Birmingham
Thomas H. Green
In 2012 Dexys returned with their fourth album, and first in 27 years, One Day I’m Going to Soar. It was a concept piece, original and funny, chewing over the volatility of love, containing wonderful set-pieces, most especially a trio of songs at its centre (“I’m Thinking of You”, “I’m Always Going to Love You” and “Incapable of Love”) which humorously excoriated the fickleness of romance.Their latest, is similarly constructed, albeit around a different theme. Anyone who connected with One Day I’m Going to Soar will likely find much to enjoy. Dexys mainstay Kevin Rowland gives us a suite of Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Duran Duran were back in their hometown of Birmingham this weekend for the first time since performing as part of the open ceremony of the 2022 Commonwealth Games and were justly forthright in trumpeting their local history. Even Pinner-born Simon Le Bon was keen to claim his stake, telling the audience a long and convoluted tale about being dubbed an honorary Brummie by UB40’s Ali Campbell 25 years ago.“Ordinary World”, for instance, was introduced by Le Bon stating, “It’s been quite a year. For Duran Duran and Birmingham. The high point was playing the opening of the Commonwealth Games and Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Is it a good idea to work with your spouse? The Way Old Friends Do, a love letter to ABBA tribute bands – which premiered at the Birmingham Rep last month and now visits the Park Theatre in north London – is a joint venture by actor and first-time playwright Ian Hallard and Mark Gatiss, who is both his director and his husband. It’s a comic melodrama about cross-dressing and pop culture – and stars not only Hallard himself, but also Sara Crowe and James Bradshaw (a familiar face and voice to fans of ITV’s Endeavour, where he plays the acid-tongued pathologist).The backstory of Read more ...
Sally Beamish
I was first approached by Quaker Concern for the Abolition of Torture (Q-CAT) in 2016 with the idea of a creating a piece of music to raise awareness of torture – its use worldwide, and the terrible damage it does both to victim and to perpetrator.They had thought of asking me as I am a Quaker myself. I have written several pieces in the past which express views and concerns shared by Quakers – for instance my violin concerto, based on Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, which is a passionate expression of my pacifist beliefs. Knotgrass Elegy, written for the Proms in 2001 with poet Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Somehow or other, fictional representations of the police have become an off-the-cuff index of changing times and evolving values. Dixon of Dock Green’s cops were stern father figures who knew right from wrong and considered it their duty to give villains a clip round the ear. The Sweeney weren’t quite so sure about right and wrong but gave everybody a good kicking anyway, while risking a bollocking from the boss for their blatant rule-bending. Prime Suspect’s DCI Tennison had to battle entrenched sexism in a mostly-male police force. Now, in ITV’s DI Ray, a female Asian police officer has to Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
It was going to be great. Birmingham’s Digbeth Rag Market was hosting 1977’s highest-profile punk festival on 17 July. The Clash were headlining. Also billed were The Heartbreakers, Rich Kids, The Saints, Shagnasty, Stinky Toys, Subway Sect and Tanya Hyde & the Tormentors.Two days before it was meant to happen, the city council cancelled it. A gathering of punks was prevented. Even so, The Clash and the less-lauded Shagnasty came to town and after meeting pissed-off ticket holders went to local venue Barbarella’s to put on an impromptu show. They used equipment borrowed from the band Read more ...
joe.muggs
There’s a period of British club music that deserves to be much better appreciated. Before hardcore and jungle, before the Underworlds and Leftfields and other arena acts, came a generation who were much closer to the most song-based US house music, to considerable success. Between 1988 and 1990 came dazzling records from S’Express, The Beloved, Coldcut’s earliest manifestation, and several Eighties pop acts that evolved with the times: The Style Council, The Blow Monkeys and Boy George with his Jesus Loves You project.Into this milieu came four Brummies known as the Groove Corporation, and Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In 2000, Broadcast’s first album The Noise Made By People entered the UK’s mainstream Top 100 and claimed the top spot on the dance charts. Three years later, their second album Haha Sound was in the Top Ten of America’s dance/electronic charts. It also went Top Five on the UK’s dance charts.Although this confirms Birmingham's Broadcast weren’t necessarily outsiders, their third album Tender Buttons did not chart. By this point, in 2005, they had slimmed down from a five-piece to core members James Cargill and Trish Keenan. Tender Buttons was followed by the 2009 collaboration album Broadcast Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Resentment Is Always Seismic – A Final Throw Of Throes is not so much a brand new album from Napalm Death, but a collection of tunes that were recorded during, but left over from, the sessions for their last disc, Throes Of Joy In The Jaws Of Defeatism. That said, there is nothing in its grooves to suggest that it might be a mere ragbag of off-cuts, put together to fulfill contractual obligations.Still powered by the righteous fury that has sustained them on their previous 16 albums, these Birmingham noise merchants are in no danger of calming down or mellowing out just yet. From opening Read more ...
Veronica Lee
There was a time when UK pantomime was heavily populated by Australian soap stars; rather late in the day Jason Donovan – formerly known as Scott from Neighbours – makes his panto debut, as Count (careful how you pronounce that, Jason) Ramsay of Erinsborough.Playing against type in a baddie role, he acquits himself well in this thoroughly entertaining spectacle with several nods to vaudeville (including circus acts in the line-up), but his fans might wish he played a more substantial part in proceedings.It’s well into the second act before he has much to do. In a paper-thin plot, Donovan's Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The picture seen above doesn’t have quite the same resonance as Art Kane’s 1958 shot A Great Day in Harlem which brought 57 American jazz musicians in front of his lens, but it is nonetheless significant. Here, in 1971, is an evocative, unique record of a moment in West Midlands music history. The shot was taken at the opening of Heavy Head Records, a Sparkhill record shop run by Move/Electric Light Orchestra drummer Bev Bevan. The shop was formerly a toy store run by his mother.In the front, from left to right, are Rick Price, Ozzy Osbourne, Raymond Froggatt, Jeff Lynne, Bev Bevan, Tony Read more ...
Richard Bratby
As the conductor of English National Opera’s 2018 production of Porgy and Bess, there can’t be many maestros in the UK who can currently match John Wilson’s knowledge of that extraordinary score. And there are surely none who can rival Wilson’s understanding of – and passion for – the work of the great interwar Broadway and Hollywood arrangers (he built an entire orchestra around them, after all). Which is one way of saying that if you’re looking for an interpreter of Robert Russell Bennett’s 1942 “Symphonic Picture” of Gershwin’s opera, Wilson pretty much covers all the bases. So Read more ...