“Good evening Leighton Buzzard!”

Tuesday 25 March, 10.15am (Voyager Recording Studio, Peterborough):
Here’s the news – we’re recording an album. We’re doing it in a state-of-the-art recording studio in a brand-new specialist arts school in Peterborough called The Voyager. It’s looking like it’ll feature 12 or 13 tracks and we have a challengingly short amount of time to record them in. George and I have set up and are ready to go, but Tony is looking a little concerned, as if there’s maybe something missing that could delay the beginning of the session. I think he must be trying to work out where some important lead or microphone is.

“Right,” he says, “I’m gonna go and investigate what Moira’s packed us for lunch.”

It is, let me reiterate, 10.15 in the morning.

******

By the end of the day we have successfully mic-ed up and sound-checked the drums, bass and guitar and have completed a take of one song – In Black Eyes. Not a bad start. The bass amp we have hired is an Ampeg 4×10 which, in case the technical term means nothing to you, is ruddy loud. Unfortunately the ceilings in this place are like the ceilings in most schools – made of plasterboard tiles – and the amp is making the entire room shake. Luckily, Tony, who has a rich history of dealing with specialized acoustic conundrums of this sort, has fixed the problem via the auspicious employment of a hard-wearing, custom-built noise-guard.

In other words, he’s stuck a cardboard box on top of it.

Sometimes it’s extraordinary what you can do with an old box and some sticky-back plastic. Just ask any Blue Peter presenter.

Saturday 29 March, 9.30am (Voyager Recording Studio, Peterborough):
It’s Day Five in the studio. For all 13 songs we have completed the drum track, bass track and a guide guitar track. Quite handsome for less than a week’s work. Just as well, really, since we now have to pack up all the gear and get to a headline show at The Wheatsheaf in Leighton Buzzard.

For those of you who haven’t been to Leighton Buzzard, well… it’s in Leighton Buzzard. It’s a funny little place but, to our surprise, it boasts an absolutely kicking live music venue. The Wheatsheaf is actually pretty well-known on the gig circuit and attracts some big names – Southside Jonny headlined here last week, for example (Tony points out that the last time he saw Southside Jonny was at Wembley Stadium, which is a little larger than The Wheatie but pretty much on a par reputation-wise, I’d say. Plus it’s much quicker getting a pint here).

We play a rocking show to a very appreciative audience, and it’s a great opportunity for us to air some of the material from the new album that we don’t often play live, such as I’m Not. After our encore we get chatting to some of the regulars and there seems to be a general consensus that they’d like us back, which is pretty cool.

Most importantly, I can tick off another lifelong rock and roll ambition from my list; namely, uttering those immortal words “Good EVENING Leighton Buzzard!”. Bruce Springsteen eat your heart out.

Chris Lightyear

Lightyears to play Astoria 2



The Lightyears are to play their debut at Soho’s world-famous Astoria 2 on Friday 4 April.



LA2 is one of London’s best-loved venues, situated in the heart of London on Charing Cross Road (a one-minute walk from Tottenham Court Road tube). Its illustrious rock ‘n’ roll heritage has included gigs by Iggy Pop, Primal Scream, Moby and Metallica.



Tickets are £6 in advance and available here.

…And thanks to everyone who made it down to the Grand on Friday night! Never has a Lightyears gig been so drenched in confetti…


Lightyears to return to Asia

The Lightyears will be returning to Seoul, South Korea to play The Queen’s Birthday Ball on Saturday 31 May.

The band will also be performing an acoustic gig at The Bungalow in Seoul on Thursday 29 May.

Listen out for details of more Asian touring later in the year…

My eyes are trying to escape backwards into my cranial cavity

Tuesday 4 March, 5.30pm (Old Jameson Whiskey Distillery, Dublin):
We are in Dublin to play a gig at the launch party for State Magazine, Ireland’s new music publication. The party’s being held at the Old Jameson Whiskey Distillery, which at some point in the recent past has been converted into a rather swanky functions venue.

We arrive at the place at around 5.30 and, as I step inside, the full extent of tonight’s potential carnage properly dawns on me. This is a music industry party. In a whiskey distillery. In Ireland. And the booze is free all night. These are circumstances in which a Mormon would struggle to remain sober.

