Blog Archive: August 2024

A Newsletter Of News
Let joy be unconfined around the land, for LO! it is the last working day of the month which means a) it is PAYDAY for those of us what gets paid upon this day and b) it is time for the latest edition of The Last Working Day Of The Month!

This month's newsletter is UNUSUALLY rich in content - or at least it is in terms of recent times. Many years ago, when I was in my full GIG POMP, the newsletter was always PACKED with forthcoming dates and recording details, but since COVID and so forth these have been rather sparse. I am thus DELIGHTED to say that this time around there are no less than FIVE (5) gigs listed, and not just in London neither.

Which reminds me - I have just started PRACTICING for these gigs (if you noticed THE MAN looking afeared this week, that's probably why) and have a LIST of about 30 songs to try and learn up. I will probably end up doing the same 8-12 songs at ALL the gigs as I usually do, but in this early period of OPTIMISM I am looking forward to trying out a few songs I have rarely - or even NEVER - done in public before. THUS if anybody has any songs they would PARTICULARLY like me to play (preferably at a gig you might be attending) do please let me know - it takes a minimum of about a MONTH for me to learn anything up, so get requests in early and I'll have a go!

In the meantime, do please have a look at the newsletter when you have a mo, it is full of loads of other stuff to READ and READ ABOUT, we may not see it's like again for quite some time!

posted 30/8/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Podcast Metric Number Stats Analysis Systems
One of the GRATE delights of The Funny Comics Fan Club (LIKE AND SUBSCRIBE TODAY!) is that it involves lots of Rock Admin. Long-time readers of this here blog will recall that, back in my ROCK POMP, I used to thoroughly enjoy a bit of Rock Admin, so it is very nice to have some of it back in my life. I have spent the past few weeks Tinkering With Websites, Submitting To Podcast Databases and, most excitingly of all, Counting Page Hits.

Counting Page Hits is one of the great lost JOYS of the early interweb, back when we all had one of those COUNTERS on their page so that everyone could see how many times it had been visited. If I remember correctly they tended to start off with a capacity to have a THOUSAND people visit you, although it was mostly a THRILL to think you could ever get to a HUNDRED, for LO! that was about how many people were actually ON the interweb way back then. Nowadays the whole thing is a giddy mess of BOTS and SPIDERS and GOOGLE ANALYTICS and all of that so it is pretty much meaningless, and that early fun has gone off to the great Geocities in the sky.

HOWEVER, our Podbean page tells you EXACTLY how many people have downloaded each EPISODE, and so ever since we UNLEASHED the series I have been watching the counter very gently go up. I was doing exactly that on Monday lunchtime when I receievd a message from my colleague Mr John Dredge to alert me to the FACT that we were mentioned in that day's Podnews newsletter - John has MUCH experience of Publicising Podcasts from his Award Winning Podcast Enterprise The John Dredge Nothing To Do With Anything Show (LIKE AND SUBSCRIBE IMMEDIATELY!) and it was he what had sorted this out.

"How lovely", I thought. "Hopefully this will enable episode one to exceed the 50ish downloads that the trailer got!"

THUS throughout the day I very occasionally (only a few times an hour) went and clicked REFRESH on the website, and watched as the counter did indeed go past our initial 50... and then kept on going. It was WEIRD - it got to 100 downloads within an hour or so, and over the course of the day went up and up and up. It turns out that LOADS of people subscribe to that newsletter, so by close of play yesterday we'd had over SEVEN HUNDRED downloads!

Rather wonderfully I was able to impart this news to an otherwise unaware John Dredge that very day, for LO! we had arranged to meet up to record a new episode after work. We are stacking up quite a healthy back-log of shows, so that it was episode FIVE what we had gathered to record, and we began doing so in HIGH SPIRITS, buouyed not only by the aforesaid downnloads but also by the fact that we were talking about KRAZY COMIC, which (SPOILERS) is FANTASTIC.

However, our glee swiftly turned to HORROR when, forty minutes in, we noticed that the recorder had stopped and, on further investigation, FROZEN! We record on my little digital four-track, which I've had for MANY years and has never done anything like this before, so I've no idea what was going on. It had completely gone KER-PLUNK though, and in the end I had to take the batteries out just to restart it!

ALAS we had lost THE LOT and so we had to pick ourselves up and go right back to the start again, this time recording in shorter bursts and SAVING it. Weirdly it felt like it was all slightly BETTER the second time around, as it forced our MIGHTY BRANES to REPHRASE the thoughts we'd wanted to get across and then to think of NEW things to say, which I am very pleased to say we DID. I'm even more pleased to say that, when I got home and was able to fully CHECK, all these new segments had recorded properly and had WORKED, which was a huge relief!

