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

There’s usually another annual event this month, but it’s been cancelled this year.

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.

Tuesday the 26th of Feb till Saturday the 1st of March – ‘Metamorphosis’ (Vesturport Theatre/Lyric Hammersmith) @ The Rep, Birmingham - Kafka with a score by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis. I can barely express how much I’m looking forward to this.

Friday the 29th of Feb and Saturday the 1st of March – ‘Family Snaps’ double-bill: ‘Tidy’ and ‘Forgive Us Our Trespasses’ (MDCC Theatre Company) @ The MAC, Edgbaston, Birmingham - “Two plays about guilt, forgiveness and love. Two plays about New Labour, model airplanes and Barry Manilow” they say, by local writers Martin Drury and Elizabeth Parkes.

Monday the 3rd - Autechre @ The Medicine Bar, The Custard Factory, Digbeth, Birmingham - Beep beep beep squiggle-scronk vroom vroom blettum blettum vroom vroom blettum blettum.

Thursday the 6th – Capsule @ The Hare & Hounds, Kings Heath, Birmingham - Finger-lickin’ finger-pickin’ guitar from Jack Rose, psychedelia from Hush Arbors, and post-rock from Cellar Door.

Thursday the 6th to Sunday the 9th – Crufts@ The NEC, Marston Green, Birmingham - Dang hounds.

Thursday the 6th to Tuesday the 12th – International Women’s Week events @ The Arena Theatre, Wolverhampton - It doesn’t mention it on the website, but apparently there’s an exhibition showcasing work done by various women’s (and possibly LBGT) community groups on the 6th and 7th. Sundry of the plays and events around happening this time are attached to IWW (according to the printed programme, Nowhere To Belong on the 6th, In No Particular Order on the 7th, and the “Mixed Bill Of Dance” on the 12th. The website doesn’t seem to attach any of those to it, but does mention that “It’s My Life” on the afternoon of the 7th is part). I hate to be cynical about anything like this, but it doesn’t bode well for a consciousness-raising exercise to prove unable to make basic information about itself clear and accessible.

Saturday the 8th - ‘An Evening Of Russian And British Romance’ @ St Mary’s Church, Selly Oak, Birmingham - Russian and English songs, music, poetry and food. All proceeds go to St Mary’s Hospice.

Saturday the 8th – Last Night Of The Spring Proms @ Symphony Hall, Birmingham - With all the usual LNOTP favourites.

Saturday the 8th – ‘Young Storyteller Of The Year’ @ The Library Theatre, Birmingham - Still looking for entrants, apparently.

Saturday the 8th & Sunday the 9th – BEAST @ The CBSO Centre, Birmingham - Birmingham Electro-Acoustic Sound Theatre. 30 channels of speakers with different characteristics are arranged into pairs and placed at chosen points across the room, “to sculpt the spatial and dynamic implications of the music.”

Sunday the 9th – ‘Doomsday’ @ The Barfly, Digbeth, Birmingham - Dooooom metal alldayer, headlined by the awesome Lazarus Blackstar. (EDIT: Or perhaps not - apparently they’re not playing).

Wednesday the 12th – ‘Tangle’ (Unlimited Theatre) @ The Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry - I saw this at The Rep Door just over a year ago and it was fan-flipping-tastic. Entangled particles, entangled lives, pet grooming, and Great Uncle Bulgaria. There’s a Flash intro to the plot here.

Wednesday the 12th till Saturday the 15th – The Cleansing Of Constance Brown (Stan’s Café) @ 38 Floodgate Street, Digbeth, Birmingham - Themes of power, a corridor where it all happens, and limited audience numbers. Tickets via The MAC. (EDIT: Turns out that this is happening at 38 Floodgate Street. See the comments below for more details).

Friday the 14th – Sophie Ellis-Bextor @ The Academy, Birmingham - Here is Throughsilver on the subject of an SEB song that I don’t think I actually know.

