Birmingham
Guy Oddy
I’ve been a regular attender of the Supersonic Festival for about 15 years and much has changed in that time. When I first rocked up to see Swans, Stinky Wizzleteat, PCM and other sonic treats, the event was a bit of a white boys’ club, both in terms of the artists and the audience, despite being put together and curated by a couple of women.Since then, there has been a major effort to decolonise the line-up and bring in many more explicitly non-Western, female and LGBT+ artists, adding new sounds and textures, while remaining resolutely outside the mainstream. So, it was surprising to Read more ...
Lucia Lucas
Until last week, Tippett’s New Year had not been staged since 1990, probably because it’s considered very hard to produce. I think it is generally harder than Britten. It’s also an ensemble piece; you need 10 people who are fairly accomplished in performing new works.There are parts that needed to be updated. Some of the libretto, seen through our lens of 2024, seemed insensitive. You can’t sanitise everything and take the drama out of the story, but it was important to update, with the blessing of Tippett’s estate.When we first started, everyone was simply trying to do it right, but it was Read more ...
Guy Oddy
When the Lovely Eggs’ married duo of Holly Ross and David Blackwell took to the stage at the recently rebranded XOYO in Birmingham on Bank Holiday Monday, they looked like they should be playing for two completely separate bands. She was looking glam, dressed like a guitar wielding Rόisín Murphy, with a blonde bob and orange and black tiger print dress, while he slid behind his drum kit in a washed-out tour t-shirt and a Johnny Ramone haircut.Once they burst into the speedy, buzz saw guitar powered “Death Grip Kids”, however, any ideas of a musical mismatch were immediately dispelled. The Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Industrious screenwriter Steven Knight has brought us (among many other things) Peaky Blinders, SAS: Rogue Heroes and even Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?, but This Town may not be remembered as one of his finest hours. Here, we find Knight revisiting his Midlands background for a story that begins in 1981, during Margaret Thatcher’s first term as Prime Minister. There’s rioting on the streets, unemployment is soaring and Bobby Sands is on hunger strike in Belfast. Ska and Two Tone music are all the rage, and the soundtrack is littered with old faves like “The Tide is High”, “Pressure Drop”, “ Read more ...
David Nice
That it would be a vividly operatic kind of oratorio performance was never in doubt. Mendelssohn, who said he wanted to create “a real world, such as you find in every chapter of the Old Testament,” instigates high drama with Elijah’s brass-backed opening statement. Pappano then let the orchestral and vocal narrative fly like an arrow, supported to the hilt by all involved, not least four great singers with whom he’d achieved several major successes at the Royal Opera.The only real problem with the evening was the work itself. You feel Mendelssohn was made for the sweet and the sorrowful, yet Read more ...
Supersonic Festival 2023, Birmingham review - musical eccentrics battle the odds and come out on top
Guy Oddy
You’ve got to feel for Lisa Meyer and the team behind Birmingham’s magnificent Supersonic Festival. Just as the live music scene gets to a point where the Covid pandemic is no longer a malign influence on dancing and having fun in a room full of like-minded people, the UK is hit by a two-day rail strike that coincides with this annual shindig of the musically wild and wonderful. On top of that, our loathsome Home Secretary refused to grant a visa for Day One’s headline act, MC Yalla.However, these Brummies aren’t ones to just throw their hands in the air and give up, and on the festival’s Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
In 2012 Dexys returned with their fourth album, and first in 27 years, One Day I’m Going to Soar. It was a concept piece, original and funny, chewing over the volatility of love, containing wonderful set-pieces, most especially a trio of songs at its centre (“I’m Thinking of You”, “I’m Always Going to Love You” and “Incapable of Love”) which humorously excoriated the fickleness of romance.Their latest, is similarly constructed, albeit around a different theme. Anyone who connected with One Day I’m Going to Soar will likely find much to enjoy. Dexys mainstay Kevin Rowland gives us a suite of Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Duran Duran were back in their hometown of Birmingham this weekend for the first time since performing as part of the open ceremony of the 2022 Commonwealth Games and were justly forthright in trumpeting their local history. Even Pinner-born Simon Le Bon was keen to claim his stake, telling the audience a long and convoluted tale about being dubbed an honorary Brummie by UB40’s Ali Campbell 25 years ago.“Ordinary World”, for instance, was introduced by Le Bon stating, “It’s been quite a year. For Duran Duran and Birmingham. The high point was playing the opening of the Commonwealth Games and Read more ...
Aleks Sierz
Is it a good idea to work with your spouse? The Way Old Friends Do, a love letter to ABBA tribute bands – which premiered at the Birmingham Rep last month and now visits the Park Theatre in north London – is a joint venture by actor and first-time playwright Ian Hallard and Mark Gatiss, who is both his director and his husband. It’s a comic melodrama about cross-dressing and pop culture – and stars not only Hallard himself, but also Sara Crowe and James Bradshaw (a familiar face and voice to fans of ITV’s Endeavour, where he plays the acid-tongued pathologist).The backstory of Read more ...
Sally Beamish
I was first approached by Quaker Concern for the Abolition of Torture (Q-CAT) in 2016 with the idea of a creating a piece of music to raise awareness of torture – its use worldwide, and the terrible damage it does both to victim and to perpetrator.They had thought of asking me as I am a Quaker myself. I have written several pieces in the past which express views and concerns shared by Quakers – for instance my violin concerto, based on Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, which is a passionate expression of my pacifist beliefs. Knotgrass Elegy, written for the Proms in 2001 with poet Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Somehow or other, fictional representations of the police have become an off-the-cuff index of changing times and evolving values. Dixon of Dock Green’s cops were stern father figures who knew right from wrong and considered it their duty to give villains a clip round the ear. The Sweeney weren’t quite so sure about right and wrong but gave everybody a good kicking anyway, while risking a bollocking from the boss for their blatant rule-bending. Prime Suspect’s DCI Tennison had to battle entrenched sexism in a mostly-male police force. Now, in ITV’s DI Ray, a female Asian police officer has to Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
It was going to be great. Birmingham’s Digbeth Rag Market was hosting 1977’s highest-profile punk festival on 17 July. The Clash were headlining. Also billed were The Heartbreakers, Rich Kids, The Saints, Shagnasty, Stinky Toys, Subway Sect and Tanya Hyde & the Tormentors.Two days before it was meant to happen, the city council cancelled it. A gathering of punks was prevented. Even so, The Clash and the less-lauded Shagnasty came to town and after meeting pissed-off ticket holders went to local venue Barbarella’s to put on an impromptu show. They used equipment borrowed from the band Read more ...