If we stick to the PLAN of fortnightly episodes then, by my reckoning, this one will be out in OCTOBER, so who knows, by then we might be into QUADRUPLE listener figures. Watch out, G Linekar and R Stewart, we are coming for you!

posted 28/8/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Pearls Aloud
At the weekend myself and The Shows In My Listings had an extremely FRINGEY experience. This was partly due to going to see a show at The Camden Fringe, but also because a) it was in a room above a pub b) we were meeting some pals beforehand and we ended up in different pubs to each other c) one of those pubs had a big courtyard and d) most importantly, it was raining. We could have BEEN in Edinburgh!

However, where we actually were was The Hen And Chickens, there to meet the Mylands and see a show called Pearls Aloud which (SPOILERS) was GRATE. All I knew before going in was that it was about three things - Feminism, a chip shop, and Girls Aloud. Two of those are ALREADY among my favourite things and I was prepared to learn about Girls Aloud, so in we went.

I thought it was going to be a One Woman Show about Experiences In A Chip Shop, but the fact that four people came onstage right at the start disabused me of that notion. It was actually a MUSICAL using the songs of Girls Aloud to tell the story of four young women working in a chip shop, and it was ACE. There were MANY jokes, there was SINGING, there was DANCING, there were Entirely Plausible Character Arcs For Every Character, and there was a general air throughout of CARE and QUALITY. I love it when you go to see a show and feel like you are in SAFE HANDS, with people who have actually put some LOVE into the production, and that's what it was like throughout. It was ACE!

I think my only complaint was that the FLYER didn't tell me who had WRITTEN it. It didn't FEEL like a Devised Piece because of the aforesaid ARCS and STORY and all round SENSE, but then maybe it was? I do not know and would like to! Otherwise it was all GRATE, and we left the pub full of JOY, and with a feeling that we should maybe go and see 15 other shows one after the other, drink loads of BEER and then go to SNAX. Instead we went home and watched Girls Aloud At The BBC on the iPlayer, which wasn't, to be honest, quite as much fun as the show itself had been. Which was a LOT of fun!

posted 25/8/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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It's Yoko!
On Sunday myself and The Concepts In My Art went to Tate Modern to see the big Yoko Ono exhibition. It was AMAZING.

It started off brilliantly in the entrance area with the sound of a phone ringing, being picked up, and then Yoko saying "It's Yoko" (or sometimes the same but in Japanese). Personally I think "It's Yoko" would have been a better title than "Music Of The Mind", which is what it was actually called, because the whole rest of the exhibition was basically her saying "It's Yoko!" in the form of ART.

As we stepped into the first room we found lots of people looking Serious because it was Serious Conceptual Art, but as we went along from room to room everyone's faces very gradually changed as it became abundantly clear that Yoko is VERY FUNNY INDEED. I don't mean that in a disrespectful way at all - the more you saw the more it became clear that she has a COLOSSAL sense of humour and was inviting us all to join in.

She was ALSO inviting us to join in with lots of the exhibits too, and so we did. I had a go in one of the bags, we shook hands through "Painting To Shake Hands", hammered in nails, outlined shadows and so on and so forth, up to and including taking a piece of SKY near the end. It was BEAUTIFUL throughout, bouncing with ideas that were a) LOVELY and b) INCLUSIVE. So often when we go to these here conceptual art exhibitions the entire point seems to be for the ARTISTE to put out how much cleverer they are than we mere plebs who can't possibly understand the Serious Political Points they are making. Yoko was very much inviting everyone in to join her and it was ACE.

My favourite parts were the section about the exhibition she did at the Museum of Modern Art, which a) she didn't tell them about and b) she called "Museum of Modern (F)art", and the instruction for "Painting for a Broken Sewing Machine" which said "Place a broken sewing-machine into a glass tank ten or twenty times larger than the machine. Once a year on a snowy evening, place the tank in the town square and have every one throw stones at it." It made I LARF!

Weirdly, for me at least, the bits with AN ACTUAL BEATLE in were some of the least fun, especially the pictures of the Plastic Ono Band playing live, as you could FEEL the other musicians being grumpy. This was, I guess, partly understandable as she WAS someone from a whole other world stepping in as an equal with the person they all looked up to, but a lot of the coverage did demonstrate that the main thing was that she was a WOMAN and a FOREIGN one at that.

Some of that attitude still seems to be about - one of the main disappointments of Craig Brown's Beatles book of a few years ago was that it seemed to fully buy into the idea that Yoko was a laughable posho "artist" who broke up the Beatles - so it was wonderful to see her being appreciated this way, both by virtue of it being a HUGE exhibition in our biggest modern art museum and ALSO by the faces of the other people who were clearly DELIGHTED by it all. It was GRATE!

posted 21/8/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Get Your Comic On
Last week, as part of the general TUMULT of Talking About Doctor Doom, I recorded a podcast interview with Mr James Lister for the comics NEWS and VIEWS site Get Your Comic On, and we had a DELIGHTFUL time. Opinions roamed widely and we even came up with a solution for the problem of what Marvel are going to do with Robert Downey Jr's expensive FACE when he's playing a character who wears a mask.

