Beeb big boys in Brum! For a bit anyway...

It's been a fun week

The BBC came to town; about time too. Well, yes, I know there is a much shrunken BBC here already, but this was important national network activity. So a load of network types swept in to be all networky and relevant at the BBC Music Awards on Thursday afternoon at the NEC, oops, sorry, Genting Arena. 

They made a big of a fuss about this. I'm glad they did, and glad they're coming back in 2016, but, really, this is a wannabe version of the Brits: international acts there to shift product in an identikit concrete hangar. Who gets most out of this? More on this whole process later. 

The upside of the week was a lot of local action. And as well as the music events, some old radio hands got gongs. Nice.

John Paul White, Victories at Sea, Oxjam, This is Tmrw. When bands promote....

14 bands, lots of local action, starts in the afternoon, runs till late.
Get there early, or you'll miss two days of good stuff and up and comers.

Poster from the great Lewes Heriot. Don't nick it. 

We're closing on this year's All Years Leaving two-day indie-alt festival at the Hare and Hounds. The team behind it, This Is Tmrw, have significantly expanded activities of late. They have a brand. They have an image. They have lovely posters which are regularly nicked before they can do their job - take a look at them and you'll see why. This is Tmrw aren't exactly making money, but the hope is that their operation can wash its face. 

John-Paul White has been with the team for five out of their seven years. He plays in Victories at Sea, who are featured in this year's All Years Leaving. Victories At Sea are growing steadily. It looks like they're going to sidle into the next West Midlands video top 50 come February. Decent video numbers apart – and getting these is a considerable achievement – the songs Victories At Sea deliver are pleasingly reminiscent of classic New Romantic post punk pop – without the dreadful mannered vocals. Reminiscent, but not too close. And that puts the band in a good place, in their own field.

JP is very clear about This is Tmrw's founder, Matt Beck. He stepped in because a lot of bands were bypassing Birmingham in favour of, say, Wolverhampton, where Wolves Civic was doing splendid business. Through Matt, Foals came to Brum to do their first local gig at the tiny Sunflower Lounge.

“A couple of years later, we were booked – my band at the time – were booked, to support The Rascals (at the time serious indie contenders). I was impressed. How did they get a band like that to play the Sunflower Lounge? And the next night they were off to support Arctic Monkeys at Alexandra Place or somewhere like that. How does that work?”

One thing led to another, and JP started going to more and more gigs, including indie-alt DJ gigs with Matt.

“Preceding that, the only promoters I knew of in Birmingham had been Rob and Jack at Zoot, who were becoming more and more successful with Editors, and didn't have time to promote, and Arthur Tapp at the Jug of Ale. As a musician, I was wondering who's going to take the city forward?

"In 2009, I was running Oxjam with Nicola Toms, and booking all the bands.As Matt had been running This is Tmrw for two years, I asked him to help out. Matt did that, and he brought a pal, Tom Hopkins, along. So I came on board after that. And last year John Fell of Goodnight Lenin came on board as well. And that's where the festival idea came from.

As promoters, you've developed a very distinctive style. Lovely posters.

"Lewes Herriott – he also plays, in Johnny Foreigner... Matt's known him for years. He never used to be in a band.

Ah but there's a long and honourable tradition of graphic artists who also play in bands – people like Hunt Emerson. Do those posters get nicked a lot?

"Yeah – it's expensive. We've encouraged Lewes to exhibit his work. People really like to collect them.

Pity they do that before the gig. You could have a sideline – downloadable images, print to order reproductions... There is an established market for classic posters, especially if you've got prestige names who then go on to be monsters. Look at those classic posters for the Fillmore West from the 60s, with Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Steve Miller, Grateful Dead, Santana – they were all local bands on the Bay area at the time. And those posters still sell.


Let's talk about Victories at Sea. Your videos are really nice – but the band aren't in them. You're not featured. Why?

"Budget! Those are all made using Creative Commons footage. We do appear on one, but it's very stylised. We thought that was better than shooting something ropey on a smartphone. Not that there aren't some very decent videos made that way.

I gather that the goal is not to make money. The goal is to break even.

"If we do well at a show, it goes into the pot. So we can put together a bigger offer to get a bigger band.

But there's a point beyond which you can't be idealistic. If you want to grow This Is Tmrw as an organisation, you can't go on doing this part time, just like you can't go on doing a band part-time past a certain point.

"I still generally regard myself as more of a musician than a promoter. So that's a question I would leave more to Matt. Ultimately, if I wasn't a musician, I'd like to do this full-time. And we do know people in other cities who do do this full time. It's still difficult to break even. We do a lot of good, but it's still difficult. We have some very fiercely regular people who come to our gigs.

"They come to the whole gig. A lot of people don't realise that as promoters, we like to work with theme, so every band has its place; they're there to be seen. It's like a club thing.

You miss an awful lot if you come in late. Like those acts that might have opened last year... and then bingo! Look what they've done now.

"But people still say, oh, they played a festival this time last year, and they can't have been any good if they were so far down the bill. They don't understand how it works!"   

Links
This is Tmrw 
All Years Leaving Facebook page
Lewes Heriot
Victories At Sea

See more posts on promoters and venues on Radio To Go

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The Beat goes on. And on. And on. Three different ways.

UPDATE: A revised and expanded version of this post 

is included in the Radio To Go ebook, Survivors 

It's complicated. We're now living in a universe where three, count 'em, three Beats are clattering, rattling, skanking, twisting and crawling.

Everett and his cohort of Mighty Mighty local Bosstones. Photo by Horseman

Dave Wakeling, a founder member of the original Beat, lives in California, and leads The English Beat. Fellow Beat founder Ranking Roger leads his brand of The Beat at home, and Everett Morton, the original drummer, has just announced dates for his band, Beat Goes Bang. 

