Brum in Brief
📖 Birmingham City Council has been accused of “disingenuous doublespeak” regarding reductions in Saturday opening hours for eight community libraries. Under the new changes, the libraries will open on alternating weekends with four open on each Saturday. The council has been blasted for social media posts in which it refers to the changes as a ‘transformation’, with independent Councillor Martin Brookes describing the cuts as the “managed decline of our community assets". Library worker and campaigner Alan Wylie called the post “disingenuous doublespeak that makes a mockery of local democracy, consultation and accountability”.
🎨 Nook Gallery in Kings Heath is celebrating its first birthday with a new exhibition titled PAPER. Featuring work by 60 artists and makers from across the UK, including creations by Jennifer Collier, Joe Lycett and Tat Vision, PAPER explores the endless possibilities of this simple material. Plus, visitors can also take part in a series of workshops and watch a performance by a paper puppet theatre. Enjoy the exhibition until 30 June at the gallery and community hub on Institute Road.
🚑 The BBC has reported from inside Queen Elizabeth Hospital — capturing the frustrations of staff and patients alike — to mark 15 years since the new site opened. “It's just that they haven't got the facilities to cope with the demand here,” said Zac Ranford whose grandfather spent 12 hours in A&E after a fall.
✅ Labour councillors in Birmingham want to give residents the option of ticking ‘Sikh’ and ‘Jewish’ as their ethnic group in surveys. They argue that without the measure, Sikh and Jewish brummies are “rendered invisible” to policymakers.
Last month at the Hare and Hounds, Jowe Head played his first gig in Birmingham for nearly 50 years. It was a homecoming of sorts, with shout outs to Shirley, Dorridge and other leafy suburbs between songs. Not being locals, the rest of the band looked faintly nonplussed. They’d come together after the pandemic to be part of Swell Maps C21, a new incarnation of a group that Jowe had first formed in the 1970s with some Solihull schoolmates. There was an element of fond remembrance — “that was a new one, and this is an old one by my late friend Nikki Sudden” — along with some playful absurdism. Towards the end a three-man middle-aged mosh-pit burst into life down the front.
It's quite possible that you’ve never heard of Swell Maps. They rarely get played on the radio, and their streaming numbers are tiny. Go to Mell Square and you won’t find a statue or a bench in their honour. However, when Kim Gordon played at Supersonic a few years ago, my friend picked her up from the airport; all Gordon wanted to talk about was Swell Maps.
Her former Sonic Youth colleague Thurston Moore has claimed that “Swell Maps had a lot to do with my upbringing,” while Pavement’s Spiral Stairs has acknowledged the debt they owe to the group’s sound: “really dirty and low frequency, but they had these great songs underneath all this mess.” It’s not just the Americans either. Damon Albarn is a fan; ‘2D’, the animated lead vocalist of Albarn’s Gorillaz project, has Swell Maps’ name emblazoned on his grubby t-shirt, while Luke Haines of the Auteurs has called the band “the British Velvet Underground”.
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But the Swell Maps story is one heavily inflected by tragedy. In an effort to tell it, I go to visit Jowe Head in the Dalston terrace he has inhabited since the 1990s. Tall, dapper and bird-like, Jowe made me tea in the kitchen while I had a nose around his cabinet of curiosities – trophies and relics from a life spent making music and art.