The idea was that this would be used as part of their regular podcast, and I think that is still the plan, but I am very happy to say that James has gone "Oh sod it, let's stick the whole thing out" and has very much done exactly that, unleashing THE LOT on an unwitting world. THUS you can see for yourself the moment when we both realised that the RDJ FACE idea is a really good one, and witness us both getting ever so excited about the Doom news in general.

It was, as you can probably tell, REALLY GOOD FUN. If anybody else wants me to come on and yack at them similarly, now that I am PUBLICALLY RECOGNISED as The World's Leading And Only Academic Expert On Doctor Doom (citation NOT required), please do let me know. I am ready to enter THE PODOSPHERE!

posted 20/8/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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The FCFC is GO!
Today I am DELIGHTED to showcase the UNLEASHMENT of the first episode of the new podcast from myself and Mr John Dredge, The Funny Comics Fan Club!



This is the first episode (not counting the trailer, which is more of an introduction) but we have TWO (2) more recorded and ready to go so far. We're planning to release them fortnightly on Mondays, so please update your social calendars accordingly, and it should be available everywhere you get your podcasts... except for Spotify. We WILL get it on there at some point, but we need to move on to the PAID version of our podcast site before that can happen, and we're not quite there yet!

Anyway, I hope you take DELIGHT in this offering and, if so, SUBSCRIBE. I think it's fair to say that John and I have had a GRATE deal of fun recording them so far, and there's a whole HEAP of GRATE comics and THORTS on same to come. As I will never tire of saying, ask you local newsagent to reserve you a copy every fortnight, and see if you can get them to write you name in pencil on the back too!

posted 19/8/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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The Funny Comics Fan Club
As mentioned the other week, myself and Mr John Dredge have been working away at recording a PODCAST that is called "The Funny Comics Fan Club" in which we discuss individual issues of funny comics. We've now got THREE (3) issues in the bank and are preparing to UNLEASH them on the world, but to kick things off we have done a TRAILER what you can listen to right HERE:



It is BRIEF but I think captures the TONE and also the APPROACH what we are going to take. I'm currently in the process of getting it linked up to FEEDS and whatnot so it may be a few days before it pops up on your favourite podcast APP, but hopefully it will all be sorted out by this time next week when we're planning to impose the first issue/episode upon a waiting world. In the meantime, why not ask your friendly local newsagent to reserve you a copy?

posted 14/8/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Abbey Road
On Saturday I zoomed across London town to distant St John's Wood, for an appointment at Abbey Road Studios!

It will surprise you to know that I was NOT there for a recording session, ENTIRELY LIKELY though that may be, but rather for the Stories In Sound tour/EXPERIENCE, what The Follicles in My Mop Top had got me for my BIRTHDAY. It was advertised as an "immersive experience" where you got to go inside ACTUAL ABBEY ROAD STUDIO and I have to say I got very immersed, and also EXCITED.

I mean, OBVIOUSLY as an International Rock Star I have been inside Abbey Road before - waaay back in 1998 the Fabians split-single got mastered there, when about 15 of us went down with Sorted Supremo Dave Dixey to be present at the "session". The engineer then seemed used to this sort of thing, and was quite calm about us all nipping out to go to the loo one after the other so we could sneak a peak into Studio 2.

THIS time however I was actually IN Studio 2, and it was AMAZING! They'd set the studio up for a LECTURE, with rows of chairs, a stage and a big screen, but before that started we were able to wander around and even go UP THE STAIRS and into the control room. My BRANE was going "ZANG! COR! OOH!" the entire time because I couldn't believe that I was actually THERE, in a place that I'd seen thousands of pictures of and had LISTENED to millions of times. Looking out of the window from THE ACTUAL CONTROL ROOM down to the studio floor I was picturing all of the photographs of The Beatles working there and it BLEW MY MIND. I also walked around and dutifully TOUCHED all of the many Famous Instruments they had in there, notably The Actual Mrs Mills Piano!!

After a little while I had to have a bit of an old sit down just so I could try and ABSORB the fact that I was really there, as it was all getting rather overwhelming. I sat for about twenty minutes thinking "I'M HERE!", after which the TALK started. It was FAB. The speakers were Brian Kehew and Kevin Ryan, authors of Recording The Beatles, a book which I am DELIGHTED to find makes mine look CHEAP! They did a 90 minute presentation on the history of Abbey Road Studios, with JOKES and FILMS and a hefty chunk in the middle all about The Beatles. Again, it was pretty mind-blowing to see an image on screen of a Famous Recording Session and then look over into the corner and think "But that's just over there!"

