West Midlands Police Archives

Words by Ed King / Pics by Paul Reynolds

Urrgghh… a gig on a Sunday, who has the energy/serotonin left?

Apparently quite a few people, as I saunter (stumble) into the Hare & Hounds Room 2 alongside a very respectable crowd. Numberswise that is, they could all be slow boiling lost children at home for all I know. Or care. My Sunday roll call of compassion is often woefully one-sided. But a strong tail end of the weekend audience have turned out to support RDE and Setting Son’s August showcase – with local lads (and it is a bit of a sausage fest tonight) Whitelight, The Lizards, and The Hungry Ghosts all supporting Joe Talbot’s label champions, Lice.

Whitelight, a band I’ve not heard of before tonight but who I’m reliably told have come from the aftermath of Shaake, take up the first space on the bill – a stripped back twosome, guitar and drums, delivering a big room sound that far surpasses their square inches on stage.

Jokingly I said words to that effect would be my review, but adding ‘fuck me they rock’ probably sums it up quite nicely. There may be a few disjointed moments tonight, in set relying too heavily on the ‘break… and kick in’ rock power play, but the musicianship from this arena filling sound is a more than a little impressive. I could even use the word ‘Hendrix’ and not feel like too much of a fraud. But keep an eye on those listings and make your own addled mind up about them. Whitelight; you have been warned.

Next up are The Hungry Ghosts, a band I love to the core but feel compelled to judge with an extra stern eye. And ear. And gut. And all those things I need to be truthful. But having a replacement bass player on stage tonight – with Miles Cocker filling in for Emily Doyle over a few of the summer months – the most immediate of my knee jerk commentaries is ‘an overwhelming newness’ to their performance tonight.

It’s exciting, it’s rock and roll, but it’s also a little… The stage, for a start, feels too small, with the proficient wall of blues rock tumbling over the first song and smothering ‘Death Rattle Blues’ – the sophomore on the set list tonight. I’ve seen The Hungry Ghosts crammed into much tighter corners, but something is uncomfortably full tonight. And yet there is a… about it all. And as I wrestle with the ellipses that will no doubt be haunting my copy later on, I write ‘too much of something’, ‘this band just keep getting better’, before adding ‘I don’t know’ to my drunk spider scrawl.

‘Lazaro’ follows, with Joe (INSERT SURNAME HERE)’s vocals feeling well rounded for a weekend finale, before a bit of a swing/miss from new song ‘Jesus Fever’ and a somewhat lacking rendition of the tried and tested ‘Super King King’ – one of my longstanding favourites from this band’s slaughterhouse repertoire. But when you’re close to perfection it’s hard to stay consistent, and exciting ebbs and discouraging flows continue from ‘the ghosts’ set tonight – yet I am, once again, left both curious and eager. For all its ferocity and fallacy, it feels like something is brewing in The Hungry Ghosts’ set list tonight, with this Sunday showcase perhaps just first public introduction to an exciting evolution. But never fear; we’ll see/hear from The Hungry Ghosts soon enough, and ‘Shake the Devil’ will no doubt be in there somewhere near the start.

It is now that I must issue an honest, albeit rather unsatisfactory, apology, as I miss The Lizards’ set due to cider and an earth shatteringly endearing band I fell afoul of at the downstairs bar. But I shall leave you with two pearls of wisdom: 1) Orchard Pig cider is not as benign as it sounds, and 2) Liquid Cheeks. And I’ll bet my pension (currently about £32 and a first edition Roald Dahl) that in 18 months time you’ll not need an explanation for the latter.

Time… enough. Attack ships on fire introduce the headline act for tonight, the Bristolian barrage of fun that are Lice. Well documented for bad time keeping and guttural prose, both attributes close to my heart, it is the band’s frontman that I’m most keen to see in full swing. But an army of low thumped drums, distorted feedback, and restrained punk pretensions (if such a thing can exist in the realms beyond oxymoron) are soon taking my eyes across the rough edged four piece. Frontman, Alistair Shuttleworth, who has set the stage for such anarchic atrocities as Fat White Family, owns the Sunday night dwindling crowd from the off – delivering his trademark prose in a way that makes me sit up straight yet miss every word. A linguistic trick I almost love and hate him for in the same short, sharp intake of breath.

