The club night Sensateria ran from 1984 to 1994 in various Birmingham venues playing psychedelic and experimental music by artists such as Captain Beefheart and Frank Zappa. [320] The label and its associated producers continued to maintain their faith in "the kind of phat beats and oleaginous basslines that would harden your arteries"[320] over the following years while the wider jungle genre came to embrace more melodic forms. Summit Records sells mainly reggae and doubles as an Afro-Caribbean barbers. [355] Although many of the scene's leading bands don't sound very similar,[356] critics have identified a common element as how the bands "all incorporate a slightly flippant attitude to their music, not concentrating on polishing their records to perfection, but playing for the joy of creating music and for entertaining their audiences."[357]. #49 of 280. Jim Cregan - guitars, vocals. [114], Also crucial to the emergence of heavy metal as an international phenomenon were Judas Priest,[115] who moved beyond the early sound of the metal genre in the later 1970s, combining the doom-laden gothic feel of Black Sabbath with the fast, riff-based sound of Led Zeppelin, while adding their own distinctive two-guitar cutting edge. [120] They were to form the essential link between the traditional heavy metal of the 1970s and the various genres of extreme metal that would follow, their sound laying the basis for the speed metal, death metal, thrash metal and black metal of the 1980s. Later in 1980 they also released one more song, "Let Go", on a Birmingham bands compilation called Bouncing in the Red (EMI). [163], The Midlands' most important early punks were The Prefects, considered by DJ John Peel to be better than either The Clash or the Sex Pistols. 80s Tribute Band. [244], Kings Heath-based Laura Mvula came to national attention in 2013, being nominated for both the Critics Choice award at the 2013 BRIT Awards and for the BBC Sound of 2013 poll. [79] The band was formed at The Elbow Room in Aston in April 1967 when Steve Winwood decided to quit The Spencer Davis Group at the height of their success to pursue more adventurous musical directions, joining together with guitarist Dave Mason and drummer Jim Capaldi from The Hellions and flautist and saxophonist Chris Wood from Locomotive. [141] Their 1978 debut album Handsworth Revolution stood out from its peers in its political commitment[144] and is still considered one of the landmark releases of British reggae. . [3] By 1963 the city's music was also already becoming recognised for what would become its defining characteristic: the refusal of its musicians to conform to any single style or genre. [185], During the late 1970s and early 1980s Birmingham was the home of a "vibrant but infamously fragmented and undervalued" post-punk scene. [218] British bhangra became increasingly important within India itself, influencing both traditional folk music of the Punjab and wider cultural phenomena such as the music of the Bollywood film industry. "[333], Birmingham's divergence from the national mainstream was partly driven by the city's inherently eclectic musical culture. [192] Swans Way achieved greater recognition for their highly individual and experimental sound, influenced by jazz, soul and French orchestral pop,[193] with their 1984 single "Soul Train" reaching the Top 20 and becoming a classic of its day. [294] While the rest of Britain was dominated by rave, Birmingham developed an underground scene combining the practices of electronic music with the influence of local black and Asian music,[295] particularly the production techniques of dub, to create a highly psychedelic downtempo sound that reinvented trance music by stretching the music out using echo, delay and reverb techniques. [346] Dubbed "dark disco" for its "groove-inflected post-punk sound",[347] their 2005 first album The Back Room was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize, and both this album and its 2006 follow-up An End Has a Start sold platinum. [216] Handsworth's Soho Road in particular developed a global cultural resonance, symbolising the specific cultural social and political space occupied by British South Asians. This span off into bank holiday all-dayers with guests including Lee Fisher, Sacha, Carl Cox etc. [159] Although only loosely connected with punk they were considered to be Birmingham's finest live band of the era[160] and built a strong local following, becoming the subject of a legendary epidemic of graffiti throughout the city and surrounding area[161] and regularly selling out Friday nights at the city's leading punk venue Barbarella's by the end of 1978. Over the next 15 years, the Mellotron had a major impact on rock