We nip across the courtyard to the local restaurant to grab some nosh and a few beers before the gig starts. The owner comes over to our table to serve us and, I have to say, she’s behaving a bit oddly. She keeps dropping her pen and mixing up her words and even spills a beer at one point. We think nothing more of it until, after we’ve finished the meal and are about to leave, she scuttles over to our table clutching a menu and says, flustered, “I’m really really sorry, but… well… I know you’re famous and I’ve seen you on the TV and I was wondering if I could have your autograph?”.

I’m trying to work out what she’s referring to. I mean, I was on Match Of The Day when I was 6 in the crowd for the Marlow Vs Plymouth FA Cup Draw, but I get the feeling that’s not what she’s talking about. Anyhow, we sign the menu for her and she promises to frame it and hang it in the restaurant.

Back at the venue, we settle down at our instruments and get ready to start the gig. Our brief tonight from Phil (the Editor of State Magazine) is to play a set of witty yet non-obtrusive “Easy Listening Heavy Metal” that will amuse the journos without being too overbearing. Oh, and he has used the phrase NO JAZZ more than once. He hates jazz. And so, in response, we have prepared an instrumental medley of tongue-in-cheek rock covers played in a lounge style. Here’s a taster – a chirpy Love Will Tear Us Apart blends effortlessly into Rage Against The Machine’s Killing In The Name Of via a cheekily nonchalant rendition of Enter Sandman by Metallica.

Predictably, things are running a bit late and as a result our one-hour set turns into two hours. We’re not bothered though because the fantastic bar-staff have been enthusiastically plying us with whiskey and vol-au-vents all night and by this point we’re really starting to hit our stride. An extended jam uniting a piano interpretation of Sweet Child O’ Mine with Daft Punk’s One More Time blends gradually into our closing number, which sees The Real Slim Shady rubbing shoulders with Led Zeppelin’s Black Dog played half-time in a swing rhythm. Sweet.

By the time I come offstage I have, to borrow a phrase off Tony, overdone it a little on the sherbets. The problem is, of course, that when things are free there’s really very little choice other than to wretchedly abuse said complimentary items and we all know what that leads to. In the back of my mind somewhere I’m aware that we’re flying back to London early tomorrow morning for another gig but that seems like such a ludicrous idea that, when the launch party wraps up, the only sensible course of action seems to be to keep the good times going and stave off the arrival of the new dawn with a round of Guinnesses back in our hotel bar. Will I regret this at 7.30 tomorrow morning? Nah. It’ll be dandy.  

********

Oh Lord. Oh, sweet Lord and the heavens. It’s 7.30 in the morning and, yep, that’s right, I do indeed regret that. My eyes are trying to escape backwards into my cranial cavity. No time for moping though. Must catch plane. 

Via some tremendous miracle, several hours later we’re striding across the tarmac at Gatwick, still alive and, I think, with most internal organs intact. The next episode in The Lightyears Saga is a mildly hellish rush-hour trip into central London to get to sound-check in time for our gig at the Rock Garden in Covent Garden.

The things we do for our band, eh? Just as well there are plenty of perks. I mean, when I’m kicking back on a gold-plated, caviar-filled lilo in the guitar-shaped swimming pool of my private jet-shaped mansion in the Phillippines with the cryogenically-resurrected Hendrix, Presley and Morrison a few years from now, I can very much imagine looking back on this time and thinking “I miss those days, back when I used to have carry my own keyboard around, dress myself and buy milk like a normal person. In fact, I was probably happier then than I am now”. And then Jim Morrison would give me a head massage and probably strum a lute.

Anyhow, I digress. Tonight’s set, we decide, needs to start slowly, on account of our fragile and hungover state. We kick off with Fine, which we haven’t played in a while, and by the end of that we’re ready to tackle something more energetic. She’s The One wakes us up and takes us through Beat Alive, Sleepless, In Black Eyes (another one we haven’t played in ages), Filmstar, This House Will Burn and finally Emily.

On finishing our set, we leave the stage to find the promoter Jeremy (who is, incidentally, Irish) approaching us with a congratulatory round of drinks – three neat whiskeys.

God bless the Irish sense of humour.