The video was filmed on top of the PRS building in Streatham Hill, directed by Chris Presswell with assistance from Carina Birrell. Huge thanks to cast and crew as well as Laura McAleer and everyone at PRS.
Behind the scenes...
ALCHEMY ROSE - LAUNCH PARTY
This was at the Hoxton Square Bar and Kitchen and played to a lovely appreciative crowd! Thanks to everyone who came down.
I debuted a number of brand new tracks from my forthcoming album, including 'I've Been Thinking' and 'Well Well' - check them out below:
MUSINGS AND SUCH "I ask the songwriter how his solo work differs to that he performed
with The Foxes; what we can expect from his sophomore album; what sort
of music he is inspired by - Thomas selects a few albums that have made
an impact on him." Have a read!
Note: I never normally look this cool
THE FOXES - 'B-SIDES AND RARITIES' - OUT NOW!
I'm really proud of this collection of songs from my old band, The Foxes, many of which have either never been heard before or only available on long since sold out CD and vinyl.
The album includes 'Hey Baby!', 'She's a Cow', 'Friday Night', alternative
original recordings of 'Lover, Killer,' 'Suzy' and 'Run' and a host of
never before heard tracks. ITunes, Amazon and all good online stores. iTunes Amazon UK Amazon US Spotify
Much more to come, including new album news, new music videos AND the day I got to drive a huge JCB digger for a horror short and another where I was filmed inside a fridge.
Very happy to say I'm playing at the Isle of Wight Festival again this year on the Kashmir Cafe stage - Sunday 11th June at 7.50pm. Do come and say hello if you're there, it's going to be a great festival and the Kashmir is a great stage (they've even got special guests Wheatus playing the day before and their beer is the stuff of legends) Full line up here.
Mark Morriss
I'm also supporting the mighty Mark Morriss from The Bluetones in Aberdeen at Drummonds on 1st September. Tickets here. I love love love playing in Scotland, huge thanks to AGP for inviting me.
More shows to be announced soon...
The Hospital Club
The packed Hospital Club gig was great, thanks to everyone who came down for it and to Darling Boy for hosting! Here's a version of 'Stepping Up' which will be appearing on my forthcoming album.
* NOT LIVE *
I've been doing some advance work on my next album - it's going to have quite a different feel from 'Travelling Man', I'm really excited for you to hear it though the main recording sessions are yet to come.
Jon
* FORMERLY LIVE *
It was an honour working with Mike Batt on his musical 'Men Who March Away' which premiered at St.Anne's Church in Limehouse accompanied by the Docklands Sinfonia Players and a hugely talented cast and crew. I also got to play guitar with a full symphony orchestra, which was really quite special!
Keeping out of trouble with my guitar at the back
Second on the right with some of the amazing cast
Mike and I
I really hope it gets some kind of tour because it's full of really great music and a witty script and deserves to be successful. It's always something to work with someone you admire so much, and Mike's talent - not least at songwriting - is something to aspire to match.
* FILMED LIVE*(then edited, then award winning)
Some great reviews and laurels for the short film 'Interception' directed by Jesper Emborg and featuring the epic acting talents of Ben Gardner Gray and Francesca Fraser. You can watch it below.
* ALIVE WITH MUSIC *
All three of my special 'Your Favourite Songs You've Never Heard' can be streamed or downloaded from here. Number four will be up soon, followed by an acoustic special.
More soon! Nigel. X “I would teach children music, physics, and philosophy; but most
importantly music, for the patterns in music and all the arts are the
keys to learning.” Plato. "Acting? It was my left eyebrow raised, right eyebrow raised." Roger Moore
First off, here's the brand new music video to 'Fever', a track from my forthcoming début album. They say there's no light without darkness and this video is very dark - made by the fantastic Infinite Pictures (the team behind my 'Third Movement' video, as well as The Foxes 'Lover Killer' and 'Bill Hicks') it references films from Maniac and American Psycho to literature including the works of Burroughs, Bukowski, Ellis and Palahniuk.
Written and Directed by Zoe. Produced by Gavin Fry (Infinite Pictures - www.infinitepictures.co.uk) Costume by Gemma Corker.
Huge thanks to everyone who gave up their time and talent so generously for this video to happen. You know who you are and you know I'm grateful.
