Author: Jon Bounds

Jon was voted the ‘14th Most Influential Person in the West Midlands’ in 2008. Subsequently he has not been placed. He’s been a football referee, venetian blind maker, cellar man, and a losing Labour council candidate: “No, no chance. A complete no-hoper” said a spoilt ballot. Jon wrote and directed the first ever piece of drama performed on Twitter when he persuaded a cast including MPs and journalists to give over their timelines to perform Twitpanto. But all that is behind him.

101 Things Birmingham Gave The World. No 4. Hollywood

No, not Hollywood up by the Maypole. The real one of blockbusters and stars rather than Blockbuster, Poundland and burnt-out cars. Because without a certain city not very far away you’d not be watching George Clooney gurn with his chest out, nor would you be able to grin through gritted teeth at the antics of those Fourty Year Old Hangover chaps with the comedy.

We’d have missed the stars and the studio system, had to put up with only On The Buses between Ealing and Love…Actually. Or watched things with subtitles, confused as to exactly what all of the smoking men were mumbling about.

Because, movies are made of film, and film is made of celluloid. Which was a revolutionary new type of thing called a thermoplastic , first created as Parkesine in 1862 by Alexander Parkes in, yes you’ve guessed it, Birmingham.

101 Things Birmingham Gave The World. No 3. The Football League

Football has had a long and evolutionary history taking in local rivalries, struggle with authority, class warfare and co-optation, and paganism; but enough of St Andrews. Everything we know about football today originated on the other side of the city: from fixture congestion, to dead rubbers, from runaway leaders to mid-table obscurity, cynicism and playing for the draw.

All because the Villa’s lushly bearded William McGregor was fed up with cup ties and friendlies and knocked football-admin heads together from around the country and instigated the Football League. So we not only have him to thank for the spread of the sport across the week and the country, but also for professionalism. For without regular games there was no way to build crowds and make money. So Birmingham created and at once ruined the modern game. It created John Terry.

And in reality created Port Vale verses Yeovil on a wet Tuesday night in November, not quite what he intended when he wrote: “clubs are compelled to take on teams who will not attract the public.”

101 Things Birmingham Gave The World. No 1. Tennis

Tennis, invented in Birmingham

Ever climbed Murray mount, “come on Tim”, or knocked a sponge ball against a wall while grunting? Then you have Birmingham to thank for the gift of the only sport that doubles the price of a certain fruit for two weeks every year. Yes, Cliff Richards’s favourite game was invented not in the white trousered environs of the Wimbledon croquet club, but up a back street in Edgbaston not a high lob from the old Firebird pub.

The rules of modern lawn tennis were drawn up by Harry Gem and his friend Augurio Perera who developed a game that combined elements of rackets and the Basque ball game pelota. The rest is, for the English at least, a posh and annually disappointing story.

Ace.

Inebriance Survey 2011

PDF

Birmingham Music Map

With the Birmingham Popular Music Archive I’ve been inviting the public to contribute to an online database of music culture in Birmingham, by placing venues, artists, people or anything they feel relates to music on a map.

The results so far were commissioned in the form of the Birmingham Music Map as part of ‘plug in’ mac‘s opening exhibition curated by Simon Poulter, more details on the exhibition are here. Here’s a shot of it in situ.

Poster copies are available, screenprinted on gorgeous white archival paper at B1 (707 × 1000mm /27.8 × 39.4in) in a signed and numbered limited edition of 100 copies. (~~£25~~ Now £15 plus £5 postage and packing — recorded delivery.)

Price for framed copies on application. Please email for details.

Explore the online version, either click and drag, or use the zoom and scroll controls at the bottom:

PDF Version of map

You can still add your memories to the map, here.

100 years of The Electric Cinema

The Electric, Birmingham Originally uploaded by new folder

A cosy evening at The Electric with a ‘This Is Your Life’ of Britain’s oldest working picture house in the company of owner Tom Lawes to celebrate its 100th birthday. Opened in late 1909 it was, we heard, one of the first opened with knowledge of what the 1909 Cinematograph Act would require — which is one of the reasons cinemas had to be specialist buildings.

