BRMB: 45 years ago today, a station came out to play

Sedate? Pah. I was expecting big fun, tidal waves of emotion and mawkish sentiment. Why? Well some of us old originals at BRMB Radio threw a bash last Friday for staff members, to mark the 45^th anniversary of the launch date, February 19^th 1974. That's today. And the day after Friday's bash...I felt distinctly fragile. 

I'm one of the BRMB originals. They'd hired me the previous November, along with the great John Howard; we were the first jocks on board. John left, quite early, to make his way to Radio 4. I stuck around for twenty years, ten on them on air as, mainly, a rock jock.

What's The Product? Facebook tricks to consider

I'm not a Facebook fan anymore. But I still check it daily. Others? Some NEED it. Still others USE it - really, really, use it. 

Young users are deserting Facebook. I persist, like many grey-hairs: I still want rich, funny, original posts.

I read of milestones and music gigs. I'm in groups for old railways, radio stuff, local history, like that. I'm a nerd, and I don't care.

I use it to announce my milestones, or to plug blog posts like this. If I score a reaction, I get that buzz. Facebook trades on people's neediness; I'm no different. Call me a hypocrite. I still don't care.

Parish-pump Facebook stuff works. But as people shift elsewhere to talk to their pals, Facebook is increasingly about reaching potential punters and markets. Put brutally, we're product. That in itself is interesting.

Half a century on the road: the unstoppable Mr Burton

50 years of classy guitar

You know how it is. You wander into a boozer and there's a band on. Old guys, enjoying themselves. Stripped down PA, maybe not even a stage. Seems fun, seems harmless. Nice to have a bit of live stuff while you drink.

Until you pay attention to what's going down. It may not be radical cutting edge stuff, but, hey, sometimes, those old guys catch you unawares. Comfortable as you like, not remotely fashionable, but they can play. And if you're very lucky, after the lessons learned, and the chops polished by years of live work, those old boys can just... knock you out.

Making it pay: consider being a hard bastard; definitely get a lawyer.

2013: the Steve Harris memorial gig      
 Photo from Rob Campbell      

Four re-mortgages and counting – but Madhouse's Roy Davis is cautiously optimistic

At Madhouse Rehearsals last month, Jaci Davis startled me by revealing that she and husband Roy had had to re-mortgage their house four times to keep the business afloat. I've known Roy since his Shy days: late period NWOBHM. They had a pretty good run. Since then, I've seen Roy and Jaci build up their business against the odds. Lots of PR and charm; lots of graft. But they haven't exactly got rich.

That said, the place thrums. Twelve busy rehearsal rooms, a recording studio, two venues, two record labels, a Rock club night that promoters would kill for. A diverse roster of clients rehearsing and recording. And like all good music workplaces, it's got a calm and business-like vibe. 

So I'm curious. Let's start with what Jaci told me: you've actually re-mortgaged your house four times to keep thise place afloat? 

Roy Davis: We have. When we started, we re-mortgaged to raise the money. As things went along, we need to re-mortgage again, to get more money... and again... every time we needed money to expand or build, we re-mortgaged. 

Casino: Fourteen years of one step forward, two steps back.

A revised and expanded version of this post 

is included in the new Radio To Go ebook, Survivors 

Casino are still swinging. Their number might be coming up. At last. 

Photo from Jo Ostermeyer

For someone who has taken way too many false turns, who has run into endless broken promises, who’s gone back to square one far too often, Adam Zindani is remarkably chipper. Casino, one of the two bands he plays in, command great local loyalty. They deserve it, they're a fine rock band. But their story brutally illustrates just how much the record industry has changed around them during their fourteen years. From mega-deals to fighting to hold on to artistic control and self-production – it’s all there.

In many ways Casino are carrying on the great Birmingham rock tradition, even if the band members weren't even born when the original 70s metal monsters roamed the land. Strong songs, good players, they look the part: all this has attracted regular interest from big music biz players … who then, regularly, don't follow through.

I’m interested in their durability. When the record industry was imploding in the face of web competition, they threw a lot of bands overboard, destroying careers at random. They did that to Casino, several times. In response, the band has been jumping hurdles just to stand still, for a long, long time. 

The oldest Bitch in Birmingham

Rich Bitch studios. What kind of name is that? For starters, a pretty long-standing one

Update: Saturday 6th Dec sees a Rich Bitch Anniversary gig at the Crossing Birmingham.  Rob may even strap on a guitar again. Lots of star guests from the studio's history. Buy tickets here.
 

In the Lobby: Rich Bitch's
very own Manikin Pis

When you chart local music history, artists get most attention. Maybe a bit goes to venues, a tiny bit to the fans. But we don’t hear stories about the other guys: the road crew, the PA boys, the promoters who put up gigs, the lighting boys. All of them enterprises that both underpin and depend on the business of local music. 

Then there are rehearsal studios. I like rehearsal studios. They mix professionalism and knowledge with a constant stream of new young talent. Sure, there's muso ego and grandstanding, but there's also the chance for of ideas to flow and mix, for contacts to be made. These places smell of hope, potential, aspiration. And work and sweat - in a good way..

Here’s a story about the oldest rehearsal studio complex in the city, which also houses its oldest continuously working recording studio, with a client list that reads like a rock Who's Who: Rob Bruce's Rich Bitch. It's an odd name to work with in 2013, but we'll get to that. 

The Redbeards From Texas started a joke. It very nearly got serious.

A tale of fake beards, real success, and pencil pushing bureaucrats.

A long time ago, a South Birmingham boozer, the Selly Park Tavern, was hosting a radio gathering: lots of people from West Midlands stations, many no longer in existence. 