The whole thing was augmented by some live performances by a string quartet, pianist and guitarist, which was Quite Nice, but the BEST bit - the VERY best bit - was right at the end where they said "Usually we'd finish now, but we've got someone here who's IN some of these images" and GOODNESS ME but then KEN SCOTT came on stage!

KEN SCOTT! All right, I realise that that MAY not be a name which is overly familiar to people who DON'T have an entire bookshelf full of Beatles books, but for those of us who DO it was pretty flipping exciting, as he was not only the ENGINEER for the White Album sessions but worked on LOADS of Beatles sessions and a METRIC TONNE of others with all manner of famous artistes. However, he wandered on stage with the air of One Of Your Dad's Mates and then talked very modestly and lightly about working with THE BEATLES FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE and was all round lovely.

The whole event was pretty ruddy incredible, and all the way home my BRANE was going "That really happened! WOW!" When I got back I pulled out my beaten up old copy of The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions and looked at the photographs, thinking "But I was THERE!" Best birthday present EVER!!

posted 5/8/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Open Access Academia (About The Beano)
Phew, it's been a CONTENT RICH week this week, and we conclude with EVEN MORE content. For LO! I have had ANOTHER article published in an Esteemed Academic Journal and this time you can read it for FREE!

The article is called The three generations of Dennis The Menace and it has been published in The Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics. It's all about the amazing RETCON that The Beano have carried out over the past few years which means that the CURRENT Dennis The Menace is NOT the same character as the one that most people my age will remember reading about in the 1970s and 1980s. THAT Dennis is the FATHER of the current one, and HIS Dad (the one with a toothbrush moustache and red pinstriped suit) was the ORIGINAL Dennis from the 1950s!

It is pretty MINDBLOWING stuff for anyone who read The Beano as a young person, and do believe me when I say that THAT is not even the MOST MINDBLOWING thing in the article. I will leave eager readers to find all that out for themselves, and rather wonderfully you can do so FOR NOTHING. The delightful people of the UAL Scholarly Communications Team agreed to use some of their FUNDS to pay for this to be Open Access, as part of a scheme to investigate how All That Sort Of Thing Actually Works, which means we all sat together on TEAMS a couple of weeks ago and filled in the many FORMS involved to make it happen. That bit was Quite Exciting for ME, and hopefully the results will be exciting for ONE AND ALL.

I was really pleased to get this paper out Open Access, as it's always a bit frustrating to spend MONTHS or YEARS working on something that most people can't actually READ (e.g. books that take YEARS to write but then cost NINETY QUID to buy). If you have ten minutes to spare do give it a read, I promise you that there is some AMAZING INFO in there for long-term and/or lapsed Beano fans!

posted 2/8/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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Talking About Comics
Yesterday I mentioned having a MULTI-PRONGED plan to become a PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL but did not actually reveal ALL of the aforesaid PRONGS. For LO! I am not just trying to write articles about Doctor Doom or do GIGS about the general gist of my academic research, I am doing Some Other Things as well!

I have previously hinted that ONE of these things involves the marvellous Mr J Dredge, and it is this that I wish to speak of today. For a couple of months now we have been discussing doing some sort of podcast where we talk about old, funny, British comics, and earlier this week we got together to have a go at actually RECORDING one.

Cunningly I had managed to book a room at WORK, which anybody who works where I work will know is something of a TRIUMPH in and of itself. It was a lovely small room, and also a very HOT room - it may not be that hot most days, but here in the middle of a heat wave it very much was!

We sat down, sweated a bit, switched the recorder on, sweated a bit more, checked our notes, and then began approximately 45 minutes of talking about a comics and it was GRATE. John and I have worked on many things together over the years, including trying to write topical comedy gags for Radio 4 Extra, making some short films, and recording a series of EPs but, for my money, the BEST thing we did was meeting up every week for A Bit Of An Old Chat. John is not only EXCELLENT at having A Bit Of An Old Chat but also MOST AMUSING too, so it seemed like a good idea to try and do THAT as an Actual Thing.

This proved to be correct! We started off a little bit nervous, and listening back to the recording I seem to have said "Yeah yeah" every 2 seconds, but otherwise it sounds Dead Good. Obviously this is an EXTREMLY RADICAL concept for a podcast - two middle-aged men who are friends talking about something from their youth, with one of them an expert and the other a comedian - so I don't know if the world is quite ready for it yet, but all we can do is put it out there and see what happens!

There's still stuff to do before we're ready to UNLEASH it on the world - we've got to finalise a name, find a podcast delivery provider, and probably get at least one more episode recorded - but so far it is looking like a pretty good idea. If nothing else it gives me a GRATE excuse to read some old comics and hang around with Mr Dredge, I just hope future episodes aren't so SWEATY!

posted 1/8/2024 by MJ Hibbett
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