Why LYs fans are the best fans in the world…

When we discovered that a five-star hotel in Cape Town had erected a plaque in our honour back in January (read about it here), I think we all expected this would be the last time something like that would happen to us. Au contraire, however! After our recent gig at the Burlington Amphitheatre in New Jersey, USA, we were invited back to the picturesque town of Riverton for an after-party. The bash was being held on the legendary porch ...

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 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 ...

Happy 10th Birthday LYs…!

As we were walking out onstage at Wembley Stadium a couple of weeks ago, Tony reminded me that we played our first gig together almost exactly ten years previously, on 29 April 2000, in a tiny venue in Oxford called The Jam Factory. I can't be certain how many people were there but it definitely wasn't 50,000. Probably more like 20. Either way, this makes today The Lightyears' official 10th birthday. Although The Lightyears per se didn't officially come into ...

The Kookaburra counts his money…

You may have heard that Men At Work, who wrote and performed the massive 1983 hit, "Down Under", have been sued by Sydney-based publishing company Larrikin Music for apparently plagiarising a line of melody from "Kookaburra Sits In The Old Gum Tree", a song written for the Girl Guides in 1934. ...

Best start to a tour… ever.

So, we landed in Cape Town yesterday and immediately jumped in a cab bound for the Table Bay Hotel. The Table Bay is generally regarded as being the city's best hotel (it's in the "Leading Hotels Of The World" group, don't you know) and is definitely one of the major perks of our annual South Africa trip. We were sat in the lobby waiting for our rooms to be prepared and decided to wander outside into the sunshine and have a closer look at the statue of a giant golden ...

A call to arms… help us hit the charts!

Today, Monday 11 January, marks the date of our first major label release - the song "Come With Me", which we wrote for the Josh's Band project. We're hoping that, with your help, we'll be able to reach the UK Top 40 Chart on Sunday. You guys have supported us loyally for years now and we truly appreciate it - a band without a fanbase is, after all, just four blokes sat in a room eating crisps and arguing about whether ...

Our Top 20 Moments Of 2009

Christmas Time is here again and there’s enormous excitement in the air. There’s an outside chance that Rage Against The Machine will beat the X Factor to Number One on Sunday and the weather-man says that snow’s a-coming. Things literally couldn’t be any better. We thought we’d add to the general feeling of goodwill and festivity by recounting our favourite and most memorable experiences from the past year. Most of them - whether in London, Cape Town or the USA - ...

Kate Nash & Her Famous Rabbit

Last night we went back into the studio to finish the lead vocal track for "Come With Me", the song we wrote for the new T-Mobile ad campaign. The record is being produced by Jonathan Quarmby, whose past work includes Finley Quaye's seminal album Maverick A Strike. George and I both lent our voices to the lead vocal track along with an awesome, honey-voiced female singer called Obenwa. The track is being ...

Setting the record straight

Yesterday afternoon we gathered at Rak Studios in St John's Wood to put the finishing touches to the track we wrote for Josh's Band, "Come With Me". Awesome turns were made by, amongst others, a rather talented tuba player, several trumpeters and the inimitable Russell Ward on the squeezebox. One perennial truth of being in the studio is that you spend 10% of your time making records and 90% of your time hanging about. It's vitally important that, during this 90% majority period, you ...

The Lightyears on your telly-box

So... the inaugural nationwide tour of Josh's Band is now over. We've been to Birmingham, Bristol, London, Edinburgh and Manchester and played to (and with!) over 1,100 people. It's been an incredible experience to be part of Josh's core band and the general consensus is that all of this is merely the beginning. Work on the track we wrote for the campaign - "Come With Me" - continues apace and it is due for release on a major record label in January. The final recording will feature hundreds of musicians and singers ...

Look out Manchester – Josh’s Band is a-coming…

Since I last blogged, Josh's Band has jammed in Bristol, London and Edinburgh. We've played with pipers, melodised with melodica players and harmonised with hurdy-gurdyists (don't be fooled by the elaborate alliteration - all of this is true). Plus our mates are starting to get in contact to say they've heard us on the radio tonight - so the word is spreading... It's been an awesome journey so far and ...

Thank you Wembley… and hello Bristol!

Last night we played to 46,000 people at Wembley Stadium and who should turn up to join the crowd but that bloke off the telly, Josh Ward! Seriously though, we had an awesome night and it was great to see so many LYs fans there. We took the opportunity to do a little onstage camera piece with Josh ahead of our trip to Bristol tonight - the next stop on Josh's Band's T-Mobile tour. I studied at Bristol University so I have a special affection for the place... ...

Josh’s Band hits the road…

Well... Birmingham was awesome. Nobody knew quite what to expect from the first date on Josh's Band's tour but what we got was a mass singalong in the Bullring, just enough decent weather to perform outside and about 200 screaming fans! Josh, it seems, has become a minor celebrity overnight and his mere presence now sparks mass hysteria amongst his devoted groupies. Our song, "Come With Me", went down really well ...

Come one, come all, to Birmingham…

All the great tours start in great cities. That's just a simple fact of rock and roll. It might be the Enormodome, Memphis, or the Shepherd's Bush Empire, or New York's Madison Square Gardens. This tour, on the other hand, begins in Birmingham. But you gotta start somewhere, eh?! Tomorrow morning at 11am, Josh's Band (featuring Chris and George Lightyear) will be premiering at the Birmingham Bullring in an attempt to get the good people of the UK singing the song ...

Tate Modern, here we come…

Over the past few weeks I've been spotting my face all over bus stops, underground stations and bins (no, really) as part of the new T-Mobile ad campaign. I know what you're thinking - if a man sees his face on too many shopping centre bins then, eventually, he's going to develop an intolerable ego. Well, true to form, the ego is burgeoning and well and truly on its way. But that's not all. Not only have ...

Our song in a national ad campaign…!

Here's the news - T-Mobile have selected our song "Come With Me" to be the signature song for their upcoming ad campaign. On top of this, George and Chris have now officially joined Josh Ward (the face of the ad campaign) and virtuoso drummer Mike Glozier to form the core band for the tour. This means that we'll be bombing up and down the country over the next month or so ...

Writing a song for T-Mobile…

Our involvement with the new T-Mobile ad campaign is now beginning to get exciting. Friends and family have been spotting us all over the UK on TV ads, billboards, bus-stops and train station big screens.... and today we were brought in to write the campaign's flagship song. We were invited to the famous Rak Studios in St John's Wood, which is where Radiohead recorded The Bends. Our brief was to write a song that would provide the ...

Jamming on an open-top bus!

OK, so it's Week Three and yet again I found myself gathering up an instrument and heading off to a slightly unconventional jamming session for the new T-Mobile ad campaign. I was on guitar rather than piano today because the session was taking place on a vintage open-top bus driving through the centre of London. I know. This was rock and roll in its purest form. George is out-of-town at the moment so I took my kid brother Shaun with me, who is a stunning musician ...

The Piano Orchestra

OK - latest developments in the T-Mobile Superband Bonanza... Today Josh asked us to come and join him and bunch of other musicians in the Half Moon pub in Oxford to jam a new song that had been written for the campaign called "I Wanna Feel You Move". It was a small pub and full to the brim with guitarists, singers, percussionists and pianists. I was rather delighted to find myself ...

The Lightyears join a superband

A couple of weeks ago, a curly-haired musician named Josh Ward (who we've played with a few times in the past and who has been known to wake up on our kitchen floor after Lightyears parties in a sticky puddle of champagne dressed like a sheep) was stopped in the street and asked by a camera crew what he would ...

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