music and is a trademark sound of the progressive rock bands. [11] Heavy metal was born in the city in the early 1970s by combining the melodic pop influence of Liverpool, the high volume guitar-based blues sound of London and compositional techniques from Birmingham's own jazz tradition. [6] The fiddler Dave Swarbrick joined the band in 1969, his knowledge of traditional music becoming the biggest single influence on the following album Liege & Lief,[46] generally considered the most important album both of Fairport Convention as a band and of the folk rock genre as a whole. [282] Downwards would become one of the most important labels in world techno,[283] and the "darkly reductionist" influence of its "huge slabs of unrelentingly unchanging minimalism" would be unmistakable in the development of the later techno scenes in New York City and at the Berghain in Berlin. Mike Pinder of the Moody Blues worked for that company and it is one of the reasons why he introduced that instrument in the band, giving its very typical sound. [92] The style of music also had precedents among earlier local bands: aggressive performing styles had been a characteristic of the wild and destructive stage shows of The Move,[93] and Chicken Shack's pioneering use of high volume Marshall Stacks had pushed the boundaries of loud and aggressive blues to new extremes. When hip hop performer Afrika Bambaata visited Britain he inspired new rappers and hip hop DJs including Moorish Delta 7 Elements, Juice Aleem, Roc1, Mad Flow, Creative Habits, Lord Laing, Fraudulent Movements, and DJ Sparra (twice winner of the DMC mixing championships). 1970s - 1980s : R&B, . a tribute to the West Midlands Passenger Transport Executive. [277] The importance of Rushton to the emergence of techno was acknowledged in 2011 by Detroit pioneer Derrick May: "The guy discovered us. [223] In 1969 they became the first Gospel Group to be recorded by a major record company when their classic and now extremely rare album Oh Happy Day was recorded by Cyril Stapleton for PYE Records. [274] Harris also joined up with New York City-based musicians Bill Laswell and John Zorn to form Painkiller, whose sound mixed grindcore and free jazz.[275]. RE-LIVE THE FUN OF THE 1980STHE BEST DECADE FOR MUSIC! [296] Oscillate incorporated these new sounds with surrounding visual effects to create what it called "heliocentric atmospheres",[297] becoming "The club of the moment, making waves far beyond the Midlands". [299] The group most closely associated with the club was Higher Intelligence Agency, established at Oscillate by its founder Bobby Bird in May 1992 to improvise live tracks between records, releasing their first track on Beyond's first compilation Ambient Dub Volume 1. [208] Newer groups began to take this further: DCS successfully fused bhangra music with rock, using only keyboards, electric guitar and a western drum kit in place of the traditional dhol;[209] while Chirag Pehchan, another Birmingham bhangra band formed the late 1970s, combined bhangra with reggae, ragga, early hip-hop, soul, rock, and dance influences. [332] Tim Felton of Broadcast described how they would "take that from the past, move it forward and present it", though insisting that "it's not a true realisation of the past. [23] Instead the city's music was characterised by a "rampant eclecticism",[6] its style ranging from traditional blues, rock and roll and rhythm and blues through to folk, folk rock, psychedelia and soul,[23] with its influence extending into the 1970s and beyond. [132] The result was a free exchange of influence and support between the sound systems of the city's Jamaican-influenced musical culture and local bands of all races and genres,[133] with particularly close relationships growing between the city's reggae and punk scenes. The Raw & the Cooked was a "melting pot of styles",[197] its "shopping list of genres" encompassing Mod, funk, Motown, classic British pop, R&B, punk, rock, and disco, while tying them all together into artful contemporary pop. During the 1960s the Spencer Davis Group combined influences from folk, jazz, blues and soul and to create a wholly new rhythm and blues sound[9] that "stood with any of the gritty hardcore soul music coming out of the American South",[10] while The Move laid the way for the distinctive sound of English psychedelia by "putting everything in pop up to that point in one ultra-eclectic sonic blender". [86][116], Birmingham's booming post-war economy made it the main area alongside London for the settlement of West Indian immigrants from 1948 and throughout the 1950s. Birmingham, the second-largest city of England, looked totally different in the 1980s. "[123], During the 1960s and 1970s, the