Oh. (Russ L going to and fro in the Earth)

And so to The Wulfrun Hall on Monday the 28th, for Henry Rollins‘ “Provoked” spoken-word doo-dah. I have seen The Rollins Band before, so this time I wasn’t surprised that he was shorter in real life.

I suppose the first thing to note is that the temporary chairs they use for the floor of The Wulfrun and The Civic just aren’t big enough (not attached together as they are, at least). I’ve sat in them before, but only ever at the end of a row where you can turn to the side a bit and get more space. In this instance I was in the middle, with a somewhat large lady on the one side of me. There wasn’t very much space. There wasn’t very much space at all.

Hank, anyway, insists that he’s not a lecturer and not a stand-up comedian. Initially I was nonplussed by that (stand-up comedy was definitely what I’d previously seen his ’spoken word’ stuff as being, from the bit I’d seen on the telly), but it began to make more sense as time went on. He was hilariously funny most of the way through, of course, but not all of his stories were told with the purpose of humour. He was just telling his tales.

I get the feeling that precisely which stories he relays might vary from gig to gig, but here we heard an assortment of stuff that included his recent trips to Pakistan (he - a Westerner - was in the country when Bhutto was assassinated. Craziness), Syria and Lebanon, the first time he saw Van Halen (continuing onto the first time he met Diamond Dave Lee Roth, and the first time that The Rollins Band played in an arena), him singing for the reformed version of The Ruts, and loads more. Three hours worth, all together. All worth hearing, of course, but a touch painful in terms of sitting there.

Especially in tiny squished-up chairs.

Still: very amusing, occasionally informative, and definitely worth me having gone.

Edit: Also, this.

More stuff this month, at least. Still mostly gigs, but there seems to be a decent chunk of theatre too.

Standard disclaimers: I can’t ensure that these events will go ahead, that they’ll be good, or that I will be going to them. This is just a list of things I found that looked like they might be interesting, so please do not contact me to ask for your event to be included. That’s not the way it works.

Friday the 1st – “Things That Can’t Be Said” (Re:Volve Theatre) @ The MAC, Edgbaston, Birmingham - A multimedia sort of thing exploring what (supposedly) cannot be said and creating “a visual tapestry of love, life and relationships.” Also at The Arena Theatre in Wolves on Wednesday the 6th.

Saturday the 2nd – Babar Luck @ The Little Civic, Wolverhampton - Completely looney but massively uplifting choons from the ex-King Prawn fella. Gangsta Folk, if you will.

Sunday the 3rd – Municipal Waste @ The Academy 2, Birmingham - Ther-rrraaaassshhh. Possibly the worst venue in which you could ever manage to see The Waste, but still.

Sunday the 3rd – Carmina Burana (CBSO & Choruses) @ Symphony Hall, Birmingham - You can go either as a punter, or you can actually become part of the ensemble and sing. I think that’s fantastic.

Sunday the 3rd – It’s Just Noise Halfdayer @ The Rainbow, Digbeth, Birmingham - Starting at 5:30pm and featuring Blakfish, The Arm, Mills & Boon and many other delights.

Friday the 8th – Dropkick Murphys @ The Wulfrun Hall, Wolverhampton - Oi Oi Oirish.

Friday the 8th – KODO @ The Town Hall, Birmingham - Here come the drums here come the drums.

Saturday the 9th – The Move @ J.B.’s, Dudley - Or the current touring version of The Move, anyway. Apparently Bev Bevan and Trevor Burton are amongst their number, but Roy Wood isn’t.

Saturday the 9th – Reanimator metal night @ The Bristol Pear, Selly Oak, Birmingham - Birmingham’s main extreme metal put-er on-ers bring you this night, headlined by German thrashsorts Nocturnal.

Saturday The 9th – Authority To Pay Recordings night @ The Hare & Hounds, Kings Heath, Birmingham - Courtesy o’ Capsule, headlined by Fuck Buttons. It seems strange to get so angry about confectionary.

Monday the 11th – Earth @ The Medicine Bar, The Custard Factory, Digbeth, Birmingham - In the field of drone-rock, it is not cosmologically incorrect to say that the Earth is older than the Sunn O))). Hyuck hyuck hyuck har har har.

