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

Yeah, alright, well, no, maybe not. There were going to be themed digest posts (‘live music in June’, ‘fightsports in June’ and so forth) but it appears I am too much of a lazy git to do even that. I’m just going to list the best bits of recent times. The bad bits can go hang.

~ I spent £40 on a ticket to see the Sex Pistols at The Academy on the 11th of June and almost immediately started wondering about precisely why I’d done such a silly thing. I love the Pistols, of course, but I’m not an enormous fan or anything like that (I think The Clash were by far the better band, as do all correct-livin’ folk) and I can’t say I’m hugely invested in their mythology (although I do like it). They’re really old now and last reunion around they were pretty open about the fact that they were just doing it for the money. It was bound to be crap, wasn’t it?

It wasn’t, surprisingly. Putting ‘standard disgustingness of a sold-out Academy’ aside, they were actually really fun. I’m sure it’s not nostalgia as such, since I wasn’t even alive when they were knocking about, but their songs have such resonance. It’s hard not to get a tiny bit excitable when the riff to this or that starts up. The sound was absolutely rotten (Edit: Arf. Unintentional) and this may or may not completely explain why they sounded so darn messy at times, but that doesn’t matter. That’s not why you go to see the Pistols, or at least I would hope not. I really enjoyed them.

~ Much like Mr Pryke I found myself happily getting more than I anticipated at Birmingham Town Hall on the 12th, expecting as I was an ordinary gig from The Destroyers which would include collaborations with The Dholblasters and Sanchita Pal in the middle of their set. As it turned out, for the first half of the evening The Destroyers formed the backbone of a larger ensemble which performed Cristina Piňero Maese’s “Scheherazade’s Rhapsody”, telling the tale of Scheherazade’s own thoughts and dreams during her story-telling captivity. I know even less about Indian classical music than anything else I find myself writing about while knowing nothing about it, but I really enjoyed this. Sanchita’s singing was wonderful and I really enjoyed the dancing, particularly the silhouetted routine behind a curtain in the second movement.

After a break the event transformed into more typical Destroyers gig (if such a thing can be said to exist. They entered the hall and approached the stage from the back as a monks procession, cowled and robed. Of course). My usual affliction of ‘having written about them 381,789 times before’ afflicts away with a vengeance and as such I have nothing to add, but the big finale when everyone came back to the stage (including the dancers) could be picked out as a highlight. I keep thinking that The Destroyers won’t be able to overload my senses any more than they already have, but they keep managing it. I salute.

~ The Courtesy Group! They’re always ace and were once again on Monday the 16th at The Hare And Hounds. Use was made of a chair and a dustpan brush. I sat on the chair afterwards, because my legs were tired.

~ The finale of this years series of The ‘Oo may have been a touch on the crappy side (on the plus side: ‘Midnight’ was brilliant), but Toby Hadoke’s Moths Ate My Dr Who Scarf one-man-show at Bloxwich Library Theatre on the 19th was very warm and fun. The jokes, unsurprisingly, are about fandom in general and contemporary society more so than about ‘Dr Who’ itself (so don’t panic, you don’t need to know any minutiae or anything), and into this he weaves autobiographical stuff that is actually genuinely moving. I’d really recommend this to all.

~ The less said about the incredible anticlimax of a main event of the boxing at The Civic on the 20th the better*, but there were some good things on the undercard. The go-go-go Midlands Area welterweight title fight between Mark Lloyd and Andrew Alan Lowe had constant action for the eight rounds it lasted, and Steve Saville managed to just about squeak past Baz Carey in a fun brawly four-rounder. It’s always nice to see Lyndsey Scragg doing well, and the same goes for Rob Hunt even if he didn’t look at his best against the entertaining but ever-unorthodox (that’s me being all subtle and polite, y’see) Alex Brew.

~ The Big Weekend O’ Boxing continued at the NIA on the following night. The main event here was a fantastic affair and incredibly exciting to watch, although I shake my head at anyone who still thinks that Amir Khan is even remotely close to world class at the moment. His handspeed is a thing to behold and I’m glad I’ve had the chance to actually see it in real life, but not only does he keep dropping his hands and sticking his (weak) chin out, Michael Gomez has now proved that he can be hurt with bodyshots too.

The undercard had more than its fair share of good stuff. The mantle of “Best Four-Rounder I Have Ever Seen” (belonging to Martin Gethin vs Baz Carey) was very nearly transferred to D. Mitchell vs Martin Concepcion. I was happy although surprised to see Steve Bendall get the judges nod against Paul Smith for the English middleweight title in a scrappy but fun affair. Don Broadhurst looked absolutely fantastic in his dominant win, and the finish in which Curtis Woodhouse put Wayne Downing on the floor for the count with a volley of bodyshots was worthy of a highlight real.

~ It was another profoundly distasteful ’sold out venue’ experience at The Hare And Hounds on the 22nd and there were moments of distinct unpleasantness to have to endure, but Melt Banana proved worth it. ‘Grindcore’ is often where they’re said to fall, but (although I stand by my years-long protest that a genre name doesn’t equate to a qualitative judgement) that really doesn’t feel right. Rickidickidickidow, rickidickidickidow, shriek shriek shriek shriek. Only catchy. And dynamically varied. That’s how to describe them. And they’re aaaawesome.

The best bit (as with last time they were over here) was the ’short songs’ bit - a series of single ideas, single hooks, each presented without any additional nonsense to waste your time. Occasionally I think that all pop music should be like that.

~ Oh man, Bacchus (under the Burlington Hotel in Brum) is great. I love that place.

~ The UK Cagefighting Championships card at The Skydome on the 29th was pretty poor on the whole, but it’s always nice to see Team Supreme going undefeated. Well… they did as far as I remember, anyway. The results don’t seem to have been sent to any of the fightfinder sites (there is this…).

~ I had fun at Old Man Mulvaney’s retirement do on the 4th of July.

~ There’s been some good fighting for watching on screens. In terms of MMA, Rampage vs Forrest Griffin was a classic for the ages. When it comes to boxing, Manny Pacquiao vs David Diaz wasn’t really a ‘fight’ as such but it was a genuinely amazing performance from Pacman, and everyone needs to watch Ricardo Torres vs Kendall Holt II. 61 seconds of absolute hell-on-wheels.

And that’s about it, I think. Supersonic this weekend! Ooh, it’s gonna be great.

* This is hidden away in the netherworld of the asterisk due to the main post being about the good things this month, but I did feel the need to say something. Wayne Elcock vs Darren McDermott had been building up for a ridiculously long time. People had talked about it for years, but it actually seemed like a possibility when McDermott won one of those ever-valuable British title eliminators in February 2007, and Elcock won the title itself that September (I was there). Elcock proceeded to kill a bit of time by getting seven bells knocked out of himself at the hands of Arthur Abraham, but soon enough the time came to defend the belt. There were mumblings about Elcock preferring to face LocalTicketSeller Supreme Matthew Macklin and McDermott needing to win a final eliminator (told you those things were valuable), but eventually the big Black Country vs Birmingham derby was signed. It was On Like The Fall Of Saigon.

Except it wasn’t. Elcock got a chest infection. Words were exchanged in the press, McDermott’s camp accused Elcock of ducking him, Elcock’s camp accused McDermott of wanting to get out of it, and the fight was rescheduled for the 20th of June. It was On Like The Film Tron, but where oh where? Fightfans waited breath a-baited as practically every building in the West Midlands county was named as a venue. It’s at AVEC! No it’s not - it’s at The Skydome! Woah there Nelly - with less than a week to go, we’re moving it to The Civic!

The night itself came. Anticipation was building throughout and by the time the fight came around the atmosphere was something else. Our Macca was hailed as a hero by the ferociociferus (no real adjective could actually describe just how ferociociferus they were) crowd; the despised (for one night only. I’ll still support him when he’s against an opponent who’s unlucky enough to come from somewhere other than the Black Country) Elcock was looked upon as someone who’d swanned into our Yampy wonderhome and walked mud onto our carpets, dropped crumbs on our settee and made lewd comments about our daughter. In a metaphorical sense, I suppose he had. F’n Zulus.

