Blog Archive: August 2025

The Debut Of The Hibbett/Thorpe-Tracey Collaboration
I was in an unusual situation when I awoke on Friday morning, as I was already IN Brighton and would be STAYING there for the whole day and night to do another GIG. For LO! That evening myself and Mr CJ Thorpe-Tracey were due to appear at the This Machine Kills Wasps night to DEBUT our COLLABORATION!

As previously revealed, for the past several months myself and The Artist Formerly Known As Chris T-T have been secretly getting together to practise a bunch of songs together, with me singing and him playing piano. The original idea was to learn up enough song for us to go into the STUDIO and record them as an album, but the last time we had a practice I suggested that we also try and book a GIG in order to try some of them out in The Live Arena. I based this idea on the FACT that every time me and The Validators have recorded an album we've pretty much always then gone on to TOUR the songs and done much better versions that we'd done in the studio, and so we agree that it made sense to give these ones some time out in the OPEN AIR in front of people first.

So it was that we contacted ace promoter and all-round groovy guy Mr James Walsh to ask him to sort something out for us, please. This he very much did, and it was only when it was all booked that I realised it was actually the day after the gig I was already coming down to Brighton for at The Catalyst Club. This meant that I was not only ON TOUR, but that we could also fit in ANOTHER practice during the day on Friday! WINZ!

Before that though I was dead sophisticated and went out for BREAKFAST like one of those influencers you read about, and then accidentally fell into Dave's Comics, which turned out to be a) really nice b) playing The Beatles when I walked in, which resulted in my spending LOADS more CA$H than I had any intention of doing.

I then headed to Chris's where we did our usual job of having a RIGHT OLD NATTER about Topics Various over a cup of tea, doing a few songs, and then having ANOTHER YACK before going round the corner for some lunch. This time however we did quite a lot MORE of the playing songs section than usual, including a whole RUN THROUGH of the six we'd chosen to perform. It was so RIGOROUS and grown-up - and also AMAZING - that I began to worry about the state of the delicate instrument what is my voice, for it is not used to being utilised at such length, either in singing or indeed NATTERING.

After the afore-mentioned lunch I wandered over to collect The Sea At My Beach from the train station, and then we strolled down to the SEASIDE for a bit of an old PADDLE. It was a gorgeous day and the beach was FULL of people, so it looked like the cover of a Beano Summer Special!

Soon it was back to the hotel and then onwards to The Venue, which was Sweet @ The Yellow Book Bar. It's got that lengthy name because the bar downstairs is called The Yellow Book but the room upstairs is run as a venue by the Sweet organisation. Sweet are comedy club promoters who have venues all over the place so, although it was only a tiny room with a capacity of around 25 seats, they ran it like a proper THEATRE or something, with somebody properly running the door, a really good soundman called Gabriel, a backstage area and Quite Strict Rules about shutting the door when it started. It was another excursion for me into the world of Theatrical Spaces, which seems to be the world I'm living in at the moment!

The full show itself was GRATE, hosted by the VERY funny Leslie Bloom who was really JOLLY funny. James organises these nights as being in two halves, with comedy in the first bit and music in the second. Originally Chris East aka The Artist Formerly Known As Winston Echo was meant to be coming but couldn't make it, so the host came on instead as another character called Verity, along with Lilla Multipass doing a bit of her clowning show "Woman (33)" (coming soon to The Museum Of Comedy) while James himself did a bit of helping out with the hosting. It was fun, and also QUITE WARM!

The second half kicked off with James's own band The Highchurches, who were GRATE - annoyingly GRATE in fact, not least because they paired their EMOTIONAL bunch of songs with some very funny in-between song banter, which Chris and I then had to attempt to follow by doing THIS:

The Perfect Love Song

Chips And Cheese, Pint Of Wine

Born With The Century

7 Hearts

It Only Works Because You're here

In The North Stand

As you can see, it was nearly all OLD SONGS by me - we do have some NEW ones but I think we felt safest doing these for our debut performance. We also did 7 Hearts which is basically my FAVOURITE of Chris's old songs, even though it has felt a bit weird to be practising it in his house with him for these past few months!



It all went pretty well I think - before we went on I'd realised that I had NO IDEA how the Being On Stage bit was going to work. Chris and I have known each other for LITERALLY DECADES but have never done anything like this before, so there was no set pattern to who would be introducing songs, or what TONE we'd take, or anything like that. However, once we got started it all felt entirely natural, with us chatting between us and to the audience, and there were even some NEW JOKES!

The songs sounded lovely too, I think, and I was amazed to discover I was entirely comfortable to be doing a whole set of singing without a guitar round my neck - another thing that, as far as I remember, I have never done before, not for a whole GIG anyway. I did worry at some points that the songs were all QUITE SAD and, for the first several songs, almost entirely lacking in choruses but, as I say, it all seemed to go all right and there were BIG CELEBRATORY HUGS in the backstage area afterwards.

