Birmingham Book Festival 2012
I’ve just spent a week volunteering for the Birmingham Book Festival 2012. I signed up in early summer, not really knowing what to expect and I turned up on Monday night to the Bay Leaf Cafe in the Custard Factory, Birmingham to lend a hand with ‘The New Lybia’ Its writers and bloggers.
It’s been a while since I went down to the Custard Factory, the last time was an all-nighter featuring 2Many Dj’s so that has got to be at least five years ago. Nowadays I am well past going to all-nighters so it felt pretty cool being there in what seems to be a kind of village for art, vintage shops and the more creative types in Birmingham.
My involvement wasn’t too strenuous – I stood at the doorway of the function area of the restaurant and greeted people and looked at their tickets – and I took photos. Three Lybian writers spoke about their work and read some excerpts of their stories, which have all been included in Banipal 40, a literary magazine. All three were inspirational – Giuma Bukleb having spent ten years in prison for simply being a writer under Gaddafi’s regime, Mohamed Mesratie being very young and Ghazi Gheblawi for not only being a surgeon but also having time to blog and write short stories.
Later in the week I again acted as a door person for the ‘address from the pulpit’ by Jackie Kay in Birmingham Cathedral. In beautiful surroundings Jackie read from her short stories and told us about her life in a sweet and entertaining way often giggling at the very funny events that have happened to her.
Finally I helped prepare the room for an evening of European Literature at the Ikon Gallery featuring writers from Hungary, Bulgaria and Sweden.
In return for donating about 15 hours of my time I was able to hear writers from across the world speak about their work, listen to some new stories I hadn’t heard before and visit some of the venues in Birmingham that I have walked past so often and never ventured inside. I also got free tickets to see Caitlin Moran and Stuart Maconie put the world to rights on socialism, feminism and music in the new world.
It was an inspiring week, giving me lots of ideas for new books to read and time to think about how and why writers find inspiration. It felt good to be helping a festival take place which has been going for 14 years in Birmingham and seems to be growing all the time. The hardest part was trying not to buy a book at every single event I attended!
Record Store Day 2012
Front page of NME 21/0402012
Happy Record Store Day! It’s the day when the nation celebrates what’s left of its network of independent record retailers. Taking place on Saturday 21 April, there’s lots to get involved with if there is a shop in your area. Participating stores will be hosting live music events and selling limited vinyl editions of reocrdings by groups such as The Arctic Monkeys, The Subways and Graham Coxon. This week’s edition of NME is dedicated to the event and lists all the shops taking part and what’s going on.
Over the past twenty years the independent record store has all but disappeared from our high streets. In fact there are are hardly any high street music retailers with only HMV remaining as the major store in many shopping centres.
In the Midlands you have to travel to Malvern or Cheltenham to join in the event. It’s pretty shocking to see that there is nowhere in Birmingham included in the promotion.
The decline happened bit by bit with the growth of shopping malls and huge corporations like Virgin, HMV and Our Price gradually stepping in and being able to offer better prices than the smaller shops. Tax- doging online setups such as Amazon and Play took much of their business away, and don’t forget the supermarkets such as Tesco and Sainsbury’s selling albums like Pearl Jam’s Ten amongst the baby food for £5 a go.
Illegal downloading chipped away a little bit more, finally Apple stepped in with ITunes, and suddenly you didn’t need to even leave the house to find your latest favourite band.
Stourbridge had an independent record store called Stourbridge Records in a little street behind the Sixth Form college and I remember going in there to buy some limited edition Red Hot Chili Peppers and Blind Melon 12″ picture disks. Sadly I don’t even know when it closed. Picture disks were a bit silly and when would you even look at them anyway; mine are stashed on a shelf with all our other records. But it did appeal to my sense of excitement about new releases and they looked very pretty. I also remember popping into Magpie Records in Halesowen and picking up new releases on my way home from school. I guess someone’s first download from ITunes just won’t have that same kind of special memory and there won’t be any old shops that they’ll walk past now converted into Charity shops or just boarded up that will pull on the heartstrings and remind them of a song they once loved.
I was never the kind of person who saved up all my lunch money for new singles or that hung around thumbing through the albums on a Saturday afternoon but I do have a sense of nostalgia about how music was available in the past and I think young people now will miss out on the geeky thrill of having a little collection of plastic disks. Even the loss of the album art and all the sleeve notes means being a music fan is very different now. Where will they pick up all the little stories behind the song lyrics or find out who the artist wants to acknowledge for inspiring their work…oh yes, Twitter or Facebook. But reading the notes was a bit like finding hidden treasure – lots of artists didn’t bother writing much so you were always pleasantly surprised when they did.
Another bonus of the record shop was that as a teenage girl you knew they were sort of cool and perhaps you might find cool people in there. Nipping in just on the off chance you might see someone you fancy in there looking at the Oasis album was part of a Saturday trip into town. You could also find posters advertising good club nights and gigs. I know that’s all done on-line now everything seems so scheduled nowadays doesn’t it? A nice illuminous orange or yellow poster with black marker pen was the perfect way of finding out about things to do on your nights out.
Having said all this, like most people, I don’t have time to seek out independent shops and if I hear something on the radio I like I will almost certainly download it from ITunes. It’s up to the students and people with a bit of time one their hands to keep the remaining record shops we have open. Perhaps I’ll try a bit harder to support the cause and if I see one I’ll go in and buy something just for old time’s sake.
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