Time for a chat with Everett, to go with this blog's existing posts on Dave and Roger. you'll find links for those at the bottom of this post. There's clearly a bit of history here. I wasn't planning to dig too deep into the feelings that boil up over a thirty year professional association. But I did... just a bit. 

The immediate question that springs to mind is: leaving Dave's US-based operation aside, is there room for two Beats in the UK, and what sort of musical differentiation will there be?

Boat To Row: on tour in May, back at Moseley Folk in August, new songs to unveil, and national airplay

The May 2013 Boat To Row tour poster

Boat To Row have been sculling through peaceful waters for some time now. But it hasn't been plain sailing (and that's quite enough boat gags). Time to talk managers, repertoire, accosting national DJs on the street... 

Two or three years back, Boat To Row opened for Goodnight Lenin at a packed Hare and Hounds, rammed with GNL’s mates. That BTR line-up played an understated but highly effective set, swiftly followed up with some early material online, much of which is still current.

This band is astonishingly calm, collected and at ease. They're good company. For all that, there’s been a hefty turnover of musicians, but the current line-up seems stable. And there’s a really rather attractive tour coming up at the end of the month – the Birmingham gig packs in the wonderful Chris Tye, the fast-rising and very appealing Cannon Street and at least four other acts, on top of Boat To Row's headlining slot. And two days ago Moseley Folk confirmed that they will appear on the first day of this year's festival.. . 

And beneath all that sunny affable calm, there’s a good deal of judicious thinking going on.

Don't You Point That Thing At Me Pal! #3: Ian Dunn talks music photography

Erica Knockalls, Wonderstuff, 2012

In the third of this blog's snappers stories, Ian Dunn talks about the ins and outs of kit, his love of music, moshpit etiquette, favourite venues and more.

Ian Dunn runs Principle Photography. He's one of maybe half a dozen local snappers you'll see regularly hoovering up images at venues around the Midlands and beyond. And like many of his peers, he has a passion for music and the scene that supports it, as you'll see if you read down the page.

But you may not see him at all. Ian works very unobtrusively. Gets in, gets the shots, gets out. He's a stickler for that definite and precise code of collaboration that he and others observe as they go about their business.

Even if you haven't seen him at work, you'll most likely have seen the results of his work. If you're at all interested in local music, his site is worth a visit.

We met up for this blog piece a few weeks back. And, as you'd expect from a rock snapper, we kicked off talking about... Opera.

The Hare and Hounds - the threat is BACK

UPDATE: This story has not died down. There's been huge response to this post, and a lot of fresh coverage in local media (BBC WM, the Birmingham Post, Birmingham Mail (with a terrific comment from John Mostyn, which you can also read here), Phil Parkin via Chamberlain Files, along with much Tweeting and Facebookery). There is a huge groundswell of protest against this. And as yet, no statement or explanation has emerged from Birmingham City Council to explain why they suddenly reversed their previous decision.

Birmingham City Council Planning Committee mysteriously and unilaterally reverses its decision to protect the Hare and Hounds. And they say there's no appeal.

Yesterday, I and hundreds of others who had voiced concerns to Birmingham City Council's Planning and Regeneration office, got emails saying the Planning Officer has reversed the council’s decision to oppose a property development right next to the Hare and Hounds venue. 

Five things I learned this year

The Radio To Go 2012 review part 1: You can learn a lot from your blog's figures. 

Clicker is a freebie app in the Apple store

The total pageview count at Radio To Go clicked past 40,000 this week: mainly people checking out the 1EYE / Del Camino post.

I'm pleased. I launched the blog in 2007 to plug my radio consult business. A regular topic was how local radio and local music can do good things for each other. But as radio shrank - four years of systematic merging of local radio into national 'brands' - I found myself writing more and about my other great passion: music. Preferably fresh,  honest and local.

Up to Christmas 2011, blog page views were tiny: less than 9000 in four years. But this time last year, at the Destroyers’ Brum Christmas party, it struck me that the radio posts were now almost irrelevant. On the other hand, here I was, watching a band that people care about; much more interesting, and very different. And that's what put me on a new path. Thank you, Louis, Paul, and company. 

So this past year, I've focussed much more on music, and things have changed - a lot. Now it's the end of the year, so here's a two-part 2012 review, starting with how people have used this blog. I’ve learned a lot.

The Hare and Hounds: Keep On Running!

Towards the end of 2012, the Hare and Hounds came under threat, again. The problem was, once again, property developers planning to run up flats right next to a cherished music venue. 

People rallied round. Gaffer Adam Regan was interviewed, petitions signed, and on Thursday 21st December BCC Planning Committee voted to OPPOSE the planning application. But this post, written while the venue was under threat, is well worth re-visiting.

The Hare and Hounds is a great little music venue in boho King’s Heath. Two upstairs rooms, good PA, decent staging, staff who know what they’re doing, a great booking policy with a strong local bias, and drinks at pub prices. It’s been around as a music venue longer than most of us have been on this planet. When I was a baby rock DJ on BRMB, in the 70s (gulp), the Hare was a fixture on the gig guides I read out at the time; it was going long before then. I have been to more gigs at the Hare than any other venue in Birmingham. 

Now it could be compromised. It is essential that the Hare keeps on running. We need our venues, especially those that take a sympathetic view of new talent. Especially those that aren't part of some soul-less corporate chain. A music scene as good as ours needs the right platforms, and the Hare is definitely one of those. Whether you live in King's Heath, or indeed anywhere this blog reaches, you can help.