West Midlands developed a culture of Black British music that was unique,[132] remaining far less segregated from the white music scene than was the case in London. [131] The founders of the reggae band Eclipse, who met at a blues party, later recalled "Blues would took place everywhere. With their distinctive peroxide blond mop tops, the quartet clocked up a run of independent chart hits, beginning with 1989's giddy Hollow Heart (on Lazy, also home to Coventry's The Primitives). [22], By the 1960s Birmingham had become the home of a popular music scene comparable to that of Liverpool: despite producing no one band as big as The Beatles the city was a "seething cauldron of musical activity", with several hundred groups whose memberships, names and musical activities were in a constant state of flux. Later on, I also took photographs for Musique, a local fanzine/music paper. [179] The success of their wild and snarling first single "Johnny won't go to Heaven" in 1977 saw the NME declare Rowland to be Johnny Rotton's successor as the voice of punk protest, but Rowland was already expressing dissatisfaction with punk's uniformity, complaining that "The original idea of punk was to be different and say what you wanted not just to copy everybody else". [354], Since 2012 the Digbeth-based B-Town scene has attracted widespread attention, led by bands such as Peace and Swim Deep, with the NME comparing Digbeth to London's Shoreditch, and The Independent writing that "Birmingham is fast becoming the best place in the UK to look to for the most exciting new music". Acid house nights such as Spectrum took place in Tamworth and at The Hummingbird in Birmingham. Nathan dj'd at 49er's around this time, playing everything from Prince to House and Balearic. [citation needed], While there is a thriving music scene in the city and a number of rehearsal studios such as Robannas, Rich Bitch and Madhouse (many of which have their own demo recording studios) there are very few working at a professional level. Rod Stewart - vocals. [116] Their 1978 album Stained Class established the sonic template for the new wave of British heavy metal that would follow, removing the last traces of blues rock from the metal sound and taking it to new levels of power, speed, malevolence and musicality. [37] Jaki Graham was one of the most popular British R&B acts of the 1980s with a string of hits including "Could It Be I'm Falling in Love," "Round and Round" and "Set Me Free". [125] Early Birmingham blues played calypso and rhythm and blues, but the early 1960s saw the rise of ska and from the late 1960s the scene was dominated by dub. "[171] Describing the "legendary Birmingham group" the journalist Jon Savage later wrote "The Prefects were always one of the most hermetic and confrontational groups. [186], Refusing to conform to a conventional post-punk sound,[187] Pigbag were formed in 1980 by Birmingham musicians Chris Hamlin and Roger Freeman while both were students in Cheltenham. From legendary 1970s rock bands Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, to 80s/90s super group Duran Duran, this compilation of Birmingham, UK, native artists features a wide range of genres, such as heavy metal, hard rock, alternative, R&B, punk, pop, folk, country, hip-hop/rap, jazz, reggae, and even blues. [65] Guitarist Roy Wood was soon persuaded to start writing original material, and his eccentric, melodically inventive songwriting and dark, ironic sense of humour[66] saw their first five singles all reach the UK Top 5. The New Dance Sound of Detroit that first identified techno as a distinct musical genre, also being responsible for giving the genre its name,[276] and his Network Records label, based in Stratford House in Birmingham's Camp Hill, that would be instrumental in introducing Detroit techno to British and European audiences over the following years. New Releases. [307] Harris also released ambient and dub influenced albums under his own name in collaboration with musicians such as New York City's James Plotkin,[308] and Bill Laswell[309] and Italy's Eraldo Bernocchi. [285] Sandwell District's sound built upon the minimalism that the earlier Birmingham sound had established as the dominant techno aesthetic of the early 2000s, but also challenged it, being characterised by a greater degree of subtlety and refinement[285] and showing influences from wider musical genres including post-punk, shoegaze and death rock. [1], Many performers who would be influential in the later growth of Birmingham music emerged during this era. From legendary 1970s rock bandsLed Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, to 80s/90s super group Duran Duran, this compilation of Birmingham, UK, nativeartists