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Fame for fame’s sake…?

25 March 2009

The internet is awash with articles about the death of Jade Goody, notorious entrepreneur and former Big Brother phenomenon. Never before has somebody experienced a gradual death quite so publicly – and inspired such a storm of media attention and public debate in the process.

Whilst Jade wasn’t exactly my cup of tea, her death was undeniably tragic. However, I can’t help but feel that there’s something terribly crass about the whole affair. The press are patting themselves on the back for “creating” her and, for the most part, transparently ignoring the fact that they spent most of their column inches slagging her off. Huge swathes of the general public are paralysed by an apoplexy of hysteria over somebody they have never met. Goody’s wedding was televised a couple of weeks ago and a million people tuned in. What does this all mean? What does it say about our relationship with the media and with the people it portrays?

You can’t help but admire Goody for her skillful manipulation of the press; however, if she can be considered the puppet-master controlling the papers, the papers can in turn be considered the puppet-masters wielding our strings. Ultimately, we’re the schmucks getting screwed at the bottom of the food chain. We are absolutely lapping it up and, as long as we continue to do this, the tabloids will continue to churn it out. 

Whereas back in the good old days celebrities were recognised and celebrated for a specific talent, nowadays they have morphed into unimaginative circus freakshows, kept afloat by a paparazzi interested almost exclusively in getting pictures of people flashing their pants. Paris Hilton, Jordan, Tara Palmer-Tomkinson – for me, these people are “Notorieties”, not “Celebrities”. The old maxim that “all publicity is good publicity” is truer now than ever. For instance, there was a time when being photographed staggering drunk out of a taxi into a strip-club would have ruined a celebrity’s career. Now it creates that career. Fame breeds fame for fame’s sake.

This, to me, suggests that the whole notion of celebrity is on the verge of eating itself. And how long can a species which cannibalises its own young survive?

Chris Lightyear

ps. this Sunday 29 March I become a “celebrity” myself when I return to my theatre roots to perform alongside a cast including supermodel Anne Diamond, Big Brother’s Nikki Grahame and supermodel Jen Hunter at the launch of Body Gossip. Click here to read more!

My very own Rock Supergroup

20 March 2009

Writing consecutive blogs about Guns N Roses and Michael Jackson has got me thinking about my rock supergroup. To be taken seriously in muso circles, every self-respecting, self-aggrandising rock fan should have their own supergroup, just as they really ought to be able to reel off their Top Five “Track One Side Ones”*** on request.

I’ll cut to the chase. Whilst I’m on the subject of MJ and GnR, the King Of Pop (circa 1987) would take on vocal duties whilst Slash would provide lead guitar. As tempted as I would be to include Axl in the line-up as well, I believe that supergroup regulations forbid any two members to have come from the same original band and, in any case, you can’t have two frontmen. Well, unless you’re The Beatles. Or The Libertines. Anyhow, I digress. Since the band would OBVIOUSLY be piano-led, I’d have to employ Jerry Lee Lewis on the ivories and have Ben Folds waiting in the wings to fill his shoes when the inevitable happens. Tim Commerford from Rage Against The Machine would play bass and Zeppelin‘s John Bonham (resurrected) would be my stick-man.

And so, I hear you cry, what kind of music would this pure pop/hard rock/hip-hop metal fusion/50s throwback leviathan pump out? Well, exactly that – heavy riffing, face-melting, boogie woogie hook-laden pop with wicked dance moves.

And I shall call them “Dangerous Killing In The Name Of A Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On Heaven’s Door” (yes, it works).

Coming to a stadium near you.

Chris Lightyear

ps. please do comment back with your own supergroups and we’ll see if we can out-do each other like Top Trumps.

*** “Black Dog” from Led Zeppelin IV, “Taxman” from Revolver, “Jackson Cannery” from Ben Folds Five, “La Breeze” from Simian’s We Are Your Friends and “Slam” from Pendulum’s Hold Your Colour (if you discount the 53-second opening prelude, which for these purposes I do)

Have we been played?

13 March 2009

 

Last week Michael Jackson came out of hiding to announce that he was playing ten shows at the 02 Arena. These were to be his last ever performances in London. This is it, everybody said.

This is it, at least, aside from the other forty gigs that were later added to meet the enormous demand for tickets.

Even once you set aside the question of whether the lovable old fruitcake will actually make it to show number 50, consider this – have we been played? Surely they knew all along there’d be more than ten concerts. In hindsight, wasn’t the whole “This is it” schtick just a clever ploy to sway the floating voters?

