Is just one of the Brum-related ephemera to be found in collage on the booklet of the new Lilac Time collection ‘Memory and Desire’. It’s a proper WMPTE Travelcard with him in New Romantic regalia. Other bits include a photo of Washwood Heath, one of the Perry Barr Poly campus, a Kynoch cycles advert, a Library card… see what else you can spot (click through for a bigger pic): And the album is beautiful, even if one track does feature Nigel Kennedy. There’s also news of a film, woo hoo!
Stephen Duffy – Twenty Three Not a proper video, but a great song – and one my dad likes. It is father’s day. June is Birmingham Music Month, so get off your arses and talk Brum Music, make Brum Music, promote Brum Music, listen to Brum Music and have fun with Brum Music. BiNS is showcasing a Brummie Music vid every day in June, The Big Paws had a Brum Music Special (listen here) and you can do whatever you likes…
Stephen ‘Tin Tin’ Duffy – Kiss Me (1985) June is Birmingham Music Month, so get off your arses and talk Brum Music, make Brum Music, promote Brum Music, listen to Brum Music and have fun with Brum Music. BiNS is showcasing a Brummie Music vid every day in June, The Big Paws had a Brum Music Special (listen here) and you can do whatever you likes…
Regular readers may have noticed unstinting praise here for the work of Speechification, and Stephen Duffy (apart from his time with a fat bloke from Stoke). A joy to bring them both together, take it away speechification: Before they were in Duran Duran various Duranies, and Stephen ‘Tin Tin’ Duffy, were The Devils. And they made a famously lost album called ‘Dark Circles’. The musical stuff is interesting but what’s especially nice is to hear a story of an emerging ’scene’; the post-punk, new romantic world of Birmingham. I first got to The Rum Runner after the glory had faded but it still carried the Duran Imprimatur, a message that you could have a glamourous life without being born in Soho. MP3 here. Btw the album isn’t lost as such, I’ve got a copy and you can pick it up at Amazon here.
Over at The Hearing Aid (a well recommended local music blog) we find a link to a band called The Will To Rally (who I think I heard a bit of last week at the Rainbow, but I was well gone by then). They have a song there called ‘I Heart Birmingham’ in which I can’t rightly tell whether they’re being sarcastic in the chorus or the verses. This song reminded me about something I’ve long been musing, does Brum need some kind of anthem? I think it’d be smashing. I think it would be great to have a song that we all loved and could sing, that helped us feel all warm and together inside – these don’t just come out of nowhere tho’, people have to write them. There is a danger, if they’re badly written for them to become laughable – just like this Stoke-on-Trent ‘theme tune’. That said it is possible for songs to cross the divide from fairly trite to meaningful for a body of people – as Flower of Scotland (only from 1967) has. Obviously this is the sort of thing that can’t come from a council, or any community groups – but...
