The Art Bar is a new venture opened by the Q-Club, based in the Methodist Central Hall on Corporation Street. Hosted by The Sauce Gallery, the Art Bar will hold monthly exhibitions, open daily from 12 midday til late for visitors to pop in and browse art work while relaxing with a drink.

With newly refurbished bar areas, events spaces, a restored grand entrance and even newly decorated toilets, Central Hall has finally got the loving touch it craved- without losing any of it’s original splendour and identity.

The first exhibition to be featured is ‘Headz’, is a 20 year collection of musicians photographed by Pete Williams. This article on Birmingham Mail explains a bit more about The Art Bar.

It’s actually a little tricky to find out about local music around the city, I find. This is the stuff I know about, feel free to add other stuff in the comments.

News

Brum Notes is the website for the free, monthly music and lifestyle magazine (Nov issue out now, Oct one online here).

The Birmingham Post have news and reviews here and the Birmingham Mail do rock/pop news.

Fused Magazine‘s site does the odd bit of music news, as does the website for sister magazine Area.

Surge Music takes a wider, Midlands-wide view of things, with articles and lists of gigs, bands and venues.

Cul-de-Sac turned out to be a false dawn for this sort of thing, but may come back one day.

@birminghamlive and @brumpunks are good sources for concert info too.

Reviews

Birmingham Live is the obvious choice here – someone from their ranks of volunteer reviewers and photographers will be at a gig in Birmingham pretty much every evening. Steve Gerrard organises this one (Lee Allen and I have also chipped in occasionally).

The Hearing Aid is a blog by someone called The Baron who goes to an impressive number of local gigs.

The Birmingham Mail do gig reviews too.

Get-togethers

The Birmingham Music Network meets monthly at the Department of Technology, Engineering and the Environment (T.E.E.) at Millennium Point. Their website has a good range of resources too.

Audio

I’m on shakier ground here – which radio shows promote local talent There’s Brumcast on Rhubarb Radio and Introducing on BBC WM. I don’t know enough about the shows on New Style Radio, Aston FM or any others.

Are there any Birmingham-based mp3 blogs worth talking about?

Anything else?

Let me know in the comments. Just to be clear, we’re not looking for bands/venues/promoters to plug themselves but if that’s you, where do you look to get featured?

Oh, and see also Birmingham listings.

(pic – The Editors by Steve Gerrard from the opening night of the new Academy)

In three weeks’ time, the last daily edition of the printed version of the Birmingham Post will roll off our presses in Erdington, marking the end of a publishing tradition that stretches back more than 150 years

Roy Greenslade rounds up the changes:

The Birmingham Post, as forecast in the summer, is to go weekly; the Birmingham Mail will become an overnight, morning title; both editors are leaving; and there will be about 80 redundancies across the group

There are plans to put the titles on a more even keel, but this isn’t good news and sympathies go to those who’ll be affected.

While we’re on the subject of the Post, they had the most fantastic front-page story this morning:

Birmingham council’s £100,000 communications chief Debra Davis attacks own department

Bearing in mind that Ms Davis has been running the department for the past two-and-a-half years, there are many questions that spring to mind – many of them articulated by ‘DiliGent’ in the piece’s 4th comment. Worth a read.