features a wide range of genres, such as heavy metal, hard rock, alternative, R&B, punk, pop, folk, country, hip-hop/rap, jazz, reggae, and even blues. [35] Although at this stage still within the R&B tradition, the music of the early Moody Blues already showed signs of the more experimental approach that would characterise their later career, with highly original musical compositions by Laine and Mike Pinder; live four-part harmonies that were far more expansive than anything used by bands such as The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Hollies or The Dave Clark Five at the time; and the zen-like repetition and rhythmic complexity of their piano parts prefiguring their future psychedelic style. The hip hop scene dates back to at least 1980, and has produced popular performers like Moorish Delta 7 and Brothers and Sisters. Birthplaces of Musicians and Bands on AllMusic . [155] The group produced hours of home recordings on reel-to-reel tapes over the course of the early and mid 1970s[156] with Sudden later recalling that when he first saw the Sex Pistols in April 1976 "my reaction was that they sounded the same as what we were doing". They started in 1976 in Birmingham and helped to develop the new wave/English synth-pop sound. [13] The ska revival grew out of the West Midlands uniquely multi-racial musical culture. [14] Grindcore was born in Sparkbrook from fusing the separate influences of extreme metal and hardcore punk. . [63] With an influence extending from alternative rock to free jazz,[58] and including figures as diverse as R.E.M., Radiohead, David Gray and Beth Orton, the actors Brad Pitt and Heath Ledger and the film director Sam Mendes,[64] his work is now revered as one of the greatest achievements both of British folk music and of the entire singer-songwriter genre worldwide. Mixmaster (constructive Trio) was, as his name suggests, a master of the mix, and also worked in radio. [9] This and its 1967 Winwood-written follow up "I'm a Man" were top 10 hits on both sides of the Atlantic[9] selling over a million copies and adding a huge fanbase in America to their existing European popularity. [336] The term Retro-futurism was first applied to music by Brian Duffy, who used it to refer to the music of Stylophonic, which he established with Robert Shaw of Swan's Way in 1984 and whose performances involved 15 analogue synthesisers sequenced live on stage "We were kind of doing this mix of Kraftwerk, The Walker Brothers and Marc Bolan it was synthesiser glam rock"[337], Pram were the scene's first major group, forming in 1988,[338] with their early sound being limited to vocals and an accompanying theremin. Birmingham, AL 80s Bands Get ready to book a blast from the past! [176] The all-male Dangerous Girls started in 1978 with a post-punk sound influenced by Public Image Ltd, perversely moving in an increasingly punk direction for their series of singles,[177] that were re-released on three compilation albums in 2001 and 2002. [127] Sounds would also often "play out" in neighbouring areas or challenge other sound systems in a competitive sound clash, allowing the more prominent outfits to attract wider attention during the 1970s and 1980s the better-known Handsworth sounds would attract visitors from as far afield as London, Manchester and Bristol. Punch Records, in the Custard Factory, run street dance and DJ training courses. ", "Remembering Trish Keenan, Singer for the Band Broadcast", "Broadcast: Laughing in the face of genres", "60s theme club Sensateria returns to Birmingham after 18-year hiatus", "Broadcast: Berberian Sound Studio Original Soundtrack review", "Trish Keenan: Singer who made beguiling, bewitching music with the experimental band Broadcast", "90. This album surely proves beyond doubt that the answer is no. With us, you get a full instrumentation, tight harmonies, and a fun show! [201] Boy George later recalled that it was Degville's influence that led to his own relocation to the West Midlands in 1978: "he wasn't like the other punks, he was wearing stiletto heels and had a massive bleached quiff and huge padded shoulders. Opening for such acts as The Boo Radleys, The Cranberries, Suede and the West Mids' own Dodgy, Delicious Monster released a solid run of EPs and a fine album, Joie De Vivre, in 1993. The Charlatans, Dodgy, Felt, The Lilac Time, and Ocean Colour Scene were other notable rock bands founded in the city and its surrounding area in this period. #13 of 392. [248], In the mid 1980s The Mermaid in Birmingham's Sparkhill district lay at the centre of the emergence of grindcore,[249] which combined the influence of hardcore punk and death metal to form arguably the most extreme of all musical genres;[15] and the