Saturday the 15th – Gallhammer @ The Barfly, Digbeth, Birmingham - Sludgy doom metal with strange vocals (a common result of having your bandmembers made up of tiny Japanese girls) and unexpected New-Wave-y bits (possibly also result of same). One of them calls herself Vivian “Depressive” Slaughter. I love that. The surname wasn’t enough, she needed a nickname in the middle too… (EDIT: It appears that they’re supported by The Sontaran Experiment. Between having Paul Catten for vocals and a Dr Who reference for a name, they cannot be anything less than Pure Win).

Saturday the 15th – ‘Road’ (BSS Showbiz Group) @ The Old Joint Stock Theatre, Birmingham - The Jim Cartwright play in which a drunken tour is given of a derelict Lancashire street. It’s won awards, don’tchaknow.

Sunday the 16th – St Patrick’s Day Parade @ Digbeth, Birmingham - They say the Birmingham one is the biggest in the world outside of New York, but (as has been noted elsewhere) that may be another ‘more cut than Venice’ claim. It’ll be huge, anyway. To be sure.

Thursday the 20th – An Evening With Tony Benn @ The Town Hall, Birmingham - What a man.

Friday the 20th - St Matthew’s Passion (Birmingham Bach Choir) @ The Symphony Hall, Birmingham - The Birmingham Bach Choir’s annual Good Friday performance.

Saturday the 22nd – The Detroit Spinners @ The Alexandra Theatre, Birmingham - They’ve been working their way back to you. Babe.

Sunday the 23rd – Enablers @ The Hare & Hounds, Kings Heath, Birmingham - This’ll probably (like Thomas Dolby and Pram/MTO/Shady Bard) be another one of those that’ll enable you to wipe out a good chunk of West Mids blogging with one well-placed bomb. (EDIT: Now with added Courteousness).

Monday the 24th – ‘Think No Evil Of Us’ (David Benson) @ The Crescent Theatre, Birmingham - David Benson’s funny and thoughtful one-man show about the lives of Kenneth Williams and himself. I am, however, aghast at the £18 ticket price, given that he performs his shows fairly regularly in various Black Country theatres for much cheaper.

Tuesday the 25th of March – “Basil Of The Caribbean” @ The Grand Theatre, Wolverhampton - Basil Brush! BOOM BOOM!

Wednesday the 26th – Free Easter Egg Hunt @ Bilston Craft Gallery, Bilston - Free, and all children taking part get a prize. There’s also egg-decoration and storytelling.

Thursday the 27th – Jean Michel Jarre @ The Town Hall, Birmingham - Synth Jarre Jarre Synth.

Thursday the 27th – Efterklang @ The Hare & Hounds, Kings Heath, Birmingham - Their set in November was one of the best of last year. Amazing, beautiful and most of all indescribable.

Thursday the 27th – Whyte & Mackay Premier League Darts @ The NIA, Birmingham - I’m given to understand that Phil Taylor has been losing a few lately. Is there nothing that can be relied on?

Saturday the 29th – Nightwish @ The Academy, Birmingham - I’m still not entirely convinced what the point of them is without Madam there. Sold out, anyway, so I don’t suppose it matters too much.

Saturday the 29th – Angrrr Management’s ‘Octagon Club’ (MMA) @ The Glades Leisure Centre, Kidderminster - Headlined by Marc Goddard vs Jacob Lovstad, which is a really well-matched fight if you ask me. (EDIT: Or perhaps not - apparently Marc Godard is out with injury).

Monday the 31st – ‘Gulls, Gulls And More Gulls’ (Steve McGinnis of the West Midlands Bird Club) @ Birmingham Medical Institute, Edgbaston, Birmingham - Caw! Caw! Gulls!

I’m still can’t really see how it’s supposed to be any was more convenient than just clicking down my blogroll on the right there, but since I’ve never heard anyone say a bad word about RSS I’ll have a go (with Bloglines - is that the right way to go about it?). I suppose that this way I am told when there’s something new appearing, but there are some blogs I habitually visit frequently and some I’m only likely to check every now and then. I already find myself there in time to see everything new or new-ish with the former, and more than happy to receive the lot in one go with the latter. I’m not sure that the new method will make a fat lot of difference to me.

