music feature
MJ Hibbett:
It Only Works Because He’s Here.
His name may not be familiar, but let me assure you, MJ Hibbett is a musical legend. Along with his band, The Validators, he has made a video that was viewed several million times online in one week, released the first ever download-only single and recorded an album that was named Record Of The Year in Rolling Stone. These are mere drops in the ocean, though. And in his new one-man show he’ll tell you just how exciting his life in rock music has been. The show, cunningly titled ‘My Exciting Life In ROCK!’, takes the form of an anti-rock biography, showing a more realistic view of the life of a musician. But rather than a tale of bitterness and failure, it’s a celebration of doing something you love for the sheer fun of it.
TW: So, introduce yourself, Mr Hibbett.
MJH: Hello! I'm MJ Hibbett, some people might know me from the ‘Hey Hey 16K’ video of a few years ago that got all sorts of people excited, others from our song ‘The Lesson Of The Smiths’, or (mostly) from me saying "Hello, I'm MJ Hibbett" to you at a gig. That was me.
TW: How did 'My Exciting Life In ROCK!' come about?
MJH: The original plan was to do something that would give me a good excuse to go to the Edinburgh Festival. Both myself and my friend Steve, who's organising it with me, went as students in the early 90s and had horrible times of it. I got booed off at The Fringe Club for four hours, ran out of money so had to eat other people's leftovers, and ended up a thousand pounds in debt. Steve found himself re-writing his show on the train there after the entire cast walked out, slept in a park because his accommodation was too far away, and entertained only 17 people, including various family members several times. We decided that, as we're a bit more experienced (ie older) and have some cash saved up that we could go back and do it properly this time!
TW: How has it developed from the original idea to the fully-formed show it is now?
MJH: Well, as the original idea was to get drunk for a week and whoop it up, it's developed quite considerably! The idea of the show is me telling the stories that would have made up a rock biography I was briefly asked to write. So, once I worked out which of my many rock anecdotes to tell it all worked out quite easily. I've told them many times to many people, but this is the first time people haven't run away from me whilst telling them!
TW: What can people expect from the show?
MJH: As well as lots of my favourite songs people will find out why I ran naked through Glasgow, how I managed to stay out drinking longer than Nick Cave and Shane MacGowan combined, what it's like to be famous in Norway and in basements, how I ended up supporting Echo & The Bunnymen on ukulele, and how I managed to write a book that got my editor sacked.
TW: The music industry has a very bad reputation, is this deserved?
MJH: Oh yes - the point of this show is to demonstrate that signing a legally binding contract with a massive international corporation who know so little about the act of creating music that they throw millions of pounds away guessing what people might like is not, perhaps, the best way to pursue your dreams. The world is changing so that you don't need the approval of clueless middlemen to get your music to people who'll like it, and that's very much a change for the better!
TW: Why have you decided to launch the show at the Edinburgh Festival?
MJH: Because if we didn't I'd just be there drinking and seeing shows all day long - the hour of the show will be a good time to have a rest!
TW: Is going from more traditional music gigs to a one-man show a strange transition?
MJH: It's very strange indeed - normally when I'm doing a gig people start to glare at me if I talk too long, and now the yacking is mostly what they've come for. It also still feels a bit like cheating to do the same songs and tell the same stories every night, but I'm getting used to it!
TW: What are your plans for the show after Edinburgh?
MJH: Nothing as yet - I'm really enjoying it and would love to carry on and do it somewhere else, but there's no plans whatsoever at the moment. I just want to get through the week in Edinburgh in one piece, then I'll start thinking about what to do next!
TW: What's your favourite song in the show?
MJH: ‘It Only Works Because You're Here’ - it's a song about romance in the IT industry, a topic which isn't exactly over-subscribed for balladry. I love it when I sing it and see people get into the story, and start to worry about how it'll all turn out!
TW: Coincidentally, you’ve just released that very song as a single. Tell us a bit about that.
MJH: Well, I was going to make a ‘Best Of’ CD to go with the show anyway, so that people coming didn't have to buy five different CDs to get all of the songs, should they want them. I really wanted to release ‘It Only Works Because You're Here’ because, as
I say, it's my favourite song, and so doing that as the single seemed like a good idea. It's also a bit of a bargain - as well as the lead track and two other songs which are in the show but haven't been released before there's four "bonus" tracks of previous singles, which make up a sort of ‘Greatest Hits’... if, of course, they'd actually been hits.
We've also done a video for it, which you can see at www.youtube.com/mjhibbett, which is the song told in the style of a My Guy Photo Story. Go and watch it and see if you can fathom out why none of us have - as yet - been pursued for major film roles!
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MJ Hibbett's 'My Exciting Life In ROCK!' was performed at Medina.
published: Oct-2008
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