WAR CHILD GIGS MERCH

Pic of special T-shirt and programme available at the shows


We thought you folks might like a sneak peek at some exclusive merchandise which has been made for this week's War Child shows in Manchester and London. Keane, War Child and artist Kate Moross came together to produce a T-shirt and Programme which will be sold at the two shows, with all proceeds going to War Child. If any items are left after the gigs, we'll be putting them up for sale in the web store early next week.

ROB'S WAR CHILD BLOG #2

Keane's tech hero sends another update from the rehearsal studio

Hello again.

A few weeks ago you might have seen the bat signal calling us all back to Keaneworld for the War Child shows.

Well, you wouldn't have actually seen it as we have a special bat signal. It consists of top tour manager Colin sending out at least 50 emails a day.

After two days of activity, rehearsals are over. The truck is loaded, the bus is here and we're off to Manchester.

Things went very well in the secret bunker. I could tell you what happened but then I'd have to kill you. And I probably wouldn't be very good at that.

So I'd better think of some captions for this lot:


This is the cage in which Keane's gear lives when it isn't on tour. It's now mainly empty.


Um ... Richard and Tom, playing a song.


Mr Chaplin singing a top pop song.


Richard gives it some 'rabbit in headlights'


Tim and his note-strewn piano


Richard and his Nikon F6 .. it has modes that neither of us understand.


Tom's enlisted keyboard and computer whiz Thom to try and fix his lappy. Apparently iTunes broke it somehow.


Tom's fancy fret hand.


Soundman Iain and Mr Chaplin are up to no good.


Tim explaining to handsome production manager Ant that brown M&Ms are no longer acceptable. Or something more important, perhaps.


Tom singing 'The Night Sky' from the rehearsal studio's kitchenette. This man is so talented that he can belt out a song and make himself a cup of tea at the same time.


A slightly pensive Tim.


Those Rice-Oxley hands hammering the CP70.


.. and the Hughes sticks in motion.


Richard post run through.


And you'll all be glad to know that Tom's lappy is on the mend. Maybe.

I'll try and take some more shots in Manchester and Brixton. But no promises.

Rob

ROB'S WAR CHILD BLOG #1

Keane's snap happy tech dude is back!



Hello from our super-secret rehearsal bunker somewhere in one of London's less desirable neighbourhoods.

Not much to report yet, but here's a picture of a piano with a random button on one of the keys to get you excited.

More to follow during the week...

Rob

Celebration Of Our 1st Year With You

We ask to each other (moderators) to send an email for HERE and say what we want about this year of Everything About Keane!

Let's Check The Texts.. =]

By Jessica (our recent Moderator):

Happy bday to youuu! Happy bday to youuu! Happy bday to Keanefas! Happy bday to youuuuuu!!!
Yay! 1 year! Once, a friend gave me a bday card with this message: "Per fare gli auguri come si deve, il modo migliore è essere breve!" (The best way to wish happy bday is to be brief!). And that's what I'm gonna do right now...Being brief. It's a great blog, made with love form nice people! Thanks for sharing your love for Keane and their music with us. Muito obrigada (is it right, professora?)!!!
Thanks very much...Don't stop doing what you love...This blog is very stunning!
Love,
Jessica



By Ana Catarina:

this is what i think about this year writing this blog... first i have to say, that paty has done almost everything, like the templates, the photos, and the most part of the posts...
she´s amazing and she worked very hard (but always with pleasure) for this blog survives... and she made it...she´s great!

Now talking about what i think about the blog...of course i´ll say that i love this blog, even though its mine,jessica and paty´s, it is for keane, and it makes it special, actualy... very special! =D

I know that this year i didnt pay atention to the blog as i should, but i promise that i will...=P

I know that there are people that loves keane more than me, paty is one of these persons... but, i dont know how to explain...everythime i listen to them they make me feel happy, hopeful, peaceful, they can make me think about my life, about all my life with truth and quiteness... and i think this is great in my life...they are one of the few reasons that make me live! And they´re very important to me... even if sometimes i dont pay atention to them in this blog, they´re always in my heart...

ok, this isnt about the blog anymore, its about me...=S so let me continue...
all this is just for say: even if there are few persons who saw the blog this year, they were great with us, and they make us continue the blog... thanks to everyone who supports us and commented our blog!! =D

Thanks*****

By Paty:

This is the way I feel about all of this.. Thanks to these blog I passed many times doing editions of photos,videos,discover many things,learn to do templates and you'll think that's nothing and you are right!
Because I have MANY reasons to be happy with this Blog ... I realise a long wish to create a blog of keane who is known in some countries in the world and that's great!
Other is meet some people fan of keane like me and Ana and thanks that I made friends for all my life!
Thanks to these blog I made maratoons like when they posted every minute at 02 Arena's gig (future DVD) or when I return to the Keane's gig and I posted.. Amazing!
These blog made me a better person and made me do things that I never thought!
Here everyone is special and everyone make these blog better and better!
Thanks for everything you do and did to make these possible!

Continue with us,
Paty

29th October News

- KEANE ON NEW SUN PODCAST - Tom chats about War Child single and gigs Click here to check out the latest edition of The Sun newspaper's free podcast, which features Tom chatting about 'The Night Sky' and the band's links with War Child.

- 'THE NIGHT SKY' IN SHOPS, MORE VIDEOS -

CD in shops, plus more films from the video shoot

After last week's digital releases (see earlier stories) the CD, 7-inch and USB formats of Keane's charity single for War Child, 'The Night Sky', arrive in record shops today. Click here to buy direct from HMV.com.

Also, following the posting of the track's video on the Video Jukebox in the Music section, we thought you might like to see these accompanying films. Click on the titles to watch them.

- BENI'S STORY READ BY JALIL

- FAISAL'S STORY READ BY CLAUDIA

- WAHIDA'S STORY READ BY SAMAN

- THE MAKING OF THE VIDEO

- A BLOG FROM ROB -

Keane's snap happy tech dude is back!



Hello from our super-secret rehearsal bunker somewhere in one of London's less desirable neighbourhoods.

Not much to report yet, but here's a picture of a piano with a random button on one of the keys to get you excited.

More to follow during the week...

Rob

26th October News

- CHANNEL 4 TO BROADCAST WAR CHILD GIG -

Brixton show to be recorded for 65 minute show We're very pleased to announce that highlights of the show which Keane are curating at Brixton Academy next week will be broadcast on Channel 4 in the UK on the night of Sunday November 4th. The programme will run from 11.50pm until 12.55am. No doubt snippets will turn up on YouTube shortly afterwards...

- 'THE NIGHT SKY' - FULL EP AT DOWNLOAD STORES -

Keane's War Child single gets full digital release

Following the exclusive release of 'The Night Sky' via warchildmusic.com on Monday, the full EP is now available via all major download stores.

Click here to buy it from iTunes, where £1.99 bags you the following five tracks:

1. The Night Sky (Radio Edit)
2. The Night Sky
3. Under Pressure
4. Put It Behind You (Frisco Mix)
5. The Night Sky (Demo)

At 39.8p per track - with profits going to War Child - that sounds like a proper bargain to us.

- 'THE NIGHT SKY' VIDEO NOW ON KM.COM -

War Child single's video now live in the Music section

Yes, we're very pleased to announce that the amazing video for Keane's War Child single, 'The Night Sky', is now live on the Video Jukebox in the Music section of this very website. We hope you like it.


