444 Club on Friday

For the benefit of all those Birmingham-based, gig-going, uplifting gormandizers out there (Heyyy now, Daddy-O...), The Courtesy Group - Al Hutchins' awesome band of Scrotnig noizemeisters who've been mentioned here on many an occasion - are supporting London-based up-and-comers XX Teens at The Rainbow in Digbeth tomorrow evening. XX Teens sound like a lot of fun - plus I'd like to see the mighty CG playing a non-Curate's Egg event - so I'll endeavour to get my pert wee Irish arse there. I think you should, too.

It's one of Kamikaze Events' 444 Club nights, in which new acts share the spotlight with local bands. Alongside The Courtesy Group, there'll be sets from Magnificatz and Betty & The ID.
Plastic Noise DJs will be, um, DJ-ing. They look as though they'll be fun, too. I purloined this wonderful image from their Myspace page:


That looks disturbingly like a mindmap of what I listen to while I'm driving.

Anyhow, here's the flyer:

Blurt at the Curate's Egg this Thursday

For the benefit of those who live in and around Birmingham, Al Hutchins and the Courtesy Group are hosting a Curate's Egg night with Blurt at the Hare & Hounds this Thursday. Here's the flyer:



I hadn't heard of Blurt before, but their Wikipedia entry intrigues me:

Blurt's compositions are based around repetitive minimalistic guitar and/or saxophone phrases with relentless, machine-like drum beats, over which Ted Milton orates his lyrics in a variety of "voices" that betray his days as a puppeteer. The overall effect is hypnotising, compelling and sometimes even unsettling.

Blurt have a very strong live reputation due to the extra-ordinary
theatrical talents of Ted Milton.

Blurt's music is featured on the soundtrack of the German movie
"Abendland."

Sounds good to me.


Al should be commended for continuing to offer an alternative to what you'd expect from an alternative music night. If that makes sense. I went to several Curate's Egg nights last year and enjoyed them immensely. One of them (with Damo Suzuki in August) made it into my Top 10 Gigs of 2007 and another one (with Gallon Drunk in November) that probably should have. I wrote about the former here, but never got 'round to writing about the latter, which is a shame as it was bloody fantastic.

Because I Can

Last night I went with my pal and gig-pimp Pete Ashton to see Damo Suzuki - former member of legendary krautrock band Can - perform at my erstwhile local muso boozer, the Hare & Hounds in Kings Heath. Frankly, I'm still trying to process the evening's events through my caffeine- and stress-addled synapses. It was, to coin a phrase I'm more than partial to using, buggier than batshit.

Which is a good thing, by the way.

Essentially, the gig was of a series of improvisational jams with Damo providing the vocals and various local bands including The Modified Toy Orchestra and The Courtesy Group providing the backing. But that doesn't really do it justice. It was very experimental and very avant-garde – in other words, the kind of things that have been known to trigger in me the involuntary rhythmic cupped-hand ideomotor response that denotes the phrase "wanker". But despite sailing perilously close to the treacherous waters of "Jazz Odyssey", it managed to be wonderful and sublime and left me grinning like a simple child.

For me, the highlight of the evening had to be Damo's jam with The Courtesy Group, who also hosted the event. It lasted about an hour, and featured some stunning improvisational work from the lead singer of the CGs [Sorry, I don't know his name - being an old-fart with a full-time job, I'm not hip on these things – dig?]. It was like watching a human beatbox at work, and reminded me of Tom Waits or Captain Beefheart. These are good things to be reminded of, by the way. When he wasn't, um, singing along with Damo he was carefully tearing strips from a copy of the local newspaper, the Birmingham Mail. At first, I naively thought it was a very subtle form of subliminal percussion, but it later dawned on me that this was probably a variation of William Burroughs' famous cut-up technique and he was using the random juxtaposition of hard-hitting local news stories and unrivalled local sports coverage as prompts for his improvisational rants. Whatever the case, it was the most productive and inspirational use of the local rag that I've seen outside of a fish-and-chip shop.

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