Fresh from their Supersonic debut, Ore played their tuba doom. Referencing Metal, Classical and Experimental sounds.

Andrew Moscardo Parker took inspiration from the newly reformed godfathers of Metal, taking the first three notes of the song ‘Black Sabbath’ ( these notes were known as the Devil’s Intervals in Medieval times) and creating a 30 minute string piece. Eight string players surrounded the audience to create a truly immersive piece of work.

Capsule’s very own Ms Sara Fowles (centre) contributes viola

Huge thanks to all the players, to SOUNDkitchen for contributing field recordings based around the notion of ‘Metal’ and to IKON.

As part of Flat Pack Festival in collaboration with Home Of Metal
Screening of: The Song Remains the Same & talk by Chris Phipps

@ South Birmingham College
Saturday 14th 16:00pm
£4
Tickets

Dir. Peter Clifton & Joe Massot
UK/USA 1976, 137 mins
Feat. Robert Plant; Jimmy Page; John Bonham; John Paul Jones

Back in the day when psychedelic concept movies were compulsory for any self-respecting rock band, Led Zeppelin took the plunge with this patchy but often entertaining document of their 1973 Houses of the Holy tour. The meat of the film is a performance at Madison Square Gardens shot over three nights in which the group steam through ‘Stairway’, ‘Black Dog’, ‘Heartbreaker’ and the rest to thunderous effect. Also scattered through the movie are fantasy sequences which Spinal Tap might have cringed at, including Plant rescuing a fair maiden and Page meeting a hermit up a mountain. The simplest and most touching is John Bonham’s, shot on his farm near Droitwich.

The making-of story is an epic in its own right, and today’s special screening will include a talk by Birmingham-born documentary maker and music historian Chris Phipps. Combining personal anecdotes with music fact and urban fiction, Phipps will provide a unique decoding of a band and film which often defy description. As he says, “you may leave with more questions than answers, but that’s Zeppelin.”

For further info about Flatpack Festival:
http://www.flatpackfestival.org.uk/

Don’t forget you can upload your photos, ticket stubs, programs etc to the Home Of Metal Archive

“I’m really proud to be a Brummie and to call Birmingham my home, that’s why I’m supporting the Home of Metal events and message.  Your surroundings and experiences influence your music so it’s important for people to know where that music came from!“

The next Home of Metal Open day takes place on Saturday 7th of Feb at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery in Waterhall, 11am – 4pm.
Fans are encouraged to bring along related memorabilia, photos and stories to be recorded and digitised to add to the archive. Its a free event all are welcome.

Above photo of Tony Iommi taken by Steve Gerrard, whose photos of Metal fans will also be on display on the 7th of Feb.

The Broad Street Business Improvement District is delighted to announce that Heaven and Hell guitarist, founding member of Black Sabbath, Grammy Award winner and king of heavy metal Tony Iommi will be honoured on the Broad Street Walk of Star’s on Sunday 23rd November 2008.

Following an afternoon of live music from local bands on the stage in Centenary Square ‘Kerrang Radio’ presenter Johnny Doom will host the evening, with the presentation of the star taking place at 6.30pm.

Home of Metal encourages fans of  Black Sabbath  to be photographed wearing their prized band t-shirts.
Images will be taken by the Birmingham photographer Steve Gerrard, who has been capturing bands in action for over 20 years, and has photographed some of the biggest names and artists. The photographs will then go on display on the Home Of Metal website and in future exhibitions.

Followed by our last Capsule gig of the year at the Hare & Hounds with Racebannon + Trencher + Dream Dreams The Dreamer - doors at 8pm

From the Birmingham Post – today article by Andrew Cowan

Document +1 magazine

Nice write ups on the Plan B Magazine blog, BBC Black Country and the Kerrang! radio website

“As Birmingham’s creative revival gathers pace, look out for events run by DIY promoters Jenny Moore and Lisa Meyer, aka Capsule. Champions of all things avant garde, they’ve hosted events at SXSW in Texas and Sonar in Barcelona as well as the annual Supersonic Festival nearer to home at the Custard Factory . Meanwhile their latest project Home Of Metal at the Wolverhampton Art Gallery , celebrates the West Midlands as the birth place of Black Sabbath, Led Zeppellin and Judas Priest. ” People will bring collections of memorabelia relating to the bands,” says Jenny Moore, “like the Antiques Roadshow of Rock.” Artefacts and stories will be recorded and uploaded onto permanent online archive. Capsule also take an original approach to hospitality – rather then snakebite ‘n’ black, they serve tea and cakes at their events.”