Wednesday the 13th – The Twang @ J.B.’s, Dudley - There would have been some sort of trope here based around “Hang the DJ/Twang The J.B.’s”, but I decided I love you all too much to subject you to something quite so feeble.

Tuesday the 19th – Storytelling Café @ Wednesbury Library, Wednesbury - Tell some stories. Also at the Kitchen Garden Café in Kings Heath the following night, and that one will apparently have an Irish theme.

Tuesday the 19th – “Bacchic” (Actors Of Dionysus) @ The Arena Theatre, Wolverhampton - ‘The Bacchae’ with aerial theatre (does that mean trapeze?), specially composed music and ‘inspired’ lighting. Sounds interesting at the very least.

Wednesday the 20th – Dillinger Escape Plan @ The Academy 2, Birmingham - This is the one that was originally due to be on the 5th of November and may or may not have been originally due to also feature Meshuggah (it isn’t now). I suppose, as creators of mad fractured music, it seems apt that their gigs have mad fractured arrangements.

Wednesday the 20th to Saturday the 23rd – “Angel House” (Birmingham Rep Theatre Company) @ The Rep Door, Birmingham - How two brothers lives can take very different paths. Written by the highly respected Roy Williams.

Wednesday the 20th to Saturday the 1st of March – Birmingham School Of Acting: Spring 2008 season @ The Crescent Theatre, Birmingham - Four different plays over a week and a bit. Including “Prince Pippin’s quest to find personal significance.”

Thursday the 21st to Saturday the 23rd – “Waitress For Godot” @ The Old Joint Stock Theatre, Birmingham - The Old Joint Stock’s resident theatre company re-lick the obvious Beckett play from a female perspective, involving two women waiting for Estragon and Vladimir. Intriguing.

Friday the 22nd – Megadeth @ The Academy, Birmingham - The ‘Wow, they’re still going! Who knew?’ option for this month.

Sunday the 24th – ISKA International Thaiboxing @ Wombourne Leisure Centre, Wombourne, Wolverhampton - No details or proper link, as ever.

Monday the 25th – Boxing (Pat Cowdell) @ The Burlington Hotel, Birmingham - Usual drill: dinner show, I’ve no idea who might be fighting, etc, etc.

Tuesday the 26th – Mayhem @ The Barfly, Digbeth, Birmingham - Don’t approach any of them and ask them if they’re pining for the fjords. Someone I know did this last time they were over here, and they had him ejected from the premises (more things happened but they may be libelous to relate). I’m not joking, this is a true story. Anyway, unholy black metal and so on.

Tuesday the 26th – Eels @ The Town Hall, Birmingham - That recent BBC4 documentary about Mark E Of The Eels’ rediscovery of his grandfather (Hugh Everett III) and his ‘Many Worlds’ interpretation of quantum mechanics was really good. Ben Swizzle writes about it here. On that note, I’m currently reading Quantum – A Guide For The Perplexed by Jim Al-Khalili and would recommend it to all, explaining (as it does) things very well to simpletons like me as well as being beautifully illustrated. I’m off on a bit of a tangent here, but since this gig is already sold out I expect you won’t mind.

Tuesday the 26th – Rolo Tomassi @ The Little Civic, Wolverhampton - Supporting I Was A Cub Scout, who I once saw supporting Rolo Tomassi (funnily enough) but didn’t think were anything particularly special.

Tuesday the 26th to Saturday the 1st of March – ‘Metamorphosis (Vesturport Theatre) @ The Rep, Birmingham - I’m reeeally looking forward to this: a staged version of the Kafka short story with a score by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis. Get Carina Round and some jalapeno peppers involved somehow and this would include pretty much everything I love in the world.

Wednesday the 27th – “Here Be Monsters” (Rejects Revenge) @ The Arena Theatre, Wolverhampton - The world’s first steam-powered spaceship, and apparently lots of silliness. Sounds like fun to me. I can’t help be thinking of Werewolves and Queen Victoria, though, getahmean?

Thursday the 28th – Alicia Keys @ The NIA, Birmingham - She wasn’t all that great when I saw her a few years back (well… she’s not the sort of artist you want to have to grin and bare onstage skits from, is she?), but I would assume that by now she has enough material to fill a set without arseing about pretending to take phonecalls from a prop phonebox. And that’d be quite good.

