Myself and Jules had a lot of fun on the interweb radio on Saturday morning. You can listen again to two hours of music and stuff, including: a rude joke about Scroobius Pip, sweary news, and the brass section: All stuff about the show is at thebigpaws.co.uk – including the tracklisting and all the things we talked about. Tune in again next week on Rhubarb Radio.com Saturday’s 8am – 10am or listen again.
BBC WM breakfast presenter Phil Upton kept hold of the big HP Sauce sign when the building was demolished (following Heinz’s lies and betrayal). Since then it’s been in the museum’s warehouse — but now Phil is asking where it should go. The options: on display at the old site in Aston, in an exhibition at the refurbed Aston Hall OR somewhere else.. I can’t see the Aston Hall connection (exciting that it’ll be properly re-opened this summer tho’), so it’s the site for me — unless anyone can thing of anywhere better? You can tell Phil what you think by email, or even give him a tweet. Photo by Brett Wilde
Rhubarb Radio has kindly consented to allow your very own BiNS-ers Jon & Jules to have a show — on the internet radio and everything. It’ll be what you’d expect from us — intelligent, amusing, cool, and featuring ELO (maybe). We’d love you to listen to us live (at Rhubarb Radio.com — click on the ‘Listen Live’ button) so you can abuse us via Twitter or email — the show is on Saturday mornings between 8am and 10am. But if you’re not awake, or by a computer there’s ways of listening again on the website. The show’s got its own blog – thebigpaws.co.uk where we’ll post track listings and links to any stuff we mention that has links. Follow The Big Paws on Twitter for the easiest way to talk to us during the show. We will also be live-tweeting our track list. (What is Twitter? Here’s a handy guide to get you started.) There’s a facebook group, if that’s the sort of thing you like. Our studio dogsbody will be collecting any messages or requests (we’ll only play good stuff tho’). So tune in at 8am Saturday, you know it makes sense.
Castle Bromwich dot net is a new site devoted to everyone’s fave Bromwich, apart who those of you who prefer other Bromwiches. It’s got a blog, a forum, events listings, all sorts of local info. It’s really nice. I’m not a Castle Brom expert and I clicked on the Parish Council section expecting minutes of the latest meeting, but instead found myself reading about: “the primary concerns of the Council were the primitive sewage systems which the Medical Officer of Health believed caused widespread Scarlet Fever. By the start of the twentieth century sewage improvement schemes were started, but it was to be a further twenty-five years before they were fully effective.” I hope they’ve sorted that out, best of luck with the blog — local blogs is the future.
Long preamble to this, but bear with us, it (like all good things do) ends in a song. Here’s what happened: Some people decided to do a Birmingham Twitter Festival. Craig Friends of the Stars offered the band’s services as cover artistes as a raffle prize. Nicky Getgood won that prize. Nicky is obsessed with all things Irish and Digbeth. So she, rather inevitably, chose a traditional Irish song (her favourite, Black Velvet Band) — but being a Brummie, couldn’t let the opportunity to do something special pass. She “butchered the lyrics to reflect the recent Noise Abatement Order problems suffered by The Spotted Dog and The Rainbow“. (Can you pop them online somewhere please, so we can sing along?) And then Craig et al recorded up a storm. A folky storm. And then Nicky put it online and intends to get copies everywhere for the traditional Birmingham green guinness fest in March. I’m not a Irish music fan normally, but this version isn’t all fiddles and yelping it’s smooth and ragged in just the right places. I suggest you play it loud, with due consideration for others. And go and check out the band’s other stuff too. Friends...
I hear that Birmingham City Council is now blocking “social networking sensation” Twitter (as it is classified as a “social networking site”). Following hard on the heals of the shock horror stories of Facebook usage (stupid story as not only are the methodologies used for tracking such things deeply flawed, but the communications team are using it as part of their job) it’s not surprising, but it isn’t sensible. You get the feeling that it would be blocked as the people responsible for blocking will have just heard about it, I’d love to hear the reasoning behind restricting access. The official statement from the council is: “Twitter is classed as a “social networking” web site and Bham City Council has imposed a restriction (in line with its Internet Use Policy) on the use of social networking sites during core hours – i.e. between 1000 and 1200 and between 1400 and 1600. Outside those hours, these sites are generally available. People who need to use social networking sites for work, rather than for personal use, are given access at these times if they can confirm that it is needed for their work.” That’s all very well, but it is...
The Birmingham Music Archive is a new project, and especially a web site that is trying to build up a huge collection of anything to do with music in Birmingham and how it has affected us Brummies. It’s entirely open to anything, so if you care more about Go Kart Mozart than ELO that’s equally important. Did Bev Bevan help you carry a drunk mate down some stairs? The archive wants to know. Dip in to the archive itself and see what you can add, see what you can find — I’ll be searching it for titbits daily. Did you know that Apatche Indian invented “bhangramuffin”? He’s opening a new bar soon I hear.
What’s Twitter? Oh, go ask Philip Schofield. What’s Twestival? It’s a Twitter – Festival (see what they did there?), personally I’d go for a Twiss Up. On 12th February 2009 Birmingham will be joining over 100 confirmed cities around the world in a night of fund raising, partying, competitions and all round fun — based around Twitter. I’ll be running a tweetastic version of ‘Play Your Cards Right” There are already some top raffle prizes, Wii’s, Bostin gear, artwork, specially recorded records – go look here. For more details pop over to the offical site, or follow @brumtwestival on the Twitter. It’s all in aid of charity:water, a non-profit bringing clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations.
One thing those old Hebrew storytellers had was a grasp of the symbolic power of encircling a town. When Joshua brings down Jericho it’s not the brass arrangement, it’s the ongoing circumnavigation. So if there was an easy way to surround one of Europe’s largest cities you’d do it, wouldn’t you? Luckily there is — the eleven bus. The number eleven skirts the city of Birmingham, the 11C clockwise, the 11A anti, taking in all of its great suburbs as far from the city centre as you can get without ending up in the wider conurbation. At two hours 45 minutes long it’s one of the longest bus routes in Europe, and if you stop on you can go round and round again. And that’s what we’re doing on Tuesday the 11th of November. From 11am, around 30-40 people (we reckon) will be spending 11 hours on the 11c bus, photographing, recording, blogging, drawing, mapping, writing about the experience. You’ll be able to watch some of the action on the web as it happens. There are few rules, we won’t be together (unless by chance we meet) and we’ve not divvied up tasks. This will be a random, personal,...
