So I popped along to the Sunflower Lounge on Smallbrook Queensway for the inaugural night of Robot vs Dinosaur and it occurred to me that I don’t often go to these sort of things, club nights based around a loose theme that don’t take place in nightclubs, but this one seemed worth supporting, not least because if it does prove popular they’re looking to expand into putting on actual gigs. The music promised to be a load of stuff I liked along with a bunch of things I suspected I’d probably like and proved to be fairly accurate, if quite hard to pin down. These genres of music can quite comfortably sit together but once you bring in any descriptives or examples, such as “electronica”, “post-analogue” or “blippy bloopy noise” you start excluding whole chunks. It’s probably best described as that weird but nice music you hear when you’re sitting in your mate’s living room, the guy with the “eclectic” tastes. Or if you are that guy, it’s the sort of music you wished they played at clubs rather than going for the most tedious common denominator. Above all the music didn’t operate in an exclusive manner. Aficionados could sit and chinstroke while the rest could treat it as interesting wallpaper, which is how it should be.
The living room vibe a fairly accurate description of how the thing felt making the event a much more convivial than is usually the case. I was struck by how a gap was being filled for people who explore the interesting edges of the Birmingham music scene, giving them an actual club in the social sense. I’m quite interested in the establishment of nodal points within wider scenes which serve to filter out the crud (trust me, it’s slightly more fascinating than it sounds) and this seemed to serve that purpose well. Any flyers for gigs picked up there would come with an implicit endorsement of quality, for example.
Personally I had some nice chats with Alex, Matt, Chloe and Seb who organised the thing with Ben, who turned out to be in The Hubble Constant and have one of my photos of them on their MySpace page. Some other connections were discovered on my return home which confirmed what I already knew – the Birmingham music scene is as intertwingled as world of bookselling, and in many cases overlaps.
So, a good night (with a fair turnout for a new event on a rainy Wednesday) which I’d recommend for a drink and a chat or some hardcore networking, whichever floats your boat. I took a bunch of photos, ostensibly for Seb to use, and I was fairly happy with a few which you can find here.
[Update: I've added another 10 photos which Seb wanted copies of. Same link]
There seems to be a whole load of music ‘genre’ titles that I have no idea what they mean. Listening to Radio 1 the other night they announced a show later that night. I was half listening (mixing up a new batch of carot cake slices at the time) and thought I heard them say ‘Farm Core’. So people, wtf if ‘Farm Core’ music?
The multiplicity of musical sub-genres is, I think, not something to take too seriously. It’s bloody hard to describe music in words so these things serve to draw rough demarcation lines within the miasma to make it all a little more manageable.
They can also be very funny. I was sitting by the door at RvD for a bit and a couple of guys came in, a little merry and on a high from seeing Gary Numan, they wanted something a little heavier music wise. Eventually one of them suggested “Rotterdam Terrorcore” and partly because I couldn’t tell if he was serious or not but mainly because it just sounds fantastic, I collapsed into a fit of giggles. Rotterdam Terrorcore – say it out loud.
Here’s Wikipedia’s big list of genres – no sign of Farmcore, though I like the sound of it.
Was there no-one dressed as a robot or a dinosaur? I can’t see any in your photos – for shame, people!
Sadly no, though one guy did turn up with a robot mask.
Since we’ve wondered onto the subject of sub-genre-naming, I’ll tell a completely true anecdote.
About a decade ago, I was sitting behind two young lads on a bus. They were passionately arguing about the band Dog Eat Dog (remember them? “No Fronts” and all that?), to the point of raised voices. The cause of such acrimony? One of them thought the band should be described as ‘rap-rock.’ The other was insisted that they were actually ‘rock-rap.’
It was at this point that I realised modern western culture really wasn’t worth saving.
Twas a fun night!