But they are commanding, even to a room that seems half empty from the last time I stood in it (The Lizards, cider, downstairs bar, shit journalist…) and I am quickly moving my shoulders in that way a middle aged man does when he wants to let go. Lice last played in Birmingham “on this stage, almost exactly a year ago” as part of the Killer Wave all day August band Holiday event in 2017, and it’s good to see them headline after such a well earned 12 months.

Oddly, even incongruously (if I were a devotee of Paul Dacre) polite, each song gets a stomach propelled “thank you” as Lice blast though their short songs and punchy set – delivering a well meant audio assault that makes me want to invite them, and their backline, to my next birthday party. Superb, SUPERB FUCKING PERCUSSION. But jumping from the tirade of an angry child to the wisdom of someone with something to say, Lice live up to their hype – as the Joe Talbot endorsed ‘fuck you we don’t care’ send out a set that shows this band mean business. And, even somewhat perversely, I believe them. If my mum were here she would probably file for adoption.

Sunday gigs are hard to promote, Lord knows I know – having spent over a year of my life doing it week in week out. But Setting Son and RDE have delivered this end of the weekend ensemble with fine fettle, setting a backbone of local luminaries against a visiting headline act who well deserve the attention. And, wonderfully, there was a good crowd to receive it. Even if the previous 48 hours have left the room’s frontal cortex a little bereft… well, mine at least.

Ha, and now to write a review about it (my ‘get it down as soon as you get home’ policy). But beyond ‘research Whitelight’, ‘The Hungry Ghosts’ new stuff’, ‘buy The Lizards a drink’ and ‘see Lice play on their home turf’, the South Park back catalogue is about all I have left. I bet Burroughs never had this problem. Possibly a bad comparison. Now, where’s that corkscrew and laptop power cable gone…

Lice @ Hare & Hounds 12.08.18 / Paul Reynolds

For more on Lice, visit www.facebook.com/licebristol

_________

The Lizards – supporting Lice @ Hare & Hounds 12.08.18 / Paul Reynolds

For more on The Lizards, visit www.soundcloud.com/allyourfriendsarelizards

_________

The Hungry Ghosts – supporting Lice @ Hare & Hounds 12.08.18 / Paul Reynolds

For more on The Hungry Ghosts, visit www.thehungryghosts.co.uk

_________

Whitelight – supporting Lice @ Hare & Hounds 12.08.18 / Paul Reynolds

For more on Whitelight, visit www.officialwhitelight.com

For more from Setting Son, including further event listings and online ticket sales, visit www.facebook.com/settingsonrecords

For more on the Hare & Hounds, including venue details and further event listings, visit www.hareandhoundskingsheath.co.uk

________

NOT NORMAL – NOT OK is a campaign to encourage safety and respect within live music venues, and to combat the culture of sexual assault and aggression – from dance floor to dressing room.

To sign up to NOT NORMAL – NOT OK, click here. To know more about the NOT NORMAL – NOT OK sticker campaign, click here.

Words by Ed King

Ed’s note…

I first wrote this back in March, a few days after Shrove Tuesday, in response to stories of sexual assault and misconduct that I had heard about that week. It was born out of frustration – I write to clear my head.

Then more stories came my way, and more, until there were so many that these words weren’t enough. Something needed to happen. So we talked to each other at Birmingham Review, we talked to local musicians and promoters. Then we talked to West Midlands Police, the Rape & Sexual Violence project (RSVP), and some local venues that could help us formulate a plan of action.

NOT NORMAL – NOT OK is our joint response, ‘a campaign to encourage safety and respect within live music venues, and to combat the culture of sexual assault and aggression – from dance floor to dressing room.’

To join the NOT NORMAL – NOT OK campaign, click here.

To learn more about the NOT NORMAL – NOT OK sticker campaign, click here.

N.B. If you have been affected by sexual assault, misconduct, or any of the issues raised in this article, you can find details for West Midlands Police and RSVP – a regional support agency trained to deal with sexual violence – by clicking here.

The ‘message from West Midlands Police’ mentioned towards the end of this article can now be found on the NOT NORMAL – NOT OK website, click here.

___________

“Yeah, they’re alright… just be careful if you’re alone with them.”