It kicked off with this (DW Griffith!) very early public information film:

We then had some top flight silent physical comedy, when one of the technicians fell off the stage in the dark, and also a bit of Laurel and Hardy accompanied by a organ played by Steve Tovey, the last full time cinema organist in Britain. A real treat was footage of the re-opening of the cinema as a ‘Tatler News Theatre’ in the early 30’s — these showed newsreels and cartoons and locally shot news. The archive was found in a shed on the roof during work in the 70s and must contain a load of local Brum footage — sadly I can find none online, maybe the owners can be persuaded (or helped) to digitise it.

There’s a great quote from one of the staff at the time on this page on Cinema Treasures (which also give a detailed history of the many ownership and name changes over the years):

“The Tatler, I worked at that cinema 1940-1941 as an operator having previously worked at the News Theare High Street, both of these cinemas being owned by Joe Cohen of Jacey Cinemas. At this time it showed cartoons, newsreels and interest films all with the credits cut out to bring the programme down to 70 minutes and if there was a queue one of the shorts was also taken out.
The staff during my time there were manager La Campe, Billy Watts (star screen reporter and later manager of Percival Mackies Band. A dogs- body Schuman. Lesley Tonks was “General Manager” I have many memories of my time there. I remember a Czeckoslovakian refugee starting there, he was the poster writer named Andre Druker, he went on to open all of the coffee shops in Brum.”

Other treasures found around the building include the master print of Eskimo Nell — funded by The Electric’s then owner Berry Jacobs who was a big noise on the ‘continental’ film circuit.

Tom showed a great deal of the refurb work that’s gone into turning the cinema back into an inviting place in recent years — the roof and the plumbing seem to have contributed to it pretty much falling down. I felt a bit uncomfortable with the way in which the previous owners/management were obviously seen. Business-wise they were crap no-doubt, but for a while at least they brought all manner of esoteric, odd, niche and arty films to Brum — I have fond memories of dozing during triple bills of Italian films in the mid to late 90s.

But what has happened to the ‘statues’ that adorned the front in the ‘art’ days? Called ‘Thatcher’s Children’ representing child poverty, they were removed (without care we heard) by the artist John Buckley (creator of the Headington Shark).

Electric Cinema, Birmingham by Ruth and Dave

“modelled by unemployed people hung up on coat-hangers.” – will we ever see their like again? We’ll try to find out.

Cramps? Best Brum gig evah?

Birmingham Music Archive is teaming up with BiNS to find out What has been the best gig ever to take place in the city and what was/is the best venue. Jez from the BMA is kicking things off, argue the toss here and in the forum.

My favourite gig was The Cramps at the Birmingham Odeon. My memory is not what it was but the gig was either April 25th 1984 or April 30th 1986, I’m tending to go for the 86 one due to me age, but anyway.. For those of you who don’t remember the Odeon before it became a 400 screen cinema, selling 2 tonne bags of sugar to kids who need no encouragement whilst showing Rambo 55, it was a fabulous art deco music and cinema hall.

For the gigs, there was a huge orchestra pit which doubled as the mosh pit (well not if you were watching Ultravox or The Thompson Twins), then those lovely plush velvet seats and above, a balcony were assorted punters would cover the crowd below in piss and beer – luckily they were often indistinguishable from one another!

So there I am, fancying myself as a bit of a psychobilly, knocking around at the Barrel Organ, Powerhouse, Zig Zags and all the others when news comes through of The Cramps coming to town to play at the Odeon. Immediately it’s THE ODEON! Who on earth has booked The Cramps to play there? Have they not seen or heard of the mayhem that normally occurs when the play. This reputation was justified. For me The Cramps remain one of THE live music bands. Raw, threatening, chaotic but always brilliant.

As I say above, my memory is no longer functioning as it used to, but this night The Cramps were late on for some reason and literally ripped through the set. Main man Lux carried around the entire audience, climbing right to the top of the pa system, Poison Ivy machine gunning the crowd with her guitar, legs akimbo, hardly, if any, talk by the band and then 30 minutes later they were gone.

