Today’s Photo
Longbridge Sunset by Kate Drew.
Music
When I heard that the NME had done a feature on the music scene of Birmingham and surrounding areas under the knowingly awful banner Best Midlands I knew I had to buy it, partly because some of the bands I like were mentioned and partly just to see how the magazine would deal with a scene I’ve had something of an eye on these last few years. I’ve often said that one of the paradoxically nice things about Birmingham bands is they’re pretty resigned to not making it big quickly and so they concentrate on being good instead. If they want to be famous they’ll fuck off to London which is why when I lived in London I never went gigging. It was too depressing. That said, I’d love for some of the genuine talent in this city to get the recognition it deserves and, for good or bad, things like the NME are what makes that happen. And at the very least this features means that a few hundred folk in the area can now put a face to some of the dozens of bands playing at the Jug or the Flapper and might well check them out. That alone can only be a good thing.
Since the NME is quaintly printed on paper and sold in shops for one week only before being recycled into pulp and doesn’t keep a digital archive I’ve take the liberty of scanning this historical document and uploading it to the internet on their behalf.
(Here’s the 1.7mb readable version.)
And here are the bands themselves with handy MySpace linkage. Those I can recommend are in bold and those I haven’t seen but intend to check out soonish are asterisked.
Ripchord
The Enemy
The Twang
Untitled Musical Project
The Ripps
Envy and Other Sins*
Deluka
Murdoch
The Gravity Crisis*
The Big Bang
Vijay Kishore*
Sunset Cinema Club*
When you consider the paper could have picked all the sub-Oasis clones and Libertines wannabes that plague our city this is not a bad selection all told. The paucity of women does cause one to pause but it is regrettably representative of the guitar-based scene. We really need a decent Ladyfest-style movement and soon.
Campaign News
I was sorry to miss the blockading of Gas Street Basin this weekend by dozens of narrowboats protesting the £7 million cut to British Waterways’ budget. Birmingham’s canal network has benefitted hugely from this investment over the years and it’s hard to believe they used to be no-go areas. While a case, however pitifully weak, could be made that the bulk of the work has been done and it’s just a caretaking job now, the scale of these cuts and the 180 redundancies that inevitably come with them are pretty shocking. From a purely tourist point of view the canals are a valuable asset to Birmingham not to mention providing essential cycle routes into the city. And it strikes me that £7m isn’t actually that much compared to other investments made by government agencies on our behalf. coughIraqcough
[Update: Photos of the protest on Flickr from Martin.O'C]
On a more petty note Andy Pryke was telling me about singing in the Complaints Choir of Birmingham the other month and I had no idea what he was on about. Seems I should have paid more attention as it’s become something of a YouTube phenomena. After the (admittedly superior so don’t watch it yet) Complaints Choir of Helsinki some wise folk in Birmingham decided we needed one too…
If there’s a story behind this worth retelling I shall endeavour to provide it to you.
Transport News
From the unlikely source of LiveJournal’s Birmingham department I learned that bus fairs are going up again in the new year to £1.40. That’s an increase of 17% which seems a little high. The last increase was, if memory serves, in the winter of 2004/2005 and then it was from £1.10 to £1.20. It would appear the vile and unavoidable-unless-you-sit-right-at-the-front-upstairs TV screens aren’t proving the revenue earning devices it was hoped they would be. That said, and allowing for my relentlessly optimistic attitude to such things, I don’t think the bus service is that bad in the city. Not a patch on London’s (oh for a night bus system of such glory!) but better than most cities I’ve seen. The only problems I can see with it are all the fucking cars that get in the way. Oh, and the arseholes who think I want to listen to their shit music pumped through the tinny speakers of their git-phones. Other than that though… I can’t find any confirmation of this on the spangly new Network West Midlands site but that wasn’t a big surprise. However while googling around I did stumble across this review of the Birmingham transport system from 2002 which raised a smirk.
Back to robbing the BBC for stories, it seems the campaign to rejuvenate New Street Station has picked up steam again with a bunch of the great and good petitioning central goverment to kick start a £500m scheme. Everyone’s favourite local historian Lord Carl of Chinn is quoted as saying “If we as a region do not grasp the need to be part of the transport revolution of the 21st Century, we will continue to lose jobs.” Which will come as news to those of us unaware we were in the middle of a transport revolution or that having a shiny new train station would have kept Rover open. What I did find notable about the current proposals is that the entrance to New St will be flanked by two giant phalluses. Lovely!
