mockstars

Revealed: cover image for “Mockstars”

Check it out, people: the brand-new cover image for our Lightyears novel, Mockstars.

She’s a beaut, right?! Inked by the fair hand of George Lightyear, with consultation from myself and the book’s publishers Red Button, the cover image provides a wee insight into the ups and downs of the Mockstars story, which was inspired by Chris LY’s international tour diaries for the band.

Oh, and a point of trivia: these photos were taken backstage at Wembley Stadium (la-dee-dah).

The eBook will hit your kindles and eReaders this summer – so keep your eyes and ears peeled for news on publication dates. You can find out more about the novel at the Mockstars website.

Mockstars: Four boys. One band. No chance.

LYs release live video of ‘Blinded By Light’

We’ve just published the first live video from our recent headline show at Westminster Reference Library, featuring brand-new LYs track ‘Blinded By Light‘.

We premiered a number of new songs at Westminster on Saturday 9 February, among them ‘Embrace Of Many‘, ‘Wait Forever‘ and ‘One Way Or The Other‘. Along with ‘Blinded By Light’ and a clutch of other tunes we’re working on in rehearsal, these songs will help to make up the next Lightyears album.

The album will be released in conjunction with my Lightyears novel, Mockstars. The novel is loosely based on my Lightyears tour diaries, and tells the story of our first ever international tour to Meribel, in the French Alps. Check out a video extract here… and watch this space for updates!

Click here to view our photo gallery from Westminster Library.

Click here to read my write-up of the gig.

Watch the video below:

LYs gig review published in London E-zine

London-based online music mag and promotion company It’s All Happening have posted a gig review covering our recent performance at Westminster Library in central London.

IAH review gigs from all across the capital, as well as running their own events and festivals and generally working their socks off to promote and foster London’s thriving indie music scene.

Head on over to their website to give the review a read.

Media from the gig

If you missed our show at Westminster – or if you enjoyed it so ravenously that you simply must relive it – then mosey on over to the gallery page to check out the official photos, or read my gig report on the Lightyears blog page.

The Lightyears – live at Westminster Library

For those of you who don’t know, I’ve written a novel inspired by the international adventures of The Lightyears, entitled Mockstars. The band are also working on an album of original songs to accompany the book, making Mockstars the first ever full-length novel by a band, about the band, with its own original soundtrack.

On Saturday 9 February we unleashed this concept for the first time on the general public. A library felt like an appropriate place to kick off a project that combines rock ‘n’ roll with fiction and so, on National Libraries Day 2013, we booked in a headline show at Westminster Reference Library, just off Leicester Square. Most people are slightly taken aback when you tell them you’re performing in a library, but WRF has a track record for these things and has previously hosted, among others, British Sea Power and Mr Hudson (not to mention our erstwhile piano-led chums Royworld) and so the idea wasn’t totally unprecedented. Plus we’ve played libraries before and we know it works – here we are entertaining the crowds at Burlington Library in New Jersey back in 2009.

The gig took a fair bit of organisation, and we were expecting a capacity crowd, so the pressure was very much on. When Tesco delivered all the alcohol to Berkshire instead of Westminster Library I can reveal that a few heart-rates began to race – but then some kindly Lightyears fans who were coming from that direction agreed to play booze courier for us, and we were back on track. By 8.30 the venue was full, we had sold out, drinks were flowing and I had begun to feel that maybe this zany idea just might work.

After spellbinding Nigerian author Chibundu Onuzo opened the show with a couple of songs and a reading from her book The Spider King’s Daughter, we took to the stage. It’s been a while since we played our own songs in the capital, and I could tell I wasn’t the only Lightyear who was relishing the novelty. We opened with Wait Forever, a slow-building ballad with (predictably) a rousing, vocal harmony-filled chorus, and from there segued straight into Blinded By Light, the song which probably best sums up the musical direction the band is now heading in. After a 2013 acoustic re-imagining of our old gig favourite This House Will Burn, I stepped up to the mic for my first reading.

