Winter 2004:   Hello and thank you for visiting the Lovejoy website, home of one of Matinee Recordings’ slower and less busy popular music artistes. Why the slightly negative vibes? Oh, you know…it’s just …winter, isn’t it? Although on the one hand it’s one of our favourite times of year, with plenty of lovely imagery available when song writing, it’s also cold, bleak and depressing to live with on a daily basis. And why the ‘least busy’ description? Well, I suppose recording a mere three songs since 2002 must qualify us for that category, particularly since two of the songs were cover versions…

Anyway, here’s the first Lovejoy news update of the year. It was going to be a final 2003 update, but like most plans last year, it all went a bit wrong and ended up late and unfinished. 2003 started with such promise, on the back of great reviews for ‘Who wants to be a Millionaire?’ and the Spanish tour with Harper Lee and the Trembling Blue Stars, and then…well because real life got in the way, it all fizzled out for a while. So in many ways it wasn’t the most productive year, with just a handful of recording sessions and releases: ‘Drug Autumn’ on ‘Matinee 50’, ‘Night on Earth’ on ‘Working Titles’, ‘Strike A Pose’ on ‘The Matinee Autumn Assortment’, an as yet unreleased TVPs cover version and….er, that’s it.

But things are looking a little brighter this year; there are a couple of songs due for release here and there and we’re pleased to announce our first release of 2004: Lovejoy contributed ‘Girlfriend in a Coma’ to Matinee’s great new Smiths tribute album ‘Romantic and Square is Hip and Aware’. Originally we were going to contribute a version of ‘Jeane’ but as with several of the songs in the back catalogue, there were licensing problems. In the end though, Girlfriend in a Coma is a favourite of ours, and we were really pleased to be able to offer our humble interpretation of this fine song! In addition to this, The Snowdrops contributed a live recording of ‘Bigmouth Strikes Again’, which features Keith and Pam singing and sounds amazing!

Plus, following hot on the heels of recording some new Snowdrops songs for an upcoming CDEP, Lovejoy have just begun recording songs for a new CD on Matinee, which is very exciting indeed. Hopefully this will be completed by March / April for an early summer release. Once again, we’re recording at Church Road studios. Alongside this, there may well be a new Lovejoy single released on a brand new record label, details of which will follow soon. We also have exciting plans to make at least one and possibly two videos this spring either or both of which should be available on the matinee site and possibly this site as well.

There are no live dates confirmed at the moment and our planned trip to Sweden has been put on hold for a while, but there seems to be a good chance that Lovejoy will play in Sweden later in the year. Things have been too hectic to commit to other dates recently, but we do hope to play in the UK as well sometime this year either as Lovejoy or The Snowdrops or a combination of the two.

Finally, following on from the last update, the last ever copies of The Spinning Wheels ‘A Million Years’ 7” on Teatime (One of Lovejoy’s previous bands) have been selling fast, so if you’d like to get hold of one, contact us at snowboundipc@yahoo.co.uk or if you live in the US, there are limited numbers available through the Matinee Recordings website. Oh, and I’m assured that the latest issue of Try Happiness fanzine from Sweden will contain a feature on Lovejoy. It’s due out very soon, so watch this space…

Thanks for visiting!

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