By which I mean that, whilst MJ has a legion of loyal fans over here who would spend their life savings to watch him perform in a swamp, the promoters must have also realised that there was a large portion of the public who might go either way – casual of fans of his music (for who in the WORLD isn’t at the very least a casual fan of Michael Jackson?) who had asked the inevitable question “Will it be any good? Will it not just be a bit like watching a marionette operated by a one-armed stroke victim?”. 

Scarcity, as we know, drives up demand. The dudes sitting on the fence were given a cunning nudge in the right direction: “Well, I wasn’t that bothered about going to see him until I discovered there were only ten shows and he’d never be playing London again. I have to get tickets now. I mean, come on, this is IT! ”

As I write I am currently trying, and failing, to secure my tickets to see the King in the flesh. Maybe it was never meant to be for me.

If only “Jim’ll Fix It” was still around.

Chris Lightyear

The King & I…

10 March 2009

Michael Jackson's house is actually bigger than thisHere’s the news – Michael Jackson is coming to London. No, not to dangle infants out of hotel windows, shop for priceless Ming vases or anything batty like that. He’s coming here to perform. That’s right – ten shows at the O2 Arena in July of this year. 

I am very excited. Michael Jackson is one of my favourite artists of all time and, although in recent years he has morphed into a character of the most riveting strangeness, he remains pop music’s greatest achievement.

Who knows whether he’ll actually be any good but, as my fine friend Ben pointed out to me on the phone but half an hour ago, “Smooth Criminal” done half-arsed will still be FREAKING SWEET. Let’s just hope we can get tickets.

I’ll be interested to see if this prompts a renaissance in the UK’s love affair with Michael Jackson and, more importantly, whether it will ultimately help shift the focus of his legacy back towards the music and away from the scandal. MJ is a nutcase in the fabled mould of the great Victorian eccentric – reclusive, enormously wealthy, gloriously weird. Back in the late 1800s, such eccentricity was actually celebrated. Now we slap a straitjacket on it and call it “mentally disturbed” – or worse, as in the King Of Pop’s case, we collectively condemn it for appalling and fantastical crimes with, seemingly, the sole purpose of selling newspapers. 

What I mean to say is that Michael Jackson may be as mad as a box of badgers but that doesn’t necessarily make him a pervert. We have an grossly unattractive tendency towards iconoclasm in this country, owing to the strange belief that because we make celebrities famous it’s our prerogative to lay waste to their careers – we giveth, and we taketh away (Matthew, XXVI: 4). This has been created by the media and is a total falsehood. You wouldn’t tell a stonemason that, if he failed to build your house to your satisfaction, you were entitled to stone him to death. That’s just bonkers.

Anyhow, before I lose myself yet further down the road of shamelessly defending the reputation of one of my musical heroes, I’ll simply say this – shamawwwwwwwwwwn people!! And I’ll see you at the O2.

Chris Lightyear

Great Rock Albums That Never Were – Part One

2 March 2009

 

So, I’ve been listening to Guns ‘n’ Roses a lot this weekend and it’s got me thinking about Use Your Illusion – one of the single greatest rock albums never made (technically speaking). 

Obviously, Guns released Use Your Illusion parts I and II as a double-album in 1991, representing the follow-up to their blistering debut Appetite For Destruction, and together the two works are punctuated by a string of absolutely corking tracks. However, due mainly to the effects of Axl’s growing megalomania and the band’s inevitable course towards implosion, the double-album was somewhat blighted by inconsistency – and, crucially, by simply being too long.

And so I ask you this – what if UYU had in fact been a more conventional hour-long single album? Would we not have had a contender for the most sublime rock record ever released? I’d be interested to hear your thoughts. In the meantime, here’s how – if they’d thought to include me in the studio sessions – I would have written the tracklisting (I suppose employing a ten year-old child from West Berkshire for this task would have been a little out-of-character for Guns ‘n’ Roses at the time, but nevertheless I think we can all agree it was an oversight):   

Perfect Crime
Don’t Damn Me
Civil War
Pretty Tied Up
You Could Be Mine
Dust ‘n’ Bones
Don’t Cry
Bad Obsession
Live And Let Die
14 Years
November Rain
Get In The Ring
You Ain’t The First
Estranged 

OK, the order’s not quite there (everybody knows it take months to properly order an album) but I think we can all concur that there’s no dead wood involved.  

