Christmas in Birmingham

Take 4 of the cheapest disposable cameras available in Sainsbury's, which happens to be a model in the Sainsbury's Basics range, cover the viewfinders with plenty of parcel tape, scratch the front of the lens on two of the cameras with a wire scrubber and on the other two use fluorescent highlighter pens to colour the lens.

Add 2 grown men who should know better, a healthy dose of magic juice (otherwise known as Diesel or Snakebite and Black, an afternoon in Birmingham that turned dark rather too quickly and a last minute trip to Boots photo centre.

What do you get?

This of course...





...and there are more.

Moseley Folk Festival 2007

The second annual Moseley Folk Festival took place in Moseley Park this weekend.

Lots of fun was had by all and the it remained dry until 7.30pm on Sunday evening which isn't bad going considering the summer we've had.



I found it particularly noteworthy for a number of, quite different, reasons.

It was the first occasion in a long time I walked away from a live gig feeling equally inspired and excited by the performance/performer(s) on stage - in this instance the truly fantastic Rory McLeod (above).

I shall be purchasing CD's very soon and hoping that the recorded version captures the talent and personality of the live show.

Other acts which stick in the mind include Nizlopi (who notably did not perform the JCB song), Findlay Brown (who was very kind to the little boy who asked him for an autograph), John Smith (similar in many ways to Ray LaMontagne), and Simon Fowler who performed some great acoustic versions of old Ocean Colour Scene songs.



The festival also proved a reminder yet again of how popular knitting appears to become when it's offered to a group of people sat in a field drinking cider for two days - or maybe it's got more to do with the cider than the wool/needle mixture itself.

B29, step 1

It's been a while since I've actually set up a new website and I'd forgotten how many things there are that need doing.

However, www.birminghamb29.com is getting there, slowly!

Birmingham, B29

After living in the B29 postcode district of Birmingham for a cumulative total of around 8 years now I've always been struck by the amazing diversity in landscape, wealth and general surroundings.

Recently an idea had been growing to get out there with my camera gear and spend a few months attempting to document this diversity of society in photographic form for all to see.

Then I had an even better idea - or I think so at least! Using the power of Flickr and, hopefully in the future, numerous other web services, I'll build a representation of B29 that anyone can contribute to and participate in.

So... here goes.

It's early days - only the Flickr group is really in existence at the moment and I haven't taken any new photos as yet - but hopefully there will be plenty more to report on soon!

For those not overly familiar with this part of Birmingham, here is the B29 area (click on map for larger image).

NeighbourhoodFixIt.com: Local problem solving

I'm breaking a golden rule now and moving away from the world of cider, football, music and photography to mention something slightly more worthy, but definitely just as interesting.

Tom Loosemore has posted an introduction to new civic society site Neighbourhood Fix-It on his blog at Tomski.com.

Enter a postcode (e.g. B5 7QQ) and track all recently reported problems in the area via a straightforward map/text interface.

If you're inclined to be more active than passive then you can use the same interface to alert the local council to a problem of your own.

Want to view all current reports by council area?

Not a problem, simply select your council from the list and then view the outstanding problems. (e.g. Here's the current Birmingham City Council list).

Check out Tom's brief appraisal of the site for more info.

Concert on a stick

Marketing genius, a guaranteed money-earner, and a damn fine souvenir as well.

Anyone who watched Barenaked Ladies' play live at Birmingham Academy last night was able to leave the gig with an mp3 copy of the entire set, including Boothby Graffoe's superb support slot.

For a mere £20 I now have a delightfully branded 256Mb Barenaked Ladies USB drive (left) containing a DRM-free mp3 of their entire gig, a pdf file of their set list, an mp3 of Boothby's support slot and a pdf of his set list.

The queue of people waiting to part with their cash rather than head for the exit suggested that the merchandise stand was heading for a rather tidy profit for the night.

What a great idea, and extremely well executed - although I'm still not sure how they managed to duplicate so many copies of the USB stick from the desk so quickly.

Satchel Blue on iTunes

Andy's already beaten me to the big announcement, but for those that don't already know... Birmingham based band Satchel Blue (yes, that's us!) now have a track available to download via iTunes, and theoretically other music download stores, for 79p.

Download here.

This technically means that if enough of you purchased this track we could actually get into the official music charts (i think).

The track is just one on a charity CD released under Dannyboy Records (DBM004) and features 16 unsigned bands/artists from the Midlands area.

Proceeds from sales go to the Kidzlikedanny charity which rasies money in aid of Autistic children, so download it today, and help a good cause.

Let it snow, let is snow (etc...)

From a sunny day at the beach to a snow covered winter landscape in just a few days - isn't weather absolutely fascinating. It's no wonder that we spend the majority of our time talking about it.

It did also provide the opportunity for me to take yet another photo of Selly Park from (roughly) the same viewpoint to compare different conditions.
So far we have autumn, frost and now snow.

Looking briefly at the stats for this site the other day made one point very obvious. Thanks to my ongoing survey of different cider brands, and therefore the number of cider related posts, the majority of people who appear to stumble here by way of a search engine are doing so whilst looking for cider related content!

...and now I feel guilty for not having reviewed any cider recently - don't worry, I'll be back on the case soon.

Finally for now, after reading this post on View From The Hill about using public transport I thought, yes, good point well made. So isn't it a shame then that this year saw the bus prices in Birmingham rise by 17%, way above inflation, from £1.20 to £1.40 standard fare.

Now I'm not necessarily saying that £1.40 is a bad price for a bus fare, particularly for those that live a good distance out of the city centre (not me!) - but a sudden rise of 17% isn't exactly going to encourage people to jump onto public transport and save the environment now is it?

Ye Olde Record Shop

There I was (or rather, here I am) vacantly gazing around this enormous wealth of information called the web and trying to work out if there is anything of particular interest or importance going on around me that I need to pay attention to when, oh, shock horror, I read a post on recently launched Brum Blog which says:

"Jon Bounds of Birmingham: It's Not Shit has had a productive couple of weeks. His review of the year is a must read and the Brummie of the Year award went to Jason Furnell, a cricketer by all accounts, with Danny Reddington of the recently closed Reddington Rare Records came in second."

Reddington Rare Records has closed!!
(photo from sfb_dot_com on Flickr)

Damn.

...and I think it's partly my fault. Ok, maybe not me as an individual, but certainly people like me, people that act in the same way that I do... ...and I reckon there are definitely a few of you out there.

To a music fan/collector/listener/whatever-you-are there is something warm, friendly, enjoyable and special about whiling away your time in a small, independent music shop that still has the word 'record' in the name above the front door.

Something that simply isn't present during a trip into the bright lights and clean spaces of an HMV or a Virgin Megastore - the name itself 'megastore', what's enjoyable or friendly about that?

But, and this is the problem, did I make an effort to visit Danny at Reddingtons? Did I make sure that for every pound I spent on Amazon or in HMV, I saved a few pennies and spent them at 'Rare Records? No, I did not.

And why not? Now that it's closed and the option is no longer open to me it's hard to understand why I didn't go more often. Yes, I visited once or twice, but definitely, absolutely not enough.

There are plenty of excuses waiting in the aisles - convenience, not enough time, too busy and so on and so on, but ultimately I just didn't stop to think about what I should be doing until it was too late.

Don't worry, this isn't a crusade to get you all to spend more at Danny's online music store, but rather a reminder... whatever your thing, whatever you enjoy, whatever you value, don't wait until it's gone to realise how much you enjoyed having it around.