Now I wasn’t in the mosh pit that night for some strange reason but they were going wild, calling for encore stamping their feet and so on. But as it became clear The Cramps weren’t returning they had nothing to really vent their anger on. For us in the seats it was different.

I’d never felt such adrenaline or emotion or basic wildness in a live crowd before. As the shouting got louder I can just recall a shower of seats reigning down towards the stage, missing it by some distance and nearly decapitating several hundred pyschobillies (or at least their quiffs). It was over in minutes but seemed like forever, even as everyone filed outside it was as if the whole crowd had become feral.

For the music but mainly for the crowd I think this has to rank as one of my all time favourite gigs in Birmingham. If anyone else was there and would like to dampen my recollection or even agree with it then get it on here and at www.birminghammusicarchive.co.uk, and then add your own best gigs/venues

Nirvana at the Barrel Organ, Oasis at The Jug Of Ale, anyone remember the Birmingham Rock festivals of the mid 70’s, saw the Pistols or Dexy’s at Barberella’s or Rum Runners, Eek-a-Mouse at the Porsche Club anyone?

Brummie Baywatch

A classic — the work of these guys.

2007, the sands of time

2007 was all about sand, blogs and noise. Sometimes more than one at the same time. At the end of last year we were all excited about having had a patch of sand up by Millennium Point during the World Cup – if you’d have told us that Brum would be host to more sand than, er, a place with a lot of sand, er Manjits Builders Merchants on Alcester Rd, we’d probably have exploded. The beaches came in, what was supposed to have been a, summer though – so let’s take a shuftie through the calender a month at a time…

January

Midlands Today’s Nick Owen got a myspace page and blog in January – don’t look for it, it’s not there any more – so we were treated to his views on cricket, cricket, and line dancing. Dancing of a different nature was going on at a council house in Great Barr, which was reportedly being used as a night club – complete with pool room, bar, and a “steam room powered by paint strippers”. Moseley and Kings Heath’s own Louis Theroux – Councillor Martin Mullaney posted his YouTube film on graffiti tagging – almost relishing pointing out “Fuk Martin Mullaney”. There’ll be more from Martin in due course…

February

Duran Duran, not in BiNS T-Shirts In February we were second best second city – according to a BBC poll – and the rudest city in the country – according to a crap survey promoting a crap supermarket. Still Lawrence Llewelyn-Bowen had some nice words to say about us on the Holiday programme, encouraging visitors to pop into town for a city break. The English Tourist board were also tempting visitors to the fleshpots of the city – specifically Saramoons (as apparently Duran Duran formed there), for a Pino Grigio no less. Not a pint of M&B mild and a fight, which is more usual.

March

March was big on weird goblin-y things, not only did a frankly bizarre Tolkien statue for Moseley get planning permission but it was, of course, Birmingham’s annual leprechaun, Guinness and green things pageant – the St Patrick’s day parade was rained on, but as huge and popular as ever. What wasn’t popular was anything produced by Heinz – as they reneged on their promises and shut our wonderful HP Sauce factory. Self-publicising John Bull character Ray Egan climbed to the top of the tower with a ‘Daddies For Justice’ banner – and we never bought anything made by Heinz ever again.

April

Ray Egan was at it again in April, fiddling on the roof of Harbourne Post Office – but who is the lovely smiling lady in the foreground? It’s Harbourne Councillor (and Edgbaston Conservative Spokesperson) Deirdrie Alden – who is perhaps Birmingham’s most consistent blogger, one post a day, every day, one photo, no comments. Towards the end of the year Deirdre would become worthy of parody, was she in April?

Brum’s other internet councillor, or auteur, Mr Mullaney was targeted by some people with very good handwriting – but by this time there were quite a few people upset with his videos, so I doubt it was clear who was responsible. It didn’t stop his videos tho’, keep going Martin.