band Napalm Death, the most influential and commercially successful band of all of the various genres of extreme metal. Featured New Releases . [39], Research by folk music scholars recorded a rich tradition of folk-songs from the West Midlands as late as the 1960s,[6] including songs being performed by local traditional singers such as Cecilia Costello and George Dunn entirely within an oral tradition, and songs documented by other folk music collectors over the previous 70 years. [316] In 1995 he took this fusion approach to its ultimate conclusion with the release of his debut album Timeless: an "archive of overlapping sounds from Goldie's past: Jamaican dub, Brit-soul, Detroit techno, hip-hop, and developments in jungle/drum 'n' bass",[317] with Goldie himself crediting these eclectic musical tastes to his rootless Midlands upbringing: "in one room a kid would be playing Steel Pulse, while through the wall someone else had a Japan record on and another guy would be spinning Human League. [211], The late 1980s and early 1990s marked the heyday of the grassroots bhangra scene. [128] Notable Birmingham sound systems whose reputations extended beyond the city included Quaker City, which was founded in 1965;[129] Duke Alloy, which was founded in 1966 and featured the toaster Astro who later became part of UB40;[130] and Wassifa, which featured Macka B, the most influential British toaster of the 1980s. [141] During their early years their music carried distinct jazz and Latin influences, but during the 1980s they brought in synthesisers and touches of R&B, later returning to a rootsier sound that showed that reflected the growth of dancehall and hip-hop. [178] Of wider long term significance were The Killjoys, who were led by future Dexys Midnight Runners singer Kevin Rowland and grew out of an earlier band called Lucy and the Lovers in 1976. [198] to form "the perfect balance between artistic and commercial, organic and synthetic, past and present". ", "Swans Way: The Fugitive Kind Expanded Edition", "80sObscurities presents: Swans Way 'Soul Train', "Classic Tracks: Fine Young Cannibals' "She Drives Me Crazy", "Muhammad Ayub ~ Founder of Oriental Star Agencies", "Jamelia: People think I have everything I don't", "Laura Mvula might be about to play Glastonbury but she's never been to a festival before", "Laura Mvula The Next Great British Soul Singer? [76] Also performing in the style later identified as freakbeat were The Idle Race, the most important Birmingham band of the 1960s not to achieve significant commercial success, who formed from the remains of The Nightriders in 1966, after the departure of Roy Wood and Mike Sheridan led to their replacement by a 19-year-old Jeff Lynne. DJs John . [158] Although never more than a cult success, they were to be highly influential in the emergence of the next generation of alternative rock, with Dinosaur Jr., REM and Pavement all citing the group as an influence, and Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore writing that "The Swell Maps had a lot to do with my upbringing". Van Halen. [42] Campbell also ran the Jug o' Punch Folk Song Club, originally at The Crown in Station Street, but later at the Digbeth Civic Hall on Thursday nights. Now it has become a day for the unsigned of all genres and was brought back to life in 2013 as unsigned acts decided it was time for them to do a day of their own. Influences were detectable here and there, but the heart of the music was mysteriously original". [319], Birmingham's Back 2 Basics marked the birth of a new minimalist strain of jungle in 1993 with their stripped-down early tracks "Back 2 Basics" and "Horns 4 '94". [195] The group's self-titled debut album mixed the influence of English pop, American soul and European dance music and met critical acclaim and some commercial success within the UK,[196] but it was their 1989 second album, The Raw & the Cooked that propelled them to international stardom, reaching number 1 in the UK, the US and Australia and producing two US number 1 singles. "[288], Away from the style that bears the city's name, Germ was one of the formative influences on early UK techno, pioneering the combination of the form and techniques of electronic dance music with the more "composerly" models of classical, industrial and experimental jazz music to form what would later become known as electronic listening music, becoming "one of the most influential, under-recognized forces of innovation in the European experimental electronic music scene". White and black musicians could routinely be seen jamming together in pubs in districts such as Handsworth and Balsall Heath and, as the cultural commentator Dick Hebdige observed, Birmingham was "one of