Created in Birmingham

It’s actually a little tricky to find out about local music around the city, I find. This is the stuff I know about, feel free to add other stuff in the comments.

News

Brum Notes is the website for the free, monthly music and lifestyle magazine (Nov issue out now, Oct one online here).

The Birmingham Post have news and reviews here and the Birmingham Mail do rock/pop news.

Fused Magazine‘s site does the odd bit of music news, as does the website for sister magazine Area.

Surge Music takes a wider, Midlands-wide view of things, with articles and lists of gigs, bands and venues.

Cul-de-Sac turned out to be a false dawn for this sort of thing, but may come back one day.

@birminghamlive and @brumpunks are good sources for concert info too.

Reviews

Birmingham Live is the obvious choice here – someone from their ranks of volunteer reviewers and photographers will be at a gig in Birmingham pretty much every evening. Steve Gerrard organises this one (Lee Allen and I have also chipped in occasionally).

The Hearing Aid is a blog by someone called The Baron who goes to an impressive number of local gigs.

The Birmingham Mail do gig reviews too.

Get-togethers

The Birmingham Music Network meets monthly at the Department of Technology, Engineering and the Environment (T.E.E.) at Millennium Point. Their website has a good range of resources too.

Audio

I’m on shakier ground here – which radio shows promote local talent There’s Brumcast on Rhubarb Radio and Introducing on BBC WM. I don’t know enough about the shows on New Style Radio, Aston FM or any others.

Are there any Birmingham-based mp3 blogs worth talking about?

Anything else?

Let me know in the comments. Just to be clear, we’re not looking for bands/venues/promoters to plug themselves but if that’s you, where do you look to get featured?

Oh, and see also Birmingham listings.

(pic – The Editors by Steve Gerrard from the opening night of the new Academy)

• Ones to watch in 2009 « West Midlands Dance
  The Guardian recommends a couple of Birmingham-based shows in its preview for 09
• by the light divided
  Jack reviews gigs for Birmingham Live and this is his blog
• Our next production – The Rage Ensemble
  The Rage Ensemble “are looking for people to be part of the ensemble cast for a production which we will be putting on at a Birmingham theatre”. Get in touch if you’re interested in getting involved
• Regional Youth Arts Conference for the West Midlands
  “This free one-day regional conference brought to you by ENYAN (English National Youth Arts Network) and the Regional Youth Work Unit will act as a forum for the development of youth arts across the West Midlands region” It’s at The Public in West Brom on 24 March 09
• Setting the Scene | Crescent Theatre Blog
  The latest edition of the Crescent Theatre’s brochure crescentscene is out
• Fullrange Media are moving to Fazeley Studios
  And here’s a set of Flickr pics
• The Hearing Aid: Envy & Other Sins / The Heathers / Mr Bones and the Dreamers / Tom Peel
  Review from the gig at The Rainbow, Digbeth Thursday 18th December 2008

• Podcasts | Friends of the Stars
  “Semi-regular podcasts created by Birmingham country/folk band Friends of the Stars. The podcasts, which also feature music, revolve around disucssions held between band members and ‘Executive Producer Robson’, a friend of the band with a tenuous, undefined role in the creation of the band’s musical output. The podcasts contain swearing” I listened to the last two ‘casts on the way back from London the other day and would recommend em
• Airy Fairy blog
  Katie, who runs Airy Fairy in the Oasis shopping centre, has a blog. I’m hoping the Birmingham Alt Fashion Icons feature carries on
• Brum Live Christmas Cracker!
  With party season warming up, here’s a lil plug for the Birmingham Live! party upstairs at Island Bar on Wed 17 Dec. Everyone’s welcome
• Would appointing a creative director solve Birmingham’s image problems? – Design Week
  A feature with input from Michael Wolff and Stef Lewandowski and comparison with Manchester who have Peter Saville as creative director
• Brumcast 112 ‘I May not be Jimi Hendrix but at least I’m not dead’
  Little Chris’s latest musical offering (features Munchbreak – hoorah!)
• D’log :: blogging since 2000 » Roads Ahead
  Competition time – “the Roads Ahead short story competition for authors from the English regions. Deadline: 14th December 08″
• Alternative Birmingham
  Not sure who started this blog and it seems to have only lasted a couple of days last month but I’m hoping someone picks it up again

Birmingham Live, for most, is a website that posts up reviews and some excellent photographs of bands playing in Birmingham.  There are people out there covering gigs almost every night of the week.

However, for the up and coming music photographers and reviewers involved, it’s a platform where they can learn their craft and get some much-needed exposure, while gaining access to photo pits that would otherwise have been off-limits.  Here I should probably disclose that I’m one of those reviewers.

Anyway, Birmingham Live, as an entity has been progressing quite a bit recently and the website has just been overhauled to make it prettier and nicer to use.

Frankie went and interviewed Steve Gerrard, the site’s head honcho, who talked about the idea and ethos behind the site, how it’s helped contributors and how he sees the site developing:

Cul-de-Sac is:

an online music magazine about the West Midlands. This is a fledgling project and we are hoping to grow in the coming months and years. Cul-de-Sac is designed to be a one-stop resource for music fans in the region, as well as being a vital source of information for people regardless of their geographical position

Cul-de-Sac has the sort of news, album reviews, gig reviews and so on that you’d expect from this sort of music site but with a West Mids slant.

I’m dead pleased to see this spring up, partly because I’m hoping it’ll take a weight off CiB.  When I get emails with local bands’ MySpace pages or gigs/nights/etc listings I’m wary that if I mention one I’d have no reason (other than my own bias) for not mentioning them all.  There are a bunch of sites doing that job better than I ever could.

There’s Live Brum, What’s On In Brum, Birmingham Gig Guide, Birmingham Alive and others for listings. Birmingham Live and The Hearing Aid take care of reviews and again, there’s a few others doing that too.  However, there was a big Cul-de-Sac-shaped hole for news and reviews.  I’ve high hopes for this one.

What might be even more interesting would be for a few of the above-mentioned to find a way of sharing their content somehow.  Just a thought…

Spotted by BiNS.

Computer games and individual bands are outside the traditional remit of CiB but this is a bit too cool to not warrant a mention. According to their bio on the SXSW website, local band Deluka have somehow managed to get their song ‘Sleep Is Impossible’ featured on the next installment of the Grand Theft Auto series.

For those that don’t spend their days complaining about their parents and/or hiding in their bedrooms, the Grand Theft Auto franchise has sold 70 million units to date – making it as popular as Tetris but much more controverisal. GTA 4 is due out imminently and likely to be one of the biggest-selling computer games released this year.

So congrats to Deluka. You can check out their obligatory MySpace page and you can also go see them at The Barfly on 29 April supporting another rather decent local band, Envy & Other Sins. I understand the gig will be reviewed and photographed by the guys at Birmingham Live! too.

Thanks to Antonio for the heads up.