FOTS-POD#20 - “The Amityville Robson”

Listen:

TRACKLISTING:

Minstrel Show - Barry Goldberg
I Can Never Tell - The Crawdaddys
Son, This Is She - John Leyton
Beautiful Waste - The Triffids
Sand - Hush Arbors
Empire (State of Mind) - Jay-Z Feat Alicia Keys
Kingfish - Levon Helm and the Dirt Band
Reggeaman - Jack Morgan
Country Pie - Bob Dylan
Bad Fog of Lonliness- Neil Young
Woman’s Prison - Loretta Lynn
I’ll Be The Other Woman - Soul Children
Blue Skies - Noah and the Whale

DOWNLOAD FOTS-POD#20 - “The Amityville Robson”

LINER NOTES:

Minstrel Show - Barry Goldberg

A Full Squad Treading The Boards

Just a gentle reminder that tomorrow, 6th November, Friends of the Stars will be treading the boards once again, playing as a full band for the first time in a wee while in support of rising folk star Beth Jeans Houghton.

Details…

Beth Jeans Houghton with support from Friends of the Stars and Banksa

Friday 6th November
The Hare And Hounds
106 High Street
Kings Heath
Birmingham
B14 7JZ
Doors Open 8pm
Admission £5.00

Here’s the blurb from the promoters, Lunar Society:

This month once again we bring you 3 fine acts. Beth Jeans Haughton, Friends of The Stars and Banksa.

Beth Jeans Houghton was born in Transylvania to a pack of albino wolves who raised her on chewing tobacco and stuffed clams. Beth is also Observer Music Monthly rising star for July.

Her very limited edition first release sold out almost instantly and second release Golden has further proved her to be a talented songwriter.  She’s played alongside a diverse collection of artists including Fiona Regan, Imogen Heap, and Scott Matthews and what more endorsement could she need than when Devendra Banhart interrupted his Greenman Festival set halfway through and invited her to play her own song.

Friends of the Stars emerged earlier this century from the fated ashes of John Peel favourites The Toques.
Principal members Anna Russell (vocals, keyboards), Craig Hamilton (vocals, guitars), Cam Docherty (guitars, vocals) and Phil Robinson (drums) hail from Birmingham, UK via Brighton, Northampton and Kilmarnock.  Friends of the Stars share out song-writing and vocal duties, with Anna’s soaring voice on its own or complimenting Craig or Cam’s more weather-beaten tones.

Banska is singer /song writer Rowena Knight. She is based in Birmingham and proves that creativity and originality are still alive in contemporary acoustic music.  This is Folk music with a unique atmospheric sound and driving rhythms with a rocky edge.

A Date With Beth Jeans Houghton

Friends of the Stars will be supporting rising folk star Beth Jeans Houghton at the Hare & Hounds, Birmingham on Friday November 6th. The line-up is completed by Banksa, and doors open at 8pm.

See you there. 

From the Lunar Society site….

Come November we’re back once again at The Hare And Hounds after our brief diversion in October.

This month once again we bring you 3 fine acts. Beth Jeans Haughton, Friends of The Stars and Banksa.

Beth Jeans Houghton was born in Transylvania to a pack of albino wolves who raised her on chewing tobacco and stuffed clams. Beth is also Observer Music Monthly rising star for July.

Her very limited edition first release sold out almost instantly and second release Golden has further proved her to be a talented songwriter.

She’s played alongside a diverse collection of artists including Fiona Regan, Imogen Heap, and Scott Matthews – and what more endorsement could she need than when Devendra Banhart interrupted his Greenman Festival set halfway through and invited her to play her own song.

Friends of the Stars emerged earlier this century from the fated ashes of John Peel favourites The Toques.

Principal members Anna Russell (vocals, keyboards), Craig Hamilton (vocals, guitars), Cam Docherty (guitars, vocals) and Phil Robinson (drums) hail from Birmingham, UK via Brighton, Northampton and Kilmarnock.

Friends of the Stars share out song-writing and vocal duties, with Anna’s soaring voice on its own or complimenting Craig or Cam’s more weather-beaten tones.

Banska is singer /song writer Rowena Knight. She is based in Birmingham and proves that creativity and originality are still alive in contemporary acoustic music.