By the way, I like to maintain that, whilst they had a tendency to release the occasional duff track, GNR summed up the essence of rock and roll like no other band has before or since. These guys were 100% thoroughbred. Take Slash, for example, a man who hit the substances for so hard and so long that he ACTUALLY DIED in an elevator and had to be brought back to life by his manager. I don’t care how many swimming pools you’ve driven cadillacs into, THAT is the most rock and roll thing I have ever heard. And in some ways, the band’s reputation and image supercedes the impact of the actual songs themselves. By which I mean that GNR (whilst my favourite band of all time) don’t have nearly as many great tunes as The Beatles or Pink Floyd – but what they have in greater abundance than any of their competitors is an elusive quality that Hugh Padgham would call ‘tude. That is, the attitude of a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Long live the Guns, I say.   

By the way, I’ve just discovered, via the wonder of Wikipedia, that the compilation album Use Your Illusion was in fact released in September of 1991 (in the USA only). Mind you, this was comprised only of the songs lacking profanities in order that the record could be sold in Walmart. Depressing, eh?   

Chris Lightyear

(Disclaimer: this feature is unlikely to have a Part Two. It just sounded like the kind of title that required the suffix “Part One”. You know, like it’s a series on VH1 or something)

Local girl done good

23 February 2009

 

So, finally, Kate Winslet won an Oscar. And hoorah for her, I say, because not only is she a damn fine actress but, like The Lightyears, she hails from Reading.

Reading isn’t generally considered to be “on the map” when it comes to famous sons and daughters, although it did also spawn Kenneth Branagh, Ricky Gervais and Dawn French. Plus, according to Tony (who perhaps ought not to be trusted on these matters as he does enjoy a good caper), Lennon & McCartney played their first ever gig in neighbouring Caversham’s Fox & Hounds pub. 

Anyhow, Kate’s been churning out stellar performances for years and so it’s somewhat ironic that she pre-empted her eventual Academy triumph during her cameo in the comedy series Extras, in which she complained that in order to win an Oscar you had to “do a holocaust movie” – and sure enough it was taking on such a role that appears to have been the clincher! Mind you, I reckon this says more about the prejudices of the Oscars ceremony itself than it does about Kate’s pedigree as an actress.

So I guess these are my official blogger’s congratulations to the delectable Kate for what she herself described as “a dream come true”. May there be many more! And I’m sure when I win my Oscar for playing Chesney Hawkes in his (surely inevitable) biopic, Miss Winslet will return the favour.

To Berkshire’s finest Hollywood export – and proof that the A329M isn’t the only great thing to come out of Reading. 

Chris Lightyear

The Lightyears’ International 5-Star Hotel Breakfast Richter Scale

13 February 2009

 

As you will probably be aware if you have been following our band for a while, food is incredibly important to us. We just got back from a storming tour of Cape Town, South Africa, and the many hours spent anticipating, enjoying and rating the various breakfasts on offer has prompted me to create something which I really should have dealt with a long time ago – The Lightyears’ International 5-Star Hotel Breakfast Richter Scale.

Man cannot live on chord sequences alone and when you’re out on the road it is imperative that you are adequately fed, lest your capacity to rock serious ass is threatened by low blood-sugar levels.

In short, eat your heart out Lonely Planet – this is the intrepid explorer’s real guide to eating abroad. Venues are listed in top five order, with number one representing the crème de la crème of hotel breakfasts:   

5. Somerset Palace, Seoul
The Somerset was our first experience of 5-star hotel breakfast-buffet eating and as a result will always hold a special place in our hearts. It has a simple elegance to it and is the only hotel on this list to offer live TV news during your meal. It opens early, at 6am, which is obviously of no use to us until the morning after the gig, during which we have become infamous for turning up at 6am on the dot, still suited, for a post all-nighter nosh-up before crashing into the jacuzzi and, eventually, bed. Pastries are reasonable, eggs are adequate and the bread-toasting machine is a pleasing little gadget, almost Wallace & Gromit-esque in its inventiveness. Slightly suspicious of the little sausages though. Always gotta wonder about the sausages.

