powder keg diplomacy

Our Favourite Moments Of 2012

1 January 2013

The Lightyears headlining at Goring & Streatley Jubilee.That’s right, people… it’s 2013. Not quite sure how that happened – we appear to be edging ever closer to the date in Back To The Future II, which doesn’t seem at all right, but there you go.

The Lightyears are looking forward to an exciting couple of months. We’re returning to the London stage on Saturday 9 February to headline at Westminster Reference Library, and before then we’ll be hitting the recording studio to lay down preview versions of some of the tracks we’ve been working on for the new album.

We’ll keep you posted on all that but, until then, feel free to avail yourself heartily of The Lightyears Favourite Moments Of 2012

Chilling backstage with multiple Rogers
In October we larked off to Sweden to perform with Roger Daltrey from The Who and Queen drummer Roger Taylor. We spent most of the time buggering about on bikes and learned that people named Roger are always spiffing. Click here to read my Gothenburg Tour Diary.

Surprising some Cumbrian ramblers
As part of a new band initiative to get back to nature, 2012 saw us popping up in a number of al fresco gig destinations and shooting funny little acoustic videos. Here’s one of us on the banks of Lake Grasmere, shortly after we confused the absolute heck out of some local hiking types:

Nearly starting a fight with The Buzzcocks
In September, while we were on tour in France, one of my legendarily BRILLIANT jokes predictably backfired and I narrowly escaped fisticuffs with a punk legend. Read the story here.

Making acoustic music really quite sexy
Our first move in 2012 was to film and release a series of acoustic videos shot at the awesome Powder Keg Diplomacy in Clapham. These proved almost suspiciously popular in Turkey. Have a gander…

Releasing The Ultimate Lightyears Photo Album
Tired of having to recreate our precious band memories by scribing them into slates like Victorian schoolchildren, this year we decided to compile an archive of our craaaaaaziest international tour photos. Click here to take a look.

Coming perilously close to outshining Bolt at the Games
Back in the heady sporting summer of 2012, we wrote and performed an Olympic Anthem for the city of Peterborough. Here we are performing it with quite literally lots of humans.

Creating lasting world peace with our new app
A couple of months ago we made ourselves tiny enough to fit inside your phone. Apparently professional people call these apps; I call them Mini-Moving-Picture-Boxes. Click here to download your copy.

Queening it up at The Goring Jubilee
Roger Taylor’s all very well, but the shocking truth is that his band nicked their entire identity from this old rocker ALSO CALLED QUEEN. On 3 June we celebrated how many hats she has by playing a big, wet gig in Goring. It was epic.

Eclipsing the internet with Project LYs
In the summer we launched our multimedia micro-site Project Lightyears. The site proved so popular that it immediately broke Google. Don’t worry, there’s a bloke coming round to fix it.

Finishing the book that is fast becoming known as The New New Testament
I’ve been writing a book inspired by the international shenanigans of The Lightyears for some years now, and in 2012 I finished it. The spelling in it is excellent. And if you come to our gig on Saturday 9 February, you can hear me read from it. Here’s an excerpt:

Mercilessly rocking Cape Town
Cape Town welcomed us yet again with open arms at the beginning of the year, and we responded by first eating loads and loads of their delicious meat (not Tony) and then rocking their cocking socks off. Here’s a teeny tiny clip.

Happy New Year folks! And thanks to everyone who supported us in 2012 – it means a lot.

Chris, George, Tony & John
THE LIGHTYEARS

New LYs music videos now online

6 February 2012

'OK boys. Whoever perfects Blue Steel first wins a fiver.'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

23 January 2012

Chris LY does Rock & Roll JackanoryLast 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