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Tag: Babybird

Posted on May 2, 2023May 2, 2023

Babybird are back together for Leeds Brudenell Social Club gig as Stephen Jones keeps writing after heading back north

Babybird’s Stephen Jones

PLAYING Leeds Brudenell Social Club on Friday will bring back memories of Stephen Jones’s early Babybird travels.

“We deliberately requested these places [Bristol, Manchester, Leeds, London and Cardiff] as it feels like a rite of passage to return,” he says of this month’s short tour.

“These cities featured in our first tours in 1996 and 1997 and are the most memorable for the between-song banter and the enthusiasm. Though I live near Manchester, these other cities are our musical homes too.”

Joining 60-year-old Stephen on the road will be guitarist Luke Scott and drummer Robert Gregory, fixtures in the line-up since 1995, and bassist Danny Lowe, a band member for 15 years. “Everyone’s doing different things these days – Luke is a senior lecturer in London – but as soon as we get into the tour van it’s like a Chuckle tour,” he says.

Babybird officially split after ten Top 40 singles and 11 albums in 2013, but Stephen continues to write prolifically – up to seven songs a day – for solo release on Bandcamp. Around 100 albums so far and still rising, recorded on a laptop, Stephen still bursting with “monstrous lullabies for an unstable world”.

“Writing tunes is just something I can do,” he says. “Mowing the garden, I’ll put off forever, but going upstairs to the ‘fourth room’ to write the lyrics, that’s the hard part.”

He has been known to write in six-hour bursts, but he does not have a set routine. “Sometimes at four in the morning, I’ll have an idea that I’ll put on the phone, but I’ve never been the kind of writer who will be writing every day because that’s what they do. There’ll be days where I get up and don’t want to do it, but when I do it’s a pleasure,” he says.

“Looking back to those early albums [lo-fi Stephen Jones recordings made initially on cassettes in his Sheffield bedsit over six years], I had no intention of releasing them, but people were coming over and stealing them and saying I should release them!”

Now as then, “I always write for myself. I think everyone does. If you write for an audience, you become an automaton,” he says.

One tour preview summed up Stephen Jones’s post-2013 career as one where he will still “persist and meddle”. “I don’t think I would use the word ‘meddle’,” he says. “But I need to keep going financially, so you have to persist, and even if I had another job, I would persist with making music – but I’ve never had to give it up.”

Born in Wellington, Telford (“the same place as the comedian Stewart Lee,” he notes), Stephen was raised in Repton, Derbyshire, and Nottingham, where he studied film; made those notorious bedsit albums in the Steel City; moved to Manchester, and then to London for 15 years.

Home for the Jones family is now Hale in Altrincham, just outside Manchester. “We were living in a really nice place in London, a maisonette, but with no garden and with two kids, we decided to move back north. Nice garden…and my wife’s mother lives up here too. I love being on the verge of the Lake District,” he says.

If one album were still to sum up Babybird, it would be October 1996’s Ugly Beautiful, the one with “songs to annoy, enjoy and employ God with”; the one with the singles Goodnight, Candy Girl, Cornershop and global hit You’re Gorgeous.

The poster for Babybird’s May tour that opens tonight and arrives in Leeds on Friday

“Obviously some songs I write are out-and-out happy and beautiful too, but that album title sums up everything. I like to write about subjects that aren’t necessarily dark but are realistic. When lots of songs have a sheen, if you’re going to write songs like a David Lynch film, there has to be beauty within,” says Stephen.

“I studied film on the creative arts course at Clifton, at Nottingham Polytechnic as it was then. Fassbinder movies; David Lynch; Eraserhead made a big impression on me. That’s my humour. Dark!”

You’re Gorgeous, a number three hit in autumn 1996, will forever be the signature song, with its theme of male exploitation and yet a misleadingly upbeat chorus. “It’s funny what happened,” says Stephen. “Roy ‘Chubby’ Brown, whose humour I don’t like, did a version. The Wurzels have done a version. Pinky And Perky, they did it, without changing the lyrics. The Smurfs wanted to change the words, so we could say ‘No’ to that!” Dame Berwick Kaler once sang it in a York Theatre Royal pantomime too, by the way.