4. The Laguna Beach Resort, Phuket
The Laguna scores points early on for effectively being outdoors. It rates highly on the Yoghurt Counter too for variety of flavours and from what I can remember also serves decent baked beans. Beans are often a problem when one is abroad – some hotels consider themselves too chic to serve baked beans (this is obviously ridiculous) and others go for a sort of posh bean medley containing butter beans, kidney beans, mung beans and the like, which I’m not averse to per se but which if I’m honest only over-complicates a classic breakfast staple. The Laguna also turned a blind eye to us appearing for our morning meal dressed only in matching hotel bath-robes and sunglasses, for which I believe the staff deserve a special commendation. Oh, and where else but in Phuket are you joined for breakfast by a dancing, juggling, harmonica-playing elephant? Mind you, I requested “Love Me Do” and received only a blank look in response. One-trick pony, if you ask me. 

3. The Table Bay Hotel, Cape Town
Like Thailand’s Laguna Resort, the Table Bay boasts the accolade of being one of the “500 Leading Hotels In The World”. However, it inches ahead of it’s Phuketian classmate by the skin of its teeth, thanks to a few high-class cherries on the cake that might surprise even the most discerning traveller. How imaginative, I thought, how recherché, to serve freshly roast duck in hoisin sauce for the opening dish of the day! The sushi was a pleasing touch too, although I couldn’t quite stretch to oysters. It’s one of my many travelling mantras that one should avoid eating anything that closely resembles phlegm for breakfast. Oh, and Michael Jackson, Snoop Doggy Dog, Kanye West and Jack Bauer have all dined here (although I doubt Bauer got much eating done – he was probably too busy uploading government schematics to his PDA and de-wiring suitcase nukes using only his eyelids).

2. British Airways Business Class Cabin, International Airspace
Yes, alright, this is technically not a hotel; however, I feel it warrants its place in the Top Five because we had to sleep in it and nice ladies bought us whatever we asked of them without once ticking us off for being immature and in that sense it mimicked my experience of hotels precisely. Plus I have stayed in hotels with less comfortable beds, believe me, and none of them faced the challenge of being 40,000 feet above the ground and hurtling around at 600mph. The thing about this particular breakfast experience was that, well, the attendants had furnished us with fine champagne before we’d even sniffed a soupçon of the food on offer. And a day that starts with champagne can never, ever be a bad day. What followed was a preposterously sumptuous smorgasbord of delights that included quails’ eggs, salmon roe, truffles and fillet steak. And I got to watch The Big Lebowski whilst I was eating. Everybody left happy. 

1. The Grand Hyatt Hotel, Seoul
And so we have a winner. As a hotel, The Hyatt may not have the flare of the Table Bay or the easy charm of the Laguna, but by George it steals the breakfast crown with flying colours. It has a carvery. It has pastries that will melt your face with desire. It covers every corner of the juice gamet. It boasts a view of the entire city. When we ate there we rubbed shoulders with the Dutch national football team. It has everything – and, most importantly, the Hyatt has Eggman. Eggman stands solemnly by a majestic breakfast hob, awaiting instructions, weaving his yolky magic on request as if it were the easiest thing in the world. He is a mythical figure, very much like Zeus or Agamemnon, except that Zeus couldn’t simultaneously flash-fry five immacuate omelettes whilst also scrambling a cheese, chive, pepper, bacon and egg combo to perfection. He has nothing to do with John Lennon’s eggman, who as far as I know was never employed by the Hyatt hotel chain and in any case can’t speak fifteen languages like Eggman can. He is our saviour. He is Eggman.

And so there you have it. Next time you visit one of these locations on tour you can dispense with your over-priced Rough Guide and instead simply heed my words. For it is impossible to feel sorrow when God bestows upon you a plentiful and resplendent breakfast buffet. 

Munch it down. 

Chris Lightyear

News from The Cape…

4 February 2009

Here’s something I’ve discovered about journalists in South Africa – they’re extremely diligent. I’ve been interviewed by a few local writers over the past couple of days and every one of them had done extensive homework on the band. In fact, the guy I spoke to yesterday knew things about us I’d forgotten myself!

On the subject of press attention, iAfrica – the country’s biggest web portal with 5.7 million hits per month – has just run an article on us on the front page of their music section.

Read iAfrica’s article on the band by clicking here.

Tony made it over here against all the odds. With Heathrow at a virtual standstill, 800 flights were cancelled on Monday and only six left the runway. His plane was the sixth. Extraordinary. As a result, he joined us on the beach this morning for a game of Touch Rugby and you couldn’t wipe the grin off his face if you tried.

