History 1960s-70s. [6] During the 1950s he fell under the influence of the Marxist Birmingham writer George Thomson and in 1956 founded the Ian Campbell Folk Group, initially as a skiffle group, but from 1958 performing politically charged folk songs including Fenian and Jacobite songs, and songs of miners, industrial workers and farmworkers. [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. [106] Paranoid also marked Black Sabbath's commercial breakthrough, reaching number 1 in the UK album charts and number 8 in the US. Birmingham Contemporary Music Group: 1990s - 2010s : Classical, . This list is incomplete and may never satisfy any subjective standard for completeness. ", "Loops Extract: Napalm Death & The Possibility of Life's Destruction", "Electronic Enigma: The myths and messages of Detroit techno", "Downwards is the Only Way Forward: An interview with Regis", "Silent Servant on the making of his new album and 'the feeling that shit could blow up at any minute', "Respect: Techno Stars Talk About Their Sandwell District Favorites", "Rumble in the Jungle: The Invisible History of Drum'n'Bass", "Goldie Talks New Album, 'EDM' and His Bass-Devoted Life", "Streets life: stories from Mike Skinner about the Birmingham garage project", "The Streets will make only one more album, says Mike Skinner", "Albums of the decade No 1: The Streets Original Pirate Material", "Downloads "When You Wasn't Famous", The Streets (remix by Professor Green)", "Getting a handle on Pram; Is Pram the most influential band in Birmingham? When was the last concert at Birmingham NEC? Artists from Birmingham, AL. #13 of 392. (Image: Birmingham Post. or "Where can I find a good list of popular British/Englishmusicians based in Birmingham?" Starting at. Birmingham band Duran Duran - who had formed in 1978 - came in with a demo tape and the Berr. [88] Birmingham's local jazz tradition was to influence heavy metal's characteristic use of modal composition,[89] and the dark sense of irony characteristic of the city's culture was to influence the genre's typical b-movie horror film lyrical style and its defiantly outsider stance. [232] Over the next 11 years she got 8 singles in to the UK charts,[233] and in 1990 her single "It's Gonna Be Alright" reached number 1 in the US R&B charts, an extremely rare achievement for a non-American artist. Rhythm Doctor worked in one of the shops selling a lot of the early house 12"'s, Tempest. [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. It had a 1400-seat auditorium and hosted some famous acts in its time. He charts the band's . ( 4 Reviews) Country: United States. Later, Musical Youth, UB40 (the first truly mixed-race UK dub band), and Pato Banton found commercial success. Summit Records sells mainly reggae and doubles as an Afro-Caribbean barbers. [216], The city's cultural diversity also contributed to the blend of bhangra and ragga pioneered by Apache Indian in Handsworth. The Accused released a single EP in 1979,[173] their self-deprecating style illustrated by their two most popular songs: the self-explanatory "We're Crap", and "W.M.P.T.E." [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. The Best Pop Artists of the 1980s. [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. Like most of those (make that all of those) who'd known him in whatever way, I'd got used to thinking of him as a private thing, an artist relegated to the exclusive periphery, one for the connoisseur. [254] First adopting their name and a settled line-up in late 1981,[255] they produced and traded cassette tapes internationally,[256] and first performed in public in April 1981. We didn't have the Barclaycard. 1880s Elyton Land Company Band 1890s Chase's City Band, headquartered 1734-1736 1st Avenue North with W. A. Here are . [332] An early review of Broadcast from 1996 described them as "laughing in the face of genres". [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. City of Birmingham Symphony Chorus: 1980s - 2010s 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). [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. [302] In 1993 Whittingham and Bush formed the Different Drummer record label, which quickly grew an international roster of artists to become "the premier outlet for forward-thinking dub productions", building links with wider scenes including German and Austrian nu-jazz. February 21-24 & 28-March 3, 1985 Sun City Superbowl, Sun City, SA. [164] The group's earliest origins lay in Hednesford to the north of the city, where a group of musicians including Robert Lloyd, P. J. Royston, Graham Blunt and Joe Crow formed in 1975 influenced by the New York Dolls and Neu!, originally calling themselves the Church of England, later The Gestapo and finally on the suggestion of Royston The Prefects. They spared no one, least of all the public. The group Birmingham Promotions, a non-profit group made up of musicians, agents and promoters have come together to invest their own time and money into a day for the whole family. [215] Bhangra musicians began experimenting with recording technology and with tracks such as Apna Sangeet's 1988 "Soho Road Utey" and DCS's 1991 "Rule Britannia" started to locate their songs within a distinctive British South Asian experience. Cover Band from