Opinion Archives - Page 5 of 11 -

October 20, 2014

OPINION: The invisible line

Words by Ed King

“What are you in to?” I’m never certain how to respond, a bad position for a writer.

I usually joke “everything from Tori Amos to Techno”, which is an adequate description of my iTunes account whilst allowing me to disguise my disdain behind alliteration. “MARACAS”, I should shout, or some equally asinine distinction; “I like all music from Sheffield”.

But there’s a darker question, one more judgmental than fatuous, steeped in the tribal politics that purport to guard certain corners of our cultural landscape. “What should you be into?” Where do you belong?

And it’s a question I still hear being asked. Walking into the wrong room, wearing the wrong clothes, saying the wrong things about the wrong band is a particularly teenage pitfall – but it’s not reserved for ‘the youth’. As I march from the pimple soaked shame of my formative years to a more grey haired solace, this ugly headed inquisition rears up more and more. Sure the genres are different, the tone is refined, but the need for validation by numbers remains the same. Red or blue? Left or right? Blur or Oasis? Radio One, Four or Six?

My recent foray into contemporary classical (if such a phrase can exist) has brought a few testing conversations. I’m a novice, happily ploughing my way through new ground and overplaying the small number of composers I happen to successfully dig up. I pay attention and I know what I know. I’m not a master of the classics. But on mentioning my new musical zeal, in certain company, I seem to unleash a passive aggressive pissing contest. Stories about child protégés (there seemed to be a lot in the 18^th & 19^th centuries), the influence of Vienna and lies about poverty or jingoism roll across the conversation when all I said was “Arnalds”. Frowns and tuts when all I said was “Nyman”.

Opera is another one, with a vast portfolio some would expect you to know verbatim before daring to converse. Jazz has its army of aficionados, Hip Hop has its lexicon, Rock has so many sub divisions I think some of them are joking, and the fashionistas of Dance still maraud clubland looking for anyone who once met Judge Jules. Are you, or have you ever, been into Trance?

I even remember being called up for a (deservedly) negative review of Peace, the once promising pastiche who seem to have sold it all for an NME blow job. It was a bad gig from a band with much more to offer, especially on home turf, but on daring to publish this I was told ‘You are over thirty aren’t you??? Go put your Screamadelica CD on and ignore us.’ So Andy Weatherall is now the stamp of anachronistic bad taste. Who knew.

From playgrounds to staff rooms, to chat rooms and forums, the cliques are still there – carving out what’s acceptable and the rules of engagement. It bored me when I was ten but now I’m nearing forty I’m landing, thankfully, somewhere closer to pity. For example, on Wednesday it’s my birthday and I’m going to the Town Hall to hear Tamsin Whaley-Cohen perform The Lark Ascending – Vaughn William’s more widespread musical homage to Meredith’s original poem. The Lark Ascending has always been a bit busy for me but it’s one of my mother’s favourite pieces, so to celebrate the horror of age we’re going to hear together.

Neither my mother nor I are experts on 20^th century composers, we have our own reasons for going. But somewhere in the room, hopefully, there will be someone who is – brimming with knowledge that could add to our continued experience of this composition; a piece of music which has attracted new listeners for nearly a hundred years. Appreciation through understanding, I couldn’t welcome it more, and I’ll educate myself at the appropriate time and pace. But a mid week afternoon is a mid week afternoon, and the moment I’m told what’s the correct opinion to have…

When I was a teenager I use to by t-shirts with The Doors on, or NIN, I had a pretty psychedelic Godfodder one too – and standing in The Hummingbird on a Saturday night used to speak for itself. Then I painted smiley faces on my school bag and had tired eyes in the mornings.

Now, hidden behind respectable shoes and a professional mandate, perhaps I’m less easy to read. But again I have to ask, why would you want to? Maybe next time I hear those five-words-and-question-mark perhaps I’ll just respond with a web address.

Ed King is editor of Birmingham Review. Follow him @EdKing2210

*Tamsin Whaley-Cohen performs The Lark Ascending at the Town Hall on Weds 22^nd Oct. For further info, visit http://www.thsh.co.uk/event/the-lark-ascending-with-tamsin-waley-cohen/

September 29, 2014September 29, 2014

OPINION: A thorn by any other name…

Words by Ed King

I move around a lot, for work. The polite term is peripatetic.

