peterborough

Our turn with the Olympic torch…

It’s 7.15am and, I’ll be honest, I’m pretty exhausted. A week of manically preparing Project LYs for launch followed by a gig in Scotland and a frankly dangerous level of partying (on Saturday, before the gig, I ate a whole asparagus and quail’s egg salad to myself and didn’t even pause before knocking back well over a quarter of a glass of champagne) has left me with some kind of non-specific illness and a sleep-overdraft of about 400 hours.

However, no time to sit around in my pants moping because things are about to kick off on the Olympic Games front. Last year we wrote a song for the Peterborough leg of the Olympic Torch Relay and tomorrow we’ll be performing it live on the Peterborough Embankment with 800 singers and drummers from across the city. It’s just been confirmed that Seb Coe will be making an appearance; click here for more details.

As far as I’m currently aware, the performance will be going out live on telly for anyone in the Eastern region, and highlights may appear on the One Show later in the evening. The following morning (Weds 4th) we’re performing a stripped-back version of the song in the town centre and rumour has it this may get coverage on breakfast television. TV scheduling often tends to change at the last minute, of course, so stay on your toes! More to come on that throughout the week. Either way you ought to be able to catch it on iPlayer.

Have a good week folks, and keep an eye on this blog / Facebook / Twitter for updates. Also, don’t forget to visit Project Lightyears to download your free copy of our new version of This House Will Burn.

ps. somewhere in the middle of all this I need to make time to find myself a literary agent. Hmm. Could forego sleep? Either that or invent time travel. Any other suggestions, let me know.

Ahoy there matey! It’s those pesky LYs…

On Saturday night we performed for Her Majesty’s Ambassador and six hundred esteemed guests at The Queen’s Birthday Ball in Seoul, South Korea. The theme for the evening was classic 1930s cruise ship glamour and, in honour of this, we performed our set inside an enormous scale model of  a vintage seafaring vessel, which opened up dramatically to reveal us inside.

This is definitely the most unusual stage we’ve played on. I mean, we’ve done some bizarre gigs (that crèche we headlined at in Peterborough springs immediately to mind, along with the cow shed in Belgium) but emerging from inside a cruise-liner bearing the legend “Queen Elizabeth” definitely takes the biscuit.

After the show I had a chat with the lady behind the idea and she explained she’d had many sleepless nights worrying about how the ship would turn out when it appeared on the day. She said that it had ended up being much bigger than she’d anticipated. I replied that she should thank her lucky stars – at least it didn’t come out unexpectedly tiny. They could have had a serious case of Stonehenge on their hands (for reference, see the famous scene in Spinal Tap in which a mix-up over feet and inches results in the dramatic lowering onto the stage of a model of Stonehenge so small that “it was in danger of being crushed by a dwarf”).

This happened to us once. Years ago we got our first big gig at a festival supporting The Levellers. Keen to make the most of the exposure, we had a banner made bearing our name and website address. In our innocence we decided that three-feet long by one-foot wide would be a sufficient size for the job, although when we picked up the banner from the shop and unwrapped it from its little sheath, it turned out to be only slightly larger than a pair of men’s pants. At least if we’d hung pants on the stage this could conceivably have been read as an anarchic gesture.

Note to self: in rock ‘n’ roll, bigger is always better…

London Road Stadium – Peterborough, Cambridgeshire – 04/08/08

How was it for us?

Our second stadium gig – and it was a cracker!

We met Alex Ferguson and played Emily as Rio Ferdinand and the rest of the Man Utd team trained around us. Bizarre – but brilliant.

We played for about 45 minutes and by the time we finished there were nearly 12,000 people watching us. Which is a few more than you can fit in The Troubadour. 

For the big picture, check out my stadium blog and Episode #4 of LY-TV. 

Chris Lightyear

How was it for you?

Were you there? Got an opinion? Want to write a review? Hit the comments box at the foot of the page.

Gig Details

Tickets are no longer on sale for this event.

The Lightyears featured in today’s Guardian newspaper

The Lightyears are featured in The Guardian today following their recent collaboration with The Voyager School in Peterborough on building links between professional musicians and arts education.

A few months ago, the LYs were invited to become artists-in-residence at the Voyager, and this partnership has since seen them working closely with the school choir, the local primary choirs and also members of the wider Peterborough community.

This collaboration has led to the release in two weeks’ time of a charity single for Peterborough United Football Club, raising money for the Free Kicks Foundation.



See page 27 in the education section of today’s Guardian or click here for the online version.