The Last Working Day Of The Month: Issue 15

< issue 14

issue 16 >

(MJ Hibbett & The Validators FACT, April 28th 2006 )

Hello all, and welcome to the FIFTEENTH issue of our SPRING POWERED newsletter. Let's make it HAPPEN shall we?

GIGS TO COME

This month I shall be playing the following places:

Saturday April 29th - Bunkers Hill Inn, Nottingham (with Dressy Bessy, The Radiator Experts and Julian Donkey-Boy)
Monday May 1st - University Students Union, Sheffield (all day BBQ - hopefully playing outside at about 4.30pm)
Monday May 1st - The Victory, Leicester (with Plans & Apologies and The Bobby McGees, on about 9ish)
Friday May 26th - The Buffalo Bar, London (with The Retro Spankees and Winston Echo)

Nottingham's a Validators gig and the rest are solo - new material will be ABOUNDING at all!

GIGS WE'VE DONE

The ROCKING MONTH kicked off with a lovely night over at Kingsmeadow Stadium where I played some new stuff and then watched Boo Hewerdine be GRATE. Next The Validators played at The Luminaire in Kilburn, which is a LOVELY venue - great sound, friendly people and CLEAN TOWELS in the backstage area! I met Phil from The June Brides in Lewisham when I played The Fox & Firkin (Rock Legend AND lovely chap!), had a FAB night with The Lovely Brothers and The Graham Parsnips in Finsbury Park, and finally went to ESSEX for some rural pleasantness at the Phoenix FM CD launch party. BUSY!

RECORDS

Shortly after the last newsletter the whole "Hey Hey 64K" idea fell apart, which to be honest was a bit of a relief. We're now releasing "Better Things To Do" as the single on its own, with "Leave My Brother Alone" and "The Other Rush Hour" as b-sides and the "Zipcodes" cassette on the multimedia. As we no longer had to record a new song we were able to use the studio time we'd booked to MASTER the album with Mr Robbie Newman at The Hive in Derby, with me and Tim spending a goodly while getting the gaps between songs EXACTLY right. It then took one last PUSH we got all the art and multimedia put together and then it was all sent off to the manufacturers - today we approved the artwork, so we should have actual physical copies in two or three weeks!

The upshot of all this is that we're VERY MUCH on course to get the single out at the end of June and the album a couple of weeks after that. Excitement is HIGH at Castle Validator - the promotional campaign is being devised, mailing lists are being updated, and GIGS are being planned - more news on ALL of this next time!

Meanwhile in other Physical Product News I've got a track on the Creative Sessions Volume 1 CD from Phoenix FM. It's the acoustical version of "Symbol Of Our Nation" that I recorded with Paul and Steve from the station on backing vocals. It should be available now from http://www.phoenixfm.com/creative.php if you want one - proceeds go towards running the station, which is a GRATE cause!


RADIO

As well as Phoenix FM we've had some airplay on The Rachel Neiman Experience on Bailrigg FM this month, and there should be some of our stuff on Another Nice Mess on 16th May when Marcelle's repeating some AAS sessions. We're currently updating our radio mailing list too, so if any of you out there have a show and would like a copy of the new material please let me know!


OTHER THINGS

The big news is that I'm going to be recording a VIDEO in a couple of week's time! Now that the "Hey Hey 64K" thing isn't happening me and Mr Rob Manuel are going to do a Proper Filmed Video for "The Gay Train" instead. It's going to be live action rather than a Flash Animation this time, and the ideas he and Mrs Manuel have come up with for it are WELL COOL. The plan is to release it just before the album comes out, so stand by for FACT about where to find it!

Other than that we've been occupying ourselves with planning the tour (due to happen around July 21st -29th, diarise NOW!), working on the new website, having a band curry (it was very nice) and generally getting PREPPED for the Summer Of Rock that is to come. I'm really looking forward to it I must say, and hopefully NEXT time I'll have a whole heap of EVEN MORE THRILLING FACT to tell you - I don't know about you, but I can't wait!


Cheers,

Mark

< issue 14

issue 16 >