the few places left in Britain where it's still possible for a white man to get into a shebeen without wearing a blue uniform and kicking the door down". [325] The Streets' first album Original Pirate Material marked a major change in British music, moving beyond both the retro guitar-based indie bands of the early 2000s and the attempts of British rappers to imitate their more successful American counterparts, by rapping about the everyday details of English suburban existence in a recognisable Brummie accent. [291] Wright has also released more dancefloor focused work as Tube Jerk. "[278], Over the following decade Birmingham would become synonymous with British techno[279][280] and established alongside Detroit and Berlin as one of the major centres of techno worldwide[281] as the home of the distinctive Birmingham sound, which differed from the techno of Detroit and Berlin through being stripped almost entirely of its bassline funk, leaving only the cold mechanical drive of its metallic percussion arrangements. This is a List of Birmingham bands, a growing list of significant musical groups based in the Birmingham area, organized by the decade of their emergence. [3] The first Birmingham-based band to have a Top 10 hit were The Applejacks, who signed to Decca in late 1963 and whose debut single "Tell Me When" reached number 7 in the UK Singles Chart in February 1964. [227] Brought up in Handsworth and educated in Ladywood, she was spotted by a talent scout singing for a jazz-funk band in.1983. It had a 1400-seat auditorium and hosted some famous acts in its time. [154] The earliest were the Swell Maps, formed in 1972 by brothers Epic Soundtracks and Nikki Sudden, inspired by T. Rex, The Stooges and Can. By Dave Freak. [28], In early 1964 Dial Records and Decca both released compilation albums showcasing the breadth of the Birmingham music scene. The Vikings started as a skiffle group in Nechells in the spring 1957,[20] with Pat Wayne and the Deltas also emerging as a skiffle group in Ladywood around the same time,[21] spending the summer of 1957 busking on pleasure boats on the River Severn in Worcester. [224] Continuing Birmingham's tradition of pioneering gospel groups were the Majestic Singers, who formed in Handsworth in 1974 with 26 carefully selected singers from the New Testament Church of God and the intention "to bring to the black choir genre something that was peculiarly British. [165] Lloyd met Harborne's Apperley brothers at a Patti Smith concert in Birmingham in October 1976, later joining their band and bringing the name and several members from his previous band with him. [90] The industrial basis of Birmingham society in the 1960s and 1970s was also significant: early heavy metal artists described the mechanical monotony of industrial life, the bleakness of the post-war urban environment and the pulsating sound of factory machinery as influences on the sound they developed,[91] and Black Sabbath's use of loosely stringed down-tuned guitars and power chords partly resulted from lead guitarist Tony Iommi's loss of the ends of two fingers on his right hand in an industrial accident with a sheet metal cutting machine. [230] Also brought up in Handsworth was Ruby Turner, the granddaughter of a noted Jamaican Gospel singer, who moved from Montego Bay to Birmingham at the age of nine. Birmingham's culture of popular music first developed in the mid-1950s. [135] Birmingham bands were showing the influence of Jamaican music as early as 1968, when Locomotive had a minor UK hit with the ska single "Rudi's in Love",[136] and, by 1969, ska nights at Birmingham City Centre clubs were attracting early skinheads dressed in tonic suits and loafers,[137], Birmingham's first major home-grown reggae band was Steel Pulse,[138] who formed in Handsworth Wood in 1975[139] from a group of musicians who had been playing dub plates since the age of 15 and 16. [53] Drake completed his education at a tutorial college in Birmingham's Five Ways, from where he won a scholarship to study English literature at Cambridge. Also in the late 1960s, there were psychedelic rock bands, such as Velvett Fogg a cult British psychedelic rock band. 6,657 votes. [166] The new band's first public gig in 1976 ended in a riot when they performed their first song "Birmingham's a Shithole",[167] but by May 1977 they were opening The Clash's "White riot" tour at London's Rainbow Theatre,[164] perfecting a "shambling, improvisational" repertoire that included the 10-second "I've got VD", a highly original interpretation of "Bohemian Rhapsody", and their most well-regarded track, the 10-minute "The Bristol Road leads to Dachau",[164] an early example of the art-punk that would later emerge in the 1980s.