January 2014

After its release last year on iTunes, the audio from the So F**king Rock Live DVD is finally available on CD too!

As Tim so eloquently put it in his blog post, “It is simply the audio from the DVD with the stand-up bits cut out, remixed by the clever ears and fingers of Mr Pete Clements.” The full tracklist looks a little bit like this:

1. So F**king Rock
2. Inflatable You
3. Rock ‘N’ Roll Nerd
4. Mitsubishi Colt
5. Ten Foot Cock and a Few Hundred Virgins
6. If You Open Your Mind Too Much Your Brain Will Fall Out (Take My Wife)
7. F Sharp
8. Canvas Bags
9. Nothing Can Stop Us Now
10. Some People Have It Worse Than I
11. If You Really Loved Me
12. Peace Anthem for Palestine
13. You Grew On Me
14. Dark Side
15. Not Perfect
16. Second Encore

You can grab yourself one of these silvery discs of goodness from this very website, whether you’re in Europe, North America or Australasia and if you’re in the UK, you might also get the opportunity to spot one of them in the wild at your local record shop!

me!

I’ve just been sent final figures from the Koko gig in London in December.

We raised a total of £13,561.69 for the amazing work Medicins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) are doing in Syria.

Jut wanted to say thanks very much for coming and putting money into buckets and generally being awesome.

Here is the MSF website if you’re interested in getting more involved.

In other news, I’m in LA with the flu. Hope you’re all well.

tx

you!

me ‘n’ Pete Clements

“Rock For The Docs” photos by house photographer Joe Traylen.

A quick heads-up, just in case you’ve not yet noticed:

Ready For This? and Tim Minchin And The Heritage Orchestra Live at the Royal Albert Hall were recently put up on Netflix UK.

Netflix UK has a month by month subscription for streaming various Films and TV programmes.

‘Ready For This?’ was filmed, in 2010, in front of a justifiably enthusiastic audience during a sell-out, 3-night run at the HMV Hammersmith Apollo, in London. It features: Prejudice, If I Didn’t Have You, Bears Don’t Dig On Dancing, Canvas Bags, Confessions, White Wine In The Sun, the acclaimed nine minute beat poem; Storm and many more.

The spectacular ‘Tim Minchin And The Heritage Orchestra Live at the Royal Albert Hall’ was filmed in April 2011. Tim is joined on stage by the awesome 55-piece Heritage Orchestra, led by Jules Buckley and by Pete Clements on bass and Brad Webb on drums. The concert features new orchestrations of favourites such as You Grew on Me, Not Perfect, Dark Side, Prejudice and Rock `n’ Roll Nerd, as well as Thank You God, Lullaby and many more.

Update for those asking on Twitter and elsewhere: there’s no word yet about Tim’s shows going up on Netflix USA or elsewhere, but if we hear anything we will announce here.

Hi all,

It seems that our wee secret has leaked: I’m working on a stage musical adaptation of the iconic and brilliant Danny Rubin script, Groundhog Day. Danny himself is writing the ‘book’, I’m writing music and lyrics, and Matthew Warchus (of Matilda fame) is directing.

For the handful of you who’ve never seen the film (philistines!), Groundhog Day is about a cantankerous weatherman who is sent to a small town to do a weather report, and gets stuck in a time loop, living the same day over and over again until – eventually – he figures out how to be less of a miserable, egotistical git. It’s about selflessness and acceptance and love and time and life and death and all that good stuff.

The 1993 Sony Pictures film was directed by Harold Ramis and starred Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell, and is a true comedy classic. However, it would be impossible to try to translate the style and tone of the movie to stage… and even if it were possible, it wouldn’t interest me. (Or Danny or Matthew, for that matter).

Our version of Groundhog Day is going to be both instantly recognizable, and utterly different.

The central conceit is perfectly suited to the theatre, in my opinion. In fact, I think many of its ideas could be enhanced by the stage. It has the potential to be complex, dark, visually fascinating, and thematically rich, whilst still being a joyous romantic comedy with cool tunes and lots of gags. It’s certainly not an easy job, and I’m truly honoured – and genuinely excited – that Danny is letting me have a crack at it.

The idea of a Groundhog Day musical is not new; famously, Stephen Sondheim was rumoured to be working on the idea five or ten years ago. I’ve actually spoken to him about it (he is – if you’re wondering – a brilliant, witty, charming man), and the truth is he was only ever tossing the idea around. It got put on the back burner, and he is now happy that we’re making a go of it. We have Steve’s blessing – and it’s a blessing I value enormously.

So, we’re aiming for a workshop sometime towards summer, and hopefully we’ll have it on stage within a couple of years. But who knows? Maybe the whole project will get caught in a temporal vortex and we won’t be able to finish writing it until we’ve achieved wisdom.

Either way, you won’t hear any more about it from us until we know where and when we’re going to put it on. Back to work!

tx

PS I actually played two of the ballads from GhD at Koko in Camden a few weeks ago. Not sure whether, out of context, they meant anything to those of you who were there, but I hope you enjoyed them. I suspect some of you guessed the project ages ago anyway!

Matilda, West End

You may have already noticed that Matilda The Musical has been nominated for Best West End Show in the 2014 Whatsonstage Awards. These awards are nominated by and voted for purely by theatregoers and the ticket-buying public.

Voting opened in December and Matilda is up against Les Misérables, The Phantom of the Opera, War Horse and Wicked. Sterling competition.

Matilda is currently second, just 2% behind Les Mis… the show that pipped Matilda to the post for this award last year! Close huh?!

So if you’d like to help make it Matilda‘s year for this award, you can cast your votes here!

There are a great many categories and you can only vote once but you can vote in as many or as few categories as you like. The Best West End Show category is near the bottom of the list.

Voting closes on the 31st January, 2014 and the winners will be announced on the 23rd February, at the Awards Ceremony and Concert.

Matilda, Broadway

In more exciting award news: The RSC’s Matilda Broadway cast album has been nominated for a 2014 Grammy Award, in the musical theatre category! The 56th Grammy awards will take place on the 26th January, 2014, at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. More information here and here.

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