Thursday the 28th – Boxing (First Team Promotions) @ The Civic Hall, Wolverhampton - Black Country vs Birmingham derby! Matty Hough takes on Max Maxwell for the Midlands area middleweight title, and it will be great. Also featuring some of our other local faves like Lyndsey Scragg, Rob Hunt, Dean Harrison, etc.

Friday the 29th – Editors @ The NIA, Birmingham - And so you’d better not make any spelling mistakes.

Friday the 29th – Fairport Convention @ The Town Hall, Birmingham - It’ll never be said in fair England that I slew a naked man, either.

Wednesday the 30th of January is International Delete Your MySpace Account Day.

It appears that a primary motivation for a lot of people taking part is “…because Facebook is better” and as mentioned previously I couldn’t be any less bothered about all that nonsense if Niels Bohr insisted I could only follow a specified orbit around a nucleus. MySpace, though, is a bit rubbish and I’m not sure I see the point of any of these things. That’ll do for me.

My history with The ‘Space can be broken down into four parts:

1) A few folk I knew seemed to have a MySpace account, and seemed to speak of it as a good way of keeping in touch with and communicating with people. I signed up to have a bit of a play (this was pre-Murdoch). I decided very early on that it seemed entirely ridiculous to add a bunch of people you don’t know at all as ‘friends’, and rejected all requests from them.

2) The trouble with that was that one of the obvious strengths of MySpace is that tonnes of bands are on there or thereabouts, all with easily-accessible songs to have a listen to. I thusly set up a second profile, just for bands.

3) It became obvious that I didn’t have any need for the ‘personal’ profile at all, whatsoever. There was nothing I did with it. Other folk, however, would periodically send me messages through it or comment on it, rather than send me an email like a civilised person. I therefore had to go to MySpace, log in if it was a message, and so on and so forth. I’m not trying to claim that it was a hugely onerous task, but it was a mild annoyance that I could easily get rid of - and so I did. I deleted it. My music adding profile continued to exist, to provide me with a selection of links to a whole bunch of bands and artists and also so I can access some of the bits of MySpace that you can’t see if you’re not signed in. It has existed like this for quite a long time, now.

4) (And this would be now…) But, but, but… there’s still no need. Although MySpace is a useful place to find music, it’s been ages since I’ve actally bothered to add a band. You can still listen to the tunes they have on there without membership. Whenever I do log in, my first task is always to delete a whole bunch of spam friend requests that have appeared in spite of the fact that I’ve put the phrase “Do Not Add Me” all over the damn profile. I don’t get a hell of a lot of the naked-lady-bots that the fella linked at the top of this post complains of, but I do get squintillions of bands who think that the fact that we have a mutual friend addition means I might be interested in either their everyday angsty teen-emo-rock with loooong draaawn out vowel sounds sung in nasal accents in place of hooks, or their stupid haircuts. Spambots, at least, are an automatic unthinking process; the fact that an intelligent human (well… I use both terms loosely) will decide to try and be my ‘friend’ without even reading my profile is something I would describe as annoying in my most generous of moods. In terms of the other features, I think I’ll be able to live without being able to view the photographs on there pretty easily. I will need to get an email address from one particular person, but after that the messaging system will have no use for me either.

All things must come to dust. I will participate in this most glorious of Wednesdays.

To Newcastle-Upon-Tyne I went (somewhere I’d wanted to go for a long time), for UFC 80: Rapid Fire (an accurate name, given the disproportionate number of quick knockouts that took place. The only better choices I can think of would have been “UFC 80: Ha Ha You’re Unconscious” or “UFC 80: Ye Gods, Man, There’s Blood Everywhere”). As is becoming depressingly common, I offer the following fractured and incomplete observations in place of a coherent narrative:

- I was worried about the need to abandon the train in favour of a replacement bus service between Darlington and Newcastle, mostly because things that can go wrong quite often do go wrong (especially in situations that involve timetables). It seems, though, that Cross Country trains build a sensible margin for error into their scheduling when it comes to this sort of thing. Hurrah for that. The journeys both there and back went without any trouble.

