I had a meeting in Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery today. You may recall that last time I was there I thought I was going to be thrown off the roof in the Lundahl & Seitl thing at Fierce fest, but today was quite sedate - I threw my tea all over the table in front of someone I was trying to impress and then nearly got ejected by security after wandering into an exhibition without paying. So sedate it’s almost not worth mentioning.
I hadn’t been planning on sticking around, but saw the poster for the Home of Metal exhibition and got all excitable. I was talking about metal when round at Hannah’s at the weekend. She likes a lot of those modern screamo bands darling (for some reason I wrote that in my Lilian-from-The-Archers voice) but I can’t abide the shouting, and I don’t like the relentlessness of it either. We were talking about how I do love heavy music though. I love Led Zeppelin and Guns N Roses because I love that classic blues-rock stuff, and the whole stoner thing that started with Black Sabbath and gave us Dead Meadow and QOTSA too. The exhibition in Birmingham was a bit corporate in places, with the whole back catalogue of Metal Hammer mags because, as far as I could tell, Metal Hammer wanted a bit of ad space. There was sponsorship from some guitar and amp people too, and an area for people to sit and play them, complete with authentic teenage boys. This is how an exhibition pays for itself I guess. I liked the oral history stuff though, LOADS. They’d recorded old guys talking about their factory jobs and then showed an interview with Judas Priest, who could hear nearby metalworks pounding during their English lessons at school. And Tony Iommi was interviewed about how he tried to fashion fake fingers for himself. And OMG THE ZINES. I’ve nothing but good words for the internet - it’s changed my life - but I’m yearning for a Sharpie and a photocopier now…