There were then some BEERS and some more CHAT before it was time for us all to head home. Thinking about it now, the funny thing was that it DID all seem quite normal. I've done over a THOUSAND gigs but I have never ever done anything like this before in all sorts of ways, and it was all fine. I think part of it was that palling around with Chris is so DELIGHTFUL that it makes everything else seem pretty do-able, even giving me the self-confidence to think that, actually, some of these songs might be WORTHY of this kind of treatment and that I might even be able to SING them.

It's all Quite Exciting anyway, and means that the NEXT step is for us to get booked into a studio at some point in the next couple of months to RECORD this first batch. We've then got about ten other songs that we've been working on, and after the fun of doing THIS gig I'm hoping we might well do the same sort of thing again, but that's all still to come. For now I'm just really really happy that we've got this far with it, it was BRILLO!

posted 19/8/2025 by MJ Hibbett
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Doctor Doom at The Catalyst Club
I had the afternoon off work on Thursday afternoon last week so I could ZOOM down to distant BRIGHTON to do a talk for The Catalyst Club. This is a WONDERFUL event running three times a month in the general Brighton area where Dr David Bramwell introduces a range of speakers who talk about Something They Really Care About for 15-20 minutes and then answer questions from the audience.

I'd been down for a RECCE a few months ago (when I'd also had my first meeting with Mr CJ Thorpe-Tracey to discuss our current collaboration - he was the PAL mentioned in that blog entry) and had THOROUGHLY enjoyed it, so was really looking forward to go back and do some Doctor Doom talking myself. I thus arrived SUPER PROMPTLY at the venue for a slidecheck - like a soundcheck but with more powerpoint and less drums - before then toddling next door for some CHIPS.

I returned to BRAVELY hang around on my own for a while as people turned up. There was NOBODY I knew either on the bill or coming along, which used to be the NORM for me back in my days of heavy touring but now feels a bit scary. Still, it wasn't long before the evening started, with David talking through some recent events and forthcoming attractions (including the upcoming return of the marvellous Ben Moor to the show) and then Susan Sainsbury talking about her book Undressed. This is a Graphic Novel, so it felt like there might be a subtle undertone of COMICS already!

After the break Jane Bom-Banes was on, as she had been on my previous visit, this time playing a song on Harmonium and then doing the same song but BACKWARDS. It was amazing, and I pitied the fool who had to go on after her... which unfortunately was ME! I was doing a heavily abbreviated 18 minutes (I'd timed it) version of the show without SONGS, which felt odd but seemed to go pretty well - early on it turned out that the microphone didn't work very well if you took it out of the microphone stand, so I decided to TALK LOUDLY instead, which to be honest felt a lot more natural to me. I waa still relieved to have got through it in one piece, and then DELIGHTED to do the QUESTIONS section at the end, which was GRATE!

We then had another break during which I was EMBOLDENED to actually talk to some people - this is usually the case, as having been on stage I kind of feel like I've been INTRODUCED to people so don't feel like just some weirdo stranger forcing them into conversations (not JUST like that anyway). The evening concluded with David Bradford doing a talk about the history of his family tied up with a book by a horrible aristocrat that he'd found in a bookcase inherited from his Nan, and then there was further chat and the reciept of a BOOK and bottle of CHAMPERS to say thanks for doing the show, which I felt was VERY classy!

It was a lovely evening and also a delightful way to begin my two-date tour of BRIGHTON, and I returned to my hotel room for the evening full of the delights of LIVE SHOWS, ready for whatever was to come next!

posted 18/8/2025 by MJ Hibbett
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How To Be In A Pop Group by Alan Jenkins
For many years now I have been considering writing a book about how to be in a band. The young people of today are obviously far too polite to ask my advice on how to do this, but I'm sure they're quietly desperate to hear my words of wisdom about how to get a band together, what you should do in a recording studio, how not to play gigs and so on and so forth.

Luckily for them, me, and the universe at large, I now know that there is no need for me to do so because Alan Jenkins has already done it with his book How To Be In A Pop Group!

This is a re-issue of the book/big fanzine he published nigh on THIRTY FIVE YEARS AGO, and so some of it is probably out of date, although for someone like me who was first IN Pop Groups at that time it feels utterly modern and of the moment, especially when it talks about the old hippies who used to turn up with their old PA systems at gigs. It is basically a very funny RANT/loving mickey-take about what it's like being IN a band, so there's lots of great stuff about how to settle arguments between band members, how many guitar solos you should have, how rehearsals work etc etc.

