josh’s band

Lightyears – part of Saatchi & Saatchi’s history!

The T-Mobile advert we appeared in (and wrote the music for) earlier this year has been included in Saatchi & Saatchi’s 40 Years of Nothing Is Impossible feature, which chronicles all the best and most popular ads made by the company since they began (forty years ago last weekend).

The Josh’s Band music video is included alongside such classics as Carlsberg’s ‘Probably The Best Lager In The World‘ and that ‘Furry Friends‘ advert where the cat snuggles up in front of the fire with the bulldog. Vintage. Click here to view the feature.

If you managed to miss our advert when it was on telly, click here to watch it.

A call to arms… help us hit the charts!

Today, Monday 11 January, marks the date of our first major label release – the song “Come With Me”, which we wrote for the Josh’s Band project. We’re hoping that, with your help, we’ll be able to reach the UK Top 40 Chart on Sunday.

You guys have supported us loyally for years now and we truly appreciate it – a band without a fanbase is, after all, just four blokes sat in a room eating crisps and arguing about whether or not The White Album has too many tracks on it. Both the recording and the video for “Come With Me” actually feature a number of you and so, in a sense, it’s as much your record as it is ours. Now is the time for rallying together and seeing if we can make a dent on the charts!

CLICK HERE TO BUY THE SINGLE ON iTUNES.

CLICK HERE TO BUY THE SINGLE ON AMAZON.

CLICK HERE TO BUY THE SINGLE ON PLAY.COM.

*It’s important you buy your copy by midnight on Saturday so as to maximise our chances of chart success!*

Last November, Josh’s Band toured five cities – Birmingham, Bristol, London, Edinburgh and Manchester – and the gigs were caught on camera and turned into a series of TV adverts and a music video featuring all 1,107 people who played and/or sang on the track. The shows were unlike anything we’ve ever been a part of and we’d like to thank everybody who came down for helping to create a truly unique musical experience.

You can watch the music video by clicking here or, alternatively, you can catch it on Channel 4 this Friday 15 January between 9pm and 10pm (during Celebrity Big Brother – exact timing T.B.A.).

Lightyears to appear on Channel 4

The music video for “Come With Me” – the song we wrote for the Josh’s Band project – is being screened in full this Friday evening on Channel 4 between 9pm and 10pm (during Celebrity Big Brother) to an estimated audience of 3 million people.

Watch this space for full details of timing later in the week.

If we manage to sell enough copies of the single (which is out NOW on Universal Records) we  may be able to make the UK Top 40 Chart on Sunday. It’s important that you buy your copy by midnight on Saturday to maximise first-week sales and optimise our chances of chart success!

CLICK HERE TO BUY THE SINGLE ON iTUNES.

CLICK HERE TO BUY THE SINGLE ON AMAZON.

CLICK HERE TO BUY THE SINGLE ON PLAY.COM.

Thanks, as always, for your support!

ps. You can watch the music video for “Come With Me” by clicking here.

Help us hit the Top 40

The single “Come With Me”, which we wrote at the end of last year for the Josh’s Band ad campaign, is being released on Universal Records on Monday 11 January.

If we sell enough copies, we might even make it into the Top 40. Watch this space for details of how to download your copy!

CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE MUSIC VIDEO.

The track was produced by Bacon & Quarmby (David Bowie, Ian Brown, Finley Quaye) at London’s Rak Studios and, alongside Josh’s Band – which features Chris and George from The Lightyears – includes many of the performers who joined us on the tour, not least our very own Tony Lightyear and his awesome percussion collective Drum Club.

The music video for “Come With Me” is out on Monday 4 January in anticipation of the single release. Keep an eye on this website for updates…

Our Top 20 Moments Of 2009

Christmas Time is here again and there’s enormous excitement in the air. There’s an outside chance that Rage Against The Machine will beat the X Factor to Number One on Sunday and the weather-man says that snow’s a-coming. Things literally couldn’t be any better.

We thought we’d add to the general feeling of goodwill and festivity by recounting our favourite and most memorable experiences from the past year. Most of them – whether in London, Cape Town or the USA – involved the support of our fans and we’d like to personally thank everyone who has helped us make 2009 one of our best years yet. You guys rule.

So here, in no particular order, are The Lightyears’ Top 20 Moments Of 2009:

1. Stepping out onstage at Wembley Stadium for the first time in front of 45,000 people

2. Winning over an audience of leather-clad Norwegian bikers at the Speedway Cafe in Cape Town

3. Performing a barbershop medley of British seaside tunes in front of the British Ambassador in Seoul

4. Writing a song for a national ad campaign (“Come With Me” is released on Universal Records in January)

5. Spotting our faces in train stations and on the side of buses

6. Performing for a full-house of fans, friends and family at The Lightyears’ Christmas Party

7. Playing to a crowd of thousands on a hot summer’s evening in Union Square, Manhattan

8. Working with top producers Bacon & Quarmby (David Bowie, Finley Quaye, Sugababes) on the studio release of “Come With Me”

9. Watching South Africa’s foremost FHM model Roxy Louw stage-dive into a crowd of boogying revelers at our Cape Town Tens gig

10. Being invited back to Wembley Stadium

11. Drinking Pina Coladas by the pool at the Table Bay Hotel, Cape Town

12. Seeing ourselves on TV (click here)

13. Touring the country with Josh’s Band

14. Finding out we’ve been immortalised on canvas!

15. Spotting The Lightyears in the New York Post

16. Dressing up as intergalactic space rockstars for a Forbidden Planet tribute gig

17. Selling out our latest album London, England on the US Tour

18. Celebrating the end of the Korean Tour with a Lightyears night on the tiles

19. Appearing on the same bill as Diversity, winners of Britain’s Got Talent

20. Partying with the LYs American Fan Club in Riverton, New Jersey!

Kate Nash & Her Famous Rabbit

Last night we went back into the studio to finish the lead vocal track for “Come With Me“, the song we wrote for the new T-Mobile ad campaign. The record is being produced by Jonathan Quarmby, whose past work includes Finley Quaye’s seminal album Maverick A Strike.