Onstage: The Redbeards From Texas. A seriously fun band that, later, came this close to breaking though; a whim that almost, almost made it. We’ll get to that. But that night, in front of the assembled might of Midlands radio, they were playing for laughs. They pulled people up onstage to sing with them. 

That was fun... until they fingered me. Ooops. I didn’t know the words to Born In The USA, so I bawled the chorus a couple of times, and retreated in confusion. Oh, the humiliation, and all in front of a roomful of my peers. Bastards. 

If you google ‘Redbeards From Texas’ now, thirty years after their glory days, you’ll find a surprising amount of material – videos, a discography and reminiscences. This was a band that made a mark. Craig Fenney (aka Bud Weiser), has a ton of stories after the jump.

Joanne Shaw Taylor: Black Country blues. From Detroit.

JST's latest CD - live, one take stuff

In November, a Detroit-based blues guitarist comes to Birmingham Town Hall. Nothing particularly unusual in that, of course, we get touring US musicians all the time. But this one’s different. Joanne Shaw Taylor is a Brit, born in the Black Country, raised in Solihull and elsewhere across the West Midlands, and she’s got a ton of local connections. .

Now, she’s based stateside, by no means the only Brit to have moved countries to further a career. More recently, Davy Knowles, from tiny Port St Mary in the Isle of Man, relocated to the US to further his blues career, while Birmingham’s Toy Hearts – familiar to Joanne from their sets at the Roadhouse in Stirchley, South Birmingham - are currently in the middle of a very extended spell playing Western Swing and Bluegrass and working out of Austin, Texas.

It's not the first time that British musos have taken their versions of USA music back to the mother ship. Rewarding though it may be, it’s not the easiest of paths to travel.

Ian Danter: National sports radio guy, Birmingham muso, point to make...

Radio person actually makes good, literate, listenable classic rock album shock horror. Cheek! 

It’s not often that someone in his mid-forties, not known for his music, delivers a debut album. It’s unusual when the album turns out to be really rather good. 

More unusual still: this is 2013, and it's a Classic Rock album, and the man who made it is known for spouting about football on national radio, after a career start in Birmingham. But he started out as, and still is, a local muso: Ian Danter. 

Ian is affable and good-natured about all this, despite some carping. Carping? Oh yes. Rock,  like some other music genres, can be stupidly tribal. Me? I’m impressed. He’s done a good job.

The bell tolls for Kerrang Radio

Sad news - another local radio service exits the Midlands. 

On June 3rd 2013, Bauer Media, the second largest UK Radio group, announced that they were taking Kerrang! off their West Midlands FM regional frequency, to replace it from Friday 14th June with the newly acquired Planet Rock, previously only on digital and online. Planet Rock comes from London, so yet more good West Midlands radio people will hit the scrapheap. And it’s bad news for local musicians who lose another outlet sympathetic to their efforts. 

Kerrang will limp on as a youth-positioned voice-tracked rock service on digital, with a much-reduced on-air staff, delivered from London. There is one really interesting angle to all this. Planet Rock had a smaller reach than Kerrang. The station has never made money, and its previous owner unloaded it last year. Planet Rock, if truth be told, had a considerably smaller profile that Bauer was hitherto able to give to Kerrang with cross-platform positioning. 

So why kill the bigger brand? 

Revisiting Moseley Shoals live after 17 years: Ocean Colour Scene's Simon Fowler

UPDATE: A revised and expanded version of this post 

is included in the new Radio To Go ebook, Survivors 

What makes a band go large? What makes them last – albeit with the odd hiatus – over twenty years, despite managerial problems and some pretty solid contractual brick walls blocking them from playing and recording?

When you try to tot up those Birmingham bands who went REALLY BIG for a sustained period in the past twenty years of so, you get quite a short list. But right up at the top of that list you’ll find Ocean Colour Scene. 

Interestingly, they're still going, with much of the original line-up. It's an gripping tale of solid songwriting and playing, battling through obstacles, and coming good. Good luck? I wouldn't say that.. Good judgement? Yup, give them that. Hard work? Without a doubt. Good friends along the way? Yes - they played a big part.

As far as most people were concerned, Ocean Colour Scene - OCS - emerged (and how) in the mid-90s. But in fact they were already a big noise in Brum at the end of the eighties. Then it all went quiet, with individual members forming impressive alliances which stood them in good stead when the time came for their proper breakthrough.

Never mind Led Zeppelin, Judas Priest and Black Sabbath. Where's the New Rock right now?

It's fine to gaze mistily back to 70s classic rock, but things have moved on in 40 years. There's lots to dig into. New acts demonstrate huge demand... and score lousy exposure. 

Trevor Burton's AC30.  Photo courtesy Roy Williams

Back in the 70s, Rock and Soul ruled in the West Midlands - and everywhere else. Lots of fine bands, pretty much everywhere, seven days a week. Powered by Zeppelin, Sabbath, Traffic, ELO and Priest, that was what the West Midlands was known for.

That was a long time ago. Now, alongside Rock, we produce  Reggae, Ska, Dance Hall, Jazz, Urban, World, Folk, Indie, Fusion, hugely inventive Singer-Songwriters… and every possible crossover and mashup of the above. 

Of course, this reflects a huge demographic shift; a vastly changed make-up of the people who create the music. 

But it’s odd: we’ve got this huge cross-cultural ferment going on. It's nothing new. Rock, in its earliest days was part of that. Now it's really not. Rock’s still there; it never went away; but it's out on its own. That said, Rock has a huge, huge audience; but media recognition is thin on the ground; most rock magazines have folded, and Rock radio can hardly be said to be healthy. 

So... where is Rock these days?