This is Folk music with a unique atmospheric sound and driving rhythms with a rocky edge.

Friday 6th November
The Hare And Hounds
106 High Street
Kings Heath
Birmingham
B14 7JZ

Doors Open 8pm
Admission £5.00

A Beautiful Moment…

It almost feels rude to intrude on this sweet, loving moment. …

Here we see Campbell and Executive Producer Robson gazing longingly into each others eyes as the sun sets on an early June evening in Birmingham. Feel the love, folks…

(FEED SUBSCRIBERS - CLICK HERE TO SEE THE PHOTO)

The Million Dollar Rematch….This Time It’s Personable

In the late 1990s in California Dorian Wood decided to track down his worldwide namesakes using the interweb and eventually got in touch with Birmingham-based Dorian Wood. Finding someone who shares your slightly out-of-the-ordinary name on the other side of the globe would be one thing, but to find out that you are both involved in the creation of strange and beautiful music is something quite altogether different.

On Friday 8th May 2009 we are bringing together these two unique talents to play on the same bill for the second time… It’s the Million Dollar Rematch.

Here’s what happened last March, when we did this for the first time when Anna sang with Dorian Wood USA:

(FEED Readers can see the video here)

Friends of the Stars and Commercially Inviable cordially invite you to kick off your weekend with a night of music, dancing and collaboration.

If your name is also Dorian Wood then you’ll receive FREE entry but proof of identity will be required.

Boringly-named individuals will need £3 to gain access.

We hope to see you there.

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DORIAN WOOD (USA)

His recently-released Bolka album is without doubt one of the best things we’ve all heard in a long time and really, really deserves to be heard by a much wider audience. Dorian has a voice that is really beautiful and he writes songs that call to mind Rufus Wainwright, The Blind Boys of Alabama and Anthony Hegarty - all rolled into one.

THEY SAY: “Wry, wistful and deliciously eerie, BOLKA is a valentine to the brokenhearted”

DORIAN WOOD (UK)

One half of the marvellous and frightening TeaTowel, the Friends of the Stars remixer of choice and the man behind the world’s only and best Happy Hardcore covers band, Pete_Prescription. Dorian will be playing brand new compositions freshly minted in his Kings Heath studio so expect Krautrock, Melody, Noise or something else entirely.

THEY SAY: “Elevator Music for people descending into hell”

FRIENDS OF THE STARS

Commercially Inviable Since 2000, this alt-country outdfit have harmonies, tunes and hooks in abundance and after surviving over 7 years of mild success and self-inflicted disappointment they bring you songs from ”Lighting and Electrical”, their first full-length album.

THEY SAY: “Their new disc is packed with the kind of authentically sad, lovely, and whiskey-drenched tunes that are tragically absent from the modern country FM dial.”

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INFORMATION:

Email info@friendsofthestars.co.uk

Call +44 (0) 7740 358 162

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USEFUL LINKS:

FRIENDS OF THE STARS

THE HARE & HOUNDS

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DIRECTIONS:

LOCATION ON MULTIMAP.COM FOR DIRECTIONS

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With Apologies To The Dubliners….

This is from Nicky over there on the Digbeth is Good website….

In the raffle at Twestival on 12th Feb I was lucky enough to win a cover of a song of my choice by Friends of the Stars, which was kindly donated by member Craig Hamilton.  I inevitably chose an Irish folk song - my favourite, Black Velvet Band.

But then I went and butchered the lyrics to reflect the recent Noise Abatement Order problems suffered by The Spotted Dog and The Rainbow, so the hairpiece is worn by a noisy colleen who gets a poor Digbeth barman into all sorts of trouble.  Play it in the little playbox above or download a 128kbps version (5mb), which should be small enough for downloads.  I’ll be burning a few CD’s for all the local pubs in good time for St Patrick’s Day.

I hope you like it, I think it’s beautifully done.  If you hate it because you’re an ardent Dubliners fan and this amounts to sacrilege, I’m really very sorry.  If it’s any consolation, my Dad’s going to kill me.

