Monthly Archives: May 2011

Home Of Metal

(by CapsuleBrum) The BM&AG exhibition opens on 18 June. There are a wealth of events taking place over the next few months. from Brumblr, the scrapbook of Brum web ephemera:

Praise the Sabbath: now Birmingham shows its metal – Features, Music – The Independent

Praise the Sabbath: now Birmingham shows its metal – Features, Music – The Independent: “Every day tens of thousands of commuters hurry past a telling statue in Birmingham’s main square. Antony Gormley’s Iron: Man – a sort of wonky prototype for The Angel of The North – perfectly expresses the culture of Brum. The city, like its under-appreciated icon, is off-kilter. It was this intangible sense of the other, of being different despite being the bullseye of Britain, that meant Birmingham could give birth to strange new sounds and trends.” from Brumblr, the scrapbook of Brum web ephemera:

Birmingham Rag Market Rave 1 of 2 – 5th May 1991 – see…

Birmingham Rag Market Rave 1 of 2 – 5th May 1991 - see www.ravehistory.co.uk (by ravehistory) from Brumblr, the scrapbook of Brum web ephemera:

…to line the rabbit’s hunch mainly. Losing relevancy to the faster, closer to “the kids”, world of the music blog the NME is in real circulation trouble. It knows it has to get back to the roots of music rather than keep putting the bloody Libertines on the cover every week, so what better to do than to praise the small venues around the country—to show just how much they know about your life. And so it’s a bit of a shame that, despite quite a few shouts for such venues as the Hare and Hounds, they decided that ‘Custard Factory, Birmingham’ was our local representative in such a poll. Shame really that that’s not much of a small venue containing as it does a few spaces sometimes used for gigs, and one quite large —but “not officially connected”—venue space in, er, Space2. Great as the Supersonic festival is it’s probably the only gig/festival/event that takes place at ‘Custard Factory’—and that is bloody huge, not small. They might have course meant ‘The Factory Club’ which was in the Custard Factory, but that closed some time ago. People on the Tweets are not happy. ...

When is a full car park not a full car park?

When it’s Birmingham City Council’s Brunel Street Car Park. Brunel Street car park “the red cage” is my favourite place to park in the city centre; the cross-hatched metal design is truly wonderful and the overall structure clearly an influence on the plans for the new Central Library. I’m the mayor of the place on Foursquare, I love it because it inspires oddness, I love it because it seems to have an odd soul of it’s own, but most of all I love it because it’s remarkably cheap for such a central place. I’m tight like that.

Supersonic Festival 2011 Fri 21 – 23rd October — Line Up announced Birmingham UK Line up includes special guests Zu93, Electric Wizard and Secret Chiefs 3 joined by a.P.A.t.T., Agathe Max, Antilles, Astro, Bardo Pond, Blarke Bayer/Black Widow, Cloaks, Eternal Tapestry, Fire! w/ Oren Ambarchi, Lucky Dragons, Monarch, Pekko Käppi, Scorn, The Skull Defekts, White Hills, Wolves In The Throne Room, Zombi (via Supersonic ) Line up announced & tickets on sale) from Brumblr, the scrapbook of Brum web ephemera:

Say it loud, say it proud: I am a Brummie

Nice rumination on the meaning and importance of 'Brummie'—never 'Brummy' remember. "Like generations of Brummies, I wasn’t born here. My family moved here a week after my sixth birthday. My parents were teachers whose first language, like many incomers, wasn’t English (it was Welsh). My dad would have been about 32 when we came. He died thirty years later having therefore lived far more of his life here than anywhere else. We scattered his ashes on the canal near Witton. He loved this city and was militantly proud of it. For his fiftieth birthday he made us walk around the newly built ICC, marveling, then go on a canal trip"

Sparkhill Sound

Seven days to listen to this pilot comedy episode, the authors of which we suspect have been here at some point: "Sparkhill Sound is a local radio station serving…Sparkhill. Sparkhill is a part of Birmingham. Birmingham is a city in the West Midlands. All human life is there. Pakistanis, Indians, Somalians, Iraqis. Even some English. Sparkhill Sound brings them all together on a radio station that tries – but usually fails – to promote harmony."

Birmingham’s Third Rate Reputation

Nothing too new here in this Independent piece about “Britain’s ‘Second City’ a third-rate reputation”, but they’ve done a fair amount of research —Adrian Goldberg, Trevor Beattie, Siôn Simon, Khalid Mahmood all quoted. “In other parts of Britain there is an almost wilful ignorance of Birmingham’s attractions; a determined refusal to acknowledge that there is anything worth tasting inside its spaghetti swirl of motorways. “It’s seen as this grimy manufacturing city with an impossible one-way system – when it’s actually long-gone,” says Clare Short, former International Development Secretary. “Then everyone despises the accent. That’s the sneer at Birmingham.”" That they go on to use a stock picture of could-be-anywhere canalsde living, sort of undermines or re-inforces the lack of identify we suffer. As ever, cover your eyes before the comments if you don’t want to see the bile.

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Monthly Archives: May 2011

Home Of Metal

Praise the Sabbath: now Birmingham shows its metal – Features, Music – The Independent

Birmingham Rag Market Rave 1 of 2 – 5th May 1991 – see…

I use the NME

When is a full car park not a full car park?

Supersonic Festival 2011 Fri 21 – 23rd October — Line Up…

Say it loud, say it proud: I am a Brummie

Sparkhill Sound

Birmingham’s Third Rate Reputation

@onBirmingham – Breaking Brum News on Twitter