Stephen wrote the song in his lo-fi recording days. “I always thought it might be a hit of course, but I was listening to Stewart Lee talking to Adam Buxton on his podcast about successful acts who wanted to be cults and those who are underground but who wanted to be successful,” he says.

“It’s a hard gap to straddle, but I’ve kind of done both and that’s why ‘Gorgeous’ is good, because although it can define you, I can keep going into the studio because all the airplay keeps the money coming in.”

Stephen has come through a heart attack too in 2017. “It did stop me in my tracks. It was like having an iron cage put over me, but it was coming,” he says, attributing what happened to alcohol. “Does it make you reassess? Well, you do for a while, but then you go back to a glass of wine.

“What I’m doing is the same as an office job. Now I get up every 20 minutes when I’m writing – and I go to the gym too. I was in a ward with four men who looked so much worse than me, but then depression comes, but you come out of that. The doctors say I’m in better health than ever, with a stent in me, and now I’m just having a good time doing these gigs.

“There’s no pressure to promote things, which doesn’t come naturally to me. It’s perfect now. I’m older now. I was inspired by the tail end of punk, seeing The Stranglers, and it’s still that DIY thing of glueing your sleeves together, thinking it’s totally up to you what you do.”

Stephen’s 20-year friendship with Johnny Depp found “lyrical diamond” Stephen attending the Hollywood A-lister’s guest appearance with guitarist Jeff Beck in Manchester last May in the aftermath of Depp’s successful libel trial against ex-partner Amber Heard. “I was meeting him in the dressing room, shortly after the verdict. I fell over and smashed my leg. I now have a huge tear,” he says.

Nothing that will stop him from performing in Leeds on Friday, however, still searching for the meaning of life that he happily acknowledges he may never find.

Babybird, supported by Terrorvision’s Tony Wright, Leeds Brudenell Social Club, May 5, doors 7.30pm. Box office: brudenellsocialclub.co.uk.

Did you know?

STEPHEN Jones has written two novels, The Bad Book in 2000 and Harry And Ida Swap Teeth (also the title of a Babybird B-side) in 2003. He wrote the score for the 2004 film Blessed.

Did you know too?

CHEF, cookery book writer, TV presenter and restaurateur Gordon Ramsay used Babybird’s song The F-Word in one of his TV series.

Posted on April 1, 2023September 4, 2023

More Things To Do in York and beyond to turn a bad day into a good one. Here Hutch’s List No. 14 for 2023, from The Press

Having a Bad Day in York: The Bad Day Blues Band play York Blues Festival tonight

FROM a dose of the blues to tragic poetry and song, an heroic fireman to a flying car, clashing couples to country-singing twins, Charles Hutchinson is ready for a week of up-and-down moods.

Festival of the week: York Blues Festival, The Crescent, York, today, 12.30pm to 11pm

YORK’S DC Blues present the cream of the crop from the British blues scene in an all-dayer. Taking part will be Mojo Catfish: Electric Blues; The Bad Day Blues Band; Bad Bob Bates; DC Blues; Alex Fawcett Band; The Terraplanes Blues Band;  Mark Pontin Group and The The Lonely Hands Band.

Hand-picked by Jorvik Radio’s Blues From The Ouse hosts Paul Winn & Ben Darwin, the fourth York Blues Festival features bands from all over Britain performing from 1pm. Now the bad news to give you the blues: the event has sold out.

Twin sisters Catherine and Lizzy Ward Thomas make their third visit to York Barbican on Tuesday

Country gig of the week: Ward Thomas, York Barbican, Tuesday, auditorium doors 7.30pm

HAMPSHIRE country twins Catherine and Lizzy Ward Thomas look for light in troubled times on newly released fifth album Music In The Madness: songs of harmony-soaked balm for shattered souls and an uplifting reminder of what really matters.

Love, family, unity and the healing power of music are recurrent themes on an album begun as war broke out in Ukraine and the world went into a post-Covid tailspin. Tuesday’s York return will be the sisters’ only Yorkshire concert on a 13-date tour. Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.

Fireman Sam on circus-saving duty at York Theatre Royal on Tuesday

Children’s show of the week: Fireman Sam Saves The Circus, York Theatre Royal, Tuesday, 3.30pm

WHEN all his friends go away, Norman Price decides to become the star of a visiting circus in Pontypandy. However, with a tiger on the loose and faulty lights, his adventure soon turns to danger. Can Fireman Sam come to the rescue and save the circus? Spoiler alert, the show title suggests yes!