The next blog will contain full info on the album release. CLARK KENT AMBUSH. The great champion of new music Clark Kent (AKA John Clay) ambushed me on the streets of Camden Town in this three part interview. Take a look, then check out his Youtube channel here. He's the real deal.
ISLE OF WIGHT FESTIVAL.
Playing the Isle of Wight Festival was a blast! After the incredible amounts of rain on Friday evening the sun shone on the Kashmir Cafe stage on Saturday where I played with some hugely talented musicians to a sizeable festival crowd, then got to watch Blur again after - not a bad days work.Thanks as always to Doug Alldred for organising and to all in the lovely crowd who watched and listened. Photos below by Chemical Gdns. Click on photos for larger versions.
'Moment of the Festival' - seeing drummer Pat Kenneally in the morning after his £19 tent was found not to be quite as waterproof as he'd hoped, and he'd used his only dry trousers to mop up the puddles.
The band left to right - Alex S Tower (Keys), GrooveSun (bass, hidden behind Alex), Patrick Kenneally (drums, vocals, hat), Me (guitar, vocals) Jon Bretman (lead guitar, vocals).
Hamburg
Last week I had the privilege of playing several gigs in Hamburg, both solo acoustic as as part of 'Darling Boy', led by the multi-talented musician Alex Gold, formerly of The Wutars, whom I met back in the Death Disco days. We were both in support of 'Duncan Reid and the Bigheads', led by the former front man of classic punk rock band The Boys. I've had their song 'Cest La Vie' in my head for days now, check it out.
HUGE thanks to Anna and Dirke Lange for their hospitality, and everyone involved. Click on photos for larger versions.
At Monkey's, a fine club and lovely crowd.
I have a lot of time for this sign!
Photo op on stage!
More Monkey club action
On stage with Darling Boy!
Don't ask....
HOLIDAY TIP - don't cross the road in Germany without the green man, regardless of complete lack of traffic. The police will
tell you off and you'll have to use your broken German to explain that
you're used to throwing yourself into the road with wild abandon in London.
NOT I... I'll leave you with a track I've recently discovered called 'Little Heart Bomb' by Norwegian band 'Bigbang'. Enjoy.
Nigel. X P.S. lovely little pre-release review of 'Fever' by John Clay here, via God is in the TV. P.P.S My dear friend Stuart Saint is doing a kickstarter for an exiting new musical called 'Princess' - do have a look!
.....quiet that is unless you've got our début album (or more especially, our early singles) cranked up to 11. Which is one louder. Speaking of which, did you read our review in Q Magazine?!
THOUGHTFUL WORDS ALERT.
Things have been undeniably quiet on The Foxes front of late - after all the effort and excitement of releasing 'Last of Many' a little break to breathe and relax was much needed. It goes without saying, though I'm going to say it anyway, that financing, recording and releasing music to the kind of standard we want is an incredible amount of (highly rewarding) effort. It's much regrettable that we didn't get anywhere near the kind of industry support we thought we would for the album and I still feel personally that, with the right push and support, it could have been far more successful and have had a greater reach than it has. Our stark refusal to follow trends, add keyboards, wear skinny jeans and so forth has undoubtedly contributed to this situation - but then, we've always just done what we wanted and made the music we've wanted to make. Hence, we are extremely proud of what we've done and are happy that we continue to gain new listeners and fans through word of mouth and people simply enjoying the music.
I'll be honest - I don't know if/when we're going to play or record again as The Foxes. We're still friends and see and play together all the time as our money-making covers playing side project, "The Hound Dogs" - the set up which funded EVERYTHING we did together and every note of music you can hear which includes the words "The Foxes".
One thing I WILL be doing is continuing to make music videos for the tracks from the album, the next one being 'Sweet Little Wonder' - a live version of which you can watch here!
So, what's everyone in the band up to while not doing The Foxes?
* First off, huge congratulations to our drummer, Steve, who recently got engaged to the very lovely Tania. They really are the most lovely couple.
* Among other things our bassist Alex has been running some amazingly successful pub quizzes which he writes from scratch - and I've even been helping out doing quiz master duties so will be at The Cock Tavern in Fulham every Sunday from 7.30pm if you want to pop down!