Probably the best news story of the year was in April, when the Daily Mail discovered a cat who takes a TWM bus every day on his commute to the local fish shop. No reports on whether he smokes catnip up the back of the number 50.

May

May was the month that the Council and the Bull Ring both announced plans to build ‘urban beaches’ for the summer, apparently inspired by something similar Paris had done a few years ago. The row made it to the national media, although they really used it a a bit of light relief featuring some comedy Brummie voices. Meanwhile on t’interweb, more and more tiny bits of Brum got their own blogs – Camellotment is a blog about plot 171 of the Moor Green Allotments, in Cannon Hill Park, and you can’t get more niche than that.

June

The Bull Ring fired the first shot in the sand war, and opened its sandpit. We used an obvious pun and got all manner of comments haranguing us for not falling at the feet of this promotional tool – but it wasn’t really to matter as the Bull Ring beach, the Council’s Chamberlain Square one, the RNLI’s Brindley Place one and the volleyball Centenary Square sanded areas were all washed out by one of the wettest summers imaginable.

It was enough to make you stop in and watch telly – lucky then that Jasper Carrot launched his obscenely convoluted quiz show ‘Goldenballs‘. The show required so much concentration that you needed to have a lie down afterwards, in a darkened room. We went down to the darkest room of all, perhaps, as part of Architecture Week – the tunnel between the Mailbox and New Street Station.

Rootsville was a blindingly ambitious and blindingly weird festival that we loved, more next year please.

June was a month to launch campaigns too – the first stirrings of what was to become Keep Digbeth Vibrant, er stirred up on, gawd, The Stirrer. The fight still continues. We were in angry mode too, and announced Talk Like A Brummie Day.

July

TLAB Day, as we unwieldingly acronymed it, took almost all of our energy in July what with constant rounds of press, TV and Radio appearances, and trying to work out exactly where on the road to Sandwell the word ‘bostin’ kicked in. Luckily there was loads going on to take our minds off it – an art space turned into a real ale pub, symposiums on the heritage of metal in the midlands, the best damn festival (it says here) in the world.

August

We got all worked up over nothing in August, there were rumours (from staff, no less) that The Jug of Ale was to close – people ranted, and were generally horrified – but in the end it turned out to not to be true. At least it gave us and excuse to have yet another tenuous picture of Frank Sidebottom on the blog. It’s scary that despite really caring, the gig going, and drinking, public have absolutely no power over things like this – there really needs to be some sort of plan to save our beloved toilet circuits.

September

September was dominated by Artsfest, Artsfest in turn was dominated by the bloody huge, bloody loud, bloody brilliant Blast – which was fire and industry and trains and a barking review from us that was obviously written with the experience still ringing in the ears. Something else that’s just as barmy is the VTP200 – a huge tower planned for Eastsiiiide – that was announced in September. It’s pointy and tall and odd, and you’ll be able to chuck yourself off it in relative safety.

The UCE was changing its name, and we got wind of the alternatives – including the eventual winner Birmingham City University – but resisted the inevitable Aston Villa University joke ©every bloody commentor on all of the blogs in Brum. It’s not often we get to take the humour-high-ground, so we’re milking it.

October

The highlight of October was without doubt the Plus International Design Festival – including all sorts of lectures, a real-life pacman game, a top party, and for me at least a free tour of Birmingham – focusing on typography (not so much of a niche market as you’d think). October was also awash with ‘something days’; National Poetry Day featured poets sauntering around the city dressed in their pyjama, Blog Action Day featured us coming over all environmental, and Badger Medical Centre day – well, I just made that up.

November

On BiNS November is awash with the hustings for the Brummie of the Year Award – Pete Ashton decided he wasn’t worthy, then campaigned like a trojan – but enough of that until December. Gigbeth happened, and for reasons lost in the midst of time we decided to refer to it as Igbeth, it was a huge glob of everything that’s brill about Brum’s music scene (with a few bits that are bad too). It gave us the brilliant sight of three or four bands all playing at the same time (and even sometimes the same song) in the middle of Digbeth High Street – I’m sure it will be back.