Here’s the credits:

Friends of the Stars - Black Velvet Band (Trad.)
Additional Lyrics by Nicky Getgood
Arrangement by Friends of the Stars
Recorded in Birmingham and Glasgow in Feb 2009 by Friends of the Stars
Anna Russell - Vocals
Campbell Docherty - Bass, Electric Guitar, Backing Vocals
Craig Hamiltion - Vocals, Acoustic Guitar
Piano kindly played by Rich Batsford

Friends of the Stars @ Birmingham Twestival

On 12th February 2009 Birmingham will be joining over 100 confirmed cities around the world in a night of fund raising, partying, competitions and all round fun. 

Everyone attending  Twesitval will  be automatically entered in to the main prize draw for a Nintendo Wii games console with guitar hero.  There will also be a raffle on the night with a fantastic range of prizes kindly donated by various Twitter folk. The raffle will take place around 10pm on the evening and people will need to be there to pick up their prize on the night.

Friends of the Stars have donated a special raffle prize for the event.  The band will record a cover version of a song of the winner’s choice, tagging the resulting MP3 file with a special dedication and photograph, before putting the song online. With the event so close to Valentine’s Day, the lucky winner may chose a song and dedication for a loved one, or alternatively a song that they’ve always thought would sound rather marvellous when performed by a harmony-heavy country/folk outfit. 

Brum Twestival is being kindly hosted by Poppy Red. It’s in central Birmingham, located between Moor Street and New Street Stations, and many of the major city bus routes pass right by it. On the evening there will be some food provided, as well as a coupon for a free drink on the door (pending sponsorship). As well as some music and games, there will be a projector setup up so a live Twitter stream can connect the event with others around the world at other city Twestivals.  Tickets are £5 and are available here, but limited to 200 only and already going fast.

Hope to see you there!

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Follow Friends of the Stars’ Craig on Twitter

Birmingham’s Big City Plan

The citizens of Birmingham are currently being asked to comment and contribute to The Big City Plan, a project led by the city council that aims to steer the development and direction of our city centre over the next 20 years. There is also a plain English version of the plan online, created by a group of Birmingham bloggers, which might be useful to some.

It’s possible that asking for public input is merely the council paying lip service, and that plans will continue along a predetermined course regardless of opinion. It’s also entirely possible that some ideas emerging from the dialogue will be taken on board, with some perhaps even being implemented in one form or another. Time will tell which way things turn out, but for what it’s worth I’ve decided to give this process the benefit of the doubt.

I started out with a few ideas, some stupid and some serious, and my plan was to write something reasonably short, floating a few of the more absurd nuggets that bounce around the inside of my head. I ended up writing over 2000 words and the surprising thing for me, reading back at the end, was how much I genuinely cared. I may have an inability to take things seriously, and my default setting is to be taking the piss out of anything that moves, but deep-down I do really, really love this town.

Here goes…

Save The Super Prix Daffodils.

You may not even know they are there, but they are there. They are always there. Let them serve as a lesson from the past to those planning the future.

In the 1980s Birmingham went through two of the grandest civic follies of my lifetime. The biggest and dumbest was the doomed bid for the 1992 Olympics, but the strangest by some considerable distance was The Birmingham Super Prix.

In defence of the organisers the idea wasn’t entirely without logic. The gigantic Rover factory in Northfield meant that we had a reasonable claim to being “Motor City” and the 1960s had blessed us with a road system so laughably complex that it kept a dullard like Jeremy Clarkson in material for years. In reality, of course, the stark fact remained that Monaco and Monte Carlo we were not and it all ended, predictably enough, in tears and expensive failure.

Back when the idea of Motor Sport on the streets of Brum was optimistically new, daffodils were planted along the grass verge adjacent to Bristol Street spelling out “Birmingham SuperPrix” in 20 foot floral letters. Over the years this has fallen into disrepair and may now have been covered forever by the hideous etap hotel building. The long and the short of it is that the flowers no longer bloom, and this is a damn shame.

I believe the daffodils should be resurrected and forever maintained so that each and every spring time we are all served a natural reminder of our Monorail moment.

Immediate Embargo On ‘Luxury 1 Bedroom Flats’

Aside from the fact that they all look the same, seem cheaply built and are sometimes inhabited by the sort of people I’d rather have moved to another city entirely (especially those with sensitive ears), there is a wider and much more serious issue at hand here.