The culmination of this epic campaign for fistic dominance and local supremacy?

Cut stoppage from an accidental clash of heads, R2.

I hate the entire world.

It feels a bit feeble this time. This would mostly be because I’m a bit feeble myself and the end of the month crept up on me too fast. Also the Ian McEwan opera thing (what a combination) seems to have disappeared from The Rep’s site, so I’m assuming that’s cancelled. Sorry.

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.

All of the Wednesdays from before now until ages away - “These Are A Few Of My Favourite Things” (Various contributors) @ Ikon Gallery, Birmingham - Various people talk about their Favourite Things, in a DesertIslandDisks stylee. Most interesting to me looks like Catherine O’ Flynn, of “What Was Lost” (amazing novel, read it if you haven’t) authorship fame on the 9th of July.

Before now until Sunday the 13th of July – Vivid’s ‘Flux-Fest’ @ Various places in Birmingham - Something calling itself a festival? In Birmingham? The heck you say. It’s to honour the memory of your good ol’ Fluxus movement, anyway.

Friday the 27th of June till Sunday the 6th – Moseley Festival @ Various places in Moseley, Birmingham - Not to be confused with the Moseley Folk Festival in August. There’s a list of events here; Rich Batsford’s Music By Candlelight on Tuesday the 1st at St Mary’s Church sounds good.

Various dates between Saturday the 28th of June and Saturday the 5th – ‘Fourplay’ (new directors showcase) @ The Crescent Theatre, Birmingham - Four new directors doing four one-act plays over the course of a couple of different double bills. The Bald Prima Donna sounds like a laugh.

Tuesday the 1st till Saturday the 5th - ‘Topless Mum’ (Tobacco Factory Productions & Imagineer Productions) @ The Belgrade Theatre, Coventry - Careful now. I mean it. We’ll have no smut here. This is a play about the actions and responsibilities of tabloid newspapers, even if they are using the poncey southern spelling of ‘mom’.

Wednesday the 2nd – Pama International / The Slackers / The Pietasters / Mungo’s Hi-Fi @ The Robin 2, Bilston - The ‘Reggae For The People’ tour. The Pietasters weren’t especially reggae-ish last time I heard them (admittedly this was years ago) but they were very good.

Thursday the 3rd – Paul Heaton @ The Academy 2, Birmingham - Your man there from The Beautiful South.

Saturday the 5th – Eddy Grant @ The Civic Hall, Wolverhampton - Oi! He’s gonna rock down to Electric Avenue, although apparently (and disappointingly) that song is about an Electric Avenue in London rather than the one in Birmingham.

Saturday the 5th – Pentangle @ Symphony Hall, Birmingham - Apparently this is the actual proper version of Pentangle, rather than the “Jacqui McShee plus some other suckahs” version I saw a couple of years ago.

Saturday the 5th - ‘Cocomad’ (Cotteridge Festival) @ Cotteridge Park, Bourneville, Birmingham - With food and stalls and wood carving and some ace bands.

Monday the 7th – Duran Duran @ The NIA, Birmingham - Just don’t go on a pilgrimage to Saramoons where they used to drink, ‘cos although it’s still open it ain’t like that these days. Pointing this out seems to be a popular local meme of late.

Thursday the 10th till Sunday the 13th – ‘Taste Of Birmingham’ @ Cannon Hill Park, Edgbaston, Birmingham - NOM NOM NOM NOM.

Friday the 11th – Lupe Fiasco @ The Academy, Birmingham - And so we kick, push, kick, push, kick, push…

Friday the 11th till Sunday the 13th – Supersonic Festival @ The Custard Factory, Digbeth, Birmingham - Look, it’s Supersonic (hey hey hey hey). If I haven’t convinced you before now then I’m not likely to. Just go, yer nutter, it’s the best annual event out there.

Saturday the 12th - Weatheroak Charity Challenge & Pig Roast @ Wythall Park Community Centre, Wythall - Including five-aside football and “It’s A Knockout” (~!).

Saturday the 12th - The Jewellery Quarter Arts & Designer Craft Festival @ all over The Jewellery Quarter, Birmingham - Bizarrely under-publicised (or at least as far as my sphere-of-noticing-things goes), but it looks interesting. There are workshops and demonstrations and things of sculpting, jewellery-making, and of course Arfs An Crarts.

Saturday the 12th – Andersens @ The Sunflower Lounge, Birmingham - Cool-sounding (on the basis of their MySpace page, at least) Japanese psych-folk doings. Courtesy of The Autumn Store, who also bring you more fun ‘n’ frolics on the 22nd – have a look at their events page, whydon’tcha.

Monday the 14th – Jah Wobble @ The Glee Club, Birmingham -Dubby experimentally silly namey erstwhile PIL fella, doing what’s said to be a fusion of dub and Chinese melodies. Leslie Kong would be proud.

Wednesday the 16th – Wiley @ The Barfly, Digbeth, Birmingham - What do you do? Usually drink, usually daaaarrrrnce.

Saturday the 19th – Boxing (Sports Network) @ Aston Events Centre, Aston, Birmingham - Frizzank Wizzank defies his own self-imposed ban on promoting in Birmingham for the second time in two months. You’d almost think the Olympic boxing squad had two Brummies he wanted to sign or something. Featuring, anyway, Enzo Maccarinelli and Audley ‘Not In The Face!’ Harrison for ‘big name’ purposes and Matthew Macklin, Don Broadhurst and Thomas Costello for ‘actually getting the tickets sold’ purposes.

Tuesday the 22nd – Butthole Surfers @ The Wulfrun Hall, Wolverhampton - Another “if I have to explain it, you’ll never understand” one. Not on the 6th, please note; the date has changed.

Thursday the 24th and Saturday the 26th - ‘Assassins’ (Through The Window Theatre) @ The Old Joint Stock Theatre, Birmingham - A comical musical about the ‘fraternity of presidential assassins’ - the nine men who’ve tried to kill a US prez.

Thursday the 24th – Boxing (First Team Promotions) @ The Civic Hall, Wolverhampton - The latest local card with a bunch of our usual faves, including (at the time of writing) Rob Hunt, Rob Kenney, Scott Evans etc. No Dean Harrison or Lyndsey Scragg though, seemingly.

Friday the 25th – Soweto Kinch @ The Town Hall, Birmingham - Fresh from Flyover Show-esque success, that man Soweto presents this ‘Basement Fables’ show – the second part of his ‘A Day In The Life Of B19’ series.

Monday the 28th and Tuesday the 29th - ‘Like A Fountain Troubled’ (Untamed Shrew Productions) @ The Old Joint Stock Theatre, Birmingham - Of the counsellor more troubled than those she counsels, and the relationship between the two. The description on the OJS site makes it sound sort of ace and sort of crap at the same time, which is as nifty a promotional trick as many you’ll encounter.

This was originally going to be a general catch-up post, but a theme went and decided to emerge. I know I’m aaaalways going on about the fact that tonnes of stuff (the good kind of stuff. Not the bad kind) happens in Birmingham all the time and that ‘cultural wasteland’ preconceptions are as wrong as wrong can be, but here’s a beautiful example – three consecutive weekends with really fun and interesting things to do in each (“A carnival of Babel, a jazzy funky fable”, as some other locals had it. Perhaps).

Saturday the 24th was the occasion on which I went (wiv me muvver) to experience a bit of this year’s Fierce Festival. Fierce has been going for a while, but the only bit of it I’d ever managed to catch prior to this was Ballet On The Buses last year. That was amazing and I was absolutely determined to see more than one thing this time around.

Our day started with The Divine Edgar (darknesscoffinsburials) at The Vaults (a restaurant in The Jewellery Quarter that more than lives up to its name – from the street you walk down stairs into darkness and a confusing layout. It’s very nice once you get the hang of it, though, albeit a’spensive). After eventually gathering our bearings and getting where we were meant to be, it turned out that Chr-Chr-Chr-Chr-Chris Uniiiiit was doing the door for ‘Edgar’, and so it was lovely to meet him at last. It’s difficult to describe the actual event without spoiling it (which I really don’t want to do in case it ends up happening again somewhere near you, dear reader, although there won’t exactly be an appropriate space for it to take place in on every street. The Vaults really was perfect in that respect), but it really was very genuinely atmospheric. Silly too, of course, but knowingly so in an endearing way. Like the Mr Poe who inspired it himself, even. Also you get a glass of sherry.