And for the first time since 2008 I find myself in Birmingham during the Conservative Party conference, with all the fervor and false promise such a political bandwagon contains – whatever its colour scheme.

But this isn’t a party political rant. No, this is a dig at the electorate. And not all electorates; the ones that rise to their murky surface when such a pertinent opportunity to shout at city centre shoppers comes around. The mouth with the megaphone – standing in front of a table adorned with buzz words, petitions and slogans, berating one agenda or another with fumbling intelligence. Again, a polite word to use.

Last week I was standing on New Street trying to find a Western Union; my archaic (apparently) iPhone 3, G, S, C something or other churning through too much information to fit on a hand held screen, when through the bulwark of my earphones I hear something about the Scottish referendum. A well dressed man in his 50’s was chastising the “Tory government” and “Labour council”, terms he delivered with equal derision, about welfare reforms that either one had made, proposed or protested. Or one had proposed they would make which made the other protest.

At least, he was protesting – extending a voluble invitation to join said action as ‘the number of billionaires and millionaires in the city rocket at the end of September’. And for the period of time I was listening to this call, the Scottish referendum seemed to be the underpinning case in point. Although what that point was remained frustratingly unclear.

I walk up to him and wait.

Me: “…yes, hello. I was just listening to you and wanted some clarification. Are you calling the Scottish referendum undemocratic?”

The gist of our following exchange came down to the following:

Megaphone: “…so you’re in favour of cutting children’s services then?”

I have made no political stance or mandate endorsement.

Me: “I’m in favour of rational debate, ask me a rational question.”

Megaphone: “(a little louder) …so you want to cut money to children’s services?”

Me: “That’s a loaded question. Ask me a rational question.”

Megaphone: “(a little louder still) …you want to cut money from children’s services, you want to take money from vulnerable children??”

Me: “That’s a loaded question. I’m not answering that. I’m interested in rational debate, ask me a rational question.”

Megaphone: “(loud) RATIONAL DEBATE, THAT’S A LUDICROUS STANDPOINT. YOU WANT TO TAKE MON…”

I have about 15 minutes in situations as circular as this before my blood sugar levels kick in; I had not wanted an argument about the funding of front line services. Plus this was going nowhere but louder. Thankfully I remembered where the Western Union was.

The politics of government, be they party line or not, are historic and complex. The fact that elections are often campaigned on issues (such as the economy) that the general electorate is not qualified to adequately address (not a seasoned economist with relevant experience and knowledge, e.g. practical applications of a national fiscal strategy) reminds us how difficult democracy can be. But it’s a better system than autocratic rule, so we trudge through – the lunacy of planned obsolescence in a representational arena withstanding.

But one thing we have control over is the delivery of ourselves, the manner and approach in which we conduct our debate. Our democracy. The world’s largest library is available to us on phones, in coffee shops and ironically libraries – spilling information across subjects from stem cell research to X Factor, and if we chose to engage there is more information available to us in the UK now than at any other time in our history. You get free wifi in MacDonalds.

And whilst I believe the diversity of opinions is a healthy foundation, even if the opinions are not, I also believe the appropriate understanding to debate them is important. Even if it’s so you can honestly say, “…I didn’t know that.”

Without fact based understanding you can start to rely on rhetoric that’s angry and divisive, as arguments without substance are usually just shouting matches. Topics become footballs and purported ideals take to the streets. The issues that should be on the table become too muddled to address, with compassionate progression slowing down to a limp or a crawl. At best.

But the most worrying outcome, to me, are the avenues of hate this kind of discourse opens up; the rivulets of camouflaged anger, once a political arena becomes a place to justify the prejudices and peccadilloes of a frustrated ‘voter’. There are political parties based on this – with one in particular (even in its increasingly, mercifully, diluted apparition) gaining more traction than is comfortable. We are not yet safe from the ghosts of Mosley and Powell.

Perhaps I’m over concerned. I do tend to watch my home city’s cultural fabric expand like I’m marking growth spurts on the kitchen wall; incremental is not a word I would use (I get this with many aspects of popular culture – who the f*ck is Pitbull?).