If the only places to live in and around the city are one-bedroom flats then where do the families live? Where do the groups of friends sharing a space live, the nurses and bus drivers, the musicians and artists on their noble and tortured breadline? What about the Creatives that have come to save our economy (…bear with me), or the students that the city is so keen to retain?

Where will the sense community and neighbourhood identity come from as a consequence of a planning policy that excludes all but a few? Fast forward 20 years and we may just get the kind of city centre we deserve.

Make The Science Museum Free, Make it Bigger..

We were once The City of a 1000 Trades and many 20th century iconic products were made right here. If you took all the guns and motorcycles out of the movie The Great Escape then all you’d be left with is footage of Charles Bronson in a tunnel, moaning about claustrophobia. One thing is certain, there’s no way it would be the ultimate Christmas telly movie that it is, and it owes that enduring popularity to the industry of our city.

When I was a kid my granddad used to take me to the science museum on Newhall Street. I can’t remember how many times we went, but it seemed like a lot, and I never, ever got bored. The museum was full of motorbikes, cars and even a World War Two Spitfire. The centrepiece of the place was an old steam locomotive that moved a few feet forward and then back again, on the hour, every hour. It was a cool place and it was free.

Sometime during the last 10 of 15 years the museum was shut and knocked down. In the place where it once stood there is now a Community Centre and….no, I’m kidding…in the place where it stood there are now luxury one bedroom flats. Meanwhile some of the contents of the museum have been transferred over to Millennium Point, where they can now only be seen in exchange for an admission fee.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Don’t Be Ashamed Of Duran Duran

A friend of mine went to Memphis, Tennessee a few years ago. He was sat in a downtown diner, enjoying a coffee and soaking up the atmosphere of a city that to many people is the de facto Ground Zero of Pop music.

A waitress approached and asked him if needed a refill, he politely declined and the waitresses clocked his English accent. She then asked him where he was from. When he told her that he was from Birmingham the waitresses almost dropped the pot of hot coffee into his groin and excitedly screamed,

“Oh my God…..that’s Robert Plant country!”

Now, of course, Percy is not technically a Brummie, but the point I’m making here is that our city is synonymous with a particular brand of heavy rock that totally conquered the mutherfuggin’ globe, and the crying shame of it is we make very little of it. Granted, Capsule’s Home of Metal project is a great start but imagine what could be done for tourism with the establishment of a proper city centre museum, and all the bars and souvenirs traps that would go with it.

Metal apart, Birmingham also has a curious musical legacy (or litany, depending on your tastes) of artists that have started here and gone on to genuine mega-stardom, particularly in the US. Then there are the places where venues once stood and played host to legends like Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley and so many more….

So, if there is to be a muso-historical vision for Birmingham in the future, then please let go far beyond a museum and Metal. Let it have everything, warts and all, and make sure it includes an open-top bus, full of Americans and Japanese, cruising through Great Barr on a wet Tuesday in October, gawping at the house where Stevie Winwood grew up, before it swings down through Aston to the place where Ozzy met Toni.

As an aside, I’ve actually been to Memphis myself and if you took away the musical legacy stuff there really isn’t a fat lot to see, which is…erm… something of a coincidence.

Hands Off The Ziggurat!

It’s often been said that town planners in the 1950s and ‘60s caused more damage to Birmingham’s architecture than the Luftwaffe. An example of this is the decision to replace New Streets Station’s glorious Victorian roof with a thunderously ugly shopping centre, and the damage didn’t begin and end there. It looks like we’re going to ignore the lessons of the past and continue this sorry tradition by knocking down the Central Library building.

A monstrous carbuncle according to the likes of Prince Chuck (”..more like a place for burning books, than keeping them”) and a classic example of a Ziggurat to the trained architectural eye, it’s a building that nevertheless provokes a reaction in people and as such it deserves to stay. It will be missed when it’s gone.

Top of the World, Ma…

Public Transport in Birmingham has long been a subject of debate. We used to have an extensive tram network before we ripped it out, and sometimes we talk about bringing it back. We used to have a lot more local train stations and services than we currently do, and occasionally there is talk of long dormant routes coming back to life. And whilst we do have an extensive bus network, we don’t appear to have much love for it (except for the blessed 11 Route).