There was also the Pantomime Horse Grand National, which got all charity-ed up and moved well outside the pantomime season. Given that the horses aren’t pantomime horses either, I wonder how far removed it will be next year. I’m making a stand of calling for it to be renamed the Pantomine Horse Grand National, since that’s how us Brummies pronounce it anyway. We didn’t win.

December

Winterval kicks of with the crowning of John Tighe Brummie of the Year 2007 – a close run thing, but there wasn’t anyone disappointed with the result. John made a speech of sorts on our blog, but for the life of me I can’t tell you what he was on about.

Noddy Holder got a star on the ‘Walk of Stars’ on Broad St – arriving in the most black country way possible on a Glam Rock Canal Barge. I have no idea exactly how glam rock it was (platform shoes for legging-it through the tunnels?), but we were pretty well disposed to the Black Country for the month – as they went up for £50 Million of Lottery funding. They didn’t win either.

December of course brings the German Market to Brum, being so popular and photogenic that it’s been a struggle not to have every picture in our advent calendar of Evil Santa.

And that just about wraps it up, I’d envisioned doing more jokes about sand. Have you got any good ones? Or more general Birmingham 2007 memories or thoughts?

Signs of the times

We mentioned the Type Tours before, but I couldn’t pass up a chance of a private mini-tour for myself:

Ben Waddington outside Baskerville House

Ben Waddington is one of those people who wants others to appreciate their surroundings. An exiled Manc, he’s been running tours of some kind round Brum for a couple of years – I went on Ben’s tour themed around John Baskerville last year, and was impressed with his research and amiable guiding if not our city’s treatment of Baskerville’s legacy. If we must have a new library (when the current one works, no matter how you consider it looks) then it should feature some tribute – it will be on Baskerville’s old land after all.
As part of the Plus International Design Festival, Ben is running his Baskerville Tour again – as well as ‘Type Tours’ of Digbeth and the city centre. A man who knows Brum well enough to give you a guided tour, as well as being a bit of a font geek? This is someone that I really should get to know, so despite my aversion to meeting strange men in pubs having contacted them over the internet, I popped out to The Old Contemptibles last week where I found Ben, Erdinger in hand. I plumped for a very acceptable Amstel.

We retired to the back of the pub, which now has a gentleman’s club vibe going on, to talk of Birmingham, design, architecture, the M6 and LCL Pils. It turn out that Ben has been posting on the BiNS forums (see if you can guess what name he posts under) pretty much since they started. Looking back it’s obvious that this was a man in possession of facts as well as the sense of righteous indignation that seems to infect the Brum-based internetter.

The first tour of hidden Birmingham that Ben organised was a walking tour of Digbeth’s forgotten pubs, putting adverts in CAMRA magazines and the like. What he neglected to mention in his pre-publicity was that a lot of those pubs were so forgotten that they were no longer open. Despite the James & Lister Lea goodness, some the tourists “were interested in walking to pubs, not so much in walking away from them. There are pubs in Digbeth that are still surviving purely on the indigenous industry, though slowly those are closing.”

We discussed how pubs are in danger as an architectural genre from all sides, the large suburban ones that formed the centre of the community on the post-war estates are fast becoming Chinese restaurants or McDonald’s as they are more and more difficult to profit from and license, squeezed by breweries and the police. In the city centre where pub culture is seemingly still thriving it would be unthinkable to actually design a purpose built pub, Ben says “the most recent one in Birmingham is, I think, The Yardbird – and that’s just a box.”.

Curiously we found out that we’d both got, wildly different, books about Brum that we’re working on – not that I’m about to reveal what’s in either of them – but they both in a way are searching for a reason why Birmingham lost the status as the industrial and creative powerhouse it had during the birth of the Industrial Revolution.

“It was lost a little as creativity and industry separated, Birmingham got industry and that then faded. Birmingham is ready for some sort of renaissance of perception. Maybe that can come though art or music.” Do we need the fabled ‘Tony Wilson figure’? “Capsule are about the closest we’ve got to that.”