It was to the The Fete Encounter at Brindley place, after that. People had a whale of a time attempting to do Scottish country dancing and a lion wandered round bothering children and falling asleep on people’s shoulders. We tried to stay on the outskirts and not get involved until we had a better idea of what was going on, but I nevertheless found myself assailed by an excitable fella wanting me to contribute some steps to the dance he would be performing later.

I completely failed to realise that B1 Labyrinths involved riding bikes, in spite of the fact that the promotional blurb therelinked clearly states so. I’m clever like that. I can’t actually ride a bike and so that might have prompted problems, but (fortunately) I was nevertheless allowed to walk alongside the cycling massive. This is another one where I can’t really say a massive amount without fear of spoiling it all, but we were led around town and at various points encountered actors doing their bits. That was great (a fair few of them were strangely evocative for such little vignettes), but even more entertaining were the reactions from neutral spectators. In retrospect it seems obviously intentional that we (with our bicycles, trikes and Army Of Shiny hi-viz jackets) were meant to be part of the performance. Perhaps most amusing of all was when we found ourselves moving contraflow to the Pride march hurtling down New Street – the copper clearing the way ahead of the marchers was getting very agitated, but the performer woman leading us was quite spectacularly brazen in not moving to one side until she chose to (she did the same thing when crossing the road in front of a bus, later on. A bus).

(There are videos on the Fierce Festival website if you click the ‘Fierce TV’ tab, and they’re fairly spoiler-free. My mom’s (pissed) account of our day, meanwhile, is here).

Saturday the 31st of May was occasion for The Flyover Show - an Increase The Peace type event organised on the traffic island under Hockley flyover, by the jazzman Soweto Kinch (EDIT: Actually, no, that’s more dismissive that I want to be. To elaborate: the idea behind it lay more in the fact that Hockley was once known as an artistic and cultured area, but nowadays you only ever seem to hear it mentioned in connection with people being shanked. The Flyover Show, I gather, was at least partly to demonstrate that there is potential in the area beyond the negativity; a symbol of this was picking a venue that many would formerly have said to be quite unpleasant but actually turned out to be fantastic. More on that in a minute). The man himself gave an interview to CIB in which he spoke of some of the trials and tribulations involved in getting the thing actually happening, and it’s well worth a listen.

It ran all afternoon and into the evening, but I got there just before 2pm to find very, very few people actually in attendance. A jazz-theatre sort of thing was going on (the posters on the flyover pillars suggested that it was by ‘Youth Group’. That narrowed it down, obviously) and I was immediately impressed with flyover as avenue - it looked fantastic for anything, and for an ‘urban’ (Sorry. See above interview link) event in particular. Sadly, I was far less impressed with the fact that I could barely hear what the performers were saying over the cars screeching around the outsides of the island and wooshing overhead. I gave up after a bit, and decided to come back later when (hopefully) the PA system would have been turned up a bit for the more music-centric portions of the day.

Blessedly, it was. I arrived back at about just gone six, and found Black Voices onstage. Such of their set as I heard was gorgeous – beautiful acapella singing, with a really endearing Bob Marley medley. Lovely stuff.

The next few turns involved artists doing very short sets of a song or two (“public appearances”, p’raps? Never keen on that. I know that doing it like this means that you can get more turns on, but as a punter I prefer proper-length sets) with the same band backing them. This did have the slightly unfortunate effect of making all of their backing sound pretty similar-ish. It actually did work to a pretty strong extent and didn’t turn out to be as much of a problem as it might have done, but it was certainly the case. Kosyne and Sonny Jim were entertaining for as long as they were briefly on, with plenty of life about them and what seemed to be some pretty funny lyrics at times, but I headed along to the off-license over the road to get a few drinkies straight after they’d finished and so missed the next artist or two. I returned in time for Tor, who was an absolutely fantastic blur of speed-rapping energy. It’d be nice to see a set long enough to get a proper idea of her one day. Zena Edwards was next with her jazz ‘n’ poetry styles. I liked various bits of her lyrics but musically it did get a bit ‘jazz odyssey’ at times (a bizarre thing to say about a jazz act, but I’m sure you get my meaning). The tracks on HerSpace are more interesting, though.

A very quick break (it couldn’t even have been ten minutes. Absolutely everything was rat-a-tat-tat one-thing-after-the-next at this) followed. It was at this point that it dawned on me - take what I was doing out of context and you’re left with the fact that I was drinking cans of Special Brew while sitting on an embankment under an A-road flyover. At last, my true station in life.

Gabbidon was next for about three or four songs and is always a pleasure. Marley-esque poppy reggae, as we know, with Steel Pulse’s “Handsworth Revolution” getting a really good reception. Another (very) short break followed before it was time for the main man himself, Soweto Kinch. He was joined for a few songs by Eska Mtungwazi, although I’m not sure whether they were doing her songs or his or what. There was some more lengthy solo-ing but I was even beginning to enjoy that a little bit after a while (the Special Brew was kicking in, obviously). The bit of the day a lot of people had obviously been waiting for then followed to finish things off, with short sets by grime geezer Bashy (“Black Boys” got the biggest reception of the day, even more than “Handsworth Revolution”) and Ty (who I was most keen to see out of the whole line-up. Yet again it would’ve been nicer with a sensible-length set, but I suppose you can’t complain for free).

It was a really fun event, all in all; any fears anyone might have had about trouble or anything like that proved unfounded, and everyone present just revelled in the music and good vibes. More of these, please.

(The Post wrote, The Mail wrote, and Chris U wrote. No, I’m not posting a link to where the photos of myself can be found).

Sunday the 8th saw me in Birmingham, this time again with Mother Dearest. Or it did eventually, at least. London-Midland seemed to be having a bit of difficulty organising the coaches to replace the trains called off for line repairs. I found it funny at the time, although I am glad I wasn’t in a rush to get anywhere.

We first went to have a look at The Secret Garden, near The Custard Factory. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but this wasn’t what I was or wasn’t expecting. Or something. Good, though. It was once a bit of overgrown waste ground with a shed and abandoned shipping containers on, until Beyond Closed Doors were given the chance to reclaim it for the purposes of their art installations. I particularly liked the little things to discover in the cupboards inside the shed, and the ingenious small model of the whole site in one of the containers.

The thought occurs (literally only just now as I’m typing this) that although ‘finding potential in things and places where it would not usually be noticed’ is far from a rare theme in art, it seems to be particularly common in Birmingham art. The Secret Garden is Hockley Flyover is Modified Toy Orchestra is… who else? There seem to be parallels, at the very least. There’s a bigger article in this, although I suspect someone may already have written it.

We had a bit of a look at the Custard Factory market next (my thoughts are the same as last year – it’s great, but it really would be so much better with more. It’s hard to imagine anyone being tempted to go significantly out of their way for it at present, as lovely as it is) before heading back city-centre-wards to have a quick look at some of the Climate Change Festival stuff lying around. I don’t understand what the big pylon was trying to tell me, but some of the local fauna seemed to appreciate the cornfield around the outside of it. I liked the video on the town hall big screen about the trees being planted in Brum city centre in the 70s, though. It had some very jolly music.

To Ikon gallery to finish. I really don’t go to see enough art in galleries, which is something I may have to rectify. Lutz and Guggisberg’s “Impressions From The Interior” was the main exhibition, and while I’m not sure I found a lot of meaning in any of it (I am thick, though) I did enjoy a fair few bits. I liked ‘Globe’ (not mentioned in the PDF notes you can get from that link, but a wooden ball made of lots of really cute little carved animals), the ‘Tonies’ (so sweet! They looked like Morph), and ‘Population’ (200 abstractly rendered birds created from seared wood. Eerie. I made sure to keep quiet while walking through).

Three consecutive weekends, anyway, with loads of fun things to do. A sterling testament to Out And About In Birmingham-ness.