Successive council administrations have ‘looked into’ the various possibilities for improvement and there always seems to be some sort of feasibility study ongoing, but nothing in my lifetime has ever come close to freeing the city centre from ‘the tyranny of the motor car’. The answer to our problems has been staring us in the face all along: A network of Cable Cars.

Not only would they look amazing they would also provide a practical solution to moving folk around the city. We could even use the Ziggurat as the City Centre Terminus, with four initial routes emerging like spokes on a wheel:

ROUTE 1: Five Ways (via Brindley Place)
ROUTE 2: Jewellery Quarter (via St Pauls)
ROUTE 3: Millennium Point (via Bull Ring)
ROUTE 4: Digbeth (via Chinatown)

At the moment, going from one of the above points to any of the others is an absolute schlep that would be at least 20 minutes on foot, very expensive (relative to distance) in a cab or else involve a long ride on at least a couple of buses. If we were to do these journeys above the traffic and chaos below we’d do it in a quarter of the time and emerge at the other end much happier.

This Time Next Year…..

This one is a stone-cold, 100% multi-million pound business idea that I’m giving to my fellow Brummies in a superbly generous demonstration of my civic pride. Ready? Ok….

Ask an American to say something that reminds them of Birmingham and those that know it’s not in France will either say “Cadburys” or “Ozzy Osbourne”. Ask a UK-resident the same thing and they’ll more than likely say HP Sauce (after they’ve said “Alright” in a Dudley accent). However, the stark realities of commerce in the 21st Century mean that production of our iconic condiment has, unfortunately, been moved to the Netherlands and the lovely HP Tower no longer forms part of our skyline. My idea could return such a landmark…and here’s how it breaks down.

We, the people, are going to start making sauce again….and not just ‘a’ sauce, folks, but lots of sauces, lots and lots of different sauces. In fact, we’re going to have a different sauce for each postcode. There will be a B14 sauce, a B44 sauce, a B6 sauce….and all the others, all under the one banner of “The Birmingham Sauce Company”

Residents in each postcode will be given a time limit (say, 6 months) and asked to concoct a sauce. They can use old, family recipes or they can engage in a sort of let’s-see-what-happens culinary alchemy. There are no rules. Sauces can be hot, fruity, tangy, good with chips / bad with chips…it’ll be a total free-for-all. Once the time is up the different sauces of a given postcode will be judged (by the people) and the winner will become that postcode’s sauce.

What we do then is start production, on a small-scale at first, at Sauce House (which will have a tower, naturally), and then slowing start ramping it up to meet demand. We have the entire globe represented here and so market research will be extensive and exhaustive. The most popular sauces could be sold nationwide and then globally, whilst the more ‘specialist’ sauces could be limited to smaller runs and sold in quaint, numbered bottles (I confidently predict that Americans and fancy London types in particular would love this aspect of our collective civic business). The whole thing will be the cornerstone of the local economy in the same way that whisky is for Scotland and, frankly, I do not see how it can possibly fail.

NOTE TO THE COUNCIL: If you chose to run with this idea and need someone to head up the project, I’m your man! You’ll need to be willing to overlook certain financial irregularities and I’ll be wanting a few afternoons off a week to play golf, but other than that I reckon we can go dancing together. Have your people call my people.

..and finally, a rant.

Stopping Thinking Up Stupid Names For Stuff

In the north of the city the area of Erdington borders the slightly posher area of Boldmere. During the 1990s Estate Agents started referring to the small area around Chester Road and the end of Boldmere Road as “Boldmere East” in an effort to make that corner of Erdington more desirable to idiots.

I realise that I’m probably wasting my time on this one, and that “Eastside” in particular is a done deal, but it’s not going to stop me getting a few things off my chest.

Other than the fact that pointless (and doubtless expensive) re-branding gets my goat, calling an area of central Birmingham “Eastside” is especially stupid because it presupposes a shared understanding of at least one of the 3 other main directional points on the compass. Since we don’t have a large river running through our city – and let’s be honest, folks, the River Rea doesn’t count – there is nothing to aid collective geographical understanding of which way is North, South or West, and as such East on it’s own makes absolutely no sense.

It’s also been pointed out to me by someone that “Eastside” is more than just a new name for an area of town that didn’t really need one, it’s also apparently a “state of mind”, which just about summed it all up for me.

So, please, I’m asking as nicely as I can - no more new names.