As I see it no other city has that figure anyway, for Birmingham it would be the equivalent of Ashley Blake running Capsule and the Custard Factory, while continuing to be news-totty for women of a certain age. I also think that the days of music as the defining cultural force of a city are gone, splintered by downloads and diluted by Blair’s 50% University quotas. Is there a visionary around for Brum from some other field?

There have been plenty of the years, and a brief type-cum-architecture walk Ben takes me on, in rapidly fading light, helps to prove that. Surprisingly, I find that Ben wasn’t a typography expert before being asked to do the tours: “I was asked, originally, to do the Baskerville tour and researched that, then for this year to do the type-specific tours. I find I look at buildings differently depending on what tours I’m conducting. Originally it was architecture, now I’m focusing more on the signage.”

“The type-tours aren’t just about signs that are ‘printed’, the Digbeth one in particular will be as interested in hand painted notes and other letter-forms. You can talk about theory, but often you can only guess at the intended purpose of so much of it – in a way the tours will be a conversation. If people want to disagree with me, that’s okay.”

I couldn’t find any fault with Ben’s observations of what’s been done to the signage over the door of the old Eye Hospital – whatever trendy wine bar that has taken over have plonked a steel and glass canopy directly over the lettering. “It’s as if they’re frightened of you going in, ordering a drink and asking them to take a look at your glaucoma.” They’ve left the work on the corner of the building intact though, and being with someone with a fine eye for detail, I see an almost playful blurring of the letters. Can you imagine an eye hospital

While there is interesting type everywhere, Ben is most animated when discussing the old, the disregarded, ghost signs, and when it’s modern things it’s those that are anything but corporate off-the-shelf Gil Sans. He promises me “what [he] hopes will become [my] favourite piece of signage in Birmingham, but first we take a walk towards the Jewellery Quarter, and past a huge piece of graffiti acting as a sign for the café next to The Snow Hill. “There aren’t professional sign-writers so much in this day and age, you can either go and get something printed or ask some kid who does graffiti. Look at the time and care that’s gone into that, it’s ordered, planned, but that tiny bit organic.”

A building that Ben is enamoured with is the HB Sale building on the corner of Constitution Hill and Hampton St, it has fantastic terracotta lettering on it, and also had this brilliant bit of work in the window:

It’s round the back of this, and past the painted signwork on the current premises of HB Sale, that we come to the wonder that is ‘Socks Direct’. It’s not often that someone tells me something about Birmingham that I didn’t have an incling of, but I did not know about Socks Direct. Now I’ll not get my socks anywhere else. The sign itself is interesting because it’s not standard in any way, we spend a geeky five minutes pondering if the Ss are upside down. In order to get my own back I tell Ben about the Henrietta St café as we pass, of how seventies rock star Alvin Stardust was a regular there in the late nineties for breakfast. Ben likes research to much and asks for evidence – I will find some, but I don’t have any at the moment.

Proving that not even we like walking away from pubs, we pop for a swift half into the Hen and Chickens where Ben talks a little more about his plans, amongst Channel Five and bizarre alterations to the bar – he thinks there’s enough of an interest in the tours, both type and more historical for him to keep doing them. “There aren’t typographical tours anywhere else in the country, and if people are studying type then they’ll be willing to travel. For the tours of buildings there’s a constant market of tourists and Brummies that are interested – I do one every Sunday now.”

Ben Waddington will be talking to Chinny on his BBC WM show on Sunday 14 October, between 2 and 3pm. And you’ll find an article and photos in this weeks Birmingham News.

Here are the Type Tour details again:

Type Tour of Digbeth – 17, 18, 19 October, 12.30 – 14.30pm
Baskerville’s Birmingham – 20 October 12.30 – 14.30pm
City Centre Type Tour – 21 October, 12.30 – 14.30pm
All priced at £10 More Info

Ben’s Guided Architectural Tour of Birmingham Buildings run every Sunday at 10am and “ a Thursday noon tour for noon-owls”. More info or tickets from the Central Library reception (0121 303 2323) or from birminghamboxoffice.com