- Flossy - One of the assortment of stray cats who turn up in our garden has passed away. Flossy was lovely and loveable, if thick. Bless ‘er. She had an amazing capacity for learned behaviour (flopping around on her back to try to look cute after seeing Kitten do it, holding her paw up as though it was hurt after seeing Garfield do it), which I suppose is one (fairly bizarre, really) metric of cleverness for a household animal, but she really was endearingly dopey. She tended not to notice when (say) she had large lumps of the chicken we’d been feeding her stuck to her tail, and every now and then she used to make a mad frantic dash through the kitchen while seeming to think we wouldn’t catch up with her. She was loveable (even angry angry Garfield put up with her presence, and she doesn’t get on with any of the other cats. Or anything else, really) and I miss her. Bye bye, sillycat.

- The Big Debate - Presumably they didn’t want it to be all that big, or they wouldn’t have had it midday when most people are at work. Perhaps, since it was a debate about the effects that social media can and will have, it was only meant for people who already make their living out of that sort of thing (less “mass debate” and more… well, yes). Judging by the liveblog it turned out to be a whole lot of stating the obvious anyway (1. So, like, blogs aren’t bad because although there are lots of bad blogs there are bad newspapers too and anyway you can, like, ignore the bad ones, and anyway people do their own things now so if they don’t, like, like something else they make their own. 2. Now that you’ve got oodles of ways to get info, Teh Newz Providorz need to be, y’know, good and suit the people they’re providing for, na’mean?) so we probably didn’t miss a lot, but I do like Doug Williams’ idea that at the moment t’internet is primarily just distributing old media ONLY FASTAH and that it’ll eventually evolve it’s own form of storytelling. That’s a hoopy piece of thinking. Also the ancillary comment by Andy Mabbett about the death of traditional clubs/societies seems like a shame.

- Venues - Well, The Jug Of Ale and The Market Tavern have gone, and another blow is struck against small DIY gigs for any bands other than Oasis-o-likes. I wish I’d gone to the The Market Tavern a few more times, but I don’t think it would have made a lot of difference in the long run (or any run, really). There’ll always be memories, of course - great sets from Bela Emerson / Grandscope / Ramesses / Copter / That Forking Tank / The Courtesy Group / Mistress and squillions more at the former, and Assert and The Klopeks at the latter. Sigh. The Academy, meanwhile, is moving to the what used to be The Dome. Wahey! I wonder if they’ll let me help them demolish the current edifice (now, where can I lay my hands on a flamethrower…)? I’ve never been to The Dome, but I can’t pretend that I’m filled with confidence - obviously some of The Aca’s huge number of problems will be solved if the new place turns out to be a better building (I’ve heard differing things about whether it is or not), but not really the main ones (staffing, prices, miasmic clouds of joylessness given physical form etc). Boo sucks. In spite of what some may suspect, I would actually like to see the new version of the place be some sort of heaven on earth (no, I really would. I’m perfectly well capable of spiting my face without cutting off my nose, thankyouverymuch), but it’s hard to be too optimistic in the face of experience. I do think that the safe money would be on my “There’s not a single gig that I wouldn’t rather see in the similarly sized Wolverhampton Civic Hall” adage holding true.* What of The Bar Academy/Academy 2 bits, meanwhile? Does The Dome have appropriate annexes/outhouses/sheds for those?
Not that I go to anywhere near as many gigs as I used to any more.

* I acknowledge that The Civic can be a pain for some people in transport terms, especially if they live at the further ends of Brum. I’m a-thinking that the best state of affairs in an ideal world would be no Aca and an enforced early curfew for gigs at The Civic, so everyone can get their bus/train and such. This tends to brush up against some elements of civic (pun not in the least bit intended) pride spikiness, though.

Right then my gas firin’ never tirin’ steam punkin’ pop junkin’ ballin’ brawlin’ shot-callin’ little chickadees: we may have had a month off in May (chiefly because I couldn’t, ‘ow you Eeenglish say, be arsed), but here’s your LOTTSADITWM for June.

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.

Thursday the 29th of May till Saturday the 21st – “Our House” (Birmingham Rep Theatre Company) @ The Rep, Birmingham - The musical set to Madness songs. Always thought that was a fun idea.

Saturday the 31st of May till Monday the 30th of June – BASS Festival @ all over the Midlands - That’s right folks, Birmingham’s annual ‘Ten Different Things Calling Themselves Festivals At Any Given Time’ season is in full swing (although this one is Midlands-wide so perhaps it’s not the best example of that particular mania). There’s tons of urban music/culture related stuff a-happening, mostly in Birmingham, Leicester and Nottingham. Their events diary can be seen here.

Saturday the 31st of May till Sunday the 8th - Climate Change Festival @ Various places in Birmingham and Walsall - Surely it’s nothing to celebrate? Or maybe they’re against it. Claystation sounds like fun.

Monday the 2nd and Tuesday the 3rd – ‘Shadow Play’ (Travelling Light) @ The Warwick Arts Centre, University Of Warwick, Coventry - Theatre, dance and Mime thingy that is apparently “inspired by the way that children use ‘play’ to investigate the world around them”.

Tuesday the 3rd – Schostakovich’s 3rd (Philharmonia Orchestra) @ Symphony Hall, Birmingham - Dmitri’s sly “A Soviet Artist’s Reply To Just Criticism”, conducted here by Gustavo Dudamel (who has apparently received the highest possible praise from no less than Simon Rattle).

Wednesday the 4th – Flogging Molly @ The Academy, Birmingham - With an Oi Oi Oi and a Too-Ra-Loo-Ra-Li. Great live band.

Thursday the 5th till Sunday the 8th – “Everyone Loves Elmer!” (Birmingham Stage Company) @ The Grand Theatre, Wolverhampton - I do, certainly. Always thought the lil’ patchwork pachyderm was too cute for words.

Thursday the 5th till Saturday the 20th – New Generation Arts Festival @ various fighters in Birmingham - A festival, eh? Whodathunkit. The stated categories for this one are visual arts, music, design, animation & film, creative writing, and ‘online interactive’. Have a little look at the list of events.

Thursday the 5th to Friday the 20th of June- Emergent Game @ all across Birmingham - Part of the above NGA festival, this… erm… no, I’m not going to pretend I have the first idea of what in the world this is all about. I think I quite like it, nevertheless. Just click the link.

Thursday the 5th to Saturday the 7th – Integra 2008 festival @ Sundry Birmingham venues - Part of the NGA, making this a festival within a festival. How very Birmingham. ‘Fusing music and technology’ is the tagline, and amongst other things it includes BEAST, and Capsule putting on The Bays with The BIT20 ensemble.

Friday the 6th – Mary J. Blige @ The NEC, Marston Green, Birmingham - Drama: no more of it.

Saturday the 7th – The Autumn Store @ The Sunflower Lounge, Birmingham - Birmingham’s main indiepop night is back, with Pete Green, Lime Chalks, and Little My.

Saturday the 8th – ISKA supershow (kickboxing) @ The Que Club, Birmingham - Promoted by Kash ‘The Flash’ Gill (a legend round these parts). I’m assuming it’s FC style kickboxing. Public information always seems scarce about this sort of thing.

Monday the 9th – Moha! @ The Rainbow, Digbeth, Birmingham - Usual annoying exclamation mark aside, this band sound pretty cool. Motorik jazz-industrial, if you will. Or something. Also: they have an album called “Norwegianism”.

Wednesday the 11th – Sex Pistols @ The Academy, Birmingham - Old, old men. But… erm… well, that’s it really. I still don’t know why I went and bought a ticket for this.

Wednesday the 11th and Thursday the 12th – “Farewell, But Not Goodbye” (CBSO) @ Symphony Hall, Birmingham - Sakari Oramo’s last fling as music director/chief conductor of the CBSO. Aaaaaw, I always loved the lil’ hyperactive fella. Beethoven’s 9th, anyway.

Thursday the 12th – The Destroyers @ The Town Hall, Birmingham - The Greatest Band In The World Ever Ever Ever (it’s official, you know) playing a new collaboration (‘1001 Nights’) with The Dholblasters and Sanchita Pal.