To kick start the proceedings we invited up the great oracle himeslf, John Doran, a music journalist who writes for a number of publications including Metal Hammer, Classic Rock, WIRE, Plan B, Stool Pigeon, Drowned In Sound, Playlouder, Disorder, Bizarre and more. He also edits his own website The Quietus. John gave us a fascinating potted history of music starting with Black Sabbaths’ early beginnings and blues influences right through to Napalm Death. Despite being rather poorly and suffering from a liver infection he had us all on the edge of our seats.

The group of volunteers will be keeping a record of their experiences on the HOME OF METAL blog, which will be set up next week, so I thought that it would be useful to keep you updated with what we discover and try and keep a record of our journey, as even within the last 7 days we’ve uncovered so much.
* Last week we went to London and met with Julie Weir and Lisa Bardsley, both key members of the music industry whom have been incredibly generous with their time and contacts, and will serve as great advocates to the project.

Myk in one of his many Napalm related garments.

* We were put in contact with Myk Bastard, a guy from Vestal, New York, whom has amazingly collected everything Napalm related, with over 200 T-shirts and clothing , not to mention the back catalogue of all their releases and related projects. Myk is now going to start photographing his collection so he can add them to our archive. What a star!

* Midge from DIABOLIK at the Custard Factory, has kept every issue of Sounds Music paper from 1984 – 1991 and has leant them to us to scan and serves as a wonderful archive of news relating to the bands of that period, loads of great reviews and news stories. A legacy of Sounds was the creation of the Heavy Metal/Rock magazine Kerrang!, which was originally issued as a supplement before being spun-off as a separate publication, which continues to this day.

* Richard Short has been in touch, he’s been documenting Digbeth over the past 20 years and has photos from all the venues in the 80’s and 90’s, mainly taken at the coach and horses, barrell organ, kalidiscope and edwards or nameless digbeth pubs and include some fantastic Godflesh photos.

* We went to Nottingham, home of Earache Records, and spent the afternoon with label founder Digby Pearson, luckily for us Digby has been a great hoarder, and has kept a wealth of treasures which relate to Napalm Death and Godflesh. He has kindly agreed to start digitising them for us to add to the archive. Most fascinating was his memories of early shows when people like Vic Reeves were big fans of the bands and the way the late great John Peel was such an advocate for the genre. We’re hoping to go back and see Digby in a couple of weeks to rifle through more of his collection, as well as inviting him to be interviewed at our first open day in Wolverhampton on Saturday 25th of october.

* We have recieved permission from Central TV to show a documentary made in 1992 by Roger Shannon and Jonnie Turpie entitled MOTOR CITY MUSIC YEARS. Part two of the documentary is about the 1970’s. It starts by charting the move from The Move into orchestral based pop music (ELO, Wizard etc) at the start of that decade, and then concentrates on heavy metal with great interviews, and music clips, with Black Sabbath, Ozzy in LA, Judas Priest, Magnum, and then Slade (filmed in the pub at the Black Country Museum).

Exhausting and thats just a weeks worth, the project is now in full swing, no turning back…start searching in your attics!

Saturday 25th October : Wolverhampton Art Gallery 10am – 4.30pm
http://www.wolverhamptonart.org.uk
Lichfield Street
Wolverhampton, WV1
01902 552 055

We launch the first series of open days at Wolverhampton Art Gallery as part of Hello Digital Festival. Home of Metal is a brand new project aimed at creating the first digital archive of metal music, memorabilia and fans stories, to tell the story of this unique moment of Midlands’ musical heritage. Launching at Wolverhampton Art Gallery on Saturday 25 October, 10am – 4.30pm, the project coincides with the 40th anniversary of when the term ‘heavy metal’ was coined by music journalist Lester Bangs when describing Black Sabbath.

The launch event at the city centre Art Gallery encourages fans of Judas Priest, Napalm Death, Godflesh, Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin to come along and share their experiences of their favourite band. Fans are encouraged to bring memorabilia along with their personal stories to the gallery to be recorded – all of which will go towards the new digital archive, which aims to tell the true story of the birth place of metal. – Think antiques roadshow for Metal fans!

Each open day will be hosted by Kerrang! Radio DJ – the legendary Johnny Doom, a stalwart of the Midlands Metal scene, accompanied by special guests from industry or genre. A selection of memorabilia will be on display as well as screenings of film documentation and interviews from the bands. Refreshments will also be provided. Dig out your old ticket stubs, T-shirts, fanzines and bring them along, its a FREE EVENT so everyone welcome, curious folks too!

Next open days: Thursday 6th November at New Art Gallery Walsall 6pm – 9pm (with special performance by Einstellung) and then Saturday 7th Feb at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery.

Images will be taken by the Birmingham photographer Steve Gerrard, who has been capturing bands in action for over 20 years, and has photographed some of the biggest names and artists. The photographs will then go on display at Wolverhampton Art Gallery at the official launch event in October as well as New Art Gallery Walsall and then will become part of the Home Of Metal website.

Photo courtesy of Ben Javens