How the band look in the vid

PS - if you're wondering why there was no KWN this week, that's because we were waiting for this video to go live before we wrote it. Sadly, by the time that finally happened, the folks at the label who can press the giant SEND button had gone home. Sorry 'bout that. Have a good weekend.

In Keane's Site The Night Sky Video
And In Our Blog Post 25th October

25th October News

- PRE-WAR CHILD GIG INTERVIEW -


The band speak to The Sun newspaper about next week's shows

Click here to read a new interview with Keane about their involvement with War Child for the current single and the upcoming gigs in Manchester and London next week.

'The Night Sky' Video



We Hope you like it 'cause we Loved it! It's very emotional.. Thanks for creating it! x')

MORE STATIONS BROADCASTING BRIXTON SHOW

List of European and Middle East stations carrying the show

As we revealed last week, Keane's Brixton Academy show for War Child on November 1st is to be broadcast live on Emap radio stations across the UK.

We now have a list of stations in Europe and the Middle East which will be broadcasting the Brixton show. They are:

Channel Islands: Island FM

Croatia: Otvoreni Radio

Czech Republic: Express Radio

Denmark: Skala, Radio SLR, Hit FM

Germany: NDR

Iceland: RAS 2

Ireland: FM 104, Red

Italy: Radio Number 1

Jordan: Play FM

Lebanon: Mix FM

Lithuania: European Hit Radio

Netherlands: 3FM

Pristina: Blue Sky

Spain: Cadena 100

Please consult the listings of your local station to discover when it will be transmitting the show (we've been told some will be live and others recorded). And remember that several of the UK stations will be broadcasting live via their websites, to listeners anywhere in the world.

All text by: www.keanemusic.com

DVD RELEASE NOW NOVEMBER 19TH

The O2 live DVD pushed back one week

The release of 'Keane Live' the DVD of July's show at The O2 has been moved back one week, to Monday 19th November.

In related news, the finished DVD artwork looks like this:



Can any of you spot yourselves?

All text by: http://www.keanemusic.com/

Download Keane's new single from warchildmusic.com now!

Yes, Keane's one-off single in aid of War Child is released this very morning, exclusively through warchildmusic.com. Click here to go directly to the track.

NB: as War Child's store is only able to sell the track in WMA format, it won't work on Apple Macs or iPods. But all other download stores (including iTunes) will be selling the track from Friday. And you can still pre-order the physical formats (released a week today) from HMV by clicking here.

All text by: www.keanemusic.com

This is our 201st post! We're so glad of that and almost 1 year with all of you but the moderators of this blog are preparing a special post for 27th October.. Wait and see! ;-)

Now some informations:

Keane Live In Plymouth 'A Bad Dream' -> http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-944289427626501272&pr=goog-sl

Keane by Leanne [member of Keane's Official Forum] with the music 'Under Pressure'



thanks for the fans who made or record the video..

BRIXTON SHOW TO BE BROADCAST LIVE UPDATED: War Child show will be broadcast across Emap stations and online! We're very pleased to confirm that Keane's upcoming show at Brixton Academy will be broadcast live on the following UK radio stations, between 9-11pm on November 1st: * Radio City * Red Rose * Key 103 * Radio Aire * Hallam FM * Viking FM * TFM * Metro * Radio Clyde * Radio Forth * North Sound * West Sound * Mory Firth * CFM * Tay * South West Sound * Radio Borders * Downtown (N.Ireland) * Kerrang * Wave 105 * The Hits The gig is also due to be broadcast on several radio stations outside the UK - we'll let you know as soon as we have details of those. Plus, all of the UK stations which have a "Listen Live" option on their websites (which is lots of them) will be broadcasting it there. So you'll be able to listen to the gig live, wherever in the world you are!

all text by: www.keanemusic.com

No Mencap Presale

We're leaving the 200 tickets in the pot

In last week's Keane Weekly Newsletter we mentioned that we may be running a special presale for Keane's acoustic show for Mencap at the Union Chapel on November 28th. It turns out that a) those tickets would just come out of the pot of tickets for which many of you have already registered and b) you'd need to register for a second time in order to qualify for the presale. So we've decided not to run a presale afterall.

Remember, if you have already registered via mencapmusic.org.uk, tickets will be sold on a first come, first served basis from 9am Monday 22nd October.

Thanks.

Text by: www.keanemusic.com

Details From 'The Night Sky'

As previously announced, Keane are releasing a special single for War Child on October 22nd. As you'll see, the artwork for the single is above. And here are the dates when the different formats will be available:

Oct 22: 'The Night Sky' made available exclusively from warchildmusic.com

Oct 26: 'The Night Sky' plus B-sides made available at all digital download stores (iTunes, Napster etc). So you'll be able to buy 'The Night Sky' edit, demo and extended versions, plus the band's 'Under Pressure' cover and the Ffrisco remix of 'Put It Behind You'.

Oct 29: Physical single released on 3 formats, CD single, 7-inch and USB stick single. You can now pre-order all three of those from HMV by clicking here. The USB stick is £4.99, with the CD and 7-inch £2.99 (all including delivery).

MANCHESTER SUPPORTS ANNOUNCED

Keane's support acts for October show announced



We're pleased to announce that rising Sheffield indie-rockers Milburn will support Keane at their Manchester Apollo show for War Child on October 31st. Also on the bill will be singer-songwriter Findlay Brown (who is also playing the Brixton Academy show). There are still a few tickets for the show available here.

Have a good weekend.

TIM: FANS' INTERVIEW PT 4

The final part of our exclusive in-depth interview



Yes, we've reached the fourth and final part of our fasincating interview between two Keane fans (Chris and Andrew) and Tim. Big thanks to all three of them for their hard work in getting the interview together. And thanks to Richard for another picture of the boys having their (serious-looking) conversation.

CHRIS: Obviously there’s an element of performance when you’re on stage – would you say there’s an element of performance in your writing, or is everything completely true to life?

TIM: My personal approach, and I think our approach as a band, is it should be true to life. It’s funny - I’m constantly amazed by the amount of people that want to take on a different persona for a song - although there are great albums like 'Nebraska' by Bruce Springsteen which are full of those songs, so it obviously has a lot of merit. But the thing that really amazes me is when people say that they don’t want to write about certain things because they’re personal. I even hear people criticising songwriters for being too personal, which seems very, very odd to me. My view is that the closer to the bone it is, the better. That’s where all the good songs come out.

ANDREW: Do you think that the risk is that you can end up being quite vague with your lyrics, so as to not hurt people? If you’re writing a song that’s very close to home, you end up writing about very abstract themes. A lot of criticism I’ve seen aimed at you is that your songs are vague lyrically, almost as if to achieve universality by non-specificity.

TIM: I think that’s bollocks! I suppose you could say that about some of the first record. I don’t know really. I mean, you could say ‘Somewhere Only We Know’ is vague, but... if it was about a particular street, it wouldn’t be the same song! There’s nothing that I consider to be out of bounds at all in a song - except if a song is about someone who has nothing to do with the band and I don’t feel that they deserve to be dragged into the limelight, so that’s happened like once or twice probably. A song like ‘Broken Toy’, for example - you can’t get much more specific than that. I’d say most of the songs on the second record are pretty specific. I don’t think that anyone could be expected to put ‘This song is about so and so’ on the album sleeve, but beyond that they’re pretty direct.

ANDREW: Is it a lyrical style rather than a good/bad thing?

TIM: Yeah, absolutely – a good song is a good song. I certainly don’t differentiate between those sorts of things. As I’ve often said, probably my favourite songwriter is Paul Simon, and I would say his songs are very, very specifically personal to him and they’re about specific things, but they rarely mention a name or a particular street. I would say that our songs are kind of like that.