The backgrounds of the pages don’t display as they do in real internets. I don’t like that. I may be doing something wrong, though.

‘Ark at ‘er, getting all technological. Changing the blog’s template, playing with RSS… if I’m not careful I’ll find myself on effing Twitter or something next.

~ Russ L

EDIT: My feed-reader doesn’t seem to be keeping up-to-date with the actual blogs. Ho hum.

Capsule threw a bash in honour of ATP Recordings (I always immediately think of “Authority To Pay”, what with me being a civil servant and such, but to some it’s “All Tomorrow’s Parties”. To others still it’s “Adenosine Triphosphate”) at The Hare And Hounds, on Saturday the 9th of Feb. It was ace, but in terms of writing about it I have lollygagged to the point where I remember few specifics. Again. Yet again.

I arrived just as Dream Dreams The Dreamer finished, and so The Arm were on first for me. I’ve seen them quite a few times now, but I’d say this was one of best times. The Shellac-y discordant destructionification that they normally bring was all present and correct, but the songs also seemed somehow more epic this time. Thumbs up.

As good as The Arm may have been, Alexander Tucker took ‘set of the night honours in a walk. He’s played around here for Capsule a few times before, but I’d somehow not managed to see him before this. That really is a shame. He plays folk-come-ambient-soundscapes (that really, really doesn’t sum them up) through the currently fashionable ‘sample yourself and layer’ trick, making use of violin, cello, guitar both distorted and plucked, and vocals both sung and chanted. Absolutely magnificent, but I’m having trouble describing him. Maybe I’d have made a better job of it if I hadn’t left it a fortnight. Doubt it, though.

I had to leave halfway through Fuck Buttons’ set, but I think I liked them more than the first time I saw them. They seemed a lot less ‘noise’ than I remember them being – still noisy, obviously, but playful with it. The most fun bit remains when they add the tribal drums to the electronic squiggly-skronk, of course (although it didn’t have quite the same impact up on the H&H’s high stage as it did emanating from in the middle of the crowd at Scruffy’s last time), but then again that was the most light-hearted bit they did last time (if that makes any sense). Lots of people seemed to know songs, which surprised me as I had assumed (and I’m not sure why) that there was a lot more of an improvised element.

I’ll start getting back into the habit of writing about these things sooner. I promise.

~ Russ L

I’m not convinced, though. I will have to think about this.

(EDIT: By ‘theme’ I mean ‘template for the visual design of this blog’, of course)

Friday the 25th of April sees Bjork playing at Wolverhampton Civic Hall, Billy Bragg playing at Birmingham Town Hall, and McDermott vs Elcock for the British Middleweight title at the Aston Villa Leisure Centre.

I have known date clashes before and annoying ones at that, but nothing of this magnitude.

Ah well. I’ve already long-since had my ticket for Bjork. Come on Braggy and COME OOOOON MACCA nevertheless.

This:

In 1996 Purnell was one of three Islington councillors who were sued for libel by fellow Labour councillor Liz Davies. [4] Davies had previously been selected as the Labour Party prospective parliamentary candidate for Leeds North East, but the selection had been vetoed by the party’s National Executive Committee. Part of the evidence to the NEC had centred around Davies’ willingness to abide by the Labour Whip in Parliament, with reference to her time as a member of the Labour group in Islington. Liz Davies claimed that, in their evidence before the NEC, the three councillors had claimed she incited violence during a committee meeting. This led to an out-of-court settlement, under which the three apologised for the allegations they had made and made contributions to the general election campaign of the local MP, Jeremy Corbyn.

Also, this:

Prior to becoming a cabinet minister, Purnell has repeatedly been one of the most expensive MPs in the United Kingdom and being confirmed as the most expensive in Greater Manchester, with expenses in 2004 of more than £120,000.

Oh yeeeaaah. Via wiki (yeah, I know), also citing muh and muhuh.

To Birmingham’s Symphony Hall on Sunday the 3rd, for Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana (y’know, the one from which the first movement is used… everywhere). I had seen strange but very good flamenco performance based around it before, but this was my first time seeing/hearing it actually sung.

