Birmingham, so much to answer for.

Kev tasked me with writing something about music from Birmingham. I however wanted to shoe horn the phrase "celebrity lezzas" into this post to capitalise on popbitchs claims and drive traffic here, lets hope this cynical stab works, back to the blog... Since my last post and now I have been to Leeds Festival (attempted to write something approaching a review, it was too big a task so in a nutshell, The Walkmen, The King Blues, NOFX and Biffy Clyro were all fantastic, The Drums, not so). I also have been to Las Vegas and celebrated my 40th birthday, seeing Biffy Clyro in a small club whilst I was there. None of these however are related in the slightest to Birmingham.

Birmingham and it surrounds famously spawned the likes of Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Slade. Slade weren’t though. Slade were Black Country and in Noddy’s case, Walsall. Zeppelin were in a loose way and Sabbath definitely were, but lets not be picky here. Lets not linger on the most famous sons, lets move away from Aston and West Brom and dip our toe into the murky waters of Birmingham Canal, like a Cliff Richard driven speedboat from Take Me High.

Cliff paid homage to God’s City in his 1973 film Take Me High, his last film and as I write Sir Cliff celebrates his 70th birthday. In Take Me High like the dead horse he has been flogging since Daddy’s Home so he sells the locals the Brum burger. Alliteration it seems were key or it may have been a totally different story and ended up being a Lincoln Burger. Take Me High is a pretty good film if my memory serves me well. I think Channel 4 were doing one of those seasons where rock stars give that acting lark a stab and therefore trotted out the excellent That’ll Be The Day, Slade In Flame and Take Me High. I suspect this all predated Spice World.



Take Me High

Cliff aside the city that gave us Fuzzbox also gave us The Nightingales, Robert Lloyd lead singer and constant of The Nightengales is a Cannock lad, but lets not let geography get in the way after all if that was the case we may have to stop PWEI, The Wonderstuff and Neds Atomic Dustbin being claimed as sons of the second city.
Robert Lloyd from the ashes of The Nightingales formed the utterly fantastic but massively overlooked New Four Seasons, I briefly loved this band as a spotty teen. John Peel played a track that I recorded late one night and I think I wore that tape out. At the time I hadn’t heard or heard of The Nightingales and I didn’t really care. Andy Lloyd of that self same band, Wikipedia tells me he is a member of Birmingham mainstays, Little Red Schoolhouse. Little Red Schoolhouse I can pin down as a band that have been going at least 20 years, if Wikipedia is to be believed as I saw them once in the Sir Colin Campbell pub in Coventry, supporting a Telford based band. Little Red Schoolhouse were I am sure excellent, banks mild has clouded my memory of their performance and the name of the Telford band that supported them. I think it was the band that later became PTR. Halcyon days.



Something Nice by Robert Lloyd and The New Four Seasons

Another son of Birmingham and a band that had a lasting impression on me was the band Mighty Mighty. I bought their album, Sharks at the back end of the 80’s. (I have a memory of being in Birmingham Virgin Megastore queing up to buy Sharks and seeing Miles Hunt in front of me clutching a copy of eight legged groove machine on the day of its release. This may not actually have happened). The purchase of Sharks and importantly an address to write to Mighty Mighty on the back meant I had a clear opportunity within the price of a cheap day return to stalk a band. I need to make this clear, I didn’t. Moseley wasn’t on a train route. Sharks though contained so many great great songs, Law, Maisonnette and the superb, Biddy Baxter. You really should listen to the latter (not that it can be found on Youtube). You really should listen to Law as well, its what the term, “stomping bassline” was created for.



Law by Mighty Mighty

Lawrence, (slaps head remembering the name of the Telford band who supported Little Red Schoolhouse) Lawrence who was Felt, who was Denim, who was Go Kart Mozart was from Birmingham and now it seems, again according to Wikipedia, resides in a place I pass by twice a day, Water Orton. Go Kart Mozart release records on Lawrences own label, West Midlands Records. The sound of young Brum. (I added that). Felt, Lawrences first notable incarnation were signed to Creation and first came to my attention from the super cheap Creation compilation and soundtrack for the live shows, Doing It For The Kids. I own 2 copies of this 1988 album, both jump in different places. Felt perform in my opinion their best track in Ballad Of The Band. An excellent track it is too, Lawrence didn’t really better it.



Ballad Of The Band by Felt

Materially speaking Lawrence went on to form Denim after Felt’s dissolution. Denim had more of a glam rock edge, but a lot of bands were doing that then. Their impact on me was a single single. My loss is Water Ortons gain.



Middle Of The Road by Denim

Finally we can’t leave Birmingham without mentioning one of the citys best sons, not Musical Youth, Duran Duran, the Moody Blues or wizard, not The Twang, The Editors, The Streets or Ocean Colour Scene. Dexy’s are the best export the city has produced and undo all that UB40, the aforementioned OCS and The Twang have subjected me to.

Dexy’s Midnight Runners formed within the B postcode and the mish mash of sounds that make up their albums reflected their home city. I dont care much for Come On Eileen, not to say it isn’t one of the greatest pop songs ever written. My favourite is a twelve minute soul screamer found on Don’t Stand Me Down. This Is What She’s Like is as paranoid as it gets. Rowland is a very honest man to allow this to go on any album and at over 12 minutes, you may tire a little. You shouldn’t though as it takes you places that a full LP will take you, like NOFX’s Decline, its more a sum of its parts. Dexy’s finest hour not bettered in my opinion until the reformation song and anger inducing track, Manhood. I think I once had a brief conversation with my co-blogger about this track once and he swore.



Disappointingly not the full version.

This is What She’s Like by Dexy’s Midnight Runners.



