In the city but not In The City

If this post was enough to cause the organisers of Gigbeth to throw a hissy fit then I may have to go into hiding for what I'm about to say. Inspired by Russ L's post wondering what Gigbeth actually is I realised I had very little idea myself. Having taken a few minutes to look over their website I've come to the conclusion that its one of two things. The cynic in me (which is, lets face it, most of me) struggles to see it as anything other than a media graduate's vanity project designed more to enhance their CV than actually have any impact, but I suppose it could possibly just be the most incompetent attempt to actually start a worthwhile music festival that I could ever have imagined. There are massive problems with every aspect from the initial concept through to the organisation of the event and I now realise why no-one else I know who works outside of the Custard Factory has even heard of it despite this being the third year of the festival.

The most obvious problem is the lineup, there is a complete lack of focus with a few events each from various unrelated genres with not enough of any one type of music to actually attract people to the idea of treating it as a festival and going to several events. I'm sure some of the individual events could attract reasonable crowds (this is being generous, by 'some' I really mean 'three' since other than The Young Knives, Guillemots and Sugarhill Gang there's precious little to attract anyone but hardcore local music fans) but I don't see many people wanting to go to more than one or two things. Of course, this would be near impossible anyway since virtually all the events seem to happen simultaneously with no sign of there being anything happening before 7pm on the Saturday and only the thrilling prospect of two members of the Wonderstuff any earlier on Sunday. Surely one of the main parts of a festival is that you can spend all day watching bands not just go to a normal gig-length event in the evening?

The festival website is also an embarrassment, with links missing all over the place(note how the 'buy tickets' links are all working fine), a blog which redirects you to the main festival site when you try to leave a comment, no detail past a name for most of the events and not even any myspace links for the majority of the bands on the lineup (if they actually get a mention, which quite a lot don't)

Maybe its slightly harsh to compare the event to In The City since Brum is sadly lacking its own Tony Wilson to promote the event but it can't really be helped given that they appear to be attempting to cover the same ground and all I can say is ITC really doesn't need to worry too much about its tagline of "The world's premier new music event" being challenged any time soon. I realise it is far more established but the history page proves it was far superior even in its first year (of course, I can only compare it to this years Gigbeth since there is no mention of the previous events on the Gigbeth site save for some claims that you can watch movies and see photos from them, which I would be very interested to do if only there was an actual link to such a thing)

The waste of potential here is an utter crime, at its basic level a festival based in various locations in Digbeth is a great idea and I sincerely hope Gigbeth will deliver one day, I just wish it could have been this year.

Bohemian Jukebox - 05/08/08

Sadly there was no sign of The Baron at last night's gig so it looks like I actually need to do some sort of review for this one:

Headlining was some cunt with a guitar (or some cunts with instruments, I think it was listed as one guy on the Bohemian Jukebox website but there were several of 'em on stage) Another guy who doesn't deserve a mention by name, or rather isn't worth the effort of checking what his name actually was. I can only assume he was given the headline slot purely on the amount of people he brings along to gigs since his music made Snow Patrol sound exciting. Sadly the people he brought along were just as bad as the arseholes at the Toby Goodshank gig, talking through all the other bands, not giving a shit until their mates were on and then suddenly discovering they could not only clap but cheer, whoop and generally ensure the talentless gimps on stage got the impression they shouldn't just go home and kill themselves.

Mr Plow, probably the world's only country singer named after one of Homer Simpson's business ventures, was the real star of the night. Great voice and fantastic downbeat country music, he mentioned that he was recording a session for Mark Lamarr's radio show on 23rd August which should be worth a listen. I think my housemate managed to collar him for one of the free 7" singles he was giving away after the set, I'll see if I can 'borrow' it and report back (I was too busy getting a quick dose of nicotine after his set, by the time I got back uptstairs they'd already packed up and buggered off - I think they must have caught the headliners soundchecking and realised it was probably a good idea not to be around when they came on)