Montgomery, AL (39 miles from Alabama) Lisa & The E-Lusion is Alabama's number one rated band through gigmasters, and one of the Southeast's most requested cover bands!! [citation needed], Birmingham was the birthplace of Street Soul Productions, a record label established in 2005, which became a community organisation in 2008, and since then has concentrated on music workshops and events alongside online broadcasting. [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. [citation needed], Party in the Park was Birmingham's largest annual music festival, at Cannon Hill Park, where up to 30,000 revellers of all ages listen to popular chart music. . [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. [330] All were however united by their interest in old musical technology that had previously been thought of as modern,[331] and its use to create an ironic sense of "nostalgia for a time when people were optimistic about the future". [19] The emergence of skiffle as a popular phenomenon in 1956 saw the birth of a new wave of Birmingham bands. [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. [157] Swell Maps "took punk's no-rules, do-it-yourself, destruction-of-rock promises literally" and "proceeded to create some of the most challenging, foreign, distinctive, and truly rebellious music of recent decades". 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". The Night Out, Horsefair: It was a cabaret venue from the 1970s to 1980s. The first of these was The Move, formed in December 1965 by musicians from several existing Birmingham bands including Mike Sheridan and The Nightriders, Carl Wayne and The Vikings and the Mayfair Set; initially performing covers of American West Coast acts such as The Byrds alongside Motown and early rock 'n' roll classics. ", "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? [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. The first single to be released commercially by a Birmingham band was "Sugar Baby" by Jimmy Powell and The Dimensions, released by Decca on 23 March 1962. [12] Bhangra emerged from the Balsall Heath area in the 1960s and 1970s with the addition of western musical influences to traditional Punjabi music. [238], The most notable Birmingham soul artist of the early 21st century was Jamelia, who was brought up in Hockley, with an absent father with a conviction for armed robbery and a half-brother later convicted of a gangland murder. There is also Moseley Folk Festival (since 2006), which takes place in Moseley Park and mixes new with established folk acts. [240] It was her second album Thank You, released after taking time away from music to raise her first daughter, which catapulted her to stardom,[241] being accompanied by three Top 5 hit singles and seeing her win four MOBO Awards and the Q Award for "Best Single". [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. [4] Birmingham's tradition of combining a highly collaborative culture with an open acceptance of individualism and experimentation dates back as far back as the 18th century,[5] and musically this has expressed itself in the wide variety of music produced within the city, often by closely related groups of musicians, from the "rampant eclecticism" of the Brum beat era,[6] to the city's "infamously fragmented" post-punk scene,[7] to the "astonishing range" of distinctive and radical electronic music produced in the city from the 1980s to the early 21st century. [47] Swarbrick's former colleague from the Ian Campbell Folk Group Dave Pegg joined as the bass player later in 1969, and by 1972 the two Birmingham musicians were the band's only remaining members, holding the group together over the following years of rapid personnel change.[48]. [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. It was a festival celebrating local independent music from the West Midlands. August 11, 1980 Municipal Auditorium, Mobile, AL (A teenage boy was stabbed to death in the hall while the band played) August 12, 1980 Jefferson Civic Center, Birmingham, AL August 13, 1980 Riverside Centroplex, Baton Rouge, LA August 16, 1980 Reunion Arena, Dallas, TX (supported by Rocky Burnette. [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. Leftfoot is a soul jazz and funk night that has featured on BBC Radio 1. [189] Despite being a challenging free jazz instrumental, their 1982 single "Papa's Got a Brand New Pigbag" was a major mainstream hit, reaching number 3 in the UK Singles Chart after it was championed by John Peel. [153] Like The Specials, the members of The Beat had varied backgrounds: Dave Wakeling, David Steele and Andy Cox had originally formed a punk band; St. Kitts-born drummer Everett Morton had a background in reggae and had drummed for Joan Armatrading, vocalist Ranking Roger had played drums with a Birmingham punk band as well as toasting over Birmingham sound systems. [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. Over the next 15 years, the Mellotron had a major impact on rock music and is a trademark sound of the progressive rock bands. [33], The Moody Blues were also originally primarily an R&B band, formed in May 1964 with musicians from other Birmingham bands including El Riot & the Rebels, Denny and the Diplomats, Danny King and the Dukes and Gerry Levene and