The novel thing about this one was that, if you wanted, you could by a slightly more expensive ticket and actually sing yourself. That’s a lovely idea, I think. I didn’t of course, but I could have done (one bad voice would have been drowned out amongst the hundreds a-singing, I’m sure).

‘Twas the CBSO providing the instrumentation, anyway, with singing by the combined choral ranks of the CBSO chorus and CBSO youth chorus, a school choir from somewhere (I have no idea where, they were unannounced), and the assembled massive of volunteer singists. What to say about something as familiar as Carmina Burana? It took the breath away as much as one would expect, varying as it does between ‘fun and playful’ and ‘easily some of the most dramatic music ever composed’. Pretty much the only surprise was the way that the large number of younger voices produced a timbral difference when compared to the recorded versions one usually hears, but you don’t really go to hear something like this expecting massive variations.

An experience and a half. All that was missing was a dribbly horse, really.

I arrived at The Little Civic for the Babar Luck gig on Saturday the 2nd of Feb to find a grand total of zero other actual punters there. More turned up as the evening went on, but not a lot. It would be more irritating if it wasn’t tediously common.

So, one Liam Something (I didn’t catch his surname) started things off. His songs seemed to fall into two distinct categories, and I liked the ones with sparse guitar and half-spoken half-sung storytelling-y lyrics more than I like the more typical singer-songwriter-y stuff. Babar seemed to be getting into it, though.

Kelly Kemp (I can’t find a website, sorry), erstwhile of ska-punk sorts No Comply, is now doing a folky/country sort of lark. It was fairly typical stuff, but nice with it. She seemed likeable, too. There have been worse ways to pass half an hour.

Babar Luck is necessary. I’m not aware of anyone else out there quite like him. He and his acoustic guitar manage to sound unique mostly through dint of him being a complete loony (bless his heart), but that’s no bad thing - he’s a Londonstaani (his own term) spreading messages of peace and love, and you can tell he means it. A variety of different styles come together in his music (there’s folk, punk, ska, funk, allsorts), and when you have songs as good as “The Fight Game” and “Care In The Community” combined with his heartwarmingly loopy personality then you’re onto a winner.

On the downside, he did refer to Wolverhampton as ‘a suburb of Birmingham’ early on, and kept saying things of that nature throughout. No no no. Thinking about it, maybe that’s why there was such a crap turnout - perhaps they were all touring round the suburbs of Birmingham, looking for the one called ‘Wolverhampton’.

Bugger and blast. I’m amassing quite the blogging backlog (again). Better get on with getting on with it, I suppose. This won’t be very good.

Tuesday the 29th of Jan saw me tootling my tootly way over to The Medicine Bar in The Custard Factory, for a Capsule gig. Taint started things off, and (as was the case last time I saw them) I find them fairly hard to describe even though their sound doesn’t really feel unfamiliar. They always get lumped in with sludge-type bands, and although there’s a bit of that about them it’s far from the entirety. There’s a good chunk of the ole time Zeppelin/Purple in some of their riffs, while some moments seem Helmet-y and some even a bit Black Flag-y. Absolutely rocking, whichever way up. I enjoyed them.

I wasn’t really aware of Kylesa before this, beyond seeing people going on about how good they were on messageboards and the like (yes, I know they’ve played in Birmingham before). They were absolutely wrecking. That’s a good thing. All sorts of metal styles came together perfectly, sludgy and crusty and at times a tiny bit deathly. Their two drummers gave them an air of being both frantic and epic at the same time (I am not capable of describing what I mean any better than that, sorry). Band of the night in a night with three good bands.

Baroness didn’t seem as loud as the first time I saw them, although perhaps once you’ve lived through them once it’s never same again. They didn’t quite make as much impact as they did last time, either, but were still very good. They seemed more quite a bit more song-y this time than the riff/different riff/different riff-y entity I remember, but I have no idea whether that’s them having changed or me just being saft. Crazy rocking widdley-wah fun.

All in all, a very good pop concert. I would like to offer a firm ‘piss off and die’ to all those who insist on wearing backpacks at crowded gigs, though. Nuts to you.

(EDIT: Also, this).