Join Sam, Penny, Elvis, Station Officer Steele and Norman in UK Family’s all-singing singing, all-dancing, action-packed show, where you can become a fire-fighter cadet. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

Alan Park’s playwright Henry in rehearsal for York Settlement Community Players’ production of Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing. Picture: Ben Lindley

Play of the week: York Settlement Community Players in The Real Thing, York Theatre Royal Studio, Wednesday and Thursday, 7.30pm, then April 11 to 15, 7.30pm, plus April 15, 2.30pm

HENRY is married to Charlotte. Max is married to Annie. Henry – possibly the sharpest playwright of his generation – has written a play about a couple whose marriage is on the brink of collapse. Charlotte and Max, his leading couple, are soon to find out that sometimes life imitates art.

Directed by Jacob Ward, Pocklington School alumnus Tom Stoppard’s deliberately confusing 1982 exploration of love and infidelity sets the question “What is the real thing?” … without answering it! Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

Sam Green, left, Dan Crawfurd-Porter and Mikhail Lim in rehearsal for Black Sheep Theatre’s Elegies For Angels, Punks And Raging Queens

Time to discover: Black Sheep Theatre in Elegies For Angels, Punks And Raging Queens, Quad South, York St John University, Thursday to Saturday, 7.30pm plus 2.30pm Saturday matinee

BLACK Sheep Theatre bring Janet Hood and Bill Russell’s rarely performed 1989 musical to the York stage with a cast including Mikhail Lim (last seen as Seymour in York Stage’s Little Shop Of Horrors last July) and Helen Spencer (Dolly Levi in Joseph Rowntree Theatre Company’s Hello Dolly! in February).

Elegies For Angels, Punks And Raging Queens is composed of free verse poems and songs, each poem representing a character who has died from AIDS, the songs reflecting the feelings of the living, those who have lost friends and loved ones. Box office: ticketsource.co.uk/black-sheep-theatre-productions

Alex Papachristou: Returning to York to play Baron Bomburst in York Stage’s Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

Spectacular show of the week: York Stage in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Grand Opera House, York, Thursday to April 15, 7.30pm nightly except April 9; 2.30pm, April 7, 8, 12 and 15

YORK Stage present the magic, mayhem and madness of Richard and Robert Sherman’s most Fantasmagorical musical, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, under the direction of Nik Briggs with choreography by Damien Poole and musical direction by Adam Tomlinson.

Can whacky inventor Caractacus Potts (Ned Sproston), his two children and the gorgeous Truly Scrumptious (Carly Morton) outwit bombastic Baron Bomburst (welcome back Alex Papachristou), who has decreed that all children be banished from his kingdom? Watch out, here come the evil Childcatcher (Richard Barker) and, yes, that flying car too. Box office: atgtickets.com/york.

Liza Pulman & Joe Stilgoe: Songs and stories, favourite standards and classic duets, at Selby Town Hall

Musical match made in theatrical heaven: Liza Pulman & Joe Stilgoe: A Couple Of Swells, Selby Town Hall, April 15, 8pm. Also Otley Couthouse, April 14, 7.30pm; otleycourthouse.org. uk

LIZA Pulman and Joe Stilgoe, both headline names in their own right, have chosen Selby for one of their first ever duo shows in a night of songs and stories, favourite standards and classic duets, sprinkled with panache and dazzle.

The Great American Song Book meets 1950s’ French Riviera chic in the company of Pulman, one third of satirical cabaret group Fascinating Aïda, and jazz pianist and singer Stilgoe, a five-time UK Jazz Chart topper. Box office: 01757 708449 or selbytownhall.co.uk.

May days: The poster for Babybird’s five-date tour, visiting Leeds Brudenell Social Club

Back together: Babybird, The F-Word Tour, supported by Terrorvision’s Tony Wright, Leeds Brudenell Social Club, May 5, doors 7.30pm

PLAYING Leeds feels like a rite of passage to return there for Babybird’s Stephen Jones, as he recalls the memorable between-song banter enthusiasm of his band’s first tours of 1996 and 1997.