the Avengers. [342] Although they largely eschewed mainstream commercial success, they acquired a large and international cult following and were cited as an influence by artists as diverse as Blur, Paul Weller and Danger Mouse. [61], Virtually unknown at his death, Drake has since become one of the greatest examples of an artist achieving posthumous fame and influence. Influences were detectable here and there, but the heart of the music was mysteriously original". [343], Editors were one of the leading bands of the indie and post-punk revival that spread across Europe and America during the first years of the 21st century. I wanted to get a band together that would be totally different, a bunch of misfits. [228] By the end of the 1980s she was established as the most successful Black British female artist of all time, and the first to have six consecutive Top 20 hits. ", which entered nationwide consciousness as sixteen-year-old West Bromwich-born Janice Nicholls gave her verdict on the week's singles in Spin-a-Disc in her broad Black Country accent. [153], Birmingham's earliest punk rock bands preceded the late 1976 emergence of the Sex Pistols and mainstream British punk, instead being influenced directly by the proto-punk of British glam-rock, American garage rock and German krautrock. Until Circle Studios opened its 3,000-square-foot (280m2) facility in 2007, aside from private studios in the hands of UB40 and Ocean Colour Scene and smaller studios such as Artisan Audio, there was no high-end recording studio operating in Birmingham. AllMusic described UB40's edgy, unique take on reggae that combined British and Jamaican influences as "revolutionary, their sound unlike anything else on either island". [18] Tex Detheridge and the Gators began performing Hank Williams covers on Saturday nights at The Mermaid in Sparkhill and on Sundays at the Bilberry Tea Rooms in Rednal in early 1956. [329] The bands associated with the movement were highly varied in their style, ranging from the catchy and ethereal pop of Broadcast, to the more sinister and angular work of Pram and the enigmatically precise instrumental music of Plone. [105] Paranoid, their second album, refined and focused this model, and in the process "defined the sound and style of heavy metal more than any other album in rock history". "[252] Promoter Daz Russell started booking hardcore punk bands at the venue in late 1984 and it quickly become an essential stop for touring punk bands and a focal point for fans from all over the country. "[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. [242] Thank You stood out from other contemporary British R&B albums in its acknowledgment its British cultural roots and context,[243] and included the title track "Thank You", a cathartic song about surviving domestic violence that peaked at number 2 in the UK charts. [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. [14] At the forefront of this development were The Specials, who were formed and based in nearby Coventry, but who came to prominence on the Birmingham music scene in 1978, holding a weekly residency at the Golden Eagle pub on Hill Street and playing as a support act for visiting punk acts playing in Birmingham. [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. There were places such as 49er's, Roccoco, Willies T Pot, Mojo, Dial B, Salvation..which played a mixture, from funk, jazz, soul through to house via hip hop and all sorts of everything. [291] Wright has also released more dancefloor focused work as Tube Jerk. [34] By November they had secured a major international hit with their multi-million selling single "Go Now", which reached number 1 in the UK and number 10 in the US, and whose "soulful, agonized" vocal performance established lead singer Denny Laine as one of the most recognisable voices in British music. "[333], Birmingham's divergence from the national mainstream was partly driven by the city's inherently eclectic musical culture. Only bands and musicians from Birmingham, United Kingdom. https://www.bhamwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=List_of_Birmingham_bands&oldid=197543, Haden, Courtney (July 31, 2008) "Friendly folk: Local music lovers get a BFF.". This page has been accessed 54,958 times. "[225] In 1978 the Irish recording engineer Les Moir first heard the "astonishingly accomplished" work of lead singer Maxine Simpson and pianist Steve Thompson, subsequently recording the 1979 album Free at Last, which would prove groundbreaking for UK Gospel music. [123], Publicity for blues parties was largely through word of mouth or over pirate radio stations and generally did not include precise details of addresses or locations, so sound systems attracted loyal but highly localised followings. Sadly, many of the venues from those days have since climbed the stairway to heaven. Any town with two is in dead trouble"[175] Dansette Damage were best known for their classic debut single, the "double b side" "N.M.E. 