‘Is There Anyone Out There?’ Documenting Birmingham’s Alternative Music Scene 1986-1990 Acknowledgements and Thanks Thanks to Dave Travis for opening up his incredible archive and recalling the histories associated with The Click Club. Likewise, thanks to Steve (Geoffrey S. Kent) Coxon for his generous insights and for taking a road trip to tell us almost everything. Thanks on behalf of all Click Clubbers to Travis and Coxon for starting it and for program- ming so many memorable nights for creating an environment for people to make their own. Thanks to Dave Chambers (and Andy Morris), Donna Gee, Bridget Duffy and Bryan Taylor Thankswho provided to all of particular those who materials contributed for the written exhibition memories: (Bryan Steve for some Byrne; fine Craig writing!). Hamilton; Andrew Davies; Sarah Heyworth; Neil Hollins; Angela Hughes; Rhodri Marsden; Dave Newton; Daniel Rachel; Lara Ratnaraja; Spencer Roberts; John Taggart; Andy Tomlinson and Maria Williams. Acknowledgements to the many contributors to Facebook Groups for The Click Club and Birmingham Music Archive. John Hall and Ixchelt Corbett Mighty Mighty: Russell Burton, Mick Geoghegan, Pete Geoghegan, D J Hennessy Hugh McGuinness. Lyle Bignon, Boris Barker, Darren Elliot, Graham Bradbury, Richard March Yasmin Baig-Clifford (Vivid Projects), John Reed at Cherry Red Records, Ernie Cartwright, Birmingham Music Archive, Justin Sanders, Naomi Midgley. Neil Hollins for production of the podcast interview with Steve Coxon and Dave Travis. Digital Print Services who produced the images. Special thanks to: Neil Taylor, Ellie Gibbons, Anna Pirvola, Aidan Mooney and Beth Kane. What was The Click Club? Established in 1986 by Dave Travis and Steve Coxon, ‘The Click Club’ was the name of a concert venue and disco associated with Birmingham’s alternative music culture. Located at the nightclub ‘Burberries-on-the-Street’, on a pre-regeneration era Broad Street, capacity was limited to a few hundred attendees on any one night. varied culture of the independent and alternative sector such as those associated with the C86During collection the period issued 1986-1990, by NME: thePrimal club Scream, showcased We’ve a wideGot a variety Fuzzbox of and acts We’re reflecting Gonna the Use It, and The Mighty Lemon Drops. The club supported the emergence of other local bands such as The Wonder Stuff, Ocean Colour Scene and a group of ‘grebo’ acts from the Black Country including Pop Will Eat Itself and Ned’s Atomic Dustbin. It scheduled Gothic Rock bands like Balaam and the Angel, Fields of The Nephilim and Rose of Avalanche, as well as nurturing the so-called baggy scene with appearances from The Charlatans, James and Blur (before they were labelled ‘Britpop’). The heterogeneous nature of the independent scene and a liberal approach to booking was further underlined by performances from hard-core punk bands like The Stupids, ‘acid jazz’ act James Taylor Quartet and DJ Fatboy Slim, as well as Zimbabwean music from The Bhundu Boys, who hold the record for the venue’s best attended gig. The Click Club was thus important locally, nationally and internationally for the economic role it played as part of a touring circuit, and for distributors and retailers of independent music. As a central feature in a music scene operating on a DIY-basis, independent of the major labels, at the intersection of subcultures, it also had enormous cultural value for its participants. Like so many sites of popular music culture, Burberries is long gone and, as with so many poses a number of challenges. This year marks the 30th anniversary of The Click Club’s opening,scenes that an haveapposite had anmoment important to explore in people’s and celebrate lives, assessing such a spaceits significance and the scene after andthe fact network of activity it represented. This exhibition draws upon the personal archive of promoter Dave Travis, whose archive of images taken by Travis at The Click Club, which are a small proportion of those produced asfilm, a professional posters, magazines music promoter and ephemera and photographer. detail a dynamic Travis space estimates and time. that Central his personal are a set of archive of photographs is in excess of 100 000 images. The exhibition enlists participant accounts and loaned artefacts too in order to contextualize The Click Club as a historical moment that remains important to its community and to the music and cultural heritage of Birmingham Who is this exhibition for? The title of the exhibition comes from 1986 single ‘Is there anyone out there’ from local band Mighty Mighty: Is there anyone out there for me? Is anyone else lonely? I can’t stand another summer, surely she’s out there somewhere someonebut if toonly, care I couldand share find thatin my girl world The lovelorn lyric evokes someonethe romantic to drag angst me of round youth Chelsea but also Girl! poses1 a question for the curators of this exhibition: who is out