Some YouTubery, courtesy of the Brummie of the Year nominee who sent me the link. It's from the Rootsville Festival that was held at Birmingham's Custard Factory during the last weekend of June and features the stunning set by The Dhol Blasters and The Destroyers. The former are masters of rapid-fire traditional drum-action, the latter are Conservatoire-trained swaggering maestros of Eastern European folk. So now you know.They played on the event's 'Lakeside Stage', otherwise known as the pool outside the Medicine Bar. The pool had been drained and a marquee put up over it, which struck me as a nice, [...]

My good friend and erstwhile gig pimp Pete Ashton is on the shortlist for 2007's much coveted Brummie of the Year award. He is, by his own admission, "dead chuffed about it"; I am, by my own admission, dead chuffed for him. For those who don't know Pete, he's worked tirelessly towards encouraging, urging and sometimes forcibly coercing the city's artistic community to use the Internet to their best advantage. His Created in Birmingham site has - in a remarkably short space of time - become an invaluable resource for writers, artists, designers, popular beat combos and all-round creative types [...]

This is a bit of an oddity from the archives, but that's never stopped me before. While clearing out some old stuff from the attic of my mum's house I found this parody I'd written a long, long time ago in an adolescence far, far away. It must have been 1988 or 1989, and I must have been 17 or 18. It was published in my Sixth Form College's ragmag while I was supposed to be studying for my A-Levels. One of those A-Levels was Philosophy, which will become somewhat apparent later on. I also remember writing a fake biography [...]