- The Angel Of The North! Beautiful.

- Once in Newcastle we didn’t get lost in any major way, but got lost in minor ways a few times. ‘Nothing major’ is still a victory, though.

- I didn’t really get to see the bridges very much (it wouldn’t have been fair on the other two, who don’t have my bridge fetish), and that’s a shame. They looked gorgeous from the glances I was able to get, though. Another time, maybe.

- Some establishments aren’t exactly what they appear from the outside.

- Once we got into the arena, we found out that our seats were cer-rappy. Not only did we have a poor view of the cage, the majority of the camerapeople decided to take up their fixed positions on the side between us and it. Bah. It was a long way to go in order to spend a pretty large amount of the time looking at the big screens.

- Paul Taylor (not only local, but a long-time fave of mine) vs Paul Kelly was the second greatest fight I’ve ever seen live. That’s bizarre, considering that it was pretty one-sided, but we were behind Paul ‘Walsall’ Taylor so much. The first half-a-minute-or-so was one of the most amazing things I’ve ever encountered, with the two of them trading blows at an absolutely hell-for-leather pace. Taylor was more accurate and putting together better combinations, which seemed to worry Kelly a little bit. The Scouser thusly muscled the Yam up to the fence, took him down, and began to pound. Such was the pattern for the rest of the fight. Our man Taylor was very active (if not always massively effective) from the bottom with strikes and kimura & guillotine attempts, but Kelly held the dominant position for nearly all of the time. A huge cut opened on Taylor’s forehead, and his fate was sealed. An amazing fight nevertheless, from my perspective. He may have lost two in a row, but I’m assuming that the UFC will bring Taylor back. It’ll be interesting to see how Kelly progresses from now on, too.

- So, the American who says he’s Irish fought the Frenchman who lives in England. Confused? You will be. In the run-up to the fight, Marcus Davies was happy to proclaim that every British grappler is worse than every American grappler. Presumably he sees himself as American when it comes to this. Jess Liaudin stated in an interview that “he’s not really Irish, he’s not fooling anyone”, causing Davies to get the hump and declare this to be “trash-talk”. Presumably he sees himself as Irish when it comes to this. One can only assume that he’s willing to chop and change his nationality when it suits him, just like his nickname (he’s “The Irish Hand Grenade”, apart from when he fights in Belfast and might get some comeback from such stupidity). Whichever way up, the bad guy (i.e the Irmerican) knocked out the good guy (i.e. the Franglishman) pretty early. It’s a shame. I really don’t think I like Davies very much.

- I wish they wouldn’t use the WWE footage in their hype videos for Block Resnar. It makes everyone look silly.

- It wasn’t much fun to have a mini-domestic happening in the row behind us. We were later informed by someone nearby that the bloke we’d dubbed Roid-Rager was pulled out of the arena foyer by coppers later in the evening. I hope Lovely Curly-Haired Lady was OK.

- The second best fight of the night was Gonzaga vs Werdum. Gonzaga won the first round pretty decisively before almost seeming to throw it away in the second, but it was exciting stuff.

- B.J. Penn (oh lord, we were chanting “Bee! Jay! Bee! Jay!”. Shameful) looked like an absolute monster. Stevenson showed plenty of heart but was on the wrong end of an absolute arsekicking for two rounds. We left after it had finished and thus missed Stevenson crying/Sherk entering the cage and getting booed etc etc.

- Travel Inn (my decision not to use Travelodge anymore produces its first fruit) have a security guard on their door at night, making sure the name of everyone who enters is on his list. That I did not expect.

- The Centurion (attached to the train station) is a nice establishment if you’re looking for a drink in Newcastle. Black Sheep Bitter on tap, too.

So there we are. A fun trip (as our MMA away-days always are), but I don’t think I got the full measure of Newcastle from it. Maybe, as I say, another time.

Unsurprisingly, there’s stuff all over the web about the UFC card. I’ll recommend The ‘Urtbusiness podcast which you can get from here. I’m with him on the hero-worship-y thing. His voice reminds me of Bez, too, which is good.

