Here’s a (very) brief potted history. Group of Bearwoodians reckon there should be more live music in Bearwood. Groups meets in pubs and bars. Quite a bit. Not a lot happens. Group has a bit of a rethink. Group decides to put on a free afternoon of music in an old, long neglected bandstand in Lightwoods Park. Working on a bit of a shoestring budget group assembles all the kit, fills in all the forms, books all the bands (7 in total…7…ambitious eh?) and does the whole promotions thing. Restoring the group’s faith in human nature around 500 people turn up to watch. Blimey. Slightly sweatier group returns to bar to plan the next one

A full write-up then follows. If that’s relevant to your interests, you’ll be interested in welovebearwood.

I liked their flyer.

I didn’t make it to CoCoMAD but I did get down to the Friday of Mostly Jazz. It was lovely – nice atmosphere if you can handle a concentrated dose of Moseleyness, some good music and an utterly charming setting. There’s a much better review by The Baron over on The Hearing Aid.

There are a few photos on Flickr but most of them are from Fiona Cullinan, who I saw running about with her camera, so here’s a slideshow from her Mostly Jazz set:

In other jazz news, the Birmingham International Jazz Festival is on until Sunday with all sorts of things happening all over the place.

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)

an online music magazine about the West Midlands. This is a fledgling project and we are hoping to grow in the coming months and years. Cul-de-Sac is designed to be a one-stop resource for music fans in the region, as well as being a vital source of information for people regardless of their geographical position

Cul-de-Sac has the sort of news, album reviews, gig reviews and so on that you’d expect from this sort of music site but with a West Mids slant.

I’m dead pleased to see this spring up, partly because I’m hoping it’ll take a weight off CiB.  When I get emails with local bands’ MySpace pages or gigs/nights/etc listings I’m wary that if I mention one I’d have no reason (other than my own bias) for not mentioning them all.  There are a bunch of sites doing that job better than I ever could.

There’s Live Brum, What’s On In Brum, Birmingham Gig Guide, Birmingham Alive and others for listings. Birmingham Live and The Hearing Aid take care of reviews and again, there’s a few others doing that too.  However, there was a big Cul-de-Sac-shaped hole for news and reviews.  I’ve high hopes for this one.

What might be even more interesting would be for a few of the above-mentioned to find a way of sharing their content somehow.  Just a thought…

Spotted by BiNS.