Home of Metal

For those of you who don't know, the West Midlands is the Home of Metal. Black Sabboth, Led Zeppelin, Napalm Death and Judas Priest, amongst others, paved the way for rock music as we know and love it today.

Local musicians were celebrated in an exhibition in Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery in September. My friend Emma and I went along to have a look.

It was great to see how much the Midlands has shaped music and how the bands influenced the next generation of music lovers. Most of these men came from nothing, but went on to become some of the most famous people in the world, although often not for the right reasons (see Ozzy and something to do with a bat or a chicken, or something!)

No other genre has had the influence on fans and their imaginations as the metal genre has. Fashion and attitudes are all influenced buy metal, to the point that you know someone rocks before you've even spoken to them. Having said that, we don't all have the band shirts and patches on our jackets, some of the most straight looking people I've ever met love to rock out.

It's a genre with great depth and is often misunderstood, but I don't think it will ever die out. It's way too much fun and is forever capturing peoples imaginations.

www.homeofmetal.com

Home of Rock family tree.

Birmingham ArtsFest

Last weekend saw another successful weekend of arts in Birmingham. Every year the city boasts ArtsFest, the countries largest free arts festival.

My friend Nicola and I go every year and this year was no exception.  We saw some interesting stuff but the highlights have to be the CBSO (along with fireworks that are synchronized with the music) and a band called Casino. The Guillemots headlined but Casino were far better. Check them out; one of the guys is from the Stereophonics...I know that isn't much to go on as I'm not a Stereophonics fan but there we go.

Why does a day out ALWAYS make me ill?

I don't understand.  I went out for the day yesterday.  I didn't get up any earlier and I didn't go to bed any later, but I'm shattered. I used my scooter all day but my knee still hurts like mad.  We went to Blackpool to see the lights. I love Blackpool, people slag it off but I think there's a charm to it. 

I was amazed to see the lovely new accessible promenade that they've been working on for the last couple of years. It's still not quite finished but it looks great already.  The tram stops are being raised to tram level to make it accessible. Again, they are not quite finished but it will be great when they are done.  We spent a lot of the day in Cleavleys which is just north of Blackpool.  It's rather lovely.  A mixture of Blackpool tat but with cleaner streets. Although Blackpool looks a lot better than it did, even a year ago. 

The lights were rather dissopointing. Not so many years ago the road was full of illuminations on either side, this year a lot we're missing. Some of the lights that were there had bulbs out, in some cases a whole row was out. You wouldn't have seen this a few years ago. Workmen would go up and down the promenade fixing the lights throughout the evening. 

All in all though I had a fab day but I do wish some of the dropped kerbs were a little more dropped!