter View. For those who have not done PowerPoint presentations, this is a facility where the current slide is shown on the screen but on your laptop you get a smaller preview of what's coming NEXT as well. This is VERY useful if, like me, you tend to build a talk around the slides and have indeed come to RELY on it, so it was a bit scary to have to try and remember what was coming next, but I think I just about managed it. Also I remembered that many years ago I had gone to TRAINING with Steve at UCL where he spent ages trying to get academics to understand that you need to hold the microphone NEAR YOUR MOUTH, and was now highly aware of exactly where I was placing it. AND that the fact that the screen was MASSIVE meant I kept almost falling off stage in an effort to get out of the way!



Hopefully my multiple internal PANICS did not distract the audience too much, who were ATTENTIVE, ENGAGED and also GRATE. I talked about my Doctor Doom research but then veered off into discussion of how superhero storytelling differs from the conventional three act structure and why that causes problems for Hollywood adaptations, based on last year's book chapter Supervillains are the real heroes (which you can read for free at that link). I also did my usual bit asking for suggestions for characters to try out the unified catalogue of transmedia character components on, which got lots of fab suggestions (we did Wolverine in the end, which I don't think I've had before) and then when we got to the end there was a series of BRILLIANT questions.



My only disappointment was that I think I may have overrun slightly, and so there wasn't a huge amount of time for the Q&A session, which I'd been v much looking forward to. However, after it was over I was joined by a GROUP of people who all wanted to ask questions and we ended up having a BRILLIANT session of DISCUSSION about matters raised. I must say this made me very happy indeed, and also relieved that I have been doing some REVISION e.g. reading the first volume of "Absolute Batman" as there were lots of pertinent and also CURRECT points being made.

It was a pretty amazing evening all round, extraordinarily well organised, even in the face of me panicking, and attended by an overwhelmingly YOUNG audience who were there to expand their BRANES. Cor, imagine if things such as this had existed when I was in my twenties, where you could go to an EVENT and have speakers EXPLAIN interesting stuff to you and then DISCUSS it with other like-minded types - it would have been GRATE!

posted 7/8/2026 by MJ Hibbett
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Episode Two: Attack Of The Podcast
I arose bright and early this morning in order to update the Data and Doctor Doom episodes page with full details of Episode 2, FOR LO! Episode 2 of 'Data and Doctor Doom' has been UNLEASHED and is currently rampaging around wherever you get your podcasts and also HERE:



This one explains how my whole methodology works, fully defines what 'The Marvel Age' actually means, talks about the need for evidence-based research, tells you how to do random stratified sampling, and contains perhaps my favourite joke of the whole series. There's also a whole bunch of new songs, including My Unified Catalogue Of Transmedia Character Components, The Marvel Age and Random Stratified Sampling, plus a whole lot more.

I think it's Quite Good, but am gradually coming around to the realisation that it Might Not Be For Everyone. When I first started putting all of this together I was convinced that there was a huge market for it. It would appeal, I thought, to people who like my music OR people who know the MCU OR people who are interested in statistics. That is a HUGE audience, but I am now beginning to understand that the actual audience may just be people who like my music AND know the MCU AND are interested in statistics, which is - SHALL WE SAY - a slightly more exclusive grouping.

To be honest I do think there's a bit more too it than that, and that it should appeal to people with ENQUIRING MINDS who'd like to know how some aspects of our current culturual landscape actually WORK, but do have a listen and see what you think - DOOM COMMANDS IT!

(PS saying "DOOM COMMANDS IT!" at the end of everything is very very enjoyable and I am sure I am going to find myself using it at the end of work emails before too long)

posted 4/8/2026 by MJ Hibbett
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