ANDREW: It’s funny that you mention Paul Simon, because 'Hopes and Fears' is very close to outselling 'Bridge Over Troubled Water' in the UK. Only a few copies in it now.

TIM: That’s just crazy. Nice to hear, if slightly bizarre! Although those sorts of things do tend to throw everything into relief slightly, because you can find yourself thinking “It’s great that we’ve sold so many records” or whatever, but I don’t think any of us would ever claim that 'Hopes and Fears' is a better album than 'Bridge Over Troubled Water', so you can see that these sorts of things are merely figures.

ANDREW: The demos record that you put out alongside 'Under The Iron Sea' was a great move. Was there any political significance to having two or three of the demos from 7th July 2005 [the day of the London bombings]?

TIM: No, there's no significance, other than the fact it was just after that tour and it was the first time that I’d had a chance to actually record the demos. Inevitably, I tend to deliver batches of demos and those three were what I gave to the band. I’d written all of those songs on that American tour which had just finished, I think. I’d just moved house - we’d bought a house, and we completely stripped it back because it was falling to bits, and it was completely empty. I had this one little room, and I was completely desperate to get on writing some songs, so I got my piano moved up there. I just had this empty house and this empty room with this big piece of polythene on the floor with my piano. I bought a little picnic table and put my laptop on it and did the demos for 'A Bad Dream' and 'Crystal Ball' and finished the one for 'The Frog Prince'. I think you can hear the polythene sheet crackling around in the background.

ANDREW: Did you set out to write a political record with 'Under The Iron Sea'?

TIM: Yeah, I think we probably did. I think we’re all very passionate and emotional people. I don’t think that comes across very much when we’re talking or being interviewed, but it comes out in our music. ‘Is It Any Wonder?’ – it’s fairly obvious where that came from, and we were really just translating our fear and anger and a lot of confusion and negative emotions into a song. ‘A Bad Dream’ is less specifically about the current wars, but it still obviously came from the same place, emotionally. There are other lines on the record just scattered about – you can just feel it coming out. I guess we’re all just hippies at heart, just feeling very angry and impotent about it all.

ANDREW: The band seem to be doing a little bit more campaigning these days than you used to be.

TIM: I’ve always felt that politics and music should mix. I think that’s because a lot of the people I really admire as musicians are people who have been very forthright in that respect – either musically or on stage, or elsewhere. As a teenager, I was a lot more inspired by what musicians said about whatever political issue they happened to be talking about than I was by watching crusty old politicians on the telly. And so I always felt that, if we were in a position to do so, and we felt that we knew what we were talking about that, that we should use that profile to try and make a difference in the world. But, of course, as soon as you get to the position where people will, rightly or wrongly, listen to what you have to say, you open yourself up to a barrage of accusations of being pompous, or preaching – again, especially in the UK. There’s people who say you shouldn’t mix music and politics. There have even been differences of opinion within the band on that issue, or there were, a couple of years ago at least. But I’ve always felt it’s something that we shouldn’t shy away from. One of the reasons people can be cynical about it is that there are so many people who obviously jump on any bandwagon in order to sell records. Obviously, if we’re doing something with War Child, for example, it’s very much more isolated than the big starry world of celeb musicians. That has a very genuine quality to it – they’re not broadcasting to millions of people on TV, so there’s not really much ‘in it’ for people who are just wanting to shift units and up their credibility a bit. But I think we’ve found at Live Earth and at Make Poverty History and anything that has more of a public profile, those things are blighted by people who are in it for all the wrong reasons. I’m sure I’m not being very constructive by saying this, but I was actually disgusted by the attitude of most of the artists at Live Earth, because it was evident that most of them didn’t give a shit about why they were there. It could have been Top Of The Pops, it was just a promotional event where they’d flown in for - especially the Americans. They clearly just didn’t give a fuck about what they were there for, and I found that really heartbreaking actually.

ANDREW: It provided an on-a-plate counter-argument to the event that was a lot more compelling than the event in the first place.

TIM: Absolutely. Those people just don’t care about that. People like Madonna, who just fly in all this gear, and turn it into a thing which is very much about their production. They are providing ammunition for people who want to discredit an event like that, or a campaign like that. The event is just a small part of it. It’s just sickening really, it is just ‘How can I use this thing to sell records and be on telly on something that’s going to be broadcast around the world?’

ANDREW: It is something that is debated on the message board in quite a heated fashion. There’s a great “Climate Change – man-made crisis or natural cycle” topic.

TIM: I think it’s great that you guys are having those conversations at all, but most people don’t have the attention span, or won’t make the time of the day to spend more than five seconds thinking about these sorts of things. The idea behind the concerts is Al Gore saying - he said this to us specifically - that he’s a politician in a suit on the telly, probably indistinguishable to a lot of people from every other politician out there. Music has the ability to reach a lot more people in a very direct way, and the big star celebrity musicians will make people pay attention. The idea of the Live Earth event was just to focus people’s attentions in a way that’s very easy to understand, very ‘bullet point’ – ‘Look what’s happening over here, pay attention over here’, in the hope in that they would then prick up their ears and the things that were being talked about on the day would lead them to enquire further. But I don’t know. I think the gamble you take is that people will - and I definitely felt this with Live 8 - get very concerned, but then they wake up the next morning and they don’t give a shit, because they’re going back to work and everyone’s getting on with their own lives and it’s hard to think outside that. The danger is that it just becomes a big gig on the TV. The point of Live Earth was not to change the Earth, but it to provide a focal point and a ‘kick-off point’, like a whistle starting a football match, to announce the campaign. It remains to be seen whether people will take the issue seriously in the long run. It seems to me that there are a huge amount of good things happening as a result. Generally, people are paying more attention, and generally the issue gets talked about a lot more than a year ago. It feels like things are happening – it’s just that you always need more to happen. Even on a political level, a few months ago, as far as I can remember, George Bush was still arguing – and his official party line was – that climate change is basically made up. Now there seems to be more recognition that the science is irrefutable, full stop. The fact that anyone's even arguing that climate change isn’t happening when pretty much every neutral scientist in the world is saying that it is - and they’ve got no political motivation for saying that – is just crazy. Obviously, then the issues become what the causes of it are, and there are people who, inevitably, don’t want to acknowledge that their zillion-pound business is contributing to the problem, and all the political ties that go with it.

CHRIS: Before we go. Which song are you most proud of, purely from a songwriting point of view?

TIM: Err... I don’t know. Probably 'Atlantic', I think. And I’m very proud of 'Crystal Ball'.

ANDREW: Do you think 'Crystal Ball' should have been a bigger hit than it was, that it was overtaken by events surrounding its release?

TIM: Yeah. I think we were all a bit... disappointed. It was still Number One on Radio Airplay, but it didn’t chart that high and we didn’t promote it at all, which I guess illustrates the previous point. When we play 'Crystal Ball' live, it’s one of the biggest moments of the set – it’s great to play live, and everyone knows it. You come to realise that song’s impact in ways that you don’t expect.

CHRIS: One last question - you're a phenomenally successful songwriter now. What do you think the best measure of success has been for your songwriting? Awards, audience response, Tom and Richard...?