And perhaps my professional lifestyle makes me miss the subtle accumulations – the gradual build of concern that pushes reasonable people onto inane battlefields. After all, I’m not always here. Perhaps I don’t fully understand the problems facing the British electorate? I come in and out of the UK for work reasons.

I’m peripatetic. At least, that’s the polite term to use.

Ed King is editor of Birmingham Review. Follow him @EdKing2210

July 28, 2014July 28, 2014

OPINION: Simmer Down’s most important success

By Ed King. Follow him @EdKing2210

So a week and a day ago, Simmer Down Festival ’14 happened; an alleged 20,000 people turned up to Handsworth Park, for the fifth festival from our friends at The Drum.

And whilst we wait for the official pictures and press release to corroborate these numbers, the last thing to swallow is the untimely end of the headline act. Steel Pulse, playing in Handsworth after a 30 year absence, cut their set short by 20minutes – excluding from the final playlist tracks such as ‘Prodigal Son’ and ‘Handsworth Revolution’.

But this is not about that. This is about the response to that.

Hours after the festival closed, Facebook was awash with comments from ‘best day of the year’ to ‘…should be ashamed’ – which is the hangover you’d expect from a large scale event mixed with social media. But at the event itself the ‘thousands of revelers’, all (I say again, alleged) 20,000 of them, ‘melted peacefully’ out of the park.

The Facebook feeds were mainly taken up with people asking and suggesting why Steel Pulse closed early – the statement from Selwyn Brown not offering much explanation and nothing official coming from The Drum. Many people were upset; they felt let down, with their frustration arguably heightened by the bubble burst finale and that Steel Pulse, or someone at least, ‘owed it to the people of Handsworth’ to have sorted it out. Whatever it was.

But the Simmer Down Festival ’14 crowd themselves, ‘melted peacefully’.

Now disappointing a crowd of 20,000 people is not always going to end ‘peacefully’. Wherever you are in the world, poking the bear to such vast degree is a precarious move – especially at anything, from Bar Mitzvahs to away games, where alcohol is consumed.

So what is it that incenses one crowd to mob retaliation and the other to calm acceptance? What takes hold once the music is switched off and the people in high-vis jackets are showing you the gate, in all the varying degrees of civility that SIA training seems to cover?

I caught the-end-of-the-end-of the ‘rave scene’, promoting a few parties myself and attending a few more; lots of driving around parts of the Midlands I didn’t really know, looking for something I wasn’t quite sure of. The only violence I witnessed was in the queue for Dreamscape 5 – a licensed event at a regulated venue.

I’ve also promoted events in Handsworth, at the foot of the Soho Road, when days before the city had been mugged by an opportunistic herd; the two uniformed officers that came to check up on us in the morning happily leaving the rest of the day to our security. Not a single incident occurred.

Then there was a regular Sunday night event I used to promote at Bar Room Bar in The Mailbox, where one week an argument was settled using the steak knives I was constantly asking the manageress to remove from the bar top. I’ve promoted events since I was too young to attend them, watching weddings turn to bar fights and festivals roll around for days after their license – and all the outcomes in between.

I’ve also seen the birth of the rioting at the debut Phoenix Festival, on Long Marston Airfield in 1994, beginning with one man hanging from one lamppost and ending in half a festival knocking down the Mean Fiddler’s perimeter fences. And some security.

So how, in the name of all that is cliché or holy, did Simmer Down Festival ’14 get away with such an abrupt rug pull?

It’s the same reason those clandestine field based parties of my youth never turned angry. It’s the same reason nights in city centre bars have a possibility too, if the wrong words are said in the right way. If you feel something is yours, you’re less likely to break it – or to let the idiots and interlopers cause any damage. If you don’t, and you’re angry, you could tear the place down.

It’s an odd outcome to such a shambolic ending, one you get the impression was more to do with bad stage and time management than anything else, but this is what Simmer Down Festival has seemingly managed to establish – a sense of ownership.

Many of the this year’s significantly increased crowd were at Simmer Down Festival ’14 to see Steel Pulse perform, and to hear live the songs that have become so important to so many. To fall at that particular fence and still keep your crowd, especially such a large one, is a phenomenally positive silver lining.