* Our guitarist Jon has been busy doing advanced computery stuff making phone apps as well as working on getting a degree (he's been coming first in everything so far - clever cloggs!)
I'm going to leave you by posting all our music videos below - simply because I'm biased and think that they're great and deserve to be seen. Have a flick through!! Don't forget they're all on iTunes and other (better) music sites if you like them.
TRAUMA TOWN(first single)
First up we've got "Trauma Town" - filmed at The Borderline just off Charing Cross Road in London and also, without permission, on the London Underground. I wrote the song about the small minority of people who make everyone else's life a nightmare in public, especially on public transport. Including zombies. There's behind the scenes footage here.
BILL HICKS(second single)
Next up we have "Bill Hicks" - a song dedicated to the great great comedian who died far before his time. I wrote to Bill's family who were 100% supporting of the song and video and whom I've been fortunate enough to meet several times. If you look on the Youtube for this you'll see more hits and more abuse than for anything else we've ever done. People have actually wished death on us for dedicating a song to one of our heroes. It's quite funny really, in a sad sad way.
LOVER, KILLER(third single)
Our third single was for one of our favourite songs, "Lover, Killer" - which I wrote based on a). the character Nicola Six from the novel 'London Fields' by Martin Amis and b). beautiful and stuck up girls in and around High Street Kensington. It was filmed in my home town of Brighton on the seafront and at The Grand Hotel. Although it's just featuring yours truly, Jon was actually there for the shoot and was one of the people pouring freezing cold water on me.
GET ME (EP/album track)
Although "Get Me" is on 'Last of Many' it was also the first track from our EP 'Depression, Joy and a Moment of Fame.' I made this video entirely from footage filmed on my phone at Sawmills Studio in Cornwall where we recorded the album. It was pieced together on Windows Movie Maker. A lot of people have said this is their favourite video as it just shows the band relaxed and having fun making music.
NO REPLY (EP/album track)
Another track from the EP and album, "No Reply" is stop motion clay modelling made entirely by my brother, Terry Thomas at home in Somerset in his bedroom (when he was 16!). I think it's amazing, I love it. He also did a test run the year before to a b-side, "Headlock".
COUNTRY LOW (EP/album track)
"Country Low" was made using a game I used to love playing on my Atari ST when I was little called "Space Quest". It was one of those parser games where you'd move the character with the cursor keys and type in what you wanted him to do, i.e. "look around" etc. I thought this was ideal for including lyrics, so set up my little HD camera in front of the screen and filmed it from different parts of the game. It took HOURS and HOURS to get right and probably could be more slick, but then the rough edges give it a home-made charm!
THE SAD THING (album track)
Challenged again to make a music video from a budget of exactly zero pounds and zero pence, I decided for "The Sad Thing" to make use of a huge bag of candles I had at the bottom of my drawer since uni and we filmed this at our rehearsal studio, 'Survival' in North Acton without a fire extinguisher or permission. I really enjoyed making this video to one of my favourite songs from the album. It's amazing how hot it got when sitting in the middle of the candles. I love the fact you can see the plugs in the video too.
SEND ME NOTHING (album track)
This album track, "Send Me Nothing" was also filmed at Survival Studios on the same day as we did "The Sad Thing". It was filmed using Steve's camera which took bursts of photos in quick succession - so I had to piece this together from literally thousands of photographs. I remember I'd read a particularly lazy review of 'Last of Many' the day I filmed the...er....smashing of the album bit with the hammer, so it not only fits the song lyrics rather well but also represents lazy music journalism where you might as well just destroy an album rather than listen to it or try to provide constructive criticism. We'd only JUST got the album delivered that day, so the first many people saw of the new album (including Alex!) was me destroying it.
I love and appreciate your comments and thoughts, as always.
P.P.S. I play three acoustic songs (including "Suzy" from our début album) and
chat from 24.36 - straight after the Alan McGee interview on Gia's "Independent Session" show.
"But this rough magic
I here abjure; and, when I have requir'd
Some heavenly music — which even now I do, —
To work mine end upon their senses that
This airy charm is for, I'll break my staff,
Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,
And, deeper than did ever plummet sound,
I'll drown my book."