Friday the 13th – Sunburned Hand Of Man @ The Hare & Hounds, Kings Heath, Birmingham - Psychedelic/weirdness collective. ‘Tis Capsule.

Saturday the 14th – ‘Cinderella Ashputtel” (Banyan Theatre) @ The Warwick Arts Centre, University of Warwick, Coventry - A puppet-theatre reworking of ‘Cinderella’. The actual figures themselves look gorgeous.

Monday the 16th – Norman Lovett & Hattie Hayridge @ The Little Civic, Wolverhampton - Stand-up comedy from the two people who played Holly in Red Dwarf, which is as sensible a manner of putting a tour together as any I suppose. It also provides a nice bit of continuity for the next entry…

Monday the 16th – Holly GoLightly @ The Hare & Hounds, Kings Heath, Birmingham - Former Billy Childish cohort and Headcoatees member. Does that make her a Headcoatee-ee? It is a Curate’s Egg gig (flyer), but I’ve been told that the fact that it’s on a Monday means it should actually finish at a righteous time.

Monday the 16th – Origin / Impaled @ The Flapper & Firkin, Birmingham - Birmingham’s main extreme metal promoting sorts Reanimator forgo their usual haunt The Bristol Pear to bring you a night of death metal in the city centre (flyer).

Wednesday the 18th – Alanis Morissette @ The Academy, Birmingham - Hur hur hur that song she did about the irony mentioned things that weren’t ironic hur hur hur stock tropes from crap mid-90s comedians hur hur hur…

Thursday the 19th – “Moths Ate My Dr Who Scarf” (Toby Hadoke) @ The Library Theatre, Bloxwich- A David Benson-esque (by the sounds of it) one-man show, about The ‘Oo and the place The ‘Oo has had in the life of one Toby Hadoke.

Friday the 20th – “They Get Free Mobiles… Don’t They?” (Banner Theatre) @ The Belgrade Theatre, Coventry - Multimedia thingy, looking at the facts and myths about refugees.

Friday the 20th – Wayne Elcock vs Darren McDermott (Boxing; Hennessy Sports) @ The Skydome, Coventry - The one we’ve all been waiting for, rescheduled from April. A proper Black Country vs Birmingham derby, and for the British middleweight title too. (EDIT: And no, you’re not going mad - it was originally at the Aston Events Centre. Now it ain’t). It’s just a shame that it’s the same night as…

Friday the 20th –Boxing (First Team promotions) @ Civic Hall, Wolverhampton - …Another boxing card, with a bunch of your local faves. Then, on top of these, on the following day also you have…

Saturday the 21st – Boxing (Sports Network) @ The NIA, Birmingham - …Amir Khan’s latest mismatch, and an undercard including Marcus Portman, Richie Collins, Don Broadhurst, Steve Bendall, and the very highly-regarded Thomas Costello.

Saturday the 21st – Jimmy Cliff @ The Aston Events Centre, Aston, Birmingham - Genuine legend. Although he’ll have many canals to cross rather than rivers, around here.

Saturday the 21st – “Score 12 – Cast” (Bill Drummond/The17) @ I think you get to pick where in Birmingham - A Bill Drummond doin’ is transpirin’. It is connected with manhole covers.

Sunday the 22nd – Melt Banana @ The Hare & Hounds, Kings Heath, Birmingham - Japanese grindo-fun lovelies. ‘Tis Capsule again.

Monday the 23rd – “Paul Merton’s Impro Chums” @ The Grand Theatre, Wolverhampton - Improvised comedy from Paul Merton and, presumably, some of his chums. Is this the type of thing where they ask the audience to shout out a profession and they act it out in song?

Tuesday the 24th - Thea Gilmore @ The Glee Club, Birmingham - She got a bit confused between Wolverhampton and Bilston last time she was around here, bless ‘er, but her songs are fab.

Thursday the 26th – “My Bum Is Genetic, Deal With It” (Village Gossip Productions) @ The Drum, Newtown, Birmingham - Presented in affiliation with the BASS Festival mentioned above. A comic monologue/spoken word type of thing in which a South African woman attempts to figure out her image of beauty.

Saturday the 28th - The Public opening doings @ The Public, West Bromwich - Well, it’s meant to finally be opening. There’s nothing on the thing’s own website. Given its history, I think we can be excused any and all cynicism. If they do manage to get the doors open then I imagine there’ll be some sort of festivities, or maybe the budget for them will run out.

Saturday the 28th – British Pipe Band Championships @ Cannon Hill Park, Edgbaston, Birmingham - Over 100 pipe bands will compete in this heroic struggle. Who, I ask you who, will prevail?

Sunday the 29th – MMA (UK Cage Fighting Championships) @ The Skydome, Coventry - Good stuff, I have happy memories of seeing MMA at The Skydome.

Sunday the 29th – Muay Thai (K-Star) @ The Tower Ballroom, Edgbaston, Birmingham - Fists, elbow, knees and shins a-flying near the reservoir.

Ooh, lummy. More gigs¹.

I was vaguely hoping that Monday the 19th’s Guillemots do at The Wulfrun would have The Courtesy Group as secret openers², but I didn’t hold out any massive expectation. As it turned out I didn’t manage to get there until it was time for the last few songs from the main/tour support band Royworld³ anyway. Theirs was the more stadium-rock-ish end of modern mainstream indie, with a potentially-interesting bit of layering with all the keyboard sounds ‘n’ such but no feeling of life and/or soul about them. They seemed to go down well with the (large) crowd, though, so I wouldn’t listen to me if I were you.

Guillemots are a band who continually turn out to be A) a lot less outré and unusual then they’re commonly made out to be, and B) a little bit less outré and unusual than you actually expect them to be even when you take ‘A’ into account⁴. I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily a bad thing, though. They play ‘pretty’ songs for the most part, and there’s nothing wrong with that⁵ .

So yes, they do have a nice mix of sounds and there’s a bit of variation to them, it picks up to the realms of energetic at times (“Kriss Kross” will indeed make you jump⁶) and epic at others, but always returns to “Aaah, that was fairly lovely”. Your man there’s voice is all over the place but it doesn’t really spoil anything. He had a good manner with the hecklers, too - tolerant at first, then just outright God-damn cold to silence them exactly at the point where everyone was sick of hearing their nonsense.

I really enjoyed them. They’re a band I feel I should have more to say about. But I haven’t.

(The Birmingham Post bit doesn’t have a hell of a lot to say either, but succeeds in stretching it out a bit more than me. EDIT: The Birmingham Live review is here).

The original plan for Tuesday the 20th was to go and see The Ting Tings, but a glance at their website that morning revealed two things: 1) That their “That’s Not My Name” single had hit number one in the national charts two days prior⁷, and 2) that the gig was sold out. “Hmmph,” I said, and resolved myself to not going. Come the actual night, of course, I received intelligence via text message⁸ of the fact that they were letting people pay on the door. Double hmmph. It was too late by then, of course. Triple hmmph.

No point getting bitter about it now, I suppose.

To the ever-‘orrible Bar Academy⁹ on the Wednesday, for a touch of noisiness from Today Is The Day. I arrived in time for the last few songs by Complete Failure¹⁰, but from such as I heard they were just your ordinary grind with nothing grabbing me.

In spite of their crappy name, Jucifer took the Russ L ‘Best Set Of The Night’ Award¹¹ in a walk. They’re a two-piece, consisting of a chick on guitar + vocals + red hair and a bloke on drums + mania + Davey Crocket hat. The base element of what they played was a Melvins-ish sort of groove, but with added sludgy bits and blasty bits and most importantly¹² a ridiculously huge sound. It would’ve been big coming from any band, but from a two-piece it had to be heard to be believed. Awesome, awesome stuff, and it’s just a shame that the quieter vocals were lost in the mix as I think they may have added even more to the experience. Definitely a band to see again next time they come over, anyway.