Sadly the chattering hordes were out in force for Theatre of the Absurd so please bear in mind that this is my impression of a gig I was struggling to hear properly. I'd previously seen him joining in with both Dizzy Spells Martian and Toby Goodshank at the rainbow a couple of weeks ago (a fact I completely forgot to mention at the time) which gave him a lot to live up to. If he'd actually managed to remember the songs he might have managed it too, there was definitely a really interesting singer-songwriter hiding somewhere under the lack of preparation. He also gets bonus points for ambition by attempting to cover The Postal Service's Nothing Better, most noticable for being a boy/girl duet with a distinctive keyboard part, on his own with an acoustic guitar. It didn't work for one second, but it was nice to see him try.

The whole night was kicked off by The Great Plain, presumably a last minute addition as they weren't listed on the posters/myspace. Decent local duo, two guys both playing guitar and singing. Nothing revolutionary but they had some good tunes and a nice contrast in singing styles. If its possible to find reasonable local acts like this at the last minute why in the fuck did we have to put up with the turgid shit on offer from the headliners?

Overall it was a good night in terms of music but despite this being a seemingly well-established night at a really busy pub there were barely any people there who didn't seem to know at least one of the bands. Why are Brummies so hard to get to gigs?

Birmingham City Council - Incompetant or Anti-Atheist?

There's a post up over at the hugely popular american evolution/aethist blog Pharyngula concerning this article on the BBC website about our council here in Brum blocking access to atheist websites while allowing access to religious sites. Most people at Pharyngula seem to be taking this as evidence of someone deliberately trying to impose their faith on council employees, but having probably had more contact with the council than any of the Americans posting there I feel pretty confident in saying this won't turn out to be the case. Birmingham City Council is the largest local authority in the whole of Europe and by all accounts is a bureucratic nightmare (as anyone who has had to sort out a problem with their council tax knows all too well) so I find it extremely unlikely that anyone went into any sort of detail in checking what was being blocked, and even if they had why would they block atheist sites? Religion just isn't an issue over here in the same way as it is in the US, the number of regular church-goers is completely dwarfed by the number of people who state they have no religion and considering that the company providing the blocking software is American it seems far more likely to have been a default setting which got overlooked. When it comes down to a council employee either being lazy/clueless or deliberately breaking the law to discriminate against atheists I know where my money is.

UPDATE: See, I told you they were fucking incompetant.

There's Nothing Not to Like About Goodshank

On the other hand, there's plenty not to like about Brummies. Just about the entire crowd at last night's Toby Goodshank gig appeared to be there to see either the sub-James Blunt tedium of ***** ***** or the soft rock garbage of **** ****. Fuck it, you can find out their names easily enough if you really want but there's no way I'm giving them the slightest acknowledgement here. Not only were they both embarrassingly poor but them and their fans, or rather their gullible mates, seemed to think that standing around chatting really loudly and not even clapping was appropriate behaviour during the other acts. Its annoying at any gig, but when you're trying to watch quiet solo artists, who have come all the way from America and are both spectacularly good maybe, just maybe, you could learn to SHUT THE FUCK UP. The main pub area was practically deserted, if you absolutely desperately needed to talk to the guys you see down the pub every other night of week would it kill you to leave the gig room?

Despite the annoyances it was a great way to kick off my adventures re-discovering the alternative scene in Brum. Both Toby and Isabel were amazing and two of the friendliest people I've met in a long while. Turns out I wasn't the only person there planning to blog about the gig either! Like the pissed twat I usually am by the end of a gig I have completely forgotten the guy's name but his blog, The Hearing Aid, can be found here and it looks like it could be a great source of information to help me get further into alt-Brum. As if that's not quite enough I also met Ben who had arranged the gig and runs Bohemian Jukebox, one of the few local nights I've already been to and which I'm sure to go along to again in the future (well, it is held in my local...)

I realise I've not said that much about the music itself but from the look of his past posts it'll get a better written review than I could manage over at The Hearing Aid, will be interesting to see his take on the local guys...