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Things I Know About Rugby

So, here’s the news – we’re forsaking Blighty next week for eleven days in South Africa, where we’ll be headlining at the after-parties for the Cape Town Tens Rugby Tournament.

“But how,” I hear you cry, “have The Lightyears ended up performing at a rugby tournament?”. Well, evidently the good word is spreading and in fact we’ve been scheming about getting out to SA for some time now. Thing is, of course, that I know very little about rugby. Next to nothing, if I’m honest. How will I hold my own with the players? What on earth am I gonna do about my banter? Will I expose myself as an idiotic boob by failing to understand the principles of scrummage? (Which, by the way, sounds like a boiled vegetable to me. However, I digress.)

Let me give you an example. In football, successfully maneouvring the ball between the two white posts is known as a “goal”. This makes perfect sense to me. The word “goal” denotes an achievement, a success. In rugby, however, it seems to be called a “try”. How did that come about? I mean, apart from anything else, using “try” as a noun demonstrates a reckless disregard for English grammar. And what’s with all the backwards passing? Did you know you can only pass backwards in rugby? Extraordinary.    

I guess the root of my ignorance of the sport is that I never really connected with rugby at school. I just wasn’t built for it, you see. In fact, I downright feared it. Consider this – you come into school one morning, just like every other day, discreetly avoiding eye contact with the school bully, Chris Jennings (a guy who would sell his own grandmother for crack), lest you attract a pummeling. Everything’s proceeding as normal until PE class comes round and, against your will, better judgement and every instinct in your central nervous system, you are forced into participating in a sport that not only authorises but actively encourages the bullies to beat the crap out of you. Effectively this was legalised maiming. And nobody did anything about it. 

Our PE teacher was called Mr Blower. Ian Blower is, in fact, an extremely fine chap who I see now and again and, bizarrely, even features in the photo on the inside of the liner notes for the new album. This fact notwithstanding, when I was a shivering, pasty, knock-kneed thirteen year-old, the particular brand of masochism celebrated by Mr Blower and, indeed, PE teachers worldwide, seemed especially unfair to me. He used to stand there in twelve layers of clothing declaring “It’s not cold, you big girls’ blouses!”, whilst the blood drained slowly from my muscles and my tiny legs turned blue. 

I have only one vivid memory of playing rugby. Quite why this is, I don’t know. We must have done it on a fairly regular basis but it’s easily possible that the part of my brain responsible for recovering those memories perished in the intense cold we would weekly experience on the school battlefield. Sorry, pitch.

On this particular occasion it was snowing. I mean, really snowing. “Blizzard” would not be an overstatement. You couldn’t see much further than six feet in front of you, which meant that when Sid The Tank – a boy who was wider than he was tall and had the look of Cro-Magnon Man about him – came careering at you across the field, you didn’t know about it until it was too late. Now, a face-off between me and Sid was a little bit like a locomotive running over a cake. There could really only be one winner. 

I remember lying face down on the cold ground, not certain how many of my fragile little bones had been shattered by the impact, reflecting that I hadn’t even had the ball in the first place. Luckily rugby is, by reputation, a sport played by gentlemen, and so I imagine these kind of underhand tactics are peculiar to one’s school days and the dog-eat-dog world of hormonal teenage boys.  

These days, as it happens, I rather enjoy watching a game of international rugby in the pub of a Saturday afternoon (let’s face it, it’s the only sport that the English are actually any good at) and am keen to learn more. So this tour may turn out to be educational as well as recreational.

Oh, and whilst I’m on the subject of sport, what’s up with cricket?!? Bill Bryson, a hero of mine, once commented that you should never trust a sport where the participants break for mealtimes. Quite. On tour, Tony and George derive hours of pleasure from forcing me to listen to cricket on the radio. “Oooooh,” they coo gleefully as we speed down the M1 to some gig or other, “the five-day test match is on. Pukka.”

Five days? FIVE DAYS?! Wars have been over quicker than that*. You know, I think if they took all the standing around, staring at the sky, scratching one’s crotch etc out of cricket and just kept the bits where the players actually moved around, the games would last about 15 minutes.

Mind you, what do I know? I still think a “googly” is an internet search engine…

Chris Lightyear

*this is no exaggeration – in December 1939, Spanish dictator Francisco Franco joined with the Axis Army in war against the French. Just one day after the declaration, the Axis conquered Algiers and the French surrendered. The following day the peace treaty was signed. And all this in the amount of time it takes cricketers to decide how many sugars to have in their tea.