Manhood by Dexy’s Midnight Runners

Birmingham, the home of Napalm Death, the home of The Beat, but also thankfully the home of Novak. Novak really deserve their own article.



Rapunzel by Novak

Fandom

Should it come as any surprise that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, unelected but leader of Iran, is a Chris de Burgh fan? What is it about that news that makes it non-revelatory? It's equally as non-revelatory as finding out that Robert Mugabe is a Cliff Richard fan. This one can be explained by the relentless do anything it takes approach to cling on to fading but hopeless power and success approach taken by both. How about Gaddafi and Clapton? That one is less obvious, but all the others are explained by clicking the links above. Gaddafi Jnr is a Beyonce fan.

We like to appeal to all, so this one is for the Colonel.


Come back next week for news on which biscuits are the chosen snack of UN peacekeeping officials.

The History of Music 19Seventy Something to The Present Day - Part One

This morning I was reading an article on pre-writing activities for EFL classes. The general idea is that you do a series of things before the actual writing, in order to make it easier yet more rewarding for your students. A good example for this is simply asking your students to 'write a story', to which they reply 'About what? I can't think of anything!' Whereas, compare this to playing them pieces of music, and asking them to decide what kind os scene in a movie this might be the soundtrack to, and they are off and running with a bag of ideas.

One of many ideas with music in the classroom included asking people to write a kind of personal music history, as placing a song in a time and a place tends to bring back lots of memories. You hear a snippet of the song in your head and the memories come flooding back, great for 'jumping off points' for a piece of writing. What did you listen to when you were a kid? What music was in the house? What did your parents listen to? What was your older brother or sister listening to? What about at school? Who were the heroes of the day? And do you and your loved one have that special song too?

Does it work though? As a poor man's muso, with anorak tendencies, I decided to put it to the test. Obviously, I took it to the absolute extreme, and rather than making a note of a few songs I liked, I thought I'd map out my entire listening history, just for the hell of it. And, don't you know, the memories did come flowing back. It was interesting to see how much more conservative my tastes have become, which is natural I guess, but also to notice that essentialy, I always go back to the same. The change in formats mean that you lose a lot of stuff along the way. Jesus there was a lot of rubbish, some of which sems to have come full circle and sound almost contemporary again. So, without further ado (it's a real word, look it up), and with links to all the audio rubbish that makes me who I am today, here is the

Official Musical History of Shropshire Lad Birth to 1980

I looked through the pop charts for 1975, but can't remember anything, although the charts from 1976 throw up clear memories, which would make me musically aware at the age of 7. Showaddywaddy's Under The Moon of Love is a clear memory, as are gangs of Teddy Boys in Blackpool on a day out with my grandmother (I thought they were exclusive to Blackpool at the time). Darts popped up in about 1977 and I loved Daddy Cool. The only punk related memory from this time was some talk of 'the lad round the block', who wore a 'bum bag', although I was never really sure what this was (the bitter Darts entry in Wikipedia reads "The band is still in the Top 250 selling list according to the Guinness Book of British Hit Singles. Despite this, and the fact that they remain Britain's best-known doo-wop vocal group, they receive almost no coverage compared to other doo-wop revival groups of the period such as Showaddywaddy").

I guess we also start with the music in the house, I certainly did. There were plenty of records to choose from including Elvis, (who now lives in Argentina, and may well have gone to the World Cup Final mentioned below), and, though I hate to say it, Cliff Richard's 'Thank You Very Much' live album with The Shadows got a lot of airplay in our living room around 1978. You can't really go wrong with Willie & The Hand Jive or Apache, can you? Also in the rack was Neil Diamond's 'Hot August Night', and his throaty "Good Lord!" at the start of the album got a good airing. It was the heaviest piece of rock in the house, apart from the rocks my Dad brought back from geology trips. I'm not making this up.

Of course, 1978 was the year of Grease, and all those singles seemed to dominate Top of the Pops for ever. For ever is a long time when you're 9. I also had a World Cup Final Birthday Party, and we saw Argentina beat Holland 3-1 (and the fixed 6-0 against Peru before???). I'd end up in a bar in Buenos Aires 25 years later, watching Birmingham v Arsenal with my brother.

1976 may have been the coming of punk, sweeping away the old guard, but it went unnoticed by me apart from an unsuspecting DJ playing 'Frigging in the Rigging' (B Side of the 'Somethin Else' cover) at a Park Junior School disco 3 years later. You'd think the title may have given him a clue to why he'd had so many requests for it. The year it all changed for me was 1979 (we watched The Waltons on BBC2 while we ate our tea), as in the same year up popped The Specials, 'Oliver's Army' by Elvis Costello, and the Smokey Robinson cover of 'Tears of a Clown' by The Beat. This was music by serious people in odd suits. Of course, I was equally as interested in Racey and 'Some Girls'.

The Jam's 'Going Underground', The Specials 'Too Much Too Young', Dexy's 'Geno', The Vapours 'Turning Japanese', all came out in 1980, and were all purchased in John Menzies in Wellington by the future fat Shropshire Lad. But, beating all of them hands down? 'Midnite Dynamos' by Matchbox.

This period was also notable for K-Tel's timeless classic, 'Axe Attack', surely the finest metal compilation to find its way into Haygate Drive. Just reading the track list gives you shivers. It was the music your mates big brother listened to. It was ROCK. Apart from Aerosmith's 'Sweet Emotion', it's music for 12 year olds. If you were still listening to The Scorpions years later you were a bit soft in the head, or coming out of east Berlin. Even then I thought Iron Maiden plainly ridiculous, although you can't knock an album too much that has Rainbow's 'All Night Long' and ACDC's 'Highway to Hell'.