TIM: Well, Tom and Richard are definitely my first port of call. If they don’t like a song, the song won’t go any further. If they do like something, that’s probably the biggest thrill for me and I feel very excited about that. I think a lot of people liking a song, or really falling in love with a song and then telling you that is probably the highest praise, for me. Because you are writing pop music, at the end of the day - call it rock music, call it indie music, but it’s basically pop music. Any kind of genre where you’re trying to get played on Radio 1 or whatever, you’re talking about how people around the world will respond to that. I always feel good if you get people all over the world who are really touched by something, even though you’ve never met them or never even been to that country or don’t even speaking the same language. That’s pretty cool!

---

Next up, of course, it'll be Chris and Andrew's interview with Tom. Look out for it on km.com in the next few weeks.

Tim Fans' Interview Part 3

Third part of Tim's interview from the official website.

ANDREW: In our interview with Richard, we asked how he felt when you said he wasn’t drumming well enough. Did you feel as though you were marshalling Tom and Richard through it in a way, because you hadn’t played them all together and it was a studio record?

TIM: I don’t know - it’s really hard to know. It’s quite hard to remember as well!

ANDREW: It’s funny that we’re doing this interview all about things that were in 2005 and 2006…

TIM: Well it is funny, because it doesn’t seem like any time ago at all. Sometimes you look back and wonder quite what all the fuss was about, or why we didn’t do things differently, but we were in such an intense head-****** place mentally that we didn’t really know what we were doing. I love recording, I love writing, I love hearing a song come together, and I enjoyed making the record the way we did. But everyone was very tired.

I felt very energised about making the record, and I was having a good time coming up with all sorts of crazy piano sounds and so on. Tom would come and go – he’d come in and do great stuff and then he’d disappear for a week or something. It didn’t feel like there was much energy coming from him. Richard was around a lot, but I guess what I meant when I talked to him about his drumming was that it didn’t feel like there was much enthusiasm coming from all three of us, with any unified sense of “Let’s get these songs down, lets make them sound really good”. It just didn’t feel like that, and I don’t know why - I still don’t really know why. But that was basically the situation. I guess probably because it felt, from the inception of the process, it had become too much ‘my thing’. It’s so difficult to dissect these things and make any sense of them. One of my regrets about the second album and the way we presented it was that we were trying to say “well, there’s some very dark songs on here”, and there’s probably two songs about the intensity and darkness of making it, and our friendships and stuff like that – but, of course, you then go on to explain all the other things, and journalists will just be like “They all hate each other!”. And you know, for every bad day, there was a great day as well.

CHRIS: So would you say there are only two songs about the turmoil within the band? The message board has been full of posts saying “It’s all about Tom, it’s completely about Tom!”…

TIM: Well obviously, a lot of what gets written in the press or on the board is basically conjecture and that’s fine, that’s what liking music is all about – I do that all the time, it’s part of the fun of it. But, let me think. 'Broken Toy' is the only real desperate cry of pain, I suppose. And 'Hamburg Song' is partly about that.

ANDREW: 'Hamburg Song' was one of the earliest songs written for the second record. So had this been going on for a very long time? Because that dates back to around October 2004.

TIM: Well, yeah. I’ve actually thought about it a lot recently. Because like I say, everyone feels very good about the end of the touring now, and it feels like “God, that’s really flown by”. Even though last year was very turbulent in places, it still feels like things have gone very quickly, and everyone is almost a bit sad that touring is over. And really, I think if you look at it, it’s not actually that much shorter than last time. With 'Hopes and Fears' we finished touring at the beginning of October, and this time we finished touring at the beginning of August, so that’s two months earlier. But everything that happened in that initial period after 'Hopes and Fears' was released felt so momentous. It felt like years between the album coming out and 'Hamburg Song' being written, but really it was only 4 months or something. It’s just because we weren’t at all ready for it psychologically – I don’t think you ever can be really.

ANDREW: Despite all the predictions that it would be the biggest success of the year, the decade…

TIM: It’s funny how you feel so disconnected from all that stuff. Even now – you think about 'Hopes and Fears', and looking back it seemed to me like that album was everywhere when it came out. The B-sides were getting played on the radio, and it was Number One again nine months after it came out. All that stuff really only happens once in a lifetime. But it always felt like it was happening to someone else, and we felt like were traipsing around doing our little gigs, and then we’d get a call saying “The album’s Number One again”. But we’d be on the other side of the world, and it felt like we had nothing to do with it. Somehow all that success didn’t help us with building up any kind of thick skin at all. So I guess my point is that it seemed like we’d gone from being great friends on this great adventure in May 2004 to suddenly all going a bit mad and not really talking to each other by October. In fact, I started writing that song quite a long time before that – probably in June in the States? Really, that was probably just a little bump in the road in the grand scheme of things. Hopefully, we’ll look back on everything that happened in the last year as being a tiny little bump in the road, but at the time these things seem so massive, and they just get on top of you. I guess that’s just life really isn’t it? So anyway, it was obviously something that was preying on my mind and it came out in that song.

ANDREW: How do you view Tom as a frontman now? I remember reading that you rated him as one of the best around.

TIM: In order to have that ability to really martial a crowd and race around a stadium, you’ve got to have an incredible amount of energy, and probably some sort of, um, weirdness in your mental make-up! I think it’s an incredible gift that Tom has, but there’s always another side to it. For all of the energy he puts into the band performances, he has to balance that with really retreating. And I think he also feels he’s out there being scrutinised so much of the time, that when he retreats into his shell it’s hard for people who don’t have some sort of emotional access to break down that wall.

CHRIS: He’s a showman at the end of the day.

TIM: Yeah! He feels it so much, he’s a very very passionate and emotional person. But a lot of that gets put into music and again performing, and it’s just like he needs to retreat from it sometimes in order to do that.

ANDREW: How do you think Tom deals with the criticism levelled at him – often either unfair or concentrating on appearance?

TIM: I tend not to get too riled by what's said about us, because that’s one thing that we have gradually gotten used to – people just talking crap basically. But that is something I get very defensive about, mainly because it tends to be aimed at Tom rather than me or Richard. I just find it very rude. It’s not like we’re putting ourselves on the cover of Heat magazine and saying “Look at our beautiful lives and look at my new boobs” or whatever… well, that would be weird. Um, don’t go to the tabloids with that.

ANDREW: “This what they do between records – have them put in, have them taken out!”

TIM: Exactly - I just want to be a woman between albums! Anyway, what was I saying? … It is such bollocks, because we’ve not put ourselves in a position where we’re presenting ourselves as beautiful people with Hollywood smiles. We’ve always presented ourselves as musicians, and that is still the way we present ourselves. That sort of criticism Tom gets seems very snidey and very British. I don’t think you’d get it anywhere else – that sort of jealousy and bitterness and that desperation to cut down the people who rise up or who dare to put their heads about the parapet. It’s just so foul. It’s so untrue – I’ve known Tom all his life, and I’ve never thought of Tom as... moonfaced or whatever. He’s a phenomenal sportsman, which a lot of people don’t know, and he’s very, very fit.

ANDREW: Does he still play village cricket?

TIM: Yeah, sometimes. He plays a lot of sports – he really is annoyingly talented in a lot of ways, and sport is one of them.

ANDREW: Speaking of negativity, talk a little bit about the 'Frog Prince' – because you were very coy about that up until that interview with NME. Why would you write a song which was about someone else in that way? What drove you to it?

TIM: Well, that was one of those things where it’s a bit like ‘You turned down the opportunity to be in Coldplay’ thing, where really the facts of the story are more convoluted and less interesting, so journalists just go for the more obvious, slightly more controversial story.

