Birmingham Bands, Not Forgotten

For anyone interested in a trawl through top Birmingham music of old, these sites are recommended.
Not all of these people got to be famous or rich, but played music how it should be played. With Heart, Soul, Imagination and when they played someone elses work the quite often did it far better. Not just pub musicians, some of these were masters.

http://oldhornsband.com/meet_the_band.html

http://www.wizzard.rsamuel.me.uk/tourprog/nick.htm

Might I add this link which is to Roy Woods own web pages...

http://www.roywood.co.uk

The wizzard/samuel link is a sub domain of a Bob Samuel of Royston, Hertfordshire. who appears to claim ownership of any external linked pages by masking the links in the browser title bar with his own domain name. This is a practice which misleads browsers into storing the wrong website addresses as favourites, usually for advertising revenue although in this case there appears to be such motive.

VM

So SB,
There we were at the Railway, Curzon Street and I had no idea who I was looking at.

Steve Gibbons, members of Wizzard and the Gibbons Band and who knows who else.
Why didn't we ever take a camera?

VM

Don't forget to look at http://www.carlwayne.co.uk/

I alwayss regret not having a camera with me in those days. But paying for all that processing, I wouldn't have had the money to see the bands. SB

SB

What did you need a camera for, by the time you were old enough to get in to see most of them they had passed their prime.

Here's Carl Wayne & the Vikings when you were about 12

Phil

Phil when you talk about bands being past their prime. You Don't understand. A few of the bands I knew are playing 40 years farthert on, and with huge followings. The rubbish soon fades away, and yes I did see Carl Wayne. At the Bulls Head Coventry Road I think.

SB

Yes but are they any good 40 years later, lets face it some of them were not that good back then.

I remember walking out of a venue one night. I think it was the Town Hall when the Irish group Them appeared and I walked out because they were rubbish and they were fronted by Van Morrison who has been described as the best blues singer ever. I think the people who said that must have been on something because they couldn't have been listening to the singer.

Phil

Me thinks Phil is a tad negative in this department.

I get excited at the thought of .......erm......no not that.....well yes that but.....other stuff, like world famous peeps, crap or otherwise, appearing in places I've been to, also crap or otherwise. This would be mostly pubs because for many years I was also appearing mostly in pubs. I wasn't there when they were for the most part but at least we trod the same ground and that is about as near as most of us get.

So to see a band live and intimately close, i.e. not in an arena, is a thrill which sadly I didn't fully appreciate at the time.
It is however a part of my history and I ain't going to trash it, because it's integral to who I am.

Much talent comes from Birmingham and we should celebrate them, not knock them because they aren't perfect for ever and always.

Van Morrison of course isn't local and is probably a taste I haven't entirely aquired, but then I wouldn't have gone to see him in the first place. For me the Town Hall was strictly CBSO land, every Thursday night in the orchestra stalls with my score and Louis Fremaux.

VM

Don't get me wrong, I think back in my youth there were some fantastic local groups as there were from further afield. VM if you had been to some of the all nighters at the Town Hall you wouldn't have thought it was CBSO land.

What you had to realise is that there wasn't the venues in Birmingham that there was today and the bigger names wouldn't appear at some of the smaller clubs because they couldn't pay enough.

The reason for me going to see "Them" was because they had two chart topping records in succession and nobody had heard them live. This is part of my argument, if a group looked right the recording studios could make them sound great even if they sounded like strangled geese in reality. I see the the group "Them" even with Van Morrison didn't last long after they started touring in this country.

Phil

Phil for once I agree. you say you saw Van Morrison and didn't like him.
Well I had a look at my files.
George Ivan Morrison OBE
Has performed on 45 Albums, 71 Singles, 2 Video, and 2 DVD's. From the late 1950s to present day and has made several million pounds, as has followers all over the world. What a flop.

I never said that Van Morrison wasn't popular (in America) I don't understand the blues medium. I think the music is fantastic but why do they have to have such awful singers. I liked some of the songs by Eric Burden but there again he is a fantastic singer whatever he sings. He also is very popular in America.

There again he wasn't a Brummy either was he? I think the best Brummy band we ever produced was the Moody Blues. I saw them live when they were top of the charts with Go Now. I suppose Black Sabbath with Ozzy could be said were average and Roy Woods from your neck of the woods has headed up one or two good bands with that other well known Brummy from Washwood Heath Carl Wayne.

Phil

How about a comprehensive list of Birmingham Bands then?
Perhaps A-Z style to keep it neat.
And what constitutes the title Birmingham Band, one member, the founder member, the front guy or the whole band?

Birmingham Bands, now there is a subject. Now for a band having all of it's members from Birmingham would take a bit of research. Then we have bands who may have been started in Birmingham but have one or two outside members.
The we have bands based in Birmingham and worked in and around the city but not have a Brummie in sight. It would be an interesting project but an alphabetical quiz would be hard, so go for it Volty as I keep saying it's your Forum. SB

Perhaps it might be best done in the games section in an A to Z format. At least it would give a jumping off point.