George and I both lent our voices to the lead vocal track along with an awesome, honey-voiced female singer called Obenwa. The track is being mixed today and, in theory, the finished product will be sent to the record label tomorrow – which is, conveniently, George’s birthday! We’ve been invited back into the studio tomorrow morning to listen to the final product and have our reactions documented by the film crew… and then I suspect we shall head off to the pub for a celebratory pint or two.

Josh was full of beans when we arrived yesterday evening having spent the afternoon taking tea with Kate Nash in the studio green room. She was recording in one of Rak’s other studios and was accompanied – as, apparently, she always is – by her pet rabbit Fluffy.

That’s nothing though. When I’m famous I’m going to cart a basking shark around with me in a skip.

Just you try and stop me.

LYs starring in two TV ads – out now!

Over the past month, The Lightyears have been touring around the country with Josh’s Band as part of a series of enormous jamming sessions in five of the UK’s major cities. These gigs have been turned into two T-Mobile adverts, both of which are now airing on primetime television.

After writing the song “Come With Me” – which became the soundtrack for the campaign – Chris and George joined Josh’s core band on keytar and vocals respectively. The line-up was completed by drummer Mike Glozier who, by complete coincidence, is an old friend of Chris and George’s from their schooldays.

“Come With Me” will be released on Universal Records in January. Watch this space for news…

Setting the record straight

Yesterday afternoon we gathered at Rak Studios in St John’s Wood to put the finishing touches to the track we wrote for Josh’s Band, “Come With Me”. Awesome turns were made by, amongst others, a rather talented tuba player, several trumpeters and the inimitable Russell Ward on the squeezebox.

One perennial truth of being in the studio is that you spend 10% of your time making records and 90% of your time hanging about. It’s vitally important that, during this 90% majority period, you have armed yourself with some quality reading material to divert your attention once the banter starts wearing thin and everybody has grown tired of quoting scenes from Spinal Tap at each other. Yesterday, Tony had picked up a copy of The Guardian and soon enough a vitriolic slating of Josh’s supergroup project, penned by the infamous pessimist Charlie Brooker, was doing the rounds (read it here). Unsurprisingly, Charlie ain’t a fan of Josh’s Band. However, he is very funny and, if you’re gonna be mocked, it may as well be entertaining.

It was quite a bizarre experience to be reading somebody’s skewed interpretation of a project whilst simultaneously living through the markedly different reality. Funny thing is, if I were in Charlie’s position, I might well think exactly the same thing. It’s a set-up. Josh is an actor. The band are all session musicians. But he isn’t, and we’re not. Of course, T-Mobile set the whole thing in motion and it clearly helps to have the support of a production company when you’re organising large events, but I can personally testify that the grassroots movement that Brooker is so suspicious of has genuinely happened.

Clearly, many of the people who attended the gigs on our recent tour came for the TV cameras and the chance of 15 minutes of fame; however, crucially, they stayed for the music. Nobody freezes their knackers off in Edinburgh for five straight hours under fire from basically horizontal rain unless they’re actually enjoying themselves.

As for the music itself, Josh asked us to come into the studio a few weeks back to write a song for the project and the resultant session produced the track “Come With Me”, which has gone on to soundtrack the entire campaign. Charlie wrote in his article that the lyrics were clearly “penned by some dickshoe at Saatchi & Saatchi” and so, in the interest of setting the record straight, I ought to point out that George (Lightyears guitarist and the man behind the lyrics in question) does not and has never worked for Saatchi.

On the other hand, between you and me… he is a bit of a dickshoe.

The Lightyears on your telly-box

So… the inaugural nationwide tour of Josh’s Band is now over. We’ve been to Birmingham, Bristol, London, Edinburgh and Manchester and played to (and with!) over 1,100 people. It’s been an incredible experience to be part of Josh’s core band and the general consensus is that all of this is merely the beginning.

Work on the track we wrote for the campaign – “Come With Me” – continues apace and it is due for release on a major record label in January. The final recording will feature hundreds of musicians and singers from all over the UK. The first advert (covering the dates in Birmingham, London and Bristol) has already hit your TV screens. The follow-up (covering Edinburgh and Manchester) is out next week.

Thanks to Josh for having us onboard and to all the fantastic performers who joined us on the tour. Josh will be making a guest appearance at our gig tomorrow night (Friday 4 December) at The Troubadour in Earls Court and it is highly likely that a mass singalong will ensue… hope to see you there!

Lightyears Christmas party – this Friday night

Your last chance to see The Lightyears live in 2009 is this Friday night (4 December) at The Troubadour in Earls Court. We’re throwing an enormous, super-shiny Christmas party to usher in the festive season and promise to lavish all kinds of delectable rock treats upon everybody present.

Tickets are selling fast so it’s advisable to buy in advance by clicking here or turn up early! Doors are at 8pm; music starts 8.15pm; LYs onstage 9.45pm. Door tickets are £6 before 9pm and £7 afterwards.

Support comes from Iain Hornal’s new act Young Squires, Neil Thomas and Shaun Russell.

We’ve also invited a few special guests down, including Josh Ward, star of the T-Mobile superband adverts. Josh will be joining us for a performance of “Come With Me“, the song we wrote for the campaign. The track is due for release on a major record label in January. Not to be missed!

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