bbc

That’s our bit done – now bring on the sport…

Yesterday afternoon I arrived back in London after our trilogy of Olympic Torch Relay concerts, exceptionally tired but incredibly proud of what everyone has achieved over the last few days.

Tuesday evening kicked off with a rendition of our Olypmic anthem “There With You” to a crowd of thousands on Peterborough Embankment (see photo on the right). We then dashed around to Peterborough Cathedral to perform for the BBC cameras while the torch itself passed by (check out a video by clicking here). Finally, we dragged ourselves out of bed at 5am yesterday to once again serenade the Olympic Torch from the Town Square, and I got a chance to chat live with DJ Paul Stainton from BBC Radio Cambridgeshire (click here and scroll through to 25mins 30secs to listen).

All in all, an incredible three days. And certainly the largest unicorn count of any gigs we’ve ever played. Thanks to the many hundreds of children and adults who spent months learning and practising the piece, and then sung their hearts out time after time. You were awesome.

Chris Lightyear

ps. The only slight dampener – other than the rain of course – was that the BBC, despite sending cameras down specifically to film us, decided against screening the performances in the end (apologies to anyone who sat in front of the telly waiting for us!) and word is we were bumped from the One Show by footage of a lost cat in a church. I was a little disappointed about this at first but, on reflection, TV companies do have to make sure they point the media spotlight on the stuff that matters. I mean, how often do the great British public get a chance to look at cats? Exactly – almost never. It’s not like you can just ‘load up YouTube’ and expect cats at the touch of a button.

BBC pick up on Lightyears Olympic song

Last year we were commissioned to write a song for the Olympic Games by Moira Green, Vice Principal at the Voyager Academy (on behalf of the city of Peterborough). Following a recent rehearsal visit from a local journalist, the BBC have picked up on the story.

“There With You”, which George and I wrote in his studio up in Yorkshire in Autumn 2011, will be performed on Peterborough Embankment on Tuesday 3 July by The Lightyears and an army of singers and drummers from all corners of the city (nearly 800 in total) to mark the passing of the Olympic Torch through the city.

The BBC were so taken by the story that they extended their planned coverage of the rehearsal and plans are now afoot to screen the Embankment performance live and nationally, in its entirety, on BBC1 on the evening of 3rd July. Our experience of TV is that things can change at the last minute, however, so watch out for updates from us so you don’t end up sitting through half an hour of Newsround wondering where the bleeding heck the bleeding Lightyears are.

Click here to read the story on the BBC website.

n.b. the sharp-witted amongst you will notice an error in this story, namely that the BBC have reported the song as having been written by pupils at the school. Now, I’m known for not being afraid of releasing my inner child, but that may be stretching it a bit.

The Kookaburra counts his money…

You may have heard that Men At Work, who wrote and performed the massive 1983 hit, “Down Under“, have been sued by Sydney-based publishing company Larrikin Music for apparently plagiarising a line of melody from “Kookaburra Sits In The Old Gum Tree”, a song written for the Girl Guides in 1934. Larrikin were attempting to claim up to 60% of the income earned from the song, which could amount to as much as $60 million. It is unclear at the moment exactly how much money the publishing company will make from the endeavour, but one thing is for sure – the judge has ruled in their favour.

There are a whole bunch of things that annoy me about this.

First of all, this song has been kicking around for 25 years and, in that time, nobody apart from Larrikin (and that includes the late Marion Sinclair, who actually wrote Kookaburra) has noticed this apparent “rip-off”. Secondly, “Down Under” songwriters Colin Hay and Ron Stryckert of Men At Work actually had nothing to do with the flute riff in question. It was, unsurprisingly, improvised by a flautist called Greg Ham. Thirdly, to suggest that two seconds of an instrumental hook could equate to 60% of the popularity of the song is patently ludicrous.

Ultimately, however, the thing that really grinds my gears about this whole business is an article I read on the BBC website, in which Larrikin’s lawyer Adam Simpson claimed that his triumph in the case had been “a victory for the underdog”. Underdog?!! Aspiring musicians strike it lucky with a cracking tune and make a ton of money USING THEIR ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE TALENT and then, nearly thirty years later, a bunch of guys in suits who have probably never created anything more complicated than a pasta sauce gang together to mercilessly rob them of millions and millions of their hard-earned dollars? Underdog my hat. What a load of utter bullcrap.

Oh, and whilst I’m on the subject of the prosecutors, Larrikin owner Norm Lurie has had the gall to imply that this wasn’t all about the money and to position himself as some kind of crusader for moral justice. He has commented in interview: “Of course it would be disingenuous for me to say that there wasn’t a financial aspect involved, [but] you could just as easily say what has won out today is the importance of checking before using other people’s copyrights.” Hang on a minute – “a financial aspect“? Fine. If it really wasn’t all about the money, then shouldn’t you consider giving half of it to Marion Sinclair’s family…?

There’s something about the thought of thousands of lawyers and publishers across the world jumping on the bandwagon and insidiously rifling through every song that ever made any money in search of a tiny snatch of allegedly stolen melody that could lead to their next big pay cheque that makes me want to be really quite sick all over everything. No piece of art is ever completely original. Everybody knows that. The music industry has been recycling material since time-in-memoriam. That is how art works. Obviously you can’t go around shamefacedly nicking other people’s work – of course you can’t – but there is a line and in this case it has been crossed, as far as I’m concerned.

Having said all this, in researching this blog I came across a transcript for some of the words in “Down Under”, which to be honest I’d never fully taken in despite having heard the song numerous times. Check this out: “I come from a land down under, where beer does flow and men chunder”. Crikey. Those are some pretty dubious lyrics – which does make me wonder rather whether they had it coming to them….

LYs to headline at world premiere of “Body Gossip”

On Sunday 29 March we’re returning to the London scene for a headline performance at the launch of Body Gossip, a celebrity-endorsed theatre event examining the effects of the “size zero” phenomenon on the nation’s sense of body image.  

The show is taking place at The Hub in King’s Cross – an exciting new venue which describes itself as “a global community of people from every profession, background and culture working at ‘new frontiers’ to tackle the world’s most pressing social, cultural and environmental challenges”.

The brainchild of actress and BBC presenter Ruth Rogers, Body Gossip will comprise 15 real life stories, gathered together from the winning entries of a national writing competition, performed for one night only by a celebrity cast that includes Anne Diamond, Big Brother’s Nikki Grahame and supermodel Jen Hunter. We’ll be hitting the stage once the theatre is finished.

Body Gossip kicks off at 7pm; tickets cost £20. Buy yours soon as this event will sell out!

Click here to buy tickets.

Click here for full details – timings, maps etc.

Click here to find out more about Body Gossip.

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.