ANDREW: So this story is more “I was slightly concerned about this particular aspect of something that Johnny Borrell said once” rather than “This song is about…”

TIM: Basically, the way I remember it, I had this song that I had written the melody for – this was on a tour of America, probably the very long tour that made us all want to kill each other. And I can remember finishing writing the melody in a hotel in Washington DC, on a very very cold day. And then I can also remember being in a hotel in Toronto, and I went down to the bar for a beer with Tom and we got talking about other bands slagging each other off, and slagging us off, inevitably, which is just part of being a band - in Britain anyway. I remember Tom was a bit het up about it.

Johnny was one of several people who came up in conversation when I was talking to Tom about it, and the only approach that we ever have to those things is that we tend to feel a bit sad and a bit betrayed, because we never belonged to any gang of musicians or bands or anything – we came from this little town in the middle of nowhere, and then we moved to London and we never got any friends there either. It’s nice when you feel like you’re part of a movement of bands, and we did feel like that at the time and when, occasionally, people would say bad things about us, we’d feel a bit hurt by it, I suppose, and think “Well, why are they slagging us off? We’re all doing the same thing here.” So I think that was basically the way we felt - and after I was having this conversation with Tom about it, I went upstairs and started working on that song all night, and those are the words that came out. But it’s one of those things where, whoever’s interviewing you from Q or NME or whoever it is, they want to know “Can we say ‘Keane dissed X’?”. And of course I think they eventually got sick of me saying “I don’t really want to say who it’s about”! But the song is much more about us than it is about anyone else. I wouldn’t say it’s a song about Johnny Borrell, I’d say it’s a song about believing in the three of us and what we stand for… and **** everyone else. It’s quite a different song for Keane, I think.

Tim Fans' Interview part - 2

Second part of Tim's interview from the official website ( www.keanemusic.com ).

ANDREW: I’ve read a lot of your comments about “the state of British music”. How do you think things are doing, given that more people than ever are out at gigs every night? Do you think there are some bands who have made it further than they should have done?

TIM: I think these things ebb and flow really. There are some moments where there’s a barrage of great music, but... I listen to the radio a lot, and I’ve found myself thinking in the last few weeks that actually, there’s not that much that I feel very excited about at this moment in time in terms of new music. Whereas even a year or two ago I felt like there was SO much to take in. I don’t know why that is. It just seems like things do ebb and flow naturally, and it feels to me like there’s not much value put on … it feels like there’s a bit of treading water going on. I think the Arctic Monkeys ‘sound’ and the other bands that might be categorised as…

ANDREW: Riding their coat tails?

TIM: Well, maybe. I like Bromheads Jacket. I don’t know where they’re from, but that seemed to be a similar, very rapid-fire delivery and sound. There seems to be a rash of those bands - of which I think the Arctic Monkeys are rightly still above - of that particular movement in the last few months. That’s the kind of distinctive thing that’s happened in the last year or so, and other than that I’m not sure what else has happened in British music in the more commercial end. I’m sure things will naturally get great again. That’s just my impression. I guess some records seem to have something about them that defines a time for you or say something special to you. I’m slightly struggling to hear much of that. It feels like a bit of a dangerous time – if you think about the bands and artists who were most commercially successful last year, it’s pretty... depressing, for want of a better word. I guess a lot of that is due to the fact that, especially in Britain and America, the majority of records are now bought in supermarkets, and the people who do the buying ar not looking for something challenging. Record companies know that, and artists know that.

CHRIS: I read something recently about this iPod culture where people don't sit and listen to albums in one go - you’ve got something on in the background or you flick between songs. Do you think that’s devaluing albums by not challenging bands to produce 12 amazing songs on one record?

TIM: Yeah, I think that’s absolutely true. For anyone who’s my age, it feels like it’s quite possible that, in a couple of years, the value that has been put on ‘an album’ as 12 songs is just going to be an antiquated concept altogether.

CHRIS: Ash have already said that.

TIM: Everyone is torn at the moment because you never quite know how it’s going to go. I think we, as a band, and you guys, as music fans, value ‘an album’ and not just because it’s an album and a complete concept, but because it has a certain number of quality songs. It feels like you’re getting this ‘multipack’ of quality material. It does feel like that’s not going to be necessary – you’re not going to have to write an album’s worth of great songs. But I’m sure that in itself will make for a different kind of competition between bands. It’s a weird one – I’m reading a book by Geoff Emerick at the moment, and he’s talking about how, in the earlier period of the Beatles’ career, the singles were considered to be more important than the album because they were attracting attention - it was the singles that got played on the radio, and that was driving record sales. Certainly in the very early ’60s, the album was just a few singles and a load of cover versions and fillers. The concept of quality songwriting output was not valued particularly highly. It’s hard to say one approach is better than the other, but I still like having a full album.

ANDREW: Have you ever done anything under a false name, or alias?

TIM: No, I haven't. I was thinking recently that it’d be nice to do an album or something where we were completely released from the pressures of being Keane. It’s a bit of a weird problem because, if you go back a few years or a few decades, bands and artists used to chuck out albums all the time. Now, when you release an album, it’s such a big deal - especially if you’re ‘major league’, for want of a better phrase! There’s so much competition for people’s attention that if Keane released a completely shit album that only sold 5 copies, it’d be very hard to say “Oh, well, we’ll just release another one 6 months time”. I think it’d be almost impossible for any band to come back from a real failure and get people’s attention, because people move on so quickly – I mean, I do. If I hear a band that I like and I go out and buy their record on the merit of their past albums, and then I get home and think “Oh, it’s a pile of shit, they can’t have tried too hard on that one”, then I’m probably unlikely to go back next time round and give them another chance. We’re all so spoiled with the amount of music that’s available to us now that we’re pretty fickle. Because of the type of band we’ve become in terms of commercial size, it’d be hard to put out an album of twiddly Aphex Twin-style typewriter sounds.

ANDREW: Did you enjoy making 'Tyderian'?

TIM: Yeah, I did. It kind of came about by necessity – that was when Tom was in the Priory. It was like “Well... I can have a go now!”. I love doing that sort of thing, but I rarely have time to do it – let alone the incentive of it becoming a B-side or whatever. I loved being able to do that, it was fun and I would have liked to spend a bit more time on it. It was playing at the O2 aftershow, I don’t know why! And when it came on all I could hear was the kick drum, and I thought “That sounds pretty funky” and then I realised what it was! So I felt quite smug about that. It’s pretty basic, and it’s quite sinister sounding, which I like.

CHRIS: Have you been asked to write for any more pop stars after Gwen and Nicole?

TIM: I’ve been asked to do some things that I would have been a little bit coy about… big American pop starlets.

ANDREW: Richard alluded to something that he said you were definitely not doing.

TIM: Right. Well yeah, like Ashlee Simpson. And Britney was another one that came up.

CHRIS: Really?

TIM: Yeah.

CHRIS: You turned down Britney Spears?

TIM: Yeah. That stuff is all fine, but I don’t know. It’s very easy to think “Right, I’m just going to do everything now”. After the Gwen thing, I was offered a lot of things, but both Gwen and Nicole are – I can honestly say – phenomenally talented, and I wouldn’t want to start diluting that level of musical quality, I suppose.

ANDREW: You must have melodies and ideas that you want to save for Keane, too.

TIM: Yeah – more to the point I found that I was starting to spend a lot of time on that stuff, and again realising that I never had time to write songs for Keane. So I just drew a line under it, and I’m not really intending to do anything else.

CHRIS: You were just talking about other projects and 'Tyderian'. That’s got quite a cinematic feel, as has 'Atlantic'. And 'Try Again' has this huge ‘soundscape’. Would you ever consider doing a soundtrack for a film if you were invited?