This was the third time I’d seen Today Is The Day and they sounded a lot more metal this time than I remember them being – a lot more about the riffs and rigid beats, and less ‘sonic evocation of boiling water’. My memories quite often seem to warp over time, though, so I wouldn’t read a fat lot into that¹³. I can say that this was probably the least effective of the three times I’ve seen them, though – you won’t find many bands more destructive-sounding and it was ace for a fair bit, but after a while the whole thing started to seem heading toward the boundaries of the outlying regions of the disputed zone next to ‘one dimensional’. A few parts where your man Austin sang on his own over a distorted synth backing track were presumably meant to break it up a bit, but didn’t have that sort of effect.

Please note that I’m not saying they were bad by any means, and I would say I enjoyed their set to some degree, but I did find myself skipping the encore¹⁴ and leaving after the end of the main set. I could actually hear them still blasting away from the bus stop near Masshouse Crossroads, which I thought was pretty cool.

(Thee Claw has not one but two posts about this gig¹⁵, the latter including comical tales of getting lost on the Queensway).

Hey, I wrote about a Today Is The Day gig and didn’t make a single ‘Steve Austin’ joke. I can’t help but feel that I should get some sort of reward.

Footnotes

1) Not that I go to anywhere near as many as I used to.

2) Just imagine seeing them in a great big venue like this. It’d be surreal. And they’re pretty surreal to begin with.

3) Isn’t that a town on the Norfolk Broads?

4) It’s difficult to divine precisely who is at fault here.

5) This is me getting old, presumably.

6) Yes, I imagine they have heard that one before.

7) Blimey! I knew they were supposed to be quite the up-and-coming band and all the rest of it, but I didn’t realise they were already that famous. Still, I approve. “That’s Not My Name” is a gloriously fun superpoppers summit between “Hey Mickie” and “My Sharona” and completely deserves to get a write-up on Popular one day, which is (I believe) the first prize in this sales-competition-lark.

8) Now there’s something you don’t often get chance to say.

9) My thoughts from then still apply now.

10) I believe that translates as ‘Epic Fail’ in your modern parlance.

11) Best Set Of The Week, in fact. They may even have just about nicked Best Set Of The Month.

12) Well, sort of.

13) Also: I’m quite stupid.

14) Encores are a bloody ridiculous idea anyway.

15) Although when the fella says “maybe 80 people were there watching” what he actually means is “less than half that number were there watching”.

And so it continues. More somewhat brief descriptions of Stuff Wot I Dun.

The ‘English Originals’ folk festival began on Friday the 25th of April, but (as previously chronicled) I was down the road at the time, to see Björk. As such I missed Billy Bragg, which was a shame (it sounds like it was a fantastic gig) but then again I have seen him three times before and if all remains well I’m sure I’ll get plenty of chances to see him again.

Sharon Kraus started larks off at The Town Hall on the Saturday night, doing an unhappy-Vashti style of folk with odd lyrics. And she was… OK-ish. She seemed to make a distinction between some of her songs being miserable & some being jollier, but I couldn’t really hear how the ones she seemed to think were the latter differed from any of the rest.

Tunng, as I’ve said at least four squintillion times before, are one of my favourite bands knocking around at the moment. This (the fifth time I’ve seen them) saw them employing new and different arrangements for quite a few of their wonderful (electro-folk, space-folk, oddball folk, all my usual descriptors) songs. I (criminally) can’t remember which song it was added to, but the tribal percussion jam ending that involving knocking plastic tubes off their legs was particularly fantastic. Their rocky one that I first heard at Supersonic last year seemed ace this time around, too. No ‘Beautiful And Light’, alas, but I think they were pushed for time. Band of the night, and during most months they would’ve been band of the month (blame the previous night’s Björk set for that).

Although saying it will mean I risk the wrath of Lady Baron, this gig really struck home to me the fact that Seth Lakeman looks about twelve years old. Just sayin’. I enjoyed his set, but not as much as I did at Moseley Folk the year before last – the pop-folk-rock stuff with the band seemed to veer a tiny touch into bland at times. Only a tiny bit. The best parts by far (Kitty Jay & Lady Of the Sea) were when it’s just him and his fiddle. His fiddle-playing just shimmers.

(If you weren’t there, click Hear for Aid. That didn’t really work as a pun, did it? Oh well).

My folkin’ Sunday began with Little Sister’s free set in the Symphony Hall foyer. They were really, really enjoyable, making use of the folk styles of a few different countries, lots of different instruments, and some almost doo-wop-ish close harmony singing to play a mix of standards and their own songs. There was a huge sense of infectious fun about them, and I’d definitely like to see them again at some point.

A quick pint in the Paradise Forum Wetherspoons (The Prince Of Wales was packed far too full) later, and it was time to head into the Town Hall for the Daughters Of Albion. Not a regular band as such, Daughters Of Albion consist of various female folk stalwarts (Kathryn Williams, Norma Waterson, June Tabor, Lisa Knapp, Bishi, and Lou Rhodes) singing different songs at different times, backed by a band which included the likes of Martin Carthy and Neill MacColl.

It was of mixed quality, but good overall. Bishi may have looked fabulous but she simply didn’t have anywhere near the depth of voice she needed not to sound a bit feeble next to the rest, and while Tabor is renowned as a great interpreter of songs I really wasn’t feeling it (even putting aside the one song she did with that “to be considered true and righteous, a thing must obtain energy from chlorophyll” lyrical style that you fear when an event bills itself as ‘English folk’). She has (what we might politely call) A Very Particular Manner about herself, too. Apparently she doesn’t like singing at the same time as other people. The other three were great, of course, and the obviously nervous Kathryn made for an endearing compere. There were highlights a-plenty alongside the embarrassing bits, including a (surprisingly intense) version of P.J. Harvey’s “Down By The Water” led by Lou Rhodes, Williams doing “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face”, Lisa Knapp’s own “There U R” (sic), and… quite a few more, but I don’t remember. It was over three weeks ago. Definitely some of the Norma Waterson stuff, but I forget what.

(Evidently some people had stronger thoughts about the poorer bits).

Wednesday the 30th saw me heading to The Civic in Wolves for the boxing, accompanied by my main bredrinman Diz Keniz. Fight of the night (or such of it as I saw, anyway – I missed the Scott Evans bout and the latter half of Rob Hunt’s due to the ever-pressing need to catch the last bus in order to actually get home) was definitely the wild affair between Wolverhampton’s own Lyndsey Scragg and Ukrainian Victoria Oleynik. The normally smooth-boxing Lyndsey had to learn and learn fast about how to deal with having a rough brawl forced upon her by the very scrappy Victoria. This was the first time I’d seen Lyndsey in any sort of trouble at all, but she came through it narrowly. My main reason beforehand for wanting to go to this had been to see the headline fight Dean Harrison vs Gary Reid. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – Harrison’s insistence on only fighting quality opposition makes me very happy indeed. I’d actually got this eight-rounder tied at 76-76 at the end, but the ref saw things differently and awarded it to Deano (78-76). His plan of going in close against renowned body puncher Reid and hardly jabbing was certainly playing with fire, but grit saw him through (although he absorbed some nasty-looking punishment at times). It’s onwards and upwards for the Black Country’s Deano and that’s as it should be, but I do feel sorry for Reid as another red mark is added to his loss column (the man makes for a perfect example of the old “he’s better than his record” cliché).

Those two were the standouts, but I was quite happy with the card overall. Most of the fights were (as ever) foregone conclusions in terms of results, but they all seemed surprisingly competitive on a minute-for-minute basis. I’d still rather see someone wave a magic wand that would reform boxing as a whole and leave us with matches where the outcomes aren’t definite, but failing that then this sort of thing will do.

(Dod Ken’s account can be read here, while Tom Podmore’s BBN report is here. EDIT: There’s a Birmingham Mail report as well).

I’m getting fed up of writing this now, but I really could do with ploughing on. I’ll never be up to date otherwise.

