Blog: Dinosaur Planet: Top Of The Pops

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It's that time of year, when people work out and publish their Top 10/20/Whatever Albums Of The Year and, as ever in a year when we've released an album, i have been SCOURING them for mentions of US.

Disappointingly, until yesterday, we had not been mentioned AT ALL - I MOANED about this on twitter and a number of people said they thought Dinosaur Planet had come out LAST year, which it was MEANT to, but due to numerous INCIDENTS (which i am convinced is the reason for the LIGHT DUSTING of grey hairs I now have) with the manufacturing, ended up not being the case. This, obviously,is the ONLY explanation for our non-appearance in ALL charts, but still, it was disappointing not to appear anywhere.

That was until YESTERDAY, when Keep Pop Loud published the second half of their Top 20 Albums of 2012, and LO! we were on it! Not only that, but we were NUMBER ONE!

HOORAH! Now, I know we're all supposed to say "Oh music isn't a competition, it really shouldn't be looked at like that", which is a) true but b) a HECK of a lot easier to say when you're actually IN a chart of what is BEST!

It's funny with this album - maybe it's because I harboured such Ludicrous Dreams of it becoming MASSIVE, or maybe it's because it didn't get featured on RADIO as much as the last two, but I've often thought of it as Not Doing Very Well, when, actually, research shows it has been our TOP PERFORMING album of ALL - it's sold more copies in its first year than ANY of our previous albums, got a TONNE more press (if in rather different places than before - we never got into The Smithsonian Magazine with WE VALIDATE! for instance) and best of all I'm STILL getting emails from people telling me how much they, and often their kids, like it.

And also, of course, I'm IMMENSELY proud of the fact that we actually DID it how we did it i.e. we said "Let's make a ridiculously huge PROPER full cast concept album about SPACE DINOSAURS full of sound effects and EXPLOSIONS" and DID make a ridiculously huge PROPER full cast concept album about SPACE DINOSAURS full of sound effects and EXPLOSIONS. My PRIDE also comes from the fact we had such a vast cast of LOVELY people involved in it, and maybe THAT'S the reason I've carried around this idea of it not doing as well as I'd hoped, because I'd hoped for it to TAKE OVER THE WORLD. Maybe one day it will!

And if this all seems a bit daft, that I should be so PLEASED about one blog saying it is THE BEST... well yes, I suppose it is, but it's the TRUTH. It reminds me of many years ago when the "Well Hung At Dawn" column ROLLING STONE made This Is Not A Library their Album Of The Year. They COULD have gone for any of the other albums that EVERYBODY was naming album of the year, but they chose us because, I think, they knew it would have meant a HECKLOAD more for us than for, say, REM. And they were right!

So I guess my MESSAGE here is this: Blogs! websites! news outlets! If you've not done your Top 10s yet, have a think about what it'll mean for the BANDS you mention. Will Alt-J or Field Music or whoever really be that bothered about you saying they're really good, and still be banging on about it in a DECADE? PROBABLY NOT.

Will MJ Hibbett & The Validators? DEFINITELY! You know what to do!

posted 19/12/2012 by MJ Hibbett

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Comments:

It's number one in our house, Mark! Master J Williams has two albums on his iPod: dinosaur plant and the best rock anthems ever. And he never plays the other one!
posted 19/12/2012 by Gareth Williams

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