The Lightyears’ Family Tree

Today, to mark the release of our new album London, England, I thought I’d attempt the impossible – to figure out where the heck it is that The Lightyears come from. 

People always ask musicians “Who are your influences?”, and musicians tend to answer with long, protracted diatribes about rare Frank Zappa B-sides and unreleased Captain Beefheart LPs that leave normal people reeling.

From now on then, when people ask me that question, I can simply refer them to this article.

Essentially I’m talking about a musical family tree. Who are our musical forefathers, our rock ancestors, our guitar-strumming, key-bashing, stick-wielding predecessors? 

To answer this question, we must begin at the beginning… 

It is 1994. Everybody’s dressed in inexplicably baggy t-shirts and careering round the playground bellowing Harry Enfield catchphrases at each other. I am still struggling to crack the mysterious phenomenon of the Magic Eye picture (“No, I can’t see a bloody dolphin in there! What do you mean look through it?”) and Les Dennis is still considered entertaining. Most importantly, soft-rock overlords Bon Jovi have taken George and I by the scruff of our tiny, grubby necks and, charmingly, have inspired us to start our own band.

George and I bonded over a mutual love of Bon Jovi. Mainly I think George encouraged this to distract me from Pantera and I, in turn, did so to distract him from Chris De Burgh. In hindsight, I think we can probably both agree that this was a very smart move.

Elsewhere, in Reigate, Surrey, Tony is diligently studying old Cream LPs and dreaming of one day smoking a cigar with Ginger Baker. Stoically anti-fashion, he spurns the bands everyone else is into and in doing so paves the way for a lifetime of shameless contrariness.

When the two worlds collide and The Lightyears (née Satellite) are formed, cheesey-nice-boy hair-rock goes head-to-head with pretentious prog-rock in a terrible battle for supremacy.

The resulting war of musical prejudices plays out something like this:

(Disclaimer 1: Rock Genealogy is not an exact science. I may have taken a few liberties here.) 

(Disclaimer 2: our biggest single collective inspiration is probably The Beatles but I haven’t included them in the tree on account of the fact that bands citing the Fab Four as an influence is a bit like a chef saying he’s influenced by salt and pepper.)

Bugger. Just realised I missed out Blur. And The Small Faces.

Well, it’ll have to do for now. To avoid unnecessary debate, this diagram is not designed to be chronologically accurate – it simply traces the course of our tastes in music. If you’re particularly anal you may enjoy some of the logical segues – take Ben Folds Five into Jerry Lee Lewis, for example, or Counting Crows into Death Cab For Cutie – and I hope that, by the same token, you will ignore some of the absurd non-sequiturs (nobody goes direct from Funkadelic to Dodgy, I mean that’s just silly. Problem is, drawing all those little lines took ages and, well, it’s not like I don’t have other important stuff to do).

Speaking of which, my tax return is staring at me from across the room like a dreadful paper Sauron. “I seeeeeee you…”, it’s saying. Yeah whatever. You’re not the boss of me, Tax Return. 

Later kids!

Chris Lightyear

The Sound Of 2009…?

Whilst perusing the BBC website recently I came across a story on the BBC’s search for the “Sound Of 2009“. A winner had been crowned – Little Boots, proclaimed the pundits, will be the sound of 2009. She is apparently being hailed by some as the saviour of pop music. To be frank I hadn’t spotted that pop music needed saving (Gwen Stefani aside) but I followed the link nonetheless and diligently sat through the video of Victoria Hesketh, AKA Little Boots, playing live in the BBC6 studio. Predecessors of this sweeping accolade include Keane and Duffy, both of whom went on to release best-selling albums, so the odds are on that Little Boots is in for a cracking year.

Like most people, my natural instinct when confronted with the supposed “Next Big Thing” is to join the long list of detractors and dismiss it all as a load of old hype. Unfortunately, in this case, I couldn’t summon up a reaction nearly as extreme as that. As it turns out her performance left me kind of indifferent. I think “saviour of pop music” might be a bit strong but I have to admit the song stuck in my head for ages afterwards. I suppose if I had to sum up Little Boots in seven words I’d probably go for “not as bad as The Ting Tings”.

Speaking of which, has anybody else noticed that The Tings Tings are, well…. to borrow an industry term…. a little bit rubbish? I mean, yes, it’s inventive – but then a Japanese Spider Crab wearing ladies pants and sucking scrambled eggs through a straw could be considered inventive but you wouldn’t buy his music, would you?