I was told this in passing, at the tail end of a conversation with a local band about local band stuff. It wasn’t prompted, they weren’t in distress; we weren’t talking about #MeToo, Operation Yewtree or institutionalised abuse in Westminster. We were just talking. And this chilling seed fell into the conversation with an almost as frightening acceptance that it was just ‘one of those things’. That it was normal. Or even worse, that it was OK.

Incredulous, then angry, then curious, I begin to pick at the scab. The story unfolds. It had been at a gig, and after the show the person in question had groped one of the band members – which falls under sexual assault in a court of law. And the feelings left by this situation, to group of friends who just wanted to perform their music on stage, are clear. They felt mistreated, angry and threatened.

This all came at the end of a troubling week too, where a promoter of a popular music venue had posted an absurdly misogynistic comment about the girls that attend their events and pancakes. You can imagine the metaphor. Or hopefully you can’t, because you really don’t want to. But it’s childish, aggressive, potentially incendiary, and beyond sexist at all points on the social spectrum. And now it’s in the public domain as a badge of what this promoter (and this club) feels is either funny or acceptable. Again, of what is normal or OK.

The silver lining from this poorly chosen ‘joke’ was the immediate outcry from many other people via the drum banging platforms of social media. I saw it because someone had reposted it in disgust, asking for some solidarity and shaming of the original author – a backlash that was far more erudite than the disturbed playground rhetoric that spurned it. The promoter in question claimed it was “a joke” that had been “taken out of context”. The public domain told them this wasn’t good enough and everything fell silent.

Then by the end of the week I am hearing about a case of sexual assault. And the more I asked around the more stories came back from our live music scene, in a frightening deluge of stories about sexual harassment, coercion, abuse, and assault happening in venues across Birmingham – from dressing room to dance floor, immediate and widespread.

I know many venue operators and promoters that are committed to the care of everyone in their building – whether they are performing, attending, or working there. And I’d be happier to see support networks in place than a campaign of naming and shaming. But the rules of engagement are quite simple and perhaps some people need a reminder:

No one, of any gender, should ever be objectified, coerced or abused. And no one in a position of power should ever use that power as a bargaining chip for sexual conduct. No one. Ever. At all. Told you it was simple.

So, what do we do? Firstly, I believe we all need to recognise our roles in this – overt and aggressive, or silent and tacit. The fact this problem exists means that none of us are without blame. And that includes me. I don’t want to believe this is a side of people I know, work alongside, or share common interests with. From the fact that it turns my stomach to think it’s happening in Birmingham venues to the cold reality that I need some of these people to support my own endeavours – put quite simply, it would be both personally and professionally easier for me to say nothing at all. I’m not proud of that last sentence but it’s a brutal truth I must own.

I’m not a huge fan of campaigning either, with self-aggrandising so often masquerading as a good cause these days. But maybe here, though, there’s a place for something we can all get behind – a vehicle to promulgate a message and provide support to those who need it, emotional, legal and otherwise. And to educate; to remind people of what is acceptable and what isn’t. A campaign of compassion and care, but also one to redefine what is ‘normal’ or ‘OK’ for those who seem to have forgotten their meanings.

So, this is what we’re doing. Birmingham Review has joined up with West Midlands Police and some key figures in our local entertainment industry to see how we can help shake a little sense into some, and support some others. We will keep you fully updated with this campaign through the Birmingham Review website and social media, and there is a message from West Midlands Police at the bottom of this editorial (this message can now be found on the NOT NORMAL – NOT OK website).

Because after all the bile that’s been seeping into my system after a week of words I never thought I’d be hearing – about a scene and city I love, and the people I love within both – I can land on at least one thing with absolute certainly. I never want to hear them again. Perhaps three things.

This is NOT NORMAL. This is NOT OK.

Ed King is Editor-in-Chief of Review Publishing, which publishes Birmingham Review and other titles.

________

NOT NORMAL – NOT OK is a campaign to encourage safety and respect within live music venues, and to combat the culture of sexual assault and aggression – from dance floor to dressing room.

To sign up to NOT NORMAL – NOT OK, click here. To know more about the NOT NORMAL – NOT OK sticker campaign, click here.

To find out more about the NOT NORMAL – NOT OK campaign, visit www.notnormalnotok.com

Tag: West Midlands Police

BREVIEW: The August Showcase with Lice, The Lizards, The Hungry Ghosts, Whitelight @ Hare & Hounds 12.08.18

OPINION: NOT NORMAL – NOT OK