Recommended Gigs
Briefly, as it’s getting late. Go see the following if you can.
Wednesday 29th: Rumblestrips at Academy 2.
Thursday 30th: Mr Bones and the Dreamers at the Sunflower Lounge
Nonsense
The Pantomime Horse Grand National returns this year on December 3rd. Last year Jon of BiNS came last. He hopes to improve on this. No idea where it’s actually taking place – if anyone knows the comment box is below…
From the BiNS newsletter:
Victoria and Chamberlain Squares
Sunday 3rd December 20061.15pm Parade of Horses to The Bullring
1.45pm All horses in Parade Ring for build up to the event
2.30pm Colts – Heat 1
3pm Colts – Heat 2
3.30pm Fillies Final
4pm Colts Final
4.30pm Prize-winning presentations
This has been part of Pete Ashton’s Brum Blog experiment to see if a weblog dedicated to Birmingham is a viable thing. Here are the archives.
I suspect a short stroll past your local newsagent will confirm the bus price rise, as it was on the posters for the Birmingham Mail on Saturday. Unless, of course, newsagents in Bournville aren’t allowed to put that kind of advertising material out on the street in plain view.
I see that network rail made a profit with enough to spare to rebuild New Street twice over (assuming developers pay for the shopping mall and twin towers). The question will be whether or not network rail see New Street as an important project (they say it is but actions would speak louder).
The key to the station’s future will surely be the problem of fumes from the many diesel powered trains that use the station. Having what is basically an underground station means that the only way to keep it clean and healthy would be to electrify all the services in and out of the station. This is probably not going to happen, particularly given the diesel operated cross country services with their new trains that should have a 30+ year life.
Reassure me that I’m not going mad – the maximum bus fare used to be £1.30 a few years ago when they still had peak and off-peak times, wasn’t it?
I’ve constantly had a bus pass for a long time now. Except for the last few days, since I keep forgetting to renew it.
I approve and support the bigging-uping of The Twang and The Big Bang, meanwhile. I’m not particularly keen on Sunset Cinema Club or Murdoch, but don’t let me put anyone off.
Within Birmingham (I’m not sure what happens when you enter the wilds of the Black Country) the max fare has been 1.20 for the last couple of years. Before that it was 1.10, previously 1.00.
I’ve never had cause to take a “short hop”. That’s what feet are for. No idea about peak fares – that must be going back a long time! – but I do remember the max fare being 70p around 1997 or so.
It’s no different between Birmingham and the real world – mostly TWM buses operating under Centro’s Aegis.
There was a peak/off-peak division as recently as about 5-6 years ago. I am certain of this. Or cracking up, possibly, but either way it’s a vivid memory.
TWM’s website has mention of maximum off-peak fare’s, even though they’re not actually any higher than the highest fare overall.
I annex this link in the name of corroboration.
Hi Pete,
The Birmingham Choir was actually first :-) and inspired the Helsinki one. Well, it was shown in Helsinki as part of the recruitment process, I guess the Finnish artists Oliver and Tellervo really inspired the lot :-)
See you soon!
Saw Vijay Kishore at the Quandrant Lounge in Wolves and I have to say he was fantastic, such a great voice. Big things will come of him for sure
Oooh, do check out Sunset Cinema Club soon, they are so much better than most of the other bands they’d probably get compared to because they have melody!
WRG: Telly’s on buses. I think it’s a good idea for the following reason.
People like their cars because they view them as another room of the house. The more you can make public transport feel comfortable, the more favourable people will be to use it as an alternative to their car. I seem to remember reading this a few months back in a brief news article in Local Transport Today.
It’d be nice to see what research would say about specifically into putting tellys on buses as a method of improving public perception, and use, of public transport. I wonder if use of these buses has increased and how that compares to the buses without TVs. If it has or hasnt worked, either way it’d be an interesting study.
Eeek, Ive just read that back to myself and it’s scary. Spoken like a true transport policy nerd with no grasp of the real world.
I’m wondering if you’ve ever seen the TVs on the busses? ;)
They’re only used for sports headlines and a bit of celebrity gossip but not much else which is a massive waste, watching ceefax pages role by would be much more exciting. I wonder if it would be possible to set them up to get News 24?
I remember some routes in Wakefield got TV’s for a bit in the mid nineties, what did they play… why ‘On The Buses’ of course :)