I remember when I first heard We Started Nothing, the band’s debut album. I had been downright nonplussed by the furore surrounding the ubiquitous hit single “That’s Not My Name” but intially concluded I must have just been missing the point. “They’re an ‘It’ band, I thought. A zeitgeist band. I just don’t get it. I’ve listened to too many Ben Folds and Jellyfish albums and now I’m just not Le Cool enough to understand this music”. Thing is, everyone was raving about it. Jools Holland, NME, The Independent On Sunday. I figured they knew a heck of a lot more about music than I did so I’d probably best keep my mouth shut – or at least give the album a listen before I issued judgment.

So I listened to the album and slumped deeper into a feeling that everybody – literally, everybody – was in on something that I wasn’t. I stood in my kitchen for 38 solid minutes, open-mouthed, wondering why I was the only person who’d noticed. Remember that story about the Emperor’s Clothes? Y’know, this Emperor dude is running around the streets with his arse hanging out and everyone’s so keen to fit in that they just go along with it and pretend he’s wearing clothes? Yeah? Well, it’s kinda like that.

Anyhow, ranting aside, 2009 has some exciting treats in store for music fans, I reckon. The sublime Glasvegas broke spectacularly last year and it looks like they could go stellar in the next twelve months. Think The Killers meets The Proclaimers singing songs about the drudgery of life, social workers and crippling paranoia. Check out their eponymous debut album and revel in its haunting beauty (disclaimer: most of the songs sound the same to me but then that seems to be fashionable these days).

Tipped alongside Little Boots for world domination are the glorious Mumford & Sons, purveyors of a folky Americana sound that has been described as “Coldplay reincarnated as hillbillies”. We caught them on the Park Stage at Glastonbury last summer and found their music to be charming, bittersweet and uplifting. One to watch…

Oh, and I know I’m hopelessly late noticing this but Beth Ditto rocks!! I caught her on the BBC6 Hub Sessions the other day and she has a wicked sense of humour. Yes, I know NME already voted her Most Super-Coolest Person On The Planet Of All Time Ever in, like, 1992, and I’m behind the times, but there you go. I was well impressed.

Oh, and for an alternative point of view, check this out – it’s Neil McCormick’s list of 2009’s Next Small Things. I like it. Very wry.

Our Top 20 Moments Of 2008

So, as 2008 draws to a close, I thought I’d send out a festive greeting to all our fans. Y’know, kinda like The Queen’s Speech.

2008 has been an unpredictable year. We’ve never known quite where we’re gonna end up from one month to another but it’s been a pretty exciting ride all told. 

We have big plans for 2009. Our new album “London, England” is coming out in the New Year and we have a feeling you’re gonna like it! Plus next year is gonna be all about you – the fans – and we’ll be spending our time creating music, media and all manner of delectable treats intended for your voracious consumption. More about that after Christmas… 

In the meantime, we’d like to thank Lightyears fans everywhere for your continuing support of the band. Wherever you are and whoever you’re with, have a disgracefully Merry Christmas and a calamitous New Year.

In the meantime, here are our Top 20 Most Memorable Moments Of 2008:

1. Performing at London Road stadium to thousands of people (twice!)
    
2. Being played on XFM
3. Being name-checked in The Guardian newspaper
4. Selling out The Troubadour
5. Performing in front of Barry Fry and the Mayor of Peterborough
6. Reaching #45 in the iTunes Plus Top 100 with charity single “Posh We Are”
7. Touring to Ireland to play at the launch of national music magazine State
8. Making the short-list for Best Pop Act at the INDY Awards
    
9. Presenting the award for Best Female Solo Act at the INDYs alongside Feargal Sharkey and Mike Rutherford
10. Playing London Astoria 2
11. Drinking a toast in a Korean jacuzzi at 7am after one of the best gigs of our lives
    
    
12. Performing twice at Glastonbury Festival
13. Supporting the Mystery Jets at a packed Barfly
     
14. Fans at Brightlingsea Festival singing all our lyrics back to us on a hot August evening
     
15. Flying Business Class to New York!
16. Headlining the Time Out Festival in Union Square, Manhattan
     
17. Releasing our EP “At Midnight” in the USA and being nominated as “Single Of The Day” at Amie Street
18. Filming a music video for “Obama Republic“
19. Recording our new album “London, England”
20. Buying a bitchin’ new van!

Here’s to 2009!

Chris Lightyear

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