There's also an ADDENDUM at the end where 21st Century Alan offers some advice about extra things like streaming that have come along since it was first published, but the real joy in the book for me is the way it captures what it was really like to be in bands around that time - you can almost smell the mildewed rehearsal room carpets!

Part of the reason it resonates so much with me is because Alan was, and indeed IS, a legendary figure on the East Midlands music scene, playing in loads of different bands, releasing amazing indie records, and running his own studio in Leicester for a while too. I particularly remember him as somebody my housemate and bandmate DOCTOR KNEEL used to quote all the time, and so really I guess I am an example of someone whose entire life in Pop Groups has been based on the information contained within. INDEED I think if I had sat down to write my book about it then it would have been EERILY SIMILAR to this one because I basically absorbed all of its teachings while playing in the band VOON in the early to mid nineties.

It was thus BLOODY WONDERFUL to be able to buy an actual copy of it for myself, and one day after receiving it I have DEVOURED over half of it already. It really is a very funny and very lovely book which I HIGHLY recommend to anyone who has any memories of being in those sort of bands in the twentieth century and, hopefully, for anyone who wants to do the same now. As Alan says multiple times in the book, you're unlikely to make any money but if you follow his guidelines you will have a lot of fun, and I can certainly attest to with that!

posted 8/8/2025 by MJ Hibbett
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Post-Tour Ruminations
The summer tour for Data and Doctor Doom is over, which means it must be time for some post-tour RUMINATIONS. Luckily for us all, I have SEVERAL!

The first is on the nature of Fringe Festivals, which basically appear to be exactly the same as they were a decade ago when Steve and I were buzzing around doing them. As far as I can gather they are still run by CRAZY LOONS who flipping love fringe festivals, so much so that they have basically MARRIED them. They are also still admministered on the ground by similarly-styled volunteers who are pretty much uniformly LOVELY and EXCITED to be doing it. The only slight change is that the festivals now seem to be slightly better organised, especially in terms of letting you know about ticket sales. Over the past couple of months I have come to LOVE this, going onto either the specific festival's own system OR, more usually, the mightily named Eventotron (which loads of them use) to see if anybody's bought any more tickets in the past couple of hours. I'm already missing it!

It's also been lovely being thrown back into the bizarre mix of shows that you end up playing with at these events. There's loads of the usual stand-up comedian doing their Standard Hours about things they're pretending have happened to them, but you also get extremely enthusiastic Improv Troupes (who always seem to have met on a COURSE and loved it so much they carried on), vast casts of musicals featuring someone's uncle who still hasn't grasped how dancing works, musicians trying to string a bunch of songs together into a THEME (imagine!), prop comedians, people doing PUNS, people explaining things while being frightened of microphones, and many many other types of enthusiasts who have taken the bold and brave decision to get up in front of people and SHOW OFF just for the LOVE of it. I salute them all, and indeed hope to be included as one of them, as they are BLOODY GRATE!

Doing loads of gigs in the same short period of time has also reminded me that it is a) fun b) KNACKERING to do so. There's something jolly exciting about having a particular bag that is always PACKED (or in my case that you THINK is always packed but is sometimes missing crucial elements) that you can just pick up and take with you for a SHOW. There's also something BITTERSWEET about the bit after a show when you really want to hang around for longer but have to rush out to get a TRANE, and then the MILD BLUES the next day when you've still got a bit of the BUZZ of it all zinging around in your heart but no show to go to.

Doing a SPECIFIC show also has its own magic - it's lovely to go and do a gig where you don't know exactly what you're going to be doing until you write the setlist (NB or in my case don't know exactly what you're doing at the time, but that's another matter), but doing the SAME show each day is strange and wonderful because you get to know WHERE in the show you are, and feel the small differences in how it works between you and the audience each time. With this one the show has changed A LOT on pretty much every performance, so I've also had the DELIGHT of seeing what works and what doesn't, trying out new stuff each time to tinker around and try and make it (EVEN) better.

That tinkering around has been VERY THORT PROVOKING too - going to see Mr D Munro a few weeks ago was a PROFOUND EXPERIENCE for me, as he not only came up with lots of GRATE IDEAS that I was able to integrate into the show but also came up with lots of other GRATE IDEAS that I definitely did NOT. Talking through it with someone who is an EXPERT on stand-up comedy and how to make it work made me realise that I am definitely NOT doing stand-up comedy, and helped crystalise for me some of the reasons I don't LIKE a lot of it. It's something about the authenticity of it all - with lots of stand-up, particularly the "confessional" style, I get the queasy feeling that the comedian is trying to form an emotional relationship with me as an audience member through things that are not actually true. I don't mind it when it's someone clearly In Character, any more than I do when I (being fancy) see a PLAY, but there's a line that gets crossed when the comedian appears to be LYING to me for their own gain that turns me off.