Carina Round at The Barfly on Sunday the 4th of May, backed by her band for the first time in what seems like forever. You all know by now that I like a bit of ‘Rina. Adrienne Pierce and Ari Shine supported, but neither offered much of anything in particular. Carina herself seemed to be in a bit of a good-time partying mood for this one, and so in such a fashion the gig proceeded. We got “Lacuna” (first time I’ve heard that live for an age), “Monument”, “Take The Money” (this was particularly fun, I recall), “Come To You” (I may be softening on this slightly. I’m prepared to acknowledge that I like the beginning of it), “Downslow”, “Into My Blood”, and probably loads more old faves. I can’t remember. The new but by now familiar ‘Backseat’ and ‘Thief In The Sky’ (this with the added bonus of the band looking very uncomfortable and embarrassed while standing in line and providing backing vox) got airings, as did the new but less familiar ‘Do You’ (the clawing-of-eyes-mentioning one she played at Woom a couple of weeks prior) and ‘Everything A Reason’ (which seems to have a bit of earlier-Carina style intensity about it). Both of those were primarily acoustic with the band only adding a bit of texture, and so from this we can have a fair ol’ guess at the direction that the next album will take.

There’s little more unpleasant than the heat of a sold-out Academy (just think - that temperature is coming from inside people. I shudder), but that was where I found myself on the 5th for Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds. I’m sad to report that this was by far the least of the three times I’ve seen Nick Cave. This was mostly a fault of far-from-ideal sound (when ‘Tupelo’ of all things is made to sound dynamically flat then you know you have a problem) but Cave and Co really didn’t help things by (seemingly) deliberately going for a rough ‘n’ ready, garage-y sort of approach. This stung the most during the more reflective and romantic songs - “Straight To You”, “Into My Arms” and “The Ship Song” all really suffered.

They weren’t anywhere near outright bad, of course, and are never likely to be. “Papa Won’t Leave You Henry” achieved a magnificent state of ragged glory (possibly actually aided by the factors that humbled other parts of the set), while “Red Right Hand” and its Morricone come noir come fire ambience cut through everything. Cave alternated between ‘avuncular’, ‘caustically sarcastic’ and ‘possessed’ in that endearing way that he always does, and led the assembled massive in a hugely fun singalong during “Lyre Of Orpheus”. Of the new stuff, “Dig, Lazarus, Dig!” and particularly “We Call Upon The Author To Explain” sounded fantastic.

Great stuff overall, but not quite as great as one might have expected. I know, I know, moon on a stick and so forth. I think I’ve earned the right to be a bit self-indulgent about this night, though - I managed to avoid making the obvious joke to an annoying pissed woman standing near me who spent all evening shouting for “Thirsty Dog”. This feat of goodwill should surely not go unrewarded by The Rest Of The Universe.

(Many, many, many others have written about this gig. Opinions vary).

Carina again? Go on then, why not. To The Little Civic on the 7th, for a more typical gig than the funtime partytime at The Barfly. Lots of people talking during the quieter songs at this one, though, which was as annoying as it always is. There’s a setlist in this messageboard thread - broadly the same as the previous gig, with an added “How I See It” and an encore of “Let It Fall” (devastating as ever, but with an ending I either didn’t know or drunkenly failed to recognise). “Monument” sounded absolutely stonking here, and happily there’s a video.

Right, that’s it, had enough. I hereby declare this post finished. I’m neeearly up to date now anyway.

‘Battle Of The Bands’ competitions are stupid, as I’m sure we all know. ‘Popular music as a competitive sport’ is a bizarre idea, while ‘a competition you win based on how many supporters you have’ is an outright idiotic one. The larger ones based on the bands selling fixed quotas of tickets go beyond this peculiarity into the realms of being actively unpleasant. The bands do all of the promotion for the gigs due to their need to sell tickets, and cover the costs and their own petrol money through said ticket sales. ‘Sponsors’ quite often donate the ‘prizes’ (either that or you’ll be blessed enough to win a record contract or some radio play that never actually materialises). What precisely do the (supposed) promoters actually do other than eat the profits?

Enter Surface Unsigned. Danny Smith posted about them on Created In Birmingham, and after some back and forth was surprisingly surprised to find out that the above sort of thing applied. The chief differences in this case were that the nonsense was A) on a national scale with tons of heats/rounds all over the country; B) charging £6 per ticket, and C) employing a ‘text this number’ system for additional fun and profit. That’s a lot of money flowing upwards. A quote from SU’s Terms & Conditions document was posted as evidence. So far so Dick Turpin, but two months later we’d all forgotten about it just as this sort of thing is destined to be forgotten.

The massive were soon to be reminded. SU decided that the republished excerpt from their T&Cs constitutes an abuse of copyright (I say ‘decided’ advisedly; it’s not like this follows the actual law or anything) and demanded that the whole post should be removed lest legal action be taken. This frustrates me far more than their sleazy promotional system (I don’t like that, but anyone silly enough to fall for it gets what they deserve). It’s just a feeble attempt at bullying. There’s no attempt to answer or refute any of the criticism; it’s just “shut up or we’ll bash you”.

What they’re about to learn, of course, is that the internet doesn’t work like that. The CIB gang quite rightly aren’t going to kowtow to such pathetic threats, and I salute ‘em for it. The offending paragraph has been re-written in lolspeak, which in my view is a more than reasonable compromise.

Your move, SU goons.

(If you don’t like entities trying to quieten criticism in New Media by this sort of method, repost a link to the original post on your blog using Surface Unsigned as anchor text, like so. Soon the Googlejuice will overflow).

Other follow-up posts:

- CIB
- Oh Danny Boy
- C-C-C-C Chris Uniiiiiiitt
- P’Ashton (including the threatening email)
- Deelog

EDIT: There’s a collective memory post on CIB with links to all of the many posts of support ‘n’ thought that this incident has inspired. It is actually quite heartwarming.

2nd EDIT: The man who tries to shut people up with threats feels ‘bullied’. Why do I get a sinking feeling that perhaps no lessons whatsoever have been learned from this?

I haven’t felt much like writing just lately (although, paradoxically, I was thinking of starting another blog. More on that if I decide I can be bothered to do it), but as ever the bold tales of fings wot I done are piling up. Don’t panic, though. You put your Reading Glasses on, I’ll don my Writing False Moustache, and we’ll get through this together.

Friday the 11th of April was my chance to bare witness to Top Girls at The Crescent Theatre. I’d never been there before, perhaps surprisingly. This was in the ’studio’ room - a performance of ‘Seven Brides For Seven Brothers’ happened in the main hall. Apparently they had ‘Annie Get Your Gone’ not long after. Plenty of opportunities for both rootin’ and tootin’.

I ‘did’ this play (I mean ‘Top Girls’, not ‘Seven Brides…’ or ‘Annie Get Your Gun’) for A level English-Literature when I was at college (I think that this might not be uncommon), but since I’d never actually seen it staged I was quite looking forward to it. I can’t be bothered with any exposition about it, so just have a read of this if you’re not familiar.

I enjoyed this. The programme spoke of Brecht (and I’ve heard him mentioned in relation to the play before), but irrespective of what techniques of acting and scripting may or may be involved used I found myself pulled in rather than distanced. It’s a very visceral and cathartic play, really, or at least that’s how I always perceive it – while (of course) it does make you think, I don’t think the various emotional dehiscent elements of it lend themselves to completely neutral viewing. They were the strength of this, and absolutely captivating (even if all of the shouting did make one member of our party’s headache worse). On a lighter note, the arguments/talking-over-each-other bits were done masterfully, which is surely no mean feat of timing. Lovely stuff.

The following night was reserved for AMMA at The Villa Ground (results in this messageboard thread, to save you having to brave the inaccuracies of MMA Universe). These are always good fightcards, although I’ve steadily come to hate the venue (it’s terrible for being able to actually see the ring, particularly for a shortarse like me). I missed the last three fights due to the ever-heavy-hanging spectre of needing to get the train, but had great fun nevertheless. There wasn’t a single bad fight on the card (or such of it that I saw), and the best amongst them was Ross Sutherland vs Ben Rose. Sutherland was throwing out almost constant submission attempts (I’m barely exaggerating), but Rose just would not give up. He gritted his teeth through a particularly gnarly triangle for absolutely ages, it was amazing. Sutherland took the unanimous judges decision in the end, but they both deserve all of the applause and plaudits you could possibly give them. (Edit: The UK’s best MMA fighter Rosi Sexton writes about cornering a fighter at this show on her excellent blog).