We’ve got a gig tonight at the Speedway 105 Cafe. This has been attracting a fair bit of press attention and will hopefully get us some reviews over the coming days. We’ve got a feature coming up in The Cape Argus on Saturday, which is great news as it’s one of Cape Town’s most widely-read daily papers. 

Oh, and as for you guys back home, building snowmen and jingling all the way, I have to say that in a way it’s a shame we’ve missed London’s biggest snowstorm in 20 years. Thing is though, we’ve become so accustomed to the sun that I think the extremity of the climate would probably have killed us. The peculiar Snow-Vs-Sand dichotomy that separates our hometown from our current location was underlined for me yesterday when we passed a lamp-post in the street bearing foreign headlines. The sign, framed by a stunning blue sky and a beaming South African sun, bore three simple words: “SNOW SHUTS LONDON”.

Funny old world, eh?!

Chris Lightyear

Lightyears hit Cape Town!

30 January 2009

The day is finally here – we’ve landed in South Africa! We arrived in Cape Town only a few hours ago but I’m already hooked on the place. It’s just incredible here – stunning weather, breathtaking surroundings and really welcoming people. Danny and I are still a bit groggy from the flight having engaged in something of an alcoholic face-off last night (Danny on JD & Coke, me on London Pride) in front of a film called “The Rocker” which, well, let’s just say you needn’t bother watching. Entertaining enough when you’re 50,000 feet in the air and a bit sozzled but otherwise missable.

Anyhow, we reached SA early this morning and the tour started on a high when we picked up our hire car. We’d booked a bottom-of-the-range 4-seater “Chico” (the kind of car driven around Slough town centre by boys in big trousers who think they’re P Diddy) because it was almost frighteningly cheap – but when we rocked up at Hertz this morning, the guy told us he was out of Chicos and instead was giving us the keys to a brand-new 8-seater Volkswagen Transporter! Our ride had OFFICIALLY been pimped!

Twenty minutes later and we were cruising down the freeway in the blazing sunshine, our new song “Johannesburg” playing on the van’s proper phat sound system. I realise it’s a little conceited to listen to one’s own music but I think in this case we had an excuse!  

Since we arrived we’ve already been booked for a couple more gigs over the coming days and have a meeting this evening with some media dudes who are gonna help us get some press whilst we’re here. The tour is well and truly in motion…

For now though, we’re off to the beach!

Chris Lightyear

“He Ain’t Heavy” – The Story Behind Johannesburg

29 January 2009

At the tail end of last year, I wrote a song called “Johannesburg”.

Typically, the songs I write are based on my own life experiences, but this one was an exception. There was a news story on the BBC, last September I think, in which a British correspondent interviewed two brothers – neither of them any older than 15 years old – arriving in Johannesburg after a harrowing journey on foot from Zimbabwe.

Their parents had been murdered by government militia. Left on their own at such a young age, at first they had no idea which way to turn, but soon they heard people talking about Johannesburg. Everybody was saying that if you could find a way to get there, you’d be offered food and shelter. The two boys had nothing – literally, nothing – except the faint glimmer of hope provided by a city they knew not one thing about and had no conceivable way of reaching. So they did the only thing they could – they started walking.

By the time they reached the outskirts of the city and the BBC correspondent interviewed them, they had been walking continuously for many days and had been mugged and beaten on the way. Finding nothing of value on them, the muggers had taken their shoes. Against all odds, however, they had made it – weak, starved and emotionally drained – to the city of Johannesburg. 

Even though this story was obviously a million miles away from anything I’ve ever experienced, and told of hardship I couldn’t hope to understand, something about it struck a chord with me. I guess it reminded me of the inspiration behind the Hollies’ song “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother”, which also happens to be one of my favourite songs of all time. Apparently “He Ain’t Heavy…” is based on a religious parable of sorts, in which a priest is walking along a dusty country road and sees two young man advancing towards him in the distance. As they get closer he realises that one man is badly injured and the other is carrying him on his back. Discovering that they have walked many miles in the intense heat without food, water or respite, the priest asks the carrier how he is able to withstand such a heavy burden. The man’s response became the title of that song.

Anyhow, I finished “Johannesburg” and we played it to a few people to test the water. We live with a guy who comes from Cape Town and, when he heard the track, he told us we had to find a way to get out to South Africa and make the song heard. So we did. 

And we leave today.

We’ll let you know how it goes!

Chris Lightyear

ps. you can get a free copy of “Johannesburg” by adding your e-mail address to the box on our homepage.

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