Right, read this first. Back? Good. Bounder of B:INS, it seems, has been tigging with memes. A couple of notes on terminology: Firstly, at our school it was ‘tick’ rather than ‘tig’ or ‘tag’. Whether that useage stretched any further than Causeway Green Infant School and Causeway Green Junior School (which merged to become Causeway Green Primary while I was there) is something I do not know. Secondly, ‘meme’ in this context means one of those internet chain-letter-y sort of things where you answer the questions or complete the exercise before handing it on to someone else. They seemed to be a bit of a blogging staple a while back, but I’d never been invited to take part in one before now.

It’s ‘Birmingham Blog Tig’, anyway. I’m not from Birmingham and Bounder knows this, but I will participate with the serenity only ever achieved by those who are well aware that part of the cultural imperialists’ plan is to wind you up and make you come over all unnecessary. I know your game, sunshine.

Task number one: Tell us an odd but fun fact about Brum. Blast, I don’t know any. A spot of research teaches me that apparently (well… according to this, anyway) a third of Birmingham’s population is under 24. Ain’t that mad? No wonder it sometimes feels like you can’t move for young ‘uns being young at you.

Also it apparently may or may not have more miles of cut than Vienna, or something.

Task number two: Tell us an odd but fun fact about this blog. I don’t think there actually are any. There’s always the time that Ozzy Osbourne declared it his absolute favourite blog on all of the internets, I suppose. That was about six weeks back. Jamelia and one of UB40 (I don’t know which of them is which) were off fetching him a pile of M&Ms of sufficient quantity and pigmentation to fill a brandy glass, and so Our Ozwald was on his own. Stevie Winwood had infiltrated the bunker under The Rotunda with the intention of assasinating poor Ozzie. As luck would have it, Ozzie leaned forward to examine my one of my LOTTSADITWM posts (he’s old. His eyesight isn’t what it was) at the precise moment that Winwood fired his gun. The bullet sailed over Osbourne’s head, and Nigel Mansell was able to burst in and apprehend Winwood with no harm done.

Ozzie was very greatful, but had forgotten everything that happened approximately ten minutes later. No links between Stevie Winwood and Sharon were ever legally established.

Task number three: Tag this post with ‘BirminghamUK’ and ‘BrumBlogTig’. I can manage that, I suppose. I haven’t ever really bothered with tags before. I may have a little play with them from now on.

So, there y’go. A bit feeble, but Bounder really should have seen that coming. Should they wish to play (and only should they wish to play), I slap the backs of and shout ‘Tick!” at Jezmoooond and Careless Jean. The full rules, once more, are here.

Apparently this blog has been indexed on something called BlogShares.com and someone called Pat Bateman has bet on me.

I’m not entirely convinced I like the sound of this.

The entertainment for Saturday the 12th looked great. Carina Round, lord love ‘er, was playing a gig at Woom art gallery in the Jewellery Quarter. The £15.50 ticket price included not only entrance, but also access to a free bar and a print of Buron’s art.

I was quite looking forward to seeing what Woom was displaying, since I’d never been there before, but it turns out all the art had been cleared away (Carina wryly noted that “It looks much more like a gallery when they’ve got pictures hanging up”). It was probably sensible, given how many people were jammed in there. Accidents can and do happen. What was more of a shame was that the ‘free bar’ ran out of booze. I was tempted to start singing Rolf Harris’ “The Pub With No Beer”, but then again I suppose that “The Art Gallery With No Beer” isn’t all that incongruous.

Carina was up against it: too cold then too hot (it was absolutely boiling throughout where I was standing), some drunk heckler going on at length, and hole in stage that she kept falling down. Really good nevertheless, though. It’s not surprising, when I think about it – her gigs are always more fun when they’re chaotic than when she’s trying to be slick. The very first time I saw her (still the best live set I’ve ever seen) she tripped over getting onto the stage. It was a fun precedent.

She was band-less again, with a couple of cohorts assisting her on a few songs and adding percussion, backing vox, We Will Rock You beatbox, and glockenspiel. ‘Down Slow’ and (perhaps more surprisingly) ‘Ready To Confess’ sounded really effective with the glock. ‘The Disconnection’ didn’t quite work for me as a solo acoustic thing (it was already leaning towards sparse sound; the even-more-minimal style made it sound half-finished), but that’s the first and so far only one of her songs that hasn’t.