Formed in 1995 and best known for misconstrued 1996 anthem You’re Gorgeous, Babybird made 11 albums before splitting in 2013, since when Manchester-based Jones has written fiction, released solo works on Bandcamp and created the film score for Blessed. Reunited, Babybird’s monstrous lullabies for an unstable world are taking wing anew. Box office:  brudenellsocialclub.co.uk.

In Focus: Ryedale Youth Theatre in The Addams Family – A New Musical Comedy, Milton Rooms, Malton, April 5 to 8

Meet the Addams Family in Ryedale Youth Theatre’s The Addams Family – A New Musical Comedy. All pictures: Tim Youster

CHLOE Shipley directs a cast of 50, aged eight to 18, in The Addams Family – A New Musical Comedy, featuring music and lyrics by Andrew Lippa and book by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice.

Although numerous film and television adaptations of Charles Addams’s single-panel gag cartoons exist, this musical is the first stage show to be based on the ghoulish American family with an affinity for all things macabre.

Billed as a comical feast that embraces the wackiness in every family, the show features an original story built around every father’s nightmare. Daughter Wednesday, the ultimate princess of darkness – with a name derived from the Fair Of Face poem’s line that “Wednesday’s child is full of woe“ – has grown up and fallen in love with a sweet, smart young man from a respectable family – a man her parents have never met.

If that were not upsetting enough, Wednesday confides in her father, begging him not to tell her mother. Now Gomez Addams must do something he has never done before: keep a secret from his beloved wife, Morticia.

Everything will change for the whole family on the fateful night they host a dinner for Wednesday’s “normal” boyfriend and his parents.

As the lyrics for the Main Theme for The Addams Family, written by Vic Mizzy in 1964, assert: “They’re creepy and they’re kooky, Mysterious and spooky, They’re all together ooky, The Addams family”.  

Under Chloe’s direction and Rachel Clarke’s musical direction, the multi-talented Ryedale cast has thoroughly enjoyed proving that rhyme’s sentiment in rehearsals. Now come the 7.15pm evening shows and 2pm Thursday and Saturday matinees, with tickets on sale at £12, concessions £10, at yourboxoffice.co.uk.

Posted on February 19, 2022September 4, 2023

More Things To Do in York and beyond when avoiding being knocked out by a garden rake. List No. 70, from The Press

Amy Hall, left, Victoria Delaney and Neil Vincent in masked rehearsals at Southlands Methodist Church for York Settlement Community Players’ production of Woman In Mind. Picture: John Saunders

CLASSIC Ayckbourn, club classics, a homecoming songwriter, a Dracula discovery and choirs galore make Charles Hutchinson’s list of recommendations, any way the wind blows.

Play of the week: York Settlement Community Players in Alan Ayckbourn’s Woman In Mind, York Theatre Royal Studio, tonight (19/2/2022) until February 26, 7.45pm and 2.45pm last-day matinee

HOUSEWIFE Susan’s growing disillusionment with everyday life in her humdrum marriage is brought to a head when she steps on a garden rake and is knocked unconscious.

Such is the impact of her minor concussion, suddenly she finds herself surrounded by the ideal fantasy family, handsomely dressed in tennis whites as they sip champagne.

When her real and imaginary worlds collide, however, those fantasies take on a nightmarish life of their own as Alan Ayckbourn applies both humour and pathos to his 1985 portrait of a woman on the verge. Victoria Delaney, on stage throughout as Susan, leads Angie Millard’s cast. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

 James Gaddas: Digging deeper into Bram Stoker’s Dracula in his one-man show at the Grand Opera House, York

So much at stake: James Gaddas in Dracula – One Man’s Search For The Truth, Grand Opera House, York, Monday, 7.30pm

WHEN actor James Gaddas comes across Bram Stoker’s original handwritten copy of Dracula while working on a satellite channel television show, he finds it contains pages never published, leading him to a terrifying discovery.

What if everything we thought we knew was only the beginning? What if it is not so much a story as a warning? What if the legend is real?

Gaddas brings the original version to life before sharing his discovery on a night of one actor, 15 characters and one monumental decision: are some things better left buried? Box office: 0844 871 7615 or at atgtickets.com/York.

