Nice interview with Joel Wilson aka rapper Joel the Custodian on the predominantly American Music Mamma’s blog.
Here’s the Brum-specific bit:
What is the current music scene like there in Birmingham?
Birmingham, the city that spawned Black Sabbath [and recently the Editors and the Streets] has over 1 million inhabitants. Despite the wealth of creativity and access to local government funding few local music scenes grow or have a national impact. The still too unfocused but flashy annual Artsfest has the potential to gain notoriety around across Europe. As far as I can tell Birmingham remains a city with fragmented, inward focused musical cliques, some of which could be doing some damage in the music business but instead are just quietly sauntering along. Some entrepreneurs are trying to change things.
He then goes on to list a bunch of bands he likes from the area including Distophia, Misty’s Big Adventure, Death Is Not Welcome Here, Highlighter Islanders, Jo Hamilton, Carina Round, Moneytree, Ross Spencer and Chrissy Van Dyke along with new-to-me hiphop label Zang.
And, as always, it gets more interesting after that as he talks about his actual work.
Photo nicked from interview. Found via Technorati.