TIM: Well, I’ve been asked to do stuff before, and we as a band have been asked to do stuff, although more as contributing songs or writing especially to be in enormous films. But the soundtrack thing – I feel a bit daunted by it to be honest. Firstly, it’d be very time-consuming, and secondly, it’s a huge responsibility, because you’re trying to contribute something that is going to be a significant part of someone else’s artistic statement. I think you’ve got to have a particular gift to be able to do those sorts of things. I wouldn’t feel confident that that’s a gift that I have. As I’ve probably said before, I love Yann Tiersen - he’s one of my favourite musicians and there’s good stuff that he’s done for a few films. He’s a similarly prodigiously talented multi-instrumentalist. But where people are producing songs that are pop song length, even if they’re instrumental soundtrack type of things – I think I can cope with the concept of that a bit more! It’s when people want a big orchestral thing, the approach is normally ‘you come up with some nice melodies, and we’ll turn it into a big orchestral piece’. I did try doing it once for a friend of ours called Ed Roe, who did the DVD. He’d asked me to write a soundtrack for this very funny thing he did with Martin Freeman –it’s very good! I actually agreed to do it and it was just the biggest pile of shit I’ve ever written. He didn’t use it in the end, which was fairly humiliating – I didn’t feel very happy or encouraged by that. Anyway, my theory at the moment is that whatever musical ideas the three of us have, it’d be nice to pool all of them into Keane.

CHRIS: Do you still believe in Keane as a unit then, as a whole band which is completely intact?

TIM: Oh yeah, yes – very much so. More so than ever actually, I think. Things were very fragmented last year around the time… I only worked with Nicole because we had that downtime while Tom was in the Priory. It turned out to be a really fun thing, but it wouldn’t have happened if Keane were still on the road. What I feel now is that I want all the energy to go into Keane, because I think we all feel very positive about things and we do feel very close knit, the way we did before. I don’t want to do anything to shatter that.

ANDREW: There’s the Q piece that talked about Tom and his solo project. What’s the status of that, or was it just talk?

TIM: Yeah, that definitely wasn’t ever something that was seriously discussed – not to diminish Tom’s songwriting. Obviously, he’d be more than capable of making a solo album, but it’s a bit like me saying I might be interested in doing an album of twiddly Aphex Twin stuff – it’s something a journalist will think (mimics writing on notepad) “Ah right – ‘planning to do album of techno babble’”. That’s all I can say about it really, I don’t think it’s something we seriously considered. Because of the fallout from the touring, Tom ended up not being as much involved in 'Under The Iron Sea' as he should have been, which I would say is largely because he needed to get away from the band and we went straight in the studio. I suppose he ended up feeling he wanted an outlet for his considerable musical energy, so it was probably some comment along those lines. Hopefully all of those energies will be put into the next record.

ANDREW: Richard said Tom had been in the Barn with a guitar and was writing.

TIM: Yeah! We’ve amassed a lot of songs. The other thing that we didn’t do with the second record was work on the songs before recording them, which we did by necessity on the first record because we were writing the songs and were like ‘why don’t we try to play this one at the Water Rats?’. We’d just rehearse it and change the structure, and Tom would try a bit of guitar or try a bit of synth or whatever, and that’s basically what we ended up recording. So it was very much a band process. Whereas with the second album, I was writing it all the road, doing demos that were quite complete-ish. We started recording in January 2005, long before we finished touring, so there was never any time to go through that process of rehearsing stuff together. That was another reason why it didn’t feel like a very ‘band’ process at all. So that’s something we’re consciously trying to get back to now.

Tim Fans' Interview part - 1

Exclusive interview between Tim and two Keane fans

Following our interview with Richard which we posted a couple of weeks ago, here is the first part of our interview with Tim, which was also conducted by two Keane fans (and message board regulars) Chris and Andrew. The other three parts will be posted this week. Unfortunately we haven't been able to sort out the technology to embed the audio clips of the interview as we'd hoped to - apologies for that. But thanks to Richard for the picture of Tim and his interrogators...

ANDREW: Hello Tim. How do you feel having played the last of the 'Under The Iron Sea' dates?

TIM: We definitely felt quite sad at the end of this touring run - everyone was feeling so buoyant and excited. But it’s nice to be in that frame of mind rather than just running ourselves into the ground a bit, which is what we did with the first album. The other thing is that whatever state of mind you end up in after touring, that’s going to carry through into your writing and recording. So it’s nice to be finishing off now and not feeling like the last thing you want to do is get together and make music. All that positive energy is going forward into what will become another album.

ANDREW: Are you feeling any pressure about the next album yet? There's no scheduled release date or anything?

TIM: No, not that sort of pressure. We came so close to the edge last year that everyone’s over the moon that things have gone as well as they have recently. We haven’t really started talking about timings yet, but it’s good that we're all excited about making this record, rather than for it to be looming, which can definitely be a danger.

ANDREW: Do you think that was how the second record felt?

TIM: Well, I particularly remember that tour where Rufus was supporting us [Europe in Spring 2005] every spare moment being locked in the bus just trying to write as much as I could. A lot of the second album came out of that, which was good, but it’s a very high pressure way to be writing songs. We put a lot of pressure on ourselves, just because we want to make great music. It’s definitely very easy to lose your edge - I think nine out of 10 bands lose the incentive to make music that has the same kind of energy that they started off making. I feel very proud of our second record, because it’s a much more energetic and intense record than the first one, and I hope we can keep up that trajectory.

CHRIS: Do you feel that the release of the second album was rushed? Because around January 2006, we now know that Tom had a brief spell in rehab, and when we spoke to Richard he said that he had wanted to postpone the release to September. What did you think about that?

TIM: Retrospectively, it’s very easy to say what shouldn’t have been done. But everyone in the band wanted to get the record out, including Tom. We had decided to move the album back to September. When we were mixing it [in January 2006], we said “Right, let’s put the album back”, then we went to visit Tom when he was at the rehab place and he was all excited about things, so…

ANDREW: So you can’t really say to someone in that position “We’re going to put the album on hold for a couple of months”...?

TIM: Well yeah, that was basically what happened. We said, “We’re going to put the album back, take as long as you need, blah blah blah”, and he said, “I really want to get the album out” and was really excited about being revitalised. So that was what we ended up doing. I think looking back at it now, it probably would have been better to stick to the cautious plan. But you’re talking about an enthusiasm for making music and getting music out there that runs through all our veins, and it’s very hard to suppress that.

ANDREW: The only trouble is that in getting the music out, you then have this two year ‘lump’ of promotion and touring that comes after it.

TIM: Yeah, exactly. It’s just an impossible situation, and I don’t know if we’d deal with it any better now. It’s just one of those situations that’s very difficult for anyone to deal with. It’s just human... mess.

ANDREW: So when was the first time that you thought it was a perhaps not the right decision to go ahead - when it came to a head in August, or had things been on the edge for the preceding few months?

TIM: It’s hard to know. I suspect that even if we’d put the album out in September it wouldn’t have made much difference. It’s only my opinion, but I think Tom probably had to go all the way down in order to really address those things. He can tell you more about that than me, but that was my impression looking at it from the outside. I can definitely remember plenty of times before the album came and after the album came out when there were sporadic incidents where he would just go off the rails - it was obvious very quickly that rehab hadn’t made any difference.