I wrote in the preview, that Simmer Down Festival was ‘picking up the old site, momentum, and to some degree legacy of the original Handsworth carnival’ and this jab-parry end to their half decade event, to me, adds further weight to this sentiment. Even on the Facebook feeds, once the initial frustration was vented, and at the end Steve Zacaranda’s Birmingham Review, the final words were positive – most people now moving on to headline suggestions for 2015.

So congratulations Simmer Down Festival; live, learn and recognise the respect for your crowd – Sunday 20^th July could have ended very differently. Despite every effort made by every organiser at every event, a success or failure can so often come down to the people attending.

And as I also wrote in the preview, under a video clip of Steel Pulse performing ‘Handsworth revolution’ at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1979, ‘…and you can just imagine the Handsworth crowd after the opening line gets sung.’

Ed King is editor of Birmingham Review. Follow him @EdKing2210

For more on Simmer Down Festival, visit http://simmerdownfestival.wordpress.com/

January 16, 2014

OPINION: Brutalising Brummie Brutalism

Interior of Birmingham Central Library - cira 1973 — Interior of Birmingham Central Library circa 1973

By Althea Patterson – first published on 07.01.14 / http://foxhunter7.wordpress.com

_____________

“The terraces on floors four and seven are closed due to adverse weather, thank you.”

I laughed wryly as the broad, thick Birmingham accent boomed over the public address system. I’m sat with coffee, notebook and pen in the fairly pricey cafe in the Library of Birmingham, a stone’s throw from the now redundant Birmingham Central Library. Whereas the former is a feat of glass, steel and light airy modern free time, the latter is a very much maligned paean of brutalist architecture, bad enough to be remembered for Prince Charles memorable quote of it being “a place where books are incinerated not kept”.

Ask any Brummie and it is a landmark that certainly divides opinion, upon hearing it was due to be demolished in 2014, I spoke for many of my peers when I said “About bloody time!” Then, I changed my mind.

I came across a group wanting to save it and felt an awful twinge of nostalgia. Call me a sentimentalist fool, but hear me out. Firstly, I know the chances of the building being saved are fairly slim; the owners, The Argent Group would have had the copper and lead piping inside priced up before the ink on the contracts had dried.

Erno Goldfinger's Trellick Towers in North Kensington — Erno Goldfinger’s Trellick Towers, London (UK)

Why is it so bad to hold onto parts that make us unique and stand out as outstanding? Birmingham Central Library is an iconic signpost for my city; when so many towns are becoming replicas of one another – a high street with Apple, Starbucks, Subway and a large shopping centre –the prospect of it disappearing only to be replaced by a bland glass fronted structure is disheartening.

As a student in the mid 1990’s Central Library came to be a home from home. I spent many an hour sat in its belly reading, writing, learning, drawing and listening to Jamiroquai on tinny Walkman ear buds. It was a wonderful place for a bibliophile; you could smell the sweet crispy aroma of books as old as the written word and all the knowledge contained. Steal energy from the other tired students sat opposite you and smile at the homeless people who made reading a copy of The Guardian into an all day activity.

Everyone was welcome, there were no pretentious acts, it didn’t try and be anything other than a library. Computers were almost sneered at by the staff who religiously nursed their filing cards.

It was, in my opinion, a womb of learning.

Brutalist architecture has been saved all around the UK, most notably Jack Lynn and Ivor Smith’s Park Hill flats in Sheffield (right) and Erno Goldfinger’s Trellick Towers in North Kensington (above) have been handed Grade II listed status by English Heritage, meaning they are of special architectural or historic interest and will remain standing.

The same privilege not given to John Madin’s inverted ziggurat that ate, slept and contained knowledge for 40 years in Birmingham. Ho Hum…

On the square which it resides sits three other buildings: Birmingham Town Hall, Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery and Birmingham City Council House – all upwards of 150 years old. All still respected, and beautifully maintained. Maybe Brutalism isn’t as pretty as classical grandeur but it’s no less important to the heritage and history of our city.

Recycle and reuse for the next generation. Please Keep it.