Up until this point I honestly had no idea whether it would work. If you were there yourself then, well, I guess you can tell me – but the reaction I got from the crowd certainly seemed to suggest that people enjoyed it. The band perched on the edge of the drum-riser and I proceeded to tell the (gloriously embellished) story of our first meeting with LYs drummer Tony. Tony had deliberately not read this scene in advance so that he could enjoy it first-hand with everyone else, although it’s possible that he began to regret that decision once his character entered the fray and he realised his personality was entirely at the mercy of my metaphorical quill.

I was delighted with how well the reading went down, but I’d also planned to keep each extract to roughly the length of a song so as not to bore anyone! From there we slipped right back into the music, and as the evening went on we continued to reveal material from the new album alongside a few carefully-selected older songs – tracks like Brother (from our 2005 album Mission Creep) and Fine (from our 2002 release Flying Blind). You can catch live videos of some of the new tracks – Embrace Of Many, Wait Forever and One Way Or The Other – at www.ProjectLightyears.com, along with video readings from Mockstars. Before the set ended I read a scene recounting the band’s first rehearsal, set in Croydon’s Scream Studios, and another that describes one of my first ever encounters with, for want of a better phrase, ‘posh groupies’ in the French Alps (also available to view on the Project Lightyears micro-site).

LYs photographer Alex Cooke – who took this photo of us at Wembley Stadium, among many others – was on-hand to document the event through his trusty lens, and you can see the pics on our PHOTOS page. We were also very lucky to have Kaushik Bhattacharya of Milky Films shoot the gig for us, and again we’re hopeful of putting together some of that footage for our YouTube channel over the coming weeks.

Thank you once again to everyone who came. It was a special night for us, a true career highlight, and hopefully the beginning of an exciting new chapter for The Lightyears. The book and album are still in development, but this gig was the first step on the road to becoming, as far as we’re aware, the only band in history to have released what I often ill-advisedly refer to as a ‘novel-bum’.

Watch this space.

Chris Lightyear

ps. Sorry we ran out of beer.

Sell-out at Westminster Library

Thanks to everyone who came down to Westminster Library on Saturday night for our Book & Album Preview – we played one of our favourite ever gigs, to a capacity crowd, in a truly unusual and exciting venue.

I’ve written a piece on the event in my Lightyears blog, and we also covered the show with a photographer and cameraman. We’ll be releasing new media as and when it’s available, so watch this space.

It was pretty thrilling for us to unleash extracts from the book and songs from the new album for the first time, and we’d be interested to know what people thought. Connect with us via our Twitter and Facebook accounts or, if you’re from the old school, just post us your crayon / dried pasta interpretations of the gig, and we’ll be happy.

Stop the press – it’s National Libraries Day…

Saturday 9 February is National Libraries Day.

But that’s not all.

It is also the date of our return to the London stage, and coincidentally your first chance to hear live readings from my new Lightyears novel as well as songs from the album that accompanies it.

So if you were looking for a way to celebrate National Libraries Day – which come on, I KNOW YOU ALL WERE – then by George I believe we have it. The Lightyears live at Westminster Reference Library, 9 February from 7.30pm. Music, words, wine and fine company, all wrapped up inside this exciting, offbeat venue right in the heart of London.

Act fast, though – tickets are selling terribly well and there’s only so much space in there (bloody Leo Tolstoy insists on filling up most of the first floor with his frankly enormous books).

Tickets on sale here at the frighteningly reasonable price of £4.50: www.wegottickets.com/thelightyears.

Click here for full gig details.

And for a wee taste of what’s to come, check out this video extract from my LYs novel Mockstars:

Exclusive preview of new Lightyears track

As you know (because I don’t stop banging on about it), I’ve just written a book.

The book is called Mockstars and it’s The Lightyears’ origin story – a true(ish) tale of debts, mugs and rock ‘n’ roll. We have a vision for this book, and it’s never been done before… on top of publishing the novel, The Lightyears will be releasing an album of original material that accompanies the story and deals with many of the same themes (incidentally, plenty of novels have soundtracks – that’s old news – but as far as I know no band has simultaneously released its own novel and album… please correct me if I’m wrong though!).

