In praise of MJ Hibbett

Many years back on a now-retired mailing list I by chance got to make the acquaintance of the inimitable MJ Hibbett, who now has a slew of releases under his belt on his own and with the Validators, mostly on the wonderfully titled Artists Against Success label. MJ’s style of writing was distinct, a wonderful mix of words and thoughts that seemed to be a constantly punctuated and UP! style of writing almost without rhyme or reason. But friend Stripey caught something first that I missed, namely that he was (and is) a very clever author, who has a natural sense of vocabulary as poetry and rhythm even in his enthusiastic e-mails, as we both knew his work at that time mostly through them.

I finally had a chance to meet the good man at a solo acoustic show of his in London late July 2005, and you can find a slew of photos I took here, this one being my favorite:

Of his many albums I’d heartily recommend one of the most recent, We Validate! — reviewed by yours truly here on the AMG — but I’m writing this post in response to a note of his today indicating the release of a new single with accompanying video, “Do the Indie Kid” — and here’s said video:

Check him out and tell him I sent ya!