Yours sincerely, A proud Brummie 🙂

To know more about the campaign to support Birmingham Central Library, or ‘Keep the Ziggurat’, visit the following links:

http://keeptheziggurat.tumblr.com/

https://twitter.com/keeptheziggurat

http://keeptheziggurat.tumblr.com/post/63073754374/friends-of-the-central-library-manifesto-oct-2013

https://www.facebook.com/friendsoftheLoB

N.B. Not to be confused with the ‘Friends of Birmingham Public Library’ in Alabama (US)

_______

Althea Patterson is the Jazz & Classical correspondent for Birmingham Review.

Read Althea’s Foxhunter 7 blog here: http://foxhunter7.wordpress.com

& follow her Twitter feed here: https://twitter.com/TheFoxHuntress

January 13, 2014March 5, 2015

OPINON: Dear Hysteria… an open letter to Benefits Street

By Ed King

Your name is wrong. In fact, it’s your biggest problem.

I watched your first episode on Sunday morning, as a 1am repeat, and kept asking the screen “what does this have to do with benefits?” Yes there was a young couple under investigation for benefit fraud, and the subject of rescinded claims was a constant, not prevalent, thread; but the programme I watched was about the lives of selected James Turner Street residents. Selected. And benefits, or rather the see saw relationship people have with the welfare state, was only part of their story. And a small part; a divisive framing technique at best.

Sitting here, after a sleep, breakfast and lunch, the things I remember are Black Dee’s agitation at the threat of eviction. White Dee’s maternal umbrella to the constant cracks around her. Danny’s foolish self destruction, Fungi’s demons, and Smoggy’s guarded admission of “trying to a think of a better way to do things, a better way to make money” and not returning to the “doing something silly” that locked him up in the first place. It’s the smoking, the grind, the conversations on porch steps; the battle for small victories and keeping a daily wolf from a door. And one moment when Danny and Fungi were trying to work out how long they have until Giro Day (as I used to call it) with the clandestine calculations of food, drink and drugs running through their minds, that made me laugh hard at myself. For that section at least, your name could have been Strensham Road – or no doubt countless of others.

And on the plus side, for there were a few to be lauded, I was fascinated by the candid participation of the subjects involved. The production team responsible for finding, engaging and filming the people featured in your first programme deserve a loud applause. However it happened, and I’m aware of the claims of bribery and coercion (which could be buying someone cigarettes blown way out of proportion), those that worked literally on the street to build the programme’s content must have done so with vigour. For anyone to get anyone to open up on camera, requires skill – but to garner such personal rolling content you’ll need empathy in there somewhere.

Had we been left to watch it in peace, and if the subsequent programmes deliver the same level of frank involvement, you may well have been on your way to a very public honour. From being allowed to film the insides of a marijuana grow to the colloquial preparation of a shoplifting endevour, alongside the seemingly default openness about individual’s lives, it was an exceptionally public look into the very, very personal. You just pitched it wrong.

So last Monday saw your debut and tonight sees your follow up, after seven days of public indignation, accusation, debate, and real news stories once again playing second fiddle to A TV PROGRAMME.

Although the actual subject of consternation received comparatively little intelligent discussion; and if, as your moniker suggests, your intention was to examine the lives of people living on welfare, and to engage, or even educate, a general public about the fiscal and emotional realities of surviving on state subsidies – you failed. You hooked this onto obvious characters with obvious problems, encouraging an even more obvious response and terms like ‘Poverty Porn’.

(Although there have been some saner responses, even on a very local level. Ozzy Styles brings some pertinent facts & figures into his personal reaction on our own Opinions page, plus Graeme Brown’s Birmingham Post article is worth a read – and not only for the line about Marketing Birmingham. For further discussions on benefits, from one side at least, also check out Sue Marsh’s blog – Diary of a Benefit Scrounger)

But the public have spoken, the country is ‘outraged’, and your hands are being widely slapped so we can all feel good about living in Moseley or not buying a Big Issue. And it is with baited breath that I shall watch your second outing tonight, alongside a confidently high audience; although to aid with my objective enjoyment I’m giving you a nickname.

To me, you will now just be called ‘The Street’, with the misguided prefix being forgotten like a precocious teenager. And I’ll forgive too, on one condition; Immigration Street never, repeat NEVER, comes to air.

Ed King is editor of Birmingham Review: https://twitter.com/edking2210

Benefit Street (2/5) is broadcast tonight on Channel 4, from 9pm to 10pm