I wrote a great deal of material for the album at the same time as writing the book. At the risk of sounding like a ponce (and possibly inadvertently using the word ‘visceral’), this was a really exciting and inspiring process for me. Sometimes I’d get writer’s block and think ‘Hmm – I need some other piece of art to inspire me’… and lo and behold, I’d trundle off and listen to one of my new demos, and my writing flow would pick right up again.

We’re currently in the process of taking the songs I’ve written, combining them with material from the rest of the band, working through it all and shaping it into an album. Mockstars makes direct references to these songs, songs which will soon, and rather excitingly, actually exist ‘in the real world’. It’s a multimedia jamboree.

The very first track I wrote for the book was called ‘Blinded By Light’. It’s a song that deals with the major themes in the novel – friendship, growing up, dealing with change and pursuing your dreams in the face of adversity. We’re still working on our full-band version of ‘Blinded By Light’ but, as a special treat (it is Friday after all), I thought I’d publish a wee clip from my original bedroom demo. This doesn’t feature any of the other Lightyears (oh, for a world where that were always the case) but you’ll get the general idea.

Enjoy… and do let us know what you think in the comments section. Thanks guys!

ps. if you haven’t had a chance yet, check out the video readings from Mockstars at Project Lightyears. I’ve embedded one below for anyone who’s feeling a bit lazy.

Two men and a dog

In case any of you were wondering, this is what a dog looks like enjoying hot-off-the-press Lightyears tracks.

I think she’s in some kind of trance.

Phoebe was the sole witness to the three days George and I just spent in his studio up in Yorkshire working on a batch of tracks for The Lightyears’ new album. You can tell the music is speaking to her from the look on her tiny little face (unlike many Jack Russells, Phoebe is a die-hard fan of diminished chords).

Meanwhile, Tony has a handful of tracks he’s been working on and there’s a rumour John is vying to fill the rest of the album with slap-bass solos, which I’m obviously very excited about. So things are shaping up…!

This album will come with an unusual bonus – a novel, about the band, by the band (well, me). Based on a true-ish story, Mockstars chronicles how The Lightyears got together, and sheds light on the people and places behind the songs.

Watch this space for updates…

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

MOCKSTARS
by Christopher Russell

Chris and George are best friends, and they want to be rockstars.

Unfortunately, a childhood spent playing in the school orchestra and listening to Jimmy Nail has left them a little fluffy round the edges, and at the age of 23 they still live with their parents and travel to gigs in a Skoda. So how do two boys-next-door from the Home Counties go about taking on the cut-throat, image-obsessed world of rock and roll?

Easy. They’re just going to have to fake it.

‘Back in the nineties, when everybody else was at illegal raves chomping ecstasy pills, what were you boys doing?’
I look at George. He shrugs.
‘Jigsaws,’ I reply.
‘We’ve got a LOT of work to do…’

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

New LYs music videos now online

Earlier this month we recorded a series of live music videos in our favourite local bar, Powder Keg Diplomacy.

The first two videos are now online – click to view our acoustic covers of David Guetta’s Titanium and Rihanna’s We Found Love.

More videos to come, including a dusting-off of Lightyears favourite Girl on The Radio and three readings from my new LYs novel, Mockstars.

Rock & Roll Jackanory

Last Monday we spent the day on a Lightyears film shoot at our favourite local bar, Powder Keg Diplomacy on St John’s Hill. That’s right, I’ve got all the lingo. We were ‘on a film shoot’. We had a clapper board with our name on it, the full works.

The shoot was in two parts – 1) filming three short extracts from my upcoming Lightyears novel, Mockstars (and, in doing so, pioneering a genuinely groundbreaking new art form we like to call ‘Rock & Roll Jackanory’) and 2) filming five new live music videos.

We’re beavering away on the edits as I write, and you lot will be the first to know when there’s something to see. To keep you amused in the meantime… erm… click here to find out what my dreams look like.

Yeah? You like that? Yeah? Of course you do. Of course you do…