The problem is that, once you’ve made the decision to release an album, this massive machine kicks in and you’re booking gigs all over the world for months and months to come. Once you’ve made the decision, you can’t really change your mind without a spectacular slew of cancellations. We held it at bay for quite a long time. It was just a very sad time – it was upsetting for everyone, it was upsetting for Tom and I think he was very frustrated with himself.

I can remember the best example of it was on the day after the album had come out, I remember getting two emails in the space of five minutes. One was from Adam [Keane’s manager] saying that the album was going to be number one - by a factor of 5 or something! - and obviously that was very exciting. Then about five minutes later we all got an email from Tom saying, you know, I’ve been off on one and won’t be able to make it in. We were supposed to do some interview at the BBC with Gideon Coe. So there was this great, great moment but also the terrible moment as well. That basically was the story of three quarters of last year!

I think for anyone who spent any kind of time progressively with us, it would have been obvious that things weren’t right. Or not obvious, but if you were paying attention you could at least feel things weren’t right. It was just a very sad situation, but I’m just very glad that we survived one way or the other.

CHRIS: How do you approach your songwriting? Do you have a work ethic where you think ‘I’m going to sit down and write a song’, or is it more relaxed waiting for it to come to you?

TIM: I spend most of my life in a stew because I don’t get enough time to write songs. I’m constantly trying to make time to write songs. It’s funny, because I’m always convinced that I haven’t written any songs and get in a big panic and then, when I think about it, I’ll remember bits of songs and suddenly realise that there’s 50 of them rattling around my head that I need to finish. I do write a lot of stuff that pops into my head, and often that’s the catchiest stuff. I don’t know if I’d say it’s categorically the best stuff, but if I’m walking around London and I can remember something without having a tape recorder handy, that’s usually a good sign. I like writing in the morning, and my favourite time to write is definitely late in the evening, which is what I tend to do when I’m at home - just lock myself away and write until the small hours. It’s definitely the most magical time for writing.

CHRIS: I remember you saying that 'Atlantic' came about in an almost ‘dream-like’ state when you were halfway between being awake and asleep. A few boardies said that they could relate to doing creative things then when you’re not quite ‘with it’. Like natural drugs.

TIM: Well, it is. I think it’s something to do with letting go and not really trying, so I guess that relates to your question. I’ll spend ages slaving over a song and not being able to finish a particular part of it, and I’ll be lying in bed – this actually happened last night, in fact – I tried to have an early night and all these different ideas for different songs kept popping into my head, so I was just falling asleep and then thought “Oh, got to get up” - because one thing I’ve learnt is that you won’t remember it in the morning! So I went downstairs, got my Dictaphone out, played something on the guitar, went back to bed... then a few minutes later, I thought of something else! But I love that. There’s nothing like the reward for actually thinking of a bit for a song – it’s definitely worth it.

CHRIS: So is the best stuff more a discovery than an invention?

TIM: That’s definitely my view. The old cliché of it being 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration – it’s completely the opposite. Although, they do dovetail, in that you can get most of a song together by working away at it. I often find that I have to sit around for days writing, just trying to write. Sometimes, I’ll get to the end of the day and I’ll just have written a load of complete shit, but somehow just the process of it gets your brain in the zone. The next thing you know, something good’s just popped out of nowhere. It’s a process that’s just a constant source of stress to me, and I’m always trying to remind myself that I always feel like I’m not writing anything and something good normally crops up. I drive everyone mad with it.

ANDREW: There was a little bit of a debate on the message board saying you “sold out” on the second record by trying to release a more upbeat record, thus compromising your trademark sound.

TIM: I saw one of those threads! It was related to the gig in New York – someone was on a huge rant about how they’d come to see Keane and we’d betrayed the beautiful 'Hopes and Fears' sound. There’s not much you can do about that. I was actually surprised that more people didn’t think that way. A lot of people I speak to seem to prefer the second album which is good. But I don’t know if we’ll ever make another album like that … 'Hopes and Fears' is a very, very accessible record. We’re all very proud of it. It’s not going to put anyone off by being too challenging, sonically. There are people who won’t buy a record because they find any sort of distortion too grating.

ANDREW: Are you annoyed that a lot of people might have written off a second record by Keane because it’s “a second record by Keane”?

TIM: Again, that’s inevitable. That partisan approach to being a music fan is not something I have much time for – it’s idiotic really, but it’s always been the way. I’ll be talking to someone after a gig and they’ll be slagging off some band or genre and thinking that’s something that we’ll really agree on, like “hip-hop is shit” or “Muse are shit” or whatever it is. I just find that bizarre. One of my favourite little thrills of being in a band is when people turn up to our gigs wearing t-shirts that say “Nine Inch Nails” or whoever, or something that seems like you wouldn’t necessarily like both of those bands/acts. I find that attitude very refreshing.

CHRIS: Was that something you had in mind when you started to work with Gwen Stefani and Nicole Scherzinger. No-one can accuse you of being an indie snob now, can they?

TIM: Well, no. I think what really drew me to that was working in a different context completely. The Gwen thing was just one of those crazy ideas. I guess I was flattered that she liked our music, and I do think she’s great and I loved her first record. As it turned out, it was fascinating to work with her in a big studio in LA, writing specifically with someone and seeing how the whole process of making a very, very ‘pop’ record worked. Just having the chance to talk to people like that is a very rare thing ordinarily.

Certainly for me, as a music fan, it’s just great to be able to work with those people. When I was working with Nicole, it was even more like that, because we were working at the Record Plant in LA, which is exciting because it’s a really famous studio and we normally don’t go in for that kind of swanky nonsense with Keane. It’s such a different experience. And Kanye was in the room next door, so he came walking in…

CHRIS: You’re on first name terms with Kanye West…?

TIM: It’s only because I don’t know any other Kanyes, or he’d be ‘Kanye W’! He was producing Common’s album at the time. He was playing some of the tracks at a deafening volume and all these massively hard beats were pumping out, and he’s rapping along, and Common’s sitting at the back playing on his Walkman. That situation is absolutely a different sphere to what we would normally move in. That was a great thrill for me.

ANDREW: Did you feel like you fitted in?

TIM: Well, sort of! It’s very fast talking… All the things people say about Hollywood are very true. I found Kanye to be very amiable, very nice and very musical, and he was extremely enthusiastic about our music. Richard had met him before and he’d said a lot of good things about us and the second record in the press, so I had a bit of a heads up at least that he didn’t think we were shit. I do still find it intimidating meeting people that I really idolise, definitely. The worst one was when I met the Pet Shop Boys for the first time. I was so nervous, and I just dribbled on at them – it was just awful. I met them again recently and they were very nice.

ANDREW: Did they remember the first time?

TIM: It was bizarre actually – I went to their gig at Hammersmith a few weeks ago and went backstage, and the first thing Neil said was “Oh hello, it’s nice to see you!. Have you met Kylie Minogue?”, which I thought was great! If you’d asked me in 1989 if I ever thought I’d be being introduced to Kylie by Neil Tennant, that would have seemed like the stuff of... um... weird dreams. (pause) We won’t go there!

-continue tomorrow-

Some Artists With Keane At Brixton Bill

Keanemusic.com announced that more two acts have been added to the Bill at Keane's special War Child show in Brixton Academy in November 1st.
. Lily Allen and Brendan Benson have joined to the already contained Keane,Pet Shop Boys,The Magic Numbers,Guillemots and Teddy Thompson.