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. [280] Most closely identified with the city's Downwards Records label and its local producers Regis, Surgeon and Female, Birmingham techno's characteristic hard, fast and uncompromising style was influenced as much by the local industrial music scene that developed around Mick Harris of Napalm Death and Martyn Bates of Eyeless in Gaza as it was by the pioneers of American techno. They left the club in 1975 to play their own material of melodic rock. . [231] In 1986 she released her debut album Women Hold Up Half the Sky, which had an unusually strong gospel influence for a 1980s soul record and was to prove both a critical and commercial success. [284], In 2002 Regis went on to form Sandwell District, initially a label and later an international production collective that included the New York-based Function and the Los Angeles-based Silent Servant, both of whom would briefly relocate to Birmingham. [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". [2] By 1967 Lynne was clearly the band's leader, shaping its sound and direction and writing its original material. Birmingham's culture of popular music first developed in the mid-1950s. . Instead, you had to take your life into your hands as you ventured through the city's subway shops and underground passages that are now filled in and long since vanished. [197], The genesis of Birmingham's New Romantic scene "the only one outside of London that ever really mattered"[199] lay in the 1975 opening of the Hurst Street boutique of fashion designers Kahn and Bell, whose influence was to ensure that Birmingham didn't wholly conform to the uniform punk aesthetic that dominated the rest of the country. [57] Over the following two years Drake recorded and released two albums Five Leaves Left and Bryter Layter of understated but harmonically complex songs that owed as much to jazz as to folk traditions,[58] but which sold poorly, partly due to his acute shyness and increasing reluctance to perform live. They started in 1976 in Birmingham and helped to develop the new wave/English synth-pop sound. [145], In the late 1970s, under the influence of punk rock, the casually multi-ethnic ska culture emerged into a coherent movement called 2 Tone, which featured politically charged lyrics, multi-racial bands, and musical influences including Jamaican ska, bluebeat, reggae northern soul and white English music hall. [86] Judas Priest came to epitomise heavy metal more than any other band,[119] with the fetishistic look of motorbikes, leather, studs and spikes adopted by lead singer Rob Halford coming to define heavy metal's visual style. This was a time when very few people took photos at gigs and I was lucky enough to capture several soon-to-be-huge bands playing small venues, including Depeche Mode, Eurythmics, New Order and Duran Duran. "[29], The most consistently successful Birmingham group of this era was The Spencer Davis Group, which fused its members' varied backgrounds in folk, blues, jazz and soul into a wholly new rhythm and blues sound[9] that "stood with any of the gritty hardcore soul music coming out of the American South". In the 1960s Birmingham was the birthplace of modern bhangra,[13] a form of music which combines the influence of traditional Punjabi dance music with western popular music and urban black music such as reggae and hip-hop. [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. [210] By the late 1970s bhangra had become well established as a significant and distinctive cultural industry among South Asian communities both in Birmingham and in Southall in London. [6] The first of these was The Move, formed in December 1965 by musicians from several existing Birmingham bands including Mike Sheridan and The Nightriders, Carl Wayne and The Vikings and the Mayfair Set; initially performing covers of American West Coast acts such as The Byrds alongside Motown and early rock 'n' roll classics. Check out some of the best, local, top artists from the United Kingdom's West Midlands below. [264] By the time the B-side of the album was recorded 7 months later the band's personnel had changed almost completely, with Bullen and Broadrick leaving and being replaced by Lee Dorian and Bill Steer, and only Harris remaining from the earlier line up. [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. [10] Driven by the "astoundingly soulful"[10] vocals of the young Steve Winwood, accompanied by his own searing keyboard style,[30] the pounding bass riffs of his brother Muff Winwood, the jazz-influenced drumming of Pete York and the then-unique electric fuzz guitar effect of Spencer Davis,[31] the band started off playing R&B covers but achieved their greatest success with their own compositions. [30] Chris Blackwell of Island Records signed the band on the spot after hearing them at the Golden Eagle pub on Hill Street in April 1964,[32] and after four minor hits in late 1964 and early 1965 they broke through with their late 1965 single "Keep on Running", which knocked The Beatles off the number 1 position in the UK in January 1966. [3] Birmingham was a bigger and more diverse city than Liverpool, however, that was never subject to a single controlling influence such as that exercised by Liverpool's Brian Epstein; and as a result Birmingham's bands never conformed to a single homogenous sound comparable to Liverpool's Merseybeat. "[172], The release of the Sex Pistols' first single "Anarchy in the UK" in October 1976 led to a wave of punk bands in Birmingham as in the rest of the country.