It’s all about the new stuff, though. The brand new (possibly unfinished, she said) ‘Simplicty Hurts’ was absolutely lovely. I was getting a vague bit of a Jeff Buckley vibe again. ‘Backseat’ was beautiful once more and we all had a nice singalong at the end (watch a version of it played in America here). I’m also by now completely sold on ‘Thief In The Sky’. The endings of both that and ‘Backseat’ were swirling around in my head a lot over the following few days (whenever I didn’t have Dholstroyers, anyway).

She finished with ‘Let It Fall’ (this appears to be customary again, which is a fact that’ll make me and a lot of other people happy), doing a version with bits of both “I’ve Been Tired” and “I Wanna Be Your Dog” at the end. I don’t think I’d ever seen her use both in the same performance before. Not sure, though.

Another triumph, whichever way up. Afterwards I queued up to get my print (it’s the artwork from the flyer, without the writing over it but with a few photos of Carina above) and buy the two special edition CDs of rarities sold at this gig only (great stuff, apart from the fact that one of them doesn’t work. Oh well…), and got them signed. I’m not normally an autograph hunter, but you had to stand in a long line with Carina at the end of it. It would have looked a bit rude not to by the time you’d got there. Faintly embarrassing, but never mind.

What I didn’t know was that there was another (presumably super-secret) Carina gig there the following Wednesday. Apparently there are lots of this sort of event at Woom all the time, so that may or may not worth watching out for. I would imagine the wine doesn’t run out every time.

You’ve got your CarinaLive.com collective memory bit here.

And so - for the second year running - my annual live music campaign began by seeing The Destroyers doing a free tea-time set in the Symphony Hall’s foyer bit at the ICC, courtesy of Rush Hour Blues. I don’t need to tell you how much I love The Destroyers and their Balkan danceband funorama.

I’m not alone, of course. They seem to be pretty popular of late, and there were certainly a lot of people here – the fact that they’d drawn a lot of folks on top of the usual Rush Hour Blues gang was apparent and obvious. The band themselves didn’t waste the opportunity to make the most of this.

Things began with a grand carnival/samba entrance, as they marched through the middle of the crowd tooting horns and beating drums. A typically riotous Destroyers set followed, with a few surprises added on top – some traditional Bulgarian music (this time arranged to suit their own style), and a new song called ‘Methuselah Mouse’ (Methuselah Mouse~!). ‘Professor (something that sounds like it begins with a Z. I haven’t quite caught it either of the times I’ve seen them play it now, sorry)’ made some of the old ‘uns leap about a foot out of their chairs, just like it did at The Town Hall in October. I know it’s cruel, but I think it’ll be a long while before I stop finding that funny.

I became really quite excitable during the interval, when I realised that members of the Dholblasters were lurking around. Sure enough, the second set saw a performance of the collaboration between the two bands (which I first saw at the Town Hall, and you can see too by clicking that link). I stick by my previous description of ’37 sided sonic medicine for your lugholes’. Absolutely amazing.

I’ve written about The Destroyers far too many times now to have much left to say, but please heed these words: Go And See Them. Really. You Will Not Regret Doing So.

Oh blimey. I suppose if I haven’t gotten around to writing about things before Christmas by now, I’m not going to get around to them at all.

Hence, in brief: I went to see Screamin’ Voice Youth Theatre” (who I saw last year doing ’8 Pantos in 80 Minutes’ last year) and their “Holly Ghastly And The 13 Days Of Christmas” at The Arena Theatre in Wolves, and it was fun. I went to see the pantomime ‘Aladdin’ (a Chinese-based version, starring Captain Jack and some Daleks. No, really) at The Hippodrome in Brum, and that was fun too. I went to see Chrome Hoof at The Bar Academy, and they were amazing (even more than they were at Supersonic). I went to the post-rock alldayer at The Rainbow, and - despite for one-reason-or-another missing most of the bands I was interested to see - I enjoyed Mothertrucker (the twentieth time I’ve seen them, and the first time without Jamesface on drums. This Is The Dawning Of A New Era) and the little bit of Burnst’s set that I got to see before having to leave (that was nice, since I hadn’t particularly liked them the first time I saw them).

So, there y’go. Brevity. 2008 may now proceed.