Skip on a week to Saturday the 19th, for Packers (no permalink, sorry – you’ll have to scroll down a bit) at Newhampton Arts Centre in Wolves (another one I’d never been to before). This was very sweet, very funny, and extremely well-observed – all of the characters were immediately recognisable archetypes of people. You’ll feel like you know ‘em all well. Happy ending, too. And proper accents.

The night after meant going to Birmingham Town Hall for Mahler’s 2nd - my favourite symphony to hear live (this was my third time. It’s probably my favourite symphony full stop, in fact). The Town Hall definitely isn’t as good as Symphony Hall acoustically, I found out (the choir and a few other things seemed a bit drowned out at times) but still stunning. The Birmingham Philharmonic Orchestra were remarkable considering that they’re not professionals.

Tuesday the 22nd saw me heading to The Academy for a Gogol Bordello gig. I’d managed to avoid going to The Stankhole since October, and so having given them a bit of time I was expecting to find all of its ills remedied. Really? Nah. All of the commonly repeated bad points still apply, only now the reek of the toilets seems to have a longer range. I look forward to the day the citizenry will rise up and cleanse it with fire. There will be much rejoicing.

Skindred supported, and as such I must make the obligatory mention of the fact that a mate of mine put them on at Eddies some years ago and apparently they acted like proper spoiled little wannabe rockstars (TALKING POINT AHOY-HOY: Is diva-like behaviour from bands who aren’t actually rich/famous yet some sort of socio-cultural parallel of your middle class ‘economic expectation’ thing? A quasi-existentialist re-ordering of the model of the world in your mind based entirely on how you want things to be, and if others in the world outside object then goshdarnit there’s gonna be trouble? Discuss). I should also note that at this gig your man there reeeeally overdid the “That’s not loud enough” getting-the-crowd-to-shout bit. Beyond these things, though, they were ace. You wouldn’t call ‘em avante garde by any means but their songs don’t have 100% boring basic structures, they really give it some welly, and they’re damn catchy. That ‘Trouble’ in particular is a choon. Skindred are probably my favourite reggae-metal band who allegedly treat DIY promoters badly from all of South Wales, and I really mean that.

I have mentioned before that I see a direct correlation between how many members a band has and how aaaawesome they are (there may actually be a formula to work it out. Maybe “divide the number of personnel by two, and use that number of ‘a’s at the start of the word awesome”), and so it goes with Gogol Bordello. Like a livewire gypsy Pogues fronted by an alternate-universe version of Iggy Pop who has a crap moustache and is trying to talk you into letting him tarmac your drive, they combine both frenetic punky jumparounds with slurring ‘n’ roaring drinking songs. Their onstage business is circus-like (carnivalesque if you will) and all the better for it. Fun fun fun.

Word reached me that Carina Round was due to play a secret gig at Woom art gallery on the 23rd. Or a largely unpublicised gig, rather - it couldn’t have been that secret if I knew about it. I’m not in the loop. Or any loop.

Loop-envy aside, I made my way over to The Jewellery Quarter and found not-too-much happening at Woom when I arrived, so I popped around the corner for a pint of Peroni (tall, slim and suspiciously phallic glasses For - as I believe young ‘uns say - The Win) in ‘Vertu’. I couldn’t decide if it was swanky or just wanky. Laura Louise (who seems to be the guv’nor of these ‘Goo Stick’ nights) was already on by the time I got back to Woom, playing acoustic stuff with a jazzy sort of feel. I often think it comes close to damning with faint praise to say that someone “has a good voice” but that’s what it was all about here, with a lot of depth and feeling. She did an absolutely gorgeous version of ‘Summertime’ (the Gershwin one. Not the Will Smith one. Although that’s good too).

Her Wonderfulness Carina did a five song solo set, appearing very very tired. It was weird seeing her without lots & lots of people around (since this set seemed to be semi-secret ‘n’ such), although likeable. She started with a new one I hadn’t heard before and didn’t catch the name of (I faintly recall a line about Clawing someone’s fuppin’ eyes out. Lovely), before going on to ‘Simplicity Hurts’, a fierce version of ‘Ready To Confess’, ‘Downslow’, and finishing with ‘Thief In The Sky’ (which by now I absolutely love). A very atypical Carina gig, but nice enough.

Immediately after she’d finished, Mickey Greaney stepped up to the stage for a couple of songs in what appeared to be impromptu fashion. I’ve read some of the hilarious stuff his name has prompted over at the B:INS forum in the past (EDIT: I retract that, it’s now completely over the top and not in the least bit funny), but musically speaking he was new to me. His first song was a standard and boring acoustic ballad sort of thing, but the second had a nice dynamic build about it (fairly nifty trick with just a voice & acoustic guitar, few manage it) and I liked it a lot more.

I left after that. I think Laura was due to play again, but I was nearly as tired as Carina was and I needed to be up early the following morning to…

Picket! Yes, it’s still a question of a three year pay deal at 2%, 0%, and 1%. This one-day strike on the 24th was timed to coincide with quite a few other trades going out, which was a very good thing – ours was very well supported, but I’m pretty sure that’s only because the teachers’ strike left a lot of folk with no-one to have their kids. We’ve had too many outwardly ineffectual ones in too short a space of time, in my most humble of opinions. I was nevertheless one of the two (count ‘em) people making up the picket line at our place. What a show of strength.

I’ve spoken before about the wealth of choice that the evening of the 25th offered for entertainment, but I’m now incredibly glad that I opted to go and see Björk at The Civic Hall (especially since McDermott vs Elcock was postponed). There was a good omen as soon as I entered the venue – the London Underground Song was playing over the PA. They should do that at more gigs.

Leila’s part-live part-DJing support set was absolutely all over the place. This is a good thing if you ask me, although it did go on a bit. We got (at different times) distorted bits of speeches and other songs, drone, R.D. James style ambient, industrial breakbeat, techno, and possibly more besides that I’m forgetting. Not all of it worked perfectly, but some bits were ace. Half of the crowd seemed rapturously appreciative, and half nonplussed (the girl sitting in the seat next to me seemed bored out of her mind).

A brass band marched onto the stage all tootling and parping as brass bands do. All of a sudden there’s FIRE EVERYWHERE then there’s Björk in a floaty yellow number and looking elfin (it’s clichéd, but really the best possible adjective when you see her in real life). I was surprised (although I’m not sure why. Hmmm) to find the first half of her set having definite leanings towards a vaguely mournful feel, but she switched to high-priestess-of-the-rave mode in the middle. The highlights came when the laser-lightshow came into play (predictably. Perhaps I am shallow), in particular “Army of Me” (it’s my favourite of hers anyway, but combine that synthline with a lasers and loads of confetti and you can’t lose). The closing “Declare Independence” was breathtaking, shaking off the “Atari Teenage Riot haven’t been very well lately” air it has on record and becoming a joyous, life-affirming thing (also including the densest confetti cloud I’ve seen released over an audience since Britney Spears in 2004), and… oh too many too mention. Amazing stuff. Probably not quite a top ten live set ever, but hovering somewhere near.

That’ll do, I think. There’s been the English Originals folk festival since then, and there’ll be more stuff very soon, but this post is long enough already. I will return at some point with more parables of modern life. Same bat-time, same bat-channel.

It’s clearly an offshoot of this kind of crapola, but these people who complain about young’uns playing their music too loudly on buses usually speak of chavs playing garage (the more hardline sorts sometimes say hip-hop, but those with pretensions towards being a reasonable human being draw back from that after thinking “Hang on… I have been known to actually like some hip-hop. Y’know, the first De La Soul album”).

The behaviour thus bemoaned by them doesn’t tend to annoy me. I can easily see why it would wind someone up (the playing of music in general, that is; not specific types) and I have some degree of sympathy (it’s someone forcing something onto someone else, after all), but it usually just doesn’t get to me.

Today I found an exception. It wasn’t the playing of music, oh no; it was the fact that he was playing The Same Damn Track. Over And Over Again. And Again. Then Again.

One of these days you’re all going to pay. All of you.

(This track was, incidentally, a post-rock come instrumental-metal sort of thing. Pelican-ish, maybe).