Old folks boogie: astute business by Ricky Cool

Wander into Broad Street's Brasshouse at the right time, and you're in for a treat. A free treat. 

    Photo: Birmingham Post 

It's weird. Broad Street Birmingham is the last place I'd expect to see decent live music. The place swapped Ronnie Scott's jazz venue for a lap-dancing club, just when Birmingham was trying to get City Of Culture. The place is full of loud chain pubs, industrial dance joints, karaoke bars and some very iffy catering. You go there to drink, lots.

As the night wears on, Broad Street becomes Purgatory Street: shrieking hen parties, testosterone morons in sports cars and quad bikes, pissed-up conventioneers and lads on the pull. Buses don't stop there now on Friday and Saturday nights. And just watch where you put your feet.

But on a Sunday lunchtime, once they've hosed it down and swept it up, it's a whole different place. In the Brasshouse, you can now catch, free, some of this city's most experienced bands, playing to an up for it, older, crowd. These aren't lame covers outfits who don't 'get' the music they serve up. These are players.

It's all good. And it's all been set up by local muso veteran, Ricky Cool.

Mellotrons: the men who (still) make them

Chains, tape loops, springs, lots of odd moving parts, and a lot of love. Two gentlemen boomers keep a key sound of Progrock alive.

If you're any age at all, you'll have heard the mellotron. The Moody Blues used it constantly. There it is at the start of the Beatles' Strawberry Fields Forever; it's all over the White Album. King Crimson fans? There it is at the Court of the Crimson King.

The mellotron sounds... weird. That's partly its appeal. Inside, it's a mishmash of bicycle chains, springs, recording tape and, depending on the age of the machine, more or less tech wizardry. It was built in Streetly, a suburb of North Birmingham which can't decide whether it's dead posh or dead rough. There's a blue plaque marking the original factory site in Aldridge Road. That was nearly fifty years ago. Now, the resurrected Streetly Electronics, creators of the first mellotron, have a thriving business. They make new mellotrons; they fix old ones; they even sell digital samples to add to your range of keyboard sounds.

The miracle is that it was invented in the first place; a second miracle is that mellotron use continues to thrive. 

Radio's oldies but goodies: who decides what we hear?

What perspective do 35 year olds use when programming 50 year old songs on the radio?

First things first: this post has been triggered by an invite from old pals Mean Street Dealers. They were also known as Hooker and School Sports, but, as Mean Street Dealers, they truly were one of Brum’s finest bands in the mid-70s. And, like a lot of excellent bands, they kind of got swept away by punk towards the end of that decade. Punk, for all its early DIY spontaneity, soon became  yet another marketing device for the music industry. This made life hard for bands who had been knocking on the door for more than a couple of years. Remember all those outfits that suddenly had to pretend that they couldn’t actually play?

But that’s another story. Mean Street Dealers could play then (and how), and now they are planning a comeback gig, on Friday 8th July at the Asylum in Hockley. Here’s the reunion gig info in more detail. I will dj at the event; I'm really looking forward to it. And that’s started me thinking for this blog post.