Hello friends! I trust you’re all well, and that the Easter break was restorative and restful. I’m blaming Easter for why this newsletter is a day late, which is a poor excuse given all of substack’s clever scheduling tools etc. but there you are. Apologies. And more apologies too, as this is going to be a relatively brief newsletter, ahead of a bonus extra issue later this week. Keep your eyes on your inbox1…
We’re still riding high from the delights of our duet of shows at Wilton’s Music Hall last week. We had two lovely audiences, and two fantastic line-ups who did not disappoint at all. Some highlights, for those who missed it - Doon MacKichan enthusiastically lead the Wilton’s crowd through a wonderfully energetic head-banging session to Led Zeppelin’s Black Dog; Samantha Baines got us all steamy as she talked about her time on Magic Mike Live; (Adam and I subsequently discovered that Ginuwine’s real name is Elgin Lumpkin (!!!) which was a highlight in and of itself); Alan Johnson transported us back to a cold London flat in 1963, listening to With The Beatles on a Dansette record player; and Stacey Carr rounded brought things to a head with a dance-off to House of Pain’s Jump Around. We hit all the notes that OneTrackMinds can hit - we laughed, we cried, we most certainly danced like fools. It was delightful.
Thank you so much to everyone who came along - we hope you enjoyed it as much as we did. If you’ve not done so yet, we’d love it if you could take three minutes to fill out our Audience Survey - it’s open to anyone who has ever come to a show, and your responses are completely anonymous. We’re keen to hear what you like about the show, less keen but nevertheless determined to understand what you don’t like about the show, and how we can make OneTrackMinds an even better experience for you, our best beloved audience.
We’ve had some brilliant responses so far - one of you thinks the show would be improved if Adam and I did a song and dance number to kick things off, but they obviously haven’t heard us sing or seen us dance before… Lots of you want Wilton’s Music Hall to serve Ice Cream, which is totally fair enough, but not really something we can do much about sadly… Anyway, if you’ve got three minutes to spare, the survey is here. We’ll be selecting a random entrant and rewarding them with a couple of tickets to an upcoming show as a thank you.
If you’re eager for some more live OneTrackMinds action, you don’t have too long to wait, as we’ll be back at Wilton’s on Friday May 31st. We already have a full contingent of speakers - Game Of Thrones star Gethin Anthony, comedian Elf Lyons, Claire Cartwright from Friends With Shakespeare, composer and creative director Stephanie Singer, and filmmaker Karan Kandhari - and tickets are already selling very nicely. You can book yours here, and, as usual, you can make use of our special newsletter discount by using the code OTMCast to get best priced tickets for just £11. Don’t delay2.
Some things to share with you this week…
Biblioracle Substacker John Warner misses physical media. We feel his pain.
OneTrackMinds Holy Grail Guest3 Gilles Peterson writes in The Guardian about how to fix the UK’s broken nightlife scene.
Those merry pranksters at The Fence have their own solutions for How To Save London’s Theatreland. I mean, you’d go and see An E-Scooter Named Desire, wouldn’t you?
“You’re not just getting older. Song lyrics really are becoming more repetitive”.
If you’ve not watched 3 Body Problem on Netflix yet, let me steer you aggressively in its direction. It’s bloody good. And episode 5 is probably the best hour of TV I’ve seen in absolutely ages.
Right, that’ll do. We’ll be back on Thursday (or Friday. Probably Friday) with a special bonus issue of the newsletter. Stay happy until then.
KB.
Next Show - Friday May 31st | Tickets Here
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This is terrible advice. Email is a scourge on us all, and keeping an eye on your inbox in case another OneTrackMinds newsletter arrives would be a horrible waste of time and is just going to result in disappointment. I’m sure most of you will disregard this advice, and see it simply as a turn of phrase to help me get from the awkward apologetic opening paragraph of the newsletter into the more meaty stuff that follows.
This, on the other hand, is excellent advice. We’ve already sold 25% of what we sold for our March shows, and we’re still nearly two months out from curtain up. This is uncharacteristically good for us, and we haven’t even started our social media campaign yet. Coupled with the fact that our May show is a one-night event (when we usually do two nights back to back, thus splitting our audience across multiple shows), I’ll be very, very surprised if we don’t sell out. All to say, if you want to come along to May - and you really should, because it will be great - then, yes, don’t delay…
A Holy Grail Guest - someone we desperately want to get on the show who we know would be amazing but feels somehow just slightly out of our reach…
ELGIN LUMPKIN!!!!
Anonymous survey completed & my email submitted for the prize draw. Am I missing something here 🤔
#Askingforafriend 🤪