That’s it, festive season over, back to work with the lot of you. This is a fairly short LOTTSADITWM and for that I apologize, but it’s January. There’s rarely a fat lot happening in January.

Standard disclaimers: I can’t ensure that these events will go ahead, that they’ll be as they’re described here, that they’ll be good, or that I will be going to them. This is just a list of things I found that looked like they might be interesting, so please do not contact me to ask for your event to be included. That’s not the way it works.

Saturday the 5th – Barbie ™ (London Symphony Orchestra) @ Symphony Hall, Birmingham - Erm… yes. Featuring films of the unrealistic-expectation-creator herself while the orchestra play bits of Swan Lake and The Nutcracker and so forth. It’ll no doubt also feature “Sold Separately”, as composed by one W. Smithers.

Friday the 11th - The Destroyers @ Symphony Hall foyer, The ICC, Birmingham - Free as part of that ‘Rush Hour Blues’ lark in the ICC/Symphony Hall foyer, at… is it 5:30pm? This would make a great start to your 2008 gigging campaign.

Saturday the 12th - Carina Round @ Woom, Jewellery Quarter, Birmingham - I’m really excited about this. Carina will be playing a set in the Woom art gallery, and the fifteen sheets ticket price includes a free bar and an exclusive print by the artist Buron. Tickets, unsurprisingly, are rarer than rocking horse mandibles.

Tuesday the 15th – Storytelling Café @ West Brom Library, West Bromwich - “For so long storytelling as (sic) been seen as something for children.” Also at The Kitchen Garden Café in Kings Heath the following night.

Wednesday the 16th – Desecration @ Scruffy Murphy’s, Birmingham - * Emits low pitched growl *

Thursday the 17th – Blurt @ The Hare & Hounds, Kings Heath, Birmingham - The latest Curate’s Egg night. No doubt it’ll also feature The Courtesy Group in one form or another.

Saturday the 19th - The Berridge Singers @ St Johns, Wolverhampton - The local chamber singers doing some Durufle and some Dvorak in that most gorgeous of churches (N.B. – 11am. Don’t turn up for this in the evening).

Sunday the 20th – Traditional Song Session @ The Station, Kings Heath, Birmingham - Apparently a monthly thing, this is your chance to “sing and listen to traditional songs in a friendly and informal environment.” I don’t know how broad a spectrum is covered by this particular definition of traditional song.

Sunday the 20th – ‘Revealing The Town Hall’ @ The Town Hall, Birmingham - An architectural talk about the history of The Town Hall, from one Anthony Peers.

Monday the 21st – Dälek @ Taylor Johns’ House, Coventry - Dälek are like conscious hip-hop meeting the end of the world. No, I mean the actual apocalypse. There’s fire everywhere, there’s smoke, there’s a man reading a scroll… ahem, sorry. This gig may or may not also be my test to see if gigging in Coventry can actually be done. I don’t really believe it can.

Thursday the 24th – Meg Baird/Shady Bard/Sharon Von Etten – The Hare & Hounds, Kings Heath, Birmingham - Apparently the selling point is that Meg Baird used to be in a band called Espers. Means absolutely nothing to me. I’m looking forward to seeing Shady Bard again, though.

January the 25th - Boxing (Pugilist Promotions) @ The Holiday Inn, Birmingham - Super-duper last-minute stop-press business (I’ve just this minute seen it on BBN). A dinner show, albeit a little bit cheaper than usual.

Saturday the 26th – Seasick Steve @ The Academy, Birmingham - I like the cut of his jib.

Monday the 28th – Henry Rollins’ “Provoked” spoken word show @ The Wulfrun Hall, Wolverhampton - You know the old joke “My dog’s got no nose/how does it smell/awful”? I’ve always wanted to think of a joke along the lines of “Henry Rollins has no neck/how does he do something or other/smart-arse reply”. If you see what I mean. I just can’t tease it out, though. Still, I like ol’ Hank.

Tuesday the 29th – Baroness/Kylesa @ The Medicine Bar, The Custard Factory, Digbeth, Birmingham - I saw Baroness as part of the 2006 GDFAF. They were so loud I could see sounds and hear colours by the end of their set. This is a good thing.