Babybird’s Stephen Jones: Revisiting his landmark Ugly Beautiful album in full at Leeds Brudenell Social Club

Yorkshire gig of the week: Babybird, Ugly Beautiful 25th Anniversary, Leeds Brudenell Social Club, February 23, doors, 7.30pm

MARKING the silver anniversary of his smart, piercing pop album Ugly Beautiful and its misunderstood ubiquitous single You’re Beautiful – pay attention to its dark criticism of men’s behaviour beyond the shiny chorus – Babybird is taking to the road for four shows built around that pioneering record. The one he said had “songs to annoy, enjoy and employ God with”.

Up front as ever will be Stephen Jones, 59, the songwriter, singer, musician and novelist who first emerged as a purveyor of low-fi recordings made in his Sheffield bedroom over six years for release in 1995-96. Box office: seetickets.com/event/babybird/Brudenell

Benjamin Francis Leftwich: Heading home to York to perform at The Citadel for the first time. Picture: Harvey Pearson

Homecoming of the week: Benjamin Francis Leftwich, The Citadel, Gillygate, York, February 25, 7.30pm

NOW living in Tottenham, North London, singer-songwriter Benjamin Francis Leftwich heads back home to play The Citadel, his second church gig in York after his sold-out Minster concert in 2019.

Last June he released his fourth album, To Carry A Whale, and he has been song-writing as prolifically as ever since then, so maybe a new number will be aired. Support comes from Elanor Moss and Wounded Bear. Box office: thecrescentyork.com.

Soul II Soul: Rolling out the Club Classics at York Barbican

Club night of the week: Soul II Soul, Club Classics, York Barbican, February 25, 7.30pm

SOUL II Soul’s postponed York gig comes back to life on Friday, with tickets still valid from the original October 2020 date.

Jazzie B’s London soul, R&B and rap collective will be reviving the vibe of their 1989 number one Back To Life, top five hit Keep On Movin and their debut album Club Classics Vol. One.  Box office: yorkbarbican.co.uk.

That singing feeling at York Community Choir Festival

On song at large: York Community Choir Festival 2022, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, February 27 to March 5

EIGHT shows, with a different line-up every time, go into York’s celebration of community choral music.

Taking part will be three primary school choirs (Osbaldwick, Robert Wilkinson and Headlands), Huntington Secondary School gents and ladies’ choirs and 30 adult choirs.

Despite there being close to 200 song choices, in only one concert will the same song be sung by two choirs, in very different styles. Each concert ends with everyone singing I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing. Box office: 01904 501935 or at josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.

Madness: Playing York Racecourse Music Showcase Weekend for a second time in July

Under starter’s orders: York Racecourse Music Showcase Weekend, Madness, July 22, evening; Sugababes, July 23, late-afternoon

CAMDEN’S Nutty Boys, Madness, are on course for the Music Showcase Weekend for the second time this summer, having first played the Knavesmire track in July 2010.

Once more, Suggs and co will roll out such ska-flavoured music-hall hits as Our House, One Step Beyond, Baggy Trousers, It Must Be Love, House Of Fun and Michael Caine.

The original Sugababes line-up of Keisha Buchanan, Mutya Buena and Siobhán Donaghy will perform chart toppers as Freak Like Me, Round Round, Hole In The Head and Push The Button and plenty more. The London girl group last played York in a Barbican Centre show in 2003. For race-day tickets, go to: yorkracecourse.co.uk

Guvnor’s rules: Al Murray puts the world to rights through the bottom of an English glass or two in the Pub Landlord’s new tirade, Gig For Victory

Bar-room bawl: Al Murray, The Pub Landlord, Gig For Victory, Grand Opera House, York, September 1, 7.30pm

THE Guvnor, Al Murray, sets off on his 86-date tour on February 24 and will still be having a word  on November 13. York will play host to the first show after a summer re-charge for the Pub Landlord, whose Gig for Victory agenda promises answers to questions that the “men and women of this great country never knew existed”.

“Who better to show the way than the people’s man of the people, steeped in the deep and ancient bar-room wisdom of countless slock-ins,” says Murray, ever ready to offer a full pint of the good stuff to a nation thirsty for common sense. Box office: 0844 871 7615 or at atgtickets.com/York.

Charles Hutchinson

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