there who might know about The Click Club and is anyone else interested in this subject? The questions we have set out to explore therefore ask: what is the value of this material? Does such material have wider importance and contributions to make for our understand- ingWhat of doesthe past? it tell us beyond confirming the memories of the few individuals it concerned? While the exhibition will no doubt appeal to those who attended The Click Club as well as fans of popular music more generally, it is aimed too at a broader audience interested in history, urban life, creativity and the cultural economy. These notes set out contextual details for the exhibition as well as details of those behind it. They aim to supplement and echo the materials found in the exhibition and to underline the nature of a general project to recognize, explore and preserve popular music’s past – in Birmingham and further afield. To underline the appropriateness of the song and title, Chelsea Girl was a clothing store and iconic meeting place in Birmingham High Street. As the Evening Mail’s Zoe Chamberlain wrote in February 20151 in a feature on the city’s lost shops and shopping culture: Every young woman of a certain age loved Chelsea Girl when they were growing up because it offered trend-led pieces at affordable prices. They disappeared when the company morphed into River Island in 1988 Curating the exhibition The core of the exhibition is the photography of Dave Travis. Travis began his career as a photographer for music magazines such as Sounds, New Musical Express and the local BrumBeat. His photographs were originally used in Click Club promotional items and materials such as the in-house Click! magazine. records and historical documents but also as artworks in their own right. The images reflect his trained eye and we have sought to present these not just as Over 500 original negatives were digitally scanned and these are presented in a slideshow in the exhibition. A selection of images – representative of the general culture of the Click Club and Travis’ artistry – has been selected for the walls and displayed in a variety of shapes and sizes. These images were scanned at high resolution and prepared for print with the help of Ellie Gibbons of the Birmingham School of Media, BCU. The exhibition was originated and overseen by Dave Travis, Jez Collins, Sarah Raine and Paul Long of the Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research (BCMCR). Collins is the founder of Birmingham Music Archive and has published widely on popular music heritage. Raine is a PhD student researching the younger generation of the current Northern Soul scene. Long is the Director of BCMCR and Professor of Media and Cultural History. Anna Pirvola, a postgraduate student in the Birmingham School of Media, aided the team and the organization of the exhibition. Parkside Gallery Parkside Gallery is a leading art, design and media exhibition space within the Birmingham City University Parkside Building, with an emphasis on, but not that is being undertaken within the wider context of the University. confined to, media and design-led practice. Exhibitions add value to the research The gallery is an integral part of the Faculty of Art, Design and Media’s teaching and learning environment. A small committee of University staff shapes an annual programme of relevant and innovative work that seeks to engaging audiences within and beyond the institution. Visitors can expect to see a diverse range of shows throughout the academic year, culminating in the University’s own graduate shows in the summer. ‘Is There Anyone Out There?’ is the second of three shows within the programme that explore music genres and culture constructed from archives of photographic images, ephemera and memories. We have already exhibited on the design of punk rock and are planning an exhibiton on the Northern Soul scene in Spring 2017. Exhibitions at Parkside Gallery are managed by John Hall and Ixchelt Corbett C86 & All That – The Cool Universe mixtape. In his last book, Document & Eyewitness: An Intimate History of Rough Trade (Orion,Neil Taylor 2010) is a Neil former chronicled NME journalist the rise ofcredited the Rough with Trade compiling label theand influential shops. His C86latest chronicles the independent music scene of the mid 80s. In this short piece, he outlines thebook, musical C86 & development All That: The ofBirth a national Of Indie scene. In Difficult (See: www.facebook.com/c86andallthat) Times, due out later this year, In May 1986, the NME asked me to co-compile C86, a cassette drawing together 22 new bands that helped codify a nascent independent music scene that had steadily been taking shape for the previous two or so years. The grinding effects of a hard line Conservative Government, the on-going recession, the brutally discombobulating social effects of the recent miners’ strike, and the sense that the period of post punk was well culture.