Of course, "not enjoying stand-up comedians telling untrue personal stories" may sit alongside "getting upset when plans change" and "not liking noisy shopping centres" that have CERTAIN OTHER CAUSES, but still, it all made me think A LOT about who I am when I am ON STAGE, even when that stage is a corner of a room above a pub. DEEP, yeah?

Most of all though the whole experience reminded me how much I like going out and meeting PALS. In earlier times I leaned into this aspect of it all so much that I ended up doing 50-70 gigs a year, most of which were to small rooms of people who I could probably just as easily have gone for a CURRY with instead. It's been a while since I did all now though, which made it even lovelier to zoom around with an excuse to see lovely people I hadn't seen for ages, even if it did mean having to dash off to catch a train afterwards!

posted 6/8/2025 by MJ Hibbett
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The Tour Finale
I was back out on The Road on Sunday, for the GRAND FINALE of this leg of the Data and Doctor Doom show at The Hen & Chickens in That London as part of the Camden Fringe. This is not the end of the show by any means - I've got a whole OTHER tour booked for later in the year and I'm on the lookout for more next year too - but it's definitely the end of THIS bit!

I'd been told that I'd need to have a TECH person for this one, and The Sliders On My Sound Desk agreed to take on the role, on condition of being provided with a high-visibility tabard bearing the words DOOM CREW front and back. Thus it was the two of us who rolled up at the venue just before noon for our tech rehearsal. I must admit I was a bit ANXIOUS about all this - doing THEATRE gigs involves a lot more Setting Things Up than you usually find in rooms above a pub - but everyone at the pub and venue were FLIPPING LOVELY, notably James who showed us round all of the gear. I felt significantly less anxious after all that!

A few hours later we were BACK with time to spare before SHOWTIME and were amazed to discover THE MYLANDS waiting for us, having come down unannounced from distant Peterborough. We had a natter with them, a delightful chat swapping stories with the theatre manager, and then soon it was time to head upstairs, where myself and The Lights On My Lighting Rig went into action like a finely honed TEAM to get everything ready.

The audience came in, my tech crew dimmed and then brought the lights back up like someone who had been working tech desks for years, and then I was ON for what turned out to be an ALMOST ENTIRELY COMPETENT performance of the show! There were a couple of wobbles - notably when I looked at my watch, thought "Oh, this is fine!" and them immediately thought "But hang on, I'm supposed to be OUT after an hour, not just finishing - PANIC!" - but otherwise there were surprisingly FEW errors and (for me) surprisingly MANY laughs! Cor, people were up for some chuckles, it was fab!

It was a highly enjoyable show to DO, and then even more so when the lights came expertly up and I realised there were LOADS of pals in the audience, including many what I hadn't seen for YEARS. There were hugs, there were beers and there was basically a FINE OLD TIME had by one and all. As I say, it was a brilliant way to bring this particular segment to an end. The only problem is it's made me want to do it loads more now!

posted 5/8/2025 by MJ Hibbett
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Dancing In The Lesbian Bar
As my fellow listeners to the This Are Johnny Domino podcast will be aware, there is a thing called the PRF Monthly Tribute Series where every month a bunch of musical types do cover versions of a specific artiste's songs. At the end of the month they vote for the best one and then the winner chooses who they'll cover the next month.

This has been going on for AGES, and in recent times has become of interest to People I Know Who Used To Be In Bands In Derby In The 1990s, a bunch of whom have started taking part on a regular basis. This is a beautiful things as the People I Know Who Used To Be In Bands In Derby In The 1990s are a high quality group of people both in terms of personhood AND musicianship, so there's always something GRATE to listen to.

July's topic was Jonathan Richman, and so Mr FA Machine (one of the all-time TOP People I Know Who Used To Be In Bands In Derby In The 1990s) suggested that we submit the version of I Was Dancing In The Lesbian Bar that he and I recorded many many years ago. The RULES of the game are that the cover version has to have been recorded during the month of the competition, so we wouldn't be eligible for winning or anything, but he suggested it would be a nice way to get it out into the world, and I CONCURRED. We originally recorded it for an indie tribute compilation album which - almost inevitably for indie tribute compilation albuns - never came out, so the only place it's ever been heard is the compilation Like A Braunstone Cowboy which was given out free to newsletter subscribers to celebrate our 100th issue. Crumbs, that was 12 years ago!

Anyway, the upshot of all of this is that you can now finally listen to our version of Mr J Richman's immortal classic anytime you'd like to - I think it's Quite Good, especially Frankie's GTR SOLO, but you can judge for yourself BELOW!



posted 1/8/2025 by MJ Hibbett
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