(On the next post TIM'S INTERVIEW! )

INTERVIEW WITH 'THE NIGHT SKY' VIDEO DIRECTOR Plus details of the animated video for the single As you know, Keane are releasing a special single for Warchild on October 29th. We're pleased to announce that the animated video for 'The Night Sky' is currently being worked on in London, with director Corin Hardy leading a workshop of 12 young teenagers. Corin has previously worked on the videos for 'Somewhere Only We Know' and 'Bedshaped'. We called him up to find out more about the new video... Hi Corin. How's the video going? It's going really well, thanks. I've just got home from the second day. It's pretty full on. What does it entail? Well, in between directing various music videos, I've run various animation workshops, for all ages from primary school up to degree level. I'm always quite amazed with the results. They always have a certain look and charm about them, because they're made by children or people learning for the first time. They come up with such brilliant angles and weird ideas. I heard that the band probably weren't going to be in the video for 'The Night Sky', so we thought making the video using one of these workshops would be a good way of linking to War Child. So we're doing a four day model and shadow puppet animation workshop, with a group of 12 children aged around 13 and 14 from a school in London. The video will come out of that. Is there a plot to the video? Sort of. But I didn't want to go in there and say, "Right, this is the idea that I want to make, now go and do it". I wanted it to come as much from them as possible. So I came in with a workshop structure and a loose narrative, with the starting point being the War Child side of things. We actually got two representatives of War Child to give a talk and I put together some information packs on four of their projects, in Iraq, Afghanistan and DR Congo. And that started to inspire the children, as did the lyrics to the song, which we'd typed up. So the walls are covered in inspiration from different angles. Some of it's pretty dark and quite horrific, because that's what War Child's work can involve. Are there characters in the video? Yes, they must have made over 20 characters now. So in terms of the narrative, it's to do with War Child and Uganda and Iraq and the night sky. And it'll be threaded through with a documentary which we're also shooting of the whole workshop. So the kids will appear in the actual video? That's the idea at the moment. I don't wanna say too much, because things can change when you edit stuff, but in theory we're making a documentary-like film about these children making the animations. So we'll probably have an animated video within a documentary within the whole video, if that makes sense. Do you play the song in the workshop a lot? Not on a constant loop! But I do play it through quite a few times each day. Will the animated models lip synch along to the track? No. But we are toying with the idea of there being Keane puppets in it. There may well be. In which case, there might be crude lip-synching. But the children are in groups of three and they've all come up with one or two narratives, so we'll see which ones we end up using. How long have you got to make it? The workshop runs until 4pm on Friday. We've done all the model making and now we're going to be animating for two days. What happens after that? Then we'll be editing for a good week or so. And I think it has to be delivered by the middle of the week after next. It's always quite a quick turnaround on videos. Will it resemble 'Bedshaped' at all? Not really, although it will involve a similar, old-fashioned style of animation. I'm steering it, but I want to let it evolve it's own natural way. I haven't gone in and said how I want it to look, I'm just helping them achieve a certain standard or level. I think the way it's being made will be very much part of the charm. Of course, Keane have played a big part in your career. Yes, the first big video I did was the 'Somewhere Only We Know' one where I did them walking through the forest and the creatures around the pond. That started things off for me, then 'Bedshaped' came a few months later. So it's really nice to be working with them again. Are you feeling good about the video? Yeah, I'm feeling really good about it. You always have doubts or worries, but I've been really pleased with how the kids have got stuck in and the work they're producing. So it's just a case of staying on top of it. We've got a lot to do, but I'm tentatively confident!

Keane On BBC

On the last September 25th, Keane were to Jo Whiley's show on BBC radio.
It was in November 2001, that Keane with 'This Is The Last Time','Bedshaped' and the U2's cover 'With Or Without You' enchanted the public who went to see their performance in Maida Vale studios.
Jo Whiley asked to Keane about their first album, in that day.
'We're working on it. We've got to write something first! I think we've got a lot of self-belief and feel we can make a really amazing record so we want to make sure we do that and don't rush into making something really mediocre.'

More later, after their two albuns, Keane return to Jo Whiley's studios with the song 'Dirrtylicious' and now will appears in the album 'Live Lounge 2' to buy it you have to by click here.

Original text in portuguese by Sara K. http://keanetrack.blogspot.com/

Dirrtylicious On New Live Launge CD

Keane's inspired cover appears on upcoming CD release



After the dizzying excitement of last night's award ceremony, it's time to get back to giving you folks the latest Keane news (big thanks for all your congratulations, though).

On October 22nd, Radio 1 are releasing Live Lounge 2, their new 2CD compilation of tracks performed on Jo Whiley's radio show. We're pleased to confirm that 'Dirrtylicious', Keane's marvellous blend of Christina's 'Dirrty' and Destiny's Child's 'Bootylicious' will appear on the compilation. You can order it (or just have a look at the tracklisting) by clicking here.

If you've not experienced the unique joys of the track, you can hear it on Keane's MySpace, or check out the iTunes gig version in the Video Jukebox in the Music area right here at (the award-winning!) keanemusic.com.

ps - KWN readers will know that we're due to post a new interview with Tim on the site this week. We're just in the process of sorting out the audio clips of the interview which will accompany it, then it'll be posted.

Text By keanemusic.com - The Best Official Website

KEANEMUSIC.COM THE BEST OFFICIAL WEBSITE

keanemusic.com named Best Official Website at tonight's DMAs



Yes, this was this scene at London's Camden Roundhouse earlier tonight, when keanemusic.com was named Best Official Website at the BT Digital Music Awards.

We should probably be getting sozzled at the after-show party with various former Big Brother contestants, but we wanted to get back online and say a massive THANK YOU to all of you folks who voted for the site. As we've said before, Keane are very lucky to have fans like you lot.

Now, here's to making the website even better...

:-)


Our award, posing for the paparazzi earlier...

Text by keanemusic.com - The Best Official Website

DVD will be release on November 12th

KM.COM announced more new details from keane dvd,which it was filmed in O2 Arena in July.

The DVD will be release with the name 'KEANE LIVE'

This are the things we can see on the DVD

• 'CCTV' - second angle of the whole concert
• 'Short Film' - the build-up to the gig
• 'Soundcheck' - 'Is It Any Wonder?'
• 'Be There' - fan footage of 'Fly To Me', 'Leaving So Soon?', 'Broken Toy', 'Bedshaped'
• 'Live Visuals' - 'A Bad Dream', 'Atlantic', 'Is It Any Wonder?'

The subtitles of the dvd will be english,german,french,spanish and Portuguese.

Another Gig have been announced

London Union Chapel fundraiser announced

Radio and TV presenter, Jo Whiley, is teaming up with learning disability charity Mencap for the second year of the Little Noise Sessions, a series of intimate, acoustic gigs. The gigs will take place from Wednesday 21st November to Wednesday 28th November 2007, at Islington’s Union Chapel. The Chapel is known for its ambience and acoustics and has an intimate capacity of 600.

Keane will headline the final show, on Wednesday 28th November, supported by Rilo Kiley and Scouting for Girls.

Those wanting tickets must register online at www.mencapmusic.org.uk. Ticket registration opens at 12noon on Tuesday 2nd October and closes at 12noon Friday 19th October. Those who have registered can then buy tickets online on a first-come-first-served basis from 9am Monday 22nd October. Tickets are £35 each.

Jo Whiley, who is an ambassador for the charity, said: “Mencap’s Little Noise Sessions are a great opportunity to see big name bands play an acoustic gig in an intimate setting, whilst raising money for a really worthwhile cause.”

The gigs will raise money for Mencap’s Arts Awards scheme, which enables children and young people with a learning disability to take part in local arts projects.

all text by www.keanemusic.com